Bill Bonner, "America's Special Mission"

"America's Special Mission"

Even physical borders didn’t mean much to the new immigrants.

 America was not a specific place; its borders shifted hugely from 1776 to 2024. 

We are all immigrants, in a constantly changing country.

by Bill Bonner

"Don’t follow leaders,

Watch the parking meters..."

- Bob Dylan

Baltimore, Maryland - "Like icebergs in the North Atlantic, the risks posed by Trump’s policies do not threaten just a slowdown in the shipping channels... but a catastrophic sinking of the whole damned fleet. We looked at tariffs yesterday, and saw how they might cause a worldwide depression, much as they did in the 1930s. Today, let’s look at deportations.

We spent last weekend at the farm... where our family has been for nearly 400 years. The first settlers, in the 17th century, simply came up the bay from their Virginia colonies and established themselves on the shores of the Chesapeake. And we are still here. But there are some new folks here too.

On Saturday, the manager of the farm next door, who is from El Salvador, came over to say hello. Next came a middle-aged woman from Guatemala, who helps clean once a week. And then, a whole team of six Latinos showed up to put a copper roof on our new gypsy wagon. The wagon began as a project to keep the grandchildren occupied two Thanksgivings ago. The children lost interest after a half an hour; it’s kept us busy ever since.

“Hay mucho trabajo. No hay mucho tiempo,” the foreman said to his crew. (There’s a lot of work... but not a lot of time.) “Where are you fellows from?” we asked. “We’re all from Mexico,” came the answer. “We’re the people Senor Trump wants to deport,” he added with a laugh. “But I like Trump. I think he’ll be good for business. And I think he’ll just deport the criminals.” “Well, if he deports you... ” we began a sympathetic reply, “I hope you get my roof finished first.”

This is Maryland. Not Florida, Texas, nor California. And yet, even here, much of the real work... the hard work... is done by Latinos. And while there are a lot of people we’d be happy to send back to wherever they came from, they don’t include the people who mow our lawn or fix our roof. “America is for Americans,” said Stephen Miller at a pre-election Trump rally.

What sense this makes, we don’t know. Latinos are Americans too. They’ve been in the Americas longer than we have. But “if Americans have a special gift,” we wrote in our 2003 book "The Idea of America," “it is a talent for ignoring irony and ambiguity and going on with their special mission: getting rich.”

The early settlers also ignored a lot of other things that bothered them in the Old World. Religion, for example; in the US, you could worship whatever god you chose. In 1649 Lord Baltimore decreed that: “No person... shall from henceforth be any waies troubled, molested, or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof.”

Race didn’t matter either: the country was open to immigrants - voluntary and involuntary - from Europe, Asia and Africa. And language? It was none of anyone else’s business what language you spoke. In 1890, there were more than 1,000 German-language newspapers published in the US.

Even physical borders didn’t mean much to the new immigrants. America was not a specific place; its borders shifted hugely from 1776 to 2024. We are all immigrants, after all, in a constantly changing country. Hardly anyone here speaks German anymore, but millions now speak Spanish. And while it may be a good idea to control the flow of new immigrants, sending existing immigrants back home could leave some serious holes in the US economy.

Donald Trump says these new immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood,’ of the native population. He says he will deport 15 million of them or about one quarter of the entire Latino population of America. While this seems unlikely, it would represent almost 10% of the US labor force... and 5% of consumers. And since 70% of GDP is consumption, that alone suggests a 3.5% cut to GDP... putting the US in recession. Or, if you imagine that all US output is proportional to the labor that goes into it, you can assume a drop in output of about 10%.

While GDP goes down... consumer prices are almost sure to go up. Who picks the apples? Who shingles the roofs? Who unclogs the toilets and trims the hedges? Without immigrants, costs go up and the population falls.

Illegal? Legal? Either way, hamburgers don’t get flipped and gypsy wagons don’t get roofed. And then, our ponzi-like Social Security and Medicare systems... that depend on the contributions of the new arrivals to support old people -- what keeps them from going bust?

Combined with the losses from Trump’s proposed restraint of trade and rising long-term interest rates, we could see much higher consumer prices, bankruptcies, shortages, crashing asset prices, and a depression that is almost impossible to escape. But we still haven’t gotten to the Biggest Loss Ever. Tune in tomorrow for the ‘worst case’ scenario, the End of the World as We Have Known It."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"The End of the World as We Have Known It?" OK!

Full screen recommended.

R.E.M., "It's The End Of The World 

As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"

Adventures With Danno, "I Was In Absolute Shock At Sam's Club, This Was Unbelievable"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 11/20/24

"I Was In Absolute Shock At Sam's Club, 

This Was Unbelievable"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Russia's Final Nuclear Warning!"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 11/19/24

"Alert! Russia's Final Nuclear Warning! 

60 Days Of DEFCON Chaos Ahead; Europe Emergency Preparations"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

God help us all...

Gerald Celente, "Democrats Lose Election, When All Else Fails They Take You To War"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 11/19/24

"Democrats Lose Election, 

When All Else Fails They Take You To War"

The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing 

global current events forming future trends. 

