"Whole Foods Faces Store Closings As Biggest Retailers In America Brace For Bankruptcies"

Full screen recommended.

"Whole Foods Faces Store Closings As Biggest

 Retailers In America Brace For Bankruptcies"

by Epic Economist

"Now several Whole Foods stores are being shuttered as fears of retail bankruptcies grow across the sector. Experts are saying that the organic supermarket chain is Amazon’s biggest risk and many pieces of evidence show why Whole Food locations are falling apart faster than other grocery stores.

This week, Whole Foods made the headlines after it announced the shutdown of a flagship store in San Francisco. The company is closing its doors only one year after opening there, citing horrible street conditions outside as the reason. The decision caused a stir online, with people taking to Twitter and Reddit to express their frustration. “I’m incredibly disappointed but sadly unsurprised by the closure of Mid-Market’s Whole Foods,” San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Matt Dorsey tweeted on April 10. The San Francisco store wasn’t the only one on the food retailer’s chopping block. Recently, it has announced store closings in four states: Alabama, California, Illinois, and Massachusetts.

The volatility faced by the company makes many retail experts argue that Whole Foods is Amazon’s biggest risk. According to analysts with the Wall Street Journal, Amazon’s new CEO Andy Jassy has a daunting challenge on his hands as the upscale grocery chain continues to fall short of earnings expectations amid rising inflation.

That concern is raising many alarm bells particularly because the e-commerce retailer just announced the shutdown of many of its Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go, and Amazon Style stores, as well as its Just Walk Out cashier-less locations a few months ago, and the permanent closure of all of its physical bookstores, Pop Up stores and 4-star stores.

In 2022, Amazon reported a loss of $3.84 billion, or $7.56 per share, compared to a profit of $8.1 billion, or $15.79 a share, during the same period in 2021. In other words, it looks like Whole Foods is Amazon’s $13.8 billion liability, and six straight quarters of declining sales are proof that consumers are losing interest in the stores as prices become too out of their reach.

Data shows that rival chains including Sprouts Farmers Market, Kroger, and discount chain Aldi are between 19% and 24% cheaper than Whole Foods. They have also picked up a considerable share of Whole Foods customers. Last month, Barclays advised that Whole Foods had experienced a “staggering” decline in foot traffic that it estimated at 3% or roughly 14 million customers.

No wonder why Amazon is rushing to reduce its retail footprint and cut costs to save its business. According to a Deloitte survey, the 2023 retail outlook for bankruptcies is worse than pre-pandemic levels. Over half of retail business owners, or 55.3 percent, who were surveyed projected a higher risk of downsizing, debt default, or bankruptcy in 2023, as sentiment across the sector continues to deteriorate.

“Many retailers’ financial models don’t make sense anymore, their debt loads don’t make sense anymore, and they aren’t functional companies anymore,” says Craig Ganz, a bankruptcy lawyer with Ballard Spahr. “A whole slew of these retail companies just can’t survive,” the expert warns.

At the end of the day, the latest wave of stress will continue to separate winners from losers. “We’re going to see what I refer to as the continuing Darwinism effect on retail,” says Perry Mandarino, head of restructuring at B. Riley Financial Inc. “Only the strongest survive.”And we will soon find out if Amazon’s biggest grocery chain is strong enough to stay alive."

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Gerald Celente, "Trends In The News"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 4/13/23

"Trends In The News"

The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing 

global current events forming future trends."

- https://trendsjournal.com

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The Poet: Maya Angelou, "Alone"

“Alone”

“Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home,

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone.

I came up with one thing

And I don’t believe I’m wrong,

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can’t use,

Their wives run round like banshees,

Their children sing the blues.

They’ve got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone,

But nobody,

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I’ll tell you what I know…

Storm clouds are gathering,

The wind is gonna blow.

The race of man is suffering,

And I can hear the moan,

‘Cause nobody,

But nobody,

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody,

Can make it out here alone.”

- Maya Angelou

The Daily "Near You?"

Harare, Zimbabwe. Thanks for stopping by!

Dr. Seuss, "The Waiting Place"

"The Waiting Place"

by Dr. Seuss

"Congratulations!

Today is your day.

You're off to Great Places!

You're off and away!

You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

any direction you choose.

You're on your own. And you know what you know.

