Monday, March 18, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "America Is One Step Closer To Collapse"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/18/24
"America Is One Step Closer To Collapse"
"America is going to see much more chaos and unrest as the economy slows. Austin Texas one of the hottest housing markets in America has cooled way down does this mean something bigger?"
Comments here:

"Fear..."

"I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on Fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed. My father taught me that, along with a few other things that have kept my life interesting."
- Hunter S. Thompson
o
"I was as afraid as the next man in my time and maybe more so. But with the years, fear had come to be regarded as a form of stupidity to be classed with overdrafts, acquiring a venereal disease or eating candies. Fear is a child's vice and while I loved to feel it approach, as one does with any vice, it was not for grown men, and the only thing to be afraid of was the presence of true and imminent danger in a form that you should be aware of and not be a fool if you were responsible for others." 
- Ernest Hemingway, "True at First Light"

Bill Bonner, "Evil and Stupid"

"Evil and Stupid"
America's two party system,
 and the predictable crisis to which it leads...
by Bill Bonner

“We have two parties here, and only two. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party…I’m very proud to be a member of the stupid party…Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship.”
- M.S. Evans

Youghal, Ireland - "No new dots today. So, let’s make sure we see how the old ones connect. Friday, we looked at how stocks have become very expensive. We live in an Age of Bubbles. 1999, 2008, 2021…and now, just three years later…a new bubble – this time, concentrated in the Magnificent 7, big tech stocks. But some things always happen. Bubbles always pop. And it probably won’t be long before the AI bubble pops. Then, people who were hoping to get rich quick, thanks to the spiffy new technology, will get poorer, in a hurry, thanks to the very old boom-bust cycle.

And here’s something else that always happens: when the cost of credit goes up, bankruptcies go up too. This year, with interest rates substantially higher than they were a few years ago, bankruptcy lawyers are back in high clover. Here’s the Financial Times: "Debt defaults at highest rate since global financial crisis, S&P reveals. "This year’s tally of corporate defaults stands at 29 – the highest year-to-date count since the 36 recorded during the same period in 2009, according to the rating agency."

Bubble, Bubble: In the financial crisis of ’09, the Bernanke Fed stepped in, pushed interest rates down, saved many big debtors – including some of the biggest banks on Wall Street – and trimmed billings for the bankruptcy bar. That didn’t have to happen. It was a mistake; Bernanke panicked and set the stage for an even bigger crisis later. The lowest interest rates in history encouraged almost everyone to go deeper into debt. And no one went farther down that rathole than the US government – adding $25 trillion in new debt since 2009.

And now, the Federal government itself is in over its head…and the Fed is in no position to rescue borrowers or stock market investors with more debt. This is new. And important. In 2000, and again in 2008, the Fed boosted stocks by lowering its key lending rate by 500 basis points…and ‘printing’ up the money to cover deficits. But that was before the inflation bogeyman was on the loose. Today, the Fed can’t get away with that kind of stunt. Bond buyers will see more inflation coming; they’ll sell bonds…forcing up interest rates, making it even more expensive for the feds to borrow.

When you are already $35 trillion in debt…and counting on adding another $16 trillion over the next 10 years…higher interest rates are not what you want to read about in the morning news. Even at 5%, the interest cost could be $2.5 trillion per year. That, in turn, would force the feds to borrow (and print) even more to cover the interest expense. That is when we’d see another thing that always happens. When you have to borrow more and more money, just to keep up with the interest payments on previous debt…you are doomed. The Fed will be very reluctant to get into that situation. It will not want to ‘print’ more money just to keep stock prices or a few high profile businesses from going bust.

A Predictable Crisis: So far, it hasn’t had to take action. Inflation rates seem to be moderating and interest rates are coming down. The vigilantes (who are supposed to punish federal borrowing by demanding higher interest rates) have been on a long break too. They “‘snooze, as Treasury bonds shrug off vast borrowing,” says the Financial Times.

But the feds are set to borrow an amount equal to more than 5% of GDP every year for the next 10 years. That is not something that has to happen; but it is something that will happen. And even those numbers depend on clear sailing, with no troublesome storms. In the event of a recession (almost guaranteed), the feds will borrow and spend more.

Yes, dear reader, the US faces ‘the most predictable crisis ever,’ as debt increases faster than GDP. You can see it coming from a mile away. The obvious thing to do is to avoid the disaster by bringing the rate of debt growth down. And the obvious way to do that is to balance the federal budget. But this is one thing that the evil party and the stupid party agree on: nothing can be allowed to interfere with America’s rendezvous with bankruptcy.

