"What Rulers Believe"

"What Rulers Believe"

by Paul Rosenberg

"I’ve been working on collections of quotes lately, and I have one more that I’d like to present… this one on the thoughts of rulers. For a number of years I’ve been telling people that the incentives faced by productive people and the incentives facing rulers (of whatever stripe) are very, very different. This list, I believe, will make that point.

For a number of years I’ve been telling people that the incentives faced by productive people and the incentives facing rulers (of whatever stripe) are very, very different. This list, I believe, will make that point.

You’ll find quotes from ‘bad’ rulers on this list, of course, but also some from the ‘good’ rulers. And please note that the ‘bad’ ones are very often held in high regard in their times. Joseph Stalin, for example – the #2 most prolific killer in all of human history – was the ‘great ally’ of the US in World War II and was routinely presented to the American public as “Uncle Joe.” So, beginning with Uncle Joe, here are the things that rulers believe:

Joseph Stalin: "Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?"

"Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs."

Mao Zedong "The cult of xenophobia is the cheapest and surest method of obtaining from the masses the ignorant and savage patriotism, which puts the blame for every political folly or social misfortune upon the foreigner."

Adolf Hitler: "Terrorism is the best political weapon, for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."

"I have not come into this world to make men better, but to make use of their weaknesses."

"What good fortune for those in power that people do not think."

"I have sympathy for Mr. Roosevelt, because he marches straight toward his objectives over Congress, lobbies and bureaucracy."

"In the simplicity of their minds, [people] more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie… It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have such impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and continue to think that there may be some other explanation."

Hermann Göring: "Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece… But… the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Winston Churchill: "What a man! I have lost my heart! (referring to Benito Mussolini in 1927). One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations."

Franklin Roosevelt: "There seems to be no question that [Mussolini] is really interested in what we are doing and I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy."

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson." (To Colonel Edward House)

Vladimir Lenin: "Our power does not know liberty or justice. It is established on the destruction of the individual will."

"The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves."

Leon Trotsky: "The real criminals hide under the cloak of the accusers."

Napoleon Bonaparte: "Of all our institutions public education is the most important… we must be able to cast a whole generation in the same mold."

"A man becomes a creature of his uniform."

"The life of a citizen is the property of his country."

Charles Maurice Talleyrand: "We were given speech to hide our thoughts."

"An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public."

Henry Kissinger: "The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer."

Cardinal Richelieu: "Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I’ll find an excuse in them to hang him."

Joseph Goebbels: "Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play."

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

J. Edgar Hoover: "Justice is incidental to law and order."

William H. Woodin (US Treasury secretary): "The Federal Reserve Act lets us print all we’ll need. And it won’t frighten the people. It won’t look like stage money. It’ll be money that looks like real money." (1933)

Benito Mussolini: "The Truth Apparent, apparent to everyone’s eyes who are not blinded by dogmatism, is that men are perhaps weary of Liberty. They have a surfeit of it… we have buried the putrid corpse of liberty … the Italian people are a race of sheep."

Roman Emperor Caracalla: "As long as we have this [pointing to his sword], we shall not run short of money."

Prince Phillip, duke of Edinburgh: "I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus."

Charles de Gaulle: "In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant."

https://freemansperspective.com/

"Extremism: The New Communism"

"Extremism: The New Communism"

by Brian Maher

“Extremism” is the new communism. Against this extremism stands “Our Democracy,” prepared and fortified. Former British diplomat Mr. Alastaire Crooke: "Just as the hegemonic West arose out of the Cold War era shaped and invigorated through dialectic opposition to communism (in the Western mythology), so we see today, a (claimed) totalizing “extremism” (whether of MAGA mode; or of the external variety: Iran, Russia, etc.) - posed in… a similar Hegelian dialectic opposition to the former capitalism versus communism; but in today’s case, it is “extremism” in conflict with “Our Democracy”…"

‘Extremism’… plainly is being set up as the successor to the former Cold War antithesis - communism. We believe this Crooke fellow has hooked onto something. Perhaps not in fine detail, but in broad outline.

“Extremist!” Did you decline vaccination? Did you ingest ivermectin? You - friend - are an extremist. Did you cast your vote for Mr. Trump? You are an extremist. Do you oppose military assistance to Ukraine? Once again you are an extremist. You are undemocratic, fascistic, racist, sexist, gay-phobic, transsexual-phobic, immigrant-phobic, dictator-philic… and an altogether nasty fellow. You are today’s communist, today’s bogeyman, today’s mighty fee-fi-fo-fum.

The maximally vaccinated, the Trump-despiser, the Ukraine booster, this is the 100% American. And one political party refers to “our democracy” so often it ought to take copyright on the term.

