Thursday, January 12, 2023

"Death of an Empire"

"Death of an Empire"
Eisenhower's warning and America's great insecurity complex.
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Normandy, France - "Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. And late, degenerate empires gotta get out of the way. Here at Bonner Private Research, we focus on money. And we see that the Primary Trend seems to have reversed. What was up is now down. Left is right. The Fed was playing fast and loose for the last 3 decades; now it is sitting up straight and tightening its tie. And those who made money in lighter-than-air ‘securities’ in the 2009-2020 boom are now losing money as they come down with a thud.

The latest headline from Bloomberg: "Super-Prime Real Estate in New York and Florida Has Hit a Wall." But this market correction is only one of a catastrophic ‘cluster’ of trends that we looked at yesterday: 

● The continued exploitation of the middle class by the elite, which is why the correction will not be allowed to complete its work.
● The decline of the American Empire, beginning about 1999 and continuing.
● Abandoning the ideas that made the US so successful. Free trade, free enterprise, free speech, equal protection under the law –who believes in these principles anymore? Not the deciders.
● A fanatical, unquestioning fear of global warming and a belief that the earth’s climate can be and must be controlled.
The unchallenged political power of what Eisenhower called the ‘military, industrial complex.’

Let’s start from the bottom and work our way up.

Insecurity Complex: The military is supposed to provide security, so that ordinary people can go about their lives without worrying about a foreign invasion. Subordinate to civilian control, in the US, the gold-braided general is supposed to be kept like a guard dog – on a leash, held firmly by people in civies.

But over time, the ‘military, industrial, surveillance, think tank complex’ has become just what Dwight Eisenhower warned that it would become – unstoppable…unanswerable…and unpalatable. This year’s appropriations bring US military spending to more than is spent by China, the UK, Russia, India, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, France, and South Korea – combined. With the money, the armed wing of the Deep State, the richest single enterprise in the world, has bought control of the press, the universities, the administration, and Congress itself. It pays an army of lobbyists and a phalanx of scholars to explain and persuade…to twist arms and bend public opinion – always in favor of more and more military spending.

The war industry keeps the public’s attention fixed on one conflict after another. Vietnam, Nicaragua, Kuwait, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria…and now the Ukraine…to be followed by a showdown with China. But what was the point of any of these wars?

US Offense Industry: Communism failed because a centrally-controlled economy is inherently weak; in Vietnam, the Pentagon got 58,000 American soldiers killed for nothing. In Nicaragua, Danny Ortega, one of the original Sandinistas, still rules. In Iraq, there are more terrorists than ever before, now that there is no Saddam Hussein to keep them in check. In Afghanistan, the Taliban – a designated ‘terrorist’ group – runs the country. And is Russia really a threat to Europe? Will she invade Germany? France? Do you watch the news? Putin has his hands full just getting control of a Russian-speaking area on his southeastern flank, where the local people actually begged him to come in.

The US ‘defense’ industry has long since given up any pretense to be defending the US. Since the Second World War, all of its undertakings have been ‘wars of choice’…offensive operations in which it meddled in the affairs of sovereign foreign nations. And yes, language evolves along with the purpose to which it is put. The new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Mike Rogers, no longer speaks of proud citizen soldiers defending the Republic. Now they are more accurately “warfighters” who can “deter and, if necessary defeat, any adversary anywhere in the world.”

Why taxpayers would want to support ‘warfighters’ has never been explained. And who do they fight? Do we have adversaries in Ouagadougou? How about in Mogadishu or Reykjavik? Only if we want to have them. And the only plausible reason for wanting to have them is to justify shifting wealth from the public to the war industry.

In practice, the grift has been easy. Put some money on the table – a campaign contribution, support to a favorite think tank, a contract, a sinecure – and deciders are easily convinced. As for the public, it needs no convincing; it hardly has time to think through the particulars. Instead, as soon as the game begins, it puts on the home-team jersey.

Long Range Imbeciles: It’s the theory that poses a problem – at least to those few who bother to think about it. America is, after all, protected by two vast oceans. It is almost impossible for an adversary to get anywhere close to Long Beach, CA or Ocean City, MD. And even the fastest long-range missiles take time to reach their destinations, during which they are vulnerable to ‘interdiction.’ In the context of an $860 billion budget, defensive missiles cost a pittance.

It’s the short-range missiles that pose a more immediate threat. That’s why President Kennedy insisted that the Soviets remove their missiles from Cuba. And that is why Mr. Putin is so keen to keep NATO away from the Donbass. Alas, in disregarding the Kremlin’s desire for the same security that it finds indispensable for itself, the US commits an error typical of late stage empires…a failure of reciprocity. It has gotten too big for its britches.

But there are limits to everything. Great armies rise. And then – under the weight of their own booty, bureaucracy and brass – they fall. Already, the Pentagon’s target-rich environment is in the US House of Representatives, not in enemy territory. In the nation’s capitol, it can toss a grenade at random and take out nothing but its own supporters. Real enemies might not be so easy.