You might wonder: how come the richest country in the world…near the peak of its power and wealth…can’t pay its own bills? Why does it have to pass the cost along to future generations…who have no say in the matter? We’ll save that question for tomorrow. For now, we connect two important dots. The quantity of US Treasury debt is soaring. The demand for it depends on the interest rate. And somewhere along the line, the bond vigilantes are likely to hear an alarm go off. Torsten Slok at Apollo Global Management: “…a really weak auction could wake [them] up.” Who knows what will happen; but real interest rates will probably go up."

"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "Last Chance with the IRS"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 3/18/24
"Last Chance with the IRS"
"The IRS is issued a warning and they are giving people a week to fix the ERC problem or you will have to pay massive penalties. Plus, there is going to be real problems when it comes to real estate. Big changes ahead."
Comments here:

"World War III Update, 3/18/24"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/18/24
"Alert! US Emergency Deployment, 
NATO Full Nuclear Drills Near Russia; Putin Goes Off; Israel Panics"
Comments here:
o
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/18/24
"Alastair Crooke: The Resistance to Israel is Ready"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 3/18/24
"Putin Is Re-elected, Ukraine Is Done, NATO Is Done"
Comments here:

John Wilder, "A Modest Proposal Concerning Haiti"

"A Modest Proposal Concerning Haiti"
by John Wilder

“Don’t worry. It’s good luck. In Haiti.” 
– Caddyshack

"Haiti is in trouble. Again. This is not a repeat from (spins wheel) nearly every year in Haiti’s history. If you look back, more Haitian leaders have been killed and eaten (hopefully in that order) than there are grains of sand in a beach.

Okay. That may be an exaggeration, since I made up the statistic. But it’s clear that Haiti is awful. The best part of Haiti is not even close to being as good as the worst part of the United States. I believe it was Michael Yon who described Haitians as “Cannibals Without Borders” which is a phrase I really hate for the sole reason that I didn’t come up with that one on my own. Dangit.

Haitians have a history that would make Pol Pot jealous. From the beginning, it was born in blood and slavery, and then managed, somehow, to get worse. I want to make a stand, right here and now, and say that the number of Haitians that should be let into the country is zero.

To be clear, I don’t want most anyone allowed in anymore, but I decided to pick on Haiti because it’s the latest foreign hellhole that will soon be sending in droves of awful people trying to escape the very problems that they created by moving to Nebraska or some place so they can bring the wonders of Voodoo (yes, they still do that) and cannibalism (yes, they still do that) and rape (yes, it’s the national sport) to the Cornhusker state.

As I said, this isn’t entirely a Haitian thing, though they’ve managed the impossible: they make communist Cuba communist Venezuela, and all of the Mad Max® movies look like paradise in comparison to Tuesday in Haiti.

No, the biggest reason I don’t want Haitians to come to the United States is because I really feel empathy for the Haitians and wouldn’t want to expose them to the horrors of our country. First, it’s a philosophical question: The GloboLeftElite tells me that all cultures are equal. So, if all cultures are equal, I think that depriving Haiti of their best and brightest is selfish. They should stay home and keep their totally equal culture going. I mean, why shouldn’t they give cannibalism a chance?

Point Two: I’ve been reliably informed that the culture of the United States is filled with systemic racism. Why would we want to bring more People of Color into a situation where they would face that? Why would they want to come here? I realize that Point One says that all cultures are equal, but it’s been pointed out that the culture of the United States is bad, so we cannot in good conscience let anyone else in. Ever. We’re that bad. We need to keep everyone else from living here.

Point Three: I’ve been reliably informed that the United States, while having no culture of its own, steals the culture of various people across the world. Imagine the horror! White teenagers are making tacos, TACOS!, at the local Taco Bell® thus stealing the sacred food that only Hispanics can make and despite the GloboLeftElite© being in favor of diversity.

An aside: I came up with a climate-friendly way to stop the illegal alien problem while fighting Climate Change™ by turning all the illegal aliens into food to stop them from entering the most carbon dioxide creating economy on the planet and killing us all. Sadly, this would be (I am reliably informed by the GloboLeftistElite) cultural appropriation from Haitians. Perhaps we should ship all of the illegal aliens to Haiti to allow them to be consumed, thus feeding Haitians and slowing Global Warming®?

