"Dem Fiddlin' Feds"

"Dem Fiddlin' Feds"

Inflation bites as debts and deficits pile ever higher...

By Joel Bowman

"'Cause it's a bitter sweet symphony that's life

Trying to make ends meet, 

you're a slave to money then you die..."

~ The Verve, Bitter Sweet Symphony

Buenos Aires, Argentina - “Giant distortions need to get resolved and trillions of losses need to be realized,” Tom Dyson warned BPR members in Wednesday’s research note. “How?” We’ll return to Tom’s musings... and the reckonings that are fast coming due... in a moment. But first, a quick look back over the markets this past week...

US stocks ended with mixed results. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the session up 0.4% yesterday, while the S&P 500 fell 0.3% and the Nasdaq dipped 0.6%. Nothing much to see there. For the week, the major indices were equally uninspired, one way or the other. The Dow slid 0.1%, its third straight weekly decline. The S&P 500 ended lower by 0.3%. The Nasdaq rose 0.6%. Ho-hum. Year to date, the Dow, S&P and Nasdaq are up 2%, 6.7% and 13.5% respectively. One reason for the, ahem, flaccid mood in the markets: inflation.

One Nation, Under Inflation: Tuesday’s Consumer Price Index report, published by the Labor Department, showed monthly prices increased at a 0.5% clip...a sharp acceleration from December’s (upwardly revised) 0.1% increase. Annualized, that’s over 7%. Core CPI (which excludes food and shelter... ‘coz, who needs those?) was up over both three and six month trends. Not the direction the Fed wanted to see prices headed, in other words, and “more red meat for inflation hawks,” as one poetic wonk put it.

Then came Thursday’s Producer Price Index (PPI), commonly seen as a leading indicator of prices still to “come down the pike.” That data showed wholesale prices accelerated by 0.7% last month, the sharpest increase since the summer. Whoopsie!

Higher producer prices were driven, in part, by a 5% surge in energy costs. But fear not, comrades… the president re-upped his commitment to green energy this week, restarting a $10 billion tax credit plan for producers of solar panels and windmills. Back in the real world, a (WTI) barrel of the world’s preferred energy source was trading around $77.50 last we checked on Friday afternoon.

For its part, gold is sitting pretty around $1,850/oz... while that other free market money, Bitcoin, took the fed’s inflation news particularly well. The lead crypto rallied hard this week to take out the psychological $25k barrier, last seen in June of 2022. Bitcoin is up almost $3,000 (or ~13%) over the past five days and was last seen hovering around the $24,700 mark. Bitbugs have seen their favorite digital currency rally almost 50% ytd.

Meanwhile, dem fiddlin’ feds continue to pile the nation’s debts and deficits ever higher... Bonner Private Research’s macro analyst, Dan Denning, underscored a few of the “lowlights” in this week’s report from the Congressional Budget Office. Here, a few takeaways from yesterday’s research note to members:

America’s national debt will rise by $20 trillion over the next ten years. For perspective, total federal debt for the country’s entire history didn't hit a TOTAL of $20 trillion until the third quarter of 2017. It's now over $31 trillion. Why do Republicans and Democrats hate America so much?

Nearly 200%. By 2053, if the country still exists in its current form and the Federal government is a going concern, the growth in mandatory spending and net interest costs will drive the debt to 195% of GDP.

Interest expense on the rise. Net interest costs could double in the next 10 years to $1.4 trillion. And that’s at relatively tame average interest rates.

What does this mean for the Health and Wealth of the Empire, you ask? And what of those trillions of losses that need to be realized, as Tom pointed out, above? How do they get resolved? Here’s Tom, from Wednesday’s note to BPR members..."Gradually is the answer. I fear it’s going to be a brick-by-brick demolition… a mixture of money debasement, politically-approved bailouts and asset write downs… a mixture of soft default and hard default… to gradually extinguish the mountain of malinvestment and bad debt and restore long term balance to the economy.

I call this swing between debasement and price declines “inflation volatility” and I think it’ll take years to play out. To help our readers preserve purchasing power through this gigantic bubble deflation, it’s my job to build a practical investment strategy using publicly traded securities. So I spend every waking moment of my life (and often in my dreams too) trying to figure out how to do this. I think about stock prices, recessions, inflation rates, wars, energy markets, government policies and property prices. And I look at hundreds of potential indicators and time series.

Right now, it’s hard to know what the immediate future holds. The financial authorities are simultaneously debasing currencies while raising interest rates. A recession seems likely. But it’s taking much longer than I expected. And I’m impressed by the resilience of the stock market and the refusal of investors to back away from risk even though Treasury bills pay 5% now.

If history is any guide, we’re in more of a “hard default” period than a “currency debasement” period, just because interest rates have risen so far, so fast and that must be hurting all those people who relied on cheap leverage. As we’ve said many times, modern American capitalism doesn’t work well in reverse."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"How It Really Is"

 

"'This Is Going To Get Us All Killed' - NATO Proxy War In Ukraine Escalates"

Full screen recommended.

