Bill Bonner, "Gouge of the Century"

"Gouge of the Century"

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - ‘How dumb does she think we are?’ was the question we left you with yesterday. Ms. Harris says it’s time for a change. Which is a funny thing to say when you’ve been the Vice President for the last three and a half years... and your boss was MIA during much of that time. Weren’t you, effectively, in charge? If not, who was? And how will leaving you in charge change anything?

But wait... the Democrats’ candidate promises something new – price controls. She’ll make it a crime for grocers to ‘gouge’ consumers with higher prices. Good news for the swamp critters! Lawyers, administrators, lobbyists - they’ll put their children through elite colleges... and build beach houses in Florida... on the money they earn arguing about what ‘price gouging’ means.

Food retailing is a notoriously ‘low gouge’ industry... the big grocers move millions of tons of food - much of it perishable - and earn net margins below 2%. If greedy corporations were gouging so lustily, you’d think they’d be able to get a rate of return at least higher than a 2-year T-bill.

Greed is one of the ‘seven deadly sins’ made famous by Tertullian in the 3rd century, AD. It is considered ‘deadly’; you go to Hell, with a one-way ticket. Why would corporate managers risk the fiery furnace to squeeze out such a pathetically small net margin from selling cucumbers and ground beef?

Or is it more likely that greed had nothing to do with it? Prices had been rising at around 2% per year for decades. Then, in the spending debauch of the Trump-Biden era - in which $15 trillion was added to the national debt... prices shot up. A coincidence? Or were the feds themselves guilty of another ancient sin - debauching the currency?

And wasn’t Ms. Harris ‘in the room’ the whole time - from 2021-2024 - as the price of food rose more than 20%? It was she who was sleeping with the Vice President’s husband... and sitting in the chair reserved for the Vice President. And she, who in the absence of a real president, should have assumed the adult-in-the-room responsibility.

Prices were rising at the fastest rate in almost fifty years; why didn’t she stop the gouging when the gougers were really going at it? Why wait ‘til the problem had largely solved itself before swinging into action?

But if Ms. Harris really wanted to stop big corporations from ripping off the public, we have a suggestion...We’re talking about the biggest gouge in history... and right under Ms. Harris’s nose.

Yes, she was in the control room when a $200 billion bill... became, not a $250 billion bill... not even a $500 billion bill... nor even a $1 trillion bill. It soared to $2 trillion as the feds allowed the firepower industry to pull off the ‘Gouge of the Century.’ Responsible Statecraft: "F-35: $2T in 'generational wealth' the military had no right to spend." The Joint Strike Fighter had a $200B price tag in 2001, now babies born that year are out of college and the plane is still not ready for prime time The plane is the F-35. Federal legislation limits the allowable price margins that defense suppliers can enjoy. So, instead of making 10% on a $200 billion F-35 program, they’ll make 10% on $2 trillion worth of costs.

Are the tomato sellers greedier than the sellers of fighter planes? Why is a 20% increase in food costs more egregious than a 1,000% increase in ‘defense’ costs? And why should Ms. Harris poke her nose into something that is none of her business (the price of bananas)... while ignoring something that is very much her responsibility (containing military spending... and getting a fair deal from military contractors)?

But wait... this is politics. It is not meant to be taken seriously. Like professional wraslin’, it depends on a willing suspension of disbelief... or just stupidity... on the part of the voters. Either way, Ms. Harris can count on their cooperation."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"The Coming of the Roman Tax Collectors"

"The Coming of the Roman Tax Collectors"

by Jeff Thomas

"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has been written about many times over the last two millennia, most notably in Edward Gibbon’s six-volume set of books of the same name.However, one significant aspect to the decline began in the fourth century that has received little attention from those who have written on the overall subject.

At that time, an exodus occurred amongst the farmers and merchants. They abandoned the "centre of all commerce" and moved to the north, to live amongst the barbarians. At first, only a relative few departed, but, over the ensuing decades, ever-larger numbers departed Rome, until much of the class of people that actually created and traded in goods had left Rome, making its economy unsustainable.

