"15 Terrible Years of Fakery"

"15 Terrible Years of Fakery"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"Well, two years of egregious inflation has certainly made my much-needed diet much easier! I’m shopping for something to eat and thinking “no way am I going to pay that for eggs” “I can’t afford this cheese!” “Bacon is breaking the bank!” “I’ll buy this olive oil, I guess, but it had better last a year.” And so on it goes. Very clearly, prices for the food I like have essentially doubled in two years. That’s not reflected in the CPI entirely but that index is a weighted average that is usually expressed in one-year terms. It does not tell you about the reality on the ground of the products you buy.

Sure, you can still snag all the foods you should not eat. Cakes, muffins, bread, cookies (sweetened with corn syrup), pasta, and rice are still affordable. But that’s all the stuff that has caused obesity rates in America to double in a generation. It’s the healthy things that are becoming unaffordable.

Let’s just tell it like it is. Our standard of living is being smashed. Already, we’ve lost two years of life expectancy in three years. This is pretty much solid proof of the underlying reality. In the old days, this is how we knew for certain that the Soviets were lying about their great prosperity. They were not living as long. Vital statistics pretty well always tell the truth. We knew they were poor based on this alone.

So too, our own vital statistics are telling us the truth that as a country, and really as a globe, we are losing ground fast. Everyone but the very rich. Excess deaths in 2022 are far higher than they were during the pandemic of 2020. They are deaths of despair, deaths from cancer left undetected, deaths from ill health, deaths from substance abuse, deaths from murder and suicide, and deaths from vaccine injury. Death everywhere. And the dollar is dying too.

The dollar of 1913 is now worth about $0.3. And there is no end in sight. They are talking about taking away gas stoves, gas cars, and gas everything, which is a certain path toward dooming billions to further impoverishment.

There are some very bad people running the world right now. They are not embarrassed about what they have done. There will be no apologies. No trials. No justice. All the people calling for Nuremberg 2.0 are wasting their breath. Watching the World Economic Forum last week, the bad guys are riding higher than ever.

More Lockdowns: The lockdowns of 2020 were a mere warmup. They have every intention of using this strategy for anything they want to achieve. It will be for the climate, for inflation, an economic crisis, a security crisis, another bug on the loose, food shortages, you name it. Lockdowns are the new word for public policy. They got away with it once, and they will do it over and over. People ask me if they can get away with it. The obvious answer is yes.

I was just at an international airport flying into the country and flying out on a connecting flight. It took about 90 minutes to get through the whole mess. During that time, I was subjected to several rounds of facial recognition photography, passport and document checks, a contact trace for Covid, drug-sniffing dogs, pat downs and body scans, and endless amounts of time in lines in which thousands of people from all over the world stood patiently creeping along and putting up with every bit of it, none of which achieves anything except surveillance and control.

And yet, it all worked. People do it because they want to get from here to there. If you want to get what you want in life, you comply. In fact, you comply with everything. This model will be tested in the future to the ninth degree. Those who say that they won’t go along never have any realistic plan for what they would do otherwise.

Those Classified Documents: Consider the incredible brouhaha about the classified documents found at the homes of Trump, Biden, and Pence. People were not shocked that Trump would be holding some but the revelations about Biden and Pence were a shock.

People pretend as if they have done something wrong but we might ask a different question: what is the deep state hiding? And why are they so intent on hiding it that they are happy to take down a sitting president and a goody-two-shoes VP from the previous administration?

How about a populist cry to de-classify these documents? We are supposed to live in a country with some transparency such that the people have access to the goings on with the government we supposedly control. Classifying things is not really about keeping foreign enemies in the dark. It is about keeping the people in the dark. It’s stuff we are not supposed to know.

What is so terrible that we cannot know? I’m guessing that there are some 60 years worth of secrets we are not to know, dating back at least to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and through the Vietnam War and Watergate and moving all the way forward to the Iraq War, 9-11, and the origins of the virus and the relationship between the CIA and big pharma.

I almost cannot believe I’m typing these words because I’m not of a conspiracy mindset. But with the opening of Twitter with Elon Musk plus the crack research team of Tucker Carlson, plus Substack, and many private newsletters, I’ve been enlightened as to the real nature of what’s going on.

If I were going to sum it up it would be as follows. There is a deep administrative state that is global in nature, built from public and private sectors, that deeply despises the idea of democracy and rule by the people. They despise it and want to get rid of it permanently and replace it with what we used to call fascism.

Free Speech: Will they succeed? The only thing that will stop them is an informed people. We are living in a slight window of time right now in which we can have access to information. The search engines are pretty useless, having long ago signed up to be agents of the administrative state. But we do now have the single most powerful research tool on the planet: the Twitter search bar.

Try it out. I’ve learned that anyone can find anything through this means. It’s pretty much all I use now. It’s like magic. Which is why they are going to try to shut it down. They will also try to shut down Substack and many other platforms too. The only way to prevent it is to spread truth far and wide while we have the chance.

Let’s return to the opening theme of our decimated prosperity. Firings in the tech realm are increasing and will certainly get worse. Back in 2008, Ben Bernanke set the U.S. on a course toward 15 years of fakery with zero interest rates. That massively distorted the financial sector, the corporate sector, and the culture at large.

