Thursday, August 8, 2024

"Every Day..."

“Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans to gain or maintain power. What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy. If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
– J. K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement, June 5, 2008

Travelling with Russell, "I Went to Russia's Most Famous Place: Red Square"

Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 8/8/24
"I Went to Russia's Most Famous Place: Red Square"
Walking through the centre of Moscow on a sunny day, there is nothing better. Walking through the middle of Red Square, and then walking inside the famous GUM Shopping Centre. Discover with me how nice walking in Moscow is on a sunny day."
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"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "End of the Bubble - This is It!"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 8/8/24
"End of the Bubble - This is It!"
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Bill Bonner, "Extreme Fear"


"Extreme Fear"
The biggest policy error is the Fed’s fantasy that it knows what it is doing... and makes
 any policy decisions at all. And if we are right, the Primary Trend will tell the tale.
by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "Not to worry! The standard, accepted, certified correct view of the stock market is that it always goes up ‘over the long-term.’ Based on figures from the S&P 500, investors have come to expect a total return of 10% per year. And the ‘price’ of getting these long-term gains, according to the sales pitch, is that you have to suffer occasional episodes of FOMO NO MO’, with a median temporary setback, since 1928, around 13% each year.

This is just one of those ‘drawdowns,’ says Wall Street. CNN: "US stocks wavered Wednesday, giving back earlier gains as investors tried to recover from the week’s bruising losses. The Dow fell 234 points, or 0.6%, after gaining more than 400 points earlier in the day. The S&P 500 declined 0.8% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.1%. CNN’s Fear & Greed Index, which measures seven barometers of market sentiment, closed in “extreme fear” territory."

Extreme fear? A 0.6% loss? Our point today is that CNN may have to readjust its index. When we look at it in terms of real, durable wealth - gold - we get a very different picture. In 1928, you could buy the S&P 500 for one ounce of gold. Now, after at least thirty years of price manipulation by the Fed, the S&P will cost you two ounces. That’s the entire real capital gain over a 96-year period. And more than likely, in the next major episode of FOMO NO MO’, it will disappear. The price of US stocks should return to a more normal level, where you’ll again be able to buy the S&P for one ounce of gold.

In other words: stocks do not always go up. In fact, it appears that they never really go up at all. Take away the fake dollar, the fake interest rates... and ten years of lending at zero by the Fed... and what do you have? Stocks at about the same real value they had in 1928. All amateur investors have really gotten since then are dividends. But wait. What about those drawdowns? Are they only 13% per year?

S&P 500 to Gold Ratio
Click image for larger size.
In 1967, you could buy the S&P for 2.6 ounces of gold. Then, over the next thirteen years, a drawdown took the price down to 0.17 of a single ounce - a 96% loss. The price of the S&P didn’t fully recover until 1997 - thirty years after the drawdown began.

And in the summer of 2000, the S&P/gold ratio rose to an all-time high over five ounces to the S&P. Then, it began to fall, eventually dropping down to 0.70 of an ounce in September 2011 - a drawdown of 86%. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, after the most aggressive central bank stimulus in history, investors have not even recovered half of what they lost. Sell the S&P today and you can buy just a bit more than two ounces of gold.

Bonds are different. The interest rate (the coupon) doesn’t change. So the value of the bond is said to be more stable and reliable than a stock. Investors typically retreat to bonds when they fear a drawdown in the stock market. But since 2020, we’ve seen that bonds are no guarantee of financial safety; they’ve just suffered the worst sell-off in history.

Why did this happen? Because the Fed kept real interest rates below zero for more than ten years. This was ‘misinformation.’ And it misled the bond market. Investors overpaid for tiny yields. Then, when interest rates returned to more normal levels (the Fed had to raise rates to fight inflation in 2022) bond prices fell.

Again, we turn to gold to keep score... The yield on a 10-year bond was only 0.84% in 1928. If we understand the research from NYU’s Stern School of Business correctly, a $100 bond purchased in 1928... if it had been held to the present... would have given you a total return of $7,278. Again, adjusting for inflation (using gold as our measuring stick), we see that $100 would have bought 4.8 ounces of gold back then. Today, $7,278 buys just 3 ounces of gold – representing a real loss of $4,309.

Stock investors generally accept episodes of FOMO NO MO’ gracefully. They believe they get a ‘risk premium’ (over bonds) to compensate. The sell-off from the last three weeks, for example, will set them back about 10%. But it comes after a 20% gain over the last 12 months... leaving them ahead of the game.

Still, hopes for an ‘emergency’ rate cut are rising. Seasoned investors are no dummies. They are like people who got into a Ponzi scheme early. They know it’s a scam... but they believe that they are the ones who will benefit from it.