Point Four: The Haitians might feel bad because there are still statues left standing of amazing Americans and Europeans that have achieved things that Haitians didn’t, like killing but not eating lots of Japanese or going to the Moon and not killing or eating anyone up there. We really want to spare their feelings.

Point Five: The vast majority of Black Studies programs in the United States wouldn’t be good for Haitians because they do not, in fact, deal much with black people, but rather with how evil white people (and now those sneaky Asians) have been bad to black people. Since the vast majority of Haitian History (since 1800 or so) has been more-or-less white people free, these college course would just confuse them.

Point Six: Many Haitians actively say that they hate white people. Good Heavens! The United States is literally filled with white people! I think we should take them (and every other illegal alien that hates white people) and help them by sending them to a country without white people, like Wakanda or the upper part of the Amazon drainage basin.

Point Seven: The United States is one of the most slave-free countries in the world today. In all of the countries of North and South America, Haiti is number two in terms of per capita modern slavery. Why would we want to impose our anti-slavery cultural imperialism on the absolutely equal (according to the GloboLeftElite) slavery practices of Haitians?

In summary, we need to keep Haitians out of the United States because we don’t want to expose them to the toxic United States culture (which also does not exist) which would infect their totally-not-awful-and-not-at-all-a-hellhole-culture-which-is-totally-equivalent-to-the-United-States-except-it’s-better-because-the-Haitians-aren’t-imperialist-colonizers.

In summary, Haiti is only in trouble because we have tried to help it in the past. We could help by keeping the Haitians in there by sinking their boats and not sending them food except for airdropping them the illegal aliens who are currently suffering oppression and racism by being in the United States.

See? Hard problems have simple Wilder solutions."
o
Related:
"The Unmitigated Racist Gall of 
Suggesting Haitians Give Up Cannibalism"
by Ben Bartee

"Some time in the past, liberal thinkers of the Western worldview cultivated a concept called “cultural relativism,” which has since rendered the Western mind a stupefied mess, unable to pass any sort of moral judgment at all on other cultures - let alone assert its own superiority when it’s warranted (almost all cultures have at least something that they offer better than the rest; the culture-making art is taking - “appropriating,” if you will - those elements of foreign cultures that are noble and discarding those that are not). I have explored this phemonenon and its manifestations at great lengths in my expat memoir, "Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile."

We have seen the ramifications of cultural relativism, driven to its maximalist conclusion, play out in the recent melodrama regarding Haitian cannibal gangs. Via NBC News: “As Haiti faces an extreme political and societal crisis amid a wave of intense violence, tech billionaire Elon Musk and right-wing pundits online are weaponizing unverified claims of cannibalism coming out of the conflict to advance a political agenda on immigration. Musk and conservative influencers have spread the message to millions, smearing Haitian migrants as cannibals as they endure deep uncertainty about the future of their country and family members still there.

The claims are getting tens of millions of views on the social media platform X, where false or misleading information has spread since Musk bought the app and slashed content moderation. Many of the people spreading the sensational claims are premium subscribers on X, meaning their content can make them money through advertising sales."

The accusations of widespread cannibalism are based on what experts said was a likely intimidation tactic from select gang members: In some videos, the most prominent examples being at least two years old, alleged members of violent gangs in Haiti appear to bite into human flesh. Experts said these videos are likely part of propaganda campaigns designed to scare rivals and terrorize local Haitians rather than a reflection of common or normalized behavior. One former armed group went by the name ‘Cannibal Army.’”

Well, the acknowledgment of the practice of institutionalized cannibalism doesn’t get much more explicit than naming one’s gang “Cannibal Army.” But let’s not let such an admission get in the way of the classic practice of white self-flagellation. Via Rolling Stone: “There’s a long, shameful history of white westerners baselessly accusing Haitians of cannibalism and human sacrifice, often connecting them to Haitian Vodou, a heavily stereotyped African diasporic religion.”

Of course, the practice of cannibalism as a tool of war and political intimidation and spiritual empowerment among descendants of Africans is well-documented, perhaps nowhere better than this Vice documentary (when Vice produced quality work).
o
WARNING! ABSOLUTELY HORRIFYING VIDEO! VIEW WITH DISCRETION!
"The Cannibal Warlords of Liberia"
"VICE travels to West Africa to rummage through the messy remains of a country ravaged by  years of civil war. Despite the United Nation's eventual intervention, most of Liberia's young people continue to live in abject poverty, surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution. The former child soldiers who were forced into war have been left to fend for themselves, the murderous warlords who once led them in cannibalistic rampages have taken up as so-called community leaders, and new militias are lying in wait for the opportunity to reclaim their country from a government they rightly mistrust."
o
The reality, is, though, that this current media narrative is a classic case of gaslighting and goalpost-shifting, playing on the well-conditioned self-hatred and cultural relativism engrained in the minds of the whites.