And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.

You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.

About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."

With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,

you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any

you'll want to go down.

In that case, of course,

you'll head straight out of town.

It's opener there

in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen

and frequently do

to people as brainy

and footsy as you.

And then things start to happen,

don't worry. Don't stew.

Just go right along.

You'll start happening too.

OH!

THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!

You'll be on your way up!

You'll be seeing great sights!

You'll join the high fliers

who soar to high heights.

You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.

You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.

Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best.

Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don't.

Because, sometimes, you won't.

I'm sorry to say so

but, sadly, it's true

that Bang-ups

and Hang-ups

can happen to you.

You can get all hung up

in a prickle-ly perch.

And your gang will fly on.

You'll be left in a Lurch.

You'll come down from the Lurch

with an unpleasant bump.

And the chances are, then,

that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump,

you're not in for much fun.

Un-slumping yourself

is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.

Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.

A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!

Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?

How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...

or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?

Or go around back and sneak in from behind?

Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,

for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused

that you'll start in to race

down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace

and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,

headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come, or a plane to go

or the mail to come, or the rain to go

or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

or the waiting around for a Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite

or waiting for the wind to fly a kite

or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting.

NO!

That's not for you!

Somehow you'll escape

all that waiting and staying

You'll find the bright places

where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,

once more you'll ride high!

Ready for anything under the sky.

Ready because you're that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!

There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.

And the magical things you can do with that ball

will make you the winning-est winner of all.

Fame! You'll be as famous as famous can be,

with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don't

Because, sometimes they won't.

I'm afraid that some times

you'll play lonely games too.

Games you can't win

'cause you'll play against you.

All Alone!

Whether you like it or not,

Alone will be something

you'll be quite a lot.

And when you're alone, there's a very good chance

you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.

There are some, down the road between hither and yon,

that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.

But on you will go

though the weather be foul.

On you will go

though your enemies prowl.

On you will go

though the Hakken-Kraks howl.

Onward up many

a frightening creek,

though your arms may get sore

and your sneakers may leak.

On and on you will hike,

And I know you'll hike far

and face up to your problems

whatever they are.

You'll get mixed up, of course,

as you already know.

You'll get mixed up

with many strange birds as you go.

So be sure when you step.

Step with care and great tact

and remember that Life's

a Great Balancing Act.

Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.

And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed!

(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So...

be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray

or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,

You're off the Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting.

So...get on your way!"

"Fate. Luck. Chance"

“That is life, isn’t it? Fate. Luck. Chance. A long series of what-if’s that lead from one moment to the next, time never pausing for you to catch your breath, to make sense of the cards that have been handed to you. And all you can do is play your cards and hope for the best, because in the end, it all comes back to those three basics. Fate. Luck. Chance.”

- Kelseyleigh Reber

“Unless, of course, there’s no such thing as chance… in which case, we should either - optimistically - get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might - as pessimists - give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought-decision-action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway, things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos?”

- Salman Rushdie

"Living In A Potemkin World" (Excerpt)

"Living In A Potemkin World" (Excerpt)

by Jim Quinn

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” - George Orwell, "1984"

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” - George Orwell, 1984

"I never thought I would experience the dystopian “fictional” nightmare Orwell laid out in his 1949 novel. Seventy-two years later and his warning about a totalitarian society, where mass surveillance, repressive measures against dissenters, mind control through government indoctrination and propaganda designed to convince the masses lies are truth, fake is real and the narrative can be manipulated to achieve the desired outcome of those in power, have come to fruition.

Everything is fake. I don’t believe anything I’m told by the government, the media, medical “experts”, politicians, military leadership, bankers, corporate executives, religious leaders, financial professionals, and anyone selling themselves as an authority on any subject matter. We are truly living in times of mass deception, mass delusion, and mass willful ignorance.

The term Potemkin Village comes from stories of a phony movable village built by Grigory Potemkin in the late 1700’s to impress his former lover, Catherine II, during her journey to Crimea in 1787. He supposedly erected fake villages along the banks of the Dnieper River, as her vessel sailed by, to impress her with the progress he was making on her behalf. After she passed, he would have the village disassembled and then reassembled further along downstream.