Whose Democracy Is It? Yet whose democracy is it? What about the “vaccine hesitant”? Does vaccine hesitancy find excuse in the actual science? A substantial body of medical literature indicates that it does. The scale of vaccine-induced injury and mortality appears far from negligible. Yet it makes no nevermind. You are an extremist if you begged off the shot.

Do Mr. Trump’s various policy positions, say - perhaps - to cease mass illegal immigration strike bull’s-eye with you? You are an extremist.

Might you fear that military assistance to Ukraine may ultimately escalate to a nuclear sword fight with Russia? You are the extremist - not the fellow willing to risk the nuclear sword fight with Russia.

Does Being Wrong Make You Extreme? Now, we must allow for this possibility: You may be incorrect in each instance. The vaccine may have benefitted you. Mr. Trump may pursue policies poor for America. Blackening Mr. Putin’s eye may prove correct. et does error equal extremism?

To the “extremism is communism” crowd among us… it evidently does. Mr. Crooke: "The West perceives itself as tacking to “the right side of History.” “Winning narratives” essentially assert - in secular format - the inevitability of the Western eschatological Mission for global redemption and convergence. In this new narrative context, facts-on-the-ground become mere irritants, and not realities that must be taken into account."

Once again we believe there is justice here. The West in general and the United States in particular are forever taking up crusades. They are not religious crusades as they once were - but moral crusades. Its latest is a crusade against extremism, be it actual extremism or perceived extremism.

Capturing the New Jerusalem: The new crusaders believe they may capture the secular Holy Land. The new Jerusalem - or perhaps the new Sodom and Gomorrah - will fall within their grasp! Again, Mr. Alastair Crooke: "The new crusaders may be imagining that a confrontation with extremism… will again, as it did in the post-Cold War era, yield an American rejuvenation. Which is to say that a conflict with Iran, Russia and China (in a different way) may come onto the agenda. The telltale signs are there (plus the West’s need for a reset of its economy, which war regularly provides)."

Central to good crusading is good storytelling. That is, propaganda is central to good crusading.

The 10 Rules of Propaganda: Good crusading must rely upon the late Lord Arthur Ponsonby’s 10 rules of propaganda. They are these:

1. We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves.

2. The other guy is solely responsible for this war.

3. Our adversary’s leader is evil and looks evil.

4. We are defending a noble purpose, not special interest.

5. The enemy is purposefully causing atrocities; we only commit mistakes.

6. The enemy is using unlawful weapons.

7. We have very little losses, the enemy is losing big.

8. Intellectuals and artists support our cause.

9. Our cause is sacred.

10. Those who doubt our propaganda are traitors.

The Propaganda War in Ukraine: Daily media coverage of the Ukraine war calls to mind three or more of these propaganda rules. On some days six or seven. On others still, all 10. Alas, there is often little substance in back of them. They break inevitably upon the hard rock of facts. Yet the propagandist cannot let go. He must impose his mummeries by force if necessary, else he stand embarrassed before his fellows.

Concludes Mr. Crooke: "The West has a problem with “winning narratives”: Their inherent flaw is that they are grounded in emotivism and eschew argumentation. Inevitably, they are simplistic. They are simply intended to fuel a “whole of society” common alignment. Which is to say that across MSM; business, federal agencies, NGOs and the security sector, all should adhere to opposing all “extremisms” threatening “our democracy.” We detailed these efforts by the “deep state” in yesterday’s reckoning.

The Worst Thing to Happen to America: Upon the conclusion of Soviet rule, Russian political scientist Georgi Arbatov pitied not the Soviets - but the Americans. “We are going to do the worst thing we can do to you,” he sneered. Which was what precisely? “We are going to take your enemy away from you.”

He was correct. As we have written before: "A superpower requires an enemy as the policeman requires criminals… as the psychiatrist requires bedlamites… as the church requires sinners. Absent an enemy it loses its direction. Its vigor. Its elan vital. It is a plodding and aimless doofus."

Turning Adams on His Head: The United States “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” said Adams (John Quincy). Of course the United States long ago took up the hunt. It found monsters in Germany (twice), Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Iraq (twice) Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. There is always another. And another. Yet the new monster-slayer, the new crusader, need not jump an ocean to locate his monsters. He says the United States “need not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” He locates them at home, and in their millions. Thus he reaches for his sword. “Long live Our Democracy,” is the cry on his lips…"

- https://dailyreckoning.com/

Adventures with Danno, "My Shocking Experience At Walmart!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, AM 8/31/24

"My Shocking Experience At Walmart!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

O

Full screen recommended.

The Real Economy, 8/31/24

"Walmart: Rotten Fruit! Egg Prices Double! 