For now, we have the denials from the likes of NBC that cannibalism exists at all - or, if it does, that it’s a freak occurrence and not indicative of any sort of cultural tolerance of the practice. However, even if it came to light that cannibalism were practiced far and wide in Haiti - even if the country made a national holiday out of it by popular referendum - the next move from the media liberal class would be to celebrate Haitian cannibalism as an act of sacred cultural Diversity™ and smear anyone who objected as a White Supremacist™ bigot. That’s how this game gets played."

Jim Kunstler, "Gags and Jibes"

"Gags and Jibes"
by Jim Kunstler

“My law firm is currently in court fighting for free 
and fair elections in 52 cases across 19 states.” 
- Marc Elias, DNC Lawfare Ninja, punking voters.

"Have you noticed how quickly our Ukraine problem went away, vanished, phhhhttttt? At least from the top of US news media websites. The original idea, as cooked-up by departed State Department strategist Victoria Nuland, was to make Ukraine a problem for Russia, but instead we made it a problem for everybody else, especially ourselves in the USA, since it looked like an attempt to kick-start World War Three. Now she is gone, but the plans she laid apparently live on.

Our Congress so far has resisted coughing up another $60-billion for the Ukraine project - most of it to be laundered through Raytheon (RTX), General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin - so instead “Joe Biden” sent Ukraine’s President Zelensky a few reels of Laurel and Hardy movies. The result was last week’s prank: four groups of mixed Ukraine troops and mercenaries drawn from sundry NATO members snuck across the border into Russia’s Belgorod region to capture a nuclear weapon storage facility while Russia held its presidential election. I suppose it looked good on the war-gaming screen.

Alas, the raid was a fiasco. Russian intel was on it like white-on-rice. The raiders met ferocious resistance and retreated into a Russian mine-field - this was the frontier, you understand, between Kharkov (Ukr) and Belgorod (Rus) - where they were annihilated. The Russian election concluded Sunday without further incident. V.V. Putin, running against three other candidates from fractional parties, won with 87 percent of the vote. He’s apparently quite popular.

“Joe Biden,” not so much here, where he is pretending to run for reelection with a party pretending to go along with the gag. Ukraine is lined up to become Afghanistan Two, another gross embarrassment for the US foreign policy establishment and “JB” personally. So, how long do you think V. Zelensky will be bopping around Kiev like Al Pacino in Scarface?

This time, poor beleaguered Ukraine won’t need America’s help plotting a coup. When that happens, as it must, since Mr. Z has nearly destroyed his country, and money from the USA for government salaries and pensions did not arrive on-time, there will be peace talks between his successors and Mr. Putin’s envoys. The optimum result for all concerned - including NATO, whether the alliance knows it or not - will be a demilitarized Ukraine, allowed to try being a nation again, though in a much-reduced condition than prior to its becoming a US bear-poking stick. It will be on a short leash within Russia’s sphere-of-influence, where it has, in fact, resided for centuries, and life will go on. Thus, has Russia at considerable cost, had to reestablish the status quo.

Meanwhile, Saturday night, “Joe Biden” turned up at the annual Gridiron dinner thrown by the White House [News] Correspondents’ Association, where he told the ballroom of Intel Community quislings: “You make it possible for ordinary citizens to question authority without fear or intimidation.” The dinner, you see, is traditionally a venue for jokes and jibes. So, this must have been a gag, right? Try to imagine The New York Times questioning authority. For instance, the authority of the DOJ, the FBI, the DHS, and the DC Federal District court. Instant hilarity, right?

As it happens, though, today, Monday, March 18, 2024, attorneys for the State of Missouri (and other parties) in a lawsuit against “Joe Biden” (and other parties) will argue in the Supreme Court that those government agencies above, plus the US State Department, with assistance from the White House (and most of the White House press corps, too), were busy for years trying to prevent ordinary citizens from questioning authority. For instance, questioning the DOD’s Covid-19 prank, the CDC’s vaccination op, the DNC’s 2020 election fraud caper, the CIA’s Frankenstein experiments in Ukraine, the J6 “insurrection,” and sundry other trips laid on the ordinary citizens of the USA.

Specifically, Missouri v. Biden is about the government’s efforts to coerce social media into censoring any and all voices that question official dogma. The case is about birthing the new concept - new to America, anyway - known as “misinformation” - that is, truth about what our government is doing that cannot be allowed to enter the public arena, making it very difficult for ordinary citizens to question authority. The government will apparently argue that they were not coercing, they were just trying to persuade the social media execs to do this or that.

Maybe one of the justices might ask how it came to be that a Chief Counsel of the FBI, James Baker, after a brief rest-stop at a DC think tank, happened to take the job as Chief Counsel at Twitter in 2020. That was a mighty strange switcheroo, don’t you think? And ordinary citizens were not generally informed of it until the fall of 2022, when Elon Musk bought Twitter and delved into its workings."

"Economic Market Snapshot 3/18/24"

"Economic Market Snapshot 3/18/24"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
Comprehensive, essential truth.
Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Job cuts and much more.
Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
And now... The End Game...
o

Greg Hunter, "Stop All Nanoparticle CV19 Vax Injections Now"

"Stop All Nanoparticle CV19 Vax Injections Now"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Karen Kingston is a biotech analyst and former Pfizer employee who has been reporting on the nightmare of the CV19 mRNA nanoparticle vax. Kingston proved the CV19 vax was a bioweapon from the very beginning and is now on a team pushing to stop using it in Florida. Kingston says, “We know the mRNA injections never provided any benefit, and because of that, they actually meet the definition of a biological weapon under 18 U.S. Code 175. It’s also a weapon of mass destruction under Florida law 790.166. The statement of facts that was submitted (to the Florida Supreme Court) goes through all the evidence. There was 1.5 million adverse events. The definition of a weapon is any biological agent or device that doesn’t prevent against infection, doesn’t prevent any kind of disease and was not done under bona fide research. We know that research that was done with the Phase 1, 2 and 3 trials, the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) that was given to Americans and the FDA approved product, none of that was legitimate. There was no informed consent. That is criminal biological human experimentation. That, by definition, is biowarfare. There is no benefit. It actually harms people. If you look at Pfizer’s documents, Moderna’s documents and the government’s documents, they knew all along that harms outweighed the benefits of this product in any population.”

Dr. Joe Sansone in Florida has been the driving force to get these CV19 mRNA nanoparticle shots banned in that state. A recent post on Kingston’s Substack says, “Dr. Sansone is seeking for the Florida Supreme Court to issue an order to Governor DeSantis and Attorney General Moody to uphold their duties of enforcing federal and Florida laws by prohibiting the unlawful and criminal distribution, promotion and administration of the engineered mRNA nanoparticle injections on Floridians and to protect Floridians by seizing the injections.”


Dr. Sansone is not the only one who thinks these CV19 injections should be “banned.” Kingston says, “The Florida Surgeon General and the Florida Department of Health have said these mRNA (CV19) injections should be used in NO human beings. They said these are gene editing technologies that can disrupt the human genome and make permanent changes. According to the DOD, our own government and national security agencies say if you change the genome of any species, including human beings, that is the extermination of that species. This makes it a weapon of mass destruction. The evidence is put together in such a damning way you cannot argue to keep the (CV19 mRNA nanoparticle) shots.”

In closing, Kingston reminds us, “States have the right to block any drug or medical device even if the FDA approves it.” In the not-so-distant future, let’s hope many states follow Florida’s lead and ban the CV19 bioweapon shots." There is much more in the 1-hour in-depth interview.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumblle as he goes One-on-One with renowned biotech analyst Karen Kingston as she gives an update on the push to stop all CV19 bioweapon mRNA nanoparticle injections.

"Sorting for Stupidity?"

Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people
who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
- Laurence Peter

"Sorting for Stupidity?"
Thoughts on the state of the federal government.
by Glenn Harlan Reynolds

"Is the federal government sorting for stupidity? I had this thought when I was out for beers with an old friend, who’s a former Senior Executive Service bureaucrat with the federal government. He was remarking that in the old days of Washington, say up through the 1960s or maybe the 1970s, being a senior federal bureaucrat was a plum job, and often even paid more than working in the private sector.

That was also a time when Washington, D.C. was a comparatively sleepy town where a senior civil servant’s salary was plenty to allow a nice house in the suburbs and meals at the best restaurants (such as they were) that Washington had to offer.

Now, however, you can make much more money outside the government, trying to influence it, than you can make inside the government, trying to do your job. The result is a steady movement of the smartest people out of government. That of course tends to mean that the people who remain are, well, not the smartest. (There are plenty of exceptions on both sides of this, of course, but the overall impact is as described.)

The reason why it’s so lucrative to influence the federal bureaucracy now is that the federal bureaucracy is sweeping and powerful. You would be a fool – as Microsoft learned in the 1980s and 1990s when it bragged about not having a DC office – not to try to influence it, if only out of self-protection. Back when the federal government was much smaller, say in the 1940s, 1950s, and even the 1960s, there was less call to influence it, and so the opportunities for people to earn big salaries by moving from administrating to lobbying were much less. But that changed.

This happened in the early 1970s, during the Nixon Administration. Despite (because of?) Nixon’s conservative reputation, his administration saw an explosion of federal regulatory power, to the point where those years are known among scholars of administrative law as the “regulatory explosion.” New agencies like the EPA and OSHA were created, new statutes like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, OSHA Act, etc., were passed, and existing agencies were given – or simply assumed – much farther-reaching powers.

As Jonathan Rauch notes in his classic book, "Demosclerosis," in 1929 the federal government made up about three percent of the U.S. economy. Now it’s closer to twenty-five percent. Also according to Rauch, interest-group domination started to take off about the time of World War II. Whereas the number of lobby groups was about 400 in the late 1920s, by 1950 that number was over 2,000, and the mid-1990s the number approached 25,000. It has only expanded since then. A government that. can regulate wages attracts the attention of lobbyists for trade unions and manufacturers; a government that can pass "crime" bills attracts the attention of police unions, local governments, gun-control activists and opponents, and so on. This should come as no surprise.

(Much of this discussion comes from things discussed in Chapter 10 of "The Appearance of Impropriety," coauthored with Peter W. Morgan, where you will find many of the citations for items mentioned below).

And the regulatory explosion facilitated the brain drain in two ways. Even with the post-New Deal expansion, before the 1970s Washington was something of a backwater, famously derided by JFK as a city of northern charm and southern efficiency. Outside of highly regulated industries like railroads, airlines, and broadcasting, few paid it much attention. And although there were Washington journalists, lawyers, and trade associations they were much less important than they would come. Compared to other major cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, Washington didn’t matter as much. It was a city of bureaucrats and mediocre but inexpensive restaurants, not a place that catered to the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

The regulatory explosion vastly accelerated the trend away from that. As Fred Barnes wrote in The New Republic, the regulatory explosion produced what he calls a “parasite culture of lobbyists, trade associations, journalists, and similar government hangers-on. After the regulatory explosion, says Barnes,

Soon the city was thick with “public interest” outfits pressing for strict enforcement. To combat them and cope with the new regulations, corporations had hired more and more Washington lawyers. Membership in the District of Columbia Bar Association more than doubled between 1975 and 1986, from 20,311 to 44,394.

According to the D.C. Bar’s 2021 annual report, there are now over 111,000 members. And lawyers are only the tip of the iceberg: Washington also became a magnet for lobbyists, trade associations, industry newsletters with names like Candy Industry or Satellite Week that advise readers on regulatory developments and the like. And, most important for our discussion here, Barnes notes that the city became flooded with the kind of money that such interests bring, sprouting luxury car dealerships, expensive restaurants, upscale shops and five star hotels until parts of it looked more like Rodeo Drive than with the Washington of previous years.

The growth of federal power increased the role of special interests because it made lobbying the federal government more attractive to companies and interest groups. If a $100,000 expenditure in lobbying can produce a $100 million return – which is entirely possible in the right industries – then your money is coming back a thousandfold. That’s a much, much better return on investment than any actual business effort can produce.

But more importantly for our purposes, the growth of federal power made lobbying the federal government a more attractive career for federal workers. When the most expensive restaurant in town comfortably fit within the budget of a senior civil servant, a senior civil servant could feel well off. By the time I was practicing law in D.C., as a fairly junior lawyer, I was making more than any civil servant up to Executive Level III, and expensive places like 21 Federal (a $300 date back in the 1980s) were comfortably within my price range, but pricey for anyone whose salary scale started with GS. And it only got worse. Dining with Roger Simon in DC during the Obama Administration, he pointed out the $140 Wagyu steaks and noted that you used to only see prices like that in Hollywood and New York.

