Long Lines and Rising Prices Spark Tension Among Shoppers"
by Epic Economist
"Are you tired of waiting in long lines just to get a carton of eggs? Well, you're not alone. Costco, one of the largest wholesale stores in America, has been hit by the nationwide egg shortage, which has led to rising prices and long lines of customers eager to buy eggs. But that's not the worst part. In this documentary, we will uncover the true reasons behind this egg shortage, its impact on customers, businesses, and the environment. Brace yourselves, because things are about to get serious.
The egg crisis that is sweeping the United States has been caused by a catastrophic bird flu outbreak that has ravaged chicken farms all across the country. The sheer scale of the problem is almost incomprehensible - millions of chickens have been affected, and the resulting shortage of eggs has sent prices skyrocketing to unprecedented levels. The average cost of a dozen eggs has doubled from last year, and the situation is only getting worse.
People are panicking, and it's not hard to see why. The situation is reminiscent of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when shoppers rushed to stock up on toilet paper, causing widespread shortages and chaos. This time, it's eggs that are in short supply, and the panic buying has resulted in long lines and limited availability. Shoppers are scrambling to purchase as many eggs as possible before they disappear, and it's not hard to see why - with the median price of a dozen eggs rising to a staggering $4.25 in December, it's clear that the impact of this crisis is going to be felt for a long time to come.
One viral TikTok video has captured the extent of the chaos that the egg shortage has caused. In the video, a long line of desperate customers can be seen snaking through the aisles of a Costco store, waiting anxiously for their chance to purchase a precious carton of eggs. The video was posted by a shocked shopper who could hardly believe how quickly the line had formed, and how tensions among customers were beginning to rise. Some shoppers were pointing their fingers in the air, accusing others of trying to cut in line, while others were exchanging heated words and even coming to blows. The scene was chaotic, and it's clear that the egg shortage has had a significant impact on Costco's customers - but the problem is much bigger than just one store.
The consequences of this crisis are far-reaching and potentially catastrophic. For farmers who have lost entire flocks of chickens to the bird flu, the impact is devastating. With millions of chickens affected, the resulting shortage of eggs is threatening to push many farmers out of business, leaving them struggling to make ends meet. For consumers, the situation is just as dire. Eggs are a staple food that many people rely on for their daily nutrition, and the soaring prices are putting them out of reach for many families.
In conclusion, the problem of food waste is a complex one that requires a multifaceted approach. By working together at all levels of the food system, we can begin to make progress in reducing waste and ensuring that more people have access to the food they need to thrive. Whether it's making small changes in our own lives or advocating for policy changes at the national level, we all have a role to play in this important issue."
"The economy keeps getting darker and darker. We’re getting warning after warning about how things are going. Now they are coming from investment banks."
"The president has made American support for Ukraine the centerpiece of his argument for a revitalized alliance in Europe, and he had told advisers that he wanted to mark the first anniversary of the invasion as a way of reassuring allies that his administration remains committed…”
- The New York Times, Feb 20, 2023
"Secret Agent Man “Joe Biden” turned up in Kiev Monday morning after landing in Poland and riding an overnight choo-choo train across the Ukraine frontier to avoid the hazardous pomp of landing Air Force One in a war zone. One might try to guess the message Victoria Nuland sent her errand boy to deliver. My guess is that “JB” was there to tell Wolodymyr Zelensky the USA stands behind him one hundred percent - an obvious whopper - being exactly the opposite of the developing reality that, short of setting off nuclear Armageddon, there is really nothing the USA can do to prevent Russia from concluding our ill-conceived project on its own terms. Who better to deliver an arrant falsehood than the master, “Scranton Joe,” he who once battled and vanquished the tyrant Corn-Pop!
Remember, last week Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, speaking out of the aperture between his butt cheeks, announced that Russia had lost “strategically, operationally and tactically” in Ukraine. This was after NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg announced rather clumsily that Ukraine’s army was out of ammo, especially artillery shells, and the only remedy for that was for Europe to rebuild an armaments industry - which was a sideways-and-backwards way of saying… fuggeddabowdit.
One might also suppose that, behind all this cognitive dissonance, the US would be engaged in secret talks with Russia to arrive at some face-saving device for getting out of this mess. But really, what is our leverage for that? Can we threaten to put US boots-on-the-Ground in Ukraine? That would be a little like channeling Gen. George Armstrong Custer, don’t you think? Apparently, all we’re left with is a game of pretend, using the Pretender-in-Chief as the front.
I’d also venture to say that American voters are not so enthused about this Ukraine pageant as they seemed to be last summer when the yellow and blue flags popped up on front porches at every Woked-up clam-bake from Edgartown to Bar Harbor. Our Ukrainian proxies sure seemed to be giving those Ruskies what-for along the front lines in Donbas, payback, you understand, for helping Donald Trump steal the 2016 election from She Whose Turn It Was Supposed to Be… America’s Amazonian Caesar-in-a-pants-suit, HRC.
