"What Is Happening To Our Wealthiest Cities Clearly Demonstrates America’s Rapid Decline"

"What Is Happening To Our Wealthiest Cities 

Clearly Demonstrates America’s Rapid Decline"

By Michael Snyder

"The largest cities in the United States are becoming cesspools of crime, drugs, violence and homelessness, and no matter what “solutions” our politicians come up with the problems just continue to get even worse. Sadly, this is even happening in the wealthiest cities in the whole country. New York City is the financial capital of the entire globe, and over the past two decades San Francisco has been swimming in giant mountains of tech industry money. But today the streets of both cities look like something out of a post-apocalyptic horror movie. If things are this bad while economic conditions are still relatively stable, what will those streets look like two years from now when economic conditions are far worse?

New York City has seen some pretty rough times in the past, but the Big Apple has never had as many homeless people sleeping in shelters than it does right now…"New York City’s homeless problem does not appear to be getting any better. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, the numbers have actually hit an all-time high. They claim the average number of people sleeping in a shelter every night climbed to nearly 66,000 in October."

It is far more preferable to sleep in a shelter than it is to sleep in the streets, because violence in NYC has escalated to very frightening levels…"Fatal stabbings and slashings are up an alarming 37% in the Big Apple this year. The NYPD has logged 96 blade-involved killings so far in 2022, compared with 70 for the same period in 2021, according to department stats obtained by The Post. Stabbings and slashings overall are up 10% in 2022, with 4,344 compared to 3,954 last year, the stats show."

Meanwhile, the downward spiral that we are witnessing in San Francisco is incredibly alarming. I recently watched footage of what downtown San Francisco currently looks like, and afterwards I was truly at a loss for words.

- https://twitter.com/

Have things really gotten this bad? Part of the problem is that the office buildings downtown are much less occupied these days thanks to the “work at home revolution” that began during the early stages of the pandemic…"Today San Francisco has what is perhaps the most deserted major downtown in America. On any given week, office buildings are at about 40 percent of their prepandemic occupancy, while the vacancy rate has jumped to 24 percent from 5 percent since 2019."

Another major factor is drug addiction. Right now we are witnessing the worst drug crisis in the history of the United States, and it just keeps intensifying every year. In fact, the number of drug overdose deaths among our teens actually “doubled from 2019 to 2021”…"Drug overdose deaths among US teens doubled from 2019 to 2021 – even as use of illicit substances declined – as fentanyl fueled a nationwide crisis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today that teenage overdoses increased 109 percent over the two years. Deaths caused by fentanyl alone increased 182 percent."

Once upon a time, the United States was such a lovely place to be. But now our communities are degenerating into rapidly decaying hellholes and our streets are filled with violent predators.

Have you heard about a new trend called “jugging”? From coast to coast, predators are patiently watching potential victims and they strike as “they juggle smartphones and car keys in parking lots or at home”…"A new crime trend is targeting the distracted and the elderly, with police warning about it from Alabama to California. The big picture: Jugging involves thieves staking out unsuspecting victims at banks or retail stores before following and robbing them while they juggle smartphones and car keys in parking lots or at home."

But of course not all predators will be satisfied with just robbing you. When a 20-year-old pregnant woman was taken in by a 36-year-old man after being kicked out of her home, she was initially relieved to have a place to stay. But that sense of relief didn’t last long…

"A 20-year-old pregnant woman was kicked out of her house around Thanksgiving. Her luck appeared to be make a holiday rebound when a stranger offered her a warm meal and a place to stay. However, this was anything but charity. Michael Barajas, 36, is accused of subjecting the young woman to unimaginable depravities over the course of three weeks. It turns out that this particular predator actually had his teeth filed down into sharp points. He literally looks like he is insane, and Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson is describing him as “a monster”…

"According to the Tri-County Times, Barajas has been charged with human trafficking, kidnapping, first-degree criminal sexual conduct, possession of methamphetamine, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault with intent to do great bodily harm, and felony possession of a firearm. “This guy is a monster,” said Swanson. “If you look at the teeth that are filed down and the threats of ripping out a throat, I will say no more.”

