"Economic Market Snapshot 3/27/23"

"Economic Market Snapshot 3/27/23"

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

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

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

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

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Financial Stress Index

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

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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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

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And now... The End Game...

Jim Kunstler, "An Eastertime Carol"

"An Eastertime Carol"

By Jim Kunstler

“The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government” - Inscription on the pediment of the Manhattan Criminal Court.

"After wolfing down a heartburn-inducing Popeye’s Shrimp Tacklebox Combo for supper, Manhattan District attorney Alvin Bragg retires to his four-poster Sleep Number bed beset with anxiety about the grand jury he has convened for fulfilling his campaign promise to stuff Donald Trump into a state prison cell. From the wall-mounted flat-screen across from his bed, the specter of a of giant rabbit emerges, gaunt and grizzled, draped in chains and weighty padlocks.

“Who are you, spirit?” Bragg asks. “I am the ghost of prosecutions past,” it moans. “This night you will be visited by three other spirits: The ghost of what you wish to be, the ghost of what should be, and the ghost of actually what-it-is.” "Oh, Gawd,” Bragg groans, his esophagus on fire with acidified hot-sauce residue.

The DA falls back into a febrile sleep, but wakens minutes later. The bedroom of his condo has transformed itself into a sunny street scene. He is riding an open limousine down Broadway through a blizzard of tickertape, the sidewalks filled with cheering citizens. Beside him sits a nubile person of the birthing persuasion, with supernaturally large infant-feeding glands, not unlike a certain star of adult films at the center of his brilliant case against the former president.

“I am the ghost of what you wish to be,” she says, her breath warm in his ear. “You’re a bigger star now than ever I was in life, and without all the mess.” “Yeah? What’s that up ahead?” he asks. “The steps of City Hall where you will receive your Nobel Peace Prize and be handed the nomination for governor, your stepping stone to the White House.” “We gonna have to change the name of that place,” Bragg grumbles.

Suddenly a box appears on Bragg’s lap. It contains two McDonald’s Sausage, Egg, and Cheese McGriddles® plus an apple fritter and a caramel macchiato. No sooner do his teeth close on that first delicious bite, when the confetti in the air turns to pixels, which dissolve along with the street scene, and then Bragg is back in his bed. Laughter rings across the big room, but with a demonic dissonance. A large white man with a silvery mane of hair and a nose like an Appalachian dulcimer, draped in black judicial robes, sits up behind a lofty bench, wearing a scowl of privilege.

"What do you want?” Bragg asks. “Your law license, assh*le.” “Who do you think you are?” “I am the spirit of what should be,” the judge-like figure growls. “This is a racist ploy!” Bragg barks back. “Plus, you got no standing!” More fiendish laughter from the bench, joined suddenly by a chorus of a million other laughers, people of all sizes, genders, and colors, a collage of Manhattan humanity, each one pointing a finger at Bragg, who retreats in terror under his king-size duvet. The laughter dissolves into Bragg’s own blubbering wails of despair.

The DA wakes a third time, trembling, to the sound of the doorbell, which he tries to ignore, but it keeps on ringing and ringing. Finally, Bragg kicks off the duvet, plods over to the door, and throws it open. A tall, stout, white man with a mystifying platinum hair-doo stands framed within. “DoorDash, at your service,” the ghost of actually what-it-is says.

“Oh, no…” Bragg cries out, as he is handed a paper bag. He opens it and peers in, only to loose a nauseating stench that instantly fills the room. “Hey, this is not the Build Your Crème Brûlée Pancake Combo from the IHOP,” Bragg complains. The DoorDash looks at his phone. “It says here you ordered the sh*t sandwich.”

Bragg’s feels like his head will explode. He reaches out to strangle the malevolent specter but wakes up choking his Saatva premium pillow instead. Eventually, he comes back to his senses, but feeling utterly drained from the night’s visitations. He washes the night-sweats away in the shower, dons a fine chalk-strip suit the size of a Coleman six-person tent, and meets his driver waiting at the end of his building’s canopy. In the backseat of his city limo there is a bag with his usual breakfast: two Starbuck’s Double-Smoked Bacon, Cheddar & Egg Sandwiches, a blueberry scone, a glazed donut, and a Starbuck’s Reserve® Hazelnut Bianco Latte. He horses it all down in traffic on the way to the DA’s headquarters on Hogan Place.

It is Monday morning, of course, roughly a week after the world was expecting him to issue an indictment against former president Donald Trump for writing off payments to a porn star as a campaign expense. But there was much to think about as the week marched along, much to mull over, many options to consider…the future to assess. The office is spookily quiet as Bragg strides in. An attractive blonde of a certain age approaches him warily.

“Ready to rock and roll, boss?” asks Lisa DelPizzo, Chief of the Trial Division, expecting Bragg to make his historic announcement shortly to the dozens of assembled reporters waiting in the press lobby. “Get me a ham sandwich,” he grunts. “And bring it down to the grand jury chamber. We got work to do!”

- https://kunstler.com/

"1930s - Street Scenes New York"

Full screen recommended.

NASS, "1930s - Street Scenes New York"

"I colorized, restored and created a sound design for this video of New York in the 1930s. We start on Manhattan's West Side, at 12th Avenue and 42nd Street, at the ferry terminal of the West Shore Railroad, the New York, Ontario and Western Railway, and the Weehawken Ferry. After we have a Crowd Scene street where we can see the beautiful fashion in the 30s."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Fascinating...

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, “In A Time Lapse”

Full screen recommended.

Ludovico Einaudi, “In A Time Lapse”

“In A Time Lapse's” Track List:

02:25 - Walk

05:43 - Discovery At Night

09:51 - Two Trees

16:18 - Life

20:40 - Brothers

24:43 - Orbits

28:05 - Corale Solo

31:01 - Waterways

35:56 - Ronald's Dream

39:41 - Bever

45:33 - Newton´s Cradle

50:35 - Time Lapse

56:08 - Circles

58:19 - Experience

1:03:04 - Underwood

1:06:44 - Burning

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This wide, sharp telescopic view reveals galaxies scattered beyond the stars and faint dust nebulae of the Milky Way at the northern boundary of the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Prominent at the upper right is NGC 7331.

A mere 50 million light-years away, the large spiral is one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier's famous 18th century catalog. The disturbed looking group of galaxies at the lower left is well-known as Stephan's Quintet. About 300 million light-years distant, the quintet dramatically illustrates a multiple galaxy collision, its powerful, ongoing interactions posed for a brief cosmic snapshot. On the sky, the quintet and NGC 7331 are separated by about half a degree.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141023.html

Kahlil Gibran, "The Madman"

"The Madman"

"It was in the garden of a madhouse that I met a youth with a face pale and lovely and full of wonder. And I sat beside him upon the bench, and I said, “Why are you here?” And he looked at me in astonishment, and he said, “It is an unseemly question, yet I will answer you. My father would make of me a reproduction of himself; so also would my uncle. My mother would have me the image of her seafaring husband as the perfect example for me to follow. My brother thinks I should be like him, a fine athlete. And my teachers also, the doctor of philosophy, and the music-master, and the logician, they too were determined, and each would have me but a reflection of his own face in a mirror. Therefore I came to this place. I find it more sane here. At least, I can be myself.” 

Then of a sudden he turned to me and he said, “But tell me, were you also driven to this place by education and good counsel?” And I answered, “No, I am a visitor.”And he answered, “Oh, you are one of those who live in the madhouse on the other side of the wall...” 

- Kahlil Gibran

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “Some Questions You Might Ask”

“Some Questions You Might Ask”

“Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like

the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?

Who has it, and who doesn’t?

I keep looking around me.

The face of the moose is as sad

as the face of Jesus.

The swan opens her white wings slowly.

In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.

One question leads to another.

Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?

Like the eye of a hummingbird?

Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?

Why should I have it, and not the anteater

who loves her children?

Why should I have it, and not the camel?

Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?

What about the blue iris?

What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?

What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?’

What about the grass?”

- Mary Oliver

"When One Cannot Be Sure..."

"When one cannot be sure that there are many days left, each single day becomes as important as a year, and one does not waste an hour in wishing that that hour were longer, but simply fills it, like a smaller cup, as high as it will go without spilling over."

- Natalie Kusz

The Daily "Near You"

Bailiwick Of Jersey, Jersey. Thanks for stopping by!

"We Must Marvel..."

“In our society, confidence leads to knowledge – which leads to power – which leads to pride – which leads to a fear of seeming ignorant – which constricts learning like an iron vise. We must understand that confidence is a blessing, for it is the embodiment of self-love, and through it we find the fuel for innovation and progress. We must realize that ignorance is merely the opportunity to learn more. And lastly, we must marvel rather than groan at the fact that there will always be more to learn… Only then will we be free of the intellectual prisons we have so readily caged ourselves within.”

- Zeb Reynolds

"Banks Call an Emergency Meeting"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 3/26/23

"Banks Call an Emergency Meeting"

"The FSOC got together to decide what’s going to happen with some of the regional banks. This is the Financial Stability Oversight Council. They don’t want to admit that things are much worse than they are leading on."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How Did We Get Here?"

"How Did We Get Here?"

by John Wilder

“Dividing and mutating at the same time?”

– "The Andromeda Strain"

"I think it’s fair to look around and ask a very simple question: How did we get here?

Certainly, the United States is in a heck of a mess in almost any way one can look at it. When it comes to cohesion, half of the country is like dad sitting on his easy chair after a hard day working at the PEZ® mines. The other half just wants to pester him because he doesn’t care enough about The Current Thing. They have been careful to not make dad put the paper down. Yet. Because that’s when the spanking hand comes out.

The ability of our economy to manufacture critical goods has been outsourced around the world, because, let’s face it, no one is better at sewing up a soccer ball than an 8-year-old Pakistani kid. And if we took the time to teach them and spent the money to build the factories, no one is better at making iPhones™ than Chinese women who are locked in those factories who have to put up nets to keep people from actually killing themselves when they try to jump off that same factory roof. I think the Chinese even charge the women an “amusement park ride fee” when they jump.

So, how did we get here? The United States has always had an ornery streak. I think Andrew Jackson would have happily had every single central banker in the United States executed – of course, the central bankers retaliated by putting his face on the $20 bill, but I assure you they waited until they were certain he was dead.

How, then, do you take a country that has divided in a massive War Between The States, been brought back (mostly) together, and divide the nation again? In many ways the three items I’ll bring up are intertwined and feed off of each other, but I’ll take each one in turn.

Propaganda. The first part is to skew the definition of America. America was a nation even up into the 1960s, where most (85%-90%) of people had a common ancestry in northwestern Europe, with Great Britain having the largest contribution. Scots may have had problems with the Irish, and the Irish with the English, they might have been neutral about the Swiss, and all of them might have been irritated by the French and Germans, but the common bounds of country and culture were there.

What changed? The idea that if you came to America, it would be expected that you would assimilate to America. Sure, your name might have been Giuseppe, but your grandkid’s name might be Colin, or Brandon, or Brayden. You left that old world behind and consciously gave it up for the new culture. The American culture.

The first lie is the lie that there is no American culture. I can understand that from the point of view of most of the world. How would a fish know about water when he’s swimming in it? American culture (with due credit to Great Britain for kickstarting it) became the most pervasive in the world, spinning off ideas and music and clothes and food at an amazing rate.

Now, of course, propaganda would tell us that we have no culture, and it is evil for us to expect people who come to our country to learn our language, and respect our culture first. No, that’s inverted. It does no good to a person who would divide a country for that to happen. Instead? It’s evil to ask people to learn English. If they kill chickens to sacrifice to Gorbo and marry off their eight-year-old kids to 32-year-old first cousins? We are expected to celebrate that.

No. That’s an inversion. They came here. If they can’t assimilate into American culture and American norms? Out. And take the chickens.

Other ways that propaganda has hurt America are numerous, probably enough for a book. One that’s still hurting us is the idea that nuclear power is evil. It isn’t. It’s funny that all the Green® power seems to be either more polluting or require those 8-year-old kids in Pakistan to learn how to mine lithium rather than sew up soccer balls to make batteries for cars fueled on pure Hopium. No, if you don’t like oil and gas, the only real solution is either condemning the country to an unending abject poverty or to build nuclear power plants.

The warfare culture post 9/11 has also been difficult. What, exactly, were we doing in Afghanistan after Osama Bin Laden assumed ocean temperature? Don’t know. Why did we go into Iraq? Don’t know. Why did we overthrow governments in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine?

Don’t know. But the propaganda that accompanied all of those divided the country, though it’s not nearly as bad as the race grievance industry that’s been in full tilt in the last two decades – but I’ll save that for a future post.

Pathological Altruism. If I have a puppy, and it piddles on the floor and everyone laughs and it’s cute, well, when it’s a big dog no one laughs. Then the dog wonders why I’m beating it for something I was laughing about. No one wants to be the bad guy and say, “No, you have to be punished for your actions so you won’t do it again.” Everyone wants to give people another chance.

A friend of mine had his house broken into. They were able to catch the criminals, and he attended the trial. Result of them stealing thousands and thousands of dollars of his property? A suspended sentence for one guy (who had multiple prior felony convictions) and two years for the other. What message, exactly, is that sending?

The Hart-Cellar Immigration Reform Act of 1965 (plus the amnesties that have followed and will follow) are horrifying in their pathological altruism and use of propaganda. The composition of the country has changed - it's no longer a nation. Where once there was a central culture, now every viewpoint is expected to be equally valid, and (I’m not making this up) the incoming medical school class pledged to honor “all indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by western medicine.”

Let’s go kill some chickens, because that will get rid of the gunshot wound. Oh, right, don’t forget the Ouija® board.

Corruption. The United States has always been corrupt, let’s get that out first. But the beauty of the corruption early on is that, mostly, it was limited because the scope of the Federal government was limited. Sure, Sheriff Smith over in Mount Pilot would take bribes, but he’d eventually be caught. And did several members of the state legislature take bribes to get the “right” senator into office?

Sure. That happened, too. Three events ushered in eras of nearly unfettered power for the Federal government: the Civil War, the 16th and 17th Amendments, and the New Deal. The Civil War ended the idea that the Several States were sovereign – they became mere political subdivisions of the United States. The 16th and This level of corruption concentrated power at the Federal level and made the farces we see today where people who are on the Right receive massive sentences at the Federal level for minor crimes, but people on the Left are not even indicted, and almost anyone who has power has a free pass for anything but killing someone on-screen at halftime during the Superbowl™, and that only counts as a delay of game penalty.

Amendments made it possible to tax and ended the appointment of Senators. Now, Senators became Representatives with six-year terms, rather than appointed representatives of the Several States – a huge difference.

I originally had more items here, but had to delete them because otherwise this could become a book. I’m certain, though, that the top three cover it well enough for now. I do think that America is getting ready to get out of the easy chair. And the spanking hand is getting ready. "

- https://wilderwealthywise.com

"How It Really Is"

 

Yeah, as a society we've clearly lost our minds...

"When Sorry? An Open Letter from We, The Peasants..."

"When Sorry?An Open Letter from We, The Peasants..."

By Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - 

"To whom remain unconcerned,

We – the collective, excess mass of humanity you so casually refer to, down your long, sneering noses, as “The People” – would like to know: When might we expect that apology? Eh? Eh? We appreciate you’re busy, what with protecting us from the uncertainty of the big, scary future and all. You have rates to fiddle, markets to diddle and thumbs to twiddle, even as the Empire burns. Your Climate Panjandrum, John Gulfstream Kerry, assures us you are a “select group of human beings,” on a mission to “save planet earth.” An “extraterrestrial” task, as he put it.

Gee whizz! The air must surely be thin, up there on the mountaintop! Though nothing compared to your Capital-C Causes, Great and Grand, we’ve been busy, too, down here on the flatlands of filth and ignorance... busy tending our own gardens, sweeping our own stoops, making our own beds and generally minding our own business. It’s not quite saving the planet, granted, but at least it’s honest. (You’ll just have to take our word for it.)

Even so, with all our stubborn own-business-minding, we couldn’t help but notice you seem to have... dare we venture... erred of late. We’re sure these peccadillos are mere oversights, products neither of malice or stupidity. (How else to explain the presence of evil in a world invigilated by beings omnipotent, omniscient and beneficent? Hmm...) Still, we reckon they’re worth bringing to your attention. Herewith, a few areas of concern...

No doubt you’ve noticed (how could you not have?) some fissures appearing in the financial system of late. The edifice, built on a foundation of trust in the “full faith and credit” of the American Government, over which many of you – elected and unelected alike – preside, appears to be giving way. Silvergate Bank... Silicon Valley Bank... Signature Bank... Credit Suisse... Deutsche Bank... First Republic Bank...

And yet, it was only a few short years ago (the blink of an eye for your immortal/undead ilk) when then Chairperson of the Federal Reserve, Ms. Janet Louise Yellen, stood in front of the nation and declared, with a straight face: “Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? You know probably that would be going too far but I do think we’re much safer and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don’t believe it will be.” ~ Janet Yellen, June 20, 2017

But lo! Contrary to her highly paid prognostications... Ms. Yellen lives, even as major institutions under her bailiwick pass one by one into the shades. Even more astounding, Ms. Yellen is not earning her keep as one of Santa’s dopey elves at the local shopping mall, or spinning a pizza sign at an abandoned intersection, or even authoring weekend columns in some fringy Substack publication (Hermes forbid!)... but instead serves as both head of the United States Department of the Treasury and chief financial officer of the federal government of the United States of America.

Benevolent overlords, we are not without a sense of humor... but you’re going to have to unpack that punchline for us.

Then there’s Ms. Yellen’s comrade-in-arms, over at the Federal Reserve. Now, before you furrow your almighty brow, we understand that Chairman Powell inherited a mess of epic proportions. And we get that the Powell bone connects to the Yellen bone connects to the Bernanke bone, etc. And yes, we appreciate that The Covid wasn’t the Chairman’s leak (about which, more in a second).

But by pinning rates to the floor for 21 months straight, right as his mates over in the federal government were hosing the economy down with trillions of gallons of jet fuel, it was Mr. Powell who lit the match that set off the greatest conflagration in prices in over forty years. What’s more, to do so while telling Americans of the non-bazillionaire class – who were at the time gagged, locked down and lathered in Lysol, as per expert recommendations – that such a painful spike would be “transitory,” was more than a mere breach of decency. It was downright duplicitous.

Now, if it were just a money thing... confined to your meddling with the price of credit, the value of your devilish fiat, the stability of your stacked and corrupted financial system... we could maybe turn a half-blind eye. Unlike your kind, we lowlanders do not worship exclusively at the feet of mammon (although a little predictability, stability and durability in our money is not unappreciated... ergo, gold).

The problem, alas, is that your creepy McMission creep McCrept into other realms of our lives, too. In our language, you see, concepts like “liberty” and “self-determination” and “privacy” are not pejoratives, but values we hold dear. And so it is your overt and relentless intrusions into these realms with which we must take umbrage. (And please, kindly excuse our use of the “Royal You” hereafter – we mean no undue respect by it.)

Remember when you told us you were not conducting Gain of Fauci research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology...when you were?

Remember when you told us that so much as asking questions about a possible “lab leak” was tantamount to attacking “The Science”...when it wasn’t?

Remember when you locked down our communities, our businesses, our schools, our churches, our theaters, our airports, our state and national borders, our kids’ playgrounds, because it was necessary for “our own safety”...when it wasn’t?

Remember when you tackled people to the ground for yearning to breathe freely...when fresh air was what they needed most?

Remember when you built quarantine camps in the Australian outback...and then told us we should “be grateful” for them?

Remember when you assured us the vaccines were safe and effective...when they were neither?

Remember when you told us you had conducted clinical trials into their efficacy regarding transmission...when you hadn’t?

Remember when you sacked millions of nurses, firefighters, policemen, pilots, teachers, surgeons, factory workers and truck drivers, when they dared exercise their own bodily autonomy...exactly as was their right?

Remember when you told us to mask our dear children, because gagging their precious little faces was necessary to protect them...when it wasn’t?*

Remember when you told us Black Lives Matter was not a giant scam, designed to relieve well-intentioned non-racists of their hard-earned money...right before the founder purchased a $6 million private mansion?

Remember when you told us biological males had no advantage over females in sports...then failed to flatten Lia Thomas’s curve?

Remember when you said there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq...when there weren’t?

Remember when you promised, repeatedly, you would “bring an end” to the Nord Stream pipeline...and then claimed you didn’t?

Remember when you said the Hunter Biden laptop story was fake news...when it was as real as the Big Guy’s paychecks?

Remember when you told us that 2+2 could = 5...when, 4.

Remember when you said we had two, five, ten, twenty, pick-a-number years before the ice caps melted...and then they didn’t?

Remember when you said the Great Barrier Reef was going to die off...right before it grew at a record rate?

Remember when you said hurricanes and extreme weather events were increasing because of global warming...then refused to retract your “stories” after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which you cited!), disputed your claims?

Remember when you said advanced, industrialized economies, like Germany, could run just fine on renewables...right before citizens there spent the winter felling virgin forests and burning trash to keep warm?

Remember when you said this constituted “peaceful protests”?

Remember when you said climate-related deaths were exploding...when they’re at historic lows?

Remember when you said we should “defund the police”...right before an epic crime wave?

Remember when you said you’d drain the swamp/close Gitmo/rein in government spending...then you didn’t?

Remember when you told us that you couldn’t define a woman...because you’re not a biologist?

Remember when you said “non-women” could get pregnant... when... really, do we have to even do this one?

We could go on. Indeed, our abiding readers are no doubt champing at the bit, another dozen examples of your ineptocracy at the very tip of their tongue... (do drop ‘em in the comments section, below...)

On these, and so many other fronts, you not only failed the smell test, you positively stunk the joint out. And yet, you continue to claim authority over our lives, our freedoms, our fates. Why should we listen to you, who could not have been more wrong… on more subjects… with more frequency?

We do not ask for much in this life, mere peasants that we are. To be left alone, to live and let live, to chart our own course, as best we can... We are but a simple people, having eschewed the miseducation of your woke, monoculture, Ivy League factories. Yes, we’ve read your books... your Keynes and Marx; we’ve suffered your opinion pages, your Krugman and Friedman; we’ve even endured your alleged “comedians,” your Colbert and Fallon. We’ve listened, politely, when you hurled your unlettered epithets – deplorables, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, racists, etc.

But all we really want to know, given the high crimes and misdemeanors perpetrated by your wretched lot, is...when sorry?

Oh, and may there be an especially noxious cauldron, bubbling away across the River Styx, waiting for those of you who enforced that gruesome diktat."

- https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

"Markets, A Look Ahead: The FED/Central Banks Must Now Hyper-inflate, Here's Why"

Full screen recommended.

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/26/23:

"Markets, A Look Ahead: The FED/Central Banks 

Must Now Hyper-inflate, Here's Why"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Biggest Financial Crisis Of Our Lifetime Is Here! Gerald Celente Last Warning"

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report, 3/26/23:

"The Biggest Financial Crisis Of Our Lifetime Is Here! 

Gerald Celente Last Warning"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

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"David Stockman On The Status Of The 

Everything Bubble Created By The Fed"

"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 3/26/23

"Massive Price Increases At Aldi!

 This Is Ridiculous!"

"In today's vlog we are at Aldi and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Things Are About To Get Dangerous, Prepare To Deal with It Now. Retailers Closing."

Jeremiah Babe, 3/25/23:

"Things Are About To Get Dangerous,

 Prepare To Deal with It Now. Retailers Closing."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Douglas Macgregor: "Russia Has Wiped Them Out, This Is It"

Red Pilled TV, 3/24/23:

"Douglas Macgregor: 

"Russia Has Wiped Them Out, This Is It"

"In exclusive interview Douglas Macgregor is back on the show to talk about the war in Ukraine. Macgregor gives his assessment of where things stand on the ground. They talk about the astounding casualty numbers and the horrifying nature of the battle over Bakhmut. Macgregor then gives some predictions for the next stages of the war. They talk about the rising tension with China. They agree there is no need to go to war with China but discuss what may explain the sudden attention shift towards Beijing. Lastly, they talk about the effects of cronyism in the weapons industry and the probability of a nuclear war."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Banks Are On the Brink"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 3/25/23

"Banks Are On the Brink"

"We’re supposed to believe that the banking problem is solved. We all know it’s not. Now we’re being told that Deutsche Bank could go down at any time."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Neil H, "Candlelight Dreams"

Neil H, "Candlelight Dreams"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Spooky shapes seem to haunt this dusty expanse, drifting through the night in the royal constellation Cepheus. Of course, the shapes are cosmic dust clouds visible in dimly reflected starlight. Far from your own neighborhood, they lurk above the plane of the Milky Way at the edge of the Cepheus Flare molecular cloud complex some 1,200 light-years away. 

Over 2 light-years across and brighter than most of the other ghostly apparitions, vdB 141 or Sh2-136 is also known as the Ghost Nebula, seen at the right of the starry field of view. Inside the nebula are the telltale signs of dense cores collapsing in the early stages of star formation. With the eerie hue of dust reflecting bluish light from hot young stars of NGC 7023, the Iris Nebula stands out against the dark just left of center. In the broad telescopic frame, these fertile interstellar dust fields stretch almost seven full moons across the sky."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"We May Know..."

“We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that’s finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbor who’s crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it’s even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That’s enough for me, or it isn’t enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.”

- Fernando Pessoa

"That One Chance..."

“You get that one chance; and damn it, you’ve got to take it! If there’s one lesson I know I will take with me for eternity, its that there are those things that might happen only once, those chances that come walking down the street, strolling out of a café; if you don’t let go and take them, they really could get away! We can get so washed out with a mindset of entitlement – the universe will do everything for us to ensure our happiness – that we forget why we came here! We came here to grab, to take, to give, to have! Not to wait! Nobody came here to wait! So, what makes anyone think that destiny will keep on knocking over and over again? It could, but what if it doesn’t? You go and you take the chance that you get; even if it makes you look stupid, insane, or whorish! Because it just might not come back again. You could wait a lifetime to see if it will… but I don’t think you should.”

- C. JoyBell C.

Chet Raymo, “Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”

 “Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”

by Chet Raymo

"In a short story that was published posthumously in the New Yorker, the inestimable Primo Levi meditated on the limits of language. The story was called “The Tranquil Star.” He writes "The star was very big and very hot, and its weight was enormous," and realizes immediately that the adjectives have failed him: “For a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. It's a language that was born with us, suitable for describing objects more or less as large and long-lasting as we are; it has our dimensions, it's human. It doesn't go beyond what our senses tell us.

Until fairly recently in human history, there was nothing smaller than a scabies mite, writes Levi, and therefore no adjective to describe it. Nothing bigger than the sea or sky. Nothing hotter than fire. We can add modifiers: very big, very small, very hot. Or use adjectives of dubious superlativeness: enormous, colossal, extraordinary. But, really, these feeble stretchings of language don't take us very far in grasping the very, very, very extraordinarily diminutive or spectacularly colossal dimensions of atomic matter or cosmic space and time. We can overcome the limitations of language, Levi say, "only with a violent effort of the imagination."

I spent more than forty years trying to find ways to violently stretch the imaginations of my students (and myself) to accommodate the dimensions of the universe revealed by science. I would project onto a huge screen a photograph of a firestorm on the Sun, then superimpose a scale-sized Earth, which fit comfortably inside a loop of solar fire. I would take the class into the College Quad here near Boston, where I had set up a basketball to represent the Sun, then gathered 100 feet away with a pinhead Earth; we walked together with our pin in the great annual journey of the Earth, and looked through a telescope at the marble-sized Jupiter than I had previously installed at the other end of the long Quad (the next closest star system would have been a couple of basketballs in Hawaii). We walked geologic timelines that took us from one end of the campus to the other.

In one of my Globe essays I used this analogy: “Imagine the human DNA as a strand of sewing thread. On this scale, the DNA in the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a typical human cell would be about 150 miles long, with about 600 nucleotide pairs per inch. That is, the DNA in a single cell is equivalent to 1000 spools of sewing thread, representing two copies of the genetic code. Take all that thread - the 1000 spools worth - and crumple it into 46 wads (the chromosomes). Stuff the wads into a shoe box (the cell nucleus) along with - oh, say enough chicken soup to fill the box. Toss the shoe box into a steamer trunk (the cell), and fill the rest of the trunk with more soup. Take the steamer trunk with its contents and shrink it down to an invisibly small object, smaller than the point of a pin. Multiply that tiny object by a trillion and you have the trillion cells of the human body, each with its full complement of DNA.”

Or this description from 'Waking Zero': “The track of the Prime Meridian across England from Peace Haven in the south to the mouth of the River Humber in the north is nearly 200 miles. If that distance is taken to represent the 13.7 billion year history of the universe, as we understand it today, then all of recorded human history is less than a single step. The entire story I have told in this book, from the Alexandrian astronomers and geographers to the present-day astronomers who launch telescopes into space, would fit neatly into a single footprint. If the 200 miles of the meridian track is taken to represent the distance to the most distant objects we observe with our telescopes, then a couple of steps would take us across the Milky Way Galaxy. A mote of dust from my shoe is large enough to contain not only our own solar system but many neighboring stars.”

But as hard as one tries, the scale of these things escape us. If one could truly comprehend what we are seeing when we look, say, at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Photo above, which I have done my best to convey to myself and others in a dozen ways, it would surely shake to the core some of our most cherished beliefs. Just as our language is contrived on a human scale, so too are our gods.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Port-of-Spain, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

Thanks for stopping by!

“24 Life Lessons By An Old Greek Shepherd”

“24 Life Lessons By An Old Greek Shepherd”

by George Giotis, Greece by Greeks

1. “The road to the destination is never straight. To reach out to the winter shelter someone must take a lot of turns, travel along rough roads, suffer losses. You have to make sure that you always take food supplies with you.

2. Leave the past behind. If a wolf eats your goat, you can’t do anything about it. Just make sure that next time you will be more careful.

3. Don’t live just for saving money and don’t be stingy. Don’t postpone the tasting of joy for future times. Do it now, while you are still young. Make your hard work worth even more.

4. Struggle, fight. You are the only one in charge of yourself. Don’t be truant, don’t expect your dogs to do all the work in herding the sheep.

5. Ask for the respect you deserve, don’t let others use you as a doormat. Set limits, put up fences, protect your animals.

6. Blessed are the ones who make mistakes. Make mistakes. These are life lessons, we call these experience. Don’t forget who you were until yesterday. Start today and define with your actions who you are going to be from now on.  Learn to forgive, starting with yourself. Don’t feel guilty, you have no time for that.

7. Blessed are those who doubt. Don’ t let your life be ruled by dogmas. Remember that if some people hadn’t doubted previous knowledge, mankind would have still lived in caves. Examine the information, be skeptical, think critically, think rationally, revise. You haven’t seen any fairies and ghosts in the forest, just wolves.

8. Be careful. Observe others. Look them in the eyes. Like a Greek saying, “If it is not shown in the goat, it is shown by the horn.”

9. Life is a journey, not a destination. And it is valuable. The previous word you read already belongs to the past.

10. Don’t advise the young constantly, it’s a waste of time. There is no right way to teach them pain or misery, solely experience will do that.

11. Go travel! Trips are experiences that stay with us forever. Get out, try, taste, savor images greedily. Let your senses free. Expose yourself, let it go, crumble, lose your self-control from time to time. Not just your self-control, but stop controlling others too.

12. You have been isolated enough in your winter shelter, get out. Go find your friends and companionship.

13. Do not try to control others. You condemn in anxiety and suffering not only yourself, but also those who you try to control. Let others live, and live for yourself. Leave the other flocks to their shepherds, take care of yours. 

14. Life is not fair. The universe does not owe you any solace, and it is certain that at the end of the road you die. Hurry up.

15. You can be a winner. Learn from those around you. Become a child with children, play with them, but also go to the cafe and talk to the elderly. You can learn from their accumulated experience.

16. Do not take everything into account. Do not take everything seriously. You are probably overreacting today. What bothers you or you are afraid of now, most likely tomorrow will seem lukewarm or insipid. Try to see yourself from a distance, take a look at the sight of your flock from the hill.

17. Have patience. The goats do not give birth every month. But when that happens you need to be there because they need you.

18. Quarrel with your partner if necessary, it is not terrible, let the feelings be defused. Make decompression in anger. The fire is sometimes beneficial. If an area of kermes oak get burnt, spring will give again vegetation, fine food for goats and their young. Careful though, the words you say you can’t take them back. Watch what your goats eat, they don’t know how to pick. If they eat the shoots of trees, the forest cannot be created again, the place will be left bare fallow.

  

19. Be balanced. Enjoy the food and your drink. Do not forget that the world’s poor walk miles for their daily food while the rich walk miles to digest it.

20. There is no perfect time, the circumstances and conditions will never be ideal. Start from where you are now! Do not postpone.

21. Be polite. A smiling face reflects similar behavior. Make gifts. Even the gift of a good word is important. Behave well to the elderly, you will soon be like them. Behave well to animals, they are not mean or envious, they have no obsessions or selfishness. They forgive without limit.

22. If you know how to read, read a lot! Those who read live extra lives. Not only their own but also all of those who you have read about.

23. Be bold. The fear keeps you tied but it is not real, it just comes from the unknown which is not in your head.

24. Do not get attached to things. Life is like the path of the pastures and the shepherd’s bag. The more you fill it, the harder you will walk. Take only the necessary things with you. The flock keeps walking, it will not wait for you if you can’t move because of too many heavy things. Let them go, release them, feel more flexible and free.”

- http://greece-by-greeks.com/25-greek-shepherd/

Translated by Eleni Vafeiadou