John Wilder, "The Big Short Part 2: AI Boogaloo?"

"The Big Short Part 2: AI Boogaloo?"

by John Wilder

“Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.” – Michael Burry, October 31, 2025

Ah, Michael Burry. I love him for several reasons. First, the man who turned the financial Armageddon of the Great Recession into a personal piggy bank. While the rest of Wall Street was busy high-fiving over adjustable-rate mortgages like they were the next Beanie Babies™, Burry had it right. If life’s a casino, Burry was the guy who spotted the rigged roulette wheel, bet it all against red, and walked away repeatedly tossing the croupier’s pinky ring in the air. But more on that.

Let’s rewind the tape, because Burry’s backstory isn’t just a hedge fund horror story; it’s the stuff of legend. Born in 1971, Burry was that kid dissecting frog guts and getting into high school early, and leaving it earlier than a Chicago inner-city kid, but instead of hitting the streets, Burry hit Vanderbilt med school by age 19. He got an ophthalmology residency at Stanford, because nothing says “future financial legend” like peering into eyeballs.

But Burry’s peepers were always fixed on the fine print of balance sheets, not dilated pupils. In 1997, he launched a value-investing blog that read like Warren Buffett’s fever dream crossed with a pathology report. By 2000, he’d parlayed his blog into Scion Capital™, a $600 million fund where he played the markets like a man solving a Rubik’s Cube® blindfolded.

Then came the subprime saga during the Housing Bubble. It was 2005, and America was drunk on easy credit. Flippers were flipping houses, banks bundling toxic multiple hundred-thousand-dollar home loans made to $14,000 a year illegal alien strawberry pickers. Yes, this happened. They called these triple-A quality financial treasures. Why not jump in? Everyone from soccer moms to strip-mall moguls mortgaging their McMansions to the hilt.

Burry? He saw the rot. He pored over mortgage prospectuses like they were Penthouse centerfolds, spotting the emperor’s new clothes in the form of adjustable-rate mortgages that would reset into huge payments. I was offered a mortgage of over seven times my salary. I asked the banker, “Why are you offering this? I can’t afford to pay that.” “I’m required to tell you that you qualify for it.”

Burry’s investors threatened mutiny as the carrying cost for his bets mounted. Undeterred, Burry plunked down to buy $1 billion in credit default swaps, essentially insurance policies on the housing house of cards He bet that it all would burn. And burn it did.

By 2008, Lehman® imploded, and Bear plowed its Stearns© into oblivion Burry’s investors pocketed $720 million after fees. Burry personally cleared $100 million, enough to buy a lifetime supply of black market Asian kidneys. He could even do the occasional eye exam for fun and pleasure since his medical license remains intact.

The kicker? He shut down Scion in 2008, tired of the thankless grind, and because nothing says “peak contrarian” like cashing out as the casino explodes behind you. His payment was that he was played in a movie about this epic heist, "The Big Short" (recommended), and that he was played by Christian Bale, who actually asked Burry for his actual clothing (cargo shorts and shirts) so he could wear them in the movie. I hope Micheal Chiklis asks to borrow my deodorant when he plays me in a movie.

Bale nailed the eccentric genius vibe: the twitching eye, the Asperger’s-adjacent intensity, the social awkwardness that makes Elon look like a prom king. Bale even learned to drum (Burry’s hobby) for the role. Imagine Chiklis having to learn to get in my daily step count – I’m up to 29.

Now, in a market puffed up like a Kardashian’s hooters, Burry is whispering (okay, Tweeting®) the dad wisdom of all dad wisdoms: sometimes, son, you just sit this hand out. No bluster, just a quiet nod to the sucker’s paradise we’re all pretending isn’t a powder keg from ACME™ while a drunken stripper pole-dances next to it lit cigar.

Generally, Burry’s X® feed is a cryptic cocktail of charts, quips, and quiet alarms. That October 31 post? It’s the mic-drop missive in a string of sidelong swipes at the surreal stock spectacle that AI has wrought. Just days prior, Burry had tweeted innocuous eye charts and “move along” memes, like a oracle playing coy before the deluge.

On Tuesday (November 4, 2025), Burry is making jokes about being short (where you sell stock you don’t own in order to buy it back later after it goes down in price – it’s like selling cars you don’t own). Or maybe about shorts. But peeling back the posts, Burry’s brewing a bearish broth. He’s been wrong before, just like me he’s predicted seven of the last two stock market crashes. In 2023, he warned of a “bubble of all bubbles,” while dumping his positions. He also admitted he was wrong.

Now? His latest dispatches echo that eerie prescience: bubbles abound, but betting against them isn’t always the balm. Sometimes, the house wins by default, by luring you in. It’s irony incarnate: the man who shorted the subprime supernova is now advising abstinence over aggression. Why play when the poker table’s tilted toward the trillion-dollar trusts and AI hype machines? Burry’s not yelling “fire” in a crowded theater; he’s slipping a note under the door: “evacuate quietly, kids.”

And boy, does the timing tickle like a tetanus shot. Today, Bitcoin dropped from $109,500 at dawn to a dippy $99,800 by lunch, rebounding to $101k like a drunk uncle at last call. Is crypto’s crashing alone, or is it the canary in the coal mine, signaling strains in the broader bedlam where Nvidia’s notched north of $5 trillion (more than Germany’s GDP)?