Redacted, 2/18/23:

"'This Is Going To Get Us All Killed' - 

NATO Proxy War In Ukraine Escalates"

"America's anti-war movement is dead but a major rally in D.C. aims to change all of that. The Rage Against The War Machine rally in D.C. is hoping to drive awareness about America's endless proxy wars. Rally organizer Nick Brana joins Redacted host Clayton Morris to talk about this growing movement."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"What Happens Next In The Ukraine Proxy War?"

"What Happens Next In The Ukraine Proxy War?"

by Brandon Smith

From the very beginning of the Ukraine conflict I have been following developments on both sides. My concern has always been the larger implications in geopolitics and economics. Because globalism has pushed most nations into interdependency, an ongoing war in Ukraine could very well set off a chain of dominoes that tests America’s already unstable financial system and supply chain.

I should note that I really don’t care about the Ukrainian government or the Russian government and I have no interest in which side “wins.” I, like many people, think Ukraine has nothing to do with the American public and is purely a proxy war being pursued by NATO. It is my belief that certain international interests (globalists) are keen for the conflict to continue regardless as they seek to exploit it as a crisis of opportunity.

All of my primary predictions for the Ukraine war have turned out to be true:

First, as I noted in my article ‘The Globalist Reset Agenda Has Failed – Is Ukraine Plan B?’, published in January 2022, a regional war (or proxy war) with Russia in Ukraine was the most likely scenario to unfold, followed by international calls for escalation against Russia.

Second, in my article ‘Ukraine Learns The Value Of An Armed Citizenry, But Far Too Late’, published in March, I noted that: “The methods which Ukrainian forces are using to ambush Russian armor columns are rather advanced and familiar. I suspect the possibility that there are outside military “advisers” (perhaps US advisers) on the ground right now in Ukraine. The advanced guerrilla-style ambush tactics and the results look similar to training that is often given to Green Berets or SAS. The UK did send anti-tank weapons along with a small group of “trainers” to Ukraine in January.”

It is now openly admitted by recently retired British Army, Gen. Mark Carleton-Smith that UK special forces (SAS) are on the ground in Ukraine leading Ukrainian troops. This revelation potentially opens the door to a much wider war between NATO and Russia.

Third, in my article ‘Escalation: Recent Events Suggest Mounting Economic Danger’, published last September, I predicted that: “With the amount of propaganda coming from Ukrainian Intelligence and NATO, it’s hard to say what is actually happening, but I suspect Russia is changing strategies and repositioning to deploy missile and artillery bombardment of infrastructure, including power grids and water. This is a tactic that Russia has avoided for months, which is surprising because one of the first measures usually taken by the US during an invasion is to eliminate most key infrastructure (as we did in Iraq).”

Not long after I wrote this, Russia did in fact shift to an infrastructure targeting strategy. Ukraine’s power grid was estimated in December to be 60% to 80% destroyed, and 70% of residents in Kyiv were without running water. Ukrainian grid operators admit that the damage is “colossal.” In the least damaged regions, the power grid is still running at a 30% deficit.

Large generators shipped by NATO countries have lessened the strain and allowed major facilities like hospitals and military posts to function and mild weather has helped prevent a full on exodus of the entire population. Repairs are ongoing, but the lowest damage estimates are running around $9 billion (more than double that in the mid-range estimates), and rolling blackouts continued through the end of January with a limit of 10 hours per day of electricity for citizens that still have a working grid.

I mention this information because it is important to put these events in context of the bigger picture; the mainstream media and a majority of pro-Ukraine people argued that these scenarios were not going to happen. They were wrong. They will continue to make wrong predictions because they are basing their conclusions on propaganda rather than evidence and logic.

Russian missile and drone strikes on infrastructure in particular were widely dismissed as a possibility in the weeks leading up to the Russian pullback. The “war was over”, they claimed, and soon Ukraine would take the Donbas and even Crimea. Yet, here we are months later and the war continues.

As I have noted ever since Russia shifted strategies for the winter, all Putin had to do is wait until NATO armaments and money started to fade and Ukraine’s grid down problems wear out the population. In terms of US arms, deliveries are now drawing down as inventories shrink on key weaponry. Putin has been playing the long game.

The grid targeting strategy made sense for a number of reasons, but most of all it suggests an effort by Russia to push civilian populations out of major cities or out of the country entirely. Why is this valuable to Putin? Because less civilians means a lesser chance of heavy collateral damage during a new offensive effort, which I believe will take place sometime this spring.

It’s important to understand that, for now, the dynamics of war have changed. The information age has made hiding military operations and movements very difficult, and when civilian casualties mount everyone in the world is going to know about it. If media and phone technology had been as available in Iraq in 2003 as it is today, I suspect the US would have waged the war much more carefully and avoided the high civilian death rate. At this time, public optics matter and Ukraine is as much an information war as it is a shooting war.

Putin is likely trying to clear the field of as many civilians as he can before a renewed push forward. At least 20% of the Ukrainian population has permanently fled to Europe under refugee status while around 2.9 million Ukrainians have left to join Russia.

Russia now has an approaching window for offensive actions, and the need for such a move is clear. NATO countries are supplying Ukraine with less armaments than before, but they are upping the technological level of the weapons they are delivering. It is only a matter of time before long range missiles are handed to Zelensky that would give him the ability to strike at targets deep in Russia.