This has all come to an end with the higher rates designed to get inflation under control. And yet prices are still rising some 6% per year so there is more to come and with it recession and more layoffs and bankruptcies. If the Republicans get serious about the budget and reform, they will allow the U.S. to test default on the debt. They should.

These days, financial and personal safety comes at a premium. I’m happy to see Bitcoin on the move again and gold and oil too. These strike me as the safest bets in the coming years as the corporate sector continues to undergo massive upheaval. Not to get too maudlin about it all but this really is a turning point in civilization. It seems like they want a new Dark Age. We cannot allow that to happen."

- https://dailyreckoning.com/

Judge Napolitano, "Ukraine, Tanks & Putin, w/Scott Ritter"

Judge Napolitano, 1/27/23:

"Ukraine, Tanks & Putin, w/Scott Ritter"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Related:

Douglas Macgregor, 1/27/23:

"We Are Co-Belligerents"

"The Walls Are Closing In"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 1/27/23

"The Walls Are Closing In"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

St. Charles, Missouri, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Musical Interlude: Yanni, "You Only Live Once"

Yanni, "You Only Live Once"

Jim Kunstler, "Pretend-O-Rama"

"Pretend-O-Rama"

By Jim Kunstler

“Not only is there no threat from Russia that is independent of American policy, but it is also the expansion of NATO to ‘meet the threat from Russia’ that creates the very threat that expansion was supposed to meet.” - Alistair Crooke

"I doubt that many Americans - even the masses sunk in vaccine smuggery and obsessive Trump-o-phobia - believe that America’s Ukraine project is working out for us. Of course, to even begin thinking about this debacle, you must at least suspect that our government is lying about virtually everything it has its hand in. Name something it is not lying about, I dare you.

So, what was the Ukraine project? To use that sad-ass country as a vector to disable and destroy Russia. You can’t over-state the stupidity of that objective. And why did we want to do that? Because… reasons. Oh? And what were they? Well, Russia was… there. Oh? And what was it doing? Trying to take over the world? Uh, no. It was actually just trying to be a normal European nation again after its traumatic 75-year-long experiment with communism, which ended in 1991.

And then, after that, coming along pretty well under Mr. Putin. Did I say that? Yes, I did, because it is a fact. Russia wrote new private property laws, made commerce legal again, and allowed its citizens to do business. Russia wasn’t threatening any other nations, most particularly its former province, Ukraine. It had even invited Ukraine to be a sovereign member of its trade association, the customs union, with a bunch of other regional states who had rational interests in good regional relations. That’s what set off the maniacs at the US State Department - under Secretary John Kerry, a.k.a. the haircut-in-search-of a-brain - who, in 2014, decided to overthrow Ukraine’s government.

The project since then was to use the US-controlled Ukraine government to antagonize Russia and, finally, to draw Russia into a military operation intended, SecDef Lloyd Austin said more than once, “to weaken Russia.” Well, everything we’ve done there, from eight years of shelling the Donbas, to kicking Russia out of the West’s banking system, to pouring billions of US dollars into Ukraine’s corrupt government, has only strengthened Russia internally, earned the approbation of many other nations who object to US interference in their regions, and steered poor Ukraine into the graveyard of failed states.

We are losing this unnecessary proxy war about as steadily as possible, and actually making Russia look good in the process. Russia could have ended the war in five minutes by turning Kiev into an ashtray, but it spent the first eight months of the operation trying to avoid busting up Ukraine’s infrastructure, so as not to turn it into a failed state (that would present new and worse problems). Mr. Putin made many overtures to negotiate an end to the conflict, all rejected by Ukraine, the US, and its NATO “partners.”

So, now Russia is grinding on-the-ground to reduce Ukraine’s ability to continue making war by systematically killing the troops Ukraine foolishly throws into the battle line, and destroying Ukraine’s heavy weapons. Ukraine is about out of its own soldiers and weapons. Russia is maneuvering to roll over what’s left there and put an end to these pointless and needless hostilities. Contrary to US propaganda, Russia has no ambition to conquer NATO territory. Rather its aim is to restore order to a corner of the world that has been its legitimate sphere of influence for centuries - and more than once been used as a doormat for European armies to invade Russia.

Apparently, we can’t allow Russia to clean up this mess we made - or we pretend that we can’t, even though it’s happening anyway, whether we like it or not. So now, the US promises to send thirty-one M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. A bold move, you think? Not exactly. By the time these tanks get anywhere in the vicinity of Ukraine, this war is likely to be over. Never mind the difficult business of training the few remaining eligible Ukrainian men between sixteen and sixty how to operate the tanks, and train maintenance crews, and deliver inventories of spare parts - you see where this is going — not to mention the certainty that the Russians will simply blow them up as fast as they appear on the premises. Anyway, a measly thirty-one tanks that can barely be operated is meaningless compared to hundreds of T-72s backed by newer T-14 tanks the Russians can muster from just over their border with Ukraine.