But, I think Burry is trying to tell us something simpler. Shorting the subprime was surgical; shorting everything now? That’s swinging a scalpel at a swarm of bees. Better to bank your bullets, brew your beans, and watch the wasps war from the porch swing. In this everything-extravaganza, where your grandma’s got GameStop™ options and your neighbor’s mining Monero® in the man-cave it pays to at least pay attention to Burry. Play if you must, and maybe, just maybe, those Beanie Babies™ will once surge in value. After all, it’s different this time."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

Note: This is not financial advice. I am an Internet humorist who gets paid nothing for writing this. If you take this humor column as financial advice (which I didn’t give anyway) you’re more stoned than Cheech and Chong were in 1977. And if you like Burry’s right, great - just don’t blame me if stocks surge and bite your shorts (borrowed or not). Disclosure: I didn’t mention any stocks because I might buy some. Or sell some. Or do nothing.

Bill Bonner, "Into the Fire"

Guy Fawkes arrested while trying to blow up 

Parliament in London, on this day 420 years ago.

"Into the Fire"

by Bill Bonner

"It’s a cold, cold world we’re livin’ in."

- Nicole Scherzinger

Baltimore, Maryland - "The pieces are jumbling into place. With yesterday’s election, New Yorkers try to escape one toxic fantasy by plunging headfirst into another. They jump from the caldarium - a muscled-up fantasy of sanctions, tariffs and warships. And they sink into the frigidarium of sensitive socialist claptrap, rent control and government-run supermarkets.

Supporting both left and right, however, is the fantasy of ‘growth.’ It will reduce the burden of debt, they say. It will create jobs. It will keep the USA as Number One. Blah…blah…It won’t happen. Since the feds began aggressively ‘stimulating’ the economy with lower interest rates and more (fake) money, for example, real growth rates have gone down. From over 6% in the ‘60s...to around 3% in the ‘90s, the latest reading is only 1.6%, annualized, for the first half of this year.

So, the first question for policymakers might be: Why keep doing it? Why keep flooding the economy with cheap money when it does nothing to help Main Street America? What a naïve question! But we forgive you for asking. You believe our leaders have good intentions. Good for you. But it’s a cold, cold world we’re livin’ in. And the people who control the government - and in particular, the Fed - are interested in the Wall Street economy, not the Main Street economy. The former is where the rich and powerful make their wealth. The latter - hour by hour, week by week, sweat by strain - is where ‘The People’ earn their money and spend it.

Like a bloated corpse, the ‘wealth effects’ doctrine surfaced in the late ‘80s. Lowering interest rates, the Fed could give owners the impression that they were richer. This would induce them to spend more. No evidence was ever produced for this phenomenon. A study of the housing market showed that declining prices didn’t change consumer habits. But there is little doubt that a real increase in wealth will cause people to step up spending...at least to a point. So, like ‘trickle down’ economics and the Phillips Curve, ‘wealth effects’ were good enough for government work.

Our guess for today is that it has had an opposite effect. A poverty effect. As paltry as current GDP growth is, for example, much of it is derived from spending on the AI bubble. David Stockman: "During the first half of 2025, real GDP grew at only a 1.6% per annum rate, but nearly 80% of that gain was due to the massively inflated spending on data centers and chips for the AI frenzy."

Even that probably overstates the REAL GDP gain. Our ace fund manager, Chris Mayer, sends this surprising note: “The US economy has grown by $20 trillion since 2000, to $29 trillion last year. About $7.7 trillion of that - or 36% of all the growth in GDP - is spending related to recovering from or preparing for disasters,” according to Bloomberg Intelligence. In other words, it’s not ‘growth’ at all.

But wait. The dollar is only worth half as much as it was in 1999 - officially. GDP rose from around $10 trillion in 2000 to $30 trillion today. So, our GDP is only worth about $15 trillion in 1999 terms. Measured in gold, the story takes an even darker turn. Instead of being worth 38 billion ounces of gold, today’s economy is worth only 7.5 billion ounces - less than a quarter as much.

What that means, we’re not sure. Gold may be over-priced. Or not. But there’s more. Suppose you are planning to buy a new house next year. But along comes the Fed with reduced mortgage rates. You take advantage of the lower rates. The purchase is added to GDP. But you have not really increased GDP...you have simply drawn on next year’s GDP.

Now look at this: "Americans losing grip on debt as delinquencies surge and borrowing costs bite.  Rising delinquencies in auto, credit card, and student Household debt climbed to a record $18.4 trillion in the second quarter of 2025, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, while the nation’s gross federal debt hit $38 trillion for the first time. The figures highlight mounting strain across every layer of the U.S. economy - from Washington’s balance sheet to families’ credit card bills."

Let’s see, in 1999 household debt combined with US government debt was only about $10 trillion. Now, it is $56 trillion. That means that $46 trillion of GDP was bought on credit. Yes, there were houses, cars and vacations - all delivered. But they weren’t paid for. The debt is still outstanding. Which means, when you net out the debt, the value of these purchases is zero. Real GDP happens when money is earned...not when it is spent. What the real GDP number is, we don’t know. But it is surely a lot lower than we think."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"Alert! They're Crashing Market Now, Bank Runs Soon! US Secretly Preps For Nuclear War"

Full screen recommended.

Prepper News, 11/4/25

"Alert! They're Crashing Market Now, Bank Runs Soon! 

US Secretly Preps For Nuclear War"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, "Daylight Saving Time? No, Daylight 'Stupid' Time"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 11/4/25

"Daylight Saving Time? No, Daylight 'Stupid' Time;

 Politicians Make It Darker As It Gets Darker"

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

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Trump Threatens To Withhold SNAP Payments"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 11/4/25

"Trump Threatens To Withhold SNAP Payments"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

Full screen recommended.

Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon.

Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110906.html

"We Must Ask Ourselves..."

''As Americans, we must ask ourselves: Are we really so different? Must we stereotype those who disagree with us? Do we truly believe that ALL red-state residents are ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying roadkill-eating tobacco juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks; or that ALL blue-state residents are godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-wing communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts?''