So if you’re a senior civil servant, you were constantly reminded that you could make a lot more money taking the revolving door to an outside interest, and you felt like you needed it because otherwise you felt poor in your own city in a way civil servants hadn’t felt before. When everyone drove Buicks and Fords, you fit in; when BMWs and Benzes became the norm, you didn’t. And, of course, all those incoming lawyers and lobbyists drove housing prices way up too. So why not switch teams? And people – disproportionately the smartest – did.

Thus, my hypothesis is that these factors produced a new kind of sorting among the bureaucrats, in which the brighter ones were more likely to leave meaning that, over time, the people staffing the agencies would become, on average, dumber. And note the double whammy – the agencies are becoming dumber because they were more powerful, since that produced the lobbying dynamic that made the smarter people more likely to leave.

The upshot, then, is that as the federal government got bigger and more powerful, it also became more stupid. All because of the sorting I describe above. There have been various tweaks in personnel and compensation policies designed to hold on to talent, but none have made much difference. So there we are. Well, this is just a hypothesis. But I have to ask: Doesn’t it fit the observed facts pretty well?"

"Looking Forward"

"Looking Forward"
by Jeff Thomas

"Since its inception, International Man has offered prognostications about what the future will bring – economically, politically and socially. The principle writers of the publication have been at this for decades. Each one began by studying world economics and politics in order to make the best choices as to where to live, where to invest, where to store wealth, etc. Over the years, each one got better at researching, better at reading the signs and, ultimately, better at predicting future events.

But, today, we’re approaching a worldwide crisis point and the study that we undertook decades ago has become important for literally hundreds of millions of people who, whether they realize it or not, will soon be impacted by events in a major way.

The foremost concern for readers of this publication is that the world’s leading governments have become decidedly fascist and are rapidly heading in a totalitarian direction. There are a number of facets to this development, all of them disturbing: The elimination of personal privacy, the creation of capital controls, confiscation of wealth, the conversion to electronic banking as the sole form of currency, international taxation standards and the creation of a police state. (There are many, many more facets, but these few tend to be at the core of concern.)

We can expect to see all of these concerns come closer to reality in the near future. The events that bring them about will increase in both frequency and magnitude as we get closer. (Historically, this is always the case, as governments that are in trouble race to get controls in place, as their continued ability to control events unravels.)

In these pages, we do our best to provide projections as to “where it’s all headed” and how it will affect the reader. In doing so, we generally discuss events that we believe will occur sometime soon (within a year or two). Often, we delay discussing events that we’ve anticipated many years previously, because they’d appear to most people as being so unlikely that their prediction would seem absurd.

However, we’re getting much closer to the crisis and, consequently, much of what once might have seemed absurd may now look quite possible to more people. But, even now, we tend to confine our prognostications to the international crisis itself. We rarely discuss what the world will look like after the market crashes have occurred, after the currencies have failed, after the governmental systems have broken down.

So, let’s have a snapshot look at what the overall landscape might look like after the dust has begun to settle. What will some of the greatest powers in the world look like in, say, five to ten years’ time?

To begin, we’ll assume that the more catastrophic events of economic collapse have taken place in the world and we’ll be observing the subsequent knock-on effects – the deterioration that would occur thereafter. Historically, any government that’s leading up to a collapse invariably tightens controls to the max, as it’s aware that, following a collapse, it will lose control, either entirely or in part.

Once markets have collapsed, we can expect a deflationary trend that governments will respond to by creating massive inflation, very possibly leading to hyperinflation. At some point, we can expect to see a collapse in currencies, as a result of the unsustainable debt load – the heroin that has kept them going for decades. This is particularly important with regard to the US, as the US presently possesses the world’s default currency. A collapse in the dollar will send other currencies into a tailspin.

Following a currency collapse, it will no longer be possible for governments to continue to expand their debt loads, as there will no longer be any takers. In addition, government income streams will be diminished. As businesses decline, the tax revenue will be greatly diminished. Whether they like it or not, for the first time in their careers, political leaders will be forced to cut costs, and cut them dramatically.

So, where will they cut? In the US, Social Security represents 15% of recurrent expenditure; Medicare and Medicaid represent another 15%; poverty entitlements are another 10% and a further 15% goes to “defense,” or more accurately, “foreign aggression.” Together, that’s 55%, yet, to diminish any of these (with the possible exception of foreign aggression) would make the blood of Americans boil.

