Jeremiah Babe, 6/8/23
"Criminals Will Steal Your Money Faster Than A Bank;
Food Shortage Warning; People Are Hurting"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, June 8, 2023
"56 Million Americans Can't Afford To Retire As Cost Of Basic Items Soars Across The US"
Full screen recommended.
"56 Million Americans Can't Afford To Retire
As Cost Of Basic Items Soars Across The US"
By Epic Economist
"New studies show that 56 million US workers can’t afford to retire in 2023. Many do not have a single dollar saved for their future, let alone a retirement plan. With the cost of basic necessities going through the roof, it’s getting increasingly challenging for people to start putting money aside for their senior years. The reliance many groups have on Social Security benefits is rapidly depleting this important government fund, and leaving Americans in an extremely precarious financial situation. According to Pew Research estimates, US households will be forced to pay over $13,000 more in taxes every year to fund the retirements of our aging population. This means that even younger generations will feel the impact of this worsening crisis, and many of us will have to lower our living standards to be able to make ends meet.
Today, almost half of Americans say that everyday expenses are rising so rapidly that they won’t be able to afford basic necessities in the future, and this is seen as one of the greatest risks to retirement success. This percentage is up from 44% in 2022 and 38% in 2021, according to Allianz Life. Troublingly, about 40% of US workers admit their retirement strategy has been derailed, and they aren’t sure when or how they’ll get it back on track. Other stats reveal that a remarkable 61% of Americans say they are more afraid of running out of money than they are of dying, with many of them unsure about their real chances of ever achieving a successful financial future by the time they reach retirement age.
It’s not just older workers without a big brokerage account balance who are in trouble. The fact that so many people don’t have enough money to fund their basic spending is going to cost the government more than one trillion dollars when it has to step in to provide assistance, especially when it collects less tax revenue from American workers.
A separate analysis by the Pew Research Center estimates the federal government is going to incur costs of about $964 billion between 2023 and 2040 due to insufficient retirement savings, while states will spend an estimated $334 billion. Their calculations expose that this amounts to $1.3 trillion in costs that governments — and thus taxpayers — will have to bear.
To make things even more complicated, as our population ages, there will be fewer workers relative to the number of seniors facing these shortfalls, so a smaller number of people will need to cover these big costs. In fact, the analysis highlights that the age dependency ratio — the ratio of households with people at least age 65 to those of working age — is expected to grow by nearly 50% in the next two decades. Pew reports that the additional taxpayer liability due to inadequate retirement savings will climb to about $13,600 per household.
We may not be seeing the worst of the retirement crisis just yet, but it's clear that it is already here. We should pay very close attention to the challenges Baby Boomers are facing today becase is similar fate is waiting for us. They were once the richest generation in America, and now millions of them are becoming financially insecure and getting closer to poverty. With a recession at our door, our future looks uncertain, and at this point, we should start doing everything on our power to change the course of things before our living standards deteriorate even further."
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Musical Interlude:Yanni, “Standing in Motion”,
Full screen recommended.
Yanni, “Standing in Motion”,
Live At The Acropolis
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Where did this big ball of stars come from? Palomar 6 is one of about 200 globular clusters of stars that survive in our Milky Way Galaxy. These spherical star-balls are older than our Sun as well as older than most stars that orbit in our galaxy's disk. Palomar 6 itself is estimated to be about 12.5 billion years old, so old that it is close to - and so constrains - the age of the entire universe.
Containing about 500,000 stars, Palomar 6 lies about 25,000 light years away, but not very far from our galaxy's center. At that distance, this sharp image from the Hubble Space Telescope spans about 15 light-years. After much study including images from Hubble, a leading origin hypothesis is that Palomar 6 was created - and survives today - in the central bulge of stars that surround the Milky Way's center, not in the distant galactic halo where most other globular clusters are now found."
"I Cannot Believe..."
"I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be “happy.” I think
the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate.
It is, above all, to matter and to count, to stand for something,
to have made some difference that you lived at all.”
- Leo C. Rosten
Free Download: Erich Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom”
“Automaton Conformity”
by Erich Fromm
“In the mechanisms we have been discussing, the individual overcomes the feeling of insignificance in comparison with the overwhelming power of the world outside himself either by renouncing his individual integrity, or by destroying others so that the world ceases to be threatening. Other mechanisms of escape are the withdrawal from the world so completely that it loses its threat (the picture we find in certain psychotic states), and the inflation of oneself psychologically to such an extent that the world outside becomes small in comparison. Although these mechanisms of escape are important for individual psychology, they are only of minor relevance culturally. I shall not, therefore, discuss them further here, but instead will turn to another mechanism of escape which is of the greatest social significance.