- Dave Barry

"Live for Yourself, Not for Others: How to Stop Being a Slave to Other People’s Opinions"

Full screen recommended.

The Psyche, 11/4/25

"Live for Yourself, Not for Others: 

How to Stop Being a Slave to Other People’s Opinions"

"What if you discovered that most of your life - your choices, your goals, even your identity - was built around other people’s expectations? In this video, we dive deep into the invisible prison of social validation - how society trains us to live for approval, and how to break free from the fear of judgment. Drawing on the timeless wisdom of Lao Tzu, Nietzsche, Carl Jung, and Marcus Aurelius, we’ll explore the path to authentic freedom - where you stop performing for others and start living for yourself. You’ll discover:

• Why we become addicted to validation - and how to end the cycle.

• The psychology behind people-pleasing and self-abandonment.

• How to detach from opinions and reconnect with your authentic self.

•The spiritual truth about ego death and living with inner peace.

This is more than motivation - it’s a psychological awakening. Because the day you stop living for others is the day your real life begins."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"We Deserve Better..."

"We are the world. We are the people and we 

deserve better, not because we're worth it, but because no 

worth can be put on the incalculable, on the infinite, on life."

- Nick Mancuso

○

“Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless -

 each of us with his or her right upon the earth; 

Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth; 

Each of us here as divinely as any is here.”

- Walt Whitman

The Daily "Near You?"

Irwin, Pennsylvania, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Rule by Thieves: The Police State Becomes a Pay-to-Play Shadow Government"

"Rule by Thieves: The Police State

Becomes a Pay-to-Play Shadow Government"

By John & Nisha Whitehead

“Kleptocracy: a society whose leaders make themselves

 rich and powerful by stealing from the rest of the people.” 

- Cambridge Dictionary

"America has been backsliding into kleptocratic territory for years now, but this may finally be it. A kleptocracy is literally “rule by thieves.” It is a form of government in which a network of ruling elites “steal public funds for their own private gain using public institutions.” As analyst Thomas Mayne explains, it’s “a system based on virtually unlimited grand corruption coupled with, in the words of American academic Andrew Wedeman, ‘near-total impunity for those authorized to loot by the thief-in-chief’ - namely the head of state.”

One could fairly say that a kleptocracy was always going to be the end result of the oligarchy that was America. The signs were visible long before now: power and wealth have been trading places for decades. Indeed, it has been more than a decade since researchers at Princeton and Northwestern concluded that the U.S. is a functional oligarchy in which “political outcomes overwhelmingly favored very wealthy people, corporations, and business groups,” while the influence of ordinary citizens was at a “non-significant, near-zero level.”

So now we find ourselves in this present moment where billionaires are running the show. The optics are undeniable: while the country suffers through a government shutdown, with welfare programs shuttered and inflation, healthcare and basic cost-of-living expenses skyrocketing, the elite are living it up.

In the White House, President Trump is redecorating, transforming what had been known as “the people’s house” into a palace fit for an American king, complete with marbled bathrooms and a sprawling, gold-fitted ballroom. The rest of the administration, taking its cue from their leader, are jetting around at taxpayer expense for lavish vacations, sporting events - and decadent parties at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida retreat.

The responses to criticisms either deflect to how other administrations wasted money or, in the case of the ballroom, insist the project is privately funded - and therefore beyond reproach because taxpayers aren’t paying for it. But money is never truly “private” once it purchases influence over public office. The moment a government accepts such funding, it becomes indebted to the funders rather than accountable to the people.

Case in point: the list of donors to Trump’s White House ballroom. It reads like a who’s who list of the government’s biggest contractors and those most eager to curry favor. Collectively, the corporations and individuals on the ballroom donor list have received staggering sums in government contracts in recent years, and more than half face or have faced government investigations or enforcement actions “that includes engaging in unfair labor practices, deceiving consumers and harming the environment.” This is how you bring about a kleptocracy - one crooked buy-in at a time.

The constitutional question that follows is unavoidable: if presidents and agencies can do whatever they please simply because someone else foots the bill, what remains of constitutional, representative government? Follow that rationale to its end and you find yourself in dangerous territory. If a president can privately fund a ballroom, could he privately fund a battalion? If a cabinet agency can accept donations to expand its reach, could it sell policy favors to the highest bidder? If every public act can be recast as a private transaction, then the public no longer governs - it merely observes.

That is why the defense of demolishing and reconstructing the White House ballroom - an undertaking never authorized by Congress - on the grounds that no public funds will be used does not pass constitutional muster. The Constitution gives Congress - and only Congress - the power of the purse. This safeguard was designed not as a bureaucratic formality but as the chief restraint on executive abuse - the people’s means of holding the presidency to account.

Once presidents can raise private money to do what the people’s representatives refuse to fund, that weapon is disarmed. What follows is the slow unraveling of constitutional restraint, replaced by the notion that money - not law - sets the limits of power. The same mechanism that once protected the people from tyranny now becomes the means of financing it. What was meant as a safeguard becomes a loophole - a backdoor to unchecked power.

The logic is as seductive as it is corrupting: if private dollars cover the cost, the Constitution doesn’t apply. By that reasoning, a president could wage war, build prisons, or launch surveillance programs - all without Congressional authorization - so long as a billionaire or corporate sponsor signs the check. That’s not democracy. It’s privatized despotism.

This is how republics fall: not only through coups and crises, but through the quiet substitution of private interests for public authority. What begins as a gift ends as a purchase. What begins as a renovation ends as a revolution in how power operates. We have already seen this creeping privatization at every level of government: private contractors running prisons and wars, corporate donors dictating policy priorities, and surveillance and censorship outsourced to tech firms. Now the presidency itself is for sale - brick by brick, ballroom by ballroom.