Essentially, this is the way events unfolded: First, as the central government became more wasteful, it increasingly relied upon "bread and circuses," or entitlements and public entertainment to placate the people. As the cost for these increased, taxes had to be raised on the productive members of society to pay the bill. This amount eventually became insufficient, as the number of recipients grew. Additionally, the government debased the currency by steadily removing silver from the denarius and replacing it with copper. But this solution was ineffectual, as it only served to create inflation, so more had to be done. Throughout this period, the government also borrowed money whenever possible. As debt increased, more tax dollars were needed to pay for the ever-increasing interest.

With each false solution, the burden for keeping the failing system going was placed on the shoulders of the merchant class and all those who produced goods for profit. Eventually, the burden became so great that unrest became prevalent. Draconian laws were instituted to keep the taxpayers in line. Restrictions on freedoms were implemented to assure that taxpayers found it more difficult to escape the system. And the behavior of the tax collectors became more Neanderthal in exacting the tax.

At this point, the tax demands were so great that the producers no longer had sufficient wealth to expand their businesses, so business stagnated, whilst Rome steadily demanded more. And, here, an interesting development occurred that’s not often related in history books: Rome, as a result of diminished tax receipts (which it had caused) discovered that they could no longer pay the mercenary soldiers that they were using as tax collectors. They cut the soldiers wages repeatedly which, of course, the soldiers were not happy about. Whether officially or unofficially, the soldiers were advised that they might make up for the shortfall by exacting further payment from taxpayers on their own behalf.

This, not surprisingly, led eventually to looting, destruction and rape, etc. by the soldiers. Each time their wages were cut, the usury increased. And each time this occurred, more merchants and farmers left Rome for the relative safety of the north. By this time, the "barbarians" were behaving in a more civilized manner than the "civilized" Roman government and its mercenaries. By the fifth century, the situation was so dire that tax riots and rebellion were the order of the day for those who had remained in Rome, but even this did not stop taxes from rising and more people being provided with largesse by the government.

It’s been written that "those who lived off the treasury were more numerous than those paying into it." (An eerie occurrence, as we too have now reached that point.) It’s significant that the decline took so long to play out. In the beginning, only those who were most incensed at the usury and/or who were the most courageous, made an exit. Then, when the next level of usury was introduced, another small percentage departed.

This is human nature. Different people have different breaking points. Had the entire producer-class risen up all at once, it’s likely that the government would have reversed its policies, but historically, that almost never happens.

Invariably, those who are the first to leave are the first to begin improving their lives. They have the initial hardship of starting over, but their self-confidence and work ethic soon make up for that. And, as can be understood, those that fare the worst in such a situation are those who repeatedly delay their exit and are often trapped when a collapse in the system eventually occurs.

It should be understood that, historically, in all such cases, government has always employed a very limited playbook: increased entitlements to those who are not productive, increased taxation, debasement of the currency, greatly-increased debt, more regulations, more restriction on freedoms, and more aggressive enforcement. As the process is gradual and ever-increasing, there are always those citizens who are prepared to shoulder yet another small increase in the usury and political leaders are only too willing to oblige, with repeated increases in the abuses listed above.

And so we say to ourselves, "What was wrong with those people? Why did they continue to accept one injustice after another? If they had any sense, they would have gotten out when the first injustices occurred. They would have recovered more quickly and built a better life elsewhere instead of being slowly bled to death by their rulers."

Quite so. Yet it’s a logic that the great majority of people invariably have difficulty in following, especially when it comes to their own well-being. In much of the former "free world," we’ve seen increasing "bread and circuses" – ever-expanding entitlements to the non-productive. As in Rome, this has now reached the point that "those who live off the treasury are more numerous than those paying into it."

And laws have been written (particularly in North America and Europe) that allow banking institutions to decide how much of depositors’ money will be allotted to them. They can now legally put depositors "on an allowance" as is occurring in Greece. All that’s required is for the banks to declare a bank emergency for it to go international. In Rome, when they could no longer pay full wages to the tax collectors, they advised collectors to make up for the shortfall by forcing greater payment from the taxpayers and pocketing the difference. In 2008, when a recession forced the US government to cut back on payments to the states, laws were implemented that allowed Civil Asset Forfeiture by the police. This has resulted in authorities seizing some $3.2 billion from people not charged with any crime – an amount that would make Roman tax collectors blush.