 - https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Putin's Nuclear Order: List Of All Nuke Weapons At Russia's Disposal"

Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 11/19/24

"Putin's Nuclear Order: 

List Of All Nuke Weapons At Russia's Disposal"

"Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a new nuclear doctrine that broadens Russia's conditions for nuclear deterrence. The updated policy allows Russia to counter threats from any country possessing weapons of mass destruction or hosting foreign forces that could attack Russia. The doctrine also declares that an attack by any NATO-aligned nation will be treated as a collective aggression, potentially triggering a widespread retaliation."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"Russia Puts Advanced Sarmat 

Nuclear Missile System On ‘Combat Duty’"

"Moscow has put into service an advanced intercontinental ballistic missile that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said would make Russia’s enemies “think twice” about their threats, according to reported comments by the head of the country’s space agency. Yuri Borisov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said Sarmat missiles have “assumed combat duty”, according to Russian news agency reports.

“The Sarmat strategic system has assumed combat alert posture,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted the Roscosmos chief as saying. “Based on experts’ estimates, the RS-28 Sarmat is capable of delivering a MIRVed warhead weighing up to 10 tonnes to any location worldwide, both over the North and South Poles,” TASS said in its report.

Putin said in February that the Sarmat – one of several advanced weapons in Russia’s arsenal, is deployed now. In 2022, some two months after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Putin said the Sarmat would “reliably ensure the security of Russia from external threats and make those, who in the heat of aggressive rhetoric try to threaten our country, think twice”.

The Sarmat is an underground silo-based missile that Russian officials say can carry up to 15 nuclear warheads, though the United States military estimates its capacity to be 10 warheads. Known to NATO military allies by the codename “Satan”, the missile reportedly has a short initial launch phase, which gives little time for surveillance systems to track its takeoff.

Weighing more than 200 tons, the Sarmat has a range of some 18,000km (11,000 miles) and was developed to replace Russia’s older generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMBs) that dated from the 1980s. Russia test-fired the Sarmat missile in April 2022 in the Plesetsk region of the country, located some 800km (almost 500 miles) north of Moscow, and the launched missiles hit targets on the Kamchatka peninsula, in Russia’s far east region."

- https://www.aljazeera.com/

o

RS-28 Sarmat

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat

15 warheads per missile, 11,000 mile range, hypersonic speed of 15,880 mph.

One Sarmat can destroy an area the size of Texas or France.

A hypersonic nuclear missile launched from Russia will hit Washington, DC in 23 minutes.

Do we really want to do this? Pray to God we don't...

o

And a continent killer...

Full screen recommended.

The Poseidon torpedo with a 100 megaton warhead explodes deep underwater, causing a 1,600 foot high tidal wave which destroys everything on the U.S. East coast as far inland as West Virginia. England would simply disappear beneath the waves...

"Restaurant Closures Are Soaring As America's Biggest Chains Hit Breaking Point"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 11/19/24

"Restaurant Closures Are Soaring As 

America's Biggest Chains Hit Breaking Point"

"Empty tables and soaring prices are wreaking havoc on the restaurant industry in 2024. New data shows that we're on track to see the highest wave of bankruptcies in all U.S. history as America's biggest chains struggle with rising costs, labor shortages, and a dramatic decline in sales. Every day more closings are being announced. You may have already noticed that many restaurants and fast food joints in your town are closing down right now. Even chains that used to be everywhere, like Boston Market, are rapidly disappearing. What's driving so many iconic brands out of business this year? That's what you're going to find out by the end of today's video!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Your Kids Could Be Drafted Into A Nuclear War; Jersey Mike's Sells Out To Blackstone"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/19/24

"Your Kids Could Be Drafted Into A Nuclear War; 

Jersey Mike's Sells Out To Blackstone"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "They Have Really Done It Now - Point Of No Return?"

Adventures With Danno, PM 11/19/24

"They Have Really Done It Now - 

Point Of No Return?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"

Full screen recommended.

Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"

○

“Reality is what we take to be true.

What we take to be true is what we believe.

What we believe is based upon our perceptions.

What we perceive depends upon what we look for.

What we look for depends upon what we think.

What we think depends upon what we perceive.

What we perceive determines what we believe.

What we believe determines what we take to be true.

What we take to be true is our reality.”

- Gary Zukav

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This shock wave plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Moving toward to bottom of this beautifully detailed color composite, the thin, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its narrow appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula.

About 5 light-years long and a mere 800 light-years away, the Pencil Nebula is only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter and is the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar gas.”

The Poet: William Stafford, “Starting With Little Things”

“Starting With Little Things”

“Love the earth like a mole,

fur-near. Nearsighted,

hold close the clods,

their fine-print headlines.

Pat them with soft hands -

Like spades, but pink and loving; they

break rock, nudge giants aside,

affable plow.

Fields are to touch;

each day nuzzle your way.

Tomorrow the world.”

- William Stafford

"Never Forget..."

"Take risks! That is really what life is about. We must pursue our own happiness. Nobody has ever lived our lives; there are no guidelines. Trust your instincts. Accept nothing but the best. But then also look for it carefully. Don't allow it to slip between your fingers. Sometimes, good things come to us in a such a quiet fashion. And nothing comes complete. It is what we make of whatever we encounter that determines the outcome. What we choose to see, what we choose to save. And what we choose to remember. Never forget that all the love in your life is there, inside you, always."

- Linda Olsson

The Daily "Near You?"

Independence, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Few Really Ask..."

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world – few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to a whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”

- Anne Rice, “The Vampire Lestat”

"Prof. Mohammad Marandi: Iran will Hit Israel Hard, Hezbollah Wipes Out IDF Invasion"

Danny Haiphong, 11/19/24

"Prof. Mohammad Marandi: Iran will Hit Israel Hard, 

Hezbollah Wipes Out IDF Invasion"

"Prof. Mohammad Marandi (https://x.com/s_m_marandi) joins the show for a round up on the exploding regional war in the Middle East amid rumors Iran is backing down to Israel and Hezbollah is seeking a ceasefire in Lebanon. What's the truth? Is Israel or Iran in trouble? Is Hezbollah and the resistance losing or is Israel?'