As we saw yesterday, the Fed has an obvious bias. Whatever it does is sure to be a policy error (it can’t possibly know what interest rates the economy actually needs today... let alone those that it will need until the next quarterly FOMC meeting). But it won’t be a random error. The Fed is a creature of Wall Street and Washington... it will err on the side of easy money, with interest rates that are generally too low, not too high. This bias assures the pros that help is on the way. The Fed will soon make another policy error... putting the S&P back on track for another unhealthy gain.

The biggest policy error is the Fed’s fantasy that it knows what it is doing... and makes any policy decisions at all. And if we are right, the Primary Trend will tell the tale. While the Fed may be able to goose up nominal prices - for stocks and bonds - in the short term…the real, long-term trend is down... meaning, they are both going down in terms of gold. For stocks, the loss is likely to be 50% or more. For bonds... especially, US treasuries... the loss is expected to be even greater. ‘Extreme fear’ will come; but only when investors realize that the Fed’s policy errors won’t save them."

Gregory Mannarino, "Situation Critical! This Is Your Wakeup Call! Expect Price Controls, Shortages, Rationing"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/8/24
"Situation Critical! This Is Your Wakeup Call! 
Expect Price Controls, Shortages, Rationing"
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Adventures With Danno, "My Very Frustrating Trip To Kroger!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 8/8/24
"My Very Frustrating Trip To Kroger!"
"In today's vlog, I am at Kroger and am noticing many issues as they are doing a complete overhaul on this store. Not only are items in different areas, but they are narrowing the aisles, making it very difficult to get around."
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Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Canadian Prepper, "Holy F#:$#! Russia Lines Collapse, Putin Calls Emergency Meeting"

Canadian Prepper, 8/7/24
"Holy F#:$#! Russia Lines Collapse, 
Putin Calls Emergency Meeting"
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"Everybody Knows The Captain Lied" (Excerpt)

"Everybody Knows The Captain Lied" (Excerpt)
By Jim Quinn

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded,
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over,
Everybody knows the good guys lost."
- Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

Excerpt: "Having heard this Leonard Cohen classic on the radio a few days ago, the lyrics have been rattling around in my head as a perfect description of the dystopian horror show we are experiencing in the world today. The song has a dark, foreboding, cynical tone, capturing the sense of a coming catastrophe which everybody can see coming, but we are helpless to stop. Cohen wrote the song in 1987 and it perfectly captures the mood of a Third Turning Unraveling, where greed; narcissism; the breakdown of societal trust; confidence in governmental and financial institutions; and the deterioration of society into the “haves” and “have nots”; sets the stage for the Fourth Turning Crisis of financial collapse, war, and a violent bloody resolution by 2032. Third Turnings are periods of cynicism, deterioration of manners and civil authority, societal disunity, and a cultural descent towards degeneracy.

It was fitting Cohen wrote this song in the same year Oliver Stone’s "Wall Street" movie splashed onto movie screens, reflecting the “greed is good” mentality of the nation. The insider trading scandals of the mid-1980s informed the good guys that the bad guys had rigged the system, and always won. The early enthusiasm of Reagan’s “Morning in America” presidency had dissipated in a blizzard of scandals, promises unfulfilled, and space program disaster. The 1986 stock market crash had shaken the confidence of the working class, while Greenspan’s bailout of the bankers who owned him, proved the dice were loaded.

It was not so evident at that point that the good guys (you and me) had already lost the war. Cohen didn’t know it at the time, but he was describing the Deep State/Invisible Government control over every aspect of our lives. The dystopia he describes has grown a hundred-fold in the 37 years since he wrote the song, and it keeps getting worse. We are approaching our rendezvous with destiny and everybody who is capable of critical thought knows the next several years will be fraught with peril, determining the future course of mankind.

The dice have been loaded for decades. The war was over in 1963 when the CIA, on behalf of the Deep State, murdered John F. Kennedy. The American people (the good guys) lost, and the Deep State won. They got their war in Vietnam. They got their Welfare State. They got guns, butter, a currency unlinked from gold, and the green light to create debt to infinity. The Deep State has consolidated their power and control over every aspect of our lives in the six decades since they killed JFK.

They have used every crisis they create to abscond with more of our liberties, freedoms, rights and wealth. In addition to the never-ending wars created around the globe to benefit their military industrial complex, their wars on poverty, drugs, terror, CO2, and covid have enriched them and their lackeys, while exacerbating the very things they declared war upon. None of these wars are meant to be won. Keeping the masses in fear and ignorance makes them easier to control."
Full, most highly recommended  article is here:
o
- Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Believe"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Believe"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster.
This sharp color image shows intense star forming regions at the ends of the bar and along the spiral arms, and details of dust lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole. The position of a bright supernova is indicated in NGC 1365. Cataloged as SN2012fr, the type Ia supernova is the explosion of a white dwarf star.”

"No Smooth Road..."

"Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere
of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps,
till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself."
- W. C. Doane

"Our Crisis of Institutional Competence"

"Our Crisis of Institutional Competence"
Why things don't work anymore.
by Glenn Harlan Reynolds

"Almost everywhere you look, we are in a crisis of institutional competence.

The Secret Service, whose failures in securing Trump's Butler, PA speech are legendary and frankly hard to believe at this point, is one example. (Nor is the Butler event the Secret Service's first embarrassment.)

The Navy, whose ships keep colliding and catching fire.

Major software vendor Crowdstrike, whose botched update shut down major computer systems around the world.

The United States government, which built entire floating harbors to support the D-Day invasion in Europe, but couldn't build a workable floating pier in Gaza.
And of course, Boeing, whose Starliner spacecraft is stuck, apparently indefinitely, at the International Space Station. (Its crew's six-day mission, now extended perhaps into 2025, is giving off real Gilligan's Island energy.) At present, Starliner is clogging up a necessary docking point at the ISS, and they can't even send Starliner back to Earth on its own because it lacks the necessary software to operate unmanned – even though an earlier build of Starliner did just that.

Then there are all the problems with Boeing's airliners, literally too numerous to list here.

Roads and bridges take forever to be built or repaired, new airports are nearly unknown, and the Covid response was extraordinary for its combination of arrogant self-assurance and evident ineptitude.

These are not the only examples, of course, and readers can no doubt provide more (feel free to do so in the comments) but the question is, Why? Why are our institutions suffering from such widespread incompetence? Americans used to be known for "know how," for a "can-do spirit," for "Yankee ingenuity" and the like. Now? Not so much.

Americans in the old days were hardly perfect, of course. Once the Transcontinental Railroad was finished and the golden spike driven in Promontory, Utah, large parts of it had to be reconstructed for poor grading, defective track, etc. Transport planes full of American paratroopers were shot down during the invasion of Sicily by American ships, whose gunners somehow confused them for German bombers. But those were failures along the way to big successes, which is not so much the case today.

But if our ancestors mostly did better, it's probably because they operated closer to the bone. One characteristic of most of our recent failures is that nobody gets fired. (Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle did resign, eventually, but nobody fired her, and I think heads should have rolled on down the line). Even the FBI agent who accidentally shot a man while dancing in a bar was allowed to carry a gun again. He also avoided jail time with a sweet plea deal.

I believe that incentives matter. Just compare the performance of SpaceX to that of Boeing here. SpaceX's rockets work. The Crew Dragon capsule has been flying for quite a while, even as this debacle with Starliner was that vehicle's first crewed flight. SpaceX has been operating in a "bet the company" mode since its first Falcon flight, and while Elon Musk is quite tolerant of rocket explosions as a part of iterative learning, I don't think he's tolerant of people who are acting stupidly or lazily or not learning. And consequently, as soon as Starliner developed problems people started speculating about a SpaceX rescue mission.

A famous essay by Nico Colchester divided approaches into "Crunchy" and "Soggy." When things are crunchy, you know how you're doing: "Crunchy systems are those in which small changes have big effects leaving those affected by them in no doubt whether they are up or down, rich or broke, winning or losing, dead or alive. The going was crunchy for Captain Scott as he plodded southwards across the sastrugi. He was either on top of the snow-crust and smiling, or floundering thigh-deep. The farther south he marched the crunchier his predicament became. Sogginess is comfortable uncertainty. The modern Scott is unsure how deeply he is in it. He can radio for an airlift, or drop in on an American early-warning station for a hot toddy. The richer a society becomes, the soggier its systems get."

Systems are soggy when nobody's life is obviously affected by failure. Any system involving civil service employees or contractors on cost-plus contracts is likely to be soggy. As long as Elon Musk is at the helm, SpaceX will be crunchy, though given time it's likely to tend toward sogginess, as most institutions do. Colchester concludes: "A crunchy policy is not necessarily right, only more certain than a soggy one to deliver the results that it deserves." Stay crunchy, my friends."

"America Is Entering A Horrific Economic And Social Crisis - Will It Survive?"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/7/24
"America Is Entering A Horrific Economic
 And Social Crisis - Will It Survive?"
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The Daily "Near You?"

Vail, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Gerald Celente, "Politicians Bent On Vengeance: It's The American Way"

Gerald Celente, 8/7/24
"Politicians Bent On Vengeance: It's The American Way"
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.
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"Unknown Knowns: Part I"

"Unknown Knowns: Part I"
Willful ignorance and the long road to Kamala Harris...
by Joel Bowman

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.”
~ Donald Rumsfeld explains “The Rumsfeld Matrix” (2002)

Savannah, Georgia - "The great “Kamala Crash”... vice presidential vices... and the mass gaslighting of the American mind. What a time it is to be alive, dear reader! Known knowns... known unknowns... unknown unknowns... And lo! here cometh man, soft-bellied and blinded by hope, determined to add another category to the Rumsfeld Matrix: unknown knowns!