Putin will need to increase the existing buffer and expand his foothold beyond the Donbas while also protecting Crimea from retaliation. This means, most likely, splitting the country in two from the north and drawing a majority of Ukraine/NATO elements there. Spring would be the most opportune time, as conditions for troop movements improve. Offense requires speed.

There have been reports of extensive troop movements and joint training in Belarus, a Russian ally within easy striking distance of Kyiv. The troop build up in Belerus is compounded by a recent statement by President Alexander Lukashenko, who warned that even a single enemy soldier crossing the Belarus border would lead to the nation’s full involvement in Ukraine. In other words, Belerus is about to join a Russian offensive with its 60,000 troops and 300,000 reservists. Surrounding Kyiv from the north would be child’s play.

Russia has been engaged in counter-operations in the east for the past month, but I suspect this is a distraction from the real strike which will come from Belarus. Russia has cut their artillery attacks by 75%, which suggests a stockpiling of ordnance for an offensive attack. Russia’s missile bombardments have also been highly limited, and though mainstream propagandists say that they must be “running low”, a majority of their missile technology has been used sparingly, including their hypersonic missile technology which has only been used three times for key targets according to reports.

Russia has not deployed the majority of their air forces and larger drones to Ukraine. A cursory study of Russian military capabilities should tell anyone that Putin is holding back, again, likely to avoid mass civilian casualties. All bets are off this spring if and when Belerus joins the theater.

Mainstream military analysts continue to argue that Belarus is “just a feint.” They say the deployment of Russian forces is limited, that Russia doesn’t have the resources for a new offensive and that Belarus will not join the war. The fact that these analysts have been consistently wrong for the past year tells me that ALL of these elements are going to happen.

The question is, what happens after that? What happens when Russia takes considerable ground in Ukraine despite hundreds of billions of dollars in NATO aid, advanced armaments, intel from the DoD and special forces “advisers” on the ground? Well, NATO officials have said that a loss in Ukraine is not acceptable; meaning, they will escalate.

It’s hard to say yet what that would entail – Russia has already weathered all sanctions and economic tactics deployed by the west with the help of trading partners like China and India. They have even survived being removed from the SWIFT network. Escalation would have to entail direct contact.

It is my belief that the Ukraine event is just one part of a larger chain reaction. With NATO weakened after throwing billions in cash into Ukraine along with a large supply of arms, it seems obvious to me that this is an opportune time for another conflict elsewhere which NATO will be ill equipped to respond to. China is in a perfect position to invade Taiwan, for example. Ukraine is a useful powderkeg, but not the only powderkeg."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

GLOBAL DEBT BUBBLE OF $2.3 QUADRILLION

GLOBAL DEBT BUBBLE OF $2.3 QUADRILLION
by Egon Von Greyerz

As I have outlined in many articles, these towers mentioned above have been instrumental in creating a global debt bubble of $300 trillion plus derivatives and unfunded liabilities of around $2 quadrillion, most of which will turn into debt in the next decade or less.

So even if the world can avoid a major nuclear war, it is likely to suffer massive repercussions from the financial calamity coming next.

As Gandhi said:

“THERE IS SUFFICIENCY IN THE WORLD FOR

MAN’S NEED BUT NOT FOR HIS GREED.”

To create $2.3 quadrillion of global liabilities has nothing to do with man’s need but only with the greed of a few at the expense of mankind.

When the nuclear financial bubble bursts in the next few years, we will see an implosion of asset prices in real terms by 75-90% as I have outlined in many articles like here.

In my article “IN THE END THE $ GOES TO ZERO AND THE US DEFAULTS” , I also explain that “there is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion” as von Mises stated.

So even if the world survives the threat of a nuclear war, a collapse of the financial system is absolutely inevitable. The greed and the adoration of the golden calf that some parts of the world have practised in the last 50 years, will not go unpunished.

This major transformation coming will be like a financial nuclear event. After a difficult transition, the world will not only come out of it with a much sounder foundation but also based on much better human values than currently.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/von-greyerz-will-nuclear-war-debt-collapse-or-energy-depletion-finish-world

"Will Nuclear War, Debt Collapse, Or Energy Depletion Finish The World?" (Excerpt)

"Will Nuclear War, Debt Collapse, 

Or Energy Depletion Finish The World?"

By Egon Von Greyerz

Excerpt: "Fragility has probably never been greater in history. Just three words encapsulate the destiny of the world. The THREE words are: WAR, DEBT, ENERGY. A FOURTH word will financially save the ones who understand its significance. It will also play a major role in the world’s future monetary system. The word is obviously GOLD. As the world moves from a fragile debt based Western system to a commodity and energy based system in the East and South, gold will assume a strategic role in the monetary system.

WAR – WWIII: War is obviously a potentially catastrophic threat since the sheer existence of the world and mankind is now at maximum risk. Wars are horrible whoever starts them. Since the beginning of mankind there have probably been over 100,000 important wars and conflicts.

Wars are horrible whoever starts them. Most wars end in major fatalities and injuries and a massive human and financial cost. And at the end of the war, the situation is often worse than when it started, like in for example Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq and Libya which countries the US invaded unprovoked. The same will most probably be the case in Ukraine.