The fall offensive by Ukraine was an illusion, alas, setting up its army for methodical decimation, now nearly complete. So, too, is all the talk of sending tanks in to save the day. And so, too, is the very existence of NATO as anything other than window-dressing on an empty storefront. If blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, as recently alleged by independent reporter Seymour Hersh, smells like an attack on our supposed ally, Germany, then how was it not an attack on NATO, in which Germany is the centerpiece? And, finally, why would Germany not be engaging in secret talks of its own with Russia, behind America’s back?
Intrigue must be rife now throughout Europe, and Americans will not hear anything about it from its Deep State-owned news media. Is there any reason why Europe could not live with a neutralized Ukraine? Of course not. Ukraine is in uproar now simply because geniuses in the US State Department thought it would be a good way to annoy and antagonize Russia. The project was insane from inception. The main result is that Europe will no longer have the natural gas it needs at a rational price to continue being an industrial society.
One must conclude that NATO is looking for a way out of this. But there is no way out except to declare by word or deed, directly or otherwise, that NATO has outlived the reason for its existence. Any sane analysis by Europeans would arrive at the unnerving realization that the USA has become the enemy of NATO, not Russia. If all that is so, then a seismic shift is underway that will leave America hung out to dry on the Ukraine project. Germany will have to make a deal with Russia to rebuild the Nord Streams. What could the US do about that? Impose sanctions on Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the rest of the bunch? Where does that leave Western Civ?
I’ll tell you: it leaves Western Civ diminished. It leaves our country to stew in its own rancid economic and financial juices in abject isolation from, basically, the rest of the world. (Fare-thee-well hegemonic dream; hello multi-polarity!) It leaves Ukraine neutralized and no longer a problem… It leaves Russia able to feel secure in its borders and free to get on with being a normal nation… and it leaves Europe the hope that it can resume modern life a while longer with the familiar comforts and conveniences.
The end of the Ukraine conflict also exposes the rotten web of Globalist schemers who planted their operators in every niche of American life and all around Western Civ - George Soros’s empire of meddling NGOs, Bill Gates’s World Health Org puppet show, the ridiculous World Economic Forum’s network of stooges in high places from Justin Trudeau to BlackRock’s Larry Fink.
The end of the Ukraine conflict reveals the submission of the Democratic Party to nefarious interests intent on wrecking this country. Even the most benign end to the Ukraine conflict - such as, by default, Europe and Russia settling-up on their own to stop the fighting - will be another humiliation for “Joe Biden” and the crew behind him, as bad as the last days in Kabul. Their other crimes await full disclosure, everything from treasonous bribery to the fraud and genocide around Covid-19. There will have to be a severe political realignment in America. But before that can happen, expect many seasons of terrible disorder."
“Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.
Many young stars from this cloud are visible in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way's close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.”
“Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life. No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today. Don’t hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don’t sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying – but by all means – face it! This life makes no room for cowards.”
"The Ukrainian Regime Is On The Verge Of Collapse"
"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics. No ego descriptions. No small talk. Straight to the point. Calls with the relevant analysis only."
In February 2022, Ukrainian puppet-President Zelensky announced at the Munich Security Conference that Ukraine would go nuclear. That was the trigger that caused Russia to invade Ukraine, days later. The US declared outrage and sought to involve NATO in retaliation. The American media was filled with angry reports of the "unprovoked invasion," stating that Russia’s goal was to seize all of Europe.
Since that time, the US media have maintained a constant barrage of propaganda regarding the war. The theme is always the same: The Russians are a murderous army, killing civilians and bombing hospitals and schools. But they are also incompetent, poorly led, their troops riddled with deserters, losing battle after battle, and experiencing far more casualties than the Ukrainians.
And yet, even though the Russians are claimed every day on the news to be losing badly, somehow, they have continued to advance. Kiev has been continually desperate for more from NATO in order to survive, and the US and other countries never seem to be offering enough materiel, advisors and funding for Ukraine to win.
Eventually, rumors began to leak out of Ukraine: Their casualties are eight to Russia’s one. The seasoned Ukrainian troops have been decimated. Kiev is barely surviving with green conscripts, outside contractors and depleting resources. Meanwhile, Russia has built up a force of over 500,000 fresh troops that are well trained and well-armed with substantial supply lines. A winter campaign is under way that’s expected to make short work of the collapsing Ukrainian defense.
The US has done all it can to appeal to the thirty-nation NATO, but the NATO countries, for the most part, are staying as far away from the fight as possible, not even wanting to provide materiel.