Anyone with any sense never would have gone with him. But other predators can look completely innocent. For example, one 33-year-old man recently thought that he was pulling over to help a woman that was in trouble on the side of the road. But once he got out of his vehicle, two men jumped out from their hiding spots and viciously attacked him…

"Shortly before 11 p.m. on Wednesday, an unnamed 33-year-old man was driving along near the intersection of Hutchinson Road and South George Washington Boulevard, a rather rural area just outside Yuba City, about 40 miles north of Sacramento, when he spotted a woman standing near a black SUV on the side of the road. She flagged the man down, indicating that she was in some kind of distress.

The man pulled over and exited his vehicle to see how he could help. However, once he left his vehicle, two seemingly armed men jumped out of the woman’s SUV. One appeared to have a gun, the other had a knife. Under threat of violence, they zip-tied the driver’s legs together and stole his wallet and car keys. The three con artists then poured gasoline all over the victim and lit him on fire before they left, driving away in their own SUV and taking the victim’s car too."

This is what our country has become. We are rapidly evolving into a “Mad Max society”, and that is because we have rejected the values that this nation was founded upon. And if we stay on the path that we are currently on, things are only going to get worse. Ignoring what is happening is not going to make it go away. Social decay is systematically eating away at the foundations of our civilization, and at this point America’s decline is really starting to accelerate."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

o

Ray Charles, "America the Beautiful"

"It’s All Falling Apart - With Gerald Celente"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 12/19/22:

"It’s All Falling Apart - With Gerald Celente"

"The economy is falling apart. They can tell us anything they want, but we know that things are much worse than they are telling us. Today we have a special guest, the one, and only Gerald Celente from the Trends Journal. He talks about everything."

Check out the Trends Journal today: - https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jim Kunstler, "A Christmas Parable"

"A Christmas Parable"

by Jim Kunstler

“The powerful are panicking, and so they should. 

Their secrets are leaking.” 

 - Miranda Devine, The New York Post

"As the Yule log burns down, and the trivialities of the season melt into air, the nation might ask itself how the authorities who run things went to war against the citizens of this land. I will tell you and it will probably make you angry: It started when the women of the professional and managerial class watched their avatar, Hillary Clinton, lose the 2020 election against a man who seemed the quintessence of everything they hated about Daddydom.

Donald Trump, flawed to perfection, wrecked the chance of the amalgamated successful women of America to run the national household. Out came the pussy-hats, the Wiccans, and the celebrities threatening to “blow up the White House.” Out came a savage animus against men generally, and a campaign to feminize them in retaliation - and then punish them for objecting to it. Up rose a social movement, Wokery, that had the earmarks of a histrionic religious mania, with Satanic overtones. Up rose the demons, the Antifa louts, the BLM arsonists, the drag queens.

Thus unrolled a national psychodrama that continues to spool out as every system, every business, every institution in our country wobbles and flies apart now. The men embedded in the professional and managerial class tried in 2016 to chivalrously protect their womens’ avatar and her steadfast followers and, failing ignobly that grim November day, then turned to actually attack their adversary, Donald Trump, with the explicit intent to destroy him by all means necessary. In the years-long process, they devolved into criminality, and in so doing they entered a vicious cycle of lying about everything they did to escape the consequences of their ostensible exercise in gallantry.

In effect, the people running things went from a war against a particular person to a war against reality and its twin sister, truth. Now they are deeply invested in unreality and untruth to the point where they have forgotten how this whole thing started and all they can do is desperately patch the dike they had to construct against a deluge of information composed of truth and reality coming at them like a tsunami rolling across the sea. The harder they work at this futile task of defense, the more absurd they make themselves, leading to ridicule, humiliation, and, finally condemnation in whatever remains of the legal arena, where their deeds will finally be judged.