The Founders feared monarchs; they never imagined CEOs with armies or presidents who could raise war chests independent of Congress. Yet that is exactly where we are headed: toward a government financed by private power and answerable only to it.

When public power can be bought, sold, or sponsored, the Constitution becomes nothing more than a branding tool - and when a nation mistakes private funding for public legitimacy, it ceases to be a republic at all. The power of the purse was meant to be the people’s last line of defense against tyranny. In the architecture of the Constitution, Congress alone was entrusted with the ability to raise and spend money - not because the Founders trusted legislators more than presidents, but because they feared concentrated power. They understood that whoever controls the purse ultimately controls the government itself. “Money,” Alexander Hamilton warned, “is the vital principle of the body politic.”

Without that restraint, the president could accumulate funds, build armies, and buy loyalty at will, consolidating power beyond constitutional limits—what Madison called “the very definition of tyranny.” When presidents or agencies can act outside Congressional appropriations by appealing to private donors, super PACs, or corporate “partners,” they dissolve the constitutional boundary between public office and private gain. Decisions that once required debate and oversight now happen behind closed doors, in boardrooms and donor suites. The result is a shadow government financed by privilege instead of the people.

The privatization of power isn’t theoretical - it is happening in plain sight. As The Intercept recently revealed, the Trump administration has even floated cash bounties for private “bounty hunters” to locate and track immigrants on behalf of ICE. In other words, law enforcement is being farmed out to freelancers motivated not by duty or justice, but by profit.

This is what a pay-to-play police state looks like: private actors deputized to do the government’s bidding, free from constitutional safeguards, answerable only to the wallet that funds them. Once the machinery of enforcement can be financed, directed, or rewarded through private channels, the rule of law gives way to the rule of money. Government ceases to function as a neutral arbiter and becomes a contractor for hire, wielding the badge, the gun, and the gavel on behalf of whoever can afford its services.

These arrangements substitute profit for principle and contract for Constitution, blurring the line between the state and its sponsors: private donors finance political events in public buildings, corporate partners shape executive policy, and billionaires underwrite the very forces - military, law enforcement, surveillance - that keep the rest of the population in check.

A police state funded by private wealth is even more dangerous than one funded by public taxes, because it answers to no electorate, no oversight committee, no constitutional restraint. Its accountability points upward - to financiers - not outward to the people it governs. Under such a system, justice becomes transactional. Enforcement becomes selective. Rights become negotiable.

What began as the privatization of services metastasizes into the privatization of sovereignty: the executive branch no longer merely executes the law—it markets it. The idea of constitutional limits erodes the moment the state claims exemption by calling its actions “privately financed.” And so, when a president boasts that he could raise his own army—through donors, contractors or loyalists - he is not being metaphorical. He is articulating the next logical stage of a government that has already sold itself to the highest bidders.

The Founders warned that liberty would perish when the instruments of power could be bought or sold. We are watching that prophecy unfold in real time. In the pay-to-play police state, money doesn’t just talk - it arrests, surveils, and kills. The fight to restore constitutional government begins where it was first betrayed: not merely with who pays, but with who decides.

If Congress no longer controls the nation’s spending- and if presidents, agencies, and corporations can bypass public consent by courting private benefactors - then the people no longer control their government. That is not democracy; that is debt servitude to power. The Founders knew that taxation and representation rise and fall together - and representation means more than writing a check. It means the power to set priorities, to attach conditions, to withhold funds, and to say no.

A government funded independently of its citizens will inevitably rule independently of them; it will spend without oversight, act without restraint, and enforce without accountability. That is why Madison stressed that “the power over the purse… is the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the people’s representatives against executive encroachments.”

The inverse is also true: once the president depends on private money, the people become dependent on the will of those who pay the president. In other words, an oligarchy - and when that oligarchy turns government itself into a vehicle for enrichment, a kleptocracy.

To reclaim the republic, the people must reclaim ownership of both the purse and the plan - the money that funds the government and the mandates governing how those funds are used. That requires drawing a hard constitutional line between public office and private enrichment; restoring congressional authority over every dollar spent in the name of the American people; and dismantling the system of shadow funding - super PACs, donor networks, corporate partnerships, and “public-private collaborations” - that now serve as pipelines for corruption disguised as efficiency. It also requires the sunlight of disclosure for any outside contribution touching government action, and strict prohibitions on off-budget schemes that treat private cash as a license to ignore the law.

Most of all, it requires remembering that citizenship is a public trust, not a private transaction. We need more than the right to pay for our government - we need the right to say how those payments are used, and the power to refuse when they are misused or abused. The moment we accept the notion that government may do whatever it wants so long as someone else pays for it, we have already sold the republic.

As we make clear in "Battlefield America: The War on the American People" and its fictional counterpart "The Erik Blair Diaries," the restoration of liberty will not come from new donors, new deals, or new rulers - it will come from a renewed insistence that power in America flows only from one source: We the People.

Our forebears fought a revolution to end taxation without representation. We may yet have to fight another - this time, against representation without appropriation, where officials claim the right to govern without the duty to answer to those they are supposed to represent. Remember, they are the servants. We the People are supposed to be the masters."

- https://mailchi.mp/rutherford/

"Do You Wish To Know?"

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"

"I... don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug."

- Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”

o

"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."

An excerpt from “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand.

Full text of “Francisco’s Money Speech” is here:

- https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/

Freely download "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand, here:

- https://archive.org/

A Tale of Two Shutdowns (Part I)"

"A Tale of Two Shutdowns (Part I)"

And the trouble with getting what you pay for...

by Joel Bowman

“Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”

~ Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Buenos Aires, Argentina -  "We awoke, dear reader, as if into a dream...An “Auction” sign on the Congress lawn… A “Foreclosed” notice on the White House gate… and a yard sale out front of the Federal Reserve, where people sifted through shoeboxes of fiat notes, none of them “worth a Continental.” From one End of the Americas to the other, the gears of government are grinding to a halt. Today, we heave a bag of cement into the mix, just for good measure.

