"Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change,
but pretty soon... everything's different."
- Calvin, from "Calvin and Hobbes"
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
"Figuring Forward in an Uncertain Universe"
"Figuring Forward in an Uncertain Universe"
by Maria Popova
"We make things and seed them into the world, never fully knowing - often never knowing at all - whom they will reach and how they will blossom in other hearts, how their meaning will unfold in contexts we never imagined. (W.S. Merwin captured this poignantly in the final lines of his gorgeous poem “Berryman.”)
Today I offer something a little apart from the usual, or sidelong rather, amid these unusual times: A couple of days ago, I received a moving note from a woman who had read "Figuring" and found herself revisiting the final page - it was helping her, she said, live through the terror and confusion of these uncertain times. I figured I’d share that page - which comes after 544 others (here are the first), tracing centuries of human loves and losses, trials and triumphs, that gave us some of the crowning achievements of our civilization - in case it helps anyone else.
"Meanwhile, someplace in the world, somebody is making love and another a poem. Elsewhere in the universe, a star manyfold the mass of our third-rate sun is living out its final moments in a wild spin before collapsing into a black hole, its exhale bending spacetime itself into a well of nothingness that can swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever produced, every poem and statue and symphony we’ve ever known - an entropic spectacle insentient to questions of blame and mercy, devoid of why.
In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all. The Voyager will still be sailing into the interstellar shorelessness on the wings of the “heavenly breezes” Kepler had once imagined, carrying Beethoven on a golden disc crafted by a symphonic civilization that long ago made love and war and mathematics on a distant blue dot.
But until that day comes, nothing once created ever fully leaves us. Seeds are planted and come abloom generations, centuries, civilizations later, migrating across coteries and countries and continents. Meanwhile, people live and people die - in peace as war rages on, in poverty and disrepute as latent fame awaits, with much that never meets its more, in shipwrecked love.
I will die.
You will die.
The atoms that huddled for a cosmic blink around the shadow of a self will return to the seas that made us. What will survive of us are shoreless seeds and stardust."
"Sunset on the State"
"Sunset on the State"
The law of opposites and the modern
nation state's date with destiny...
by Joel Bowman
“What was scattered gathers, what was gathered blows away.”
~ Heraclitus (c. 6th century BC)
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Tide comes in... tide goes out. Sun rises... sun sets. Empire rises... empire declines... and falls. Where are we, dear reader, upon the long and winding road? Celebrating another journey around the sun this past weekend, your editor got to thinking about revolutions... about cosmic cycles... and about the ancient concept of enantiodromia.
The theory, first floated by the pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus, holds that all things are always and everywhere in the process of yielding to their opposite. Wrote the clever ol’ Ephesian (from his extant works, "Fragments"): “Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools; what is wet dries, and the parched is moistened. And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old; the former are shifted and become the latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former.”
We are not yet at the half century mark, flâneuring this pale blue dot, but already time’s inexorable pull makes itself known. The years pass by more quickly. The body does not recover as it once did. As Ernest Dowson mused, (channeling the great Roman poet, Horace), “They are not long, these days of wine and roses.”
Already, half the countries on the planet are known to us... but half remain hidden, “beyond the misty dream.” We have read (and reread) half of Proust’s spiraling epic, "In Search of Lost Time", but there remains time enough to regain the rest. So where does that leave us, dear reader, at this particular moment along the journey? Are we optimistic about the future? Or pessimistic? Is our copa half full, or half empty? Hmm...
Bulls and Bears: Looking around us, we notice enantiodromia performing its silent work everywhere, turning the parched sodden and scattering what was once gathered to the eternal winds. Markets turn from bullish to bearish... then bullish once again. Nations lurch from times of war, to moments of peace... only to take up arms anew. The government grows and grows... until somebody comes along with a chainsaw, and chops it down to size.
And what of the State of the State? With the motosierras a buzzin’ and Team DOGE going to work on the flabby underbelly of the beast, it’s fair to ask to what extent we featherless bipeds have outgrown our need for Big Daddy government.
Half a lifetime ago, we could scarcely have imagined that one of the world’s most dysfunctional States would be overhauled by a man who openly declared himself – during the election, no less! – to be an “enemy of the state.” Or that said man, having gone on to become president of his nation, should one day gift a golden chainsaw to the richest human on the planet, who would in turn unleash it on his own unwieldy government, the most powerful and far-reaching in history. Or that half the citizens of those nations would cheer, while the other half writhed in agony, as the multi-headed hydras squirmed and gnashed their teeth to the sound of chains ripping into tender flesh.
And yet, difficult as it may be to fathom, nation states themselves are not some permanent fixture in the cosmic firmament. In fact, the very concept is relatively new. Prior to the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648, national borders were constantly under dispute, or as Heraclitus might prefer, in flux. (Heraclitus’s own birthplace, Ephesus, was at turns under the yoke of dozens of tribes and conquerors, including the Attics, Ionians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans and, most recently, the Turks.)