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Scott Ritter, "Countdown To Chaos And War In The Middle East"

Strong language alert!

Scott Ritter, 11/18/24

"Countdown To Chaos And War In The Middle East"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Forget Us Not"

"Forget Us Not"

by Mr. Fish

NEW YORK: "I am in the The Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center next to the St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral in Manhattan. I am holding a bound, hand-written memoir, which includes poetry, drawings, and scrapbooked images, by Zaven Seraidarian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide. The front cover of the book, one of six volumes, reads “Bloody Journal.” The other volumes have titles such as “Drops of Springtime,” “Tears” and “The Wooden Spoon.” “My name will remain immortal on the earth,” the author writes. “I will speak about myself and tell more.”

The center houses hundreds of documents, letters, hand-drawn maps of villages that have disappeared, sepia photographs, poems, drawings and histories - much of it untranslated - on the customs, traditions and notable families of lost Armenian communities. Jesse Arlen, the director of the center, looks forlornly at the volume in my hand. “No one has probably read it, looked at it or even knew it was here,” he says.

He opens a box and hands me a hand drawn map by Hareton Saksoorian of Havav village in Palu, where Armenians in 1915 were massacred or expelled. Saksoorian drew the map from memory after he escaped. The drawings of Armenian homes have the tiny, inked in names of the long dead.

This could well be the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza. They too will soon battle to preserve memory, to defy an indifferent world that stood by as they were slaughtered. They too will doggedly seek to preserve scraps of their existence. They too will write memoirs, histories and poems, draw maps of villages, refugee camps and cities that have been obliterated, set down painful stories of butchery, carnage and loss. They too will name and condemn their killers, lament the extermination of families, including thousands of children, and struggle to preserve a vanished world. But time is a cruel master.

Intellectual and emotional life for those who are cast out of their homeland is defined by the crucible of exile, what the Palestinian scholar Edward Said told me is “the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place.” Said’s book “Out of Place” is a record of this lost world.

The Armenian poet Armen Anush was raised in an orphanage in Aleppo, Syria. He captures the life sentence of those who survive genocide in his poem “Sacred Obsession.” He writes:

"Country of light, you visit me every night in my sleep.

Every night, exalted, as a venerable goddess,

You bring fresh sensations and hopes to my exiled soul.

Every night you ease the waverings of my path.

Every night you reveal the boundless deserts,

The open eyes of the dead, the crying of children in the distance,

The crackle and red flame of the countless burned bodies,

And the unsheltered caravan, always unsure, always faltering.

Every night the same hellish, deathly scene –

The tired Euphrates washing the blood off the savaged corpses,

The waves making merry with the rays of the sun,

And relieving the burden of tis useless, weary weight.

The same humid, black wells of charred bodies,

The same thick smoke enveloping the whole of the Syrian desert.

The same voices from the depths, the same moans, soft and sunless,

And the same brutal, ruthless barbarity of the Turkish mob."

The poem ends, however, with a plea not that these nighttime terrors end, but that they “come to me every night,” that “the flame of your heroes” always “accompany my days.” “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” Milan Kundera reminds us. It is better to endure crippling trauma than to forget. Once we forget, once memories are purged - the goal of all genocidal killers - we are enslaved to lies and myths, severed from our individual, cultural and national identities. We no longer know who we are.

“It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history,” Kundera writes in “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.” “Human life - and herein lies its secret - takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.” Those who have crossed that border return to us as prophets, prophets no one wants to hear.

The ancient Greeks believed that as the souls of the departed were being ferried to Hades they were forced to drink the water from the River Lethe to erase memory. The destruction of memory is the final obliteration of being, the last act of mortality. Memory is the struggle to stay the boatman’s hand.

The genocide in Gaza mirrors the physical annihilation of Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Turks, who feared a nationalist revolt like the one that had convulsed the Balkans, drove nearly all of the two million Armenians out of Turkey. Men and women were usually separated. The men were often immediately murdered or sent to death camps, such as those at Ras-Ul-Ain - in 1916 over 80,000 Armenians were slaughtered there - and Deir-el-Zor in the Syrian desert. At least a million were forced on death marches - not unlike the Palestinians in Gaza who have been forcibly displaced by Israel, up to a dozen times - into the deserts of what are now Syria and Iraq. There, hundreds of thousands were slaughtered or died of starvation, exposure and disease. Corpses littered the desert expanse. By 1923, an estimated 1.2 million Armenians were dead. Orphanages throughout the Middle East were flooded with some 200,000 destitute Armenian children.

The doomed resistance by several Armenian villages in the mountains along the coast of present-day Turkey and Syria that chose not to obey the deportation order was captured in Franz Werfel’s novel “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.” Marcel Reich-Ranicki, a Polish-German literary critic who survived the Holocaust, said it was widely read in the Warsaw ghetto, which mounted a doomed uprising of its own in April 1943.

In 2000, when he was 98-years-old, I interviewed the writer and singer Hagop H. Asadourian, one of the last survivors of the Armenian genocide. He was born in the village of Chomaklou in eastern Turkey and deported, along with the rest of his village, in 1915. His mother and four of his sisters died of typhus in the Syrian desert. It would be 39 years before he reunited with his only surviving sister, who he was separated from one night near the Dead Sea as they fled with a ragged band of Armenian orphans from Syria to Jerusalem.