Crazy High Food Prices!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

The Economic Ninja, 8/31/24

"Big!Lots: Another Big Box Retailer Bites The Dust"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"WTF Alert! Moscow Declares Emergency Until Sept. 9th; Ukraine Suspends Hotline, Plans Full Attack"

Canadian Prepper, 8/30/24

"WTF Alert! Moscow Declares Emergency Until Sept. 9th;

 Ukraine Suspends Hotline, Plans Full Attack"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Your Privacy Is For Sale!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 8/30/24

"Your Privacy Is For Sale!"

"Did you know your privacy is slipping away? Ford's latest move involves tracking your every drive – and not just for repossession purposes. They're selling your data, folks! Imagine the legal ramifications, like in divorce cases or employee surveillance. It's a wild world out there!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"This Is Scary: We Just Saw A Record Breaking Food Line, People Waiting 3 Hours For Food"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 8/30/24

"This Is Scary: We Just Saw A Record Breaking Food Line,

 People Waiting 3 Hours For Food"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Boarshead: I Can't Believe This Just Happened...It's Worse Than We Thought!"

Adventures With Danno, PM 8/30/24

"Boarshead: I Can't Believe This Just Happened...

It's Worse Than We Thought!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

At least 9 deaths...

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, "Alpha"

Despite ourselves, this song always suggested the images of 

Mankind's relentless march through the ages to our unknown destiny...

Vangelis, "Alpha"

“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."

- Scott Morse

"A Look to the Heavens, With Chet Raymo"

“Learning And Yearning”

by Chet Raymo

“This photograph of the Eagle Nebula made by a rather modest telescope - the 0.9 meter instrument at Kitt Peak, Arizona - appeared on APOD. I sat in front of the computer screen for ten minutes, breathless. One tiny corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of tens of billions of galaxies that we can potentially see with our telescopes! At the center are the so-called "Pillars of Creation" from a famous Hubble photograph.

I recall when the Hubble photograph appeared in the media hundreds of viewers claimed to see the face of Jesus in the billowing clouds. Which prompted these observations from "Skeptics and True Believers": "In an article on the psychological basis of belief, the psychologist James Alcock proposed that two aspects of the human brain might be called the "yearning unit" and the "learning unit." He probably didn't mean these terms to be taken literally, as referring to separate compartments of the brain, but yearning and learning are certainly central to the way we interact with the world. It is hard to imagine how we can be fully human without a little of each. Finding the proper balance between the two is a task that can keep us occupied for most of our lives.

We yearn when we dream of fulfillment, of greater happiness, of knowing more. We yearn when we love, when we laugh, when we cry, when we pray. Yearning is wondering what is around the next bend, over the rainbow, beyond the horizon. Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, philosophy, and religion.

Learning is listening to parents, wise men, shamans. Learning is reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments, being skeptical. Learning is looking behind the curtain for the Wizard of Oz, touching the stove to see if it's hot, not taking anyone's word for it. In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is wrong as to prove it right, even if that something is a cherished belief.

Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd, the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, weeping statues. Yearning without learning is buying tabloid newspapers with headlines announcing "Newborn baby talks of Heaven" and the like. Yearning without learning is looking for UFOs in the sky and the meaning of life in horoscopes.

Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, dogmatic belief. Learning without yearning is believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty. Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Whatever Your Fate Is..."

“Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment- not discouragement- you will find the strength there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures, followed by wreckage, were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”

~ Joseph Campbell

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

Commencement Speech, Stanford University, 2005

- Steve Jobs

"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true...

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called "The Whole Earth Catalog", which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of "The Whole Earth Catalog", and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

"Listen to me. We're here to make a dent in the universe.

Otherwise why even be here?"

- Steve Jobs

The Daily "Near You?"

Brooklyn, New York, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"We Are Doomed And Challenged..."

"The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; 

once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged

 to seek the strength to see more, not less."

- Arthur Miller

The Poet: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Charge of the Light Brigade"

"The Charge of the Light Brigade"

Full screen recommended.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson,"The Charge of the Light Brigade"

Read by Tom O'Bedlam

"The Battle of Balaclava, fought on 25 October 1854 during the Crimean War, was part of the siege of Sevastopol to capture the port and fortress of Sevastopol, Russia's principal naval base on the Black Sea. The Charge of the Light Brigade was a charge of British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. Lord Raglan, overall commander of the British forces, had intended to send the Light Brigade to prevent the Russians from removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions, a task well-suited to light cavalry.

However, there was miscommunication in the chain of command, and the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery, one well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. They reached the battery under withering direct fire and scattered some of the gunners, but they were forced to retreat immediately. Thus, the assault ended with very high British casualties and no decisive gains.