At the beginning of the war, Joe Biden stated, "The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews, just understand… that’s called ‘World War III.’" Yet, in January 2023, he announced that the US and Germany would send 45 tanks to Ukraine. It might as well be sending 45 school children with pop guns, as they’d last nearly as long on the field of battle as 45 tanks.
Not only is the US running out of options, but the American people are beginning to realize that they’ve been lied to, and while inflation is raging in the US, the US government is pouring billions into Ukraine. All is not well on the home front.
US leaders have begun to suggest that a "limited nuclear war" might be the one remaining option. This suggests that if the US were to fire a few nuclear missiles, it would scare Russia into throwing in the towel. The trouble is Russia has the largest number and most advanced nuclear weapons on the planet. The chances of it not retaliating to "limited" nukes are nil. Instead, they’re likely to unleash the full force of their nuclear armaments.
The media has said that the present situation is "unprecedented." But in fact, this has happened before. In 1962, it was the Soviets that had the temerity to move into America’s "back yard," sending missiles to Cuba. The US was as justifiably outraged then as Russia is now.
At that time, President Kennedy called the Joint Chiefs together to advise him. Today, that meeting has been largely forgotten, but it’s important to recall that the joint chiefs unanimously said, in essence, "Press the button immediately. Don’t wait another day."
Mr. Kennedy was alone in the hope that nuclear Armageddon could be avoided. With no other option open to him, he called Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev and asked him to call back the ships that carried the missiles. Mr. Khrushchev advised him that his own generals were telling him, too, to push the button immediately. The two men ignored their respective generals and worked out an agreement in which both sides would de-escalate. Armageddon was avoided by two sane men.
But here we are again, possibly on the brink of Armageddon. All that’s required is for one side to push the button. The missile systems of the other would then respond. But would anyone actually push the button?
Well, Mr. Putin, as formidable as he is, is a pragmatic man and may well respond as well or better than Mr. Khrushchev. But the man in the White House is no John Kennedy; he’s a cardboard cutout of a leader. The real decisions in Washington are being made by the Deep State… and it’s running out of options.
Russia holds virtually all the cards: Its economy is expanding. The US sanctions have caused two-thirds of the world to seek new treaties with Russia and China. The new agreement between China and Saudi Arabia will effectively end the petro dollar. And the US is not only broke but in debt beyond the ability to even pay the interest.
The last thing the Deep State wants is a loss of face, leading to a loss of power. And their last hope may well be to bluff that they will go nuclear. So, if this were to happen, how would it play out? Well, based upon past performance, the most likely scenario would be that the US would fire a low-yield (perhaps 0.3 kiloton) B61 missile at, say, Kiev, and claim that it was a Russian missile, then call on all of NATO to join the fight against Russia.
The danger of this is that the pre-programmed missile systems in both the US and Russia would take over, carpeting the US, Europe and Western Russia with nukes. The volleys would be brief, lasting only a few hours, but their total volume would be sufficient enough to obliterate those countries.
Full screen recommended.
The casualties are estimated at 91.5 million. Deaths from fallout would significantly increase this number, as fallout would cover much of the Northern Hemisphere, moved by trade winds and ocean currents. (As the Southern Hemisphere has a separate weather system and virtually all targets would be in the north, the Southern Hemisphere would fare far better than the north.) Beyond this damage, a nuclear winter would ensue, lasting months and perhaps years.
In reading the above, the natural reaction for each of us, as sane people, would be to say, "That can’t possibly happen. Nobody would be that crazy." Yet, as is so often the case, many of the world’s political and military leaders are certifiably sociopathic. And as history shows, when sociopaths vie for power, reason tends to go out the window.
In looking back to 1962 once again, it’s instructive to note that, when Fidel Castro was advised by Mr. Khrushchev that de-escalation had been agreed upon, he was furious. He is reported to have advised Mr. Khrushchev that he would have preferred Armageddon for his country rather than to have been left out of the negotiations. Such is the nature of sociopaths. It should be emphasized that nuclear war is by no means a certainty… but we are dangerously close."
“Lands can be reconquered, indeed in the course of a battle, a hill or a certain plain might trade hands several times. But missed opportunities? These can never be regained. Moments in time, in culture? They can never be re-made. One can never go back in time to prepare for what they should have prepared for, no one can ever get back critical seconds that were wasted out of fear or ego. Napoleon was brilliant at trading space for time: Sure, you can make these moves, provided you are giving me the time I need to drill my troops, or move them to where I want them to be. Yet in life, most of us are terrible at this. We trade an hour of our life here or afternoon there like it can be bought back with the few dollars we were paid for it. And it is only much, much later, as they are on their deathbeds or when they are looking back on what might have been, that many people realize the awful truth of this quote. Don’t do that. Embrace it now.”