He told me he wrote to give a voice to the 331 people with whom he trudged into Syria in September 1915, only 29 of whom survived. “You can never really write what happened anyway,” Asadourian said. “It is too ghoulish. I still fight with myself to remember it as it was. You write because you have to. It all wells up inside of you. It is like a hole that fills constantly with water and no amount of bailing will empty it. This is why I continue.” He stopped to collect himself before continuing.

“When it came time to bury my mother, I had to get two other small boys to help me carry her body up to a well where they were dumping the corpses,” he said. “We did this so the jackals would not eat them. The stench was terrible. There were swarms of black flies buzzing over the opening. We pushed her in feet first, and the other boys, to escape the smell, ran down the hill. I stayed. I had to watch. I saw her head, as she fell, bang on one side of the well and then the other before she disappeared. At the time, I did not feel anything at all.” He halted, visibly shaken. “What kind of a son is that?”' he asked hoarsely. He eventually found his way to an orphanage in Jerusalem.

“These things dig into you, not only once, but throughout life, throughout life, through these days,” he told an interviewer from the USC Shoah Foundation. “I am 98-years-old. And today, to this day, I cannot forget any of this. I forget what I saw yesterday maybe, but I could not forget these things. And yet, we have to beg nations to recognize genocide. I lost 11 members of my family and I have to beg people to believe me. That’s what hurts you most. It’s a terrible world, a terrible experience.”

His 14 books were a fight against erasure, but when I spoke with him he admitted that the work of the Turkish army was now almost complete. His last book was “The Smoldering Generation,” which he said was “about the inevitable loss of our culture.” The present is something in which the dead hold no shares. “No one takes the place of those who are gone,” he said, seated in front of a picture window that looked out on his garden in Tenafly, New Jersey. “Your children do not understand you in this country. You cannot blame them.”

The world of the Armenians in eastern Turkey, first mentioned by the Greeks and Persians in 6 B.C., has, like Gaza, whose history spans 4,000 years, all but disappeared. The contributions of Armenian culture are forgotten. It was Armenian monks, for example, who rescued works by ancient Greek writers such as Philo and Eusebius, from oblivion.

I stumbled on the ruins of Armenian villages when I worked as a reporter in southeastern Turkey. Like Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel, these villages did not appear on maps. Those who carry out genocide seek total annihilation. Nothing is to remain. Especially memory. This will be our next battle. We must not forget."

- https://chrishedges.substack.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"People Will Forgive You..."

"People will forgive you for being wrong, 

but they will never forgive you for being right -

especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong."

- Thomas Sowell

"If you're going to tell people the truth 

make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

- Oscar Wilde

Gregory Mannarino, "Pre-Market Report 11/19/24"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/19/24

"Alert! For The 1st Time In A Decade The FED's 

Own Stock Market Indicator Goes Negative"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Don't Pay Your Bills"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 11/19/24

"Don't Pay Your Bills"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "You Won't Believe What I Saw At Meijer, This Is Unbelievable"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 11/19/24

"You Won't Believe What I Saw At Meijer, 

This Is Unbelievable"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "Sky High"

"Sky High"

No situation is so grim... or so hopeless... that a determined 

leadership in Washington can’t make it worse. And since 

we're looking for the ‘worst case’ scenarios, let’s look a little further.

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "Uh oh... here’s tech showboat, Cathie Wood: "The Reagan revolution extended through President Clinton’s administration, leading to lower taxes, stronger GDP growth, and a bull market rewarding active equity management that lasted nearly 20 years. We believe that this bull market has just begun to broaden out." Morning in America? Better check the clock.

Donald Trump is in a tough spot. Because this economy today is in no way similar to the economy that greeted Ronald Reagan. It is almost the exact opposite — with a 4.5% Fed Funds rate…rather than the 20% rate that greeted the Gipper. And when Reagan looked at the feds’ books, he found $900 billion in debt. Today, there’s $36 trillion in debt, rising at $3+ billion per day. As for asset prices, in 1980, they had been sinking since 1966, not rising 44 times in the last 44 years.

Reagan also had the benefit of a real inflation-fighter at the Fed — Paul Volcker, who could reduce interest rates as inflation cooled off. Lower rates meant higher asset prices. And as Volcker won the fight against inflation, the bond vigilantes could hang up their spurs. They weren’t needed. But today, asset prices are already sky high and ready for a correction. And since the Great Boom ended, in July 2020, the Fed can no longer support the stock market without risking two unhappy consequences.

First, as we’ve seen since September, the bond vigilantes are back in the saddle. The Fed cuts short rates... and long rates rise. Investors know what time it is. They expect more inflation. Not only that... they seem to be doubting the good faith and full credit of the US government itself. Our Investment Director Tom Dyson comments: "US Treasury rates are the highest they've been in decades relative to everyone else's rates. Not only are Treasury bond yields cheap relative to stocks, but they're cheap relative to corporate bonds, bonds from other countries, and commercial property cap rates. In other words, it looks to me like Treasury bonds have lost value relative to the rest of the asset universe... stocks, foreign bonds, corporate bonds, junk bonds, property etc, etc... Which implies investors are specifically marking down the creditworthiness of the federal government’s paper.

Second, higher long-term rates set in motion trends that are the opposite of the Reagan years. Instead of rising real asset values, we should see them fall. Instead of an economic boom, we should see a bust. And instead of financing small deficits at declining interest rates, the Trump team will be financing big ones at increasing real rates."