These and other acts of increased taxation, inflation, debasement of the currency, increased debt, more regulations, more restriction on freedoms, and more aggressive enforcement manifestly demonstrate that, once again, history is repeating itself. The outcome? Well, a small percentage of those victimized have already recognized where this is headed and have made an exit. They expatriated their wealth, have sought legal residency in another jurisdiction and then… quietly… left.

More have followed, but as has always been the case historically, people have differing tolerance levels. Those who make the move early will be those who prosper the most, whilst those who follow will, when the time comes, feel lucky just to get out. Yet, many more will remain and, as was true in Rome, the entire decline may span many years.

However, the principle remains the same: the earlier the exit, the better the outcome. Misguided political and economic ideas have taken hold in the US and around the world. In all likelihood, the public will vote itself more and more "free stuff" until it causes an economic crisis. It's all coming to climax soon."

- https://internationalman.com/

Scott Ritter, "The Real Truth About Israel And Zionism"

Scott Ritter, 8/26/24

"The Real Truth About Israel And Zionism"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"World War III Prelude, 8/26/24"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 8/26/24

"Alert! Israeli Military Bases Struck! Russia Obliterates Ukraine! 

Drone Hits Poland! Iran Attacked!!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, “Serenity”

Liquid Mind, “Serenity”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.

Many young stars from this cloud are visible in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way's close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121211.html

Chet Raymo, “Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright…”

“Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright…”

by Chet Raymo

“Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet.” You may recall these words from Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.” There is nothing intrinsically cheerful about the world, she says. To live is to die; it’s all part of the bargain. Stars destroy themselves to make the atoms of our bodies. Every creature lives to eat and be eaten. And into this incomprehensible, unfathomable, apparently stochastic melee stumbles… You and I.

With qualities that we have - so far - seen nowhere else. Hope. Humor. A sense of justice. A sense of beauty. Gratitude. But also: Anger. Hurt. Despair. Strangers in a strange land.

Galaxies by the billions turn like St. Catherine Wheels, throwing off sparks of exploding stars. Atoms eddy and flow, blowing hot and cold, groping and promiscuous. A wind of neutrinos gusts through our bodies, Energy billows and swells. A myriad of microorganisms nibble at our flesh.

We have a sense that something purposeful is going on, something that involves us. Something secret, holy and fleet. But we haven’t a clue what it is. We make up stories. Stories in which we are the point of it all. We tell the stories over and over. To our children. To ourselves. And the stories fill up the space of our ignorance.

Until they don’t. And then the great yawning spaces open again. And time clangs down on our heads like a pummeling rain, like the collapsing ceiling of the sky. Dazed, stunned, we stagger like giddy topers towards our own swift dissolution. Inexplicably praising. Admiring. Wondering. Giving thanks.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

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“The Tyger”

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art.

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”

- William Blake

Paulo Coelho, “Dreams: The 12 Steps”

“Dreams: The 12 Steps”

by Paulo Coelho

"When Joseph Campbell created the expression “follow your blessing,” he was reflecting an idea that seems to be very appropriate right now. In “The Alchemist,” this same idea is called “Personal Legend.” Alan Cohen, a therapist who lives in Hawaii, is also working on this theme. He says that in his lectures he asks those who are dissatisfied with their work and seventy-five percent of the audience raise their hands. Cohen has created a system of twelve steps to help people to rediscover their “blessing” (he is a follower of Campbell):

1. Tell yourself the truth: Draw two columns on a sheet of paper and in the left column write down what you would love to do. Then write down on the other side everything you’re doing without any enthusiasm. Write as if nobody were ever going to read what is there, don’t censure or judge your answers.
 

2. Start slowly, but start: Call your travel agent, look for something that fits your budget; go and see the movie that you’ve been putting off; buy the book that you’ve been wanting to buy. Be generous to yourself and you’ll see that even these small steps will make you feel more alive.
 

3. Stop slowly, but stop: Some things use up all your energy. Do you really need to go that committee meeting? Do you need to help those who do not want to be helped? Does your boss have the right to demand that in addition to your work you have to go to all the same parties that he goes to? When you stop doing what you’re not interested in doing, you’ll realize that you were making more demands of yourself than others were really asking.
 

4. Discover your small talents: What do your friends tell you that you do well? What do you do with relish, even if it’s not perfectly well done? These small talents are hidden messages of your large occult talents.
 

