"The United States Has The Biggest Government In The History Of The World By A Very Wide Margin"

"The United States Has The Biggest Government

 In The History Of The World By A Very Wide Margin"

by Michael Snyder

"How does it feel to have the largest government that the planet has ever seen? When I was growing up, I was taught that we had a capitalist system and that we had a limited federal government. Of course neither of those things has been true for a very long time. Today, the United States has the biggest government in the history of the world, and it gets even bigger with each passing year. Running that gigantic government requires more money than we actually have, and so we are going into staggering amounts of debt. But there is no way that our politicians will ever agree to reduce the size of the federal government to an appropriate size. So we are stuck with this system until the day when it finally collapses. Let me give you some numbers that illustrate what I am talking about.

- Approximately 3 million people work directly for the federal government.

- The federal government spent 6.13 trillion dollars in 2023. That figure is larger than the GDP of every nation on the entire planet except for the U.S. and China.

- More than 70 million Americans are on Social Security.

- More than 65 million Americans are on Medicare.

- More than 81 million Americans are on Medicaid.

- More than 41 million Americans are on food stamps.

Of course there are many more programs that hand out money to the population on a regular basis. We have reached a stage where most U.S. households are at least partially dependent on the federal government. We very much prefer not to call ourselves “socialists”, but that is precisely what we are. Sadly, if we attempted to go back to the way things were 100 years ago, most Americans would not know how to survive.

The massively bloated federal government that so many of us depend upon constantly consumes enormous mountains of money. We cannot provide enough money to keep it going, and so the federal government has been piling up insane amounts of debt. Since 1980, the size of the U.S. national debt has gone from 1 trillion dollars to 34 trillion dollars.

The combined wealth of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ken Griffin, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio and George Soros would not be enough to even pay the interest on our national debt for a single year…"The combined net worth of the most prominent billionaires in the United States would not be enough to pay a single year’s interest payment on America’s ballooning national debt, which currently stands at an astonishing $34 trillion.

The combined net worth of some of America’s most prominent billionaires, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ken Griffin, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio, and George Soros, adds up to approximately $726 billion according to data compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Meanwhile, the net interest on our national debt is currently at $730.8 billion, dwarfing the sum for previous years."

We are now at a point where the national debt has become a major national crisis, and the percentage of Americans that believe that our politicians should do something about this has been going up…"A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 57% of Americans said reducing the budget deficit should be a top priority for the president and Congress, up from 45% the year prior."

But the politicians in Washington don’t have the stomach to do anything about the wild spending. They know that if we tried to live within our means, it would instantly plunge the U.S. economy into a horrifying economic depression. And voters wouldn’t like that at all. So instead they are just going to try to keep the party going for as long as they can.

In fact, the size of the federal deficit in December was 52 percent larger than for the same month a year earlier…"The U.S. federal government posted a December deficit of $129 billion, up $44 billion or 52% from a year earlier as outlays rose while receipts fell from December 2022 levels that were swelled by pandemic-deferred tax payments, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Thursday.

The Treasury said that outlays for December rose 3% to $559 billion, a December record, partly as a result of higher Social Security outlays and interest on the public debt. Receipts for the month fell 6% to $429 billion."

America’s “empire of money” really has reached the endgame. Our debt spiral is out of control, our currency is rapidly losing value, and everyone can see that our entire system will inevitably collapse. But for the moment, the talking heads on television continue to tell everyone that our leaders know exactly what they are doing, and millions of people actually believe that nonsense."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

o

"Breaking Down The Coming $20 Trillion Debt Tsunami"

"So We All Ran Around..."

“So we all ran around in mad, mindless, meaningless circles, as if we were in a cotton-candy eating contest where the grand prize was getting kicked in the face. We were oblivious to everything around us that no truly sane person would ever tolerate. And we needed someone else to tell us to stop it.”

- Edward M. Wolfe

"What Are The Facts?

“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!” - Robert A. Heinlein

“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.”

- Carl Sagan

And always remember...

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,

however improbable, must be the truth."

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"

Hey, who lied and told you any of this was easy?

"How It Really Is"

 

"Bamboozled..."

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

- Carl Sagan

Dan, I Allegedly, "The Bank of Elon is About to Open"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 1/18/24

"The Bank of Elon is About to Open"

"We had heard that Elon Musk wanted to have his company be the go to payment processing company in the future. He wants to be a bank. He just became one step closer to that. Plus, experts are warning that the real estate market is about to tank. Things are getting bad."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "Revenge of the Outsiders"

The World Economic Forum conference venue in Davos is 

secured with barriers and barbed wire on a slope. What are they so afraid of?

"Revenge of the Outsiders"

Milei rips WEF, Schwab on the back foot and the natives grow restless...

by Bill Bonner

"Do not be intimidated either by the political class or the 

parasites who live off of the state. The state is the problem itself."