So, what’s new? No situation is so grim... or so hopeless... that a determined leadership in Washington can’t make it worse. And since were looking for the ‘worst case’ scenarios, let’s look a little further.

Prominent among the additional risks is the call for trade barriers. The US doesn’t just import stuff. It also exports stuff - $3.5 trillion worth each year. And it wouldn’t be at all surprising if the countries that suffer higher US tariffs, set up some tariffs of their own. This is what happened after misters Smoot and Hawley enacted a tariff bill in the US in 1930. Trade declined and much of the world went into a depression.

Trade is what keeps the world economy in business. Only very poor countries - who have nothing to export and no money to buy imports - don’t rely on trade for a substantial part of their GDP. The others need to buy and sell... and depend on it not only to meet their daily needs, but also to keep up with their debts.

The defining stupidity of the whole boom-bubble era, 1980 to 2024, was the role of interest rates. From double digits - 15% for a 10-year Treasury in 1981 - down to no digits at all. On August 3, 2020, the yield on a 10-year treasury note was not even a whole number... it was just a fraction of 1%.

Pushed down by central banks all over the world, the ultra-low lending rates led to an ultra-abundance of debt... now totaling more than $300 trillion. Take away the $25 trillion in international trade... or even a small portion of it... and it becomes much harder to keep up with debt payments. Here’s Bloomberg with an analysis of Trump’s tariff proposals:

"Of all the goods traded globally, 20% either go to the US or come from the US. In our model with tariffs, we’re looking at that falling to 9%. We don’t have 100% confidence in these figures, but that looks like a loss to the US economy of about 10% of its GDP. And then…loans of all sorts go unpaid. Business profits shrink. Banks go bankrupt. In short, in addition to the massive financial correction described above, we could have another worldwide depression... similar to what happened in the 1930s."

That is a worse case scenario. But it’s not the ‘worst case’ scenario. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, in other words. But we’ll come to that tomorrow."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"Inflation: Your Role as a Milk Cow"

"Inflation: Your Role as a Milk Cow"

by Jeff Thomas

"Traditionally, inflation has been defined as “an increase in the amount of currency in circulation.” Such an increase almost always causes an increase in the cost of goods and services, since, more plentiful currency units lowers their rarity, as compared to the supply of goods and services, which remains roughly the same. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising if a 20% increase in the amount of currency units translates into a 20% increase in the price of goods and services.

Unfortunately, in recent decades, even dictionaries have been offering a revised definition of inflation, as “an increase in the price of goods and services.” This is a pity, as it makes an already confusing subject even more difficult to understand. This is especially true for the average guy who has a minimal understanding of economics, but does realize that, even if his wages increase (which he regards as a good thing), he never seems to get ahead. In the end, he always seems to be worse off.

Let’s say that you’re paid $4000 per month. You budget for housing, food, clothing, transportation, etc. Let’s say that that adds up to $3800 per month, and you’re hoping to put $200 per month into savings. Often that doesn’t happen, as unplanned expenses “pop up,” and must be paid for. So, in the end, you save little or nothing.

In the meantime, you’re daydreaming about buying a new car, but it can’t be bought, because you don’t have any money to allocate to it. Then, your boss says that the recent prosperity has resulted in a big new contract for the company that allows him to give you a raise of $200 a month. This is your big chance. You go to the car dealership, buy the car, and arrange for time payments of $200 per month to pay for it.

However, what’s rarely understood is that the theoretical “prosperity” is the result of governmentally induced inflation. What appears to be prosperity is merely a rise in costs and, along with it, a rise in your wages.

You appear to be “getting ahead,” but here’s what really happens…The inflation that resulted in your pay rise also raises the prices on most or all other goods and services. So, instead of spending $3800 on expenses every month, your costs have risen to, say, $4200.

So, only months after your pay rise, you become aware that, not only are all your expenses higher (which you didn’t figure on when you bought the car), you now have the extra monthly obligation of the $200 car payment.

A year later, you look back and say to yourself, “Just when I was finally getting ahead, just when I was realizing my dream to have a new car, all those greedy businesspeople raised their prices because they just want to be rich, and I ended up a loser.” Not so. The businesspeople raised their prices for the same reason everyone does during inflation -because their costs are also higher and they must either raise prices or go out of business. So, in effect… no one got ahead.

But, worse, you got behind. Because, now, in addition to your monthly expenses, you have debt obligations, and buying on time is always more costly than paying as you go. As time goes on, you run into emergencies of one type or another that dip into your meagre savings. You must renegotiate your debt with the bank in order to keep your car and, of course, the bank demands a greater percentage than before, assuring that your economic situation will only get worse.

Ergo, inflation has not been a boon, but a curse. And that, in fact, is exactly the idea. Banks figured out ages ago that, although people will only tolerate so much taxation, they’ll not only tolerate, but welcome the hidden tax of inflation. The illusion that they’re “getting ahead” gives them the false confidence to take on debt, which will, over time, cripple them.

The purpose of bank-created inflation is to extract wealth from the populace. By regularly increasing the amount of currency in circulation, banks create an environment in which the concept of debt appears to be beneficial. As a result, virtually everyone in today’s society not only has debt; he actually believes that he couldn’t improve his life except through debt.

So, that’s essentially how inflation works. However, there’s a further knock-on effect from inflation that comes with retirement. When retirement arrives, almost no one who is caught up in the system described above has found a way to get out of debt. Inflation always gobbles up whatever advances he feels he’s made, because inflation itself created those imagined advances.