Instead of fixed nation states, the Old World was divided into multi-ethnic empires. In Europe, the Austrian, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British Empires, along with the Kingdoms of France and Hungary, vied for geographic and political supremacy, securing their claims through a complex interplay of strategic marriages and foreign conquests. In Asia, meanwhile, a similar game was played out among Islamic caliphates and, further east, Chinese and Mongol dynasties, such as the Tang, Yuan and Qing.
A Date with Destiny
That a fixed geographical claim should be governed by a group of privileged earthly mortals, claiming an authority derived from the will of the majority, to be limited by a constitution to which no living human is signatory, would have seemed as unimaginable to our ancestors as the Divine Right of Kings appears to many today. And yet, each political system has its time in the sun, both at dawn... and dusk.
As of this writing, in the second month of the year 2025, the federal government of the United States of America employs around 3 million people. It carries a national debt of $36.5 trillion, which equals $107k per man, woman and child in the country, or $323k per taxpayer. To that staggering debt load is added $5.64 billion per day, equivalent to $234.99 million per hour, $3.92 million per minute, or $65,275 per second.
So far, the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) claims to have “saved” $65 billion from the total government outlays... which is about 11.5 days worth of spending. Although that number amounts to a tiny percentage of the overall size of the state today, it would have been enough to pay off the entire federal debt in 1941, the year America entered WWII.
It is an incontrovertible fact that nothing lasts forever. From the mightiest ruler to the lowliest footsoldier, the greatest empire to the tiniest fiefdom, the brightest dawn to the darkest night; every end has to begin somewhere. That the modern day nation state has a date with destiny, we have little doubt. Whether it is voluntarily dismantled... or collapses under its own weight... whether it comes to pass next year, or half a lifetime from now, we only hope to be around to see it."
Gregory Mannarino, "Without Action Now We Will Face A Currency Meltdown. Here Is The Proof!"
"Without Action Now We Will Face A
Currency Meltdown. Here Is The Proof!"
by Gregory Mannarino
"This has to be fixed, and fixed now. (Graphic above). This is the relationship between the CPI, (consumer price index), and the inflation rate. The red circle on the left is the last time we had a crossover which led to an inflation surge in the 1970’s. What reversed this inflation surge, was in 1979, then Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker introduced a new monetary policy of high interest rates. In fact VASTLY higher. If you do follow my work, then you are aware I have been screaming from rooftops for quite a while now that the last thing we need is lower rates, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and President Trump are now calling for. We need much higher rates because if action is not taken immediately, what is about to happen here in the US regarding inflation will make what happened last time in the 1970’s look like a walk in the park…
Immediate action is needed now due to the lag effect. Even when Volcker raised rates in 1979, the effect of higher rates took time to take effect… we will have the same situation here."
"2025 Credit Card Debt Statistics"
"2025 Credit Card Debt Statistics"
by Matt Schulz
Excerpt: "Americans have an absolute mountain of credit card debt - $1.211 trillion, to be exact. This credit card debt statistics page tracks Americans’ credit card use each month. We update this page regularly, looking at how much debt people have, how often they carry a balance month to month, how often they pay their credit card bills late and more. How much credit card debt do Americans have?Americans’ total credit card balance is $1.211 trillion as of the fourth quarter of 2024, according to the latest consumer debt data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That’s up from $1.166 trillion in Q3 2024 and is the highest balance since the New York Fed began tracking in 1999."
Full article is here:
"18 Horrifying Statistics About Medical Bills, Medical Debt And The Healthcare Industry That Will Make You So Mad You Will Want To Tear Your Hair Out"
"18 Horrifying Statistics About Medical Bills, Medical Debt And The Healthcare
Industry That Will Make You So Mad You Will Want To Tear Your Hair Out"
by Michael Snyder
"Do not read this article if you do not want to get angry. The “healthcare industry” in the United States has become one gigantic money making scam, and tens of millions of American families now live in great fear of illness and disease. Why are they so afraid? It is because a single trip to the hospital can ruin you financially. Even if you are covered by health insurance, medical debt can still wreck your finances. In fact, most of the people that go bankrupt due to medical bills actually have health insurance. Meanwhile, on the other side there are lots of people that are becoming fabulously wealthy from this system.
Our “healthcare industry” has turned large numbers of doctors, lawyers, health insurance company executives and pharmaceutical company executives into multi-millionaires. Of course the largest shareholders in our gigantic healthcare corporations are raking in the most cash of all. The healthcare industry in the United States has become a cesspool of corruption and greed, and this has been the case for so long that we don’t even remember what a legitimate system even looks like anymore.
Many Americans truly believed that health insurance would protect them if something went terribly wrong with their health. But then they discovered that health insurance companies will use their “delay, deny and defend” tactics to weasel out of paying what they owe any what that they possibly can. Even if you do have a health insurance company that is relatively honest, and that is fairly rare these days, you are still just one really bad accident or one really bad illness away from bankruptcy unless you are independently wealthy.
Our healthcare system is designed to rapidly drain money out of us when we are at our most vulnerable. If you have to call for an ambulance to take you to the hospital, are you thinking about how much your care will cost at that point? Of course not. You are just hoping that you will survive.