The events are best remembered as the subject of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's narrative poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854), published just six weeks after the event. Its lines emphasize the valor of the cavalry in bravely carrying out their orders, regardless of the obvious outcome. Blame for the miscommunication has remained controversial, as the original order itself was vague, and the officer who delivered the written orders with some verbal interpretation died in the first minute of the assault."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/

○

As glorified by Hollywood, 1936:

Part 1: 

Part 2:

Part 3:

"Where Your Gaze Lingers..."

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that has nothing to do with you, this storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.

You have to look! That’s another one of the rules. Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”

- Haruki Murakami

“Closing your eyes won’t make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head – doesn’t this feed the monster? You can’t close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.”

- Richelle E. Goodrich

"Extreme Gaslighting: Here Are 7 Signs That The Mainstream Media Is Flat Out Lying To Us About The Economy"

"Extreme Gaslighting: Here Are 7 Signs That The 

Mainstream Media Is Flat Out Lying To Us About The Economy"

By Michael Snyder

"How many times have you heard the mainstream media tell you that the economy is doing just great in recent months? Personally, I have seen the word “booming” used over and over again to describe the economy, and it makes me sick. The level of gaslighting that we are witnessing right now is off the charts. Millions of Americans are sleeping in their vehicles, thousands of businesses are failing all over the nation, and most of the country now believes that the American Dream is no longer attainable. If this is what a “booming” economy feels like, I would hate to see what would happen during a “recession”.

I totally understand why the mainstream media is gaslighting us. They want us to believe that everything is fine so that we will vote a certain way in November. They have an agenda, and they are pushing it really hard. But what they are telling us simply does not match up with reality. The following are 7 signs that the mainstream media is flat out lying to us about the economy…

#1 Survey after survey has shown that the economy is the number one concern for American voters during this election season. If the economy was in good shape, we would not be getting results like this…"The economy was still the top issue for 26 percent of voters, per the poll. Threats to democracy and extremism came in second at 22 percent, and immigration was third at 13 percent."

#2 At this point, the economy is in such rough shape that even Dollar General customers seem to be running out of money…"Dollar General shares tumbled Thursday after the discount retailer slashed its sales and profit guidance for the full year, suggesting its lower-income customers are struggling in this economy. Shares of the retailer, which caters to more rural areas, tumbled 25% after the earnings report."

#3 When the U.S. economy was actually booming, Big Lots was thriving. Sadly, today’s economic environment has been very hard on the retail chain and it is now teetering on the brink of bankruptcy…"Discount home goods retailer Big Lots is reportedly on the brink of bankruptcy after years of falling sales. The beleaguered chain may seek Chapter 11 protection within weeks, according to Bloomberg, if it is not able to find investors. The Ohio-based company runs around 1,400 stores across the US, after closing hundreds of locations earlier this year."

#4 Needless to say, Big Lots is far from alone, because the number of businesses that are filing for bankruptcy has reached dizzying heights…"According to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, annual bankruptcy filings totaled 486,613 in the year ending June 2024, compared with 418,724 cases in the previous year. Business filings rose 40.3 percent, from 15,724 to 22,060 in the year ending June 30, 2024. Non-business bankruptcy filings rose 15.3 percent to 464,553, compared with 403,000 in the previous year."

#5 According to Zero Hedge, several regional Fed business surveys just fell even deeper into contraction territory…"‘Four more years’ is not the message being heard from the regional Fed surveys this week as the Philly, Dallas, and Richmond business surveys all slumped deeper into contraction…"

#6 As I discussed yesterday, approximately two-thirds of the entire U.S. population no longer believes that the American Dream “is still alive”…"Only about a third of U.S. adults believe the American dream is still alive, a Wall Street Journal/NORC poll published Wednesday found.

A survey of 2,501 people conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute twelve years ago found more than half of respondents believed the American dream “still holds true,” but now only a third feel that way, according to a recent WSJ/NORC poll of 1,502 adults. The study also found an increasingly large gap between people’s economic goals and what they think is actually attainable - a trend that was consistent across gender and party lines, but was especially common amongst younger generations."

#7 Last, but certainly not least, total household debt in the United States has soared to a level that we have never seen before…"A quarterly report published this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on household credit and debt found that between the first quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2024, credit card debt surged 48.1% while household debt — which includes mortgages and auto loans — rose by 21.6%. In dollar terms, credit card debt rose from $770 billion in early 2021 to $1.14 trillion in the most recent quarter, while household debt increased from $14.64 trillion to $17.8 trillion in the same period."

Yes, there is a small segment of society that is still doing really well. Thanks to the unprecedented intervention that we have seen in the financial markets in recent years, they are still able to live the high life while most of the country suffers.