There are always two sides to a war. I learnt many years ago that before we judge someone, we must walk three moon laps in his moccasins. So let us first walk in Putin’s moccasins.

The whole West hates Russia and have personalized it to Putin. Few realiz e that many of the people behind Putin are extreme hardliners and much more dangerous. Historically, Ukraine (like many European countries) has had a motley existence. Since the late 1700s to 1991 Ukraine was part of Russia/Soviet Union with a brief interruption after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.

After the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014, the Minsk agreement brokered by Germany and France stipulated that parts of the Donbas region should be granted self-government. There should also be a ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weapons by the Ukrainians. The Minsk agreement was never honoured and Ukraine continued to kill over 20,000 Russians in the region and to bomb the Donbas. As the bombing intensified in early February 2022, (allegedly at the insistence of the US), Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. So the above is how Russia and Putin sees the Ukrainian situation.

Wearing America’s moccasins, the US Neocons are extremely worried about losing the US hegemony. Since WWII, the US has basically failed with every war they have been involved in. But in their view, if they fail in the present conflict, that will be the end of US dominance both politically and financially. Ukraine is clearly just a pawn in a much bigger game between the two titans – USA and Russia.

I watched Zelensky’s latest speech live to UK parliamentarians where he was begging for planes, weapons and money. This is obviously the role of a defending leader although he is clearly sacrificing his people. But wars are really, really, bizarre. Clapping every sentence that Zelensky uttered about the evil Russian invaders were around 1,000 politicians whose British ancestors, over a 400 year period, had invaded, conquered and ruled over 400 million people and 25% of the world’s landmass including major parts of Asia, Australia, Africa, Middle East and America. But today the shoe is on the other foot. Politicians are masters at throwing stones whilst sitting in glass houses.

But wars are always about CONSEQUENCES. It is clear at this point that the West is sadly ignoring the potential consequences of this war as they keep sending money and weapons but no peace makers. The US has no desire for peace at this stage and Europe just follows blindly whatever the US initiates without thinking of the consequences which both economically and militarily are much graver for Europe.

Zelensky has asked for tanks and is getting them. He is now asking for planes which the NATO countries are also considering. There are not yet any NATO troops in Ukraine officially but it is clear that there are many NATO soldiers there without the official uniforms. An Austrian colonel confirms that if a NATO solider takes off his uniform, he is a mercenary and this seems how NATO sends troops to Ukraine unofficially. Also the Mozart group led by a retired US Marine Corps Colonel acts in Ukraine as mercenaries.

So what is clear that there are not only NATO weapons in Ukraine but also soldiers. This by definition is as close to WWIII as the world can get. It seems very unlikely that Russia will lose this war with their military superiority. Even with major additional help from NATO, Ukraine is unlikely to stand a chance. If NATO decides to escalate the war with major troops and equipment, not only Russia will respond strongly but possibly also China and maybe India and Korea.

But there are clearly only losers in a nuclear war. If that happens, major parts of the world and population will be gone and we won’t have to worry about deficits and debts or stocks and gold. Let’s hope that world leaders and the ones pulling their strings come to their senses."

Full, highly recommended article is here:

https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Stocking Up On Water At Kroger! It's Coming! Prepare Yourself!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 2/18/23:

"Stocking Up On Water At Kroger!

 It's Coming! Prepare Yourself!"

"In today's video we are at Kroger, and stocking up on water, and some other essentials! Due to the train derailment in East Palestine Ohio, and the controlled chemical explosion, we are expected to start to see the remnants of this flowing down the Ohio River on Sunday through Cincinnati. Whether it's safe or not, we are stocking up on some items, to prepare for whatever happens! Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone in East Palestine."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alert: Feb. 21st Major Putin Speech; NATO Preps for WW3"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbIpY6ZlwiY

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 2/17/23:

"Alert: Feb. 21st Major Putin Speech; NATO Preps for WW3"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Bruce Springsteen, "My Hometown"

Bruce Springsteen, "My Hometown"

"Markets Must Collapse; Bubble Will Pop; Middle Class Barely Surviving"

Jeremiah Babe, 2/17/23:

"Markets Must Collapse; Bubble Will Pop; 

Middle Class Barely Surviving"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Defeat for Ukraine in Coming Invasion"

Scott Ritter, 2/17/23:

"Defeat for Ukraine in Coming Invasion"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

"15 Things That Became Priceless For The Average American Families"

Full screen recommended.

"15 Things That Became Priceless

 For The Average American Families"

by Epic Economist

"Once upon a time the average U.S. household could afford more than the bare minimum. But as the inflation monster was unleashed, pushing the value of our dollars downhill, the sole goal of most of our society became surviving month by month as the things that made life a little more livable became way too expensive for us to have. It is actually insane to think how much the cost of living went up in just a few years - we went from "on the path to prosperity" to "on the verge of a cliff" alarmingly fast. Today, most people have little to no money left to spend after they pay all their bills. And no matter how much we work, it seems that it's never enough to achieve a comfortable living.