5. Begin to choose: If something gives you pleasure, don’t hesitate. If you’re in doubt, close your eyes, imagine that you’ve made decision A and see all that it will bring you. Now do the same with decision B. The decision that makes you feel more connected to life is the right one – even if it’s not the easiest to make.

6. Don’t base your decisions on financial gain: The gain will come if you really do it with enthusiasm. The same vase, made by a potter who loves what he does and by a man who hates his job, has a soul. It will be quickly sold (in the first case) or will stay on the shelves (in the second case).
 

7. Follow your intuition: The most interesting work is the one where you allow yourself to be creative. Einstein said: “I did not reach my understanding of the Universe using just mathematics.” Descartes, the father of logic, developed his method based on a dream he had.
 

8. Don’t be afraid to change your mind: If you put a decision aside and this bothers you, think again about what you chose. Don’t struggle against what gives you pleasure.
 

9. Learn how to rest: One day a week without thinking about work lets the subconscious help you, and many problems (but not all) are solved without any help from reason.
 

10. Let things show you a happier path: If you are struggling too much for something, without any results appearing, be more flexible and follow the paths that life offers. This does not mean giving up the struggle, growing lazy or leaving things in the hands of others – it means understanding that work with love brings us strength, never despair.
 

11. Read the signs: This is an individual language joined to intuition that appears at the right moments. Even if the signs point in the opposite direction from what you planned, follow them. Sometimes you can go wrong, but this is the best way to learn this new language.
 

12. Finally, take risks! The men who have changed the world set out on their paths through an act of faith. Believe in the force of your dreams. God is fair, He wouldn’t put in your heart a desire that couldn’t come true.”

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "What I Have Learned So Far"

"What I Have Learned So Far"

"Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone."

~ Mary Oliver

The Daily "Near You?"

Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"You Know..."

"You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually, and this is my belief, we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is."

- Maria Popova

John Wilder, "Propaganda: It’s Not Just For Diapers Anymore"

"Propaganda:

 It’s Not Just For Diapers Anymore"

by John Wilder

"Movies are amazing tools. Movies are the backbone of an entire American industry, but it’s a really small industry, with global box office revenues hitting a record of $42.5 billion before COVID. Sure, $42.5 billion sounds like a lot of money, but Elon Musk paid $44 billion for X®. One single pipeline, the Nordstream 2®, cost about $10 billion. That’s just one pipeline: natural gas pipeline construction spending was over $206 billion in 2020, so it’s roughly five times the size of the size of the movie business.

Yet we focus on movies, and focus on stars. And Ben Affleck, for some reason. Must be his insurance company. But the reason that we focus on movies, of course, is the stories. The stories have real power, because they’re watched and internalized. Part of the point of propaganda is that, even if you’re aware of the attempt to manipulate you, you’re still impacted by it, though in a lesser format. And movies, when we’re actually “shown” a story are much more powerful than reading a story.

I think this is because reading requires the reader to function as a co-creator of the story: you have to imagine the armies of Orcs headed to Helm’s Deep™, so as Tolkien writes the words, your part of the creation is imagining and modeling the characters, the setting, the smoke and fog and the arrows in flight. Yes, books and stories and news are propaganda, too, but the visual is so much more effective, which is why they went to such great lengths to stage the drowned boy on a beach to make people feel a certain way so that millions of invaders could be let into Europe.

Large chunks of movies are pure propaganda. I recall watching "Raising Arizona" right before I had a baby. There’s a fairly humorous scene in the movie that involved Huggies™ diapers, so I bought Huggies© diapers to give them a try. Huggies® diapers sucked and we moved on to Pampers©, but the propaganda worked. And I knew it was propaganda. I knew that Huggies™ had given money to be in the movie. It wasn’t evil propaganda, but it was propaganda, nonetheless.

I’ve since developed another theory: the bigger the lie that they’re attempting to force you to swallow, the more the propaganda, and the more it becomes vilified to have an opinion that differs even by the slightest degree from the lie. You can probably think of examples, but I’ll start off with one of the biggest lies: “Diversity is our strength.”