~ Javier Milei

Baltimore, Maryland - "On Monday, Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte warned the World Economic Forum, gathered in Davos, Switzerland, that the natives were getting restless. If elites weren’t careful, he said, there could be a revolt of the masses. WEF founder, Klaus Schwab sees the mob forming…and identifies its ringleaders: “An anti-system which is called libertarianism, which means to tear down everything which creates some kind of influence of government into private lives.”

And what’s this? The outsiders are winning key elections. Donald Trump won the Iowa Republican primary contest – by a strong margin. Geert Wilders won in the Netherlands. And in perhaps the most exciting and impressive turnaround yet, Javier Milei took over the jefe role in Argentina. Here’s The Guardian: "From Helsinki to Rome and Berlin to Brussels, far-right parties are climbing steadily up the polls, shaping the policies of the mainstream right to reflect their nativist and populist platforms, and occupying select ministerial roles in coalition governments. It remains to be seen whether any of these ‘populists,’ ‘authoritarians’ or ‘right wing nut cases’…depending on your point of view …can actually steer the ship of state away from the rocks."

Dazzling and Spellbinding: Some, such as Donald Trump, seem to have no stars to guide them. For four years, he was in the control room at the White House, floating like a drunken boat, getting nowhere. His mixture of bluff, bluster and BS…resulted only in more of the same – debt, decree and dysfunction.

But Milei is another matter. He is like what Ronald Reagan might have been if he had had time to read Hayek and Bastiat, study classical economics, philosophy and history…and if the CIA hadn’t misled him, leaving him to believe that the Soviet Union was a great military threat, when in fact, it was a dying empire.

Like it or not, Milei has a coherent theory about the way the world works…and, from our point of view, a much more attractive one. And on Wednesday, he explained it to the assembled hacks, jackasses and deep staters at Davos. Like Daniel walking into the lions’ den, he had a message that was so unexpected …so inhabitual in all public discussion… so at odds with the whole Davos philosophy…it was dazzling and spellbinding: "We’re here to tell you that collectivist solutions are never the answer to the real problems that have afflicted the world. Free market capitalism is not only the only system to relieve poverty it is also the only moral system. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem. Long live freedom, dammit!"

Milei to WEF: F-Off! Milei was challenging the fundamental creed of the Davos group. They are the elite of the elite…captains of industry (there are 800 leading CEOs in attendance), along with heads of state from all over the world. They are movers… shakers…the intellectuals and power brokers who’ve created many of the problems we now face. But whatever the challenge, real or imagined, they are ready to meet it head-on, with more ‘solutions’ that increase their own prestige and power. And there was Milei, yesterday, standing in front of them…and telling them all, essentially, to F-off.

Davos Man aims to control your money, your time, your home, your car…your entire life. And your thoughts. One of his chief worries for 2024 is that the common man might have thoughts he can’t control. A WEF report: “Some governments and platforms... may fail to act to effectively curb falsified information and harmful content, making the definition of ‘truth’ increasingly contentious across societies.”

The WEF has the full and final TRUTH, of course…and urges censorship for the good of the planet…along with the quest for equality…or to help the homeless (unless they are made homeless by a Davos-attending nation!) or make people use the proper pronouns…and now they want us all to live in small, energy efficient apartments, take only one trip a year, eat no meat, and drive an EV. We will “own nothing, but we will be happy.” They want us to vote democratic and read The New York Times. And, oh yes, at every meeting, we should acknowledge an Indian tribe that may or may not have once inhabited the land on which we stand.

Collectivism vs. Voluntarism: Milei spoke directly…and with the authority of someone who has ‘been there, done that’ against ‘collectivism.’ And here, we clarify. ‘Collectivist’ solutions don’t work. But the reason they don’t work is not that they involve collective action. We all work ‘collectively’ – together in one form of another. A company is a collective undertaking. So is a family. And a church. A tribe. A town. All of them involve groups of people working more or less together, following certain rules…with more or less the common goals…guided by free markets that tell us what things are really worth. And even the simplest product, such as a common pencil, takes as many as a million different people – from the one who plants the tree to the one who puts on the paint – with hundreds of different skills, machines, languages, and beliefs.

Man is a social animal. He cannot exist unless two of his species get together. And then, he cannot prosper unless he works with others…to hunt…to reap…to build…to exchange the fruits of one for the services of another. Capitalism is a collectivist undertaking. It requires near-constant exchanges and interchanges between people who are never fully independent of one another.

The difference between capitalism and the kind of collectivism that Milei is talking about is that the former is voluntary; the latter is not. The collectivist elite – many of whose big shots you find at Davos – produce no pencils…and, often, nothing else. We have no choice; we are forced to follow their rules and policies, whether we want to or not. Those policies – always favoring the insiders at the expense of everyone else – ruined Argentina over an 80-year period…and killed some 100 million people, worldwide, in the 20th century.