The first stage of that outcome for them is pretending that none of it is happening. That’s why The New York Times and Washington Post ignore the news that the gallant knights of the FBI and several other tentacles of the Intel octopus mounted a ferocious, long-running psy-op through the new phenomenon of social media - that happened to rise in importance through this whole period of national discord. In effect, the intel agencies seized the transmitters (as Fidel Castro might put it) and used them very effectively to control their hallowed narratives.

The second stage is deploying a ruse to distract the public’s attention: That’s why CNN allowed Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the most accomplished liar in all of American politics, to set the stage on Sunday for this week’s criminal referrals against Mr. Trump to be issued out of the House Special J-6 Committee he sits on. That will give America something else to talk about than how they’ve been gaslit and deceived for years. If The Party of Chaos can only bring back The Insurrection to the spotlight, they will feel safe for a little while during the Christmas holiday - because shortly after the new year, there will be a different crew running the J-6 committee and, for the first time in a couple of years, they will be looking into neglected matters such as the FBI’s actual role in that event, and Nancy Pelosi’s failure to honor the then-president’s request for national troops to protect the Capitol building.

Between then and now, we must expect to see the release of Elon Musk’s Twitter files regarding the interactions between federal public health officials and the social network during the years of Covid-19. You understand that these officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, CDC chief Dr. Rochelle Walensky, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and many others, lied about absolutely everything concerning the pandemic and continue lying to this moment about the putative remedy for it: mRNA vaccines, which happen to be killing a lot of people these days. That will be very serious business. Soon will come congressional inquiries, subpoenas, compelled testimony, and perhaps even criminal referrals.

Of course, the professional and managerial class also happens to be the most stalwart group of vaccine champions in the land and thus the most psychologically invested in thinking they did the right thing taking all those shots - while forcing as many others to submit, whether they consented or not. The psychology of previous investment is a prime generator of self-delusion. It looks like that class of people will be proven incorrect the hard way. It turns out, after all, that the mRNA “vaccines” were very effective at being deadly. The excess mortality has already kicked in. It’s 18 percent above normal, for instance, in Australia right now, because they’re keeping track. Our officials don’t want to keep track. They don’t want to know, and they certainly don’t want you to know. This is what you get when you make war against truth and reality."

- https://kunstler.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Economic Market Snapshot 12/19/22"

"Economic Market Snapshot 12/19/22"

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

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

○

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

○

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

○

A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

○

Financial Stress Index

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

○

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

○

Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

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

○

And now... The End Game...

Gregory Mannarino, "Cracks In The Debt Hyper-Bubble Are Getting Larger"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/19/22:

"Cracks In The Debt Hyper-Bubble Are Getting Larger"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Strange Prices At Big Lots! This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 12/19/22:

"Strange Prices At Big Lots! This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"

"In today's vlog we are at Big Lots, and are noticing some strange price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Just A Coincidence"

"Just A Coincidence"

"Watch this and have your mind blown. Its like who ever wrote this episode of X-Files knew what was about to happen and was trying to tell us all. Whoever wrote the script for this episode has to be a time traveler or a senior deep state operative who revealed the entire plan just for giggles. NO ONE could simply imagine this in 2016..."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

- https://twitter.com/

OMG...Astonishing, incredible... HOW?

"Be Ready For Stock Market Crash That Is Happening Right Before Our Eyes"

Full screen recommended.

"Be Ready For Stock Market Crash That 

Is Happening Right Before Our Eyes"

By Epic Economist

"Up until this point, it felt like we were living in two separate economic universes. A “real” one, where people struggled with rampant inflation, supply shortages, and soaring prices for food, gas, energy, and housing; as well as a “parallel” one, where financial markets were bracing for a swift return to normalcy and expecting companies to report perfect earnings results. Now, we’re clearly seeing investors' fantasies being shattered. Our economic reality has become way too oppressive, and hopes for brighter days are being turned into deception.