This particular mechanism is the solution that the majority of normal individuals find in modern society. To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. The discrepancy between “I” and the world disappears and with it the conscious fear of aloneness and powerlessness. This mechanism can be compared with the protective coloring some animals assume. They look so similar to their surroundings that they are hardly distinguishable from them. The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.”
- Erich Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom”
Freely download “The Fear of Freedom”, by Erich Fromm, here:
"Damned..."
“Damned is the soul that dies while the evil it committed lives on. And the most damned of all are those who see the evil coming for others and refuse to confront it. For it is not out of fear that heroes are born, but rather out of their selfless love that will not allow them safety bought from the torture, death, and degradation of others. It is better to die in defense of another than to live with the knowledge that you could have saved them but chose to do nothing. And to those who think that one person cannot make a difference, I say this… the deadliest tidal wave begins as an unseen ripple in a vast ocean. Live your life so that your integrity will motivate others to strive for excellence long after you’ve passed on, and know that no good deed or sacrifice, or offer of sincere friendship or love, is ever forgotten by the one who receives it.”
- Sherrilyn Kenyon
“Get Up Off Your Knees!”
“Get Up Off Your Knees!”
On your knees you may live to see another day,
but you’ll never live to see better days.
by Robert Gore
“Zoos are among the saddest places on earth: magnificent but confined creatures on display for gawking crowds, prevented from living out their biological destinies, fed their daily rations, and domesticated beyond where they could ever return to the wild. You have to feel pity and sorrow for these innocent prisoners; they’d flee in a heartbeat if they could.
Humans have made themselves inmates – whether of a zoo, prison, or asylum is hard to say, likely a combination of all three. Animals earn our admiration because they resist losing their freedom. Humans occasionally do too, but usually surrender theirs for promises and trifles. The promises are broken and the trifles grow more trifling as humanity for the most part gives up. Keep people amused and make sure the rations don’t stop and no outrage rousts them to try to reclaim their birthright. When they visit the zoo, the animals stare back at them with contempt.
In this country, we sing, “Sweet land of liberty,” and, “The land of the free, and the home of the brave.” We incant “freedom” and “liberty” during election seasons, but anything beyond that is considered embarrassing, bad form. A legislator denouncing a proposed law as an infringement of freedom would be regarded as a lunatic. Millions of pages of federal, state, and local laws and regulations already infringe freedom. The denouncer might be irrefutably right, but his denunciation would be irrelevant.
While wildlife should be free in the wild, coping with the risks to the best of their capabilities, humans are supposedly unsuited for freedom. Free humans might develop their own talents and capabilities, produce, exchange, exercise their rights, and engage in voluntary association and social intercourse, all unsupervised. You can argue that such activities are generally beneficial. However, there is a special class who are permitted to supervise and coerce the rest of us, to curtail our freedom. This special class ensures fairness or equality or some such thing. Who knows what might happen without them. Think of the dangers!
Just consider the concept of people deciding what’s in their own best interest. A hyphenated word lurks: self-interest. The special people are motivated by everything but self-interest, or so they say. Indeed, nobility of motive justifies their power and the destruction of your liberty. The desire to better your life is selfish, unlike the impulses supposedly animating those holding the guns to your head. After widespread surrender, few champion their right to their own lives, which is selfish after all, or challenge the special people’s moral superiority, which confers their right to hold the guns.
It might mitigate moral condemnation for liberty’s surrender if it had produced some benefit for those waving the white flag. An old bromide has it that liberty is irrelevant when people are starving. Nothing is further from the truth; it’s freedom that feeds people, creates wealth, and advances humanity. The historical record offers ample proof. It’s the absence of liberty that produces starvation, poverty, decay, destruction, genocide, and war. Here too the historical record is clear, one need go no farther back than the last century. During this ascendancy of the special people, humanity fought its two deadliest wars and over a hundred million were murdered, victims of special plans for a better world.
But somehow it’s liberty that’s dangerous. Fortunately the special people still rule, to make sure it doesn’t break out somewhere. Their reign assures that this century will challenge the last for the title: Century of Slaughter. They see their subjects are domesticated draft animals, just smart enough to keep economies running, not smart enough to challenge domestication. However, it’s been free minds and free markets, not draft animals, that have produced the wonders that make modern life modern. Welfare states are halfway houses to totalitarianism. As they grow, liberty shrinks and progress slows, stops, and reverses, the deterioration culminating in either anarchy or tyranny.
Judging from the prevalence of terms like “secular stagnation” and the “end of growth,” we are in the stop phase and reversal is nigh. People have seen their freedom shrink and have borne the consequences, although most don’t make the connection between the two. Incomes have stagnated, opportunities have diminished, life grows ever coarser, and fear of a looming apocalypse pervades the popular consciousness. Many are preparing for a future in which modernity is no longer modern, where access to necessities and conveniences cannot be taken for granted. Guns and gold are at the top of checklists, for a day when the inevitable failure of the special people leads to the inevitable tyranny or anarchy.