Just before retirement, most people have their most expensive houses, cars, etc., and appear to have prospered, but they also have the greatest level of debt that they’ve ever carried. If they’ve been careful, they may have savings and/or investments that they hope will carry them through their twilight years. But they quickly find that inflation continues after they retire. Savings in banks no longer earn money. In fact, they do the opposite. Inflation takes more than the paltry interest savings received, resulting in an annual loss on any money held in banks. But, inflation continues to march on, assuring that the retiree’s costs will continue to rise, even as his savings decline. In essence, the inflation concept was invented by banks as an invisible tax - a means by which they could extract wealth from the populace.

And, here we get back to the original complaint of the individual. As he tries to balance his chequebook or to plan for his retirement, he scratches his head and wonders, “How is it that no matter how much more money I make, I never seem to get ahead?” In effect, the individual is used by the banking system as a milk cow. For his entire working life, inflation is carefully adjusted to extract as much monetary value from his labours as possible, whilst still leaving him capable of continued production.

Pretty grim… So, is that it, or is there a way out? Well, to begin, it would be very helpful to exit any country where the dual monetary drains of taxation and inflation are prominent. (By leaving, you may take an initial step down, but, over the long haul, you’re more likely to prosper.)

An additional move would be to refuse to borrow money for any situation. Yes, it will mean that, as your friends show off their new cars, you’ll be driving an older model. They’ll also live in nicer houses than you and they’ll “own” their own house before you do. But, at some point, since you’re free from debt, you’ll pass them by and eventually retire well. By understanding inflation, and acting on that understanding, the odds of living your life as a milk cow can be greatly diminished."

- https://internationalman.com/

"WTF Alert! Mushroom Cloud In Russia - ATACMS! Iran Says 'We Have Nukes!'; NATO In WW 3 With Russia!"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 11/18/24

"WTF Alert! Mushroom Cloud In Russia - ATACMS! 

Iran Says 'We Have Nukes!'; NATO In WW 3 With Russia!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/w

"Danger In Tennessee - Tren De Arugua; Prep Your Home For Nuclear Armageddon"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/18/24

"Danger In Tennessee - Tren De Arugua; 

Prep Your Home For Nuclear Armageddon"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Afshin, “Prayer of Change”

Full screen recommended.

Afshin, “Prayer of Change”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Like delicate cosmic petals, these clouds of interstellar dust and gas have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile star fields of the constellation Cepheus. Sometimes called the Iris Nebula and dutifully cataloged as NGC 7023 this is not the only nebula in the sky to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this remarkable image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries in impressive detail. Within the Iris, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. 

 Click image for larger size.

The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the dusty clouds glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula may contain complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The bright blue portion of the Iris Nebula is about six light-years across.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120929.html

Chet Raymo, “The Journey”

“The Journey”
by Chet Raymo

"Here's a deep-deep sky map of the universe from the March 9, 2006 issue of Nature. The horizontal scale is a 360 view right around the sky; the vertical gaps at 6 hours and 24 hours are the parts of the universe that are blocked to our view by the disk of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The vertical scale - distance from Earth - is logarithmic (10, 100, 1000, etc.) measured in megaparsecs (a parsec equals 3.26 light-years). Across the top is the Big Bang, and the oldest and most distant thing we can see, the cosmic microwave background, the radiation of the Big Bang itself. A few relatively nearby galaxies are designated at the bottom. All that stuff in the middle that looks like smoke or dusty cobwebs are quasars and galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

A smoke of galaxies! A universe cobwebbed with Milky Ways! Each galaxy itself a smoke of stars, hundreds of billions of stars, many or all of them with planets. My new book, Walking Zero, is about the human journey from the omphalos of our birth into the world of the galaxies, a journey many of us are disinclined to make. Here is how the Prologue to the book begins:

"Each of us is born at the center of the world. For nine months our physical selves are assembled molecule by molecule, cell by cell, in the dark covert of our mother's womb. A single fertilized egg cell splits into two. Then four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Ultimately, 50 trillion cells or so. At first, our future self is a mere blob of protoplasm. But slowly, ever so slowly, the blob begins to differentiate under the direction of genes. A symmetry axis develops. A head, a tail, a spine. At this point, the embryo might be that of a human, or a chicken, or a marmoset. Limbs form. Digits, with tiny translucent nails. Eyes, with papery lids. Ears pressed like flowers against the head. Clearly now a human. A nose, nostrils. Downy hair. Genitals.
 

As the physical self develops, so too a mental self takes shape, not yet conscious, not yet self-aware, knitted together as webs of neurons in the brain, encapsulating in some respects the evolutionary experience of our species. Instincts impressed by the genes. The instinct to suck, for example. Already, in the womb, the fetus presses its tiny fist against its mouth in anticipation of the moment when the mouth will be offered the mother's breast. The child will not have to be taught to suck. Other inborn behaviors will express themselves later. Laughing. Crying. Striking out in anger. Loving.
 

What, if anything, goes on in the mind of the developing fetus we may never know. But this much seems certain: To the extent that the emerging self has any awareness of its surroundings, its world is coterminous with itself. We are not born with knowledge of the antipodes, the plains of Mars, or the far-flung realm of the galaxies. We are not born with knowledge of Precambrian seas, the supercontinent of Pangea, or the Age of Dinosaurs. We are born into a world scarcely older than ourselves and scarcely larger than ourselves. And we are at its center.
 

A human life is a journey into the grandeur of a universe that may contain more galaxies than there are cells in the human body, a universe in which the whole of a human lifetime is but a single tick of the cosmic clock. The journey can be disorienting; our first instincts are towards coziness, comfort, our mother's enclosing arms, her breast. The journey, therefore, requires courage - for each individual, and for our species.
 