The tank proffer is, sad to say (for the dignity of our country), a joke, kind of a last feeble pretense before the whole thing ends in ignominy for the “Joe Biden” team - whoever that actually is. The repercussions are liable to be ugly for our country, not necessarily more military trouble in other lands (which we probably lack the capacity to engage in now), but something more personal: the collapse of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and a vicious loss of purchasing power here at home. That would provoke a situation worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, and that’s probably where things are going.

The Ukraine misadventure will disappear from America’s collective consciousness in a New York minute and a Fourth Turning jamboree of serious domestic political disorder will commence in short order. If you think “Joe Biden’s” term in office has been a disaster so far, just wait. You ain’t seen nuttin yet."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Do You Believe..."

“Do you believe,’ said Candide, ‘that men have always massacred each other as they do today, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?”

“Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”

- Voltaire

Gregory Mannarino, "Economy Continues To Crater As Inflation Continues To Rise!"

Gregory Mannarino, 1/27/23:

"Economy Continues To Crater As Inflation Continues To Rise!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b45Zt5dYkQ

"The Middle Class Squeeze"

"The Middle Class Squeeze"

Biden's $7,400 tax on the working class while elites bank $30 trillion.

By Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Normandy, France - "We begin with a bleak update. The DailyCaller: "Americans Getting Poorer As Real Disposable Income Plummets Over A Trillion Dollars In 2022." "Over the course of 2022, America’s real disposable income fell to its lowest level since the 1932 Great Depression, Heritage economist EJ Antoni said Thursday… He said the 2.1% real GDP for 2022 was the slowest growth since 2016, outside the 2020 and 2021 pandemic years. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows real disposable personal income dropped to -6.4%, data released by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows. The steep decline cost Americans over a trillion dollars in 2022, Antoni reported."

Did real incomes really fall to 1932 levels? Probably not… Let’s get the report directly from Heritage.Org: "New data released Thursday showed prices have risen 13.7% since President Biden took office, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI). The overall price level declined 0.1% last month but increased 6.5% in 2022, a year which saw four-decade-high inflation. Even as the increase in the CPI slows, many consumer staples remain highly elevated compared to the start of the Biden administration: eggs are up 189.9%, ground beef 21.1%, gasoline 44.3%, electricity 21.3%, transportation services 19.5%, and housing 11.8%."

EJ Antoni, research fellow in regional economics with The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, released the following statement Thursday on the latest data: “Biden’s presidency has been marked by excessive spending, borrowing, and printing of money by the federal government. The result has been an appalling rise in inflation to levels not seen in 40 years.

If you are wondering where the government got the trillions of dollars in extra spending over the last two years, they are taking it out of your hide right now through the hidden tax of inflation. Every time you put gas in your tank or groceries in your back seat, you are paying Biden’s inflation tax.

Prices have risen so much faster than wages that the average family has lost $6,000 in purchasing power. As the Federal Reserve belatedly raises interest rates to fight the very inflation it helped cause, interest rates are rising fast, increasing borrowing costs by $1,400. Combined with falling real wages, the average family has effectively lost $7,400 in annual income since Biden took office."

America’s Poor Middle Class: Until now, the economic story has been fairly simple. The feds spent too much. They financed excess spending with ‘printing press’ money. The result was inflation – a tax, $7,400 so far, for every family in the country.

The Fed is now working to bring consumer price inflation under control. Its higher rates have caused trillions in losses to investors and are leading to a recession, probably later this year.

Note also, that the Primary Trend has reversed. That too is easy to understand. After 40 years of rising stock and bond prices, they are now going down. And as long as the Fed continues to raise its key lending rate…and reduces the nation’s money supply…asset prices are more likely to go down than up.

In brief, the Primary Trend aims to correct the excesses of the last 20 years – the rich got too much of the money, interest rates were too low, stock prices were too high (especially the techs), flakey ‘assets’ (cryptos...NFTs) were worth billions, debts and deficits were out of control...the Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Powell Put distorted the markets…stimmie checks distorted the economy…and much more.

According to some estimates, the 2021 correction erased $30 trillion from the world’s (paper) wealth. And the yield on US 10-year Treasury bonds is now 7 times higher than it was in 2020. So you see, dear reader, God is in His Heaven, the king is on his throne…and the Fed and Mr. Market are both on the job…both bringing things back to ‘normal.’

Elites Bank 10X: But this phase is unusual. And probably temporary. It will probably end soon. Before too long, the Fed and Mr. Market will part company. The fiscal and monetary policies of the last two decades were exceptional. As we saw, above, they cost the middle class a lot of money. The aforementioned $7,400 is just the most recent and most obvious tab. Our own calculations show that the common working man has not had a real raise in nearly 50 years. The things that really matter – his food, his shelter, his energy, and his wheels – are much more expensive, requiring him to sell more of his precious time just to keep up with them.

But while the ordinary citizen was getting poorer, the rich – that is, the elite – got richer, faster than any time in US history, with nearly all the increase in wealth going to the richest part of the population. Here’s David Stockman with the figures: "The net worth of the top 1% of households increased by a staggering 192% during that 13-year period, rising from $15.6 trillion in Q4 2008 to $45.6 trillion in Q4 2021." That $30 trillion gain, however, was 10X more than the $3 trillion gain attributable to the bottom 50% of households.