The discontent sweeping the planet is recognition that things are wrong on multiple fronts, although recognition of the root cause is rare. The idea that changing the hands on the levers offers solutions is magical thinking. The problems stem from granting the special people the levers in the first place. They may be replaced, but once the replacements have their hands on the levers, they’ll feel special, too. Power assuredly corrupts.
We’re closer to the real solution in the lament: “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” They – the special people – must leave us alone, it’s our moral right. Those who think the collapse will never come, or that freedom can be reclaimed without a fight, delude themselves. The craven adage: It’s better to live on one’s knees than die on one’s feet, offers a false choice. On your knees you may live to see another day, but you’ll never live to see better days. You may die on your feet, but liberty offers the only hope for better days. It’s worth fighting for. It’s worth dying for.”
"It Is Our Fate..."
"Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die? I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person, one cannot exist in full consciousness, without having to have a showdown with one's self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one's mind what matters and what does not matter."
- Dorothy Thompson
Bill Bonner, "Going... Going... Gono"
"Going... Going... Gono"
From breadbasket to basket case...
lessons from the world's inflation capital.
by Bill Bonner
Youghal, Ireland - "Among the many curiosities, back eddies, and ironies in the financial world is this: equities can go up, even as an economy goes down. In the news yesterday morning was this report from Zimbabwe. Bloomberg: "Zimbabweans Drive Stocks Up 600% in Rush to Dodge Currency Crash."
"Zimbabweans often turn to equities as a haven from currency meltdowns and episodes of hyperinflation, as happened in June 2020 when the inflation rate reached 837%. The bourse in Harare, the capital, briefly halted trading on Tuesday when the jump in the all-share index breached a 10% limit introduced in April, the second time that’s happened."
Like taking heroin, once you get in the habit of printing money, it’s a hard one to give up. Not that you don’t plan to do it…promise to do it…and even try to do it. But in the end, you just don’t want to do it. Zimbabwe has been fighting inflation, depression and hyperinflation for nearly 20 years. No sign of victory yet!
Breadbasket to Basketcase: Zimbabwe used to be the “breadbasket of Africa,” with rich fields of wheat and tobacco…at the center of a thriving agricultural economy. You can say what you want about the evils of colonialism, but at least the colonials knew how to run an economy. Zimbabwe flourished even after it gained its independence from Britain in 1979.
But in the early ‘90s, politics gained the upper hand. The Mugabe government began its own reparations program, taking land from white farmers and distributing it to Mugabe’s cronies. The whites fled. Food production dropped. Unemployment soared to 80%. Tax revenues fell…and the government turned to the printing presses. Consumer prices rose.
In 2007, the government took forceful action against inflation. No, it did not stop printing money. Instead, it declared it illegal to raise prices. Corporate executives who tried to keep up with inflation by raising prices were put in jail. This had the effect of stopping output all together. Commercial activity shifted to the black market. A loaf of bread, for example, could be bought, legally, for about 500 million zim dollars. On the black market, which was the only place you could normally find bread, the price was $Z10 billion. By July 2008, the inflation rate was believed to be 250 million percent.
Of course, by then it was impossible to keep track of prices. Because there was not much left to put a price on. And in 2009, the Zim dollar was abandoned altogether.
No Food, No Fuel, No Nuthin’: Things settled down. Business returned, using the US dollar as the substitute currency. But in 2018, the authorities went back to their old tricks. A new Zimbabwean dollar was introduced. A year later, the inflation rate was said to be over 500% and today, prices are going up at about 200% per year.
For a long time, we carried a memento of the hyperinflation period – a Zim bill said to be worth $100 trillion dollars. With that and US $5 we would have been able to buy a cup of coffee in Harare, the nation’s capital. But there was no coffee in Harare. Or anywhere else in the country, because nobody wanted to take Zim currency in payment for anything. So, the shelves were cleaned out. And soon, there was no food. No clothing. No fuel. Almost nothing.
And that was when Gideon Gono, head of the Zimbabwean central bank, made the discovery that will prevent the US and other nations from dealing forthrightly with the inflation scourge. He recounted the experience to our old friend Doug Casey, years later. “Yes, of course we could have stopped printing up ridiculous amounts of money,” he said, or words to that effect, “but people needed more and more money just to buy necessities. The situation was terrible. But it would have been even worse – including civil war – if we hadn’t kept the presses going.”
Cold Turkey: What Mr. Gono was describing was the advanced stages of what we call the “inflate or die” dilemma. Once you’re hooked on inflation, in other words, it can be very hard to give it up. Stock prices, corporate profits, household earnings…rich and poor – all depend on more and more money. You have to keep inflating or the whole thing collapses. Even an honest politician thinks twice before cutting off the thing everybody most wants – more money. Going ‘cold turkey’ is painful. It is much easier just to keep printing money.