That’s just a horrible lie. Would Japan be better off if 100,000 Haitians were dropped off in Tokyo tomorrow afternoon? No! Haitians have had over 200 years to try to improve Haiti, and it’s awful. It’s not because of climate or natural resources: the Dominican Republic is on the exact same island, and has a per capita GDP of $11,825. Not great, but not horrible. Haiti? It’s an economic basketcase with a per capita GDP of $2,125.

Bringing Haitians to any country wouldn’t improve it, because the people who make Haiti the hellhole that it is are the Haitians. Being on the Magic Dirt of Japan won’t change them. Being on the Magic Dirt of the United States won’t change them, either.

On particular film that focused on this subversion was 2017’s "Logan." Yup, another superhero movie about the character Wolverine™, but this one ended with the immortal and indestructible mutant Wolverine© dying as an old man, and with his replacement mutants all being illegal aliens from Mexico. Oh, and the cross that they put on his grave? The end scene shows one of the mutants pushing it over so it’s an “X” and not a cross. I’m not making this up.

According to the movie, diversity is not only our strength®, it’s inevitable. Oh, and your Christian God? We’ll mock Him as well.

The reality is that greater levels of diversity are correlated with greater levels of crime, lower levels of social trust, and lower productivity in a workplace. For a “strength” I’m not sure what that “strength” is improving. So, it has to be sold, again and again and again.

The propaganda machine has been in overload mode for decades on the “girls are just the same as boys” and the result has been a confused mass of children as the most impressionable youth are hit with that message and women are shown in action movies doing things no woman ever born on planet Earth would be capable of doing.

The really fortunate thing is that this latest propaganda has been a horrible mistake. In the new rules, no woman can ever do anything wrong. No woman can be forced to grow and change since they were perfect since birth. No woman can be defeated by a man, ever. It’s the revenge of the Girlboss©.

That makes for a really stupid story. And Hollywood™ is finally figuring that out since people don’t go to see really stupid movies with stupid plots. That’s to our advantage. If people aren’t going to see the propaganda, well, they won’t be indoctrinated. And, although I’m not firmly of the opinion that Elon is on our side, his purchase of X® gives him the ability to influence the propaganda that’s being forced on us 24/7/365 from every single location. It allows people to react to The Narrative and mock it.

And that’s the key, because it’s not really The Narrative, it’s really The Narrative Against Truth. The essence of a good meme is a few words and an emotional punch. The reasons memes from the TradRight work much better than from the GloboLeftElite is simple: our memes are based on Truth, not based on The Narrative.

And, no matter how much they fight us, their propaganda couldn’t make Huggies™ better than Pampers©. And no matter how hard they push, their propaganda can’t make lies the Truth. Think about what you cannot say, and ask: “Why can’t I say that?”

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

Travelling with Russell, "I Went to a Brand New Russian Shopping Mall in 2024"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 8/26/244

"I Went to a Brand New Russian Shopping Mall in 2024"

"What does a Russian shopping mall look like in 2024? Come on a tour of the Pervomayskiy Shopping Centre in Moscow, Russia. Opened in August 2024, this is a brand-new shopping mall in Russia. How have sanctions affected shopping in Russia?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Absolutely astonishing...

Full screen a must! Highly recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 7/27/24

"I Visited The Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces"

"Park Patriot in Moscow, Russia has one of the most famous Churches in all of Russia. The Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces is a spiritual symbol of Russia, glorifying the greatest victory of life over death."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Oh my God...

Dan, I Allegedly, "No Cash Accepted - The End of Financial Privacy?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 8/26/24

"No Cash Accepted - 

The End of Financial Privacy?"

"In today's video, we're diving into the digital currency dangers and how your privacy is at risk! As we see major chains like Tesco ditch cash, it's crucial to understand the implications for our privacy and society. Plus, we're unraveling the truth behind 'Silver Squatters,' gift card scams, and the looming economic challenges. More and more businesses are restricting cash as a method of payment. Here comes the Central Bank Digital currencies."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Live All You Can..."

 "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter

what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.

If you haven't had that, what have you had?"
- Henry James

Bill Bonner, "Mission Accomplished"

The press says inflation is beat…and the coast is now clear; 

the Fed can get back to doing what it has been doing for 

the last thirty years - supporting Wall Street with artificially cheap credit.