Capitalism has its elites too. But they are only elite so long as they provide goods and services to everyone else. When they fail, they are quickly sidelined. By contrast, collectivist elites, once they get power, are almost impossible to get rid of. Win-win becomes win-lose. And ‘The People’ get poorer.

We waited for the end of Milei’s speech. How would the elite react? Would they recognize that Milei was telling them that they were wasting their time and despoiling the world? Would they turn off his mic? Would they walk out? In the event, they sat in silence…and then gave him a polite applause, the kind reserved for honest preachers. The crowd must have known he was right; but they didn’t want to hear it."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

o

"The President of Argentina's Rallying Cry for Libertarianism"

Adventures With Danno, "Massive Price Increases At Kroger! This Is Ridiculous! What's Next!?"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 1/18/24

"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! 

This Is Ridiculous! What's Next!?"

"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! We are noticing a huge surge on price increases to the likes we have not seen in a while. It is important now more than ever we are paying attention and stocking up on sales as we see them. It's getting rough out here as many food items are becoming unaffordable!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Must View! Scott Ritter, "Everything Israel Is Doing Is Warcrime"

Scott Ritter, 1/17/24

"Everything Israel Is Doing Is Warcrime"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Things Will Get Much Worse, Very Powerful Forces Will Impact US Economy"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/17/24

"Things Will Get Much Worse, 

Very Powerful Forces Will Impact US Economy"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Dance of Life"

Full screen a must for this beautiful video!

Peder B. Helland,

"Dance of Life"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.

The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160728.html

The Poet: David Romano, "If Tomorrow Starts Without Me"

Full screen recommended.

David Romano, "If Tomorrow Starts Without Me"

Read by Tom O'Bedlam

o

"Dog's Last Day"

- https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-JTxAIq-1K4

So sadly beautiful...

Bill Bonner, "Revolt of the Masses"

Fire at the water tower, Place du Palais Royal,

February 24, 1848, By Eugéne Hagnauer.

"Revolt of the Masses"

Are "the people" finally losing faith in the infinite wisdom of their deciders?

by Bill Bonner

"Workers of the world, unite.

You have nothing to lose but your chains."

~ Karl Marx

Baltimore, Maryland - "Among the jitter and jive from Davos this week comes this gem. The elites are beginning to worry about a revolt of the masses. CNBC reports: "A growing detachment between political leaders and populations presents the biggest risk in a busy election year, according to Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte. The Allianz Risk Barometer published this month noted that political risk was already at a five-year high in 2023, with some 100 countries considered at high or extreme risk of civil unrest. Asked on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday what he considers the main global risk at present, Bäte pointed to a lack of trust from populations in their governments across major democracies..."

Why might The People lose faith in their deciders? What went wrong in the 21st century’ is becoming a popular subject for historians. Here’s Ed Snowden, now ‘on the lam’ in Moscow: "If I had to explain how the American Century collapsed in just 3 points, I might say: * Impoverishing the worker via union-busting & off-shoring * Unleashing the state by abandoning the gold standard * Continuously erasing essential liberties post-9/11."

“Exorbitant Privilege”: Snowden gets 2 out of 3, which is not bad. The end of the gold standard allowed government spending, debt, and cockamamie projects to increase enormously. And, he’s right that the feds took advantage of a fearful population, post-9/11, to grab more power in the Patriot Act. Union busting and off-shoring, too, may have contributed to lower compensation for the working classes, but the real source of the trouble was the funny money itself. Rather than make things and trade with other producers, Americans could buy on credit.

That is the benefit of what Giscard d’Estaing called the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of having the world’s reserve currency. After 1971, other countries took America’s green paper and treated it as real money.

But there was a big downside. The situation was a little like that of Spain after the conquistadores had seized the gold of Mexico and Peru. Ships laden with gold arrived in Spanish ports. The Spaniards were rich. From our book, "Empire of Debt" (written with Addison Wiggin…and soon to be re-released): "…the easy money from the new territories undermined honest industry. In the bubble economy of the early 16th century, Spain developed a trade deficit similar to that of the United States today. People took their money and bought goods from abroad. By the time the New World mined petered out, the Spanish were bankrupt. The Spanish government defaulted on its loans in 1557. 1575, 1607, 1627 and 1647."

Greedy Hands: An honest economy functions as people exchange goods and services for money…and use the money to buy goods and services from others. They all become better off, together. Distort the money and you distort the whole transaction…and sour the relationship between buyers and sellers. Some people no longer have to give to get…they just have to get their hands on this cheap ‘money.’ The new money, created by the Fed passed through Wall Street. Much of it stuck to greedy hands.

No surprise then, that in the period 2009 to 2023, the fellow with a hedge fund…an IPO…a SPAC…venture capital…or just an investment portfolio… watched his stocks rise by 87% after inflation. The poor working stiff, on the other hand, put his savings into a bank account, collected almost no interest…and its real value fell by 45%. But now, America’s paper money is petering out too. The feds can still print it, but the inflation cat is out of the bag. More printing leads to higher prices and higher interest rates.