As you’ve no doubt heard, from hyperventilating neckbeards on the mainstream news, government workers are lately going without, as federal programs go unfunded from Washington DC to Buenos Aires. Of course, the “Tale of Two Shutdowns” reveals entirely different motivating forces, and will thus likely yield entirely different results. As such, some see their situation as “the best of times,” while others contend it is “the worst of times.” This week, some unpopular thoughts on them both...

Flying Blind: First, the sitcho up north, as relayed by the state’s apple-polishing newswire of choice...

"WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. government shutdown on Tuesday entered its 35th day, matching a record set during President Donald Trump’s first term for the longest in history, as Republicans and Democrats in Congress continue to blame each other for the standoff. The toll increases by the day. Food assistance for the poor was halted for the first time, federal workers from airports to law enforcement and the military are going unpaid and the economy is flying blind with limited government reporting."

And on, and on, blah-blah... Reading the press’s soft, pseudo-lamentations, we are led to believe that, without the tireless work of selfless government employees, the crème de la crème of our otherwise fallen species, mankind would be left wandering naked in the dark, without so much as a club with which to throttle his covetous neighbor. Here’s now Big Government’s arch-apologist, Thomas Hobbes, saw the state of nature (from his own monstrous doorstop, "Leviathan")...

“In such condition there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

False Dilemmas: So that’s it, eh? Government... or violent death. The State... or no building, no moving, no removing, no industry. Centralized authority... or no arts, no letters and no knowledge at all. As a man who never met a horse he did not wish to place behind a cart, it might be said of Hobbes that he was a kind of intellectual precursor to the AOC, Mamdani, Bernie Sanders faction...except that the postcursors lack the intellectual prerequisite.

To be sure, we do not begrudge the poor their daily bread... which is precisely why we don’t want them beholden to the state for piddling handouts in the first place! If ever there was a “utilitarian” argument for favoring the profit incentive, for inducing those “greedy capitalists” to provide the very best goods and services at the most competitive prices, it would surely be to do so to the benefit of those least able to afford them.

And yet... Right now, we live in a world that provides Gold, Diamond and Emerald Status for our highest fliers... but which subjects the poorest among us to the Michelin star equivalent of government-brand imitation gruel. Rather than maintaining the proverbial “safety net” for those struggling to make ends meet, public disservices crowd out much needed private competition where it’s needed most, ensuring ersatz healthcare and subpar miseducation for generations of welfare dependents, who are in turn conditioned to expect no better, and to never bite the hand that force feeds them.

As for the economy “flying blind” without the government’s deft and skillful guidance, have you ever read such poppycock in all your days? Government “reporting” is not so much a reliable navigation system as it is a blizzard wrapped in a blindfold... dipped in chloroform.

Continued Reuters... "No federal funding means limited government data for the U.S. Federal Reserve to pinpoint jobs and economic data as the central bank steers policy. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal workers, is pushing for a stopgap funding measure that the Democrats have voted against.

Featherless Bipeds: The US Federal Reserve has been “pinpointing jobs”, “gathering economic data” and “steering policy” for over a century (since 1913). According to Federal Reserve website, the unwieldy beast, spoken of in hushed tones as “The Board,” employs over 400 Ph.D. economists. “The System,” which includes The Board plus a dozen regional reserve banks, has over 1,000 economists on the payroll.

And what, gentle reader, has the public reaped for all this academic mustache twirling and pointy-headed brow furrowing? What masterful guidance have the chosen few delivered to the innumerate, unwashed masses? What sacred oracle was Greenspan consulting, for instance, when he declared, in 2005, while the sublime mortgage crisis was brewing in the cauldron:

“Although a ‘bubble’ in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely, there do appear to be, at a minimum, signs of froth in some local markets where home prices seem to have risen to unsustainable levels.”

What omniscient intelligence was his successor, Benjamin Bernanke, channelling when he said, in 2007, on the eve of the sub-prime collapse and ensuring global financial crisis: “We believe the effect of the troubles in the sub-prime sector … will likely be limited, and we do not expect significant spill-overs from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.”

What dials and knobs was Jefe Jerome Powell fiddling when, in 2021, right before inflation skyrocketed to its highest level in nearly a half century, he told the press gallery plebeians:  “As the economy reopens… we expect that as the economy reopens… we will see inflation move up… but these effects are likely transitory.”

Would that these wise sages were merely running one of Mamdani’s soup kitchens “city-owned grocery stores,” where the fallout from their unbridled arrogance might be contained to a mere mop-up in aisle three... or a few bare shelves in aisle seven.

That these featherless bipeds were given the keys to the system, the ability to control the price of money itself (by setting interest rates and, therefore, determining the cost of borrowing and the reward for saving), is the very reason we have the term “systemic risk.”

Right now, American taxpayers are concerned that they are not getting all the government they (are forced to) pay for. As Will Rogers once said, they ought to be thankful they’re not getting any more. Next time, a tale of another government shutdown at the other End of the World… only, this one’s not a consequence of political ineptitude, but an expression of the will of modern politic’s most overlooked constituency: the people."

- https://joelbowman.substack.com/

"Will Payment Of 50 Percent Of Food Stamp Benefits Be Enough To Keep Widespread Rioting And Looting From Breaking Out?"