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France: "The parade of lies and claptrap goes on. Here’s the news from MarketWatch: "Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday delivered his clearest message yet to financial markets that the time has arrived for lower interest rates. The three major U.S equity indexes ended Friday near record territory after Powell’s brief speech at Jackson Hole, Wyo., the dollar traded at its lowest level in more than a year against a basket of major currencies and prices for U.S. bonds jumped as yields fell."

Yes, the Fed has won the fight against inflation. In those famous words of George W. Bush - Mission Accomplished! Never mind that prices are up 39% since 2012 (when the Fed first announced its 2% target). And never mind that they’re still going up at 3.3% per year... 65% above the target. The press says inflation is beat…and the coast is now clear; the Fed can get back to doing what it has been doing for the last thirty years - supporting Wall Street with artificially cheap credit.

Stocks are already anticipating the return of EZ money, with the Dow over 41,000. Pundits and stock mongers are calling for another big bull market. But remember, what really counts is the Primary Trend - the sustained, long-term direction of asset prices, in real, inflation-adjusted terms. That trend has been down for the last three years. Most likely, it will continue going down, even as nominal stock prices get goosed up by the Fed.

In October 2021, you could sell the Dow stocks and get enough money to buy 20 ounces of gold. Today, you’ll get only 16 ounces – a 20% loss. The authorities can boost nominal prices, but not real prices. And they can ‘manage’ the economy by manipulating interest rates; but they can’t improve it.

At dinner on Saturday night a companion remarked: “They always think they know better. The ‘educators’ don’t want any input from parents. Doctors don’t listen to patients. The agricultural bureaucracy doesn’t pay any attention to farmers. “They are in their own bubbles... protected from the real world, imagining that they can control it.”

She had in mind France’s leadership; our thoughts drifted to the other side of the Atlantic, where the frauds are gaudier, more flamboyant…and more absurd. Presidential contender Ms. Kamala Harris, for example, says she is going to protect America’s democracy...even though she is the least democratically-selected candidate in modern history. She was chosen, not by voters... not by ‘The People’... but by a handful of party honchos. Insiders. Elites.

What does she really think? What does she ‘stand for?’ How did she come to stand before the American people, portraying herself (plausibly) as the only sane choice for president? Nobody knows. But there she was, last Thursday, heading up the Democrats’ ticket... the last act in their big DNC circus. She said we can count on her to put the country first... to protect ‘free and fair elections’. It was a ‘fight for America’s future,’ she said... in what was billed as an ‘historic’ speech. But it was all blah-blah, claptrap and lies.

Americans can now go to the polls in November and choose between a grotesque nincompoop and a stuffed pantsuit. It is a choice between someone who says a lot of things that aren't true... and someone who says nothing at all. “It is a choice between the plague and cholera,” said our dinner companion.

Ms. Harris said a lot of silly things in her speech, accepting the Democratic nomination. But probably the silliest was her proposal to lower consumer prices by putting a stop to ‘price gouging’ by greedy corporations. How dumb does she think we are? Stay tuned."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "What They Have Planned For Us Will Shock And Horrify You, Are You Ready?"

Gregory Mannarino, 8/26/24

"What They Have Planned For Us Will 

Shock And Horrify You, Are You Ready?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "Alastair Crooke: Western Propaganda Wars"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, AM 8/26/24

"Alastair Crooke: Western Propaganda Wars"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "I've Got A Bad Feeling About This... You Can't Make This Up!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 8/26/24

"I've Got A Bad Feeling About This... 

You Can't Make This Up!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 8/26/24"

"Economic Market Snapshot 8/26/24"

○

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

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Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

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- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

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Comprehensive, essential truth.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

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And now... The End Game...

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Jim Kunstler, “RFK, Jr. Murders Whale with Chainsaw!”

“RFK, Jr. Murders Whale with Chainsaw!”

by Jim Kunstler

"The alliance between Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Donald Trump is many things. But first it’s an all-clear signal to a large class of less-than-fully brain-damaged Americans that it’s okay to quit being insane. As you know, this election is no longer a battle between the political Left and Right. It’s an epic struggle-session between the sane and the insane.