Naturally, the feds want to keep the show on the road. That is how they win the support and admiration of their elite brethren…it’s their source of campaign contributions, bribes and sinecures…and it’s how they pocket the wealth that previously belonged to the ‘The People.’ Yes…the Fed will ‘pivot.’ And that is when the next phase…much harder to understand, much more difficult to navigate…will begin. Investors will rejoice. Homeowners will see their houses rise in price. Wages will rise. The economy will appear to boom…and the middle class will get even poorer. More to come…"

Joel’s Note: Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Powell… call it four generations of Fed Puts. And what do we see as a result of the elites’ meddling and fiddling? A massive transfer of wealth from workers to moochers… outsiders to insiders… Main Street to Wall Street. Take a look at the chart Dan Denning sent to the BPR team this morning. It shows the increase in total net worth held by the richest 1% in the country since December, 1996…

Click image for larger size.

“The total net worth of the top 1% increased by 400% from then to the peak in Q42021,” writes Dan. “From $8.6 trillion to $45.6 trillion.”

Astute readers will recognize that start date as the moment when Ayn Rand’s fallen pupil, Alan Greenspan, delivered his (in)famous “irrational exuberance” speech. Here’s the key paragraph from that talk…"Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy? We as central bankers need not be concerned if a collapsing financial asset bubble does not threaten to impair the real economy, its production, jobs, and price stability." ~ From Alan Greenspan’s address to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Dec 5, 1996

In a classic MAD “What, me worry?” moment, Greenspan then cited the market crash of 1987 as having “few negative consequences for the economy.” Message to markets…investors…speculators: Have at it, we’ve got your back!

“What Greenspan didn’t reckon on,” observes Dan, “is what Fed puts would do to inflation, or to the gap between people who got rich on rising asset prices, and people who got poorer in real terms because their primary assets are/were their wages, and maybe their home (now subject to violent booms and busts thanks to monetary policy).”

Record inflation… violent booms and busts… and falling assets/wages… it’s exactly the kind of “negative consequences for the real economy” Americans are now dealing with."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"Strange Prices At Dollar General! This Is Crazy! What Now!?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 1/27/23

"Strange Prices At Dollar General! 

This Is Crazy! What Now!?"

"In today's vlog we are at Dollar General, and are noticing very strange price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"A Simple Choice..."

"It comes down to a simple choice, really. 

Get busy living or get busy dying."

- "Andy Dufresne", "Shawshank Redemption"

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 1/27/23"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 1/27/23"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Dr. Paul Craig Roberts (PCR), former Assistant Treasury Secretary and international award-winning journalist, is the special guest for this week’s Weekly News Wrap-Up. Dr. Roberts gives his deep dive on the three biggest stories of the week. The U.S. and NATO is stumbling towards nuclear war that nobody even mentions. How close are we to a thermal nuclear exchange? The symbolic Doomsday Clock says just 90 seconds from midnight and total global disaster.

The news for the CV19 bioweapon is all bad, and I mean all bad. Dr. Roberts adds to the bad news with new information that says the CV19 injections helped nobody. Dr. Roberts also says the awakening is unstoppable, but will enough people wake up to bring these criminals to justice?

Finally, big news on the economic front about the U.S. dollar no longer being the exclusive currency accepted by the Saudis in exchange for oil. This effectively kills the U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status and thus the buying power. The Lying Legacy Media is not even reporting this huge development that will affect the entire world, especially the U.S. consumer. Is America getting ready to feel a tsunami of inflation? Dr. Roberts says yes. When a former high ranking Treasury official is warning, you should take notice." There is much more in the 55 min. newscast.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

"Nuke War, Bioweapon Awakening, Dollar Dies"

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble with special guest Dr. Paul Craig Roberts 

for these stories and more for the Weekly News Wrap-Up.

- https://rumble.com/

"2023: Fourth Turning Meets Mass Formation Psychosis", Part 2 (Excerpt)

"2023: Fourth Turning Meets Mass

 Formation Psychosis", Part 2 (Excerpt)

By Jim Quinn

Excerpt: "In Part 1 of this article, I laid out the mass formation psychosis theory postulated by Mattias Desmet in his book "The Psychology of Totalitarianism" and how totalitarian minded politicians and bureaucrats manipulated the masses by creating the covid crisis. Now I will focus on how this will impact the Fourth Turning we are currently trying to survive.

Decades of social indoctrination and degraded ability to think critically has left most people hopelessly unable to resist the vitriolic opinions of those under the spell of coronavirus mass formation. Even though they didn’t necessarily believe the covid narrative, especially when it became clear only the very old (especially when tyrant governors inserted infected patients into nursing homes) and the very obese actually died with covid, these people still went along. Even the CDC admitted only 6% of deaths were attributable to covid alone.

Based upon research like the Milgram Experiment, we know average people will obey authority without question, even when they know their actions are causing pain. The conformity research done by Solomon Asch explains why a huge percentage of the global population just conformed to what appeared to be a majority opinion. Asch’s experiment had 8 test subjects, but 7 of them worked for Asch. They asked them which line was the same length as Exhibit 1. The 7 Asch employees answered C. Only 25% of the case subjects consistently answered A. They were cowed into giving a patently absurd answer due to peer pressure and lack of faith in their own judgement.