Today, it is so easy to rack up $10,000, $20,000 or even $30,000 in medical debt in the blink of an eye and many hospitals are becoming extremely aggressive about collecting on those medical debts. I guarantee that many of you that are reading this article know exactly what I am talking about.
One trip to the hospital can wipe out years of financial savings. But why should it cost so much? In many cases, a doctor only spends a few minutes with you. Sadly, you discover the truth when you follow the money. There are a lot of people that are becoming exceedingly wealthy from this system, and unfortunately that does not include middle class Americans. The following are 18 horrifying statistics about medical bills, medical debt and the healthcare industry that will make you so mad you will want to tear your hair out…
#1 According to the CFPB, approximately 100 million Americans are in medical debt right now.
#2 Even though the vast majority of the population is covered by health insurance, 62 percent of the two million personal bankruptcies that are filed each year in the United States are caused by medical debt.
#3 One survey found that U.S. households have piled up more than 220 billion dollars in medical debt.
#4 A three day stay in the hospital will typically cost you somewhere around $30,000.
#5 Americans spend more than 200 billion dollars treating cancer each year.
#6 According to the CDC, heart disease costs this country more than 250 billion dollars each year.
#7 According to the NIH, diabetes costs this country more than 400 billion dollars each year.
#8 A 25-year-old mother in Nevada was handed a bill for $700,000 after her baby daughter spent about two months in the neonatal intensive care unit.
#9 One study found that hospitals overcharge Americans “by as much as 18 times over their costs”.
#10 78 percent of U.S. adults have avoided hospital visits because they cost so much.
#11 Hospital profits have risen by more than 400 percent since 1999.
#12 A study that was conducted a few years ago determined that more than 90 percent of all hospital bills contain errors that can result in “overcharges, unnecessary costs, and insurance claim denials”…"According to a 2020 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, billing errors affected over 90% of hospital bills. These errors can result in overcharges, unnecessary costs, and insurance claim denials, leading to financial hardship for patients."
#13 The average family premium for employer-sponsored health insurance in the United States has skyrocketed to $25,572 annually.
#14 One survey found that 18 percent of all insured adults in the U.S. have had a health insurance claim denied within the past year.
#15 Since Obamacare became law, the annual profits of the five largest health insurance companies in the United States have gone up by 230 percent.
#16 In 2023, the six largest health insurance companies in the United States had combined revenues of almost 1.1 trillion dollars.
#17 In 2023, the CEOs of the five largest health insurance companies in the U.S. brought home approximately 75 million dollars in total compensation.
#18 There are five giant pharmaceutical companies that each make more than 10 billion dollars in profits each year.
Our healthcare system should not be based on greed. It should be based on helping people and doing what is right for patients. Other industrialized nations spend a much smaller portion of their GDP on healthcare, and many of their systems are actually more efficient.
What is wrong with us? Why can’t we get our healthcare system fixed? Can anyone answer that question? Unfortunately, I don’t think that it is going to be fixed. They have made trillions of dollars by keeping us sick and managing our illnesses. When trillions of dollars are at stake, any effort to fundamentally fix the system will be met with overwhelming resistance. So it appears that we are stuck with our current system for the foreseeable future, and that is very bad news for all of us."
Dan, I Allegedly, "We Are On A Financial Roller Coaster"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 2/25/25
"We Are On A Financial Roller Coaster"
"Good people are struggling financially like never before, and in this video, I break down why it’s happening and what we can do about it. From skyrocketing costs at the grocery store to auto loan delinquencies hitting even those with great credit, it’s clear we’re all feeling the squeeze. Big names like Walmart and Amazon are seeing shifts in sales, while industries like retail and commercial real estate face massive challenges. Are we on the brink of something bigger?"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Market Gains, 2/25/25
"Starbucks Fires 1,100 Workers
as Everyone Stops Buying Their Coffee"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Jaw Dropping Prices At Meijer"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 2/25/25
"Jaw Dropping Prices At Meijer"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Frugal Recipes, 2/25/25
"Urgent! These 6 Foods Will Disappear
from Stores Before March 17, 2025!"
"In this video, we analyze the latest data showing why certain foods - like eggs, coffee, sugar, fresh produce, pasta, and seafood - are at risk of disappearing from store shelves well before March 17, 2025. Drawing on fresh reports, expert commentary, and real-time updates from the last few weeks, we uncover how volatile weather, rising production costs, labor shortages, and even crop diseases are converging to threaten our daily staples. Viewers will learn which items are most vulnerable, why prices are soaring, and how to strategically prepare for potential gaps in the food supply chain. Tune in to get actionable insights on stocking up and staying informed so you can protect yourself and your loved ones from looming shortages."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 2/25/25
"Russian Typical Supermarket After 3 Years of Sanctions"
"What does a Russian typical supermarket look like after 3 years of sanctions on the Russian economy? How have things changed, which brands have left Russia and can the average Russian shop for basic food items in 2025?"
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "The Real Heroes"
"The Real Heroes"
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "We wonder how many federal employees complied with the DOGE demand? Midnight last night was the deadline. CBS News: "DOGE's Elon Musk says federal employees must document their work or resign; some agencies push back. Federal workers received an email on Saturday instructing them to document five things they accomplished in the past week, and Elon Musk said those who don't reply would risk losing their jobs.