Last month, the stock market has benefited from what experts call “a bear market rally,” - when stocks climb higher for a brief period within a longer-term downward trend. Although many believed the worst was behind us, and that things were starting to fall back into place, the outlook for a deep recession seems to be crushing optimistic predictions for next year. In fact, as Alba Puerro, trader and co-founder of SalaParaTraders, notes, the U.S. Federal Reserve is now pointing to the highest odds of a recession in the next 12 months at 45%, the highest on record. "If the Fed sees a 45% chance of a recession, the probability is clearly much higher," highlights the analyst.

We are actually entering what could be seen as the second stage of the “great unraveling,” when a selloff in stocks reignites and dropping real estate values combine to create a major collapse in asset prices as the reality of a severe economic recession starts to sink in. Given that the S&P 500 ballooned by 113% over the past two years from its market bottom recorded on March 2020, it’s safe to say that the correction in stocks is nowhere near its end. Rates have gone from 0% to 4% in a span of only nine months. Now, they’re currently standing at the highest level in 15 years, and that was enough to trigger the worst selloff the market has seen since September. The second phase of the drag down in equities is being driven by a free-fall in corporate earnings as economic activity shrinks in a lagged response to rate increases, explains author and professional investor Danielle Ecuyer. "The more earnings fall as the economy splutters, the more stock prices will decline," she says.

Wells Fargo strategist Chris Harvey wrote in a new note: "We expect 2023 to be a back-and-forth year, with double-digit sell-offs driven by Fed and economic concerns". According to Morgan Stanley Chief Investment Officer Mike Wilson, the bear market is not over. "We've got significantly lower lows if our earnings forecast is correct," he revealed. If we’re talking about a return to normal valuation levels, the market would have to go down by almost 60% from where it sits currently, argues the financial expert who called the 2000 and 2008 market downturns. For the Nasdaq, that would be equal to a total loss of almost 91%, says John Hussman, the president of the Hussman Investment Trust.

Everyone could tell the stock market was in a historic bubble that would explode as interest rates started to rise. What we didn’t know was how much chaos the comedown would bring. The bear market doesn’t run on a controlled schedule, but interest rates certainly do. With a new series of rate hikes expected in 2023, the stock market seems to be falling off a cliff so steep that we still cannot see the bottom. This downfall is going to be a brutal one, and the whole financial world is starting to see it."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

"Cars Are About To Be 50% Off"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 12/18/22:

"Cars Are About To Be 50% Off"

"People are so broken and behind on their bills that they cannot afford to make a car payment. Get ready because car prices are about to drop in half. There are now incentives from the lenders to pick cars up faster from dead beat borrowers."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Related:

"Perfect Storm Arrives: “Massive Wave” Of Car Repossessions And

 Loan Defaults To Trigger Auto Market Disaster, Cripple US Economy"

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Full screen recommended.

Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.

Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110712.html

"Courage..."

"Courage isn't having the strength to go on - 

it is going on when you don't have strength."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"Sometimes..."

 

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "Sunset"

"Sunset"

"Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors

which it passes to a row of ancient trees.

You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,

one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,

not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,

not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing

that turns to a star each night and climbs –

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)

your own life, timid and standing high and growing,

so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,

one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

"One Can Make People Believe..."

“One could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."

- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" 

"Car Repossessions And Loan Defaults Will Cripple Economy; Prepare For Reality"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/18/22:

"Car Repossessions And Loan Defaults Will

 Cripple Economy; Prepare For Reality"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Mukwonago, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Cruelest Joke Of All..."

“The smallest decisions made had such profound repercussions. One ten-minute wait could save a life…or end it. One wrong turn down the right street or one seemingly unimportant conversation, and everything was changed. It wasn’t right that each lifetime was defined, ruined, ended, and made by such seemingly innocuous details. A major life-threatening event should come with a flashing warning sign that either said ABANDON ALL HOPE or SAFETY AHEAD. It was the cruelest joke of all that no one could see the most vicious curves until they were over the edge, falling into the abyss below.”

- Sherrilyn Kenyon

"The Bamboozle...:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” 

- Carl Sagan

"Homo Credulus"

"Homo Credulus"

by Joel Bowman

"Man: He’ll go along with just about anything. Given the right circumstances…a little programming…and enough time for it all to marinate in his soft, mammalian brain… there is almost nothing Homo Credulus will not learn to embrace. Don’t believe us?

Take a look at the historical record; you’ll soon wonder how we ever got this far. Sure, you’ll discover gizmos and flying contraptions, art and agriculture, music and mathematics. You’ll witness spectacular scientific breakthroughs, the number “0” and a man’s footprint on the moon. You’ll also find automobiles with so many cup holders, you won’t know where to holster your oversized 7/11 Big Gulp.

But you’ll also scratch your head. Perhaps you’ll even weep. And if you think hard enough, you’ll put a few things to serious question…“Central banks?” “Modern democracy?” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show?” How has mankind survived such atrocities? Self inflicted, no less! And why, moreover, does he rush so earnestly to repeat and replay his worst mistakes? (Ellen has been on air since 2003!) Don’t be too hard on yourself, Dear Reader. After all, repetition is nothing new…

You’ll recall that it was the Greeks who first gave the world democracy – from the Greek, dēmokratía, literally “Rule by ‘People’”. (And yes, it was those very same Greeks who put their own beloved Socrates to death, by a majority vote of 361-140.) Today, democracy is a cherished tenet of “the West.” It is woven into the civic religion, sewn into the social fabric. Men march off eagerly to fight for it, to proselytize it, and to die in forgotten ditches defending it.

At least, that’s what they believe they’re doing. As usual, the poor saps have been duped. Herewith, a little historical context…The phrase “Making the world safe for democracy” was actually a marketing slogan, coined back in the 1910s, as a way to sell “The Great War” to America. Weary from their own disastrous Civil War just a few decades earlier, in which hundreds of thousands of (mostly) young men gave up the ghost, Americans were mostly inward looking at the time. That is to say, they wanted little to do with what they largely saw as a “European affair.”

Polls might have indicated no appetite for battle, but the nation’s politicians were nonetheless starved for military misadventure. They sensed big profits abroad, both in manufacturing armaments and making onerous bank loans to foreign lands. Sure, “the nation” would have to fill tank and trench with warm young bodies, but very few soldiers would carry senatorial surnames along with their rifles. And so, after a public relations campaign of truly epic proportions, America marched off to war, wrapped in the delusion they had freshly been sold.

Eddie Bernays, the man who coined the phrase and, thus, peddled the war to America, made a fortune for his efforts. He was even invited by Woodrow Wilson to attend the Paris Peace Conference, in 1919, as a show of gratitude for his services. There, Bernays learned the full impact of his “democracy” slogan. An obviously bright fellow, the surreal experience caused him to think. If people will line up to kill one another under the influence of a mere marketing campaign they could surely be convinced to do, say and buy just about anything!

Bernays was right. In fact, he wrote a series of books, detailing his insights. They included "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923), "A Public Relations Counsel" (1927) and a neat little number titled "Propaganda" (1928), in which Bernays laid out the blueprint for mass social and psychological manipulation. The collected works went on to become a huge success, and the favorite of none other than Joseph Goebbles, Reich Minister for Propaganda in Nazi Germany between 1933-45.

Bernays himself, writing in his 1965 autobiography, recalls a dinner at home in 1933 where… "Karl von Wiegand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Wiegand his propaganda library, the best Wiegand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Wiegand, was using my book "Crystallizing Public Opinion" as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. […] Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign."

It is indeed chilling to think of such a heinous undertaking as being engineered, blueprinted, premeditated and carried out according to some kind of script. And yet, there it is, in Bernays’ own words, the “Father of Propaganda.” Having acquired somewhat of a tainted reputation-by-association, propaganda, itself, underwent a “strategic rebranding” after WWII. But make no mistake, the very same métier thrives to this day, under the more socially palatable designation, “Public Relations.” Still, a ruse by any other name…

“Could we be so stupid again?” wonders the gentle reader. “Might the mob still be swayed by what Charles Mackay termed ‘extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds?’” Why, of course! That’s the nature of the mob! Whether in love, finance, politics or any other matter, man is wont to be convinced, assured, persuaded, often against his own best interests. Few are the absurdities in which he will not take refuge, invest his hard-earned capital or squander his morality. All he needs is a good story, something to arrest his imagination and cauterize his capacity for reason. A distraction from his lonely, quotidian existence. That, and a few crumbs to pass his lips.

The Roman poet, Juvenal, recognized as much when he mocked the panem et circenses (bread and circuses) stratagem almost two millennia ago. In his "Satire X", he referred to the Annona (a kind of grain dole) and the famous circus games, held in the Colosseum and elsewhere, as designed to keep the unthinking population fed and happy.

Look around you today, Dear Reader. What do you see, two millennia later, in the Year of Their Lord, 2022 AD? We’ve got reality television and stadium sports matches, food stamp programs and an Everest of transfer payments, we’ve got mask mandates at schools and the whole pretense of safety and security, there’s $31 trillion in national debt and government spending out the wazoo., plus a collapsing workforce, an opioid epidemic (out-killing COVID-19 in < 65s) and Whoopi Goldberg in the sin bin...

And behind it all, the greatest bread and circuses show ever: modern representative democracy. Now, as then, the show goes on!"

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

And now, it’s time for more "Fatal Conceits" - 

the podcast about money, markets, mobs and manias...

- https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

"Bread And Circuses"

"Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt."

- Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, in English "Juvenal"

"Take away my bread and circuses and all I have left is my pitchfork."

And the bread and circuses are ending...

"The 'A-Word'”

"The 'A-Word'”

Counting the cost of the state... and imagining the alternative.

by Joel Bowman

"They shed their sense of responsibility

Long ago, when they lost their votes, and the bribes; the mob

That used to grant power, high office, the legions, everything,

Curtails its desires, and reveals its anxiety for two things only,

Bread and circuses."

~ Juvenal, "Satire X"

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "The news hit the wires like a dead frog landing in the bottom of an abandoned well. Down here on the Pampas, annual inflation accelerated “less than expected” for the month of November. According to government data, prices rose by only 92.4% from the same month a year ago. ¡Que quilombo!

Sure, prices are rising at the fastest rate in 30 years... in a country where high double-digit inflation is as common as Messi football jerseys in Qatar... but hey, it was mercifully lower than the 94.2% median experts had projected. Small victories, no?

But currency collapse and economic crises can wait for mañana. Today is game day, after all... the final of the Copa Mundial (The Football/Soccer World Cup). Long ago did the poor Argentines lose faith in their votes... their bribes... their hack politicos. Now, in the 35th Year of Their Lord, Lionel Messi, the long-suffering mob place their faith instead in their beloved football team, the Albicelestes.

Facing the defending champions, France’s Les Bleus, the real world-weary Argentines dream of glory and fame on the pitch, of clenching “la tercera” (their third world title), and of waking up tomorrow in a world where rampant inflation is not the only thing in which they are #1.

While we’re on the subject of lofty dreams, allow us a few paragraphs to do as that mopey Beatle once did and “Imagine all the people... with no government...” More in today’s feature essay, below..."

"The 'A-Word'”

by Joel Bowman

"Have you noticed, dear reader? A heretofore unspeakable word is beginning to form at the edge of polite conversation. Long has it lingered on the margins of society... the proud and so-called "fringe." Now, thanks in no small part to the vast and increasing decentralization of information, the word is starting to find a voice.

Many voices, in fact. While the ongoing “Twitter Files” story makes clear the extent to which the previous iteration of the world’s largest digital platform censored “alternative” opinions, there is hope yet that free speech may be yanked from the grasp of bed-wetting censors and narrative toting, mainstream news apologists alike.

But back to our word of the day. For the amateur etymologists and card-carrying logophiles among us, the term in question derives from the Greek arkhos, meaning "rulers." The critical prefix, an, simply denotes "without."

An-arkhos - Anarchy (noun): without rulers.

Not without rules, we hasten to emphasize, just without rulers. No masters, in other words... and therefore, no slaves. Only freely contracting individuals, voluntarily interacting for the benefit of one and, by extension, the other. Put like that... clinically, factually... academically, it almost seems as if the word itself might represent a faintly desirable concept. "A world without rulers," we muse to ourselves, "imagine..." It almost sounds like the lyrics to a John Lennon song; as poetic as it is improbable.

Imagine all the People… But without rulers, administrators, bureaucrats, meddlers, do-gooders, world-improvers and the rest of their irksome ilk, how would society function? Ah... therein lies the hitch.

We're prohibited from ever finding out! (That's one of the rulers' favorite restrictions... and the real reason they don’t like people like Mr. Musk privatizing the government’s favorite media playthings, like Twitter.) Instead, each and every year, tens of thousands of pages' worth of new regulations are added to the Federal Register, the nation’s repository of legislative “sand in the gears.” Likewise, state and local agencies enact their own brands of "Justice."

Statutes, bylaws, edicts, decrees, requirements, orders, mandates, acts, canons, caveats and the rest... all imposed by a group of insider elites claiming to represent some amorphous, esoteric concept they call "the common good." What is this "common good," we wonder, this deliberately ambiguous entity? How is it measured? And what of the plight of the world's smallest minority: the individual? The rulers never seem to say. And too few people bother to ask.

Elsewhere, the masses' attention remains focused on the unproven positives supposedly delivered by politicians and their weird and wacky market interventions... the Fed, the DEA, SEC, IRS, TSA, EPA, and the other 440 odd federal agencies listed in the Register. The benefits, appointed officials assure us, far outweigh the costs. But what are those costs? How do we quantify the unrealized... the potential... the hypothetical value and experience of the road not taken? In short, we can't. Not in any definitive manner. Still... how about a vague figure... a guestimate... a "más o menos," as the Argentines say...

The Cost of the State: It’s been almost a decade since economists John Dawson and John Seater examined the relationship between the growth in regulations (measured by the pages of federal regulations) and economic performance (measured by real GDP growth). The pair followed the paper trail back more than half a century in an attempt to gain some scope for their research. Their results? See for yourself:

Dawson and Seater estimate that federal regulations have potentially lowered real GDP growth by about 2% per year since 1949 and made America 72% poorer. The professors put the figures into context in their conclusion: "Regulation's overall effect on output's growth rate is negative and substantial. Federal regulations added over the past 50 years have reduced real output growth by about two percentage points on average [annually] over the period 1949-2005. That reduction in the growth rate has led to an accumulated reduction in GDP of about $38.8 trillion as of the end of 2011. That is, GDP at the end of 2011 would have been $53.9 trillion instead of $15.1 trillion if regulation had remained at its 1949 level [see chart above]."

Hang on a second. Only $38.8 trillion? Over 6 1/2 decades? The numbers seem a tad lenient to us... Then again, by Dawson and Seater's own admission, they attempted only to account for the costs of federal regulations... leaving aside all those pesky local infringements and market incursions at the state level. Measuring all the rules is simply too arduous a task... like counting the number of lies during a presidential debate.

"Inclusion of state regulation would be highly desirable," the economists lamented, "but data collection is an enormous task, far beyond our resources." And yet, with nary an eye to the spiraling costs, regulations at the local, state and federal levels nevertheless pile ever higher... page after page... promise after promise... vote after vote.

Back when Dawson and Seater set for themselves their monumental task, over 80,000 pages were appended to the Federal Register. The directory alone is enough to make the eyes bleed. The Homeland Security Department has six subdivisions. The Interior Department has 10. And the Agricultural Department (which ostensibly oversees and regulates an activity that humans have managed to do for thousands of years) boasts no fewer than 20 arms, branches, offices and agencies.

Now fast-forward to today. Imagine factoring in the brigades of hyperventilating Covidians... the teams of Diversity Inclusion and Equity (DIE) consultants... the squadrons of ESG zombies and Capital “S” Scientists drawing paychecks and “research” grants for measuring the world’s temperature half a century from now... not to mention their paymasters in Congress and lapdogs in the mainstream media, ceaselessly browbeating us all on how best we (not they, mind) should offer appropriate propitiations to Mother Gaia, making certain sacrifices in the here and now for vague promises about a nebulous, computer-modeled future.

One Nation, Ungovernable: Of course, all this meddling should come as little surprise to anyone paying attention. After all, bureaucrats have a vested interest in conspicuously "doing something"... no matter the consequences, seen or unseen. But again, here we are attempting to account for only the economic cost of State intervention. What about the myriad other weights lumped on the backs of individuals seeking a free and unmolested life?

It is here, in the nebulous "Cost of Empire" column, where the State is allowed (literally) to get away with murder. To illustrate...Imagine discovering that a "friend" routinely stole half your paycheck... but excusing him because he throws a half-decent barbecue once in a while...Or learning that your neighbor routinely deployed Predator drones to rain Hellfire missiles down on children's birthday parties... but pardoning his curious pastime because he once gave you a good deal on your old clunker. In no other walk of life would a reasonable person tolerate the kind of nonsense that passes for critical thinking in the political realm.

Economic historian, Robert Higgs, has written extensively on this very topic. His powerful insights are worth quoting here at length: "Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a "Great Leap Forward" that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children."

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy's mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state's mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.

Dropping the A-Word: By some estimates, the State (in its various machinations and vile expressions) is directly responsible for the death of some 200 million human beings over the past century alone. This figure takes into account both wartime deaths and those who perished as a result of such disastrous undertakings as Mao's "Great Leap Forward," referenced above by Mr. Higgs, which alone accounted for as many as 70 million deaths... during peacetime.

And yet, while those who eschew violence are made to wade through a torrent of hypothetical chaos and "wholly conjectural" mayhem ("But who will build the roads...?"), the basest depravities perpetrated by the State remain beyond the reach of so-called "polite" conversation. For shame!

Day by day... dollar by dollar... death by death... the cost of feeding the State continues to mount. If peace and prosperity are ever to prevail, the alternative must become the imperative. With that in mind, readers grown weary of counting the costs are cordially invited to drop the "A-word" into their next cocktail hour conversation. If it sinks like a lead balloon, you'll know you're onto something good."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"How It Really Is"

 

"Shopping At Hobby Lobby! Massive Holiday Sale, Don't Miss This!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 12/18/22:

"Shopping At Hobby Lobby! 

Massive Holiday Sale, Don't Miss This!"

"In today's vlog we are at Hobby Lobby, and are noticing massive holiday clearance sales! We are one week away from Christmas, and are taking you shopping with us to help save you some money on some amazing holiday gift ideas!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Massive Offensives by the Russians to Terminate Ukraine"

"Massive Offensives by the Russians to Terminate Ukraine"

Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 12/18/22:

"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics. No ego descriptions. No small talk. Straight to the point. Calls with the relevant analysis only. On the other side of the line is Godfrey Bloom."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/