When you have 30% of the population as true believers of the covidian religion, with their savior Fauci, prophets Walensky, Birx, Gottlieb, Biden, the pope, a slew of Big Pharma paid priests for hire, Hollywood elites, low IQ athletes, and a highly compensated mass media campaign of fear and loathing, the 40% in the middle really had no chance to not be pulled into the vortex of pandemia. From the outset they were inundated with data like Neal Ferguson’s Imperial College model of death. Putting up a scary chart, even though it was based on absurd assumptions, is considered fact by the lazy, non-thinking masses.

Shutting down the world was based on this worthless fraudulent model. Add some fake videos of dead people piling up in the streets in China, with media talking heads declaring hospitals being overrun (even though nurses had time to do coordinated dance routines on Tik Tok), and graphics on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox showing cases rising (based on a faulty PCR test set too high), and Fauci knowingly lying about the effectiveness of masks and the ineffectiveness of ivermectin and hydroxychloquine, and you’ve got panic."

Full, highly recommended article is here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Gerald Celente, "WWIII: US, NATO vs Russia, It Was Never a Proxy War"

Full screen recommended.

Very strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 1/26/23:

'WWIII: US, NATO vs Russia, It Was Never a Proxy War"

"U.S. and Germany agree to send tanks into Ukraine. 

What comes next?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Oh, Gerald's in fine form... lol

"NATO Is Going To Get Us ALL Killed With This Move"

Full screen recommended.

Redacted, 1/26/23:

"NATO Is Going To Get Us ALL Killed With This Move"

"NATO's escalation of the war in Ukraine is going to lead to massive blood shed and no positive outcome. Germany, Poland, Portugal and the United States announced plans to send tanks to Ukraine in a dramatic show of force."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"People Aren't Laughing Now, The Struggle Has Just Begin"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/26/23:

"People Aren't Laughing Now, 

The Struggle Has Just Begin"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Douglas Macgregor, "Russia Established Air Defense System in Moscow"

Douglas Macgregor, 1/26/23"

"Russia Established Air 

Defense System in Moscow"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Related:

"Russo-Ukrainian War: The World Blood Pump"

"Egg Prices Skyrocket 2023! Food Shortages Plan Accelerated"

Full screen recommended.

"Egg Prices Skyrocket 2023! 

Food Shortages Plan Accelerated"

By Epic Economist

"Do you remember when you could buy a dozen eggs for 99 cents? It seems like it was only yesterday, but unfortunately those days are now gone for good. Thanks to a variety of factors, egg prices have risen to levels that we have never seen before, and in some areas of the country significant shortages are being reported. In fact, things are so bad that Whole Foods is apparently “now limiting egg carton purchases to two per person”. This is extremely alarming, because millions of U.S. households have traditionally relied on eggs as a cheap source of protein. Unfortunately, it appears that eggs will not be “cheap” for the foreseeable future. According to an article that originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the average price of a dozen eggs in California actually reached $7.37 this week.

Meanwhile, more families are coming to the food bank, where volunteers dressed as the Three Kings passed out free toys and about a dozen shoppers filled carts with fresh produce, frozen meat and loaves of bread early Friday afternoon. Most products were out on display for the taking. But eggs had been rationed to small plastic bags in the back.

Inflation on basic grocery staples such as milk and flour has burdened poor families for months. But the current egg shortage has been particularly tough for families who rely on the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. Social media is brimming with reports of missing food items at Kroger supermarket locations across the country.

A repeat of early 2020 when toilet paper and other essentials ran bare, the start of 2023 is seeing “a lot of empty shelves” at Kroger, according to numerous reports, some containing video evidence of lingering supply chain problems. Not only are Kroger shelves missing many essentials, but prices for things that are still in stock, most notably eggs, are skyrocketing to unprecedented levels.

As we are hit by one crisis after another throughout 2023, I expect our supply chain problems to continue to intensify. So I would encourage you to stock up while you still can. Yes, prices may seem ridiculously high now, but the truth is that they aren’t going to be getting any lower than they are at this moment."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

“Today It Is Ukraine, but Tomorrow It Will Be Us”

“Today It Is Ukraine, but Tomorrow It Will Be Us”

By Brian Maher

Annapolis, Maryland - “Today it is Ukraine, but tomorrow it will be us, if we do not stop Putin now.” These are the remarks of Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal - babbled this week in Ukraine. Standing next to him was Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican. He too had something to say. Thus he intoned: "If Putin gets away with this, there goes Taiwan. If Putin's successful in Ukraine and is not prosecuted under international law, everything we said since World War II becomes a joke."

An empire such as the United States can no more sit idle in Ukraine… than a cat can sit idle as a mouse slinks by. It must get itself in the action. And to these senators the year is 1939. Herr Hitler is on the goose step - today in Ukraine, tomorrow in Warsaw, the next day in perhaps London.

Why Not a Blank Check? Yet Sen. Graham further simpered that he is not requesting a “blank check” to aid Ukraine. Here is our question: Why didn’t the South Carolina senator demand a blank check to aid Ukraine? If tomorrow it “will be us”… if Taiwan will go away… if Russian victory would “turn the world order upside down" as Sen. Graham likewise claimed...Why would the United States recognize any financial limits whatsoever?