I guess this was an early version of fake news, though I am sure there were also plenty of falsities and propaganda in the newspapers of the time. But, in our current day, oppressors have taken lies, falsities, miss-truths, and propaganda to heights never conceived by Edward Bernays, George Orwell or Joseph Stalin."

Please view this outstanding, and highly recommended complete article here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"How It Is, Always Was, And Always Will Be"

"We know they are lying, they know they are lying,

 they know we know they are lying,

 we know they know we know they are lying, 

but, they are still lying."

- Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

"Violence does not always and necessarily lunge straight for your throat; 

more often than not it demands of its subjects only that they 

pledge allegiance to lies, that they participate in falsehood." 

  - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"Start of the End?

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 4/13/23

"Start of the End?"

"When you have an A+ office building go with a 36% loss does that concern you? It concerns me with the economy. Blackstone just sold two office towers in orange county California for a huge loss. Plus today we’re going to take a little tour through Whole Foods."

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"Welcome to the U.S.S.A.'s Banquet of Consequences"

"Welcome to the U.S.S.A.'s Banquet of Consequences"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"When I mention that the U.S.A. feels increasingly like the U.S.S.R., a surprising number of people tell me they feel the same way. Welcome to the U.S.S.A.: United Simulacra States of America where everything is an absurdly transparent simulation with little connection to reality and dissent is crushed by an ever-present, ubiquitous narrative police state enforced by the union of Big Tech social media, search and other monopolies and the Savior State: do what we tell you and you'll get a piece of our endlessly spewed trillions.

My colleague Mark Jeftovic recommended an insightful book on the unraveling of the USSR, "Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation." It's an academic book so there are the required servings of jargon and references to suitably opaque academic tropes, but beneath the conceptual clutter lies a profound analysis of how humans adapt to and navigate a system that has lost all authenticity and survives entirely on the ceaseless marketing of artifice: in other words, the USA today.

Of particular interest are the book's personal accounts of dutiful Party members going through the motions of obedience as a means of enjoying their private friendships and lives. Joining the Party's machinery was a way to meet friends who you recruited for your committee work. Everyone went through the motions but nobody actually believed any of it: you did homework while "listening" to the endless canned speeches, you went out for coffee while telling the Party functionary that you were on Party business, and you worked on parades and activities that were a bit of fun despite the dreary official purpose which everyone ignored.

Despite the enormous effort put into placing propaganda everywhere, nobody actually saw any of it: it was all background noise. When it changed, nobody noticed. "Regular" party members avoided the True Believers and the Dissenters as both could get you in trouble - and who wanted trouble? It wasn't worth it. And so a carefully cloaked language of phrases and signs emerged to separate the safe "regular" members from the dangerous True Believers and Dissenters.

Documentarian Adam Curtis called this artifice as reality hyper-normalization, a concept also referred to as super-normalization: "normal life" is stripped of authenticity in favor of a simulacrum "normal" that supports those at the top of the status quo. This "new normal" reaches extremes of artifice, hence hyper-normalization.

As long as everyone thinks there are no alternatives to this hyper-normalized simulacrum, this artificial construct appears to be immutable - everything is forever. But once the power structure admits, however minimally, that it no longer has the answers to the decay of the social-economic order, then the entire artificial construct collapses in a heap. This is the sociology of collapse: people accept a facade of artifice and propaganda without actually believing any of it, though they do have a limbic loyalty to the founding ideals of the State.

The ideologues (True Believers) are avoided as dangerous brown-nosers, and the Dissenters are avoided because it's not worth being sent to digital Siberia (shadow-banned, deleted, marginalized) just to publicly call attention to the abject failure of status quo institutions and organs of propaganda.

What's real is denial, repression of dissent, group-think, virtue-signaling and a profound loss of competence. What's hyper-normalized artifice is all the media spew about how great everything is going to be once we print and squander another couple trillion dollars to prop up the zombie corporations, institutions and government agencies until the magical vaccine time machine returns us to the glorious debt-dependent overconsumption of 2019.

The USSA has not yet admitted that the decay of its socio-economic order is unstoppable, and so the internal gulag has yet to be breached. But artifice is not a substitute for reality, and what's unsustainable (hyper-normalized artifice) unravels very quickly once the first thread is pulled.

The USSR took 20 years to unravel, but 19 years of the decay were hidden by an increasingly disconnected-from-reality simulacra of "success" and competence: the USSR lost the race to the moon in 1969 and 20 years later two decades of decay led to collapse.