Our subject of late, known to all, is ignorance. Today, we delve a little deeper... into a specific subset of the unknown: willful ignorance. It is generally acknowledged that ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law. Lawyers may even charge you a fee for quoting the principle in Latin: ignorantia juris non excusat. But not knowing something, in and of itself, is certainly no crime. And a good thing, too. The cell blocks would be overflowing! Voters’ craniums are crammed with all they don’t know...and plenty they don’t even know they don’t know.

It is the acknowledged role of the politician – and his apple-polishing fabulists in the mainstream press – to fill that gaping void. This they typically do with lies, damned lies and political slogans. So far, so bad…

The Great Unknowing: But while there is no shame in quiet, even humble ignorance (of which we all stand guilty)...willful ignorance is another matter altogether. Which brings us to Kamala Harris...and the media’s orchestrated “unknowing” of all that was once known about her. But in order to understand this remarkable phenomenon, we must first go back to the beginning, to the very outset of the Great Swamp Battle...

2016 was supposed to be the Year of Hillary Clinton. Anointed by Deep State war hawks... beloved by mainstream presstitutes and Ivy League hackademics... adored by Hollywood’s shiniest trophy people... and championed by useful idiots from sea to shining sea... Hillary Clinton was all set to lead a pantsuit revolution of “I’m with her” apparatchiks back into the very Oval Office her husband had once so… enjoyed.

Barely had she ordered the new drapes and rethought those sofa cushions when...Orange Man Bad. On the eve of the election, Hillary was positively shocked to learn that, even after all her warmongering and profiteering abroad, despite the shocking disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, even after the expanded drone strike operations in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, the American public was somehow unwilling to give her the nuclear codes. Incredible, no? Even branding half the country a “basket of deplorables” didn’t seem to help. Humph!

The Devil They Knew: Passing over the “devil they knew,” voters chose instead a political outsider who promised to “drain the swamp.” The response: Swamp Creatures of the world, attack! For the better part of the last eight years, the American voter has endured a Niagara of mis-, dis- and mal-information at the hands of the reliable propagandists in the long-disgraced Fourth Estate. In its crosshairs, the man who left their warrior goddess jilted at the presidential altar.

Even before the 2016 election of Donald Trump, rumors began swirling in the press that he was “colluding” with America’s #1 boogeyman. The “Russia collusion” story would persist, unrelenting and unproven, well into The Donald’s presidency. Daily were America’s leading mastheads electrified by gossip, whispers and scuttlebutt. Nightly did the unfunniest men in late night television reiterate and reinforce The Narrative. That the Donald was a “foreign asset,” a “traitor to his country,” a “treasonist,” “terrorist” and “threat to democracy!” was a foregone conclusion. Every right-thinking citizen with a New York Times subscription said so. All that was needed was the proof!

Damage Done: What followed was one of the deepest, most protracted and, at $32 million, costliest investigations ever conducted into a sitting United States president. The resulting Mueller Report was a bombshell for everyone who had apparently hoped to be living under the illegitimate presidency of a hostile foreign enemy state. From the Mueller Report: "The investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Similar “lawfare” investigations, including from the FBI, the DOJ and other federal agencies, plagued Trump through his presidency. Only last year, an investigation conducted by Justice Department special counsel John Durham, concluded that (per USA Today): “The FBI should have never launched an investigation into alleged Russian collusion with Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, given the slim evidence.”

The paper went on..."The investigation into the "collusion" clouded Trump’s entire presidency, and Democrats harnessed the tale to paint Trump as an illegitimate president." Durham slammed the FBI’s investigation – dubbed Crossfire Hurricane – into the Trump campaign for its “serious lack of analytic rigor” and a “cavalier attitude” for accuracy. “...We conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.

For its part, the FBI does not dispute the report’s findings, but says it has already taken action and added safeguards in its investigations. And yet, the damage was already done. The country had so divided itself over the Russia collusion hoax, there was simply no going back. And if Trump wasn’t guilty of trading with the enemy, he was sure as heck guilty of something. It became the media’s job to find out what...and if it couldn’t find anything, it would have to invent it. After all, “democracy” was on the line..."

"There Was Truth..."

"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. 
There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth 
even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
- George Orwell, “1984”

"The Sharp Tang And Savor Of Existence..."

"The Sharp Tang And Savor Of Existence..."

"The thought of the disaster which almost certainly lay in wait for the Other Men threw me into a horror of doubt about the universe in which such a thing could happen. That a whole world of intelligent beings could be destroyed was not an unfamiliar idea to me; but there is a great difference between an abstract possibility and a concrete and inescapable danger. On my native planet, whenever I had been dismayed by the suffering and the futility of individuals, I had taken comfort in the thought that at least the massed effect of all our blind striving must be the slow but glorious awakening of the human spirit. This hope, this certainty, had been the one sure consolation. But now I saw that there was no guarantee of any such triumph. It seemed that the universe, or the maker of the universe, must be indifferent to the fate of worlds. That there should be endless struggle and suffering and waste must of course be accepted; and gladly, for these were the very soil in which the spirit grew. But that all struggle should be finally, absolutely vain, that a whole world of sensitive spirits fail and die, must be sheer evil. In my horror it seemed to me that Hate must be the Star Maker.