If Vladimir Putin is the equal of the little Austrian corporal - again, we are told he is - it follows that his scotching must trample any financial concern. If it empties the United States Treasury… then it empties the United States Treasury. And in our estimation the good senator should just go ahead and say it: The United States should issue Mr. Zelenskyy the naked check and a pen to go with it. Let him write in the dollar amount, as he deems necessary.

Tanks to Ukraine: Mr. Zelenskyy has not yet been issued the blank check. Yet he will now receive Abrams tanks from the United States Army - some 31 of them as we understand it. He will likewise receive some number of Leopard 2 tanks from Germany and Challenger 2 tanks from Great Britain. They will almost certainly prove inadequate to purposes. They simply lack the oomph to muscle Mr. Putin out of Ukraine. Moreover, these paladins have proven vulnerable to anti-tank weaponry in various Middle East wars — to Russian anti-tank weaponry in particular. We hazard most will end their service lives in junk heaps, wrecked or as trophies of war in Russian military museums. But then what?

Up the Escalation Ladder We Go: Is a great power such as the United States to simply throw up the sponge… and walk off with its head bowed in defeat? The calls to “do more” will come issuing. After all, “we are next” should the Nazi aggression - pardon, the Russian aggression - stand. We cannot imagine that the United States would walk off. It has already invested too much money, material and morality into the business. It will not permit the blow to its reputation, to its leadership, to its “prestige.”

What great power would? What then will it do once its tanks are cleared from the battlefield, smoldering and dead? Here we speculate…It is quite possible the United States and its NATO understrappers dispatch airplanes to Ukraine. There is already talk of F-16 shipments. These are light attack aircraft, modest yet capable. Over Ukraine they will drop aerial bombs and other munitions upon the heads of unfortunate Russian soldiers - or at least they will attempt to.

Our spies inform us that Russia boasts the most formidable integrated air defense systems on Earth. They maintain very close watch over Ukraine’s airspace and will not be easily subdued. Come we now to the next question: What happens should this initial aerial campaign fail to turn the wartide in Ukraine’s favor? Again we speculate…

Out Comes the Heavy Stuff: Out will come the sharpest and shiniest swords in the American armamentarium - F’s 22 and 35… B’s 1, 2 and 52. The latter are “strategic” bombers capable of delivering a monstrous pummeling to those beneath them. Recall, the United States is very serious about defeating Russia in Ukraine. We do not believe its efforts will cease with artillery, tanks or lighter aircraft. Would these aircraft succeed against Russian forces… where other systems have failed? We do not know. Yet it is a very plausible possibility.

The question then becomes… how does Mr. Putin respond? Does he sit idly upon his hands while heavy American bombers let go tons and tons of ordinance upon his men?Does he then turn around and limp away from Ukraine and beg for forgiveness - and fly himself off to the Hague to face trial for crimes against humanity?

We cannot imagine that he would, no. By all appearances he is a very determined and resolute fellow. He will no more vacate Ukraine than the United States will vacate the NATO alliance. His goose is well and truly cooked if he does. This he knows - and knows well.

Can You Trust the Western Media? Incidentally, our spies notify us - strongly against Western claims - that Mr. Putin enjoys fantastic domestic support. The people of Russia are largely with him. To the extent he is unpopular it is because he has proved too gentle. That is, he has failed to display the requisite aggression against Ukraine. They have seen videos of Ukrainians executing disarmed Russian war prisoners, for example, and are hot for vengeance.

Our spies further report that Russian arms factories are going night and day, producing arms and ammunition in prodigious quantities. This too defies Western reports that Russia is running out. We cannot confirm these reports. But our men are earnest about it. Moreover, they rarely miss. We are therefore inclined to accept their word.

Meantime, Russia is shooting off perhaps 60,000 artillery shells per day. Ukraine is fortunate, we understand, if it can shoot 6,000 back the other way. All the while, we understand the United States is scavenging ammunition depots in Israel and South Korea to keep Ukraine up and going. We must therefore conclude that war’s grim calculus leans strongly toward Russia.

Answers Please!!! Germany’s Iron Chancellor, Bismarck, once argued that the entire Balkans were not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Is all of Ukraine worth the bones of a single American pilot, or tanker or infantryman? If it is then Sens. Graham and Blumenthal should notify us that it is.

But to return to the larger question, for which we also request a square answer: How does this Putin fellow react if his men in Ukraine start absorbing a true licking? Here you have the $64,000 question, the $164,000 question, the $1,164,000 question. Do Sens. Graham and Blumenthal have the answer? If they do, we request - and request loudly - that they share it. We would remind them both that Mr. Putin’s Russia houses loads of nuclear toys. We would further remind them that a cornered beast is a dangerous beast. They nonetheless appear determined to back the Russian beast into a very tight corner.

We suspect Mr. Putin is ticketed for a very hot place once he pays his debt to nature. If the senators have their way, that day is near. Are you, senators, prepared to follow him? And are you prepared to drag millions along with you? Answers please, gentlemen - and soon."