The USSA responded to the dot-com crash of 2000 with artifice and propaganda, an absurdly transparent simulacra of "success" and competence. Twenty years of decay has brought us to the precipice of collapse, and the internal gulag of TINA - there is no alternative - is fraying. The incontestable incompetence of the USSA's monopolies, institutions and agencies is about to take center stage. The sociology of collapse will be followed by a not-be-missed banquet of consequences."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"Gulag Capitalism"

"Gulag Capitalism"

What people want vs. what they deserve.

by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "What’s wrong with capitalism? What’s wrong with the US economy? Why isn’t it making people richer? News flash from The Telegraph: "All Western economies are now facing the consequences of two decades of fundamental economic mistakes. Interest rates are the warning sign. They are far too low for a free market economy."

Capitalism, left alone, generally does make people better off. If it’s more money they want, they work for it…and get it. If it’s more leisure that they really care about…they can get that too. More hula hoops? More Bud Light? More diversity officers? Well…that’s where the story becomes more complicated.

In a capitalist system, people get ‘money’ by providing goods and services to other people. Then, they use their money to ‘vote’ for what they want. Naturally, if it is rocking chairs they want…capitalists deliver them. The whole ‘system,’ if you can call it that, intends to satisfy the wants and needs of “The People.”

Who Wants What? This is not to say that everyone gets what he wants. People make mistakes. They make bad choices. They develop bad habits. So, what they actually get is not exactly what they want, but what they deserve.

But what about diversity officers? Who wants them? Why do we have them? Who votes for them? It turns out that there are people who want you to spend money on what they want, rather than what you want.

Nobody wants a tax accountant. But the elite who run the government have made sure that you need one. Who wanted to spend an estimated $100,000 per household so the Pentagon could lose a 20-year war in the Middle East? Who wants to pay for an anti-drug policy that doesn’t work? Who wants to send money to the Ukraine, where hundreds of millions are skimmed off by the corrupt elite? Who wants to pay for more regulators to tell them what to do?

And if you look at the entire federal budget – OMG, who wants that? This year, the feds will spend nearly $6 trillion. So far, half way into the year, which begins in October, the deficit has hit a record. Fox: "Federal budget deficit hits $1.1 trillion in first half of fiscal 2023, $430 billion higher than last year. Government spending was 13% higher so far this year compared to 2022, while revenues dropped 3%, the CBO said."

Incalculable Costs: In other words, the feds are spending about $5 for every $4 in revenue. The excess gets remembered as debt, now almost $32 trillion. That’s about $400,000 per household, which will most likely get ‘paid’ in the form of consumer price inflation. And what half-wit would want to save money, and then lend it to a bank or the government at a lower rate than inflation? But that’s what everyone was forced to do for more than an entire decade. And even now, after more than a year of ‘going back to normal,’ the inflation-adjusted key rate is still almost 2% below the CPI.

This last point is an important one. Because the cost is incalculable. The price of money is the most important information in the whole system. And if it is distorted…and untrue…everything begins to warp and wobble. The cost of money (interest rates) tells us where to invest…and where not to. If the interest rate is 5% a project must deliver 6% or 7% just to breakeven. Any less than that destroys capital.

But put the interest rate at NEGATIVE 2%...and where do you invest? You don’t know. Could you borrow money, buy gold, bury it in the ground and then just wait until you could repay your loan at pennies on the dollar? Maybe. Long term investing requires faithful numbers. And all the numbers are fishy. Better to take the money now – in dividends…or higher stock prices. Or speculate – it costs nothing to borrow…so why not take a chance?

Gulag Capitalism: The result is a fall-off in the kind of real investment that the economy needs. Production slumps. Productivity slides. Real growth and real prosperity disappear. Adjusted for inflation, real wages just went down for the 24th month in a row.

Real GDP growth is only half the average of the 63 years from 1954 to 2017. As we calculated last week, it now takes the average worker three times as much time on the job to buy the average house as it did in 1971. And, oh yes…there’s a building boom going on. New houses are now being put up at the same rate as 1978. This is reported as good news, but now we have 100 million more people in the US than we did in the 70s.