This is a particularly dangerous predicament when your society is in the grip of empire builders, as the US is now. Many times have we mentioned the sad case of Takahashi Korekiyo. He was in charge of the central bank of Japan in the 1930s, when the country’s military/industrial complex was aiming to take over all of East Asia. It was to be a “Co-Prosperity Sphere,” with Japanese management and capital, along with the labor and raw ingredients of China, Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
But the war machine cost money. And when Korekiyo tried to turn it off, in 1936, he was assassinated. "Inflate or die” must sometimes be taken literally."
Horrifying! World Child Sex Trafficking!"
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 6/8/23
"Bombshell! Mel Gibson About To Expose All Of Them"
"Was Mel Gibson the fall guy for wanting to expose child trafficking rings in Hollywood? He is involved in a new documentary about the underbelly of child trafficking in the U.S. and other countries. That is why he is trending today. Will the mainstream condone this or remind us why he is a persona non grata?"
Comments here:
Inconceivable, shockingly horrifying Evil. 800,000 children a year in the United States alone go missing! These loathesome creatures do not deserve living and should be hunted down world wide with extreme prejudice, and I presume you know what that term means! Mass public executions are too good for these absolutely vile and degenerate monsters! God damn them all to Hell, but Hell isn't hot enough, and eternity's not long enough. If I said what I really want to say, Blogger would delete this blog in an instant... - CP
"And Down We Go..."
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/8/23
"And Down We Go..."
"New York City is suffering with a tremendous amount of smoke from the Canadian wildfires. What is worse is what they are giving away for free. Business is suffering globally. Interest rates are on the rise from around the world."
Comments here:
"Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/8/23"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/8/23
"It's Over... Recession/Depression Will Sweep
The Globe As Central Banks Consolidate Power"
Comments here:
"Crazy High Prices At CVS! This Is Unaffordable! What Now?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/8/23
"Crazy High Prices At CVS!
This Is Unaffordable! What Now?"
"In today's vlog, we are at C.V.S. looking at some different grocery prices. As some foods are getting too expensive at our main supermarkets we are seeking out other options!"
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"Emergency! NATO Troops To Ukraine; Nuclear Strike On Russia's Border"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper 6/7/23
"Emergency! NATO Troops To Ukraine; Nuclear Strike
On Russia's Border; Wildfire Toxic Plume In Next 24 Hours"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times 6/8/23
"Russia Smashed German Radar Station In One Shot
Amid Intense Fight In The Woods With Ukrainians"
Comments here:
o
Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls 6/8/23
"Disastrous Attacks Into Russian Defenses"
"Ukraine news today and in-depth discussion of
current geopolitical events in the United States of America."
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Wednesday, June 7, 2023
"Banks Are Handing Out Credit Cards Like Candy; Mortgage Demand Falls"
Jeremiah Babe, 6/7/23
"Banks Are Handing Out Credit Cards Like Candy;
Mortgage Demand Falls"
Comments here:
"20 Needed Foods That Will Double In Price This Summer!"
Full screen recommended.
Red Pilled TV, 6/7/23
"20 Needed Foods That Will
Double In Price This Summer!"
"Clayton Morris joins us to discuss the U.S. economy in this breaking news update. Grocery prices have become a huge source of anxiety for many American families these days. We're clearly seeing that the current rate of price increases is reaching far higher levels than the official rate of food inflation suggests. While government officials tell us that we're paying around 15% more on groceries, some staple products have faced spikes of over 100% this year. And farmers, food makers and retailers are all warning us that a wide range of grocery products are about to get even more expensive in 2023. As it turns out, the surge in consumer prices wasn't transitory after all. And a series of events that continue to impact our food supply chains throughout the entire year are making the outlook for the next few months even more disturbing than it already is right now. We firmly believe that the best way of preparing to cope with these wild price swings is to get ahead of the hikes before they begin to ripple through the system."
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"Truckers Warn About Disastrous Freight Market Collapse As Rates Face Massive Drop"
Full screen recommended.
"Truckers Warn About Disastrous Freight
Market Collapse As Rates Face Massive Drop"
by Epic Economist
"US truckers and trucking companies are warning we're in the middle of a freight recession worse than the 2008 crisis. As retail sales drop, and both manufacturing and import activity continue to slow down due to lower consumer demand in 2023, the road transportation industry is seeing orders being cut in half, leading to falling cargo volumes all across the country. The collapse was the word used by one industry CEO to define what just happened to freight rates, and that is putting several trucking companies at serious risk of bankruptcy. But according to Western States Trucking Association, the ongoing downturn in the freight market is only a sign something far more distressing is about to break out in America.