"Train wreck. That’s a perfect way to describe the dismal record of the Biden administration. We’ve already seen a series of major disasters at home and abroad. And now we have a literal train wreck in eastern Ohio that is, yet again, exposing how incompetent, laughably dumb and out-of-touch the president and his gang in Washington are.
The derailment of the Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3 started out as a small news item from a Trump corner of Flyover Country. But it quickly became a major story when it was learned that some of the 38 derailed cars were carrying unpronounceable and unspellable hazardous materials, including tank cars full of cancer-causing vinyl chloride and ethylhexyl acrylate.
Three days later, to avoid a major explosion from the leaking cars, the authorities in charge and the railroad execs made the fateful – and, as we now know, foolish – decision to do a controlled burn of the dangerous chemicals. The evil mushroom cloud of thick black smoke that formed over the town of 5,000 souls looked like something out of a disaster movie. But it was real. As the cloud drifted eastward, it poisoned the air, water and land with a shower of dangerous chemicals that has killed fish and pet chickens, poisoned water wells and scared the heck out of people living downwind in Ohio and western Pennsylvania.
In the last two weeks, what happened in East Palestine has exploded into a major environmental catastrophe that could have long-term health effects on the health of thousands for decades. But as of Thursday, the president and his bumbling Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, have virtually ignored the derailment and the ongoing environmental calamity.
The president went on TV Thursday afternoon to read a statement to reporters about why we’ve been using jets and $400,000 rockets to shoot down Chinese spy balloons, private weather balloons and other unidentified flying things – and then walked off without answering any questions about anything.
Meanwhile, Mayor Pete, who earlier this week was talking about diversity, inclusion and equity and complaining that construction workers were too white, also has been AWOL on the derailment disaster. He’s managed only a tweet expressing how he continues “to be concerned” about the impact that the derailment has had on families whose “lives were upended through no fault of their own.”
Reports that Mayor Pete was seen on a bicycle going door-to-door in East Palestine in a hazmat suit to express his deep concern turned out to be fake news. But that’s exactly what Buttigieg should have been doing the last 10 days.
Instead of hiding wherever it is he’s hiding and blaming the train derailment on a regulatory rule changed by the Trump administration, he should have gone to East Palestine long ago. Both he and President Biden, who apparently still hasn’t been told about the derailment, should have gone to Ohio together to comfort the local people and promise that the federal government would help with anything they need. That’s the job the president is supposed to do when there’s a major disaster like this – go to the scene, wrap their arms around the people there, embrace them and comfort them.
President Biden has done none of that. He didn’t even order Buttigieg to take Air Force Two to Ohio. As for Mayor Pete, instead of having someone on his staff whip up a token tweet of concern, he should have stayed overnight with a local family in East Palestine and been videotaped chugging their tap water – and not in a hazmat suit."
"In today's vlog we go over the events in East Palestine Ohio, and explain what items we are stocking up on as Cincinnati has shut off the water intake to the Ohio River amid contamination concerns! We encourage everyone to be cautious, and be safe. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone in East Palestine!"
"A lot of people out there have been waiting for the next major economic crisis to arrive. If you are one of them, you don’t have to wait any longer, because it is already here. All of the numbers are telling us that we haven’t faced a downturn of this magnitude since 2008. For example, the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has now fallen for 10 months in a row. According to Zero Hedge, this is the first time that has happened since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And just like we witnessed in 2008, the housing market is crashing. In fact, the median price of a home in the San Francisco Bay Area has already fallen by a whopping 35 percent…
"The median price in the nine-county Bay Area plunged by another 8% in January from December, by 17% year-over-year, and by 35%, or by $540,000, in 10 months from the crazy peak in March 2022, from $1.54 million to $1.00 million, according to the California Association of Realtors." Home prices in the Bay Area are plummeting even faster than they did during the first housing crash. But don’t worry. Joe Biden says that everything is just fine.
Of course the reality of the matter is that everything is not fine. As bad as things are for residential real estate, the truth is that things are even worse for commercial real estate. Earlier today, I came across an article that explained that one of the biggest landlords in Los Angeles just defaulted on 755 million dollars in loans…"Brookfield Corp., parent of the largest office landlord in downtown Los Angeles, is defaulting on loans tied to two buildings rather than refinancing the debt as demand for space weakens in the center of the second-largest US city.
The two properties in default, part of a portfolio called Brookfield DTLA Fund Office Trust Investor, are the Gas Company Tower, with $465 million in loans, and the 777 Tower, with about $290 million in debt, according to a filing. The fund manager had warned in November that it may face foreclosure on properties."
Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg. We stand on the brink of the most epic commercial real estate crash in the entire history of the United States, and it is absolutely going to devastate the financial community.