Uniquely of all animals, humans have the capacity to let our minds expand into the space and time of the galaxies. No other creatures can number the cells in their bodies, as we can, or count the stars. No other creatures can imagine the explosive birth of the observable universe 14 billion years ago from an infinitely hot, infinitely small seed of energy. That we choose to make this journey - from the all-sustaining womb into the vertiginous spaces and abyss of time - is the glory of our species, and perhaps our most frightening challenge.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/2006/04/journey.html

"This World..."

"This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle;

wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it."

- Thomas Carlyle

"Time..."

"Time is the substance from which I am made.

Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river;
it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger;
it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire."
- Jorge Luis Borges

"Fast Time and the Aging Mind"

"Fast Time and the Aging Mind"
By Richard A. Friedman

"Ah, the languorous days of endless summer! Who among us doesn’t remember those days and wonder wistfully where they’ve gone? Why does time seem to speed up as we age? Even the summer solstice — the longest, sunniest day of the year — seems to have passed in a flash. No less than the great William James opined on the matter, thinking that the apparent speed of time’s passage was a result of adults’ experiencing fewer memorable events: “Each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.”

Don’t despair. I am happy to tell you that the apparent velocity of time is a big fat cognitive illusion and happy to say there may be a way to slow the velocity of our later lives.

Although the sense that we perceive time as accelerating as we age is very common, it is hard to prove experimentally. In one of the largest studies to date, Dr. Marc Wittmann of the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, in Germany, interviewed 499 German and Austrian subjects ranging in age from 14 to 94 years; he asked each subject how quickly time seemed to pass during the previous week, month, year and decade. Surprisingly, there were few differences related to age. With one exception: when researchers asked the subjects about the 10-year interval, older subjects were far more likely than the younger subjects to report that the last decade had passed quickly.

Other, non-age-related factors influence our perception of time. Recent research shows that emotions affect our perception of time. For example, Dr. Sylvie Droit-Volet, a psychology professor at Blaise Pascal University, in France, manipulated subjects’ emotional state by showing them movies that excited fear or sadness and then asked them to estimate the duration of the visual stimulus. She found that time appears to pass more slowly when we are afraid.

Attention and memory play a part in our perception of time. To accurately gauge the passage of time required to accomplish a given task, you have to be able to focus and remember a sequence of information. That’s partly why someone with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has trouble judging time intervals and grows impatient with what seems like the slow passage of time. The neurotransmitter dopamine is critically important to our ability to process time. Stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall, which increase dopamine function in the brain, have the effect of speeding up time perception; antipsychotic drugs, which block dopamine receptors, have the opposite effect.

On the whole, most of us perceive short intervals of time similarly, regardless of age. Why, then, do older people look back at long stretches of their lives and feel it’s a race to the finish? Here’s a possible answer: think about what it’s like when you learn something for the first time — for example how, when you are young, you learn to ride a bike or navigate your way home from school. It takes time to learn new tasks and to encode them in your memory. And when you are learning about the world for the first time, you are forming a fairly steady stream of new memories of events, places and people.

When, as an adult, you look back at your childhood experiences, they appear to unfold in slow motion probably because the sheer number of them gives you the impression that they must have taken forever to acquire. So when you recall the summer vacation when you first learned to swim or row a boat, it feels endless. But this is merely an illusion, the way adults understand the past when they look through the telescope of lost time. This, though, is not an illusion: almost all of us faced far steeper learning curves when we were young. Most adults do not explore and learn about the world the way they did when they were young; adult life lacks the constant discovery and endless novelty of childhood.

Studies have shown that the greater the cognitive demands of a task, the longer its duration is perceived to be. Dr. David Eagleman at Baylor College of Medicine found that repeated stimuli appear briefer in duration than novel stimuli of equal duration. Is it possible that learning new things might slow down our internal sense of time?

The question and the possibility it presents put me in mind of my father, who died a few years ago at age 86. An engineer by training, he read constantly after he retired. His range was enormous; he read about everything from astronomy to natural history, travel and gardening. I remember once discovering dozens of magazines and journals in the house and was convinced that my parents had become the victims of a mail-order scam. Thinking I’d help with the clutter, I began to bundle up the magazines for recycling when my father angrily confronted me, demanding to know what the hell I was doing. “I read all of these,” he said.

And then it dawned on me. I cannot recall his ever having remarked on how fast or slow his life seemed to be going. He was constantly learning, always alive to new ideas and experience. Maybe that’s why he never seemed to notice that time was passing.

So what, you might say, if we have an illusion about time speeding up? But it matters, I think, because the distortion signals that we might squeeze more out of life.

It’s simple: if you want time to slow down, become a student again. Learn something that requires sustained effort; do something novel. Put down the thriller when you’re sitting on the beach and break out a book on evolutionary theory or Spanish for beginners or a how-to book on something you’ve always wanted to do. Take a new route to work; vacation at an unknown spot. And take your sweet time about it."

- http://www.nytimes.com/

•

Richard A. Friedman is a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psycho-pharmacology clinic at the Weill Cornell Medical College.

The Daily "Near You?"

San Jose, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Is Joe Biden Trying To Start World War 3 Before He Leaves Office?"