Not so to Bvalitu. "Even if the powers destroy us," he said, "who are we, to condemn them? As well might a fleeting word judge the speaker that forms it. Perhaps they use us for their own high ends, use our strength and our weakness, our joy and our pain, in some theme inconceivable to us, and excellent." But I protested, "What theme could justify such waste, such futility? And how can we help judging; and how otherwise can we judge than by the light of our own hearts, by which we judge ourselves? It would be base to praise the Star Maker, knowing that he was too insensitive to care about the fate of his worlds." Bvalitu was silent in his mind for a moment. Then he looked up, searching among the smoke-clouds for a daytime star. And then he said to me in his mind, "If he saved all the worlds, but tormented just one man, would you forgive him? Or if he was a little harsh only to one stupid child? What has our pain to do with it, or our failure? Star Maker! It is a good word, though we can have no notion of its meaning. Oh, Star Maker, even if you destroy me, I must praise you. Even if you torture my dearest. Even if you torment and waste all your lovely worlds, the little figments of your imagination, yet I must praise you. For if you do so, it must be right. In me it would be wrong, but in you it must be right."

He looked down once more upon the ruined city, then continued, "And if after all there is no Star Maker, if the great company of galaxies leapt into being of their own accord, and even if this little nasty world of ours is the only habitation of the spirit anywhere among the stars, and this world doomed, even so, even so, I must praise. But if there is no Star Maker, what can it be that I praise? I do not know. I will call it only the sharp tang and savor of existence. But to call it this is to say little."
- Olaf Stapledon, "Star Maker"
o
Freely download “Star Maker”, by Olaf Stapledon, here:

"How It Really Is"

“We'll know our disinformation program is complete 
when everything the American public believes is false.”
- William Casey, former director of the CIA
o

"Donald Trump Says That A Great Depression Is Coming. He Is Right"

"Donald Trump Says That A Great Depression Is Coming.
He Is Right"
by Michael Snyder

"Do you believe Donald Trump? He is entirely convinced that if we stay on the path that we are currently on we are heading into a “great depression”, and many believe that he is right on target. Unemployment is rising, manufacturing activity is contracting, bankruptcies are soaring, home sales have fallen to depressingly low levels, the cost of living crisis never seems to end, poverty is soaring and homelessness is at the highest level ever recorded. Since Barack Obama first entered the White House, our politicians in Washington have been propping up the economy by adding 25 trillion dollars to the national debt. Now our national debt has crossed the 35 trillion dollar mark, and our politicians continue to spend money at a pace that is absolutely absurd. But despite this tremendous influx of borrowed cash, the wheels are starting to come off the U.S. economy anyway.

This week, everyone is talking about a “recession” because of what has been happening in the financial markets. Prior to Tuesday’s session, more than 6 trillion dollars in global stock market wealth had already been wiped out… Bloomberg estimates that approximately $6.4 trillion has been erased from the value of global stock markets over the past three weeks. Investors were desperately hoping for a bounce on Tuesday, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average only jumped 294 points. Needless to say, that is not the bounce that they were looking for.

The turmoil that we have witnessed on Wall Street in recent days also caught the attention of Donald Trump. On Truth Social, he blamed crashing stock prices on Kamala Harris and he warned that a “great depression” is on the way…"Trump took to Truth Social to blast Harris for the “Kamala Crash” in a series of posts. “Of course there is a massive market downturn. Kamala is even worse than Crooked Joe. Markets will NEVER accept the Radical Left Lunatic that destroyed San Francisco and California, as a whole,” Trump wrote. “Next move, THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024! You can’t play games with MARKETS. KAMALA CRASH!” he added."

Of course Trump is in the middle of trying to win an election, and his goal was to make Kamala Harris look bad. But he is quite right that if we stay on the road that we are on it will only end in disaster.

Last Friday, the Sahm rule was triggered when the unemployment rate went up again…"The Sahm rule, created by the former Federal Reserve official Claudia Sahm, triggers when the unemployment rate’s three-month moving average moves 50 basis points above its 12-month low. That rule was triggered Friday, with the moving average rising 53 basis points above that one-year trough, according to the real-time Sahm Rule Recession Indicator from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. The Sahm rule has successfully predicted every single recession since 1970, and it is indicating that another recession is here."