- dailyreckoning.com

"America’s Generational Failure Exposed, Episode 4: “The Demise of the Dollar”

"America’s Generational Failure Exposed,

Episode 4: "Demise of the Dollar"

by Addison Wiggin

"Episode 4 of the hit miniseries America’s Generational Failure is finally available for free viewing! The much anticipated series finale, titled "Demise of the Dollar, is the culmination of years of research on the American financial machine, and how greed, fear, and corruption have poisoned the USA and our way of life.

If you’re easily offended by facts and truth, you may not want to watch this episode. It’s an eye opening roundtable discussion exposing the reality behind:

The “quantity theory of money” and what that means for everyday Americans saving for retirement.

Corporate bankruptcies, “zombie businesses” that don’t earn enough even to pay the interest on their debts, big names going bust (like Lehman Bros. in 2008)…and the dreaded panic sell-off sure to follow.

How (and when) we expect the fallout of this fiasco to play out in an inevitable economic downturn

Why joblessness will rise, too…maybe to 10%...maybe higher

A look into when the Fed will “Powell pivot” and how investors can use this as an opportunity to create true wealth

Plus, how new digital currencies fit into this twisted form of social governance. Those are just some of the highlights from the grand finale.

You’ve got 24 hours to watch this must see episode before it goes behind a paywall. I strongly urge you to watch it immediately, so that you don’t risk missing a single second of the valuable information revealed here. Information from top financial analysts…Former Wall Street advisors…Best selling writers…And some of the biggest names in the industry about how to not only survive this crisis, but thrive as a result of it.

Again, this episode will be available free for one day only. I hope you take this opportunity to help you protect yourself, your family, and your money. I’ll see you in the viewing room. So it goes..."

- wigginsessions.com

o

- Watch Episode 4 now.

Musical Interlude: Yanni, "To The One Who Knows"

Full screen recommended.

Yanni, "To The One Who Knows"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round?

Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star visible above at the nebula's center. One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star's own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150426.html

Chet Raymo, “Why Cranes Fly”

“Why Cranes Fly”

by Chet Raymo

"There were a few Comments here about herons, from right around the world. What is the power of this bird to touch our minds and hearts? The naturalist Aldo Leopold was intimately familiar with the cranes of Wisconsin, cousins of our New England great blue heron, the Irish gray heron, and Adam2's aosagi from Japan, and wondered about their ability to move us so deeply. In A Sand County Almanac he watches as a crane "springs his ungainly hulk into the air and flails the morning sun with mighty wings." Our ability to perceive beauty in nature, as in art, begins with the pretty, he says, then moves into qualities of the beautiful yet uncaptured by language. The beauty of the crane lies in this higher realm, he proposes, "beyond the reach of words."

Words may fail, but poets have tried to capture the ineffable.

John Ciardi sees "a leap, a thrust, a long stroke through the cumulus of trees" and stops to praise "that bright original burst that lights the heron on his two soft kissing kites."

Theodore Roethke observes a heron aim his heavy bill above the wood: "The wide wings flap but once to lift him up. A single ripple starts from where he stood."

In Chekhov's "The Three Sisters", sister Masha refuses "to live and not know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why the stars are in the sky. Either you know and you're alive or its all nonsense, all dust in the wind."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

o

Kansas, "Dust in the Wind"

"Maybe..."

“Maybe we’re not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes to simply be a human. Maybe, we’re thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe, we’re thankful for the things we’ll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate.”

- “Grey’s Anatomy”

Gregory Mannarino, "A New Phase Of Ridiculousness"

Gregory Mannarino, 1/26/23:

"A New Phase Of Ridiculousness: 

Faking Of The Data Just Hit A New All Time High"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Debts, Deficits... and Death to the Middle Class"

"Debts, Deficits... and Death to the Middle Class"

Inflation to the left, housing crisis to the right, 

America's workers get squeezed...

by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Normandy, France - "Let’s slow down for a moment and take stock. Investors are mostly bewildered, but hoping that inflation has peaked out and the Fed will soon ease up. Easing up seems likely to us…but not decisive. There’s more to the story, which we will come to in a minute. Consumer prices are still rising at an unacceptable rate. And workers – that’s most of us – are still losing ground. Wages are going up. But after inflation, we are poorer.

Meanwhile, real estate, where most people keep most of their wealth, is going down. We saw yesterday that house prices may fall 30% – in line with the last bear market in real estate. Many families only have ‘equity’ of 30%...or less…in their houses. So, the expected drop will wipe out 100% of their accumulated wealth. And most likely, the Fed will continue its ‘tightening,’ forcing those who need to Hypotheses, 1 & 2…

We expect the Fed to continue its rate hikes until one of two things happen. A big bankruptcy, crash on Wall Street, or other financial emergency will cause the Fed to panic and ‘pivot’ towards lower rates. That is our hypothesis number 1: that the Fed will continue to raise rates “until something breaks.”

But there’s another possibility, hypothesis number 2: that the Fed will be forced to raise rates by the federal government. The Fed caused today’s inflation; it is trying to redeem itself by getting it under control. But the elite who control the national government are still very much in spend, spend, spend mode. No cutting back for them. They have elections to win…battles to fight…claptrap to promote and boondoggles to finance. And they are increasingly turning not just to spending money they don’t have…but also to guaranteeing credits they can’t really afford.