Interest on national debt represents another 9%, but that would quickly be defaulted on. Next to be cut would be the “non-essentials” – the departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Immigration, plus prisons, drug control, conservation and national parks. Cuts in each of these would cause less civil unrest than diminishing the “big four” that make up 55% of the budget.

They would likely keep funding for Homeland Security, the IRS, and the Capitol Police and, in fact, would be likely to increase funding for all three. (Bear in mind that the Capitol Police is unlike any other police force; it is a virtual army, designed to protect legislators within the beltway from what will soon be classified as “domestic terrorism.”)

Along the way, those states that are net receivers of largesse from the federal government will find their allowances cut dramatically. This will mean that, for state and city governments, roads, garbage collection and departments such as Fire and Motor Vehicles, will all receive cuts, along with state and city police departments. This latter move will not only result in increased lawlessness, but will result in police themselves becoming more lawless, or a law unto themselves, sometimes acting in sympathy with the public against the central government, sometimes acting with aggression towards the public.

But these cuts will only be the beginning, as they will be insufficient to address the shortfall. Confiscations of bank accounts will take place, but they too will be insufficient. Cuts in Medicare and Medicaid will eventually be put into effect, along with cuts in Social Security (primarily through inflation). For the over 50% of people who are presently recipients of these mainstays of collectivism, the cuts will quickly create anger, unrest, then riots.

As stated above, veterans (some 10% of the population) will be unceremoniously dumped. They will react by joining those who protest the cuts. Those still employed in the armed forces and Homeland Security will be torn as to whom to side with. (Remember, the invasion of ancient Rome by the barbarians was made possible when the mercenary Roman soldiers simply walked away.)

In total, what we’re looking at is a government that will no longer have the level of control to operate an effective tax collection service, capital controls, or outbound migration, let alone to continue to aggress against other nations. The U.S., more than any other nation, is therefore most greatly at risk of holding itself together following a collapse. As stated in The Art of War, by Sun Tzu in the fifth century BC, “Those who are waging war should get rid of all the domestic troubles before proceeding to attack the external foe.” Essential advice today, as it was then.

It’s clear there are some ominous social, political, cultural, and economic trends playing out right now. Many of which seem to point to an unfortunate decline of the West. As space here is limited, we can only offer a thumbnail sketch of these events; however, it’s not essential that we labor over the fine details of conditions that will exist after the collapses have taken place. A sketch suffices to allow us to plan our own agenda – to locate ourselves geographically away from the hot spots and shift our investments into those things that might be likely to be more depression-proof. And we can move whatever wealth we might have to jurisdictions where its safety is most assured. Those concerns are more urgent than ever and the time remaining is decidedly uncertain."

Sunday, March 17, 2024

"Iran and Hezbollah Want To Destroy Israel, And Gaza War Is Their Trap For Israel"

Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter & Larry Johnson, 3/17/24
"Iran and Hezbollah Want To Destroy Israel, 
And Gaza War Is Their Trap For Israel"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Memory Of The Sky"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Memory Of The Sky"

"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).”

"It'll Do..."

Deputy Wendell: "It's a mess, ain't it, sheriff?"
Sheriff Bell: "If it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here."
- "No Country For Old Men"

"He Cannot Help Doubting Himself..."

"A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet for sale, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing, cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity."
- Erich Fromm

Jeremiah Babe, "Catastrophic Events Coming Soon To America"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/17/24
"Catastrophic Events Coming Soon To America"
"Prepare now for catastrophic events to take place in 
America, take the time that you have left to insure your survival."
Comments here:

"Pepe Escobar: Putin and China Send Devastating Warning to NATO as Germany, Macron Threaten WW III"

Danny Haiphong, 3/17/24
"Pepe Escobar: Putin and China Send Devastating 
Warning to NATO as Germany, Macron Threaten WW III"
"Geopolitical analyst and journalist Pepe Escobar gives his assessment of major escalations NATO is engaging in with Russia and China and how World War III is fast approaching despite numerous warnings from Putin and Xi Jinping’s top political brass. Buckle up because this video explains the wild ride humanity is going to take as unipolarity and multipolarity collide!"
Comments here:

"The Daily "Near You?"

Maintal, Hessen, Germany. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Czeslaw Milosz, "Hope"

“Hope”

“Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.
You cannot enter. But you’re sure it’s there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.”

- Czeslaw Milosz,
“Hope”, from “The World”