Sadly, the unemployment rate is likely to go even higher during the months ahead because large companies all over America continue to conduct mass layoffs. Today, we learned that Dell is planning another round of mass layoffs…"While Dell has confirmed the layoffs, it hasn’t revealed how many employees are losing their jobs. SiliconAngle reports that roughly 12,500 Dell employees are being laid off this week, citing an unnamed source. Impacted employees are primarily on Dell’s sales and marketing teams. A layoff tracker has since reported the same number. Former Dell employee Ian Armstrong, who previously worked on the company’s UX design team for eight years, called the layoffs a “bloodbath” in a post, reporting that Dell has now laid off 24,500 staff in the past 15 months."

Meanwhile, the cost of living crisis continues to crush working families all over the nation. At this point, it takes an additional thousand dollars a month for the typical U.S. household to buy the exact same goods and services that it did three years ago…"The typical U.S. household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation, according to calculations from Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi shared with FOX Business. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 more compared with three years ago, before the inflation crisis began."

Consumer spending has always been so critical to the U.S. economy. And at this point, a very large portion of the population is simply tapped out. That is one of the primary reasons why credit card debt is at an all-time high and credit card delinquencies are soaring into the stratosphere…"Credit card delinquencies continued to rise from their pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter. As of June, about 9.1% of outstanding credit card debt was in some stage of delinquency, up from 8.5% the previous quarter.

The rise in credit card usage and debt is particularly concerning because interest rates are astronomically high right now. The average credit card annual percentage rate (APR) hit a new record of 20.73% last week, according to a Bankrate database that goes back to 1985. The previous record was 19% in July 1991."

Of course it isn’t just millions of consumers that have reached a breaking point. As I discussed a few days ago, we are witnessing a very alarming surge in business bankruptcies…"Over the past year, business bankruptcy filings are up 40.3 percent, and have now reached a number not seen since the second quarter of 2020, at the peak of lockdowns. American households are following along, with total bankruptcy filings up 16.2 percent in the past year, including 132,710 new filings in the second quarter of 2024 alone."

A 40 percent increase in one year is quite serious. And every day even more businesses are going belly up. Here is one of the latest examples…"A popular Italian restaurant chain has filed for bankruptcy – just days after it abruptly shut 13 underperforming locations across the US. Court documents filed just before midnight on Sunday show Buca di Beppo owes as much as $50million – yet has assets of under $50,000. Last week, the chain – known for its family-style dishes and vintage décor – permanently closed restaurants in California and Florida. It also shut its last remaining locations in Michigan and Pennsylvania."

It is a horror show out there. According to the Sahm rule, a new recession is now upon us. But if Donald Trump is correct, something even worse is looming. Unfortunately, most people just don’t get it. If people really understood what is on the horizon, they would be behaving very differently. Most of the population is still convinced that things will turn out just fine somehow, and for the moment ignorance is bliss."

"GPS Is Blocked! Iran-Israel War Could Break Out In Next 48 Hours"

Larry C. Johnson, 8/7/24
"GPS Is Blocked! Iran-Israel War 
Could Break Out In Next 48 Hours"
Comments here:

"Israel's Mask Is Slipping"

Chris Hedges, 8/7/24
"Israel's Mask Is Slipping"

"David Hearst, Editor-in-Chief of Middle East Eye, and I discuss Israel, Gaza and what the genocide means for the future of Israel. The latest chapter of Israel's occupation of Palestine has raged on for nearly the last year, marking a significant shift in the decades-long clash that has already initiated the demystification of the mythology behind Israel. Truth continues to be the first casualty of war in this particular struggle, as it has been massacred, through the killings of journalists in Gaza and the censorship of dissidents, throughout the conflict along with the Palestinians themselves. Unfortunately for Israel, however, the state’s lies and brutality this time are too severe to escape the eyes of the global stage, and even its own people.

As David Hearst, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Middle East Eye, states in this interview: “There are huge tensions in Israel about how the war was prosecuted, particularly the central tension is the obvious fact that Israel has been killing its own hostages through military action, obviously. And the narrative from Israel that Israel is pushing Hamas to release hostages is nonsense. It is the exact opposite. The main killer of the hostages has been the bombing campaign. So there is a huge protest about getting the hostages home. And getting the hostages home means ending the war, basically.”

Hearst joins host Chris Hedges on the second episode of The Chris Hedges Report to offer a clear and direct explanation of the complexities surrounding the conflict, providing essential context on what to anticipate moving forward. “What we've got to get really clear about is that our idea of left and right, or our idea of moderates and extremists, does not translate to Israeli realities. And when it comes to killing as many Palestinians as they can, everyone is up for it,” Hearst tells Hedges. The brazen violence that journalists like Hearst and others have reported on is pulling Israel’s mask of nobility down, and revealing its true face as the “ugly, repressive, hate-filled apartheid regime it always has been.”
Comments here:
o
"Israel is Evil personified. Israel is Evil Embodied."
- Scott Ritter

And YOU, America, paid for every bomb, every bullet, every plane, every tank,
EVERYTHING the psychopathically degenerate monsters use to slaughter Palestinians.
Eternal shame and disgrace on us...