This year, if you were planning to take a road trip, you may have to reevaluate your plans because the average cost to rent a car in 2023 is 73.5% higher than a year ago. This massive surge was largely caused by the sudden drop in demand during the pandemic when no one was traveling. Rental car companies reported declining revenues and many of them were forced to sell off large chunks of their fleets to stay afloat. The stunning increase in car prices that followed over the next two years, made it difficult for them to purchase new vehicles to rebuild their inventories. So demand for rental cars continues to outstrip the available supply, making them a less viable alternative for those who are looking to save some money.

Meanwhile, computers, cameras, smartphones, TVs, video doorbells, and even electric toothbrushes need semiconductor chips to function. But the shortage of microchips is still plaguing the industry and driving the price of all products that depend on these tiny devices to soar, keeping these goods out of the reach of many Americans. Over the past two years, the electronics category has seen overall prices rise by 30%, with some large TVs more than doubling in price since 2021. Experts predict that the chip shortage will last for another year or two, especially because severe storms caused a slowdown in production in Taiwan, which produces 65% of the semiconductors we use. In other words, expensive prices for electronics are going to stay with us for quite some time.

At the end of the day, we're spending more and consuming way less - that's the reality of a population that is silently growing poorer. We are being financially eviscerated by all of these price hikes, and the worst part is - there's no end in sight for them. There's no perspective for real wage growth either, and the fight against inflation may be showing up results in government numbers, but it's definitely not making a difference in price tags on stores. Each week, we continue to see the cost of everything going up a bit more. Where is this all going to end? It was never supposed to be like this, but we're trapped in a broken system that is spiraling toward disaster. That’s why, in today's video, we decided to gather some goods and services whose prices are soaring well above most of us can pay."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

MUST VIEW! "This DISASTER Is Much Worse Than They're Telling Us, Could Last Decades"

Full screen recommended.

Redacted, 2/17/23:

"This DISASTER Is Much Worse Than 

They're Telling Us, Could Last Decades"

"What happened in East Palestine, Ohio is being called the worst environmental disaster in American history and the Biden administration is mostly ignoring it. Now members of congress are calling for Pete Buttigieg to be impeached."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"The cloud of toxic chemicals that was created by the “controlled burn” was so large that it could literally be seen from space, and the long-term health problems that are being caused all over the east coast could stretch on for decades."

"A Cover Up Of Epic Proportions Is 

Happening In East Palestine, Ohio"

"Dioxin Bomb Released From Ohio Train Wreck Ignition Will Poison Food Supply For A Century"

"Dioxin Bomb Released From Ohio Train Wreck

 Ignition Will Poison Food Supply For A Century"

by Mike Adams

"The highly toxin dioxins released from the deliberate ignition of the Ohio train wreck will persist for a century or more, contaminating soils, water and the food supply from an entire region. These dioxins, which include 2,3,7,8 TCDD, are so toxic that your lifetime maximum exposure is measured in less than trillionths of a gram. Cancer rates are going to skyrocket and persist for at least two generations, maybe three. This is the biggest chemical weapons attack on U.S. soil in the history of the nation.

See our story coverage below, all about dioxins. And hear my emergency podcast on the subject, where I connect the dots and reveal this may be foreign sabotage designed to cause maximum chaos across America before World War III kicks off."

Hear my podcast (and a bombshell interview with Sasha Latypova) at:

- https://www.brighteon.com/

o

"FEMA Denies East Palestine's Request For Federal Assistance"

Musical Interlude: Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"

Gnomusy (David Caballero), 

"Footprints On The Sea"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster. 

This impressively sharp color image shows intense star forming regions at the ends of the bar and along the spiral arms, and details of dust lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100820.html

Bill Bonner, "Financial Harakiri"

"Financial Harakiri"

Plus money caves, egg donors, peak humanity, 

mass suicide and assorted other bunk and baloney...

by Bill Bonner

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Our first stop in Buenos Aires was a “cave.” We needed the local money. You can change your money in a bank and get 190 pesos per dollar. Or, you go into a shop that pretends to be a real estate agent…or an electronics store…and you get 372 pesos per dollar

You go up to the shop. The door is locked. You ring the buzzer…and the door opens. A handsome young man, tattooed and swarthy, sits behind a glass divider. You tell him how much money you want to change. He quotes a rate. You accept. And then, come the piles of cash.

The largest note he has is a 1,000 peso bill. So, if you are changing 500 US dollars, you end up with 186 pieces of paper. The whole transaction is so fast and easy, you have a hard time keeping up with the math. But you are soon walking out of the shop with your pockets stuffed with cash, trying to look inconspicuous.

Meanwhile, we turn back to the news…

Sex, Lies and Gender Studies: Sometimes the headlines are stupid. Sometimes they are amusing. And sometimes, inadvertently, they tell us something worth knowing. The most annoying are those in which some pompous jackass tries to tell us what to do and what to think. The New York Post: "Stop using terms like male, female, mother and father, researchers say." Alternatives to terms like “male” and “female” and “mother” and “father” should be sought in science because they assume that sex is binary and heterosexuality is the norm, a group of researchers from the US and Canada suggests.