The email from the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, had the subject line, "What did you do last week?" It instructed recipients to reply with five examples of what they got done last week, excluding any classified information, and asked workers to include their supervisor in their response. They either presented some evidence to show that they were gainfully employed… or else…the President explained: ‘If you don’t answer, like, you're sort of semi-fired or you're fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist.’
The DOGE assault troops believe they can ferret out ‘waste’ and ‘corruption’ and save trillions of dollars. But they may be firing the wrong people. The problem with government spending is not the form; it’s the substance. It’s not that the money is spent inefficiently; it’s that it is spent at all. And for many programs, the phantom employee, who doesn’t do anything, is the best of the lot. He does no harm… never complains, and never needs an expensive triple by-pass.
Imagine the emails DOGE might have gotten from the feds who were enforcing, say, Prohibition. “I put in a very productive week,” one might have replied. “I destroyed three stills, arrested 49 moonshiners, and broke 1,450 bottles of whiskey.” Or… “I went to a speakeasy to study the illegal distribution of alcohol. I had a drink, just to verify that they were really serving demon rum. Then, I went home.” Who shoulda been fired?
Imagine that they put the DOGE test to Iraq warfighters…or to the grunts in the war against drugs…or anti-poverty bureaucrats or DEI honchos? The malingerers were the real heroes…they were the ones who did the least damage. The last thing we would want is a group of earnest federales diligently and energetically pursuing their malignant policies. And the best way to deal with them is to cut their budgets and eliminate their programs. Anything less than that is mere window-dressing.
So back to our line of thought from last week. We’ll come right to the point, before we forget it: Wages, GDP, sales and profits should never get too far out of line - one with another. There is no reason for stocks to spin out of orbit either. Chickens cannot be separated from eggs and corporations cannot be de-connected from the value of the output they produce. If they get too pricey, they can be expected to fall. If they get too cheap, the best bet is that they will rise. And overall…compared to the value of the ‘stuff’ in our lives…stocks should not increase by a single penny…not even in 100 years. (More on this counter-intuitive assertion tomorrow.)
How could that be? Stocks rose 366 times since 1925. But against what? Of course, the answer is against the dollar. And therein hangs a tale. It is a tale with a twist. And a spin. The funny money distorted the whole system…as we will see. Not just prices, but sales, profits, and GDP too. In dollar terms, the S&P 500 gained 2.7% in January after a 23% boost in 2024. The economy in which these remarkable gains were recorded, however, only grew 2.8% for all of 2024.
Shouldna… oughtna… done that. Same eggs. Why would the chickens be so much more valuable? As we will see, they are not really more ‘valuable’ at all. They have just been bid up in the speculative frenzy of what Tom calls the ‘greatest financial experiment in history’. That experiment will sooner or later be shown to be a failure. Worldwide, there may be $100 - $150 trillion worth of barren chickens…asset values with no corresponding real output. And as this becomes more obvious, over the next 10… 20…or 100 years, the real return on US investment assets may be negative. Stay tuned."
Monday, February 24, 2025
Jeremiah Babe, "People Taken By The FBI; Train Robberies In Mojave Desert; Haiti Missing Billions Of Dollars"
Jeremiah Babe, 2/24/25
"People Taken By The FBI; Train Robberies In Mojave Desert;
Haiti Missing Billions Of Dollars"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Una Mattina"
Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "Una Mattina"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“This pretty, open cluster of stars, M34, is about the size of the Full Moon on the sky. Easy to appreciate in small telescopes, it lies some 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Perseus. At that distance, M34 physically spans about 15 light-years. Formed at the same time from the same cloud of dust and gas, all the stars of M34 are about 200 million years young.
But like any open star cluster orbiting in the plane of our galaxy, M34 will eventually disperse as it experiences gravitational tides and encounters with the Milky Way's interstellar clouds and other stars. Over four billion years ago, our own Sun was likely formed in a similar open star cluster.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100211.html
"There Are Simply No Answers..."
“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”
- Barry Lopez
The Poet: Mary Oliver, "There Is Time Left"
"There Is Time Left"
"Well, there is time left –
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life,
and not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death,
and be overcome with amazement!”
~ Mary Oliver
Gregory Mannarino, "Expect Supply Chain Disruptions Within 6 Months; 9 Product Chains To Watch"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 2/24/25
"Expect Supply Chain Disruptions Within 6 Months;
9 Product Chains To Watch"
Comments here:
Jeff Thomas, "Kite in a Tree"
"Kite in a Tree"
by Jeff Thomas
"When I was a boy, cartoonist Charles Schulz introduced a new comic strip called Peanuts. Its central premise was children having the same problems as adults, and it was an instant hit. There were several recurring themes and, each autumn, the cartoonist would have his main character, Charlie Brown, attempt to fly a kite. At first all would go well, and Charlie Brown would build up his hopes, only to have them dashed when a tree would snag his kite and eat it.