But while stock prices continue to set new all-time highs, much of the nation looks like a horror show. For example, just consider what has happened to Pine Bluff, Arkansas…"A small Arkansas city suffering from severe population decline and economic turmoil has become so abandoned that properties are on offer for as little as $400. Pine Bluff, a bleak metro that saw its population drop from 49,000 to 41,250 residents from 2010 to 2020, made headlines this month after being panned in a YouTube documentary from Abandoned Atlas. In the movie, filmmaker Michael Schwartz said witnessing the city’s decay ‘shocked’ him, saying: ‘It seems like every time I turn a corner, there is another abandoned home or building left behind.’

The gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us has never been larger than it is right now. The next time you walk past an abandoned store that has been boarded up, just remember how much the mainstream media has been lying to you.

The next time you walk past someone that is sleeping in a vehicle, just remember how much the mainstream media has been lying to you.

The next time you walk past someone that is hooked on drugs because they have lost all hope, just remember how much the mainstream media has been lying to you.

Our communities are falling apart right in front of our eyes, our economy is falling apart right in front of our eyes, and our entire society is falling apart right in front of our eyes.

So don’t let the mainstream media fool you. The economy really is moving in the wrong direction very rapidly, and it won’t be too long before even they are forced to admit the truth."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Mother of All Housing Bubbles"

"The Mother of All Housing Bubbles"

by David Stockman

"America’s bubblicious economy will soon hit another milestone of sorts - -the $50 trillion mark with respect to the market value of owner-occupied residential real estate. At the present moment, this figure (purple line) stands at $46 trillion (Q1 2024), which is nearly 2X its pre-crisis level of $24 trillion in Q4 2006. It’s also 8X its level when Greenspan took the helm at the Fed ($5.6 trillion) after Q2 1987 and a staggering 51X the $900 billion value of all owner-occupied homes when Tricky Dick did the dirty deed at Camp David in August 1971.

Needless to say, neither household incomes nor the overall US economy have grown at anything near those magnitudes. For instance, nominal GDP is up by 24X or less than half the gain in housing values since Q2 1971. As a consequence, the value of owner-occupied housing relative to GDP has climbed steadily higher over the last 50 years:

Market-Value of Owner-Occupied Housing As % of GDP Since 1971:

• Q2 1971: 79%.
• Q2 1987: 117%.
• Q4 2006: 172%.
• Q1 2024: 175%.

Market Value of Owner-Occupied Real Estate And % Of GDP, 1970 to 2024

Here’s the thing. The US economy was downright healthy in 1971. During the 18 years between 1953 and 1971 real median family income rose from $38,400 to $62,700 or by a robust 2.8% per annum. So the fact that residential housing represented only 79% of GDP at that point was not indicative of some grave deficiency or structural malfunction in the US economy.

Indeed, when you note that real median family income rose by only 0.8% per annum during the most recent 18 year period, or by just 29% of the 1953-1971 rate, you might well conclude that it would have been wise to leave well enough alone. Not only was the main street economy prospering mightily, but it was being accomplished with honest interest rates owing to Fed policy that was constrained by the Breton Woods gold exchange standard and also by the sound money philosophy that prevailed in the Eccles Building during the William McChesney Martin era.

As shown below, the 10-year UST benchmark rate during that period exceeded the CPI inflation rate by more than 200 basis points most of the time, save for brief periods of recession. Yet the US economy thrived, real living standards rose steadily and the residential housing market literally boomed.

Inflation-Adjusted Yield On 10-Year UST, 1953 to 1971

The subsequent period between 1971 and 1987, of course, was racked first by the double digit inflation of the 1970s and then the brutally high nominal interest rates that issued from the Volcker Cure during the first half of the 1980s. But by 1986 consumer inflation was back to just below 2% and heading lower, thereby paving the way for interest rates to normalize to a low inflation economy.

But the new Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, had other ideas. Namely, the notion that "disinflation" as opposed to no inflation was good enough for government work; and also that the Fed could actually improve upon the jobs and income performance of the main street economy via what he labeled the "wealth effects" doctrine. That is, if the Fed kept Wall Street percolating happily and the stock indices rising robustly, the increased wealth among households would kindle capitalist animal spirits, thereby fueling enhanced spending, investment, growth, jobs and incomes.

Notwithstanding Greenspan’s mumbling and opaque messaging, what he was doing actually amounted to monetary humbug as old as the hills. He launched an era in which real interest rates were pushed steadily and artificially lower to the zero bound and below on the theory that rates well below what would otherwise prevail under honest supply and demand conditions on the free market would elicit an enhanced level of economic growth and prosperity.

It never happened on a sustained basis, of course, because below market interest rates only cause an accumulation of above normal debt levels in the public and private sectors alike - along with widespread economic distortions and malinvestment on main street, unsustainable leveraged speculation on Wall Street and, at best, the swapping of more economic activity today for reduced activity and higher debt service tomorrow.