And now, the workers of the world are losing faith in their leaders. Why? Because the decisions made by the deciders were almost unbelievably bad. Iraq, Afghanistan, Patriot Act, Wall Street bailout, zero interest rates policy for 10 years, stimmies, lockdowns, Inflation Reduction Act…in every instance doing nothing would have been far preferable. And thanks to this deranged activism, by 2024, the feds had added $29 trillion to the US national debt. Are the elites stupid? Why did they make so many bad decisions?

Corrupting Power: We’ve hammered on this nail many times, but we’ll give it another whack today. The future is unpredictable. But things follow patterns. Power corrupts, as Lord Acton reminds us. There is always an elite that takes control of a society. Over time these smart ‘deciders’ find ways to make their own lives richer…more secure…or more illustrious.

Wars are losers for The People. But they are much beloved by the firepower industry; trillions of dollars come their way. Giveaways and boondoggles do little to help the common man…but they are great for the parasites, the grifters, and the insiders. Wall Street – and the whole investor class – made an estimated $30 trillion in ‘excess wealth,’ thanks to the Fed’s low rates.

But what about The People themselves? Why do they go along? How come they now cling to two proven failures – Biden and Trump? Where are the lynch mobs? Where is the rope? Where is the candidate promising real reform? Everyone plays his role in the glorious theater of history. The People, in a late, degenerate empire, have their bit parts too. They give a ‘triumph’ to their incompetent generals. They re-elect their jackass politicians. They cheer their own destruction and kiss the boots that kick them."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Kinsman, Ohio, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Too Often...:

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word,

a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring,

all of which have the potential to turn a life around."

- Leo Buscaglia

"Revenge of the Real World"

"Revenge of the Real World"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Rather than stare at empty shelves, you have two options for distraction: You can don a virtual-reality headset and cavort with dolphins in the “metaverse” or you can trade various forms of phantom wealth that always go up (happy, happy!) because of the Fed.

Neither distraction actually solves any real-world problems, a reality we can call the “Revenge of the Real World.” We've entered a peculiar phase in American history in which illusions of wealth and control are the favored distractions from the unraveling of the real-world economy and social order.

Printing trillions of currency units can't restore the global supply chain or social cohesion. Rather, jacking phantom wealth to the moon is only accelerating the collapse of the social order and the economy even as it accomplishes absolutely nothing in terms of solving real-world problems. Let's start with the core economic realities of the 21st century…

The Facts:

1. The number of high-consumption ("middle-class") people doubled from 1 billion to 2 billion. The human populace has expanded to 8,019,876,189 individuals, but poor people who don't have enough money to consume large quantities of energy, goods and services delivered by the global supply chain don't have much of an impact on global consumption of energy and resources. It's the number of people jetting around the world playing their part in the landfill economy (toss the old one, buy a new one) who drive "growth" (i.e., waste is growth).

Strangely enough, there are actual physical limits to resources being transformed into junk being dumped in the landfills. Humanity's rapacious appetite for stuff has extracted all the cheap-to-extract resources and now all that are left are the increasingly expensive-to-extract resources.

2. Corporate America offshored most of the production of essentials to exploit the low labor and energy costs, minimal environmental standards and currency arbitrage of overseas production. The net result has been an astounding increase in corporate profits. But a funny thing happened on the way to Corporate Profit Nirvana: America became dependent on foreign supply chains. In essence, we traded national security for corporate profits. Now the real-world costs of that myopic greed are becoming apparent.

3. Global supply chains have been optimized for cheap energy and cheap credit. This optimization stripped away all the buffers as a means of maximizing profits. Once the system veered outside the narrow band of optimization, the entire system lost coherence and unraveled.

Counting on Magic: Now that the entire global supply chain has been optimized to maximize profits at the expense of buffers, the buffers are too thin to save the system from collapse. The entire dependency chain depends on cheap energy (all those cheap seats on wide-body aircraft were subsidizing the air cargo beneath the passengers' feet) and cheap credit, as consumers can't buy enough with earnings to keep the machine well-oiled. And firms in the dependency chain need ample cheap credit to function, as many have receivables that stretch out over 90 days. Without cheap credit, these firms would have to close down.

The status quo response would be amusing if the consequences weren't so dire: We don't need no stinking buffers! The supply chain for the landfill economy will be back up to full speed any day now, or maybe next year, but don't you worry, the conveyor belt from China to big-box stores to the landfill will be fully restored.