This theme was endlessly enjoyable, as it reflected a syndrome familiar to all adults. The cartoonist was careful to ensure that he could do new variations on the theme every autumn, due to the fact that Charlie Brown never succeeded. At the end of the strip, the tree always ate his kite. And so it often goes in the adult world. Albert Einstein famously said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
And, yet, in every era, we can see this strange behavior play itself out, time and again. People go to casinos, imagining that, somehow, the casino will lose and they will win. They buy lottery tickets with odds of hundreds of thousands to one against them. And, amazingly, they invest in the stock market, not just badly, but in the very same pattern that has historically proven to virtually guarantee loss. More amazingly, this is not the behavior of the occasional loser; it’s the approach adopted by the great majority of investors and is one that they staunchly defend as "wise and informed investing," right until the crash that cleans them out.
So what, then, is this pattern? Well, generally, a potential investor contacts his broker and asks him if there’s anything he can recommend. The broker virtually always says yes - that whilst some stocks do not earn his endorsement, there are others that he feels are almost certain to go up. Should the investor then buy, he can count on the broker to push the prospect of further investment, whenever one of his recommendations has risen in value. (He’s less likely to get in touch if his recommendations go down.)
As each bull market unfolds, the broker advises his clients that, if they don’t continue to buy, they’ll be "missing out," and the opportunity for enrichment will pass them by. Each investor who’s roped in by this spiel reinforces the broker’s prediction, expanding the bull market and attracting more and more investors to get into the game. Then, something very interesting happens.
In a major bull market, when investors have reached their limit, they’re advised that they can buy on margin and increase their position. This is acknowledged as being risky in normal times, but these are not normal times. This is the mother of all bull markets, and "the sky’s the limit." The investors dive in.
When they become so strapped that they cannot buy on margin any further, many investors, believing that they’re on the cusp of getting rich, borrow money privately to buy on margin and, in so doing, become dramatically leveraged, but they do so because the broker promises that the bull market is going "to the moon."
But, like all bubbles, this one, too, eventually pops. Naturally, Wall Street doesn’t want an uncontrolled collapse of the market (after all, they wish to get themselves out before a crash), so, their ideal scenario is to create a controlled crash. Once the writing is on the wall, they themselves sell out, just prior to a trigger that will collapse the market.
In 1929, this was achieved through a sudden raise in interest rates. Since investors were up to their eyes in debt, any rise in interest rates meant that they’d default on their loans. The brokers would then unilaterally sell off their clients’ portfolios (as they are entitled to do in a margin call). They, of course, hope to salvage the maximum amount possible for themselves, so they do their best to liquidate everything overnight. The customary reaction by investors is to be stunned that a crash occurred that they didn’t see coming and that they woke up one morning to find that they’d sustained a massive loss.
In the early 2000s, a small number of people (myself included), predicted a stock market crash. I estimated its occurrence to be in 2007, so, in order to be out well ahead of time, I was out in 2006. (As it transpired, I was out earlier than necessary, for which I had no regret.) Prior to the crash, I warned friends and associates, who invariably said, "All indicators say that the market’s still going up. If it starts to slide downward, then I may sell."
I repeatedly reminded them that a major bull market never ends with a whimper. It invariably ends with a major upside spike, before it suddenly plummets downward. And this is not a coincidence. It’s based upon the behavior stated above.
What I find truly amazing is that most investors never learn. Even after they’ve been cleaned out once, they simply find another "better" broker and start all over. Incredibly, the average investor will work hard at his regular job and do all he can to get better at it, then, whatever savings he can create that year, he hands over to someone else to manage. He makes little or no effort to educate himself in the patterns of bull and bear markets so that he can avoid another failure. He repeatedly takes his kite out to fly it amongst the trees.
Many investors make the same mistake over and over, throughout their careers, working hard for their pay, then literally throwing away their savings. Today, we’re approaching the end of a major bull market. This one is especially interesting, in that, since 2008, we’ve been in a depression that virtually no one acknowledges. Those on Wall Street state with confidence that, despite increased unemployment, manufacturers leaving the country in droves, diminishing GDP, extensive business closures, etc., "This can’t be a depression if the market is up."
Unfortunately, what we’re really witnessing is the world’s longest sucker-rally. In the 1930s, a popular, if bitter-tasting, joke was that, "When every shoeshine boy is offering stock tips, it’s time to get out of the market." That advice arrived too late. We’re presently at that point again, except that the profession of shoeshine boy has disappeared.
Incredibly, even heads of banks and Wall Street firms are now warning that the end could be near. Perhaps the most unlikely expert of all to join this group is Lord Jacob Rothschild, who has now said, in a semi-annual report, We do not believe this is an appropriate time to add to risk. Share prices have in many cases risen to unprecedented levels at a time when economic growth is by no means assured.
Clearly, he was careful not to employ phrasing that would be overly alarming, but he did make the quote to explain why he has dumped massive amounts of US assets (i.e., he’s getting out before the crash). Meanwhile, the average investor, who contributes the oxygen to create all bubbles, is once again flying his kite, convinced that the tree will not once again eat his kite."
A must read post below by Canadian Prepper!
Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Market Crash Could Start In Days! Panic, Fastest Selling In History!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 2/24/25
"Alert! Market Crash Could Start In Days! Panic,
Fastest Selling In History!"
Comments here:
"How It Really, Truly Is"
"Back when I taught at UCLA, I was constantly amazed at how little so many students knew. Finally, I could no longer restrain myself from asking a student the question that had long puzzled me: ''What were you doing for the last 12 years before you got here?''
- Thomas Sowell
○
"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
- Thomas Sowell
○
"The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds." - Will Durant
○
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."
- Thomas Sowell
And look around, everywhere you look faces stuck in phones...
"There Is No Escape..."
"The precept: "Judge not, that ye be not judged" is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself. There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.The moral principle to adopt in this issue, is: "Judge, and be prepared to be judged."
- Ayn Rand
Dan, I Allegedly, "Is This the End of the IRS?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 2/24/25
"Is This the End of the IRS?"
"What if we abolished the IRS forever? In today’s video, I explore the fascinating idea of eliminating the IRS, simplifying our tax system, and even doing away with property taxes. Imagine a world where taxes could be calculated on a postcard in minutes and a national sales tax replaced the complex system we have today. From Donald Trump's discussions to Steve Forbes’ visionary ideas, this concept is gaining traction. Could this really happen? And what would it mean for Americans?
We also dive into other major topics like Florida’s potential changes to property taxes under Governor Ron DeSantis, the struggles of homebuilders (#HomeBuilders) amid high-interest rates, the collapse of companies like Nikola, and the ongoing challenges in the housing market. Plus, I share insights into businesses shutting down, California’s wild proposal to run its own refineries, and Apple’s plans for an AI-powered iPhone 16. There’s so much to unpack in this one!"
Comments here:
"Inside The Machine: How The Left Created A Manipulation Machine, And How Musk And Trump Broke It"
"Inside The Machine: How The Left Created A
Manipulation Machine, And How Musk And Trump Broke It"
by John Wilder
"It’s rare that The Mrs. texts me an article, so rare that years go by between texts containing links. In this case, the article The Mrs. texted me was Rapid Onset Political Enlightenment, from Tablet® magazine (LINK). I’d never heard of the author, David Samuels, but it’s likely he’s never heard of me, either, so we were tied on that count. The piece dives into how the mainstream machine seduced the American electorate and how normie voters finally snapped out of it. It’s looooong, and I’ve got a different spin on what broke the spell. This isn’t a review - it’s my take, sparked by Samuels’ fire. So here we go – this isn’t so much a review, but rather a self-contained post inspired by Mr. Samuels’ article.
Mankind was once an oral civilization. The stories that we told were handed down from one mouth to another around campfires under the stars. The stories that came down are still spoken of, and remnants of that civilization remain in the names of stars with names so ancient we have no idea where they came from, like Canopus.
Over time, though, we invented writing because we needed to write down tax regulations, and for a time we became a literate civilization, with people moving far away from the preceding oral civilization. This had some pretty significant impacts, the biggest of which was the great increase of words available to the human vocabulary. In an oral civilization, each member of the tribe knows all (or almost all) of the words that exist in the language.
In a literate civilization, these words can be written down, and there is space for new words to be added that are beyond the capacity of the average dude to remember. Language got complex. That let us think bigger, and writing smashed space and time. A Greek could read about Alexander’s exploits in far Persia, and that same account would be available for centuries or even millennia if properly stored.
As a literate people, we produced many of the finest works of art, science, and literature in human history. Don’t forget, the Greeks and the Romans were similarly a literate society in the upper strata, and you can clearly see that when literate society devolved away, so did the culture and art it created.
Reading takes time. The average person’s reading speed is 200 to 250 words per minute, though obviously the complexity of the text and the complexity of the thoughts expressed can speed up or slow down the input rate.
Although watching television takes even more time (about 135 words per minute output) it requires far less effort than reading, so the person is much less engaged on a logical level, but the addition of pictures engages the person at an emotional level. Going further into the future, the Internet introduced the meme to common culture in around the year 2000. The meme is an emotion laden image with a brief text around it to give context. It’s basically a cave painting along with the story that Uncle Grug wanted to tell. Yes. 4000 years from cave painting to cave painting.
This really did revolutionize the way that people took in information. Gone were long articles with complex language, and back were literally the shortest bits of coherent thought, emotion and a short message. Guttenberg’s press was no match for iPhone® screens and Grumpy Cat.
This is a fundamental change in the way that information is given, and as we transition back from a literary to an oral culture, people actually think less, and think in less complex ways. There is an opening built upon this simplification for manipulation.
Of course, someone would use this change in information as a tool to manipulate public opinion just as the radio was used prior to World War II, as television was used in Vietnam, and as cable news was used by Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II for their manipulations. The Internet was the next iteration, and of course politicians would use it to create and disseminate propaganda on the largest and quickest scale in history. The first real person to use this immense power inherent in the ascendency of the social networks, Samuels maintains, was Obama.