What’s wrong with capitalism? The answer is very simple: nothing. Capitalism does its best. Even in Soviet Gulags, capitalism continued, as prisoners exchanged food and clothing. Wherever they are, people try to produce things that other people want…and to trade with them for the things they want. The Fed’s phony interest rates did not stop capitalism. Nor did $31 trillion federal debt – almost all of it squandered on wars, stimmies, and boondoggles. But they made it much harder for people to get what they really wanted.

o

Joel’s Note: "Yesterday we mentioned the stagnation in real (that is, adjusted for inflation) wages. American workers have essentially gone nowhere in over a generation… and for the past couple of years, virtually the entire Biden administration, wages have actually gone backwards when measured against rising prices.

That alone would be bad enough. But as we know, the state never saw a wound it didn’t feel the sadistic urge to rub salt into. Have a look at the average “price of money” down the line and you’ll see what we mean. In an effort to keep their heads above water, working Americans have been smashing the plastic of late… to the tune of almost a trillion dollars. Our macro man up in Laramie, Dan Denning, sent over this rather fugly chart, courtesy of the Fed’s Board of Governors…

Click image for larger size.

As you can see, the chart shows the explosion in outstanding credit card loans (and other revolving plans) beginning in mid-2021… and then really taking off during the “recession-that-wasn’t-technically-a-recession,” in the back half of 2022. Of particular note here is the fact that, according to the latest Forbes Advisor’s weekly credit card rates report, the average credit card interest rate in the US is… wait for it… a decidedly non-trivial 24.20%.

Unsurprisingly, after a significant uptick in Q4, 2022, credit card delinquencies are expected to see a sharp rise through 2023. TransUnion expects serious delinquencies – usually defined as being more than 30 to 90 days in arrears – to rise from 2.1 to 2.6%, the highest they’ve been since 2010. Delinquency rates on personal loans are also expected to track a similar path.

But unlike crony banksters, for whom money is cheap, plentiful and practically failure free, honest workers cannot simply declare insolvency and be “made whole” by their buddies/paymasters inside the beltway. As usual, it’s rule for thee… and not for the SOBs. Call it what you will, Messrs. Sanders, Stewart, Edwards et al. Just don’t call it “capitalism.”

- https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

"Unaffordable Prices At Kroger! Prepare For The Future!"

Full screen recommended,

Adventures With Danno, 4/13/23

"Unaffordable Prices At Kroger! Prepare For The Future!"

"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! This is not good as we are also seeing some empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products, and also charging extremely high prices!"

Comments here:

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Scott Ritter: "102,000 Ukrainian Soldiers Got Wiped Out, This Is The End!"

Red Pilled TV, 4/12/23

Scott Ritter: "102,000 Ukrainian Soldiers 

Got Wiped Out, This Is The End!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"60% Of Americans Can't Afford Gas As Prices Explode And Stockpiles Collapse"

Full screen recommended.

"60% Of Americans Can't Afford Gas As 

Prices Explode And Stockpiles Collapse"

by Epic Economist

"Once again gasoline stockpiles are falling to alarmingly low levels ahead of the busiest driving season of the year. And that is the perfect recipe for a massive spike in prices over the next few weeks and months, experts say. The increases will come on top of the 20-cent rise in the cost of a gallon of gas seen over the past 30 days. The outlook is quite worrying considering that almost 60% of Americans are struggling to afford prices at the pump, according to a new poll. Production is way down and several factors are adding extra pressure to the oil market right now, signaling more trouble for U.S. businesses and consumers this summer.

Analysts are warning that U.S. motorists will face a repeat of last summer’s high gasoline prices because fuel stockpiles are heading towards multi-year lows ahead of the peak summer driving season that starts in a couple of months. Retail gasoline prices, now averaging $3.60 a gallon nationwide, hit a record $5.02 a gallon last June as crude oil prices jumped due to dwindling inventories.

In the past month, the cost of a gallon of gas rose on average by 20 cents, with some U.S. counties reporting a 36-cent increase, AAA data shows. At the same time, vehicle travel in the U.S. remains 5.6% higher than last year, which resulted in a drop in gasoline stockpiles for five straight weeks.