Meanwhile, the tsunami of layoffs that we have been witnessing just continues to intensify. For instance, KPMG just announced that it will be laying off about 700 workers…"Several financial firms have slashed jobs in recent months including major Wall Street banks, asset managers and fintechs amid a turbulent macroeconomic environment that has pressured consumers and soured demand in several mainstay business units. The cuts at KPMG will affect close to 700 people, the FT report added."
And Docusign is already on their second round of layoffs…"E-signature software company DocuSign on Thursday announced plans to cut around 10% of its workforce. DocuSign had 7,461 employees in January 2022 before it announced an earlier round of layoffs last September that impacted 9% of its workforce. The company said the latest cuts will impact about 700 employees."
Even Apple is letting people go. It is being reported that “hundreds of contractors” were suddenly given the axe last week…"NYPost said Apple fired hundreds of contractors last week. These workers are employed by outside companies but work alongside Apple employees on projects. It appears Apple is reducing headcount as the macroeconomic environment remains challenging." If even an extremely wealthy company like Apple has decided that now is the time for mass layoffs, what does that say about the economic outlook for the rest of 2023?
In 2022, we witnessed a wave of layoffs in the tech industry that was unlike anything we have seen since the Great Recession. And so far this year, we are way, way ahead of last year’s pace…"The news comes after 1,045 tech companies last year fired 161,000 employees in 2022. So far this year, 380 companies have fired 108,000 workers, according to the jobs tracking website Layoffs.fyi."
Does anyone out there still want to try to argue that the economy is in “good shape”? Look, if the economy really is in “good shape”, then why is Walmart closing down more stores?…"Walmart has confirmed it is shutting down seven stores over profitability concerns after a “thorough review process.” Walmart confirmed the closure of five locations across three states to Nexstar last week. Among those was a store in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that was described as “underperforming” in a statement to Nexstar’s KRQE. Other impacted locations included a store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and three in the Chicago area. Nexstar’s WGN reports two of the stores in Chicago did not meet financial expectations."
Walmart can see what is coming. So can Apple. So can hundreds of other major corporations that have been “downsizing” in recent weeks. Everyone is battening down the hatches because we are entering a really bad storm.
Of course not everyone is hurting. If you are in the top 10 percent of all income earners, you may still be doing quite well. For now. But at this point the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us is larger than ever, and most of the population is just trying to find a way to survive from month to month.
Once upon a time, the U.S. had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now our landscape is littered with dollar stores because such stores are some of the only places where our vast throngs of poor people can afford to shop…"A small town in eastern Kentucky has an unusual claim to fame: with a population of just 1,424, it has six dollar stores, most of them built in the past few years. Olive Hill, a quiet hamlet situated on Tygarts Creek in the Appalachian foothills, has two Family Dollar locations and four Dollar General stores in and immediately surrounding the town. All but one of them are located along Tom T. Hall Boulevard, the town’s main drag, named after Olive Hill’s most famous native, the country singer and songwriter nicknamed ‘The Storyteller’."
I have been warning that a nightmarish economic meltdown was coming for a long time. Now it is here. And it is going to get a lot worse. The good news, if you want to call it that, is that we are still only in the very early chapters of this crisis. So I would encourage you to do what you need to do, because things are only going to get rougher from here."
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "What a treat last week was. From one clown show to the next. The Pentagon wasted millions of dollars shooting down harmless weather balloons….while the whole nation watched what it thought was either a war with extraterrestrials…or at least a war with the Chinese. Member of Congress James Comer - who is supposed to be endowed with normal human intelligence - worried that the balloons might be vectors for “bio-weapons,” forgetting that thousands of tons of imports from China arrive every day. If China wants to attack with bio-weapons, it doesn’t need to send up silly party balloons.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics let it be known – what everybody already knew – that prices were going up. Despite all the reports of ‘softening’ inflation and a soon-to-come ‘pivot,’ the numbers show inflation is not going away anytime soon. USA Today: "Stubborn inflation is worrying economists as new numbers reveal hotter-than-expected price data Producer prices, or those charged by manufacturers, farmers and wholesalers, jumped 0.7% in January after dipping 0.2% in December. It was the largest gain since June and nearly double what economists had forecasted. Over the 12 months to January, [CPI] prices rose 6%, which was also more than economists had predicted but slower than December’s 6.5%."
AKA ‘Reality’: Producer price increases lead to consumer price increases later. So, the Fed will have to stick with its rate hikes. And higher rates are bound to cause consumers and businesses to make cutbacks (aka ‘recession’). The essential problem is this: the interest rate cycle turned in July 2020. So, the cost of carrying debt is going up. As interest rates rise, more and more people will have trouble keeping up. Then, debt that can’t be paid, must be liquidated.