You just witnessed the Democratic Convention nominating an empty drunken pantsuit whose only record as a high government official is failure to protect and defend the nation and to support its constitution. All arranged without any real votes cast. Pretty neat trick, pulled off under the banner of Saving Our Democracy. Please understand that it was the result of hypnotizing so many vulnerable personalities into a mass formation psychosis. They were vulnerable because they are scared stiff by propaganda specifically targeting their deepest archetypal fears - in this case, fear of Daddy, meaning fear of behavioral boundaries, in short, of being civilized.

Thus, the advocacy for Hamas (Israel = Old Testament = moral boundaries), abortion (no more babies = die-off of cultural line), drag-queens (“mother” = demonic imposter), open border (border = nation’s boundary), the Ukraine War (“Let’s You and Him Fight”), censorship (hatred of fairness), mandates and lockdowns (destroy purposeful, meaningful, productive life), and so on. The propaganda engineered to produce this madness surely comes from our intel blob. They have devoted all the years since the founding of the CIA in 1947 to developing and refining their methods of mindfuckery. They have unleashed it lately at full force because they fear that Mr. Trump will deconstruct their intel blob and possibly prosecute some of its current and former officials for serious crimes such as treason, misprision of felonies, and murder.

The final ingredient in all that is submission of the populace to these programmatic suggestions. Simply put, they yield to the fears induced in them. Try to enter the mind of a committed Democratic voter. You’ll discover that you are locked out. Sharing of thoughts is impossible because there is no thought in there, only disordered emotion.

Ask a Democrat what they think Donald Trump actually did as president for four years. I guarantee you they will say only one thing: he cancelled abortion. Which is actually not true. He nominated several Supreme Court Justices who ruled that abortion properly belonged under the jurisdiction of the fifty states. (It was the act of ruling that drove them nuts because rules = boundaries.) Of course, all the single batshit crazy cat-ladies of Boston, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Denver, and Los Angeles now raging over the issue are free to abort themselves to their hearts’ content.

So, Kamala Harris emerges from this Cluster-B personality disorder exercise in hypnosis (the convention) as the avatar of... “joy” ... in the absence of any ideas about actually running the government of a country which, for the moment, is run by nobody because the current president (“Joe Biden”) is both mentally unfit and on permanent vacation. None of this is very promising. The raptures of “joy” tend to obscure the idea that there is a future to be concerned about. Enter Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

He explained his view of the situation and his role in it with unsurpassed clarity last Friday in a powerful and moving speech outlining a decision that must have been very painful for him. As I averred he would do last Friday morning, he denounced the party of his ancestors in unequivocal terms for coming to militate against its own traditional principles - opposing war, fighting for free speech, helping poor working people, and against weaponizing government agencies. He threw his support to Mr. Trump because it’s become obvious that Mr. Trump’s aims and ideas are more in-tune with those forsaken principles of Mr. Kennedy’s father and his uncle, JFK.

And now he’ll campaign on behalf of Mr. Trump, with the expectation that he will play an important, well-defined role in the next Trump administration - in charge of a range of public health issues that he is deeply familiar with from decades of litigation and researching the books about pharmaceutical racketeering actually written by himself.

It’s Monday after the convention. What’s on the candidates’ campaign schedule today. CNNs “Campaign Latest” page says that Mr. Trump will give a speech in Detroit today to the National Guard Association where he is expected to greet the endorsement of former Rep. (and Lt. Col. In the National Guard, Tulsi Gabbard). Kamala Harris has no public appearances scheduled, but CNN reports that she has raised a fabulous $540-million since her launch a few weeks ago. Isn’t that nice? Boolah boolah, lotsa moolah. On Wednesday, Ms. Harris and her veep sidekick, Tim Walz, embark on a bus tour around Georgia. Bus tours will be the signature of their campaign.

Let me tell you what that means: instead of flying expeditiously between campaign stops where they might have to state some positions on public issues, Harris & Walz will eat up many hours on long bus rides from Point-A to Point-B, hiding from the public and the press.

Bobby Kennedy, meanwhile, is cramming as many media appearances as possible into his schedule, submitting to questions about everything, including the latest barrage of accusations about his fully-disclosed personal history. Fox has had him on several programs, though the other cable news stations are ignoring him, as are The New York Times and the WashPo, except to publish scurrilous stories from his mindfucked siblings and cousins - the latest being that he cut the head off a dead whale on the beach at Cape Cod with a chainsaw. Readers are supposed to construe that to mean he murdered a whale with a chainsaw."