In fact, Reuters reports that last week's 6 million-barrel drawdown was the biggest since September 2021, leaving national gas inventories at 229.6 million barrels, their lowest for this time of the year since 2015, according to weekly government data. "We are in danger of going below 200 million barrels of gasoline storage for the first time in many years," stressed Robert Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho.

On Monday, the U.S. price of oil rose 6 percent, after OPEC announced plans to sharply cut production starting in May. The organization informed that it will slash oil production by more than a million barrels a day starting next month, a move that experts say could seriously impact gas prices in the U.S. To make things even more complicated, in March, U.S. oil production plummeted as a result of the banking crisis and concerns about an economic recession that would reduce fuel demand.

All of these factors are weighing on the outlook for prices this summer. GasBuddy forecasted that the production slowdown would cause oil prices to rise by $6 a barrel. At the pump, this could be translated into another 20-cent rise per gallon next week. On the same note, Peter McNally, an industrial materials and energy expert for Third Bridge, predicts a steeper increase, closer to 30 cents per gallon. They’re right, gas prices could reach $4 a gallon before the end of April.

Given that demand increased slightly from 9.15 to 9.3 million barrels a day, according to new data from the Energy Information Administration, this means that we’re only holding 21 days of supply on our domestic reserves. That’s extremely tight.

Meanwhile, Americans are doing what they can to get by, and that often means cutting back on spending. The latest Monmouth University Poll, released last Thursday, found that a majority (or 58%) say it’s difficult to afford gas right now. Since December, the number of people who have had difficulty paying for gasoline has increased by 10 points, the poll results showed. This supply and demand imbalance is going to hit crisis levels this summer and you shouldn't be surprised if fuel shortages came back too, turning the outlook from worrying to downright terrifying in a few short months."

Comments here:

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Musical Interlude: Prelude, "After The Gold Rush",

Prelude, "After The Gold Rush", studio version.

Prelude, "After The Gold Rush", live version.

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is some 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter. It's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. 

Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. Omega Centauri's red giant stars (with a yellowish hue) are easy to pick out in this sharp, color telescopic view."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210603.html

“Are You Sane?”

“Are You Sane?”

by Charles Hugh Smith

“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”

– Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House”

“Madness has engulfed the entire world, with a concentration of power in the hands of a few psychopathic financial elite wielding an inordinate and dangerous expanse of power over the lives of the common man. They are a modern day version of Al Capone, except their weapons of choice aren’t machine guns, but a printing press, peddling debt, creating derivatives of mass destruction, and peddling heaping doses of disinformation. The contemporary criminal class wears Hermes suits, Rolex watches and diamond studded pinky rings, drops $500 to dine at Masa in NYC, travels by chauffeured limo, lives in $10 million NYC penthouse suites, occupies luxurious corner offices in hundred story glass towers, and spends weekends hobnobbing with the other financial elite at their villas in the Hamptons. They have nothing but utter contempt for the lowly peasants who depend upon a weekly paycheck to make ends meet. Why work when you can steal $1 or $2 billion from farmers with no consequences?

The willfully ignorant masses are kept at bay by the selling them a false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, and capitalism versus socialism. The ruling class distracts the public with fake wars on poverty, drugs and terror, while using these storylines to further enrich themselves and keep the public alarmed and frightened. We’ve been “fighting” the wars on poverty and drugs for over four decades and poverty is at record levels, while drugs are easier to obtain than candy in a candy store. The war on terror is nothing more than a corporate arms dealer welfare plan. The end of the Cold War put a real crimp in the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and the rest of the peddlers of death. 9/11 and the subsequent undeclared wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, with Iran on the horizon, have been a godsend to the bottom lines of the corporations Eisenhower warned about in 1961.

In reality, the politicians are interchangeable and bought off by corporate and special interests. The people are sold a fable, and controlled opposition is the fairy tale. They perpetuate the welfare/warfare state that enriches Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the healthcare service complex, politically connected mega-corporations and the corporate media propaganda complex. The American people are given the illusion of choice by their keepers. The system is rigged. The real decisions are made by unelected secretive men who operate in the shadows and use their wealth to direct the decision making of the politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate entities that benefit from those decisions. Edward Bernays described a society that existed in the 19th Century, 20th Century, and has now grown to immense proportions in the 21st Century:

“Political campaigns today are all sideshows. A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand,’ but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room. The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” – Edward Bernays

The manipulation of the masses has been perfected by the ruling class through decades of corporate mass media messaging the purposeful dumbing down of the populace through government public school education that teaches children how to feel rather than how to think. The conscious manipulation of the masses has been designed to produce obedient non-thinking consumers of corporate products, educated to believe the accumulation of material goods with debt constitutes wealth, to fear whatever the government tells them to fear, and never look up from their iGadgets long enough to actually think for themselves. We are bombarded with Orwellian memes designed to keep us sedated and pliant, as the ruling class pillages the national wealth and expands their power and control over our lives.