In any event, the inflation-adjusted benchmark US Treasury rate marched virtually downhill for the next three decades, ending deep in negative territory by the early 2020s. The ill-effects were widespread throughout the economy and in this instance turbo-charged by the deep tax preferences for home mortgages. So the inflow of cheap debt into the residential housing market was massive and sustained.

There is no mystery as to why: Economic law says that when you subsidize something heavily, you get more of it. And the implicit Fed subsidies depicted in the graph below were heavy indeed.

Inflation-Adjusted Yield On the 10-Year UST, 1987 to 2024

Needless to say, economic law had its way with the residential mortgage market. Big time. Household mortgage debt (black line) had stood at $325 billion or just 50% of household wage and salary income (purple line) back in 1971. But by the peak of the subprime borrowing spree in 2008-2009, mortgage debt had risen by 33X to nearly $11 trillion.

Consequently, the mortgage debt burden soared to 170% of household wage and salary income before abating modestly during the period since 2009. But the point is, the Fed’s severe interest rate repression during that period caused a financial arms race in the residential housing market - with ever more debt pushing housing prices ever higher.

In short, it wasn’t the free market or even steadily rising, albeit more slowly growing, GDP that caused residential housing values to go from 79% of GDP in 1971 to 175% of GDP at present. Instead, it was a sustained, fiat credit fueled tidal wave of housing price inflation—a financial torrent that bestowed large windfalls on earlier period buyers (i.e. Baby Boomers) while progressively squeezing later comers and income and credit-challenged households out of the so-called American Dream of home ownership.

Indeed, the housing inflation tsunami was by no means an equal opportunity benefactor. One study based on the Fed’s periodic survey of consumer finances, in fact, showed that between 2010 and 2020 upper income households, defined as those having an average income of $180,000, saw their collective housing investments rise from $4.5 trillion to $10.3 trillion. That was a 130% gain in just one decade!

By contrast, the housing investment value held by lower income households, defined as having an average income of $29,000, rose from $4.46 trillion to, well, $4.79 trillion. That’s a piddling gain of just 3.5%, which amounted to a double digit lost when you account for the 19% plus rise in the CPI during the same 10-year period.

Household Mortgage Debt and Mortgage % of Wage and Salary Income, 1971 to 2009

To be sure, the Fed heads were not explicitly trying to redistribute wealth to the top of the economic ladder, although that’s most surely what happened. Instead, the whole theory of interest rate repression was that it would stoke a higher level of spending and investment than would otherwise occur, and especially so in the residential housing sector.

Needless to say, no cigar on that front. Residential housing completions per capita and residential housing investment as a % of GDP have been heading relentlessly southward every since Nixon rug-pulled the dollar’s anchor to gold and unleashed the Federal Reserve to foist monetary central planning on the main street economy.

As depicted by the black line, for instance, residential housing investment as a percent of GDP dropped from 5.7% in 1972 to just 3.9% in 2023. The only deviation from this steady downward trend was in 2003-2006, which is to say the very interval during which Bernanke’s first experiment with 1% money fueled the subprime mortgage and house price inflation disaster.

In fact, the chart below paired with the first one above with respect to nearly $50 trillion value of homeowner occupied real estate tells you all you need to know about the folly of Keynesian central banking. To wit, artificially cheap money does not stimulate higher levels of real output and income over time; it merely causes existing assets to be bid-up and inflated in the secondary markets.

In turn, the systematic and relentless inflation of existing assets confers windfall gains and losses on the public in an entirely capricious manner but with the perverse effect of redistributing wealth to the top of the economic ladder. The Fed’s entire financial repression model is therefore not only pointless and ineffective - it’s profoundly iniquitous, too.

Per Capita Private Housing Units Completed and Residential Investment % of GDP, 1972 to 2023

- https://internationalman.com/

Bill Bonner, "The Rest of the Story"

"The Rest of the Story"

Free speech is all very well when a nation is young and prosperous. 

It’s a different matter when you have $35 trillion of debt... 

and the worker/dependent ratio turns sour; what to do then?

by Bill Bonner

“The desire for gold is not for the gold.

 It is for the means of freedom and benefit.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poitou, France - "Gold is telling its story. Reuters: "Gold prices gained around 1% on Thursday, fueled by strong expectations of a Federal Reserve rate cut in September with investors focusing on U.S. inflation data for further insights on the potential size of the cut. Spot gold rose 0.9% to $2,524.45 per ounce."

On the surface, it is a strange time to cut rates. Stocks are at a tippy top - more valuable (nominally) than ever before. At nearly two times GDP, stock market capitalization is flashing a giant ‘SELL’ signal. House prices too are soaring. And total US debt is at $99 trillion - sixty times higher than it was when the country switched to its credit-money system.