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM, Stock Market Crash? No, We Are In A Worldwide Financial Crisis Of Epic Proportions"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/7/24
"Stock Market Crash? No, We Are In A 
Worldwide Financial Crisis Of Epic Proportions"
Comments here:
o
Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/7/24
"Big Banks Are Boosting Cash Reserves - Why? 
(I Am Expecting A Major False Flag Event)
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Bill Bonner, "FOMO NO MO'"

Click image for larger size.
Total Net Worth of the top 1% of Americans is $46.1 trillion, 
up from $4.7 trillion in 1990

"FOMO NO MO'"
Booms and busts are normal. But the feds - claiming to moderate the business 
cycle by countercyclical fiscal and monetary policy choices - actually make them worse.
by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "There are two main emotions in the stock market - greed and fear. A wise pro avoids them both. He looks at the situation like a doctor with a patient. No joy at the bedside when the recovery begins. No tears at the cemetery gate when it doesn’t. He just tries to figure out what is going on.

But the great mass of people in the stock market are amateurs, more like the hometown crowd at a football game than dispassionate analysts. When the team is winning... they want to be in the stadium. And they have a Fear of Missing Out when they are not. Then, comes a losing streak... and they stay home. FOMO... no mo’.

Where we are in this season’s stock market games is unclear. There have been some big wins - Nvidia at $3.3 trillion! But recently, there have been some disheartening losses too - with investors in Nvidia losing almost a trillion dollars in three weeks.

The selloff was blamed on the Bank of Japan’s intention to raise its lending rates. In today’s news, we see it trying to correct its ‘error.’ Bloomberg: "BOJ Sends Dovish Signal After Rate Hike Sparked Market Meltdown." "Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Shinichi Uchida sent a strong dovish signal in the wake of historic financial market volatility in Japan by pledging to refrain from hiking interest rates when the markets are unstable."

Prices are just information. They tell us how much one thing is ‘worth’ compared to all the other things one might buy. Markets are always ‘unstable’ because price information changes all the time. So, there’s no particular reason for the BOJ to favor high prices over low ones... or stability over instability. What gives?

As near as we can figure, the Primary Trend is a confluence of emotion and brainpower... policies and happenstance. If it were all a matter of policy choices, you’d think that the geniuses at central banks would have figured out how to control it by now.

But they err and stray like lost sheep. Some things just have to be experienced. You can arrange a date. You can study the dating profile... is that a recent photo, you wonder? What does she mean by “flexible,” you ask yourself? You can decide what restaurant to go to and which shirt to wear. But you can’t decide to fall in love. That will have to happen - or not - on its own. Likewise, the correct price of credit - the prevailing interest rate - can only be discovered, by willing buyers and sellers, canoodling together. Otherwise, it is unknown.

Wrong Answers Only: What should the interest rate be today? At any given moment, there is only one right answer. But the Fed’s FOMC doesn’t know what it is. And there are an infinite number of wrong answers. So, Central Banks are almost always wrong; every policy choice is an error.

The error choice is binary. One, a rate too low, encourages excess borrowing and speculating... two, a rate too high, stifles borrowing and spending. Either way, the amateurs are going to be drawn - towards FOMO... or towards FOMO NO MO’. The trend toward greed or fear - a natural part of the human condition - is thereby exaggerated. In other words, booms and busts are normal. But the feds - claiming to moderate the business cycle by countercyclical fiscal and monetary policy choices - actually make them worse.

While the Fed’s choice of policy errors is binary, it is not random. If it were - if the Fed set its key rate too high half the time, and too low the other half - the errors would even themselves out. There may be more volatility in the credit and equity markets, but rates and prices would ultimately average out to where they ought to be.

Alas, the Fed (along with other central banks) has a strong bias towards FOMO... and against FOMO NO MO’. Owned by big banks, it is a creature of Wall Street as well as Washington. It is not ‘independent.’ Its analysts, PhDs and economists are not dispassionate. They are all members of the elites for whom the system was created and to whom it grants its favors. They stand and cheer for FOMO. And when FOMO NO MO’ comes, they cut rates to stop it. That’s why we have $35 trillion of national debt... and Nvidia priced as though it were worth more than the entire annual output of the UK.