Conform; Stay Asleep; Do Not Question Authority; Obey; Consume; Reproduce; Submit; Watch TV; Buy; Follow; Doubt Humanity; No New Ideas; Feel, Don’t Think; Fear; Accumulate; Honor Apathy; Believe Experts; Surrender; Spend; No Independent Thought; Win; Want More; Hate; Succumb To Desire; Yield To Power; Choose Safety Over Liberty; Choose Security Over Freedom

This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character.

Vonnegut and Huxley’s social commentary reveals a basic truth that societies and human beings have been prone to bouts of madness over the course of decades and centuries. Humans are a weak species, susceptible to the vagaries of greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, envy and pride. The seven deadly sins are in full bloom today, as the American empire descends through Dante’s inferno of reality TV, celebrity worship, religious zealotry, adulation of wealthy titans, military conquest and worship of false idols.

This is where the interests of those in power and those being ruled have coincided, as a fiat based monetary system allowed unlimited spending to keep the welfare/warfare state growing, enriching the crony capitalists, deepening the power of the state, and providing the masses with foreign made trinkets, baubles, corporate logoed clothing, techno-gadgets, and pimped out financed wheels. The concepts of self-restraint, discipline, saving for a rainy day, prudence, discretion, and deferred gratification are rarely displayed in modern day America. In a case of mass delusion, Americans have convinced themselves to live for today, recklessly ignore their futures, irresponsibly spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need, neglect their civic duty towards future generations, choose ignorance over knowledge, and vote for spineless politicians who promise them entitlements that are mathematically impossible to honor. The public’s foolish attitude towards debt accumulation matches the arrogance of our gutless intellectually dishonest leaders.”

- http://www.theburningplatform.com/

Gerald Celente, "The American Rhythm: War Drums And Lies"

Gerald Celente, 4/12/23

"The American Rhythm: War Drums And Lies"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsresearch.com/

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"The Definition Of Hell..."

 

The Poet: May Sarton, “Now I Become Myself”

“Now I Become Myself”

“Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places,
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before —”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
or the end of the poem, is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move,
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the Sun!”

~ May Sarton

The Daily "Near You?"

Lower Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand. Thanks for stopping by!

"Anheuser-Busch Distributors Freaking Out Over Transgender Ad Campaign"

"Anheuser-Busch Distributors Freaking Out

 Over Transgender Ad Campaign"

By Tyler Durden

"Distributors for Belgian-owned Anheuser-Busch are reportedly 'spooked' over the reaction to the company's Bud Light transgender ad campaign featuring Dylan Mulvaney's "365 Days of Girlhood," according to Beer Business Daily. In what many thought was an April Fool's joke, the transgender activist whose act consists of mocking women with exaggerated stereotypes that the left is too stupid to pick up on, revealed that the company had begun featuring Bud Light cans featuring his face, which Mulvaney said was his "most prized possession." The ad campaign includes a video of Mulvaney drinking Bud Light in a bathtub."

Full article, of freaks, weirdos and degenerates, with videos, is here:

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

Look around, look at everything and everybody, then ask yourself, as I do, as a society could we possibly go any lower? Incredibly, the answer seems yes, and we're determined to do it, aren't we? "Insane" is too kind a word... - CP

"The Most Beautiful Lies..."

"Memories and feelings of nostalgia are nothing more than cruelties; they are the most beautiful lies we will ever convince ourselves to believe. We chase the false hope so fiercely that we nearly push ourselves past the edges of our sanity, longing for that which can never be in our possession again. These edges are blurred by our regrets and desperation all throughout the darkest hours of the night, until finally we are set free from the illusions and the ghosts of our past with the rising of the sun... and we are changed in some small, yet permanent way."

- Margaret E. Rise