In the meantime, cavort with dolphins in the metaverse and trade tokens of phantom wealth to amuse yourself. We're counting on magic to put it all right, and if that doesn't work, then the real world's revenge will be something to behold. What about the precious dollar? Is it toast? Let’s think about this…

TINA: The consensus makes sense: The U.S. dollar is doomed because the Federal Reserve and the Treasury will conjure trillions of new dollars out of thin air to prop up the status quo entitlements, monopolies, cartels and debt/asset bubbles, and since little of this issuance actually increases productivity, all it will accomplish is the dilution/devaluation of the currency.

Put simply, the dollar will lose its purchasing power as the inevitable result of the need to print and borrow ever-increasing sums to pay interest on existing debts; fund bread and circuses to keep the masses placated; and keep inflating the asset bubbles in stocks, housing, bat guano, etc. to maintain the illusion of prosperity.

This destruction of the dollar is TINA writ large: There is no alternative. The only way to keep the status quo from imploding is to print as many trillions as are needed, and this inevitably devalues the currency to the point of worthlessness.

OK, we get it: TINA so the dollar dies. But let's consider TINA from the perspective of the deep state...

Will the Deep State Allow the Dollar to Crash? Destroying the purchasing power of the dollar destroys the engine of America's power, which is the ability ("exorbitant privilege") to conjure "money" out of thin air and be able to trade this "money" for cobalt, steel, semiconductors, etc. supplied by other nations.

If the dollar is destroyed by overissuance, then how do we buy the cobalt and other goodies we need to keep the aircraft carriers and all their aircraft in working order? This is a problem, for if we can't conjure "money" out of thin air and persuade everyone it still has value, then America's global influence dissipates into thin air.

So what the consensus proposes as inevitable is financial trickery will destroy America's global influence and its prosperity, and there's no alternative. In other words, the deep state will just throw up its collective hands and surrender its empire so Wall Street can continue inflating its bubble of phantom wealth, even as that destroys the dollar, America's global empire and ultimately its prosperity.

Is this really inevitable? Isn't it plausible that the deep state might rouse itself from its various distractions and take notice that once the dollar loses purchasing power the deep state loses all its power? Are there really no adults left in the room who can make this basic observation?

Wall Street or Empire? For the sake of argument, let's assume there are a few adults left who understand that the dollar is the linchpin of the entire empire and so it's actually worth protecting. And let's also assume these few adults understand that boatloads of parasites, leeches, speculators, etc. will have to be sacrificed, and all manner of politically sacrosanct bubbles, skims, scams, rackets, monopolies and cartels will have to be demolished, much to the dismay of the parasites, leeches, speculators, etc. who have gotten immensely wealthy off these bubbles, skims, scams, rackets, etc.

It seems impossible that the parasites, leeches, speculators, etc. at the top of the heap could be brought down. It's certainly a stretch, given their entrenched power. It seems much more likely that the game of incrementally devaluing the dollar will continue indefinitely. But what's the endgame of this devaluation? Is it really so faraway that the banquet of consequences will never be served? These sorts of things have a way of gathering momentum as self-reinforcing feedbacks kick in, and then the consequences are served up faster than anyone believed possible.

Which is more valuable: Wall Street's debt/asset bubbles or the global empire? You can't have both, so choose wisely. The contrarian bet is that the deep state finally awakens from its troubled sleep and decides the empire is more valuable than the bubbles, skims, scams, rackets, etc. and so the dollar will have to be defended regardless of the cost to those benefiting from its devaluation. Very few are willing to take that bet now, but let's get comfortable and watch the printing-borrowing-trillions devaluation game for a few more years and see how it plays out."

- dailyreckoning.com

Dan, I Allegedly, "What's Next For Your Wallet?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 1/17/24

"What's Next For Your Wallet?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Col. Douglas MacGregor, "Iran Launches Massive Military Move To Protect Houthis, Regional War Breaks Out"

Full screen recommended.

Col. Douglas MacGregor, 1/17/24

"Iran Launches Massive Military Move To Protect Houthis,

 Regional War Breaks Out"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Canadian Prepper, "Red Alert! WW3 Nuclear Plans Leaked! All Of Europe Mobilizing For War; Military Draft"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 1/17/24

"Red Alert! WW3 Nuclear Plans Leaked!

 All Of Europe Mobilizing For War; Military Draft; Day X"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Fear Grips The Market As World War III Begins"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/17/24

"Fear Grips The Market As World War III Begins"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "One Dollar Items - Stock Up On These Deals At Meijer!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 1/17/24

"One Dollar Items - 

Stock Up On These Deals At Meijer!"

"In today's vlog, we are at Meijer and are noticing a massive amount of food items on sale for one dollar. With grocery prices being the highest they have ever been, you don't want to miss this epic sale! Get your notepad pad ready as I take you shopping with me to show off these amazing deals!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 1/17/24

"Russian Typical Hard Discount Supermarket"

"What does a Russian typical supermarket look like in surburban Moscow? Take a look inside. How busy is it? What food items are available?