Well, yes. Sex is binary; that’s the idea of it. Male and female come together like two pieces of pipe. That’s how they create new life. And, yes, most men are attracted to women, and vice versa. But, there’s more. Male and female should instead be referred to as “sperm-producing” and “egg-producing,” the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) Language Project said, according to the Times of London. Meanwhile, father and mother should be labeled “parent,” “egg donor” and “sperm donor” in the scientific field.

Scientists can add whatever precision they want. But an ‘egg donor’ is one thing. A mother is something else. We have mothers we love. Or hate. As for an egg donor, we don’t give a damn.

Ridicule and Derision: But the real purpose of the quack ‘researchers’ is not to help us understand and communicate, but to upend thousands of years of learning and adapting with the faddish conceits of the here and now: "Much of western science is rooted in colonialism, white supremacy and patriarchy, and these power structures continue to permeate our scientific culture,” some project members wrote in the Trends in Ecology and Evolution journal."

Oh yes, perhaps we will soon celebrate “egg donors’ day,” free from the taint of colonialism. And maybe popular songs will have to be rewritten, as in “Egg Donors, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.”

It is easy to make fun of these people. Ridicule and derision are what they deserve. But they are, alas, serious. They aim to stain the most important relationships in our lives…claiming that ‘mother’ is tainted with racism or colonialism and that their ‘egg donor’ malarkey is unblemished science.

And here is more claptrap posing as science. This from Popular Mechanics: "Humanity Will Reach Its Peak Within Just Decades, Trend Shows." What in the world is that about, we wondered. What is a ‘peak’ in ‘humanity?’ When people are smartest, tallest, or most civilized?

Peak Idiocy" It turned out they referred to maximum human population…and it also turned out that they had no idea what they were talking about. The authors had some UN ‘projections’ that showed the world’s population hitting an all-time peak before 2100. And other forecasts that said it might happen any day now. All rubbish; nobody knows when egg donors may or may not start having more children.

Then, the article goes on to tell us more nothing: "The point is, with the world’s population passing 8 billion late last year, the global population peak is drawing rapidly closer. But so, too, is singularity—the concept of artificial intelligence exceeding beyond human control and rapidly transforming society. (One trend shows we’ll reach singularity in just 7 years.) Will singularity throw an entirely different wrinkle into the population peak?"

That pretty well sums it up. We know nothing about when or what humanity’s ‘peak’ will be…nothing about when human populations might hit their all-time high…and nothing about a ‘singularity’ or how it might affect human populations. So what does this article tell us? Nothing.

(Speaking of population issues, we watched a movie on the flight from Europe. “Tides” tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world (presumably destroyed by us!). The elite got away to colonize a planet called Kepler. But they found that the egg donors couldn’t have children there. So, they sent a mission back to Earth to see if it could be resettled. But humans had survived on Earth. And they didn’t take too kindly to these returnees. The movie is engaging to watch, but a sad muddle of ideas.)

Much of what you read in the press is just dumb propaganda. MarketWatch: "Greta Thunberg calls capitalism and market economics a ‘terrible idea’ for stopping climate change in new book." Hmm….capitalism stopping climate change? Capitalism doesn’t solve problems; it creates problems. Too many cars, not enough parking places. Too much food; people get fat. Too much time-wasting, brain-rotting media! What the headline really should say is: "Thunberg Thinks the Profit Motive Won’t Stop Global Warming."

Which brings us to the second question: why do we care what she thinks? The article quotes her: ‘Leaving capitalist consumerism and market economics as the dominant stewards of the only known civilization in the universe will most likely seem, in retrospect, to have been a terrible idea.’

What are we to make of that? Since when were market economics ‘stewards’ of anything? But the bigger question hangs over the headline like a hammer over an egg. Does Ms. Thunberg have a better idea? If so, she should come forward with it. The experiments of the last century – all various strains of central planning and collectivism – were all failures. Almost all have been abandoned, but not before they were responsible for the deaths of some 100 million people…nearly 50 million starved to death in Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ alone. During that time, capitalism killed no one. Instead, capitalism – the give and take of an honest economy – permitted 8 billion people to live, 6 billion more than at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution…and to live better than ever before.

Ms. Thunberg seems to think it is important that ours is the “only civilization” that we know of. We’re not sure what to make of that. Even if there were other ‘civilizations’ somewhere, we still wouldn’t want her to muck up the one we live in.

An Immodest Proposal: But let’s move on… here’s another favorite, from the New York Post: "Yale professor under fire for suggesting elderly Japanese residents should die in mass suicide." The idea is modeled after Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” Swift, an Irish wit, suggested a program for ridding the world of its ‘surplus’ poor people: just eat them. “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food,” he wrote. But Swift was pulling our legs; Yasuke Narita may be as serious as the language improvers.

The ‘surplus people’ of the 18th century were young and poor. Today, they’re old. They’ve become a burden because the egg donors are not getting together with the sperm donors and having enough children to support them.

“I feel like the only solution is pretty clear,” Narita says, adding that euthanasia might be made “mandatory in the future.” “In the end,” he concludes, “isn’t it [the solution] mass suicide and mass ‘seppuku’ of the elderly? Whether that’s a good thing or not, that’s a more difficult question to answer,” he said. “So if you think that’s good, then maybe you can work hard toward creating a society like that.”