Why Obama? The iPhone® really was the game changer when combined with social media. It made ideas shorter and self-contained, but also made them immediate with the advent of social media that wasn’t quite ripe when Bush II was president. Obama created a machine that provided information. It pulsed. The idea was simple, and I’ve sketched it out a bit in another post but here it is in much deeper detail.
First – an event occurs. AP® or some other news outlet reports the facts. Now, if the facts don’t support the Narrative, they are brutally suppressed – they’re just not reported on. There was a mass murder where The Mrs. and I lived, and it was reported in the local papers and on the radio. It was horrific. Was it covered nationwide? No. When the family went to go visit my in-laws, they had not heard of this horrific mass murder at all even though they only lived 90 miles from the murders.
Why? The killers were black and the victims were white. They couldn’t cover up the mass murder locally, but nationally? They shut it down. Even regionally all reporting was shut down, because this didn’t fit the erroneous idea that only white people were serial killers.
This event may be a real story, or something manipulated to be a story – it’s here that Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) stage events that “make news” or are magnified. Think about the George Floyd death as one such event.
Second – that event is interpreted in a way that fits with the Narrative. Events which are at odds with the Narrative are suppressed. The central clearing house is generally the New York Times, which uses experts from various NGOs and “think tanks” to further refine how the event fits the Narrative. The prestige of the experts of the various NGOs are validated because they’re respected by people from...other NGOs.
Words like ‘false’ and ‘baseless’ tag stories - ‘baseless mRNA vaccine injury claims’ or ‘false vote fraud accusations’ - to smother anything off-Narrative. The idea of an impartial news media is dead, and now j-schools are teaching young reporters that they should be activists as well as reporters. I’d bet that the NGOs are part of making those suggestions.
The secret sauce in this step is based on David Axelrod’s strategy of making people change their opinion based upon convincing people to act based on how they wanted to be seen by others. In essence, the entire GloboLeftistElite strategy is based on virtue signaling.
Who does this work most stunningly well on? Unmarried white women, hard-core leftists, and people not paying attention much to politics. These are clearly shown in the exit polls, and a study I read on virtue signaling point out that: women virtue signal because that’s a core part of what they generally do – group membership is absolutely a survival mechanism for women. Hard core leftists are often atheists, and their morality is, shall we say, often fluid. Finally, people not paying attention want to be thought of as having a good reputation, so virtue signaling is a cheap way to maintain that reputation.
Third – media outlets report the interpreted event out – the bigger the event, the harder the push. The Late Night TV Funny Joke Men like Colbert and Kimmel join on. The message is slickly packaged, but the language is the same from everyone. How did the words “Russian Asset” get in everyone’s mouth at the exact same time? It’s simple. They read the memo.
Fourth – repeat and grow the Narrative to make sure it remains an accepted fact to the targets being manipulated. Note, that the Narrative doesn’t have to be internally consistent. For instance, we must utterly cater to racial differences. But there are no races. We must also respect the rights of women. Oh, and a woman is absolutely anyone who says they’re a woman.
What comprises the Narrative is less important than that it serve the purpose of the moment. The Narrative changes over time: free speech was the stated goal of the GloboLeftElite in the early 1970s, but now free speech must be controlled. That control of speech? That’s the last part of the process.
Fifth – deplatform anyone who tries to tell any story that is counter to the Narrative. Silicon Valley was, at least in its early days, a libertarian enterprise. The entire industry was about conquering a space where there weren’t any rules. To the extent that libertarians identify with a major political party, it’s generally the Right since the Right typically wants fewer rules. In 2012, however, the maturing industry was taken in by the GloboLeft and bought into the Narrative. When Trump was elected, they became part of the machine.
The Narrative is a very fragile thing, and since it’s fragile, the one thing it can’t stand is scrutiny. One of the wonderful things that the Internet allowed early on were comments sections. Comment sections are wonderful because they often add more information to a news story, and give a direct voice to the readers impacted by the news. That’s intolerable. So, comment sections have to go.
It then moved into Twitter™. Anyone not expressing opinions against the Narrative or any component thereof would be banned. Question the safety of mRNA? Banned. Question the official story of the origin of COVID? Banned. Question the 2020 election results? Banned. Show information from Hunter Biden’s laptop? Banned. On the laptop, they even got 51 former U.S. intelligence officials to say that Russia did it. Then, Twitter© even banned the sitting president of the United States. Reddit© is still (in 2025!) banning communities where badthink takes place.
To quote the Tablet article, this “structure is neither modern nor conservative,” but...“Rather it is totalitarian in its essence, a device for getting people to act against their beliefs by substituting new and better beliefs through the top-down controlled and leveraged application of social pressure, which among other things eliminates the position of the spectator. The integrity of the individual is violated in order to further the superior interests of the superego of humanity, the party, which knows which beliefs are right and which are wrong.”
Elon broke the machine by allowing actual free speech on X®, and cleared the way for Trump’s landslide.Why did he do it? Was it power? Was it the best way to get to Mars? Regardless, the illusion of the machine is toast.
How? The machine made people believe things that were silly. The machine fed people silly crap -‘men in dresses are women’ - and now they’re pretending they never bought it. Memes laid it bare: short, sharp, and too raw for the Narrative’s lies. Once fooled, at least some normies question everything now. That’s good.