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Increasing Psychopathic Behavior Is A Sign That Society Is On The Verge Of Breaking Down"

"Increasing Psychopathic Behavior Is A Sign 

That Society Is On The Verge Of Breaking Down"

by Tyler Durden

"Discussions on collapse often turn to signs and signals - the economy, politics and social tensions have become increasingly unstable for many years now, and much like adding more and more weight to a man standing on a frozen lake, eventually the ice is going to break. The question is, how do we know when that moment will be?

As cultural systems begins to dissolve due to political clashes and economic decline the real evil tends to slither out of the woodwork. It happens slowly at first, then all at once. A sure sign of accelerating collapse is the growing prevalence of psychopaths and psychopathic behavior in the open.

The US appears to have entered the middle stages of such a collapse with many sociopaths and psychopaths beginning to feel that they might be able to act out their worst impulses without consequences. They are beginning to test the waters to see what they can get away with.

In the past ten years there has been a dramatic uptick in mass violence and theft. With the advent of social media it is now easier than ever for spontaneously planned riots to form with little warning, and in most cases these mobs are random in who and what they attack. They might organize in the name of politics or activism, but they tend to lash out at whatever targets are closest or easiest rather than the people they blame for their travails.

In most cases these events result in simple property destruction in urban areas, but more and more there has been an underlying and aggressive impulse to hurt people. There will come a time very soon when the the goal is not just to steal or vandalize, but to use instability as a smokescreen; a distraction the provides opportunities to harm others.

Psychopaths like to exploit the chaos of political turmoil to indulge their violent tendencies, or to convince others to do the same. If no one acts to eliminate the first wave of criminal actions during a social breakdown, then thousands of other criminals will also move to take advantage. The first wave becomes an avalanche, all because the system no longer provides sufficient incentives to behave.

The root psychology is hard to explain, but look at it this way – Imagine a spoiled toddler is kept in check by his parents in the pristine halls of a delicate museum. The toddler might throw fits, screaming and shouting because he wants to touch the many fragile items around him, but at least his parents are there to hold him back. He has not yet learned the responsibility and maturity necessary to have access to these treasures. Now imagine removing the parents entirely and telling the toddler there are no rules anymore?

The rush of joy he experiences is exhilarating; it is the feeling of sudden and unearned power. No one is around to stop him, therefore, he is going to test his own limits. He sees the ordered environment around him and he becomes frustrated. How dare this place restrict him with boundaries and structure. His first inclination is to destroy anything that he can get his hands on.

Now understand that there is a portion of any given adult population that has these same tendencies. They never grew up. They want to take or destroy what they cannot have; they are only waiting for the opportunity to do so without repercussions.

At this phase of a breakdown when the dominoes begin to topple, law enforcement generally folds and retreats, leaving the public with no first line of defense. Gangs and looters organize quickly and take territory rather than just taking people's possessions. Organized crime at the local level leads to large scale death and minimal opposition. People are so isolated and busy trying to scrape together a meager economic lifeline that they have no time or motivation to fight back.

The point of no return comes when regular people are afraid to leave their homes. Organization at the neighborhood level with an aggressive posture must be enacted or the most vicious attacks will be visited on the population.

Sometimes, though, the psychopaths we have to deal with during a collapse are within the very government that is supposed to protect our liberties. This is a situation in which the criminals are given license to use violence against the citizenry through the illusion of law. The populace is then confronted with the inevitable question - Are laws worth following when psychopaths write them?

When corrupt people run government, good becomes evil and evil becomes good. Consider the extreme double standards in place between the treatment of leftist activist mobs and conservative protesters. Look at the government and media response to the BLM riots versus their response to the Jan 6 event. In the case of the capitol "riots", police fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the otherwise peaceful crowd, then when the protesters reacted violently, they were accused of "insurrection."

Is there any example of this kind of setup used against the political left? No. Instead, the media and public officials describe the destructive mobs as "fiery but mostly peaceful." The double standard is absurd, but then again, it's meant to be. Why? Because the psychopaths among the political left were being rewarded and encouraged. Conservatives and moderates are supposed to feel defeated, making them unwilling to fight back any longer. These are the kinds of conditions that fuel unhinged and predatory people, unleashing them on the population. When psychopaths feel protected, total upheaval quickly follows."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"We Will Not Go Down"

Full screen recommended.

Michael Heart, "We Will Not Go Down"

"John Mearsheimer: Hamas Prepares To Counterattack After Israel Just Lost At The Court Of Justice"

Judge Napolitano, 1/16/24

"John Mearsheimer: Hamas Prepares To Counterattack

 After Israel Just Lost At The Court Of Justice"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

The Hill, 1/16/24

"New Horrifying Video Details Israeli Genocide"

- https://www.youtube.com/

Don't you dare look away, Americans, YOU paid for all this!

So, the psychopathically degenerate, racist, apartheid, murderously genocidal ZioNazi entity, with exactly the same mentality as the Nazis exterminating the Jews and others whom they called "untermenschen", while these Zionists call the Palestinians "human animals", IS committing genocide for all the world to see, and WE, the United States of America, to our eternal shame and disgrace allow and support this! 24,300 old people, men, women and 12,000 CHILDREN slaughtered by over 29,000 bombs including over 6,000 2,000 lb. bombs the US gave them, destroying 70% of all Gaza homes, 300,000 out of 439,000 homes have been destroyed! At least 7,000 more victims are still buried under the rubble! Water and electricity have been cut off and food is blocked from entry! What do YOU call that? Read this, then tell me! CP

12,000 children!

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: US Drowning In Debt - The Nation Is Sinking"

Strong Language Alert!

Gerald Celente, 1/16/24

"Trends Journal: US Drowning In Debt - 

The Nation Is Sinking"

"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."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "The World Isn't Ending, It's Just Ending For The Unprepared"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/16/24

"The World Isn't Ending, 

It's Just Ending For The Unprepared"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"21st Century Debacle"

"21st Century Debacle"

Two decades of debt, deficits, war and inflation...

by Bill Bonner

If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then, give up. 

No point in being a damned fool about it.

~ W.C. Fields

Baltimore, Maryland - "Markets were closed yesterday…we spent the day at home, gentle snow floating down in tiny flakes. And today, the headline news from Bloomberg: "Trump Trounces Rivals, Advances Toward Biden Rematch."

Last week, we were guessing about the real challenges faced by the US empire. What will really affect our wealth, security and happiness? The Houthis? Nah…they aren’t going to make any difference. The war between Russia and the Ukraine? Nah…it doesn’t really matter who wins. AI? Old people? Crime? Immigrants? Racism? White Supremacy? Global warming? Inequality? Most are distractions…made up threats, designed to make people afraid, so they will grant more power to the elite to protect them.

How about the race for the White House, between (currently) two geezers? Nope again. Both of them have already shown us who they are and what they will do. Whichever one wins, the powers-that-be will remain the powers-that-are…agencies and departments will continue to function as they do now…deficits and wars will continue. Voters must know what they got during the last 8 years; the puzzling thing is that they seem to want more of it.

The Empire’s Twin Threats: What are the real threats America faces? We don’t have to look very hard; they’re readily available in the history books. And they can be reduced to two main ones – war and bankruptcy (inflation). Making war requires enemies; eventually they humiliate you. Overspending, meanwhile, wrecks your economy. Wars cost money; they have to be financed somehow. Taxes are raised. Money is borrowed. And then, the deciders turn to inflation. Deficits become routine. Real interest rates rise, to make it easier for the feds to borrow. Investors, fearing inflation and eager to take advantage of higher rates in the real economy, withdraw from Fed debt auctions. That leaves the central bank as the only source of funds…and the printing press as the only way it can get them.

But wait, there’s always more to the story. The whole point of having deciders, is that the elites can make better decisions, on behalf of the public, than the common man. They’ve demonstrated their superiority by becoming richer and more powerful…better educated…with more responsible positions than the rest of us. The great Italian economist, Wilfred Pareto, spelled it out. The top 20% decide. The bottom 80% go along. Always. Everywhere.

The elite are elected to Congress and appointed to various posts in the bureaucracy. They’re also on the boards of large corporations…they teach in prestigious universities…and write magazine articles and books that tell the rest of us what to think. That’s why they’re the deciders. But why, then, did they make some of the worst calls in American history, by going to war in the Middle East…and taking 20 years to get out of it? And by adding $29 trillion to US debt?

The “America Last” Policy: At the beginning of the 21st century, the deciders had a choice. They could have learned their lessons from Korea and Vietnam…they could have just said ‘no’ to more pointless wars. They could have decided to ‘give peace a chance;’ they could have adopted an “America First” policy.

They might have learned something from America’s economic history too. Lyndon Johnson’s ‘guns and butter’ spending set the US up for the recession and inflation of the 1970s. There is no law that says we have to go deeper and deeper into debt. Our $34 trillion in debt? It’s not fate…it’s a choice made by the deciders.

They could have simply decided to do what every householder in America does – balance the budget. No more deficits. Just limit spending to what they could raise in taxes. The economy was very healthy at the end of the 20th century. It was the envy of the world. Tax receipts were more than enough to fund important federal activities. No grand acts of genius or grandstanding heroics were required. No superhuman show of discipline was necessary. All they had to do was not do something stupid. They had to balance the budget and avoid unnecessary ‘wars of choice.’ If they had only done those two simple things, our debt today would be only around $5 trillion, not $34 trillion…we wouldn’t have to borrow trillions more just to pay the interest on it…and we wouldn’t be facing a catastrophic debt crisis.

Alas, they failed miserably…Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden – from 1999 to 2024. And now, two of the deciders who failed most spectacularly are the frontrunners for the White House 2025-2029. If elected, they will surely fail again."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"One Of The Most Beautiful Things I've Ever Seen"

"One Of The Most Beautiful Things I've Ever Seen"

View it here, no sign-in, turn music on:

- https://www.facebook.com/reel/894089869112246

Thank you Kamosa!

Emmylou Harris, "Pledging My Love"

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "A Dream"

Full screen recommended.

Peder B. Helland, "A Dream"

"Beautiful Relaxing Music • 

Norwegian Nature & Violin, Flute, Piano & Harp Music"

- https://pederbhelland.lnk.to/websiteYL

"A Look to the Heavens"

“NGC 253 is not only one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, it is also one of the dustiest. Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel in the constellation of Sculptor, NGC 253 lies only about ten million light-years distant.

NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest group to our own Local Group of Galaxies. The dense dark dust accompanies a high star formation rate, giving NGC 253 the designation of starburst galaxy. Visible in the above photograph is the active central nucleus, also known to be a bright source of X-rays and gamma rays.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111220.html

The Poet: William Blake, “The Tyger”

“The Tyger”

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art.

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”

- William Blake

"What Do We Here..."

“Father, O father! what do we here

In this land of unbelief and fear?

The Land of Dreams is better far,

Above the light of the morning star.”

- William Blake, “The Land of Dreams

Dan, I Allegedly, "Look! It's Much Worse"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 1/16/24

"Look! It's Much Worse"

"The one and only Jamie Dimon steps forward and tells us that San Francisco is an absolute disaster. It’s even worse than New York city. What’s next?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Delhi, Ontario, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

“Albert Camus on Strength of Character and How to Ennoble Our Minds in Difficult Times”

“Albert Camus on Strength of Character 

and How to Ennoble Our Minds in Difficult Times”

by Maria Popova

“In 1957, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) became the second youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to him for work that “with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” (It was with this earnestness that, days after receiving the coveted accolade, he sent his childhood teacher a beautiful letter of gratitude.)

More than half a century later, his lucid and luminous insight renders Camus a timeless seer of truth, one who ennobles and enlarges the human spirit in the very act of seeing it – the kind of attentiveness that calls to mind his compatriot Simone Weil, whom he admired more than he did any other thinker and who memorably asserted that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

Nowhere does Camus’s generous attention to the human spirit emanate more brilliantly than in a 1940 essay titled “The Almond Trees” (after the arboreal species that blooms in winter), found in his “Lyrical and Critical Essays” (public library) – the superb volume that gave us Camus on happiness, despair, and how to amplify our love of life. Penned at the peak of WWII, to the shrill crescendo of humanity’s collective cry for justice and mercy, Camus’s clarion call for reawakening our noblest nature reverberates with newfound poignancy today, amid our present age of shootings and senseless violence.

At only twenty-seven, Camus writes: “We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” [D.H.] Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”

In a sentiment evocative of the 1919 manifesto “Declaration of the Independence of the Mind” - which was signed by such luminaries as Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Rabindranath Tagore, Jane Addams, Upton Sinclair, Stefan Zweig, and Hermann Hesse – Camus argues that this “kick” is to be delivered by the deliberate cultivation of the mind’s highest virtues: “If we are to save the mind we must ignore its gloomy virtues and celebrate its strength and wonder. Our world is poisoned by its misery, and seems to wallow in it. It has utterly surrendered to that evil which Nietzsche called the spirit of heaviness. Let us not add to this. It is futile to weep over the mind, it is enough to labor for it.

But where are the conquering virtues of the mind? The same Nietzsche listed them as mortal enemies to heaviness of the spirit. For him, they are strength of character, taste, the “world,” classical happiness, severe pride, the cold frugality of the wise. More than ever, these virtues are necessary today, and each of us can choose the one that suits him best. Before the vastness of the undertaking, let no one forget strength of character. I don’t mean the theatrical kind on political platforms, complete with frowns and threatening gestures. But the kind that through the virtue of its purity and its sap, stands up to all the winds that blow in from the sea. Such is the strength of character that in the winter of the world will prepare the fruit.

Elsewhere in the volume, Camus writes: “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” Each time our world cycles through a winter of the human spirit, Camus remains an abiding hearth of the invisible summer within us, his work a perennial invitation to reinhabit our deepest decency and live up to our most ennobled nature.

Complement this particular excerpt from the thoroughly elevating “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, with Nietzsche on what it really means to be a free spirit, and Susan Sontag on how to be a moral human being, then revisit Camus on happiness, unhappiness, and our self-imposed prisons and our search for meaning.“

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"O You..."

"Life passes like a flash of lightning, whose blaze barely lasts long enough to see. While the earth and sky stand still forever, how swiftly changing time flies across mans face. O you who sit over your full cup and do not drink, tell me, for whom are you still waiting?" 

- Hermann Hesse