By all measures, the economy suffers from too much credit... not from too little. But deeper down, there is a good reason for the Fed to cut rates. With so much debt, it needs inflation. It wants inflation. It must have inflation to ease the debt burden. Otherwise, the bubble economy will deflate and die.

The dollar has lost 98% of its value since 1971, measured by gold. The big question now is how and when it loses the rest of it. But let us pull back to get a broader view. What is the ‘rest of the story’ that gold will tell? Free speech, for example, is all very well when a nation is young and prosperous. It’s a different matter when you have $35 trillion of debt... and the worker/dependent ratio turns sour; what to do then?

Already, journalists, UN weapons inspectors, writers, activists, former British ambassador Craig Murray, former member of Congress Tulsi Gabbard, and many others report that they are being stopped at airports, visited by the FBI, added to ‘terrorist’ lists. Why? For the first time in US history, the young do not expect to be richer than their parents. GDP growth rates hug the floor like victims in a mall shooting. The ratio of workers to retirees began at 41 to 1 in 1945... and now is down to 2.8 to 1. But it’s worse than that.

There are now 167 million people in the US who don’t work. And guess how many do work? 167 million - almost exactly one worker for each non-worker. US debt service is already costing the nation more than ‘defense’... and will soon rise to more than Social Security payments too. Promises can’t be kept. Benefits and services will have to be cut back. How can the elites silence critics and keep the masses in line? Inevitably they turn towards ‘hard power’ - lockdowns... censorship... sanctions and bombs.

The latest from the Wall Street Journal: "France’s arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov over the weekend has made the Russian-born entrepreneur a cause célèbre for free speech. Paris prosecutors say Mr. Durov was detained in relation to an investigation into criminal activity on the platform, including child pornography, drug trafficking, money laundering and its refusal to cooperate with law enforcement. Those are serious offenses if true."

But many suspect this is merely a pretext because Europe is also imposing speech controls on other media platforms. Elon Musk might want to watch out too. Thierry Breton, European Commissioner, made a threat to Musk, just before his live interview with Donald Trump. The WSJ: “Amplification of harmful content in connection with relevant events, including live streaming” might “generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security,” he warned. He added… that regulators will “not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox... should it be warranted to protect EU citizens from serious harm.”

The WSJ comments, earnestly: "Trust in government is declining in democracies around the world, and leaders don’t help themselves or their countries when they blur lines between criminal conduct and speech they find offensive."

But the megapolitics of the situation point to a different interpretation. Suppressing challenging ideas and opinions actually does help leaders stay in control. Faced with fines or jail time, intelligent people keep their mouths shut.

Apparently, France intends to give Durov the Assange treatment. Julian Assange had been hiding out or in jail for the last 14 years before he was sent back to Australia recently under a plea deal. His crime? As founder of WikiLeaks, Assange gave whistle-blowers a place to blow their whistles. What next? We don’t know. But our guess is that gold’s tale will be more like "1984" than "The Sound of Music." Sure to be a page-turner."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Jim Kunstler, "The Significance of the Passage of Time"

"The Significance of the Passage of Time"

by Jim Kunstler

Dana Bash: “You’ve been Vice President for three and half years. 

The steps that you are talking about now, why haven’t you done them already?”

 Kamala: “I’m very proud of the work we have done.”

"She was speaking, you understand, but the main thing you noticed was the musical quality of her voice: sonorous, resonant, like one of the more obscure woodwind instruments, an alto clarinet or a basset horn, producing a sound like unto creamy dressing over the familiar word-salad of iceberg lettuce.

It would be ungentlemanly to bang on the particulars of Kamala Harris’s CNN interview performance, so I’ll proceed. The nocturne was 18-minutes long, all that survived from the 41-minutes CNN actually recorded, so you might wonder a little about the notes not played. The leitmotif throughout was “my values have not changed,” meaning, disregard any dissonance you might detect in the velvet honk of my voice. Mind the significance of the passage of time, not the music, Altogether, as nocturnes should, it had a soporific effect.

And now candidate Kamala Harris will go back to hiding on her campaign bus, which makes a different statement than, say, hiding in the basement a la “Joe Biden,” 2020. It’s the difference between going nowhere fast and going nowhere at all - though both concepts apply to the condition of the USA during the four years of “Joe Biden” (loved and revered by his comrades in the Party of Chaos, who threw the president under the very bus Kamala is hiding in).