A large part of the machine being broken now is that Trump is moving too fast for the machine to cope with his initiatives, and he’s throwing in ragebait to drive the GloboLeft conformity persuasion machine crazy. On offensive, Trump is moving so fast that they can’t initiate the second phase listed above to drive people to conformity.
Besides, X® is now close to indistinguishable from /pol/ in the ability to share almost any opinion again. I don’t know if it’s entirely the algorithm, but when I see a GloboLeftist try to advance the Narrative on X©, the responses with Narrative-breaking comments is immediate and utterly complete. Spin no longer works and the conformity persuasion machine is stuck because it’s clogged with Greenland Redwhiteandblueland and the Gulf of America, both of which are perfectly tuned to drive GloboLeftists nuts.
The conformity persuasion machine is broken, not destroyed. Destroying it entirely would require destroying the government/think-tank/NGO complex, which Trump is working on. Likewise, the media is sick and since the Internet has destroyed a lot of its revenue, and X™ really is the biggest news aggregator on the planet. When an event happens, I go to X® now to find out what’s going on.
Unless The Mrs. texts me about it. And, I wonder if people in the distant future will look from the City of Musk on Mars into the night sky and wonder why one of the moons of Mars is named Trump?"
Bill Bonner, "Rendezvous with Catastrophe"
"Rendezvous with Catastrophe"
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - “You are a traitor and a fool,” wrote a Dear Reader. The ‘traitor’ charge has no sting. But as for the ‘fool’? He may be on to something. Is it traitorous to notice that the US is being pulled down by its own Deep State scalawags, its jacked-up world improvers and its over-stretched empire? We don’t think so. But it is probably foolish to say so. Like noticing your wife’s first gray hairs, it might be best to keep it to yourself. So, let’s look at today’s confusing, chaotic, nonsensical dots.
How about a $5,000 stimmie check? MarketWatch: "Trump Adds Support For DOGE Dividend." "Donald Trump loves putting his name on things — buildings, steaks, and even stimulus checks. Now, he’s added fuel to the idea of a $5,000 DOGE Dividend stimulus check to taxpayers, courtesy of the Department of Government Efficiency. At a speech in Miami on Wednesday, Trump said his administration is considering a plan to give 20% of DOGE’s savings back to the public."
Giving money ‘back to the public’ is spending it. Not saving it. A $5,000 stimmie will be welcomed by many people… but so were ancient Rome’s bread and circuses. Last month, the US ran a deficit of $127 billion, which brought the total to $838 billion in debt for the first four months of the fiscal year. At this rate, the annual deficit could top $2.5 trillion. As long as there is any deficit at all, the money being passed out to buy support from voters is financed by debt - bringing America’s rendezvous with catastrophe closer.
Even the most pro-American of old-timers are beginning to wonder. For more than half a century, Warren Buffett has advised investors to ‘never bet against America.’ Well, now the traitor is betting against America’s businesses.
MarketWatch: "It surely says nothing cheerful that Warren Buffett, the world’s most famous and successful investor, now holds more than half of his company’s net assets in cash and Treasury bills. Or that in his latest annual letter to investors, the 94-year-old has taken a break from his usual patriotic boosterism, and instead is warning about the risks to America from “fiscal folly” and from “scoundrels and promoters” who “take advantage of those who mistakenly trust them.”
Sen. Rand Paul explains how the scoundrels operate. MSNBC: “Things are not as they appear to be in Washington,” Paul declared. “While Elon Musk and the Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) are trimming the fat, finding billions - if not trillions - in waste, fraud, and abuse, the Senate is rushing to pass a budget that increases spending. What gives?” Paul pointed to the Senate’s proposed budget, which includes a $150 billion increase in military spending, $175 billion for border security, and $20 billion for the Coast Guard."
Last week, we were describing chickens and eggs - that is, the elegant way in which the key elements of a real economy are connected. No chickens, no eggs; no eggs, no chickens. If sales are to go up, consumers must have more money to spend. But a debt-funded stimmie is a hollow deception; it will just increase prices. Because the chicken is barren; there is no real output to justify the expense. Real earnings must be earned. Businesses pay their employees for their output.
But the expense depresses their earnings. So, they can only afford to pay for things that are actually productive. A business can cut costs and thereby increase its earnings. It can innovate and add wealth to the whole society. But if its sales grow faster than GDP, it must be taking them from other enterprises.
And yes, of course, the whole economy can grow - thanks to Progress! We enjoy painless dentistry, self-driving cars, and movies streamed into our houses; we believe we are better off. But we can’t all enjoy above average wealth. And as a society, we would not be one penny richer - even if the feds were to give us each a check for $1 million.
But what about asset prices? Can the chickens (producers) ever be worth more than the eggs they produce? Can they go up and up forever, making stock owners richer and richer? We’ve seen that US stocks rose 366 times over the last 100 years. How much of that was real? And what is likely in the next 100 years? Tomorrow… more un-patriotic treachery… and more foolish observations."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)