- https://kunstler.com/

"The Obedience Cult"

"The Obedience Cult"

by Paul Rosenbeg

"Not too many years back, warnings of Peak Oil circulated widely, and they made me consider something a good deal more dangerous: Peak Obedience. If that concept strikes you as odd, there’s a reason: We’ve all been living inside an obedience cult.

In our typical “scary cult” stories, we find people who have given up their own functions of choice and do crazy things because they are told to by some authority. But so long as people are within the cult, none of it appears crazy. So, inside a cult of obedience, obedience would seem righteous, and more than anything else it would seem normal. And I think that very well describes the Western status quo.

Obedience, however, should not seem normal to us. Obedience holds our minds in a child state, and that is not fitting for any healthy person past their first years of life. It also presupposes that the people we obey have complete and final knowledge; and in fact, they do not: politicians, central bankers, and the other lords of the age have been wrong – obviously and publicly wrong – over and over.

So, obedience is not a logical position to take. Nonetheless, the mass of humanity believes that something horrible will happen if they don’t obey. After that, they merely need to be supplied with a defensible reason to comply. But all of that, even though true, isn’t what I’d like you to take away from this discussion. My primary point is this: When we obey, we make ourselves less conscious; we make ourselves less alive.

Why Obedience Is Peaking: Over the past two centuries, authority has benefited from a perfect storm of influences. There was never such a time previously, and there probably will never be another. Briefly, here’s what happened:

Morality was broken: For better or worse, Western civilization had a consistent set of moral standards from about the 10th century through the 17th or 18th century. Then, through the 20th century, those standards were broken. Note that I did not say morality was changed. The cultural morality of the West was not replaced, but broken. The West has endured a moral void ever since. Previously, people routinely compared authority’s decrees to a separate standard (most often the Bible), to see if they held up. But with Western morals broken, authority was freed from examination, and thus from restraint.

Economies of scale: Factories made it much cheaper to produce large numbers of goods than the old way, in individual workshops. Economists call this an economy of scale. Thus a cult of size began, making “obedience to the large” seem normal.

Fiat currency: Fiat currency has allowed governments to spend money without consequences. It allowed politicians to wage war and to provide free food, free education, and free medicine… all without overtly raising taxes. Fiat currency made it seem that politics was magical.

Mass conditioning: Built on the factory model, massive government institutions undertook the education of the populace. And more important than their overt curriculum (math, reading, etc.) was their invisible curriculum of obedience to authority. Here, to illustrate, is a quote from the esteemed Bertrand Russell, who is himself quoting Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a founding father of public schooling: "Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished."

Mass media: Mass media turbocharged authority and obedience in the 20th century, followed by the free account vultures of Facebook, Google and others. All of this went beyond authority’s grandest dreams. These things created an unnatural peak for authority. But now, this perfect storm is thinning.

Peak Obedience Is Brittle: Through the 20th century, the people of the West built up a very high compliance inertia. They complied with the demands of authority and taught their children to do the same, until it became automatic. People obeyed simply because they had obeyed in the past. Authority quickly became addicted to this situation, basing their plans on receiving every benefit of the doubt.

Automatic obedience, however, is a brittle thing. Economies of scale are failing, the money cartel has been exposed, government schools have lost respect, mass media is fading away and everyone knows that Facebook is an addiction. The game continues because the populace is distracted and afraid, but that won’t last forever.

And Then? It has long been understood that complex systems breed more complexity, and eventually break themselves. As central authorities try to solve each problem they face, they inevitably create others. Eventually the system becomes so complex, and its costs become so great, that new challenges cannot be solved. Then the system and its authority fail, as they did in the Soviet Union.

But again, that’s not my primary point. Rather, it’s this: Obedience disengages our best parts. Obedience degrades our creativity; it undercuts our effectiveness and especially our sense of satisfaction. Don’t sign away your life, no matter how many others do."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

"You Will Be Held Accountable, Home Deals Collapse In July, Don't Buy A House"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/25/24

"You Will Be Held Accountable,

Home Deals Collapse In July, Don't Buy A House"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Realms of Splendor"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Realms of Splendor"