Yes, the feds are running huge deficits. If everything goes well, you can expect another $1 trillion shortfall this year. In case of recession – which is likely – the deficit will be much greater. But in addition, they are steering private spending towards their favorite projects by offering an expanding system of tax breaks and credit guarantees. Homeowners are promised public money if they will put solar panels on their roofs, for example, or insulation in their walls. Buyers are given credits if they purchase an EV. Young people are promised loans (later to be forgiven!) if they submit to further indoctrination, rather than finding a job where they might actually learn something useful. to pay higher rates (mortgage rates have already more than doubled since 2020).

The Primary Trend: This spending, direct and indirect, has to be covered. Meaningful tax hikes are out of the question. So, the money has to come from borrowing or printing. Borrowing will drive up interest rates, thereby also increasing the cost of carrying the government’s $31 trillion debt pile. Either way – borrowing or printing – the Fed will be forced to make low-cost funds available.

Thereby, one way or another, along comes the much anticipated ‘pivot.’ And with it comes a new phase of the developing catastrophe, with the Fed supporting federal spending and the economy with lower rates, and probably more QE.

When this happens, many people will see a boom. Stocks are likely to go up. It will seem like an early spring thaw, with flowers coming up everywhere. Investors will remember how the Fed goosed up stocks after the dot.com crash…and again, after the mortgage finance crisis…and again, after the economy was shut down in the Covid Panic. They will think: ‘here we go again.’

But this time, it will probably turn out much differently. In our view, the Primary Trend is what counts. And the primary trend…for stocks…for bonds…for real estate…for the US empire…for the dollar-dominated currency system…for western democracy…for Congress and the administration…for the economy…for standards of living…is down. That’s the ‘cluster’ we’ve been exploring, when many things go wrong together. Night follows day. Bust follows boom. A young man becomes an old man. And a church warden sneaks into a brothel. You get the idea.

In ‘n’ Outta Whack: The Primary Trend is merely the process by which that which was out of whack gets back into whack…and then goes out of whack again. In the bond market, for example, we have seen only two major course reversals in our entire lives. Bonds fell in price from the late ‘40s until the early ‘80s. Then, the primary trend turned…and they rose for the next 4 decades. The second turn only happened in 2020, when they finally topped out, and yields (which go in the opposite direction) began to rise. Since then, the 10-year Treasury bond, the most common brick of the whole modern financial edifice, rose from barely one half of one percent in July 2020, to 3.7% – seven times as much.

We pay attention to the primary trend because 1) it is almost impossible to make any real money by trading in and out, trying to pick winners or anticipate the markets’ moves, 2) primary trend changes destroy fortunes as well as make them, and 3) when you invest in the primary trend you don’t have to pay so much attention to Wall Street.

We should probably add that the primary trend also brings us in contact with the ironies and disappointments of real life. ‘He that did ride so high doth lie so low,’ we say, with the gravitas of a sage, after a crash. What goes up must come down. The last shall be first. The chambermaid will be queen. And the jerk, who gets elected to Congress, eventually gets what he has coming.

So many opportunities to say “I told you so!” But wait…how can the ‘primary trend’ be down…and yet, after the Fed pivots, the economy may boom and stocks may go up? Stay tuned…"

o

Joel’s Note: "After the great housing bonanza of the past couple of years, the US real estate market is finally coming back to earth. Here’s the unhappy headline from Fox Business: "US suffering from the second biggest home price correction of the post-WWII era." "According to the 2022 Housing Affordability Survey, conducted by CATO Institute, “55% of Americans say they cannot afford to buy their home in today's market.”

How could this be? With so much of the fed’s free money sloshing around, isn’t everyone as “rich as an Argentine”? Well, yes… and that’s not a good thing. As usual, Bonner Private Research’s macro analyst, Dan Denning, was on the case… “Let's remember the Fed pumped $1.3 trillion into the housing market by buying mortgage backed securities during the pandemic,” recalls Dan. “This coincided (caused, led to, created) a 40% increase in median existing home prices across the country over 24 months. Median home prices are now over $450,000 in much of the country.”

Take a look at the following chart, which Dan sent to the BPR team this morning. You can see clearly the massive liquidity injection spiking at the end of the recession (gray area) on the right…

Click image for larger size.

Of course, what goes up must eventually revert to the mean… but not before overshooting in the opposite direction.

According to the National Association of Realtors, existing home sales fell 1.5% in December, marking the 11th straight month of declines. On an annual basis, home sales were down 34%, the largest calendar year drop on record… and that’s despite mortgage rates easing slightly for the month.

Goldman Sachs reckons prices could keep falling for another 6 months before things turn around. But even that may prove to be optimistic…“As much as the Fed wants to blame fiscal policy for underlying inflation (which is true),” cautions Dan, “the asset bubbles they created and which are now bursting will do just as much to wipe out middle class wealth. Bursting bubble with the left hand. Inflation with the right. Over and over.”

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"No More Income Tax"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 1/26/23:

"No More Income Tax"

"There is a radical proposal being talked about in the Senate, they want to eliminate the income tax that we pay it altogether. They want to replace it with a national sales tax."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/