"Is Joe Biden Trying To Start World War 3 Before 

He Leaves Office?The Decision To Use Long-Range 

Missiles To Strike Targets Deep Inside Russia Is Insane"

By Michael Snyder

"As if everything that Joe Biden has done so far was not enough, now he has decided to push us to the brink of nuclear war. On Sunday, Joe Biden decided to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles provided by the United States to hit targets deep inside of Russia. This is a bombshell. I don’t know how else to put it. The Russians have already warned us how they will respond if long-range missiles provided by the United States and other NATO countries start raining down on their cities. Sadly, most Americans have no idea what a direct conflict with Russia would mean.

When I first heard what Joe Biden had done, I reacted very emotionally. I am still feeling very emotional at this moment. Everyone needs to clearly understand what just happened, because this is a major turning point…"President Biden has given the OK to lift restrictions that will allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided long-range weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News on Sunday. The move is a significant change to U.S. policy in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict.

The easing of restrictions would allow Kyiv to use the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, to hit targets inside Russia. The move also comes as some 10,000 North Korean troops were sent to Kursk near Ukraine’s northern border to help Russian forces retake territory."

One of the reasons why I am so upset is because this wasn’t his decision to make. We just had an election and his side lost. The American people elected a leader that wants to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, but now Joe Biden is trying to make sure that nobody is going to be able to end this war.

According to CBS News, one of the reasons why this decision was made was to “put Kyiv in a better negotiating position when and if peace talks happen”…"The U.S. decision could help Ukraine at a moment when Russian forces appear to be making gains and could put Kyiv in a better negotiating position when and if peace talks happen. It also comes as Mr. Biden is about to leave office and President-elect Trump has pledged to limit American support for Ukraine and ending the war as soon as possible."

Are you kidding me? That is nonsense. Donald Trump needs to come forward immediately and denounce this move, because we could be facing a scenario where events spiral out of control before he even has the opportunity to take office.

When Vladimir Putin was asked about the possibility that long-range missiles provided by the U.S. could soon be used to hit targets deep inside Russia, he responded by warning that such a move would mean that “U.S. and European countries are at war with Russia”… “We are not talking about allowing or not allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons,” Putin said Thursday in comments to propagandist Pavel Zarubin. “We are talking about deciding whether NATO countries are directly involved in the military conflict or not. This will mean that NATO countries, the U.S. and European countries are at war with Russia,” Putin said. “And if this is so, then, bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created for us.”

Joe Biden just called Putin’s bluff. We just crossed that red line, and there is no going back. Now we will see if Putin was bluffing or not. Later in September, Vladimir Putin explained that a “joint attack on the Russian Federation” could trigger the use of nuclear weapons…"A new nuclear doctrine would “clearly set the conditions for Russia to transition to using nuclear weapons,” he warned – and said such scenarios included conventional missile strikes against Moscow.

He said that Russia would consider such a “possibility” of using nuclear weapons if it detected the start of a massive launch of missiles, aircraft and drones into its territory, which presented a “critical threat” to the country’s sovereignty. He added: “It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation.”

The Russians have told us that allowing Ukraine to fire long-range missiles deep into their territory could cause a nuclear war. But Joe Biden did it anyway. Just imagine how we would feel if some foreign power was firing long-range missiles into Washington D.C. and New York City. If someone did that to us, we would nuke them. I want everyone out there to understand the gravity of the scenario that we are facing.

Of course the Russians have been escalating matters as well. In fact, they just hit targets all over Ukraine using “120 missiles and almost 100 drones”…"Ukraine said it would introduce nationwide emergency power restrictions Monday after a “massive” Russian attack further damaged its already fragile energy grid ahead of a much-feared winter, with nine civilians also killed across the country on Sunday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow launched 120 missiles and almost 100 drones, targeting Kyiv as well as southern, central and far-western corners of the country. Civilians were killed in the Mykolaiv, Lviv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa regions in what officials in the capital called one of the biggest barrages in the almost three-year Russian invasion."

Meanwhile, the war in the Middle East threatens to spiral completely out of control. On Sunday, Zero Hedge was reporting that Israeli troops were seen fighting at a location that is 3 miles north of the Lebanese border…"The Israeli military has reached the deepest point in Lebanon since the ground offensive began about six weeks ago. This has been reported by both Lebanese and Israeli media, amid raging battles with Hezbollah on Saturday.

“The state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli troops temporarily captured a strategic hill in the southern Lebanese village of Shamaa, about five kilometers (3 miles) from the border early Saturday, before later being pushed back,” Israeli media reports. “The outlet claimed soldiers detonated several buildings including a shrine before they withdrew.”

The IDF has also been bombing Syria on an almost daily basis, and we are waiting for the next Iranian attack on Israel which could literally occur at any moment. Even though we could see these wars coming way in advance, nobody has been able to stop them.

Now Joe Biden has brought us to the brink of nuclear war with Russia even though he has very little time remaining in the White House. It was not his decision to make, but he made it anyway, and it could end up having very serious implications for every man, woman and child on the entire planet."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/i

“Too Much Rain Will Kill Ya”

“Too Much Rain Will Kill Ya”

by Bruce Krasting

"My first week on Wall Street was in August of 1973. I was newbie to NYC. My office was on the south side of 100 Wall, on the second floor, looking out over Front Street. There was a tremendous thunderstorm one afternoon. I looked out the window as the street filled with water. The flood poured into a street gutter and overwhelmed it. With the gutter flooded, the rats were drowning. They came out of every hole. In twenty minutes, 500 came out of the one gutter I was watching. The rain stopped and the flooding abated. The rats on the street followed the receding water back into their holes. A memorable first impression of life in the financial district."

- http://www.zerohedge.com/