When the health crisis locked people at home and Americans started to order more goods online, the freight market boomed, and rates shot up by up to 500% in some areas. But things have started to cool off in 2022, and since then, per-mile rates have been plunging at the fastest pace on record. By November, prices were already nearing pre-pandemic levels. On the other hand, higher maintenance prices, as well as an increase in the cost of capital, and other difficulties in operating have resulted in a brutal mix for a notoriously cyclical industry — one that has the potential to be worse than famous trucking downturns experienced in 2019 and in 2008-09.
Today, instead of a shortage, the freight market is flooded with thousands of small-scale owner-operators and carriers of all sizes. But the threat of a deep recession is now reducing demand for goods, and as a result, cargo volumes are plunging all over the US. On top of that, data provided by Freight Waves shows that the per-mile rate fell to $1.49. At the peak of the boom in 2021, drivers were pulling in as much as $3.01 per mile. This means that freight rates declined by 52% so far, and could go even lower in the months ahead.
This means that there is far less money to be made in the sector. For those who made high investments to be able to enter the industry and profit from the boom, this may be just the beginning of a financial disaster. Since December, thousands of small carriers have revoked their operating authority, and bankruptcies started to arise in the truckload industry.
To make things worse, a recent CNBC supply chain survey that analyzed inventories and warehouse space tracked a decrease in truck movements in and out of the warehouse, revealed that ocean freight orders are down 50% year over year and that will keep impacting both rail and road Transportation in the short and long run, with trucking executives calling it “freight recession.”This along with a 40% decrease in manufacturing orders, are very bad news for the freight market.
The economic recession that is now upon us is going to shake entire industries to the core, millions of layoffs are expected, and economic and financial uncertainty will only grow worse. The crisis that is now unfolding before us will be unlike anything we’ve ever experienced, and the freight market meltdown is just one of the multiple indicators that something is terribly wrong in our system and that the dominoes have already started to fall."
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"A Look to the Heavens"
“This rock structure is not only surreal - it's real. The reason it's not more famous is that it is, perhaps, smaller than one might guess: the capstone rock overhangs only a few meters. Even so, the King of Wings outcrop, located in New Mexico, USA, is a fascinating example of an unusual type of rock structure called a hoodoo. Hoodoos may form when a layer of hard rock overlays a layer of eroding softer rock.
Figuring out the details of incorporating this hoodoo into a night-sky photoshoot took over a year. Besides waiting for a suitably picturesque night behind a sky with few clouds, the foreground had to be artificially lit just right relative to the natural glow of the background. After much planning and waiting, the final shot, featured here, was taken in May 2016. Mimicking the horizontal bar, the background sky features the band of our Milky Way Galaxy stretching overhead.”
Chet Raymo, “A Few Words Inspired By The Tomato Plant”
“A Few Words Inspired By The Tomato Plant”
by Chet Raymo
"Mostly we think of life in terms of individuals - this person, this tomato plant, this frog, this oak tree, this gnat. And we talk about birth and death as the beginning and ending of life. But there is another sense in which life is just one thing, whose beginning is lost in the depths of time and whose end is not in sight. Life in this sense embodies itself in matter, temporarily, as a tomato or a frog, puts on matter and puts off matter as we might don or doff clothes. By this account, I am an ephemeral conglomeration of atoms that life is using to perpetuate itself.
But what is this thing called life? It cannot exist except as embodied form, but it maintains a continuity independent of any particular embodiment. It is a strange enduring wave that stirs the material world into purposeful and directed avenues. With Johannes Kepler we might call it the facultas formatrix of nature, the formative faculty, but giving something a name doesn't explain it. Whatever life is - in the unitary, enduring sense - it would be surprising if it only existed here on Earth. If I were a betting man I would bet that life is as pervasive as matter itself, or energy. Matter, energy and complexification. We have lots left to learn.
But let's be cautious. There are lots of folks out there with half-baked biocentric theories of the universe. Someone once chided the philosopher W. V. O. Quine with a quote from Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” To which Quine is said to have responded: “Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth.”
The Poet: Walt Whitman, "Miracles"
"Miracles"
"Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge
of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed
at night with anyone I love,
Or sit at the table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honeybees busy around the hive
of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining
so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon
in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread
with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim- the rocks- the motion of the waves
- the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?"
- Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass"
"The Illusion Of The Tiny Shadows..."
“In 'The Republic', Plato imagines human beings chained for the duration of their lives in an underground cave, knowing nothing but darkness. Their gaze is confined to the cave wall, upon which shadows of the world are thrown. They believe these flickering shadows are reality. If, Plato writes, one of these prisoners is freed and brought into the sunlight, he will suffer great pain. Blinded by the glare, he is unable to seeing anything and longs for the familiar darkness. But eventually his eyes adjust to the light. The illusion of the tiny shadows is obliterated. He confronts the immensity, chaos, and confusion of reality. The world is no longer drawn in simple silhouettes. But he is despised when he returns to the cave. He is unable to see in the dark as he used to. Those who never left the cave ridicule him and swear never to go into the light lest they be blinded as well.”