Last week, it was reported that thanks to the Fed’s ultra-low interest rates, the US now has a record amount of debt. Corporate debt…government debt – both are at record highs – and still going up. Here’s The New York Times with a report on household debt: "Household Debt Rises to $16.90 Trillion; Credit Cards Pass Pre-Pandemic High."
"Total household debt rose by $394 billion, or 2.4 percent, to $16.90 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. Credit card balances increased by $61 billion to reach $986 billion, surpassing the pre-pandemic high of $927 billion; mortgage balances rose to $11.92 trillion, auto loan balances to $1.55 trillion, and student loan balances to $1.60 trillion. The share of current debt transitioning into delinquency increased for nearly all debt types."
In an honest economy, people create wealth by producing goods and services. The value of this output is recorded and preserved in ‘money.’ But in a dishonest society, they just print money. In the first instance, money is a credit – it reflects real wealth. In the second instance, it is a debit; it is a claim on wealth that doesn’t exist, measured as ‘debt.’
A Stunning Lack of Thought: And then, as debt increases and the cost of carrying it goes up, the mismatch between the money and the real goods and services it can buy becomes unsustainable. The accounts must be reconciled. How? The claims can be erased – by defaults, write-offs, and market crashes, for example. Or, the value of the money itself can be adjusted downward in a devaluation or inflation. Inflation is the most likely outcome. Politically, it is the only acceptable way.
Another absurd report last week came from the Congressional Budget office. It estimates that we will almost double our ‘national’ debt over the next 10 years. That goofy news deserves special comment, so we’ll return to it tomorrow.
For today, we’ll close with an observation. What was most amazing about the media reports of last week was what wasn’t in them. Yes, the press worked hard last week to ignore the biggest story to come along in many years. It appears that the president of the United States of America ordered the destruction of a vital piece of commercial infrastructure. The report, from respected investigative journalist Seymour Hersh (of Mai Lai and Abu Ghraib fame) presents a plausible case that the Biden Team blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. This is the sort of thing, as we pointed out last week, that Think Tanks might want to think about, but as Chesterton pointed out in his “Twenty Ways to Kill a Wife,” actually doing the deed reflects a stunning lack of thought.
Willful Ignorance: Imagine if the president had ordered his goons to blow up the Holland Tunnel or the San Francisco bridge. The Republicans would be holding hearings already; they’d have the president impeached almost immediately. But this vandalism is much worse. Blowing up someone else’s infrastructure is not only illegal, unconstitutional (the constitution gives the president no power to start a war) and criminal – it is an act of war against two foreign countries, one of which is our own ally.
In Germany, at least one member of Parliament has called for an investigation. If the report is confirmed, he says he will demand the removal of US troops. There have been low rumbles, too, in the press throughout the world. But in the US…not a peep. An interview with Hersh, that appeared on U-Tube, was suddenly blocked. The US government has gone rogue. But Americans don’t want to know…and the mainstream press doesn’t want to tell them."
"The rental market apocalypse continues. New research reveals that almost all renters in the U.S. today are cost-burdened, and a significant rate of them are spending 50% of their incomes on rent this year. But with so few rental units listed in the market right now, people are being forced to choose between making sacrifices to keep up with higher prices, or facing the risk of losing their homes. Conditions are so chaotic that even Goldman Sachs is predicting that over half a million Americans can be pushed to the streets as early as March. This is shaping up to be one of the most catastrophic housing crises America has ever seen, and the pace at which everything is crumbling down is stunning.
From January 2022 to January 2023, rent prices surged by 8.6%, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show. That is adding hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars to the average rent payment. A survey conducted by ZONE asking renters about their cost of living expenses revealed that 59% of Americans said their rent went up in the past 30 days, and 43% of them saw an increase of up to $500. Believe it or not, 36% or around 15 million people faced rent hikes of $1000 or more.
In an interview with CNBC, Shannon Corrick, who lives in Cheney, Washington, said her landlord increased her rent and that forced her family to move out of their home. Just like a lot of hard workers out there, Corrick was priced out from the neighborhood she and her children grew up in. "We had lived there for decades," she said. "Then out of the blue, he said he was going to raise the rent. If we signed a lease, it would be a 30 percent increase. If we did not sign a lease, it was going to be a 50 percent increase, and we could not find anywhere to move that was at all affordable."
A major difference between the current housing market and last year’s housing market is that now the bottom 90% of the population is paying 30% or more of their income on rent, meaning that almost everyone in America is cost-burned by rent prices in 2023. It’s the first time in history that an overwhelming majority of renters spend so much of their monthly pay on housing alone, new research by Moody’s Analytics found.
By being forced to keep spending so much on rent, people have less to save for a down payment to buy a house, noted Alexander Hermann, a researcher at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The rate of U.S. households who are now severely cost-burdened households — paying more than 50% of their incomes on rent – rose by 22% since 2020, standing at 36%.
In face of all that, it isn’t surprising at all that Goldman Sachs predicts that landlords will evict 750,000 U.S. households in March, according to Bloomberg. The firm also forecasts a rental price growth of 8.4% in 2023. And that’s on top of previous increases. It’s important to note that in the past 30 days, there was a 17% increase in the number of renters behind on their rent compared to the month prior. It’s safe to say that this figure will soar even higher as the economy deteriorates and unemployment rates spike again. This is the messiest rental market we have ever seen, and the consequences of such steep imbalances will be disastrous for all of us."
"The unavoidable is about to happen. We’re going to have a car wreck when it comes to the banking system. The central bank and digital dollar is about to be unfolded throughout different countries. This will destroy freedom and your ability to shop on your own."
"In the aftermath of East Palestine Ohio Train Derailment, we are preparing for the likely scenario that the chemicals may be traveling down the Ohio River towards Cincinnati. Cincinnati has shut off the water intake from the Ohio River, and we are here to check out the situation."
“NGC 3314 is actually two large spiral galaxies which just happen to almost exactly line up. The foreground spiral is viewed nearly face-on, its pinwheel shape defined by young bright star clusters. But against the glow of the background galaxy, dark swirling lanes of interstellar dust appear to dominate the face-on spiral's structure. The dust lanes are surprisingly pervasive, and this remarkable pair of overlapping galaxies is one of a small number of systems in which absorption of light from beyond a galaxy's own stars can be used to directly explore its distribution of dust.
NGC 3314 is about 140 million light-years (background galaxy) and 117 million light-years (foreground galaxy) away in the multi-headed constellation Hydra. The background galaxy would span nearly 70,000 light-years at its estimated distance. A synthetic third channel was created to construct this dramatic new composite of the overlapping galaxies from two color image data in the Hubble Legacy Archive.”
"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here I can pretend... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come and Gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend... "
“Ad Deum Qui Laetificat Juventutem Meam” by Chet Raymo
“And so it begins. On the woodland floor. The first paired leaves of the wild-lily-of-the-valley. The nodding blossom of the bellwort. The five-petaled gift of the wood anemone. The planet leans into the Sun. That old random tilt. Twenty-three-and-a-half degrees. It could have been more, or less. It could have been zero. If it had been zero, our lives would have been different in a myriad of ways. Not just the transformation of our physical circumstances in a world without seasons. Our psychic lives, too.
The annual cycle of the seasons - the departure and return of the Sun - is the progenitor of our most primitive conceptual categories. "The chief difference between the man of the archaic and traditional societies and the man of the modern societies with their strong imprint of Judeo-Christianity lies in the fact that the former feels himself indissolubly connected with the Cosmos and the cosmic rhythms, whereas the latter insists that he is connected only with History," writes Mircea Eliade at the beginning of his classic work, The Myth of the Eternal Return.
Even the Christian story, for all of its historicity, participates in the archetype. Jesus is another of Joseph Campbell's "heroes with a thousand faces," who retreats into the darkness of Calvary to return in glory at the equinox. The cycle of the solar season - as Eliade, Campbell, Frazer, and many others have documented - is impressed upon our subconscious as firmly as flesh itself.
Of course, these days we can insulate ourselves from the diurnal and annual cosmic rhythms. Heat and light can come and go at the flick of a switch, and with every flick we become more psychically removed from connection with the cosmos. But wait! There, just there, pushing aside last summer's decaying leaf litter, those two green hands, folded as if in prayer, Introibo ad altare Dei, the wild-lily-of-the-valley, the tip, the tilt, the eternal return."
“The shade of Thucydides, formerly an Athenian general and historian, languished in Hades for 24 centuries; and having intercourse with other spirits, was perturbed by an influx into the underworld of self-described historians professing to admire his History of the Peloponnesian War. They burdened him with their writings, priding themselves on the imitation of his method, tracing the various patterns of human nature in politics and war. He was, they said, the greatest historian; and his approval of their works held the promise that their purgatory was no prologue to oblivion.
As the centuries rolled on, the flow of historians into Hades became a torrent. The later historians were no longer imitators, but most were admirers. It seemed to Thucydides that these were a miserable crowd, unable to discern between the significant and the trivial, being obsessed with tedious doctrines. Unembarrassed by their inward poverty, they ascribed an opposite meaning to things: thinking themselves more “evolved” than the spirits of antiquity. Some even imagined that the universe was creating God. They supposed that the “most evolved” among men would assume God’s office; and further, that they themselves were among the “most evolved.”
Thucydides longed for the peace of his grave, which posthumous fame had deprived him. As with many souls at rest, he took no further interest in history. He had passed through existence and was done. He had seen everything. What was bound to follow, he knew, would be more of the same; but after more than 23 centuries of growing enthusiasm for his work, there occurred a sudden falling off. Of the newly deceased, fewer broke in upon him. Quite clearly, something had happened. He began to realize that the character of man had changed because of the rottenness of modern ideas. Among the worst of these, for Thucydides, was that barbarians and civilized peoples were considered equal; that art could transmit sacrilege; that paper could be money; that sexual and cultural differences were of no account; that meanness was rated noble, and nobility mean.
Awakened from the sleep of death, Thucydides remembered what he had written about his own time. The watchwords then, as now, were “revolution” and “democracy.” There had been upheaval on all sides. “As the result of these revolutions,” he had written, “there was a general deterioration of character throughout the Greek world. The simple way of looking at things, which is so much the mark of a noble nature, was regarded as a ridiculous quality and soon ceased to exist. Society had become divided into two ideologically hostile camps, and each side viewed the other with suspicion.”
Thucydides saw that democracy, once again, imagined itself victorious. Once again traditions were questioned as men became enamored of their own prowess. It was no wonder they were deluded. They landed men on the moon. They had harnessed the power of the atom. It was no wonder that the arrogance of man had grown so monstrous, that expectations of the future were so unrealistic. Deluded by recent successes, they could not see that dangers were multiplying in plain view. Men built new engines of war, capable of wiping out entire cities, but few took this danger seriously. Why were men so determined to build such weapons? The leading country, of course, was willing to put its weapons aside. Other countries pretended to put their weapons aside. Still others said they weren’t building weapons at all, even though they were.
Would the new engines of destruction be used? Would cities and nations be wiped off the face of the earth? Thucydides knew the answer. In his own day, during an interval of unstable peace, the Athenians had exterminated the male population of the island of Melos. Before doing this the Athenian commanders had came to Melos and said, “We on our side will use no fine phrases saying, for example, that we have a right to our empire because we defeated the Persians, or that we have come against you now because of the injuries you have done us – a great mass of words that nobody would believe.” The Athenians demanded the submission of Melos, without regard to right or wrong. As the Athenian representative explained, “the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.”
The Melians were shocked by this brazen admission. They could not believe that anyone would dare to destroy them without just cause. In the first place, the Melians threatened no one. In the second place, they imagined that the world would be shocked and would avenge any atrocity committed against them. And so the Melians told the Athenians: “in our view it is useful that you should not destroy a principle that is to the general good of all men – namely, that in the case of all who fall into danger there should be such a thing as fair play and just dealing. And this is a principle which affects you as much as anybody, since your own fall would be visited by the most terrible vengeance and would be an example to the world.”
The Athenians were not moved by the argument of Melos; for they knew that the Spartans generally treated defeated foes with magnanimity. “Even assuming that our empire does come to an end,” the Athenians chuckled, “we are not despondent about what would happen next. One is not so much frightened of being conquered by a power like Sparta.” And so the Athenians destroyed Melos, believing themselves safe – which they were. The Melians refused to submit, praying for the protection of gods and men. But these availed them nothing, neither immediate relief nor future vengeance. The Melians were wiped off the earth. They were not the first or the last to die in this manner.
There was one more trend that Thucydides noted. In every free and prosperous country he found a parade of monsters: human beings with oversized egos, with ambitions out of proportion to their ability, whose ideas rather belied their understanding than affirmed it. Whereas, there was one Alcibiades in his own day, there were now hundreds of the like: self-serving, cunning and profane; only they did not possess the skills, or the mental acuity, or beauty of Alcibiades. Instead of being exiled, they pushed men of good sense from the center of affairs. Instead of being right about strategy and tactics, they were always wrong. And they were weak, he thought, because they had learned to be bad by the example of others. There was nothing novel about them, although they believed themselves to be original in all things.
Thucydides reflected that human beings are subject to certain behavioral patterns. Again and again they repeat the same actions, unable to stop themselves. Society is slowly built up, then wars come and put all to ruin. Those who promise a solution to this are charlatans, only adding to the destruction, because the only solution to man is the eradication of man. In the final analysis the philanthropist and the misanthrope are two sides of the same coin. While man exists he follows his nature. Thucydides taught this truth, and went to his grave. His history was written, as he said, “for all time.” And it is a kind of law of history that the generations most like his own are bound to ignore the significance of what he wrote; for otherwise they would not re-enact the history of Thucydides. But as they become ignorant of his teaching, they fall into disaster spontaneously and without thinking. Seeing that time was short, and realizing that a massive number of new souls would soon be entering the underworld, the shade of Thucydides fell back to rest.”