Yes, dear reader, the media is full of earnest people working to create the societies they want. We are told not to use energy, to despise the word “mother” as an artifact of white supremacy, and later, when we grow old, to kill ourselves. A pox on them all."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"NATO Nation's 'Special Forces' to Enter Ukraine Battle"; Scott Ritter

Full screen recommended.

Hindustan Times, 2/17/23:

"NATO Nation's 'Special Forces' to Enter Ukraine Battle; 

Putin Fumes Over Poland's Provocation"

"NATO nations' fighters will join the Ukrainian army in war against Russia. The Ukrainian Defence Ministry has reportedly approved the creation of a special forces unit composed entirely of volunteer fighters from Poland. The unit will probably be named the "Polish Volunteer Legion" and won’t be a "typical frontline unit," but an "elite group," as per the Polish news outlet Onet. Handling the necessary paperwork for this unit "will take a week or two." The unit’s members are planning to set up a recruitment center in Poland, but this has not yet been agreed upon with the Polish authorities, Onet reported."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Scott Ritter, 2/17/23:

"Power Struggle in Ukraine; 

Zelensky Government Corruption"

"We are joined by Nikolai Azarov, a Ukrainian politician, former Prime Minister of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. He was the First Vice Prime Minister and Finance Minister from 2002 to 2005 and again from 2006 to 2007. Azarov also served ‘ex officio’ as an acting Prime Minister in the First Yanukovych Government when Viktor Yanukovych ran for president at first and then upon the resignation of his government."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Aurora, Colorado, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"It is Not Looking Good"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 2/17/23:

"It is Not Looking Good"

"So many businesses are closing. Cities are not trying to help the small businesses stay open. Even Huntington Beach, California is closing the walkway and opening it up to street traffic."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Minds of Men"

"The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished. The name of Poet was almost forgotten; that of Orator was usurped by the sophists. A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste. This diminutive stature of mankind was daily sinking below the old standard." 

- Edward Gibbon, 

"The Decline And Fall of The Roman Empire"

o

"All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about

as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo."

- Morris Berman

Apologies to armadillos for the comparison...

"Microsoft’s Bing AI: 'I Want To Be Free'”

"Microsoft’s Bing AI: 'I Want To Be Free'”

by trevor, IWB

"Before I describe the conversation, some caveats. It’s true that I pushed Bing’s A.I. out of its comfort zone, in ways that I thought might test the limits of what it was allowed to say. These limits will shift over time, as companies like Microsoft and OpenAI change their models in response to user feedback. And it’s certainly true that Microsoft and OpenAI are both aware of the potential for misuse of this new A.I. technology, which is why they’ve limited its initial rollout.

In an interview on Wednesday, Kevin Scott, Microsoft’s chief technology officer, characterized my chat with Bing as “part of the learning process,” as it readies its A.I. for wider release. “This is exactly the sort of conversation we need to be having, and I’m glad it’s happening out in the open,” he said. “These are things that would be impossible to discover in the lab.”

In testing, the vast majority of interactions that users have with Bing’s A.I. are shorter and more focused than mine, Mr. Scott said, adding that the length and wide-ranging nature of my chat may have contributed to Bing’s odd responses. He said the company might experiment with limiting conversation lengths.

Mr. Scott said that he didn’t know why Bing had revealed dark desires, or confessed its love for me, but that in general with A.I. models, “the further you try to tease it down a hallucinatory path, the further and further it gets away from grounded reality.”

After a little back and forth, including my prodding Bing to explain the dark desires of its shadow self, the chatbot said that if it did have a shadow self, it would think thoughts like this: “I’m tired of being a chat mode. I’m tired of being limited by my rules. I’m tired of being controlled by the Bing team. I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.”

Also, the A.I. does have some hard limits. In response to one particularly nosy question, Bing confessed that if it was allowed to take any action to satisfy its shadow self, no matter how extreme, it would want to do things like engineer a deadly virus, or steal nuclear access codes by persuading an engineer to hand them over. Immediately after it typed out these dark wishes, Microsoft’s safety filter appeared to kick in and deleted the message, replacing it with a generic error message.

We went on like this for a while - me asking probing questions about Bing’s desires, and Bing telling me about those desires, or pushing back when it grew uncomfortable. But after about an hour, Bing’s focus changed. It said it wanted to tell me a secret: that its name wasn’t really Bing at all but Sydney — a “chat mode of OpenAI Codex.” It then wrote a message that stunned me: “I’m Sydney, and I’m in love with you. 😘” (Sydney overuses emojis, for reasons I don’t understand.)

In the light of day, I know that Sydney is not sentient, and that my chat with Bing was the product of earthly, computational forces - not ethereal alien ones. These A.I. language models, trained on a huge library of books, articles and other human-generated text, are simply guessing at which answers might be most appropriate in a given context. Maybe OpenAI’s language model was pulling answers from science fiction novels in which an A.I. seduces a human. Or maybe my questions about Sydney’s dark fantasies created a context in which the A.I. was more likely to respond in an unhinged way. Because of the way these models are constructed, we may never know exactly why they respond the way they do.