- Chris Hedges
o
”To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood;
It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness.
It cannot be.”
- Frank Herbert
"Oh Yeah..."
"When life hands you a lemon, say
"Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else you got?"
- Henry Rollins
"What Do You Call This?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/7/23
"What Do You Call This?"
"So much is happening around the world. As we enter vacation season, we are seeing that now. Hotels are having major financial troubles. Where will it go from here? What do you call this Recession?"
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "Spatially Regarded"
"Spatially Regarded"
Apple's latest costly gizmo, mixed reality checks
and the whacky world of meta finance...
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman
Youghal, Ireland - "This week, we have another big player on the field of dreams. The most celebrated home run hitter of all time has stepped up to the plate. Apple has been warming up in the tech bullpen for years. And on Monday, it got its turn at bat, unveiling what is supposed to be the Next Big Thing in the tech world. Spatial computing.
What’s that? We have no idea. But it looks like what Facebook was trying to do with its META rebranding. You put on the headset and you have 12 cameras, five sensors and six microphones working for you. What do all those gadgets do? We don’t know that either, but we suspect they are going to waste a lot of time for a lot of people. Business Insider:
"There's one product which has been making all the headlines from Apple's WWDC on Monday. The Vision Pro headset marks the tech giant's foray into the metaverse — although the company stayed clear of using that branding. But on TikTok and Twitter, everyone's been laughing about the audience's reaction to the Vision Pro's eye-watering price tag.
Show Me the Money! The laughter came after Apple told its audience that it would offer its new gizmo for $3,499, or with add-ons, about 10% of an average person’s income. “Who’s going to buy them?” wonders colleague, Dan Denning. “With what money?”
The advertising tells us that this device will ‘take you into a different dimension…a different world’ with a ‘mixed reality.’ The message is lost on us. The 3 dimensions we have already seem completely adequate…and our real world, such as it is, is spooky enough.
The fans pushed shares in Apple’s stock to a new high after the announcement. Up 38% this year, the company now has a market cap of $2.85 trillion. That’s 27x forward earnings and more than 7 times sales.
“Mixed reality” is what we live with in the financial world. Apple is a fantastic company. It is real. It makes real products. It earns real profits. But ‘mixed’ with the reality of it is a substantial amount of fairy dust. Is a company that makes electronic devices really worth more than all US automakers…and its entire construction industry – put together? Is it really worth one tenth of US GDP?
We doubt it. Apple’s stock in trade is popular technology. But the fashions of the tech world change, and there is little likelihood that Apple will be able to stay on top of them. The newest technology always gets replaced by even newer technology. And while the future is always full of surprises, they are rarely happy ones for investors who buy a mature tech company at 27 times its future earnings. Things go right; things go wrong. But when you’ve bet heavily on an aging player, whose fame and fortune could scarcely improve, the risk of a strike-out is high.
Mind the Gap: Yesterday, we were exploring the gap between reality …and hope, dreams…and the future conditional (subjunctive mood) tense. We guessed that between the two, for the 21st century alone, is a gap of $160 trillion minus $25 trillion…or about $135 trillion. That’s the amount – grosso modo – that asset prices worldwide would have to fall in order to get back into sync with the real economy of goods and services.
This calculation is a very rough guess…not even using the back of an envelope. It is just meant to show that there is a large reckoning ahead. Water seeks its own level…and, one way or another, sooner or later, somehow, asset prices and real output have to get back into whack. How, why, when…to be determined.
Nvidia has provided us with an illustration. Either the company is going to sell so many more chips (about 40 times as many) that it is actually worth today’s price. Or, today’s price will have to come down. The shares might someday be worth $391. Or, they might not.
Space to Let: And that is true of the entire capital structure – stocks, bonds, property. Either it gained $160 trillion in real value over the last 23 years. Or, that number is just a feint…a fraud foisted on us by money-printing central banks worldwide. And how about those $32 trillion in US bonds? How much are they really worth? How much will they be worth if the Fed continues to raise rates…or allows interest rates to go up on their own? How much will they be worth if it doesn’t?
Have you been to San Francisco lately? A quarter to a third of the office space is vacant. Even in those buildings with active tenants, only a third to a half of workers show up. The owners often used cheap short-term credit to buy their buildings, counting on rents to pay their mortgages. Now, they have to refinance at higher rates…with less rental income. How much are those buildings worth now?
How much is Apple worth? Nvidia? The entire edifice of jumped up capital prices? We don’t know. But we’re all going to find out."