The ‘errors’ are harmful to most people. But they benefit some. Since 1990, the bottom 50% of the population has gained about $46,000 each in household wealth. The top 1%, however, has gained $30 million - each. Or 680 times as much. So, if the Fed has its way, we will have plenty of FOMO... and NO MO’ stinkin’ FOMO NO MO’. Is that clear?"
o

Dan I Allegedly, "People are Putting Their Safety at Risk"

Full screen recommended.
Dan I Allegedly, AM 8/7/24
"People are Putting Their Safety at Risk"
"You cannot make this up. People are risking their own safety for the dream of homeownership, and it's getting INSANE. From skyrocketing homeownership costs to the economic breakdown we're facing, there's so much to unpack."
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Adventures With Danno, "Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 8/7/24
"Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Sam's Club and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices as it continues to get rough out here for many struggling families trying to put food on the table!"
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Tuesday, August 6, 2024

"Alert! Iran Goes Into Lockdown, Businesses Close; Diplomats Flee Israel"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 8/6/24
"Alert! Iran Goes Into Lockdown, Businesses Close; 
Diplomats Flee Israel"
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The Atlantis Report, "Banks Are Raising Fees for ALL Customers As Americans Prepare To Pay Up"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 8/6/24
"Banks Are Raising Fees for ALL Customers 
As Americans Prepare To Pay Up"
"Recently, retail banking in the United States has seen significant changes that affect millions of customers nationwide. Major banks like JP Morgan and Chase have announced plans to introduce new fees on services that were previously free. This has sparked widespread concern and criticism, especially as it coincides with rising delinquency rates, increased bankruptcies, and a general slowdown in loan growth. These new fees come at a time when many Americans are already dealing with financial challenges due to the rising cost of living and economic uncertainties, adding an extra burden of higher banking costs for consumers. Banks are raising fees for all customers as Americans prepare to pay up."
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Jeremiah Babe, "A Massive Economic Storm Is Coming And It's Getting Very Close"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/6/24
"A Massive Economic Storm Is Coming 
And It's Getting Very Close"
Comments here:

Judge Napolitano, "Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Can Palestine Be Free?"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 8/6/24
"Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Can Palestine Be Free?"
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Gerald Celente, "Market Meltdown, Crash Coming"

Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 8/6/24
"Market Meltdown, Crash Coming"
"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."
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Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Zero Degrees Zero"

Liquid Mind, "Zero Degrees Zero"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Distorted galaxy NGC 2442 can be found in the southern constellation of the flying fish, (Piscis) Volans. Located about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy's two spiral arms extending from a pronounced central bar have a hook-like appearance in wide-field images. But this mosaicked close-up, constructed from Hubble Space Telescope and European Southern Observatory data, follows the galaxy's structure in amazing detail.
Obscuring dust lanes, young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions surround a core of yellowish light from an older population of stars. The sharp image data also reveal more distant background galaxies seen right through NGC 2442's star clusters and nebulae. The image spans about 75,000 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 2442."

Kahlil Gibran, "The Madman"

"The Madman"
by Kahlil Gibran

"It was in the garden of a madhouse that I met a youth with a face pale and lovely and full of wonder. And I sat beside him upon the bench, and I said, “Why are you here?” And he looked at me in astonishment, and he said, “It is an unseemly question, yet I will answer you. My father would make of me a reproduction of himself; so also would my uncle. My mother would have me the image of her seafaring husband as the perfect example for me to follow. My brother thinks I should be like him, a fine athlete. And my teachers also, the doctor of philosophy, and the music-master, and the logician, they too were determined, and each would have me but a reflection of his own face in a mirror. Therefore I came to this place. I find it more sane here. At least, I can be myself.” Then of a sudden he turned to me and he said, “But tell me, were you also driven to this place by education and good counsel?”
And I answered, “No, I am a visitor.”
And he answered, “Oh, you are one of those who live in the madhouse on the other side of the wall...”

The Poet: Grace Schulman, “Blessed Is The Light”

“Blessed Is The Light”

“Blessed is the light that turns to fire, and blessed the flames 
that fire makes of what is burns.
Blessed the inexhaustible sun, for it feeds the moon that 
shines but does not burn.
Praised be hot vapors in earth's crust, for they force up
mountains that explode as molten rock and cool like
love remembered.
Holy is the sun that strikes sea, for surely as water burns
life and death are one. Holy the sun, maker of change,
for it melts ice into water that bruises mountains, honing 
peaks and carving gullies.
Sacred is the mountain that promises permanence but
changes, planed by rockslides, cut by avalanche,
crushed, eroded, leeched for minerals. 
Sacred the rock that spins for centuries before it shines,
governed by gravity, burning into sight near earth's
orbit, for it rises falling, surviving night.
Behold the arcs your eyes make when you speak. Behold 
the hands, white fire. Branches of pine, holding votive
candles, they command, disturbed by wind, the fire that
sings in me.
Blessed is whatever alters, turns, revolves, just as the gods
move when the mind moves them.
Praised be the body, our bodies, that lie down and open 
and rise, falling in flame.”

~ Grace Schulman

The Point..."

"What is the point? We assume that every time we do anything we know what the consequences will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This is not only not always correct. It is wildly, crazily, stupidly, cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong!"
- Douglas Adams, “The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide”