Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 8/15/24
"Alert! Here's What They're Not Telling You"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, August 16, 2024
Thursday, August 15, 2024
Gerald Celente, "Markets Up, Gold Up, Trump Down, Harris Up"
Very strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 8/15/24
"Markets Up, Gold Up, Trump Down, Harris Up"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
"Scott Ritter: Israel is LOSING the War Now as Iran & Hezbollah's Crushing Blow to IDF Looms"
Danny Haiphong, 8/15/24
"Scott Ritter: Israel is LOSING the War Now as
Iran & Hezbollah's Crushing Blow to IDF Looms"
Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "There Is No Going Back, The Damage Is Done; Subway Sandwich Emergency Meeting"
Jeremiah Babe, 8/15/24
"There Is No Going Back, The Damage Is Done;
Subway Sandwich Emergency Meeting"
Comments here:
"The Fed Is Powerless"
"The Fed Is Powerless"
by Brian Maher
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
- Henry Ford
"We are told the time has come for the Federal Reserve to wield its ax… and cut its target rate. We are further told that prevailing conditions may demand multiple axings. And that these adjustments to the overnight lending rate will work healthful impacts. They will invigorate the guttering economy with fresh gusts. They will soothe the nerve-wracked stock market. They will, in brief, pour down oil upon disturbed waters.
We are not half so convinced it is true. We do not believe the Federal Reserve commands the power most believe it commands. You must first realize the Federal Reserve cannot even define the thing it supposedly kings - the dollar itself. The dollar was once defined by standards of measure. That is, as 416 grains of a silver coin. Or as 1/20th of one gold ounce. Perhaps the dollar can be defined as 100 cents. Well then, what is a cent? The answer is 1/100th of a dollar.
Yet what - again - is a dollar? Thus you embark upon a merry and infinite chasing of your tail. Imagine a butcher who cannot measure a pound. Imagine a mapmaker who cannot measure a mile. It is as if 2.54 centimeters no longer define an inch but a foot. As if 12 inches no longer defined a foot - but an inch. Or that three feet no longer defined a yard… but a mile.
We must conclude that today’s dollar is largely an abstraction. It is as wispy as gossamer, as slippery as eels, as elusive as quicksilver. Thus the Federal Reserve steers by the swaying and erratic lights of varying money supplies. These include M0, M1, M2, MZM, etc. Here we have money, near money, money at second and third remove, money somewhere in the ghostly ether. And so the monetary authority stumbles along in pitch darkness.
But do not rely upon our slanted and cynical word. Rely instead upon the authority of the “maestro” himself - Mr. Alan Greenspan - who conceded long ago that: "The problem is that we cannot extract from our statistical database what is true money conceptually…One of the reasons [is] that the true underlying mix of money in our money and near money data is continuously changing. A decision to base policy on measures of money presupposes that we can locate money. And that has become an increasingly dubious proposition."
They cannot even locate money! It is as absent as caviar from a Donald Trump campaign rally… or sagacity from Kamala Harris’ skull. Thus we arrive at this arresting conclusion, the Federal Reserve’s deepest secret: The Federal Reserve exerts little actual control upon the monetary system. No money stands beneath it, behind it, beside it. Who then actually controls monetary policy today? As we have argued before: The answer lies hidden in the “shadows.”
Here moneyman par excellence Jeffrey Snider - he of Alhambra Investments - rams a very sharp stake through the heart of the monetary myth: "Monetary policy has been quite intentionally stripped of money. Banks evolved and there was really no easy way to define money beyond a certain point (in the ’60s), so economists just gave up trying…
When the Federal Reserve… acts on monetary measures, they seek not to increase the supply of money to the economy but rather the supply of credit… Monetary policy in the modern sense of the word actually has little to do with money. Instead, it is always and everywhere about credit and debt."
All money is credit in today’s lunatic and preposterous world. That is, all money is disguised debt. The dollar in your wallet you consider an asset. But only someone else’s previous debt conjured it into existence. Technically it is a Federal Reserve note. A note is a debt instrument.
Here this Snider commits perhaps the grandest heresy in the universes of economics and finance: That the Federal Reserve and all central banks are largely impotencies…
The Central Bank Is Not Central: "They are merely men behind curtains… irrelevancies. The emperor in fact dons no garments." Here Snider strips the fraud bare: "The Fed is, largely outside of temporary sentiment, irrelevant. The central bank is not central. The thing people have the most trouble with is the idea that central banks are not central. It flies in the face of everything you have been taught and told your whole life. The media still give these guys every benefit of every doubt, and central bankers abuse that privileged platform to perpetuate their myth."
Central banks are not central? The Federal Reserve is irrelevant? As well argue that gravity is a hellacious fiction, that 2 and 2 is 11, that Washington could not tell a lie.
Snider further argues that the federal funds rate - the subject of so many babblings today - is likewise an irrelevancy: "There is absolutely no legitimate reason why anyone should notice federal funds.]The federal funds market is a nonentity… pocket change… It is the sparest of spare liquidity. Today, federal funds are nothing, an extraneous anachronism."
The Fed’s Target Audience: You: Why then does the Federal Reserve target the fed funds rates? Because it wants you to believe that it bosses the markets, that its false fireworks are real: What was decided, essentially, was to keep federal funds as the primary monetary policy focus. The reason? You.
Monetary policy contains no money; it runs entirely on expectations. Therefore, according to this view, what ultimately matters is how you perceive monetary policy… So the FOMC decided that for the public they would still use federal funds to signal to you their intentions. There is no money in monetary policy; it is entirely psychology.
What about quantitative easing, Mr. Snider? Was it not about “printing money”? "QE accomplished next to nothing. QE’s real purpose was in trying to manage expectations which central bankers were more than happy to let you believe this was all money printing. Then you might act in anticipating all that “money printing” was going to have stimulative and even sharp inflationary effects. You might then pull forward purchasing activity, or, if a business, hiring and production, before the expected higher costs arrived."
Blasphemy mounts upon blasphemy! But if not the central banks running monetary policy… who… or what… is central?
The Shadow Banking System: You will find the answer in the shadows, says Snider - the shadow banking system. The shadow banking system? That is the deeply interconnected network of banking institutions that operate outside direct control of central banks. They include the large banks and their offshore units. This shadow banking system extends through Europe, the Caribbean and Asia, the world over. In 2017, the Bank for International Settlements - the central bank of central banks - estimated $13–14 trillion dwell within the shadow system.
But this shadow banking system is invisible. It hides in shadow, leaving only traces of its activity… as a thief leaves traces of his crime.Only a properly trained sleuth can sniff them out:
No one can directly observe this global shadow banking system, what is actually the world’s reserve currency. First of all, it is primarily based offshore from everywhere, therefore outside of official recognition. There are no direct statistics. The term “shadow” is, in this case, perfectly appropriate.
The United States dollar is the coin of this realm. The shadow system first took shape in the 1950s and ’60s after Bretton Woods placed the dollar at the center of the international monetary system. It expanded through the 1980s, ’90s… into the early aughts. And beneath notice, the shadow banking system shouldered the central banks out of the international monetary system. Snider: "The global money system moved on without central banks bothering to notice."
Did the Shadow Banking System Cause the Great Financial Crisis? These shadow banks traded heavily in derivatives and other risky instruments. All without oversight. Where do asset bubbles come from, asks Snider? “They came from the shadows” is his answer - including the U.S. housing bubble: "Especially from the 1960s forward, and particularly in the 1990s forward, was that as the [shadow banking system] replaced other forms of mediation in global trade what actually happened was it became a parallel banking system unto itself… not so much that a company in Japan could import goods from Sweden.
But so that the banks in Japan or Sweden or Switzerland or anywhere around the world could participate in this [shadow banking] system that at the time was stoking a U.S. housing bubble, while at the same time creating vast bubbles in emerging market[s]…
So what we’re describing here is almost an entire massive complete system… that existed offshore and wholesale, in the shadows, because there was no regulatory authority… no government authority over the conduct of this system. It was essentially a self-contained system that operated beyond the reach of everybody."
Can you expect the Federal Reserve to patch the system, to wrest some order from this lawless jungle? The Federal Reserve has no idea what it takes to fix the broken monetary system (they can’t even get the simplest part right). All these central bankers did was prove they had, and have, no answers.
What then is the answer? We’re kind of stuck in this disinflationary depression condition. Unless the monetary system is substantially reformed, I don’t think this will change. The present system is in fact heading in the wrong direction and the political and social order is slowly being taken down with it…
There has to be a breaking point where either the political system realizes the dangers inherent in that condition and actually responds favorably by taking hold of the [shadow banking] system or actually reforming it…Will the shadow monetary system be substantially reformed? Hell will first become an ice sheet…"
Musical Interlude, Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"
Full screen recommended.
Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"
"Peaceful, empowering and soothing music and nature to nurture your mind, body, and soul. Supporting and empowering you on your life journey. 528Hz positive energy healing music with 417Hz Solfeggio frequency. These frequencies have a specific healing effect on your subconscious mind." Be kind to yourself, savor this extraordinarily beautiful video. Headphones recommended, not required.
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Massive stars, abrasive winds, mountains of dust, and energetic light sculpt one of the largest and most picturesque regions of star formation in the Local Group of Galaxies. Known as N11, the region is visible on the upper right of many images of its home galaxy, the Milky Way neighbor known as the Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC).
The above image was taken for scientific purposes by the Hubble Space Telescope and reprocessed for artistry by an amateur to win the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures competition. Although the section imaged above is known as NGC 1763, the entire N11 emission nebula is second in LMC size only to 30 Doradus. Studying the stars in N11 has shown that it actually houses three successive generations of star formation. Compact globules of dark dust housing emerging young stars are also visible around the image.”
Chet Raymo, “Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”
“Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”
by Chet Raymo
"In a short story that was published posthumously in the New Yorker, the inestimable Primo Levi meditated on the limits of language. The story was called “The Tranquil Star.” He writes "The star was very big and very hot, and its weight was enormous," and realizes immediately that the adjectives have failed him: “For a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. It's a language that was born with us, suitable for describing objects more or less as large and long-lasting as we are; it has our dimensions, it's human. It doesn't go beyond what our senses tell us.
Until fairly recently in human history, there was nothing smaller than a scabies mite, writes Levi, and therefore no adjective to describe it. Nothing bigger than the sea or sky. Nothing hotter than fire. We can add modifiers: very big, very small, very hot. Or use adjectives of dubious superlativeness: enormous, colossal, extraordinary. But, really, these feeble stretchings of language don't take us very far in grasping the very, very, very extraordinarily diminutive or spectacularly colossal dimensions of atomic matter or cosmic space and time. We can overcome the limitations of language, Levi say, "only with a violent effort of the imagination."
I spent more than forty years trying to find ways to violently stretch the imaginations of my students (and myself) to accommodate the dimensions of the universe revealed by science. I would project onto a huge screen a photograph of a firestorm on the Sun, then superimpose a scale-sized Earth, which fit comfortably inside a loop of solar fire. I would take the class into the College Quad here near Boston, where I had set up a basketball to represent the Sun, then gathered 100 feet away with a pinhead Earth; we walked together with our pin in the great annual journey of the Earth, and looked through a telescope at the marble-sized Jupiter than I had previously installed at the other end of the long Quad (the next closest star system would have been a couple of basketballs in Hawaii). We walked geologic timelines that took us from one end of the campus to the other.
In one of my Globe essays I used this analogy: “Imagine the human DNA as a strand of sewing thread. On this scale, the DNA in the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a typical human cell would be about 150 miles long, with about 600 nucleotide pairs per inch. That is, the DNA in a single cell is equivalent to 1000 spools of sewing thread, representing two copies of the genetic code. Take all that thread - the 1000 spools worth - and crumple it into 46 wads (the chromosomes). Stuff the wads into a shoe box (the cell nucleus) along with - oh, say enough chicken soup to fill the box. Toss the shoe box into a steamer trunk (the cell), and fill the rest of the trunk with more soup. Take the steamer trunk with its contents and shrink it down to an invisibly small object, smaller than the point of a pin. Multiply that tiny object by a trillion and you have the trillion cells of the human body, each with its full complement of DNA.”
Or this description from 'Waking Zero': “The track of the Prime Meridian across England from Peace Haven in the south to the mouth of the River Humber in the north is nearly 200 miles. If that distance is taken to represent the 13.7 billion year history of the universe, as we understand it today, then all of recorded human history is less than a single step. The entire story I have told in this book, from the Alexandrian astronomers and geographers to the present-day astronomers who launch telescopes into space, would fit neatly into a single footprint. If the 200 miles of the meridian track is taken to represent the distance to the most distant objects we observe with our telescopes, then a couple of steps would take us across the Milky Way Galaxy. A mote of dust from my shoe is large enough to contain not only our own solar system but many neighboring stars.”
But as hard as one tries, the scale of these things escape us. If one could truly comprehend what we are seeing when we look, say, at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Photo above, which I have done my best to convey to myself and others in a dozen ways, it would surely shake to the core some of our most cherished beliefs. Just as our language is contrived on a human scale, so too are our gods.”
"Chastity In A Whorehouse..."
"People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?"
- H. L. Mencken
"Peak Focus for Complex Tasks With Beta Isochronic Tones"
Full screen recommended.
"Peak Focus for Complex Tasks
With Beta Isochronic Tones"
by Jason Lewis - Mind Amend
"This is a high-intensity audio brainwave entrainment session, using isochronic tones. Listen to this when you need a strong burst of intense focus to concentrate and study things like advanced mathematics, scientific formulas, financial analysis or any other complex mental activity. Listen to this track with your eyes open while doing the task/activity you want to focus on. Use this session in the morning, afternoon or early evening, to train your brain for better cognition, focus and thought processing. You can either sit somewhere quiet and comfortable with your eyes closed and give your brain a nice workout, or you can also listen to this while doing an activity that requires a boost in concentration.
Headphones are NOT REQUIRED for this video. Although headphones are not required you may find they produce a more intense effect, because they help to block out distracting external sounds.
o
"Isochronic tones are a fast and effective audio-based way to stimulate your brain. Among many of the benefits, they can help improve focus, relaxation, energy levels, sleep and more, without taking drugs or needing any special equipment. What isochronic tones essentially do is guide your dominant brainwave activity to a different frequency while you are listening to them, allowing you to influence and change your mental state and how you feel."
I strongly suggest you read Comments here:
○
"Isochronic Tones –
How They Work, the Benefits and the Research"
This is a brainwave entrainment audio session using isochronic tones combined with music. The isochronic tones are the repetitive beats you can hear on top of the music throughout the track. If you are new to this type of audio brainwave entrainment, find out how isochronic tones work and how they compare to binaural beats here:
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Listen folks, we're out of time! Whether you want to know it or not we're literally in the fight of our lives, for our lives, right now, and it's going to get much, much worse. Some of you reading this will not survive, and I may not either, so I'll take any edge I can get, and you should too... This works for me. Prepare yourself, brace for impact...
- CP
"Still, Sometimes..."
“The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can’t pretend we haven’t been told. We’ve all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still, sometimes, we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today’s possibility under tomorrow’s rug, until we can’t anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant: That knowing is better than wondering. That waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake, beats the hell out of never trying.”
- “Meredith”, “Grey’s Anatomy”
"Never, Ever Forget..."
Never, ever forget that nothing in this life is free. Life demands payment in some form for your "right" to express yourself, to condemn and abuse the evil surrounding us. Expect to pay... it will come for you, they will come for you, regardless. Knowing that, give them Hell itself every chance you can. Expect no mercy, and give none. That's how life works. Be ready to pay for what you do, or be a coward, pretend you don't see, don't know, and cry bitter tears over how terrible things are, over how you let them become."
- Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls "
Free Download: Henry Miller, "Tropic Of Cancer"
“The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off.
All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open.
Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some intrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved, felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At dawn I parted company with the young Hindu, after touching him for a few francs, enough for a room. Walking toward Montparnasse I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself.
Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed except my illusions. I myself was intact. The world was intact. Tomorrow there might be a revolution, a plague, an earthquake; tomorrow there might not be left a single soul to whom one could turn for sympathy, for aid, for faith. It seemed to me that the great calamity had already manifested itself, that I could be no more truly alone than at this very moment. I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer. Even if war were declared, and it were my lot to go, I would grab the bayonet and plunge it, plunge it up to the hilt. And if rape were the order of the day then rape I would, and with a vengeance.
At this very moment, in the quiet dawn of a new day, was not the earth giddy with crime and distress? Had one single element of man’s nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all. At the extreme limits of his spiritual being man finds himself again naked as a savage. When he finds God, as it were, he has been picked clean: he is a skeleton. One must burrow into life again in order to put on flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts.
At this very moment, in the quiet dawn of a new day, was not the earth giddy with crime and distress? Had one single element of man’s nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all. At the extreme limits of his spiritual being man finds himself again naked as a savage. When he finds God, as it were, he has been picked clean: he is a skeleton. One must burrow into life again in order to put on flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts.
On whatever crumb my eye fastens, I will pounce and devour. If to live is the paramount thing, then I will live, even if I must become a cannibal. Heretofore I have been trying to save my precious hide, trying to preserve the few pieces of meat that hid my bones. I am done with that. I have reached the limits of endurance. My back is to the wall; I can retreat no further. As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie. The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which the lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself.”
- Henry Miller, "Tropic of Cancer"
o
"Great God! What have I turned into? What right have you people to clutter up my life, steal my time, probe my soul, suckle my thoughts, have me for your companion, confidant, and information bureau? What do you take me for? Am I an entertainer on salary, required every evening to play an intellectual farce under your stupid noses? Am I a slave, bought and paid for, to crawl on my belly in front of you idlers and lay at your feet all that I do and all that I know? "
- Henry Miller, "Tropic of Cancer"
Freely download "Tropic of Cancer", by Henry Miller, here:
"Vast Stretches Of America Are So Depressed That They Look Like Something Out Of A Horror Movie"
"Vast Stretches Of America Are So Depressed
That They Look Like Something Out Of A Horror Movie"
by Michael Snyder
"The wealthy are doing just fine at the moment, but they don’t seem to understand that much of the country is deeply hurting right now. 59 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is currently experiencing a recession, and that is because most of them are personally experiencing economic pain. Literally just about everything is substantially more expensive in 2024, more major layoffs are being announced with each passing day, and thousands of businesses are going bankrupt. We haven’t seen a tsunami of economic suffering like this in a long time.
If you live in a wealthy area in a good part of the country, you may wonder what all of the fuss is about. If you and everyone around you is still doing well, life may still seem quite good. But the truth is that there are vast stretches of this country that are so depressed that they literally look like something out of a horror movie. There are many communities that are so plagued by poverty, drugs, homelessness, violence and theft that it seems like there is no possible way that things could ever turn around.
A man named Drew Binksy recently visited one of the poorest parts of West Virginia, and he discovered that most of the people there are living in poverty: "Most of the residents live below the poverty line and life expectancy is well below the national average. ‘Many families rely on Government assistance just to get by and there’s limited access to healthcare.’ Today, tens of millions of Americans are heavily dependent on the checks that they get from the government each month.
In areas where most people have lost hope of ever finding a better life, drug addiction often runs rampant, and that is precisely what Binksy witnessed… He also notes that ‘crystal meth and Fentanyl addictions run wild’ in the state, while many people are ‘living so isolated, they have their own dialect.’ The content creator starts his journey in Bluefield and as he wanders through the once prosperous manufacturing city, he says it feels like he has stepped into ‘a forgotten world.’ He continues: ‘Empty streets and closed shops stretch as far as the eye can see. It’s like life just stopped.’
This is where the entire country is heading. Just a few days ago, I wrote about the “retail apocalypse” that is rapidly spreading across America. Thousands upon thousands of stores are closing, and most of those abandoned stores will not be filled any time soon. But at least they will make convenient locations for drug addicts to gather.
According to one woman that Binksy interviewed, 30 percent of the people in her community are into illegal drugs…"One woman in the store tells the camera crew: ‘We’re the poorest county in the United States or we were. About 30 per cent of our community are dopers, druggies… more than 30 per cent!’ The same conditions are being repeated in rural community after rural community all over America.
Sadly, the standard of living in our rural communities is going to continue to go down because the cost of living just keeps going up…"The cost of frozen noncarbonated juices and drinks has risen by 19.2 percent from July 2023 – the most of any grocery item. Eggs, meanwhile, have increased by 19.1 percent in price, and frankfurters are now 9.7 percent more expensive. The cost of bacon, beef roasts, pork chops and butter have also risen notably in the last year. In terms of non-food items, car insurance is the biggest riser in the last year – with an 18.6 percent price hike."
We have already reached a stage where a large portion of the population cannot even afford the basics. As I shared yesterday, I was absolutely shocked to learn that 39 percent of Americans have been forced to skip meals so that they will have enough money to make their housing payments…"39% of Americans say they’ve skipped meals to make housing payments, per Clever Real Estate survey. And among millennials, that figure rose to 44%. Among Baby Boomers, it was 20%."
It is no wonder why so many voters are so deeply frustrated with the current state of the economy. This is our country now, and the outlook for the future is not positive at all. In fact, it appears that very alarming changes are starting to happen in the employment market as large companies lay off large numbers of workers…"Another domino falls for recession as job creation turns negative for small businesses, which employ nearly half of all Americans. In the past year, payrolls for companies with under 50 employees plunged by nearly 100,000, while job trends were flat for midsized businesses up to 500 employees.
The only bright spot was big businesses - which might be changing, given recent layoff announcements, including 2,500 at Chrysler, 4,000 at Cisco, 12,000 at Dell, and 15,000 at Intel. Paramount and the left-wing Axios both cut 10% to 15% of their workforce."
20 years ago, most American families were clearly thriving. Today, most American families are clearly struggling. This change occurred so gradually that most people didn’t even realize what was happening. The gap between the wealthy and the rest of us is now larger than ever, and our major cities are teeming with millions of highly desperate people. This story is not going to end well, but most of you already knew that. When people feel like they have nothing left to lose, it doesn’t take much to push them over the edge. Unfortunately, it appears that the next few months represent a major tipping point, and it won’t be too long before all of the frustration that has been building up in this country starts to boil over."
o
"The Middle East: Genocide!"
Full screen recommended.
Breaking Points, 8/15/24
"Mass Exodus? Israel's Economy Self-Destructs"
Comments here:
Stipendium peccati mors est, you Israeli monsters! So be it!
o
Full screen recommended.
Democracy Now!, 8/15/24
"'Incomprehensible': U.S. Approves $20 Billion in
New Arms for Israel as Gaza Death Toll Tops 40,000"
"Health officials in Gaza said Thursday that the official death toll from Israel's 10-month war has topped 40,000, though that is believed to be a vast undercount of the true figure. The grim milestone was reached just days after the Biden administration greenlit $20 billion in additional weapons sales to Israel, including 50 F-15 fighter jets, tank ammunition, mortar rounds, tactical vehicles and advanced air-to-air missiles. The U.S. approved the sales despite growing calls for an arms embargo on Israel. "This is just a continuation of a policy that has been going on now for 10 months of the U.S. providing to Israel all the arms that it requests," says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest over Gaza policy in October. "It is a dark day for American foreign policy." We also speak with Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who says it's "incomprehensible" that the U.S. keeps supplying Israel with weapons. "There should be no more arms going into that place before there is a ceasefire."
Comments here:
o
"Israel Kills More Than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza,
16,456 of Them Children"
o
"Gaza Toll Could Exceed 186,000, Lancet Study Says"
"The accumulative effects of Israel’s war on Gaza could mean the true death toll could reach more than 186,000 people, according to a study published in the journal Lancet. The study pointed out that the death toll is higher because the official toll does not take into account thousands of dead buried under rubble and indirect deaths due to destruction of health facilities, food distribution systems and other public infrastructure."
See that hand? That's your hand, America, mine and yours...To our eternal shame and disgrace we paid for it all, every bullet, every fighter bomber, every bomb, every tank, and continue to support this horrifying genocide. THIS is who and what we've become...
"To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I
stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."
- Herman Melville, "Moby-Dick"
Bill Bonner, "The Most Predictable Crisis Ever"
"The Most Predictable Crisis Ever"
In the Covid panic of 2020, people realized that they no longer needed to
go to the office. This led to a spike in office vacancies and a big drop in prices.
by Bill Bonner
Poitou, France - "First, it appears that Warren Buffett is doing the same thing we are - moving to Maximum Safety Mode. Charlie Bilello: "Berkshire’s Cash Pile spiked to a new all-time high of $277 billion, increasing by a record $88 billion during the 2nd quarter. $75 billion of that came from stock sales with Berkshire selling nearly half of its position in Apple. Berkshire Hathaway is now holding 25% of their Assets in Cash, the highest percentage since 2004 and well above its historical average (14%)."
Why is Buffett selling Apple? Bilello points to the obvious reason - it’s gotten far too expensive. Today’s price is thirty times earnings and nine times sales, the highest level in the company’s history. Apple has been a marvellous success. Buffett bought his stake in Apple in 2016, when the stock was trading around $25. Now, it’s $220. What is the likelihood that the price continues to go up?
We don’t know, but the more expensive a company is, the more marvelous it must be. Taking the long view, marvels always cease. Apple was founded 48 years ago. It was a leader in the Internet Revolution. But the revolution may be over.
Aztec Real Estate: We’ve spent this week looking at the big picture... and the role of problem solving in causing societies to decline. How and when the Big Picture comes to bear on the Little Picture is our subject for today.
The price of real estate in the Aztec capital, for example, must have taken a tumble when Cortés massacred the inhabitants. But until his brigantines appeared on Lake Texcoco there was little sign of the coming catastrophe in Aztec asset markets. The same was true for the handsome houses of Pompei, covered with hot ash when Mt. Vesuvius lost its top in 79 AD. The loss was sudden... unanticipated... and catastrophic.
So too was the more recent crash in US commercial real estate. In the Covid panic of 2020, people realized that they no longer needed to go to the office. This led to a spike in office vacancies and a big drop in prices. Business Today: 'US real estate on fire sale': Another Washington DC office building sold at 75% discount: "Another Washington DC office building has just been sold at a massive 75 per cent discount, a real estate entrepreneur said on Sunday. The 175k sq. ft. tower at 1101 Vermont Avenue sold for $16 million, he said, adding that the building was last sold for $60 million in 2006. "
But wait. What’s this? Arabian Business reports: "Dubai office market records significant upsurge in Q1 2024, according to Savills. Grade A office rentals registered an average annual increase of 14%, with specific markets experiencing hikes up to 30%.
Location still matters. Here’s another detail, from Business Insider: "A record 128,000 millionaires are expected to move countries in 2024, according to a new report. Data from Henley & Partners shows the UAE has the largest predicted inflow of millionaires. This is the third year the UAE, dubbed a "wealth magnet" by the firm, topped the list.
We’ve visited Dubai. Horrible place. Hotter than Hades... and no charm or taste anywhere in sight. Like Las Vegas, only worse. But the rich are burrowing in there... not in New York, Paris or London. They’re moving to the burning sands of the United Arab Emirates... a ‘semi-constitutional monarchy’... not to the US, France or England. Why? Is the world’s center of gravity shifting away from The West? That appears to be a Big Picture trend... perhaps already showing up in property prices.
Not all Big Picture trends and events are surprises. Most - including some of the biggest catastrophes in financial history -could be seen coming for years. America’s rendezvous with bankruptcy, for example, has been called ‘the most predictable crisis ever.’ And for good reason; it is mathematically... scientifically... empirically proven that when you spend more than you earn, year after year, bad things will begin to happen. And yet, while the Big Picture is clear about where this bus is headed (not in detail, but in general)... the historical record provides little hope of a route change. Tune in tomorrow..."
Research Note, by Dan Denning: "On this day, fifty three years ago, US President Richard Nixon interrupted Bonanza to announce that he had ‘temporarily’ suspended the convertibility of the US dollar into physical gold for foreign investors. Inflation and a balance of payments crisis had led to a run on US gold reserves. Nixon, like Vice President Kamala Harris apparently intends to announce tomorrow, also enacted price controls.
In December of 1971, via the Smithsonian Agreement, Nixon devalued the dollar from $35/ounce of gold to $38/ounce but did not lift the ‘temporary’ suspension of convertibility. The dollar was devalued again in October of 1973 when the statutory price of gold (the price at which, by law rather than market prices, the US Treasury values the gold it owns) was raised to $42.22/ounce.
At this point the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates between currencies that had been in place since 1944 was effectively over. The Par Value Modification Act, passed in 1976, formally removed any link between the definition of the dollar and a weight or value of gold. The value of the fiat dollar (rather than the gold dollar) has since been determined by a global system of floating exchange rates. One result of Nixon’s decision is a stagnation in the value of wages and compensation to workers since 1971."
Click image for larger size.
Dan, I Allegedly, "How to Destroy a City - Shopping District Shut Down"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 8/15/24
"How to Destroy a City -
Shopping District Shut Down"
"We're diving into how retail crime has destroyed a city, specifically the once-vibrant Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Witness firsthand the devastating impact of Proposition 47 on local businesses, where crime runs rampant and stores are left vacant. This was once a bustling hub of international tourists and lively commerce, but now? It's a ghost town filled with nothing but "For Lease" signs."
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Cash Jordan, 8/15/24
"Brooklyn is Now So Dangerous…
Even Cops Aren’t Safe"
"A journalistic report on the current situation facing Brooklyn NYC, a borough with 2.5 million residents who deserve the same city resources devoted to areas like Times Square."
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Full screen recommended.
Graham Stephan, 8/15/24
"WTF Happened To Santa Monica, California?!"
"Let's discuss what's happening throughout Santa Monica and Los Angeles, California, the problems they're facing, and my thoughts on the entire situation."
Adventures With Danno, "Massive Sales At Kroger!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 8/15/24
"Massive Sales At Kroger!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are seeking out some bargains on grocery items. With massive price increases continuing at grocery stores, we are searching for some good deals during these times of high inflation. We will go over the quality and prices of items that we shop for in the store."
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Meanwhile, elsewhere...
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 8/15/24
"I Went to the Oldest Street Market
in Russia: Levsha Fair"
"Levsha Fair has been operating in Moscow since 1824. Making it the oldest Trading market in Moscow, Russia. Join me on a tour of this famous old flea market on the outskirts of Moscow. What treasure can we find, what kind of antiques will they have for sale?"
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Wednesday, August 14, 2024
"Wars And Rumors Of War, 8/14/24"
Danny Haiphong, 8/14/24
"Scott Ritter: Putin's Gloves Are Off As Kursk
Offensive Crushes Ukraine; Israel-Iran War Coming?"
"Former UN Weapons Inspector and US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer Scott Ritter (https://scottritter.com/) joins the show to react to the latest U.S. government attempt to silence him, how the Kursk offensive is dooming Ukraine to oblivion, and what comes next for the Middle East as Israel and Iran brace for war. This stream will cover all of the most pressing world developments and provide the key geopolitical analysis needed to understand them."
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Larry Johnson, 8/14/24
"Hezbollah-Iran Launch A Devastating Revenge!
Israel Uses Nuclear, Open WWIII"
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Gerald Celente, "Government Spying Rampant; Peace Warriors Punished"
Gerald Celente, 8/14/24
"Government Spying Rampant;
Peace Warriors Punished"
"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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Jeremiah Babe, "The Retail Apocalypse Is On Fire, The Inflation Lies Keep Getting Worse"
Jeremiah Babe, 8/14/24
"The Retail Apocalypse Is On Fire,
The Inflation Lies Keep Getting Worse"
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Musical Interlude: 2002, "Kindred Spirits"
Full screen recommended.
2002, "Kindred Spirits"
"Once we sailed upon the seas. Now we sail among the stars. This song was composed as a tribute to our friend, harpist Hilary Stagg, who left us far too soon. Hilary loved the sea and he loved the stars."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident.
The featured exposure covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight."
"On The Meridian Of Time..."
“On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.”
- Henry Miller
"I Promise You This..."
"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."
- Edward Abbey
“Sigmund Wollman’s Reality Test”
“Sigmund Wollman’s Reality Test”
by
Robert Fulghum
“In the summer of 1959, at the Feather River Inn near the town of Blairsden in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of northern California. A resort environment. And I, just out of college, have a job that combines being the night desk clerk in the lodge and helping out with the horse-wrangling at the stables. The owner/manager is Italian-Swiss, with European notions about conditions of employment. He and I do not get along. I think he’s a fascist who wants pleasant employees who know their place, and he thinks I’m a good example of how democracy can be carried too far. I’m twenty-two and pretty free with my opinions, and he’s fifty-two and has a few opinions of his own.
One week the employees had been served the same thing for lunch every single day. Two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut, and stale rolls. To compound insult with injury, the cost of meals was deducted from our check. I was outraged.
On Friday night of that awful week, I was at my desk job around 11:00 P.M., and the night auditor had just come on duty. I went into the kitchen to get a bite to eat and saw notes to the chef to the effect that wieners and sauerkraut are on the employee menu for two more days.
That tears it. I quit! For lack of a better audience, I unloaded on the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman.
I declared that I have had it up to here; that I am going to get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and go and wake up the owner and throw it on him.
I am sick and tired of this crap and insulted and nobody is going to make me eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make me pay for it and who does he think he is anyhow and how can life be sustained on wieners and sauerkraut and this is un-American and I don’t like wieners and sauerkraut enough to eat it one day for God’s sake and the whole hotel stinks anyhow and the horses are all nags and the guests are all idiots and I’m packing my bags and heading for Montana where they never even heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn’t feed that stuff to the pigs. Something like that. I’m still mad about it.
I raved on this way for twenty minutes, and needn’t repeat it all here. You get the drift. My monologue was delivered at the top of my lungs, punctuated by blows on the front desk with a fly-swatter, the kicking of chairs, and much profanity. A call to arms, freedom, unions, uprisings, and the breaking of chains for the working masses.
As I pitched my fit, Sigmund Wollman, the night auditor, sat quietly on his stool, smoking a cigarette, watching me with sorrowful eyes. Put a bloodhound in a suit and tie and you have Sigmund Wollman. He’s got good reason to look sorrowful. Survivor of Auschwitz. Three years. German Jew. Thin, coughed a lot. He liked being alone at the night job – gave him intellectual space, gave him peace and quiet, and, even more, he could go into the kitchen and have a snack whenever he wanted to – all the wieners and sauerkraut he wanted. To him, a feast. More than that, there’s nobody around at night to tell him what to do. In Auschwitz he dreamed of such a time. The only person he sees at work is me, the nightly disturber of his dream. Our shifts overlap for an hour. And here I am again. A one-man war party at full cry.
“Fulchum, are you finished?”
“No. Why?”
"Lissen, Fulchum. Lissen me, lissen me. You know what’s wrong with you? It’s not wieners and kraut and it’s not the boss and it’s not the chef and it’s not this job.”
“So what’s wrong with me?”
“Fulchum, you think you know everything, but you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems. You will live longer. And will not annoy people like me so much. Good night.” In a gesture combining dismissal and blessing, he waved me off to bed.
Seldom in my life have I been hit between the eyes with a truth so hard. Years later I heard a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest describe what the moment of enlightenment was like and I knew exactly what he meant. There in that late-night darkness of the Feather River Inn, Sigmund Wollman simultaneously kicked my butt and opened a window in my mind.
For thirty years now, in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I’m ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks: “Fulchum. Problem or inconvenience?”
I think of this as the Wollman Test of Reality. Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference. Good night, Sig.”
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