Meanwhile, the more time and stuff the ‘military, industrial complex’ squanders, the less is left over to fuel economic growth. Productivity is falling in the US at the fastest rate in four decades. Growth rates have fallen since the 1950s, and now are nearly negative. Savings are the precious “secret sauce” of a real economy. But the savings rate is at a 17-year low. And instead of using money carefully and wisely, billions of dollars go to the shysters of Kiev, in the Ukraine, as well as those in McLean, in the Virginia.

Fearing the death of its empire, America commits suicide. "

Joel’s Note: "When this year’s spending bill was flown to President Biden – who was vacationing in St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands at the time – the man with the magic pen tweeted: “It’ll invest in medical research, safety, veteran health care, disaster recovery, (Violence Against Women Act) funding – and gets crucial assistance to Ukraine.” The signing represented a “year of historic progress,” the president crowed, adding that he was “Looking forward to more in 2023.” (Whether more spending or more Virgin Islands vacations was not stipulated.)

Jam-packed with goodies, the 4,000+ page bill – almost certainly unread by a single member of the human species – promised all kinds of fuzzy, feel-good giveaways, like childcare development programs and housing assistance for low income families. No doubt there’s a few pennies in there for the study of mythological insects and scholarships for one-legged trans soccer players, too. Something for everythey.

In fact, there’s so much conspicuous non-violence in the bill’s non-defense spending, one might be tempted to forget about the larger, decidedly meatier slice of the pie… that is, the part that’s full of B-2 stealth bombers, Predator drones, Hellfire missiles, nuclear submarines and 11 aircraft carriers, boasting around 80 fighter jets each, the combined deck space of which is more than twice that of the rest of the world’s carriers… combined. Then there’s the 1.4 million active military personnel, with their fidgety fingers on the trigger, who keep the whole operation running...

All in, so-called “defense” spending now eats up a much larger portion of the federal government’s spending than does non-defense spending… by almost $100 billion. That’s more than the total spent on social service programs (the entire Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs, combined), plus transportation, education, housing, urban development… all the things that government officials like to tout when they’re selling their massive spending bills to ordinary working citizens, whose generous hearts are reliably won over by such well-meaning, community sounding allocations.

At $858 billion for fiscal year 2023, not only is America’s defense spending larger than those of the aforementioned nations in Bill’s column, combined, it’s also roughly equal to the entire GDP of Saudi Arabia, the world’s second largest oil producer (11 MMB/D).

Were that money deployed at home, $858 billion would be enough to hire 11 million full-time registered nurses… or 15.6 million kindergarten teachers… or 17.1 million firefighters...It’s enough to fund 28.6 million in-state physics degrees… or to fully graduate 4.2 million engineers from MIT… or to hire every single Diversity, Equity and Inclusion consultant in the entire country… and pay them double time to never come to work again.

Alternatively, the US could pay a fortune to shoot itself in the foot, the ultimate price for ignoring Eisenhower's dire warning. Bang, bang."

"Urgent: DEFCON Flights Grounded; Russian Command Shift To War With NATO!"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 1/11.23:
"Urgent: DEFCON Flights Grounded;
Russian Command Shift To War With NATO!"
"Major escalation has just happened in the Russian ranks signalling a big move is on the way. The flight cancellations may have been a test?"
Comments here:

"Will This Be America's Next Big Bankruptcy?"

"Will This Be America's Next Big Bankruptcy?"
By Mike Palmer

"The ultra-wealthy entrepreneur Bill Bonner wrote a fascinating piece in his daily e-letter last week. Bonner, who built one of the largest financial research firms in the world, with offices across the globe starting in the late 1970’s says three trends made the period of 1980 to 2022 one of the most investment-friendly episodes in history. Bonner describes these three investor-friendly trends as:

Cheap energy...
Cheap labor (mostly from China)...
And cheap credit, in the form of ultra-low interest rate loans.

But now... says Bonner, all three of these trends have radically reversed. And as a result, businesses, ideas, and plans based on these trends are quickly collapsing... and even going bankrupt!

You can see the wreckage beginning to pile up all around us...The cryptocurrency company FTX, for example, which at one point was worth $32 billion and counted Blackrock and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan as shareholders, recently went bust. The millions in losses from this collapse are just beginning to be tallied.

Before that, nearly half of England's 400 pension funds almost collapsed. They were saved only by the intervention of the country's central bank. Then, there are the formerly "hot" tech businesses like Carvana, a company that was being touted as a way to reinvent the car business. It's fallen 98% in roughly a year... and is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Many more former tech darlings, like Arrival (electric cars), Vapotherm (healthcare), and Porch (home buying and selling) are also all down more than 95% in the past year. But here's the really scary part...

According to Bill Bonner, these collapses and bankruptcies are just getting started. In fact, Bonner says the next big bankruptcy and next big collapse is likely to come from a place few people are even thinking about right now. Bonner says this looming fall is going to catch almost everyone by surprise and could lead to some very difficult years in America.

I strongly encourage you to check out Bonner's recent analysis. You're unlikely to hear this message anywhere else, and the mainstream press likely won't report on it for months to come, when it's far too late. Click here to view it for free..."

Chet Raymo, “Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright…”

“Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright…”
by Chet Raymo

“Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet.” You may recall these words from Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.” There is nothing intrinsically cheerful about the world, she says. To live is to die; it’s all part of the bargain. Stars destroy themselves to make the atoms of our bodies. Every creature lives to eat and be eaten. And into this incomprehensible, unfathomable, apparently stochastic melee stumbles… You and I. With qualities that we have - so far - seen nowhere else. Hope. Humor. A sense of justice. A sense of beauty. Gratitude. But also: Anger. Hurt. Despair. Strangers in a strange land.

Galaxies by the billions turn like St. Catherine Wheels, throwing off sparks of exploding stars. Atoms eddy and flow, blowing hot and cold, groping and promiscuous. A wind of neutrinos gusts through our bodies, Energy billows and swells. A myriad of microorganisms nibble at our flesh.

We have a sense that something purposeful is going on, something that involves us. Something secret, holy and fleet. But we haven’t a clue what it is. We make up stories. Stories in which we are the point of it all. We tell the stories over and over. To our children. To ourselves. And the stories fill up the space of our ignorance. Until they don’t. And then the great yawning spaces open again. And time clangs down on our heads like a pummeling rain, like the collapsing ceiling of the sky. Dazed, stunned, we stagger like giddy topers towards our own swift dissolution. Inexplicably praising. Admiring. Wondering. Giving thanks.”
“The Tyger”

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”

- William Blake

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

"Bank Runs And Food Runs Imminent; Your Church Failed You; Household Debt Danger"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/11/23:
"Bank Runs And Food Runs Imminent; 
Your Church Failed You; Household Debt Danger"
Comments here:

"Americans Don’t Realize They’re Being Cooked"

"Americans Don’t Realize They’re Being Cooked"
by Brian Maher

Annapolis, Maryland - "Your editor entertains a theory: We Americans are frogs. We are frogs wallowing blissfully in a pot of fatally warming water. We boil gradually away, unaware… comfortable… arrogant… and ignorant. That is, we the American people have grown so accustomed to the warmth enwombing us - and for so long - we are incapable of detecting the ratcheting heat. We will never jump the pot. We are simply too comfortable inside it.

We refer specifically and unequivocally to the warming water of the American fiscal setting. The nation is spending itself into hot water. Why? The United States national debt runs to $31.5 trillion, approximately. The nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio comes in at 124%... the highest since 1949.

In 1949 the United States was still shoveling its way out of the World War II spending blitz. What is today’s justification? Where is Herr Hitler and his conquesting Nazis? Where is Mr. Tojo and his imperializing Japanese? What bank-busting Manhattan Project is the United States government funding? To our knowledge there is no worldwide war. There are then no attending requirements for vast fleets and mighty armies. And yet the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio registers at 124%.

Yes, the pandemic with its lockdowns threw the nation’s finances into wild discombobulation. Yet even before the pandemic the debt-to-GDP ratio exceeded 100%. That is, the United States churned out more debt than domestic product, grossly measured. That is, the pot water was already warming dangerously and the frog lolling therein was already disnoticing the increase.

The Great Heat Generator: “Entitlement” spending - the quote marks are necessary - account for much of the warming. On this topic former colleague David Stockman is shouting an alert. As David explains, entitlement outlays have heavily rotated the oven dial clockwise… from the lower heat settings… to the higher settings: "The long-term growth of government transfer payment entitlements benefits since 1954 are self-evidently the heart of the nation’s fiscal doomsday machine.

Dollar outlays have grown by a staggering 290 times - from $16 billion in 1954 to $4.64 trillion in 2021. And even when you make allowance for inflation and economic growth, the story is no less relentless. Back in the heyday of postwar prosperity (1954), America was booming and middle-class living standards were rising rapidly. Yet these transfer payment entitlements cost just 4.0% of GDP.

Needless to say, that’s a tiny fraction of today’s entitlement spending at 20.0% of GDP. And this staggering fiscal burden sits atop a national economy that is barely creeping forward on a trend basis - even as virtually every single dime of these expenditures has been authorized in perpetuity."

Hence your pot of increasingly warming water. Or in David’s telling, the “nation’s fiscal doomsday machine.” Mr. Stockman was President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget. That is, he commands a very rich knowledge of the topic under discussion. Thus we are willing to lend him a listening ear.

Guns AND Butter: In the famous “guns vs. butter” duality, entitlements represent butter. This tempting goo - people enjoy entitlements and clamor for them - has greased our way into the water, the water presently accumulating heat. Yet as David explains: the “guns” have likewise eased our way in. It is thus a bipartisan raising of the water temperature, both gun and butter merchants working the oven dials clockwise:

The true threats to America’s national security today are a mere fraction of those posed by the nuclear-armed Soviet Union at the peak of the Cold War. That the current defense budget is nevertheless nearly two times larger in real terms is due to the fact that the constitutional processes for managing the nation’s fiscal affairs have essentially become vestigial.

What we have instead is history’s greatest log-rolling machine. This year, for example, the domestic spenders gave the military hawks in both parties the obscene sum of $858 billion for national defense in return for $773 billion of domestic pork. The combination amounted to $101 billion more than last year’s already capacious budgets.

Warmer Water: $101 billion more than even last year! Can you believe it? What do the American people receive for the extra $101 billion? Additional debt and an increase of the debt-to-GDP ratio. Beyond that, very little we suspect. In words other, we will receive another counterclockwise working of the oven dial - that is, another increase to the water temperature.

Yet what is the one factor that may raise the water temperature to unendurable and fatal settings? Here is the answer: Interest payments on the debt. That is correct - interest payments on the debt.

It’s All Fun and Games While Interest Rates Are Low: For years and years Congress borrowed and borrowed on very easy terms. Interest rates were abnormally low, therefore interest payments were abnormally low. They could afford to spree. They were after the free lunch and very nearly received one… because of suppressed interest rates. Once again, David: "Like so much else, the Fed’s previous money printing madness resulted in rampant borrowing by Congress, even as artificially low interest rates drastically suppressed the annual interest bill.

Consequently, Congress got the wrong message - the delusion that there is essentially a free fiscal lunch. Just since the year 2000 the public debt soared from $5.7 trillion to $31.4 trillion at present, a 450% gain. At the same time, however, interest expense grew by barely 80% during the same 22-year period…

That bit of arithmetical magic in which the debt grew nearly six times as fast as interest expense happened because the weighted average cost of net debt service dropped from 4.0% at the turn of the century to just 1.3%."

The Days of Wine and Roses Are Over: Yet the cost of lunching has undergone a magnificent increase. Interest rates have been on the jump since the summer of 2020. After guttering along near 0.50% that peculiar summer, the 10-year Treasury yield presently exceeds 3.5%. It recently exceeded 4%. Interest payments on the debt have jumped in consequence.

In 2017 - merely five years distant - interest payments scarcely exceeded $200 billion. During the plague year of 2020 they hovered near $300 billion. In 2022 interest payments verged upon $400 billion.

Meantime, the Congressional Budget Office projects these expenditures will triple over the decade ahead. Glancing further out, CBO projects interest payments will near $66 trillion over the following 30 years. They will likewise absorb nearly 40% of all federal expenditures by 2052. The frog in its pot will be well and truly cooked.

What if Interest Rates Rise Even Higher? Yet CBO’s crystal-gazings assume a reasonable increase to the interest rate. What if rates rise unreasonably, at substantially higher paces? Yet again, David: "CBO’s latest federal spending projections tell you all you need to know. Even with its relatively moderate forecast rise in Treasury debt yields, outlays for interest expense are projected to rise by 200% over the next decade. That’s triple the projected growth of health and Social Security entitlements and 7X the baseline gain in defense and nondefense discretionary appropriations.

Needless to say, the impending massive explosion of mandatory debt service has not been in the playbook of either the Washington pols or the Wall Street speculators. It was just assumed that wildly growing public debt would never present a carry cost problem. No longer." No longer - indeed.

Meantime, debt runs riot, the economy runs to conditions nearly recessionary, the debt-to-GDP ratio ticks remorselessly higher… And the American citizen wallows away in the increasingly warming water that envelops him. He mistakes it for comfort. He will one day learn otherwise. Alas… he will learn too late."

“'Threats To Democracy' And So On"

“'Threats To Democracy' And So On"
By Addison Wiggin

“Common sense will tell us that the power which hath endeavored 
to subdue us is of all others the most improper to defend us.”
- Thomas Paine

"Our Session this week is called “The Real Anthony Fauci with Filmmaker Jeff Hays.” Jeff, known in Hollywood for his work on the documentary Fahrenhype-9/11, spent the last four years chasing the leads around vaccine policy and the manipulative, corruptive power of what he calls “American Royalty.” His way into the backrooms: Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, Jr, the notorious son of RFK and nephew of JFK.

Bobby is nestled in the trenches of American political decision-making. Most notably, he claims that everything that happened during the COVID “plandemic” is a “threat to democracy.” These are heavy words. I pushed back during our discussion:

Addison: You’re going to have to explain that phrase to me. “Threats to democracy” have been thrown around a lot recently. Challenges to the establishment are what make democracy function properly, right?
Jeff: You’re right. We may end up losing the right to even use this phrase and have it make any sense to somebody who hears it.

What Bobby means when he says “threats to democracy” is that during COVID, every article in our Bill of Rights, except for the Second Amendment, was attacked and set to the side. We had 3.3 million businesses shut down by the government without compensation. That was one of our basic rights. We had freedom of speech that we lost. We had freedom to gather that we lost. We had freedom of religion that we lost.

So when Bobby says “threat to democracy,” he is talking about our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. And the basic rights that this country was built on were taken away without hearing from the bureaucrats. That’s the threat. And we sat by and let this happen. Some people are even saying freedom of speech is somehow a threat to democracy!

Unfortunately this kind of jingoistic political dissolution of which Jeff and Bobby speak– these “threats to democracy” coming from within the bureaucratic establishment– are all too prevalent. Just last week my son Henry was asking questions about the Federal Reserve and interest rate hikes after reading one of my missives. “What’s so bad about the Fed dictating monetary policy? Isn’t the question really: How much socialism do we want?”

I didn’t think I would ever reach a point in my life where my own progeny would say this back to me! We are truly in a moment of reorganization and change when it comes to our American values, and the COVID daze was fuel on the fire.

“It is irrational to look for solutions to problems from the people who caused the problems in the 1st place,” reader Howard S writes in an email simply titled Madness. “A good place to start is to make sure there are consequences for bad behavior.”

“You know damn well this is all part of an orchestrated agenda!” echoes Wayne J and the conspiracy begins again. So it goes..."

You can watch the full Episode 88 of TWS with Jeff Hays here. His exposé into the world of American politics – what’s really going on behind the curtain – is eye-opening:

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

Full screen recommended.
"What Is Happening To Our Wealthiest Cities
 Clearly Demonstrates America’s Rapid Decline"
by Epic Economist

"The wealthiest cities in the United States are getting infested by addicts, delinquents, and homeless people, and no matter what alleged “solutions” our politicians come up with those issues just continue to get worse. The landscape of once-prosperous areas just looks disgusting -- almost like something out of a post-apocalyptic horror movie. If things are this bad right now, what will those streets look like when the recession depression starts gaining steam in the months ahead, and deteriorating economic conditions begin affecting everyone’s lives?

We’re watching our major urban centers rot from within. Even in the richest cities in the whole country, filth and misery are everywhere. Places like New York, the financial capital of the entire globe, and San Francisco, one of the greatest tech hubs in the world, are not spare from rampant rates of delinquencies and severe offenses, people using illicit substances in the middle of the streets in broad daylight, and a surge in the homeless population that is just gut-wrenching.

In fact, local reports detail that New York City’s homeless problem does not appear to be getting any better despite the almost $6 billion in federal funds sent to the local government to introduce programs that could help alleviate the issue. 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 the past quarter. However, the city’s homeless population is estimated at 126,000 people, which means that a large share of that group is sleeping on the streets. The coalition stressed that the main reason these numbers are this high is because the city has failed to provide adequate affordable housing.

At the same time, the downward spiral that we are witnessing in San Francisco is unquestionably disturbing. On Twitter, one resident share footage of what downtown San Francisco looks like on any given day, and the images are truly shocking. “This is what the kids in San Francisco are forced to walk past every day,” the user wrote. Substance abuse, feces, needles, adults slumped over with exposed wounds, and addicts suffering from mental illness screaming in the streets. “The streets are truly scary to walk down,” she emphasized.

It seems that everywhere we look, we can see that some of our beloved communities are degenerating into rapidly decaying hellholes and our streets are filled with ruthless predators. It is clear that America is descending into lawlessness. The thin veneer of civilization that we all depend upon every day is disappearing at an alarming pace, and if we stay on this path our society will soon be completely unrecognizable. Once upon a time, the United States was such a lovely place to be. But now, this is what our country is looking like. We are rapidly becoming a dystopian society, and that is because we have rejected the values that this nation was founded upon.

If nothing changes, we’re going to be swallowed up by these issues. Ignoring what is happening is not going to make it go away. Social decay is systematically destroying the foundations of our civilization, and at this point, it has become evident that America’s decline is really starting to accelerate."
o
Full screen recommended.
SBC News, 1/1-2/23:
"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Ave"

"Problems with drugs and crime on Kensington Ave, Philadelphia's most dangerous street. In Philadelphia as a whole, violent crime and drug abuse are major issues. The city has a higher rate of violent crime than the national average and other similarly sized metropolitan areas. The drug overdose rate in Philadelphia is also concerning. Between 2013 and 2015, the number of drug overdose deaths in the city increased by 50%, with more than twice as many deaths from overdoses as homicides. 2 Kensington's high crime rate and drug abuse contribute significantly to Philadelphia's problems.

Because of the high number of drugs in the neighborhood, Kensington has the third-highest drug crime rate by neighborhood in Philadelphia, at 3.57. The opioid epidemic has played a significant role in this problem, as it has in much of the rest of the country. Opioid abuse has skyrocketed in the United States over the last two decades, and Philadelphia is no exception. In addition to having a high rate of drug overdose deaths, 80% of Philadelphia's overdose deaths involved opioids, and Kensington is a significant contributor to this figure. This Philadelphia neighborhood is said to have the largest open-air heroin market on the East Coast, with many neighbors migrating to the area for heroin and other opioids. With such a high concentration of drugs in Kensington, many state and local officials have focused on the neighborhood in an attempt to address Philadelphia's problem."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Bruce Springsteen, "Streets of Philadelphia"

"Leaked! FDIC: 'There Is Going To Be Bank Runs.' Banks Are In Much Worse Trouble Than We Think!"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/11/23:
"Leaked! FDIC: 'There Is Going To Be Bank Runs.' 
Banks Are In Much Worse Trouble Than We Think!"
Comments here:

"Banks Are Failing Faster Than Ever"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 1/11/23:
"Banks Are Failing Faster Than Ever"
"Never in history of we seeing banks in such a precarious position. There is even a famous central bank that is going down fast. This is happening around the world and going to affect each and every one of us."
Comments here:

"Decline of Empire: Parallels Between the U.S. and Rome, Part I" IExcerpt)

"Decline of Empire: 
Parallels Between the U.S. and Rome, Part I"
by Doug Casey

Excerpt: "As some of you know, I’m an aficionado of ancient history. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss what happened to Rome and based on that, what’s likely to happen to the U.S. Spoiler alert: There are some similarities between the U.S. and Rome. But before continuing, please seat yourself comfortably. This article will necessarily cover exactly those things you’re never supposed to talk about - religion and politics - and do what you’re never supposed to do, namely, bad-mouth the military.

There are good reasons for looking to Rome rather than any other civilization when trying to see where the U.S. is headed. Everyone knows Rome declined, but few people understand why. And, I think, even fewer realize that the U.S. is now well along the same path for pretty much the same reasons, which I’ll explore shortly.

Rome reached its peak of military power around the year 107, when Trajan completed the conquest of Dacia (the territory of modern Romania). With Dacia, the empire peaked in size, but I’d argue it was already past its peak by almost every other measure.

The U.S. reached its peak relative to the world, and in some ways its absolute peak, as early as the 1950s. In 1950 this country produced 50% of the world’s GNP and 80% of its vehicles. Now it’s about 21% of world GNP and 5% of its vehicles. It owned two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves; now it holds one-fourth. It was, by a huge margin, the world’s biggest creditor, whereas now it’s the biggest debtor by a huge margin. The income of the average American was by far the highest in the world; today it ranks about eighth, and it’s slipping.

But it’s not just the U.S. - it’s Western civilization that’s in decline. In 1910 Europe controlled almost the whole world - politically, financially, and militarily. Now it’s becoming a Disneyland with real buildings and a petting zoo for the Chinese. It’s even further down the slippery slope than the U.S."
Full part I of this article is here:

Full part II of this article is here:

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Dream Ten”

Full screen recommended.
Chuck Wild, "Liquid Mind, Dream Ten”
"Liquid Mind" (aka Chuck Wild) originally wrote this music to deal with the anxiety and stress of overwork and the serious illness of friends. The gentle ebb and flow of the music has an immediate "slowing down" effect, providing a serene escape from tension-filled days. Ideal for stress relief, falling asleep at night and to enhance meditative and therapeutic practices. There are few composers with as much love for slowness in their music as Wild. Chuck draws from classical and pop influences as varying as Beethoven and Brian Eno, Bartok and Rachmaninoff, Bach, Chopin and Fauré, Duruflé and Brahms."

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust. 


Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.”

"Tako-Tsubo Syndrome: The Broken Heart Disease"

"Tako-Tsubo Syndrome: The Broken Heart Disease"
by Prof. Filippo Crea

"It seems an infarction, but it's not. It's called Tako-Tsubo syndrome, or stress-induced cardiomyopathy, and it's a rare disease which at first used to be confused with the far more common (and dangerous) cardiac infarction. Patients arrive to the emergency room with the characteristic heart attack symptoms: acute pain in the chest, an electrocardiogram with the typical changes and the release of those enzymes associated with the usual heart disease. Yet, as soon as a coronarography is performed, in order to discover the location where the occlusion preventing the blood reaching the heart was formed, nothing is found. In the infarction this occlusion causes a number of heart cells to die.

Many have defined it also as the "broken heart disease": it affects mostly women in post menopause period, when they are no longer protected by the estrogen hormones, and it is associated with strong emotional stress, like a bereavement, in 80% of the cases. This is the reason why it is often associated with a broken heart. Researchers at the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine of the Catholic University – Policlinico Gemelli of Rome, led by Filippo Crea, have identified the mechanism underlying this peculiar pathology and have published an article in the "European Heart Journal," of the European Society of Cardiology. This article is already among the fifty most-read in the field.

"In 80% of the patients, symptoms disappear spontaneously after a couple of weeks, leaving no trace behind", explains Filippo Crea, "whilst in the other cases the damage persists. The fact is that the damage caused by this syndrome is in the heart but not in the coronaries. What we have tried to explain is the mechanism which leads to the onset of these symptoms".

To perform this analysis, the group led by Crea studied fifteen women aged on average 68 for a month. Thanks to this study, they were able to identify for the first time the physiopathological mechanism of the disease. "We concentrated on the apical region of the heart", explains first author Leda Galiuto, "because that is the area where the dysfunction is localized. Due to this, the heart takes on the characteristic shape of an air balloon, or – as the Japanese observed – of a local octopus trap. The Tako-Tsubo is as a matter of fact the name of this pot in Japanese."

The hypothesis the researchers developed is that the mechanism which influences the dysfunction resides in the spasm of the small coronary vessels, the so-called coronary microcirculation. "To prove our hypothesis we used the myocardial contrast echography, a method we pioneered and which allows us to study the coronary microcirculation in a selective, safe and cheap way at the patient's bedside", explains the young researcher. "The microcirculation plays an important role in cardiac diseases", adds Crea, "and the intense vasoconstriction of these small vessels cannot normally be noticed in a coronarography."

Researchers have also been able to demonstrate that this microvascular spasm is reversible and, once over the acute phase, the microvascular dysfunction causing the symptoms is also resolved. "Usually patients are not left with any damage, because the lowering of the blood input is sufficiently serious to prevent the heart from contracting properly, and hence the balloon-like shape, but not enough to determine the death of blood cells, which is what normally happens in an infarction", concludes Crea."

Prof. Filippo Crea, fcrea@rm.unicatt.it, Catholic University of Rome
- http://www.eurekalert.org/

"Chronic Stress Resulting in ‘Broken Heart’ Syndrome"
by N. Shahid, S. Bruhl, B. Saeed & U. Pandya

"Broken heart syndrome/tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy is a recently described stress-induced cardiomyopathy that is often associated with symptoms suggestive of acute coronary ischemia including chest pain, ST changes and elevated cardiac enzymes. In most cases the syndrome is triggered by profound physical or psychological stress and has an increased incidence in post menopausal women. Here we describe a patient who was admitted with nonspecific abdominal pain and symptoms of ileus that went onto develop Tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy as confirmed by left ventriculography. Unlike previously reported cases, our patient appeared to develop the syndrome as a result of chronic rather than acute stress." Full article:
Citation: N. Shahid, S. Bruhl, B. Saeed & U. Pandya: "Chronic Stress Resulting in ‘Broken Heart’ Syndrome." "The Internet Journal of Cardiology", 2009 Volume 7 Number 1

"It Matters A Great Deal..."

In the movie “The Lion in Winter”, when the sons, in the dungeon, think they hear Henry coming down the stairs to kill them...
Richard: "He's here! He'll get no satisfaction out of us! Don't let him see you beg...Take it like a man!
Geoffrey: "You chivalrous fool! As if the way one falls down matters!"
Richard: "Well, when the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal."

"Shaya's Home Run"

"Shaya's Home Run"
by Rabbi Paysach Krohn

"In Brooklyn, New York, Chush is a school that caters to learning-disabled children. Some children remain in Chush for their entire school careers, while others can be mainstreamed into conventional yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs. There are a few children who attend Chush for most of the week and go to a regular school on Sundays. At a Chush fund-raising dinner, the father of a Chush child delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out, “Where is the perfection in my son Shaya? Everything that Hashem [G-d] does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do. Where is Hashem’s perfection?” The audience was shocked by the question, pained by the father’s anguish and stilled by his piercing query.

“I believe,” the father answered, “that when Hashem brings a child like this into the world, the perfection that He seeks is in the way people react to this child.” He then told the following story about his son Shaya. Shaya attends Chush throughout the week and Yeshivah Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway on Sundays. One Sunday afternoon, Shaya and his father came to Darchei Torah as his classmates were playing baseball. The game was in progress and as Shaya and his father made their way towards the ball field, Shaya said, “Do you think you could get me into the game?”

Shaya’s father knew his son was not at all athletic, and that most boys would not want him on their team. But Shaya’s father understood that if his son was chosen in, it would give him a comfortable sense of belonging. Shaya’s father approached one of the boys in the field and asked, “Do you think my Shaya could get into the game?”

The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said, “We are losing by six runs and the game is already in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning.” Shaya’s father was ecstatic as Shaya smiled broadly. Shaya was told to put on a glove and go out to play short center field, a position that exists only in softball. There were no protests from the opposing team, which would now be hitting with an extra man in the outfield.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shaya’s team scored again and now with two outs and the bases loaded and the potential winning runs on base, Shaya was scheduled to be up. Would the team actually let Shaya bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shaya was told to take a bat and try to get a hit. Everyone knew that it was all but impossible, for Shaya didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, let alone hit with it. However as Shaya stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so that Shaya should at least be able to make contact.

The first pitch came in and Shaya swung clumsily and missed. One of Shaya’s teammates came up to Shaya and together they held the bat and faced the pitcher waiting for the next pitch. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shaya. As the next pitch came in, Shaya and his teammate swung the bat and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shaya would have been out and that would have ended the game.

Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field, far and wide beyond the first baseman’s reach. Everyone started yelling, “Shaya, run to first! Shaya, run to first!” Never in his life had Shaya run to first. He scampered down the baseline wide eyed and startled. By the time he reached first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman who would tag out Shaya, who was still running. But the right fielder understood what the pitcher’s intentions were, so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman’s head, as everyone yelled, “Shaya, run to second! Shaya, run to second.”

Shaya ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled the bases towards home. As Shaya reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran towards him, turned him towards the direction of third base and shouted “Shaya, run to third!”

As Shaya rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him screaming, “Shaya, run home! Shaya, run home!” Shaya ran home, stepped on home plate and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders and made him the hero, as he had just hit the “grand slam” and won the game for his team.

“That day,” said the father who now had tears rolling down his face, “those 18 boys reached their level of perfection. They showed that it is not only those who are talented that should be recognized, but also those who have less talent. They too are human beings, they too have feelings and emotions, they too are people, they too want to feel important.”

That is the exceptional lesson of this episode. Too often we seek to find favor and give honor to those who have more than us. But there are people who have fewer friends than we, less money, and less prestige. Those people especially need attention and recognition. We should try to achieve the level of perfection in human relationships which the boys on the ball field at Yeshiva Darchei Torah achieved. Because if children can do it, we adults should certainly be able to accomplish it as well."

"Life Is Difficult..."

“Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.”
- M. Scott Peck

The Daily "Near You?"

Dagenham, Barking and Dagenham, United Kingdom
Thanks for stopping by!

"The Cycle of Freedom"

"The Cycle of Freedom"
by Jeff Thomas

"Periodically, I offer up a statement by Scottish economist Alexander Tytler, who, in 1787, was reported to have commented on the then-new American Republic as follows: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been about 200 years. These nations always progressed through this sequence:

From Bondage to Moral Certitude;
from Moral Certitude to Great Courage;
from Great Courage to Liberty;
from Liberty to Abundance;
from Abundance to Selfishness;
from Selfishness to Complacency;
from Complacency to Apathy;
from Apathy to Dependency;
from Dependency to Bondage.

Tytler had it right. There is a Freedom Cycle. It’s not an accident. It’s based upon human nature, which is perennial. And it’s not something that can be manipulated to suddenly reverse itself, just because the citizens of a country are unhappy when they find themselves living in the declining stages. It has to play itself out. Tytler was quite a scholar and had come to his conclusion, based upon the rise and fall of many nations, over the ages, with particular emphasis on the Athenian Republic.

Since Tytler’s time, we’ve been able to witness many formerly free countries slide inexorably into their final stages of decline. For example, the countries in the EU are further gone than the countries in North America, and Venezuela is further gone, still. But, what this means is that the cycle is likely to stay in order in these countries over time and, at some point, years from now, Venezuela will be likely to climb out of its Bondage stage before Europe and certainly before North America. But, what very few people can wrap their heads around, is that this is indeed a cycle.

Cycles Never Reverse Themselves: The Freedom Cycle continues until it hits bottom (Bondage), then it stays there for a while. Historically, the generation that is in charge at the time of bondage is never responsible for the eventual rebirth. The bottom must continue long enough for a new generation of adults (who, all their lives have witnessed that "free stuff" is a lie) to create the rebirth. They understand, only too well, that their only hope to have more, is to develop a work ethic and stick to it. (Their still-whining parents continue to hope that a leader will come along and finally deliver on the free lunch.)

The cycle is a long one, as it requires that generations pass. Just as the depression-era people in the US and Europe were hard working and the baby boomers were their spoiled children who voted for those who promised free stuff, and millennials represent the complacency and apathy generation, so these generations must age and slide into the background before a new and productive generation can create a rebirth.

I was extraordinarily fortunate. In my own country, when I was young, we were a relatively poor, but hardworking people who understood that if we didn’t work, we didn’t eat. We didn’t get to build houses for ourselves and we didn’t buy a car. Therefore, everyone except the truly indigent worked. The truly indigent are always very few in any culture, and our entire community looked after them easily, without government support.

But, then came dramatic prosperity. One of the by-products of that prosperity was that a new generation of politicians rose up, hoping to cash in. They promised free stuff to the public, but insisted that they must be left alone to dominate. (Their dual slogans were, "The people may have their say, but Government must have its way," and, "We were elected to govern and govern, we shall.")

But small numbers of us challenged them, dug in our heels and, over time, we gained overwhelming support from our people. We had to rout two successive governments, but, eventually, those political hopefuls who remained, understood that, should they become too domineering, their careers would end. As Thomas Jefferson said, "When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

In Jefferson’s day, America had been a frontier. Those who went there to find freedom from the oppression in Europe understood that, if they were to survive there, they must have a strong work ethic and be entirely self-reliant. They were soon joined by others from Europe with a similar ethic. These were not people who would tolerate dominance. Although the colonists only paid King George a meagre 2% in tax, they revolted at the very principle of domination and, through their tenacity, prevailed. (Remember, the majority of them were self-reliant.)

The same was true in my own country. People who have a strong work ethic and are self-reliant may be kind and sharing, but they don’t like being dictated to. Therefore, when we opposed the tyranny that had just begun in our country, we attracted tremendous support from the electorate. (Again, the majority were self-reliant.)

Cuba, today is just breaking out of the ground in its own rebirth. Although it is not yet understood by most of the world, a younger generation of free-marketers have grown to adulthood in a country where the "free stuff" has been an obvious lie. Their parents remain complacent and apathetic, whilst the new generation are transforming their country from the bottom up and their trajectory is unstoppable.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that a Freedom Cycle exists and has always existed and it’s driven by human nature. Most people, when they find themselves in the downward swing of the cycle, become complacent and apathetic, as Tytler describes. Otherwise intelligent, educated people vainly hope for a Freedom Fairy who will appear on the scene and reverse the process (but will continue giving out the free stuff). Historically, this has never happened. No country reverses the cycle. Like a plant, it must die before renewal can occur.

So, the reader may wish to ponder where his own country is on Tytler’s list of stages. If it’s on the upward swing, wonderful—life will be good until it reaches the pivot point of "Abundance to Selfishness". But those whose countries are in the declining stages (especially if they are nearing the "Dependency to Bondage" stage) are in a more dangerous position. I do believe that 99.9% of them will act in accordance with apathy and do nothing. Only a few will choose freedom. But, to do so, they will need to understand that freedom will not find them where they live. Those who seek freedom must go to one of the places where it’s presently rising up from the ground or has already gotten on a roll and is on the upward swing of the cycle."

"How It Really Is"

 

"Strike Back! Nations Are Arming Themselves To The Teeth! No More War!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/11/23:
"Strike Back! Nations Are Arming
 Themselves To The Teeth! No More War!"
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"Hold on Tight! - Business is Broken"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 1/11/23:
"Hold on Tight! - Business is Broken"
"We are watching that business will never be the same. The business models that we want to follow to make a tremendous amount of money are now completely broken."
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