Did you think Kamala would still be rising on the joyful billows of hot air that blew out of the Democratic Convention? Like so many of the magic tricks in the party’s repertoire, that one was a spoof of artificial levitation, to give the appearance of something holding up, like, say, the US economy, when there is actually nothing underneath. Nothing real, that is. What’s giving the economy its appearance of loft has been “Joe Biden” pouring government money into scores of party-connected NGOs as pure grift. The main effect of that is the inflation that everybody notices. Meanwhile, nobody gets hooked up to promised broadband and only eight EV charging stations get built for $7.5-billion allocated to the Department of Transportation.

The current prank, though, is to artificially pump-up Ms. Harris in the polls in the attempt to justify the coming ballot fraud to be executed two months from now, as engineered by election lawfare maestro Marc Elias, now on the Harris campaign payroll. That is, an effort to obviate any apparent discrepancies between actual poll numbers and harvested ballots flooding in at two o’clock in the morning on Nov 6.

As it happens, Ms. Harris’s poll numbers have begun to sink the past week, as the tactic of hiding the candidate from the press has backfired. As of August 29, Nate Silver has her chance of winning down at 42.7 to Mr. Trump’s 56.7. Voters have begun to notice that the candidate represents nothing except whatever happened the past four years in Biden-Land - which is to say, open borders, war for the sake of arms profiteers, flagrant censorship, inflation, cratering business activity, and overt DOJ political persecutions. Martin Armstrong, for instance, has estimated Kamala Harris’s true polling number in the ten percent range. Yikes.

So, what was the net effect of the CNN interview with Ms. Harris? It couldn’t have helped. They had to get her out of hiding, considering the significance of the passage of time in an election campaign. Even the in-the-tank news media was starting to complain about her holing-up on the bus. Dana Bash was surprisingly harsh at times when the veep confabulated about her plans to “fix” America’s problems, like asking, “Why haven’t you done that already?” The answer was the bizarre, “We can do what we’ve accomplished so far.” Roger that.

You’re probably wondering: how Mr. Trump will play this? He’d best be polite about it and assume that the voters can see and understand the obvious: that the Democrats have put up an especially inadequate candidate who can’t explain away the fiascos of the past four years. He doesn’t have to rub in so hard that it seems cruel. His own policy intentions are a quite clear alternative to four years of hoaxes, pranks, trips, gaslighting, and grift. Installing Ms. Harris without any input or votes from the party rank-and-file was about as desperate an affront to “our democracy” as anyone could imagine, like something straight out of the old Soviet politburo, picking an Andropov or a Chernenko. Mr. Trump should remind audiences of this at every opportunity if the Democrats keep yapping about “our democracy,” which seems to be all they’ve got.

Something is slip-sliding out there, perhaps the solidarity of the news media. Even The New York Times dissed Kamala Harris - Bret Stephens called her interview “vague and vacuous” the day after. One thing you have to give CNN credit for: they didn’t show a whole lot of Kamala Harris cackling in her trademark manner - to cover that mental vacuum. The cackle has been getting very mixed reviews, anyway, when you disconnect it from the fake “joy” trope. Maybe a laugh-riot is what’s in the missing 23-minutes that CNN edited out of the 41-minute recording."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Alert! Wars And Rumors Of War, 8/30/24"

Canadian Prepper, 8/30/24

"Alert! USA Moving Warships Closer To Russia For

 Nuclear Decapitation Strike? Iran On High Alert"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Hindustan Times, 8/30/24

"Iran Gets Nukes Amid Fears Of All-Out War With Israel? 

UN Agency’s Bombshell: ‘Just 2 kg Short Of…’"

The International Atomic Energy Agency has raised alarms over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, revealing a significant increase in highly enriched uranium. The IAEA report stated Iran's stockpile has grown to 164.7 kg, nearing the threshold for nuclear weapons. It further added Iran remains just 2 kg short of the uranium needed for four potential bombs.

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Strange Prices At Aldi!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 8/30/24

"Strange Prices At Aldi!"

"In today's vlog, we are at Aldi and are noticing some strange price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices as it is getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 8/30/24

"Russian Typical Shopping Mall (Under a Football Stadium)"

"Take a tour of the most unique shopping mall in the world, situated under a Russian football stadium, the VTB Arena in Moscow. Russia has the only shopping mall in the world under a football pitch. What does a shopping mall in Russia look like?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 8/29/24

"INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Dollar Stores On The Brink Of Destruction, The System Is Coming Apart"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/29/24

"Dollar Stores On The Brink Of Destruction,

 The System Is Coming Apart"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, "False Flag Will Ignite World War III"

Very strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 8/29/24

"False Flag Will Ignite World War III"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Wings II, Return To Freedom"

2002, "Wings II, Return To Freedom"

Over 1 hour of soothing, relaxing music for 

stress relief, studying, meditation, yoga, and sleep.

 These are peaceful, soothing, instrumental compositions.