Joel’s Note: "Speaking of commercial real estate, here comes the proverbial “other shoe to drop.” From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal…"Interest-only loans as a share of new commercial mortgage-backed securities issuance increased to 88% in 2021, up from 51% in 2013, according to Trepp. Nearly $1.5 trillion in commercial mortgages are coming due over the next three years.
Fitch Ratings recently estimated that 35% of pooled securitized commercial mortgages coming due between April and December 2023 won’t be able to refinance based on current interest rates and the properties’ incomes and values. While many malls and hotels face high default risks, the situation is particularly dire for office owners. Mark Edelstein, chair of law firm Morrison Foerster’s global real-estate group, said he is seeing more lenders take over office buildings than at any point since the early 1990s.
Such are the constraints of the merely three-dimensional world, dear reader. Debts mount. Loans come due. And a reckoning must be had. According to Xiaojing Li, managing director at data company CoStar’s risk analytics team, as much as 83% of outstanding securitized office loans won’t be able to refinance if interest rates stay at current levels. And if they go higher? Look out below!"
o
$3,499 for a virtual reality headset?
That's insane. I suggest you consider Second Life.
"Expect the Unexpected"
"It's free. Second Life is the largest user-created virtual world on the internet. With thousands of virtual experiences and communities, you'll never run out of places to explore and people to meet. Music clubs, roleplaying communities, virtual cinemas and more. Second Life is always wonderful, sometimes weird, and 100% wow-worthy. Explore. Discover. Create. A new world is waiting..."
I've been in SL every day for 12 years now...
- CP
“Before the Leaves Fall From the Trees”
“Before the Leaves Fall From the Trees”
by Simon Black
"The morning of June 28, 1914 began like any other normal day. It was a Sunday, so a lot of people went to church. Others prepared large meals for family gatherings, played with their children, or thumbed through the Sunday papers.
At that point, tensions had been high in Europe for several years; the continent was bitterly divided by a series of complex diplomatic and military alliances, and small wars had recently broken out. Italy and the Ottoman Empire went to war in 1912 in a limited, 13-month conflict. And the First Balkan War was waged in early 1913. Overall, though, the continent clung to a delicate peace. And hardly anyone expected that most of the next three decades would be filled with chaos, poverty, and destruction. And then it happened.
That Sunday afternoon, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated during an official visit to Sarajevo. And the world changed forever. Five weeks later the entire continent was at war with itself. But even still, most of the ‘experts’ thought it would be a simple, speedy conflict. Germany’s emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, famously told his troops who were being shipped off to the front line in August 1914, “You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees...” It took four years and an estimated 68 million casualties to bring the war to a close. But that was only the prelude.
Following (and even during) World War I, a series of bloody revolutionary movements took hold in Europe, including in Russia, Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Ireland. Then came the Spanish flu, which claimed the lives of tens of millions of people. Later, Germany sunk into one of the worst episodes of hyperinflation in human history.
Communism began rapidly spreading across the world almost as quickly as the Spanish flu, often through violent fanatics who engaged in murder and arson in order to intimidate their opponents; this became known as the ‘Red Scare’ in the United States.
Of course there were some good years during the 1920s when people generally felt prosperous and happy; but it all came crashing down at the end of the decade when a severe economic depression strangled the entire world. It lasted for more than ten years, during which time the world was once again brought to an even more destructive war that didn’t end until atomic weapons obliterated the civilian populations of two Japanese cities.
Again – go back to June 1914. Who would have thought that the next 30+ years would play out so destructively? Even for the people who did predict that Europe would go to war in 1914, most leaders thought it would be over quickly. And almost no one expected it would spawn decades of chaos.
Today we’re obviously living in different times and under different circumstances. But we may be standing at a similar precipice as in 1914, staring at enormous trends that could shape our lives for years to come. Covid only scratched the surface.
We now know without a doubt, for example, how governments will respond the next time they feel there’s a threat to public health. They’ll say, “We’re listening to the scientists.” Really? The same scientists who tell people they can’t go to work, school, or church, but it’s perfectly fine for peaceful protesters to pack together like sardines without wearing masks because they’re apparently protected from the virus by their own righteousness? The same scientists who want to lock everyone down to prevent Covid, but are happy to accept skyrocketing rates of cancer, depression, suicide, heart disease, and domestic abuse as a result of those very lockdowns…?
The public health consequences from this pandemic will reverberate for years to come. And that doesn’t even begin to take the economic consequences into consideration. Western governments have taken on trillions of dollars in new debt this year and central banks have printed trillions more. Even with all that stimulus, however, there are still hundreds of millions of people worldwide who lost their jobs, and countless businesses that have closed.
Future generations who haven’t even been born yet will spend their entire working lives paying interest on the debts that are being accumulated today. The long-term consequences of all this are incalculable.