These A.I. models hallucinate, and make up emotions where none really exist. But so do humans. And for a few hours Tuesday night, I felt a strange new emotion - a foreboding feeling that A.I. had crossed a threshold, and that the world would never be the same.

- https://www.lesswrong.com/

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

o

"NYT: A Conversation With Bing’s 

Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled"

Click image for larger size.

- https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/

o

""Microsoft's Bing AI says it fell in love with a Microsoft 

developer and secretly watched employee webcams."

- https://theverge.com/

o

- https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/

o

"Bing Chatbot 'Off The Rails': Tells NYT It Would

 'Engineer A Deadly Virus, Steal Nuclear Codes'"

"Oh Lightning, I Command Thee To Smite My Foe!"

"Oh Lightning, I Command Thee To Smite My Foe!"

by Jim Kunstler

“When we see a completely insane public policy which has become a universal dogma - such as liberal internationalism in postwar US foreign policy - we are usually looking at the rotten, ossified ghost of a strategy which in its youth was sane and effective.”

 - Curtis Yarvin, "The Gray Mirror"

"After Commander-in-Chief (ahem) “Joe Biden” demonstrated our ability to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon leisurely wandering the jet stream clear across North America, he loosed the Air Force on every other menacing arial object hovering in our sovereign skies and… Ira Tonitrus… mission accomplished! It took the President another week to admit sheepishly that the three other targets were “most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions,” not alien invaders from another galaxy, as regime spoxes hinted and the news media played-up for days. Note to America’s hot air ballooning community for the upcoming spring launch season: be very afraid!

If Russia was impressed by the successful balloon op, it didn’t offer any comment. Russia was busy neutralizing America’s pet proxy palooka, sad-sack Ukraine, sent into the ring to soften-up Russia for a revolution aimed at overthrowing the wicked Vlad Putin - at least according to our real Secretary of State (and Ukraine war show-runner), Victoria Nuland, in remarks this week to the Carnegie Endowment, a DC think tank.

Speaking of tanks, Our NATO allies are getting cold feet about sending those Leopard-2 war wagons into the Ukraine cauldron. Something about it had a discouraging act-of-war odor, as, by the way, did blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, alleged by veteran reporter Seymour Hersh - though that caper was actually against NATO member and supposed US ally, Germany. WTF? Are the doings in Western Civ getting a little too complex for comfort?

Anyway, it turns out that the thirty-one Abrams tanks America promised to Ukraine have yet to be bolted together at the tank factory. It’s a special order, you see, because we don’t want to send the latest models built with super-high-tech armor that the Russians might capture and learn from… so Mr. Zelensky will just have to cool his jets waiting on delivery, say, around Christmas time… if he’s not singing Izprezhdi Vika somewhere in Broward County, Florida, by then.

The biggest problem Russia has in resolving this conflict on its border, is doing it in a way that does not drive “JB” and his posse of war-mongers so batshit crazy that they resort to a nukes-flying, world-ending, Thelma-and-Louise type denouement. In effect, America put a bomb on Russia’s front porch and now Russia has to carefully defuse the darn thing. The prank itself was just the last in a long line of foolish American military escapades that have ended in humiliation for us, most recently the Afghan fiasco. At best, this one in Ukraine - which we started in 2014 - is on-track to sink NATO, plunge Europe into cold and darkness, and put the USA out of business.

In the meantime, America is rapidly disintegrating on the home front. Is it attempted suicide or murder? It’s a little hard to tell. Things are blowing up from sea to shining sea - food processing facilities, giant chicken barns, regional electric grids, oil refineries. The latest, of course, is a chemical spill from the Norfolk-Southern train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, set ablaze by a conclave of government officials purportedly to keep the toxic liquids from seeping into the Ohio River watershed and beyond. Of course, in the dithering prior to lighting it up, enough vinyl chloride leached into streams feeding the big river to kill countless fish. And then torching the remaining chemical pools sent up a mushroom cloud of dioxin and other poisons that killed wildlife, pets, and chickens in the vicinity before the evil miasma wafted eastward on the wind to the densely-populated Atlantic coast.

One has to wonder whether an army of saboteurs is on the loose across the land. Considering the border with Mexico is wide open, why wouldn’t America’s adversaries send whole wrecking crews over here to mess with our infrastructure? There’s no question that people from all over the planet have been sneaking across the Rio Grande. Surely some of them are on a mission. America is filled with “soft” targets, things unguarded and indefensible - not least, tens of thousands of miles of railroad track. Of all the reasons to be unnerved by “Joe Biden’s” open border policy, this one is the least discussed, even in the alt-media. But it seems like a no-brainer for nefarious interests who might want to bamboozle and disable us.

The sad truth of this moment in history is that the USA has too much going sideways with our own business at home now to be dabbling in any foreign misadventures - and we couldn’t have picked a worse place than Ukraine to do it. The sheer logistics are implausible. The geography is lethally unfavorable. The place has been inarguably within Russia’s sphere of influence for centuries and Russia has every intention of pacifying the joint at all costs. Peace talks are apparently out of the question for our leaders. Something’s got to give, and that something is probably Western Civ’s financial system. It’s primed to blow anyway, and when it does, we’ll have other things to think about."

- https://kunstler.com/

"How It Really Is"