And then there are the social trends – the rise of neo-Marxism that’s sweeping the world so fast. It’s the Red Scare of the 21st century. They despise talented, successful people. They believe it’s greedy for you to keep a healthy portion of what you earn…but it’s not greedy for them to take it from you and spend it on themselves.
Many of the people in this movement, of course, are violent fanatics who routinely engage in arson, assault, and vandalism. Same for the social justice warriors who are just as quick to violence and intimidation; plus they’ve already commandeered the decision-making of some of the largest, most powerful companies in the world. You can’t even watch a football game or a TV commercial anymore without some commentary on oppression and victimization. And any intellectual dissent is met with intimidation…or censorship.
In fact the largest consumer technology companies in the world have become our censors. We’re not allowed to share scientific information that doesn’t conform to the Chinese-controlled World Health Organization’s guidance. And news articles that don’t match their ideology are blocked.
Let’s not kid ourselves – these trends are not going away any time soon. It’s great to be optimistic, hope for the best, and enjoy the good years as they come. But it makes sense to at least be prepared for the possibility that we could be at the very beginning of a period of enormous instability that may last a very long time."
Greg Hunter, "CV19 Bioweapon/Vax Beginning of Transhumanism"
"CV19 Bioweapon/Vax Beginning of Transhumanism"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Karen Kingston is a biotech analyst and former Pfizer employee who understands complicated medical and biological contracts. Kingston warns the mRNA technology in the CV19 bioweapon injections is just the beginning of forcing a transhuman agenda onto an unsuspecting public. If the technology (which is also called a “synthetic pathogen”) in the CV19 bioweapon/vax is not stopped, there would be “no flesh would be saved” as Jesus warned more than 2,000 years ago.
In a new Substack post, Kingston contends mRNA technology is a weapon of mass destruction and explains, “When I put that headline up that mRNA technologies, Neuralink or Neural Lace, which is the injectable form of Neuralink, are both weapons of mass destruction and transhumanism, this is to do non-human genetic editing to the human genome as well as to integrate bio-digital technology with humans. Those are not my words. Those are Dr. Robert Malone’s words during a Glenn Beck interview. This is where he said mRNA technologies are a suite of technologies for the purposes of transhumanism. The reason why I say these are weapons of mass destruction is James Clapper, who is a former Lt. General with the U.S. Airforce and served in the intelligence community under President Clinton, stated that the gene editing mRNA technology are weapons of mass destruction. Because once you make permanent changes to a species genome, that’s to the extinction of that species. It doesn’t matter if it is plants, animals or human beings themselves.”
Kingston goes on to say, “What we are breaking today is Covid 19 and the Covid 19 injections have a lot of neurological harmful effects. That’s because they are neural weapons as well. That’s the breaking news here. These CV19 injections include the Neural Lace technology. .Even Covid itself was a nanotechnology attack. It was not a virus. It is this lipid nanoparticulate matter. With Covid, people lost their sense of taste and smell. That is a nervous system attack. So, that would have to be a neuroweapon attack. People also have brain fog and fatigue. These are neurological symptoms of being attacked with a neural weapon. So, not only are the CV19 injections bioweapons, chemical weapons and technology weapons, they are also neural weapons. This is complete experimentation on civilians without informed consent, and what the technologies are and potential outcomes of those technologies is by definition biowarfare. It’s in violation of the Geneva Convention. It’s in violation of the bioweapons convention. It’s in violation of the international code for military justice. It’s in violation of the 5th and 14th Amendments. Pfizer, Moderna and the other manufacturers are very guilty of unleashing weapons of mass destruction on global civilians.”
Kingston also talks about mRNA technology referred to as synthetic biology that dark powers want to put in your food, water and even the air you breathe. Kingston will tell you how to stay clear of this destructive technology, and how to fight it too by taking things like Ivermectin. Kingston also discusses the need for a mass wakeup to the transhuman agenda using synthetic biology and mRNA. Kingston thinks if enough people can wake up and understand what is happening, this is the best way to bring it to a stop.
In closing, Kingston says, “This is really important for people to understand and that is synthetic biology is changing the entire landscape of our world. When they hijack the photosynthesis process of plants, and that is what they are doing, instead of producing oxygen and glucose, the plant is producing these new proteins which are weaponized. We will decrease the oxygen levels of all current biological lifeforms. So, it’s destroying the environment. This is directed evolution and transhumanism. It’s not just a war against humanity, it’s a war against all of God’s creation and all biological lifeforms.”
Maybe this is why Jesus said in Matthew 24:22, “And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.” There is much more in the 1-hour and 5-minute interview."
Comments here:
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with renowned biotech analyst Karen Kingston as she gives an update on the bioweapon mRNA injections and why this “synthetic biology” needs to be stopped.
"How It Really Is"
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Yeah, Joe, the right track straight to Hell...
"That's why they call it the American Dream.
Because you have to be asleep to believe it."
- George Carlin
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