"Will Payment Of 50 Percent Of Food Stamp Benefits Be

Enough To Keep Widespread Rioting And Looting From Breaking Out?"

by Michael Snyder

"Do you want the good news or the bad news first? The good news is that 50 percent of food stamp benefits will be paid out during the month of November. The bad news is that a lot of food stamp recipients are still extremely angry. Food stamp protests are already starting to happen, videos are being posted on social media that show people how to take groceries right out the front door of a Walmart, and one woman is claiming that “everyone was stealing” when she visited her local grocery store. Of course if you live in an area where food stamp use is very low, conditions may seem perfectly normal. It just depends on where you live. Hopefully the government shutdown will be resolved very soon, because if we get to a point where no more food stamp money is coming from Washington at all things could get really crazy.

On Monday, we learned that the Trump administration has agreed to use $4.6 billion dollars in a contingency fund to “cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments” in the month of November…"In a declaration submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, Patrick Penn, a Department of Agriculture official who oversees SNAP, said the administration “intends to deplete SNAP contingency funds completely and provide reduced SNAP benefits for November 2025.”

There is roughly $4.6 billion in the contingency fund that can be used to cover November benefit payments, according to Penn. Officials have said fully covering those benefits would require roughly $9 billion. The $4.6 billion will be used to “cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments,” Penn said."

Will this be enough to stop widespread rioting and looting from breaking out this month? I hope so. But we are already seeing lots of videos on social media that allegedly show people stealing food from grocery stores. If food stamp recipients start receiving some money, that could help settle things down. Unfortunately, we are being warned that it may take some states “weeks” or even “months” to distribute reduced benefit amounts…

"In his declaration with the court in Rhode Island, USDA official Patrick Penn said that getting SNAP benefits into the hands of recipients could face delays, since states will have to rework their systems to provide partial payments. “Given the variation among State systems, some of which are decades old, it is unclear how many States will complete the changes in an automated manner with minimal disruption versus manual overrides or computations that could lead to payment errors and significant delays,” Penn wrote.

He added: “For at least some States, USDA’s understanding is that the system changes States must implement to provide the reduced benefit amounts will take anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months.”

This is yet another example of how incompetent government agencies have become. How long does it take to calculate a 50 percent reduction in benefits? This isn’t exactly rocket science. There could be millions of food stamp recipients that have to wait for an extended period of time for their reduced November benefits, and that certainly isn’t going to make them very happy.

Meanwhile, the USDA has specifically warned grocery stores that they must not give special discounts to food stamp recipients…"The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has told grocery stores not to give special discounts to around 42 million Americans who use food stamps. An email sent by the department to stores, posted on X by Catherine Rampell, co-host of MSNBC’s The Weekend, said: “You cannot treat SNAP-EBT customers differently than any other customer.”

Was that really necessary? There are a lot of people out there that are really hurting right now. Yes, it is certainly true that there are some that choose to abuse the system. For example, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins just admitted that thousands upon thousands of people have been illegally using food stamps…“We have found thousands and thousands of illegal use of the EBT card, we have been moving people off of SNAP, we’ve got about 700,000 people that we’ve moved off SNAP since the president took office, and we’ve arrested about 118 people,” Rollins said. She added that investigators also discovered about 5,000 dead people who were still receiving benefits.

There should be consequences for abusing the system. I think that is something that we should all be able to agree on. One woman posted a video in which she claimed that she actually gets $4,194 in food stamp benefits each month. I have no idea how she is able to get that much money. Is she telling the government that she has 12 kids or something? People like that ruin the system for everyone else.

There really are millions of Americans that do not have enough food to eat every month, and the food stamp program is an important lifeline for them. Unfortunately for them, it does not appear that this government shutdown is going to end any time soon. During an interview with CBS News, President Trump explained that the government shutdown will finally end when the Democrats decide to give up…“I’m not going to do it by being extorted by the Democrats who have lost their way,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s something wrong with these people.”

Mr. Trump said he believes that Democrats will eventually capitulate and vote to end the shutdown. “And if they don’t vote, that’s their problem,” he said. I don’t think that the Democrats are going to give up for quite a while. I think that the Democrats feel like they have an opportunity to turn the political mood in this country in their favor.

So for now, millions of food stamp recipients will just have to stretch their meals as far as they can…"Christophe Niyibizi, 67, said he and his wife had begun limiting themselves to one full meal each day, in midafternoon, to try and make their food last longer. After spending $14 on Saturday for a few groceries, he had $83 remaining — and no way of knowing if his next monthly benefit would show up as scheduled in 10 days.

Placing his small grocery bag into his car, Mr. Niyibizi shrugged and smiled when asked if he felt hungry. A U.S. citizen who immigrated to the United States from the Democratic Republic of the Congo a dozen years ago, he recalled how he had prayed, while still in Africa, that he would make it to America one day. “This country is a good country, 100 percent,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve had this problem.”

If we get to Thanksgiving and the government shutdown has not ended, I think that things could get really wild. But it doesn’t have to get to that stage. If our politicians in Washington can work things out, we could potentially avoid a scenario in which we see widespread rioting and looting. The level of anger among America’s impoverished masses is rising very quickly, and if it rises high enough we could see a very frightening explosion."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Life In The Russian 'Manhattan'"

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

Full screen recommended.

Lisa The Russian, 11/4/25

"Life In The Russian 'Manhattan'"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Walmart And Amazon Warn Of Major Changes Coming"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 11/4/25

"Walmart And Amazon 

Warn Of Major Changes Coming"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"7,500 Flight Delays! What’s Really Going On With This Broken Economy?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 11/4/25

"7,500 Flight Delays! 

What’s Really Going On With This Broken Economy?"

"Over 7,500 flights delayed and countless cancellations - travel chaos continues with no end in sight! In this video, I talk about the massive issues affecting air travel, like TSA delays at major airports like LAX and Houston, and share why I decided to hit the road instead of flying to Las Vegas for the SEMA car show. Plus, I’ll give you a glimpse of what’s happening in Vegas right now, from the Formula 1 preparations to the surprising vibe shift in the city."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"If You Repeat A Lie..."

 

Bill Bonner, "Prepare for Rip-Off"

"Prepare for Rip-Off"

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "We are entering a new world - the post-hypocrisy, post-shame planet. Forget the pretenses. Now bribery, influence peddling, murder, larceny, vulgarity - it’s all right out in the open. Tom Nichols: "The White House press secretary answers a question from a member of the free press - a serious question about who planned a meeting between the American and Russian presidents- by saying, “Your mom did.” The secretary of defense cancels DEI and other policies by saying, “We are done with that shit.” The vice president calls an interlocutor on social media a “dipshit.” The president of the United States, during mass protests against his policies, responds by posting an AI-generated video of himself flying a jet fighter over his fellow citizens and dumping feces on their heads. What kind of country is this, Nichols wonders?

We don’t know...but our beat is money, so let’s stick to the coin. And the way to make money now is to invest in the Trump family and its pet projects. Here’s the latest from the Washington Post: "More than half of the companies that donated are facing or have recently faced federal enforcement actions tied to alleged wrongdoing, ranging from engaging in unfair labor practices to deceiving consumers and harming the environment, according to the report from Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization."

A conflict of interest? You bet. But that’s the post-hypocrisy world...where we ‘let it all hang out.’ The business of government, after all, is to redistribute wealth and power, from ‘The People’ to the rich and powerful. Canny investors want to be on the right side of that trade.

Yesterday, we explored the way public standards slip. Richard Nixon went on national TV to overcome the appearance of wrongdoing. Today, there’s so much wrong being done, it’s hard to keep up with it. And it’s not just a few billion dollars and the reputation of the first family that are at stake. It’s the future for all of us.

Note that the Fed lowered interest rates last week. Adjusted for inflation, member banks now borrow for less than 1%. This is supposed to stimulate the economy by making credit more readily available. As we have seen, lower rates do not actually help the Main Street economy where most people live, work and shop. This century has seen more ‘stimulus’ than ever before...with Fed rates actually below zero, in real terms, for nearly ten years. And yet, GDP growth rates have gone down, not up.

What has gone up are asset prices. The big banks borrow from the Fed at super-low rates and feed the money into the Wall Street economy, not the Main Street economy. They use it to wheel and deal...to speculate...and to pay themselves huge fees.

Forty percent of the public may rely on SNAP or food banks, but the rich get richer than ever. NewsBytes: "Top 10 US billionaires gain $700B as wealth gap widens. The top 10 billionaires in the United States have seen their collective wealth increase by a staggering $698 billion over the past year, according to a report by Oxfam America. The study highlights how policies from both Republican and Democratic administrations have contributed to widening the wealth gap in the country. It also shows that between 1989 and 2022, the richest 1% of American households gained 101 times more wealth than median households."

Did these people suddenly become smarter or more productive? Nope. They were just on the right side of the trade. People generally are probably no more corrupt than they always were. They are neither always good, nor always bad...but always subject to influence. And what has influenced us all is a money system that is easily exploited by those who control it.

If the Trump boys take out a billion here...a billion there...who cares? But as the Fed reduces rates, it leaves the rip-off rate (inflation) at 3% officially...and nearer to 10% by our reckoning. Consumers pay higher prices. And savers lose money. On outstanding US treasury debt alone, that means somewhere between $1 and $4 trillion will be scammed away.

And the tariffs! The ground shifts daily...but it is fundamentally another transfer of wealth, from the middle classes to the ruling classes. Consumers pay the toll when they shop. It’s a trivial amount to the rich, but a major cost to those who live paycheck to paycheck. The overall rate is said to be around 17%. With total imports around $3.5 trillion, that’s another half a trillion-dollar transfer. The money goes from the public to the feds, their donors, and their favorite causes. Where this leads, we don’t know...but we buckle our seat belts, close our laptops, and prepare for rip-off."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Shocking Prices at Walmart"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 11/4/25

"Shocking Prices at Walmart"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Imminent Financial Crash - The Stock Market Apocalypse - The 4 Horsemen Are Coming"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/3/25

"Imminent Financial Crash - The Stock Market Apocalypse - 

The 4 Horsemen Are Coming"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"SNAP Benefits Confirmed, How Much Will You Get In November?"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 11/3/25

"SNAP Benefits Confirmed, 

How Much Will You Get In November?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Blow That Ended America 112 Years Ago"

"The Blow That Ended America 112 Years Ago"

by Paul Rosenberg

“There is a lot of ruin in a nation,” wrote Adam Smith, and what he meant was that it takes a long time for nations to fall, even when they’re dead on their feet. And he was certainly right. America took its fatal blow in 1913, one hundred twelve years ago; it just hasn’t hit the ground yet. This is a slow process, but it’s actually fast compared to the Romans. It took them several centuries to collapse.

The confusing thing about our current situation is that America – and by that I mean the noble America that so many of us grew up believing in – has long been poisoned. Its liver, kidneys, and spleen have stopped functioning. but it still stands on its feet and presents itself as immortal. And I’m not without sympathy for those who want to believe. They find themselves in a world where politics is almighty, and where their comfort, prosperity, and perhaps their survival all hang in a delicate balance. They don’t want to upset anything, and questioning the bosses is a good way to get hurt.

But just because someone wants to believe doesn’t make it so. We are not children and we are not powerless. We producers should never be intimidated by those who live at our expense. So let’s start looking at the facts.

1913: The Horrible Year: For all the problems America had prior to 1913 (including the unnecessary and horrifying Civil War), nothing spelled the death of the nation like the horrors of 1913. Here are the key dates:

February 3rd: The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose income taxes on individuals. An amendment to a tariff act in 1894 had attempted to do this, but since it was clearly unconstitutional, the Supreme Court struck it down. As a result – and mostly under the banner of bleeding the rich – the 16th amendment was promoted and passed.

As a result, the Revenue Act of 1913 was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in October. Income taxes began in 1914, with the government swearing (as in, “only a crazy person would say otherwise!”) that the rate would never, ever go higher than one or two percent. And, by the way, the amendment was introduced by Senator Aldrich of Rhode Island, to whom we’ll come again shortly.

April 8th: The 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, taking the powers of the states and transferring them to Washington, by mandating the popular election of senators. Previously, senators were appointed by state legislatures, which, by design, restrained the power of the national government. This change gave political parties immediate and massive power, nearly all of which was consolidated in the city of Washington.

The amendment was ratified in the name of making the national government a force for good, under the direct control of the people. It was true that state governments were often corrupt, but the implied idea that Washington was pristine… which was and remains a fantasy. A structure featuring small, separate pockets of corruption is far less dangerous than one featuring a single, large seat of corruption, to which oceans of money are gathered. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: "It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected."

December 23rd: Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act, which had passed Congress just the previous day. This system – called the Aldrich Plan, and promoted by Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island – gave a monopoly on the creation of dollars to a consortium of large banks. The Act was passed, by the way, in the name of financial stability.

And Senator Aldrich? Wikipedia says this about him: "He… dominated all tariff and monetary policies in the first decade of the 20th century… Aldrich helped to create an extensive system of tariffs that protected American factories and farms from foreign competition, while driving the price of consumer goods artificially high… Aldrich became wealthy with insider investments in streets, railroads, sugar, rubber and banking… His daughter, Abby, married John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the only son of John D. Rockefeller."

The Combination: Here is why I say that these three changes of 1913 killed America: They robbed every producer in America of their money and handed it to politicians. Until 1913, ordinary people kept their money. Carpenters, grocers, and repair men were able to make business loans and to retire on stock dividends. Once the income tax came in, however, politicians were empowered to skim off more and more of their money, which is precisely what happened. While the modern skim is multi-faceted, the average producer is now stripped of half his or her earnings every year, leaving politicians to spend it.

They consolidated all power in Washington DC. This is precisely what James Madison wished to avoid when writing the US Constitution. (Again, note the Jefferson quote above.) By depriving the states of their remaining power, the City of Washington had no opposition. Since then, the Washington government has taken over practically everything on the continent and is choking it to death… a lot like the city and empire of Rome before it.

They created a money empire that took over almost everything. When you start talking about central banking, and how it provides politicians with free money, people generally turn away from it, because it’s just too much to take. And so I’ll stop here.

There’s more to say but my point is made. America, as we grew up thinking of it, is over. The old ideas live on in some of us, but they no longer live in the political arena. What remains to be seen is what Americans will do next."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

o

"JFK's Executive Order 11100 Abolishing the Federal Reserve"

"21 Quotes About Central Banking That Show 

Why The Federal Reserve Must Be Shut Down"

"When a Train Wreck Is No Accident"

"When a Train Wreck Is No Accident"

by Jeff Thomas

"In spite of all the rhetoric, we will go deeper in debt, the Fed will print more money, and the value of the dollar will continue to plummet." - Ron Paul

"Never in history have the economic and political structures been so manipulated by those who are responsible for their safekeeping; never has so much been at stake, in so many countries, and facing collapse, all at the same time. The great majority of people in the First World recognize that the world is passing through an economic crisis. However, most are under the impression that there are some pretty smart fellows running the show and all they need to do is tweak the system a bit more and we’ll return to happy days. Not so. The "smart fellows" who are in charge of fixing the problem are in fact the very same people who created it.

Understandably, this a hard concept for most people to even consider, let alone accept, as the very idea that those in charge of the system might consciously collapse it seems preposterous. So, we might wish to back up a bit here and present a very brief history of the system itself, in order to understand that the eventual collapse of the economic system was baked in the cake from the very beginning.

Creating a Central Bank: From the very earliest days of the formation of the American republic, bankers (along with inside help from George Washington’s secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton) sought to create a banking monopoly that would create the country’s currency and become the central banking system. The first attempt at a central bank was a failure, and strong opponents, including Thomas Jefferson, prevented a second central bank for a time. Later, further attempts were made by bankers and their political cronies, and each central bank was either short-lived or defeated in its planning stages.

Then, in 1913, the heads of the largest banks met clandestinely on Jekyll Island, Georgia, to make another try. Having recently lost yet another bid to create a central bank, due to the public’s understandable concern that the big bankers were already too powerful, a new spin was placed on the idea. This time, they decided to present the idea as a government body that would be decentralised and would have the responsibility of restricting the power of the banks. However, the new bill was in fact the same old bill, with a new title and some minor changes in wording. But this time, it would be presented by the new president, who was a liberal.

The president, Woodrow Wilson, had in fact been handpicked by the banks. The banks then scuttled their own conservative party’s candidate, got the Democrat Wilson elected, then installed a secretary of the Treasury whose job it would be to ensure that the Federal Reserve was created.

The bill was widely supported by the public, even though, in truth, it was not a federal agency, but a privately owned conglomerate, controlled by the banks. Neither was it a reserve. It was never intended to store money; it was intended to give the biggest bankers control of the economy. They followed the central principle of uber-banker Mayer Rothschild: "Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws."

From the start, the new institution peddled itself as the protector of the people’s interests, but it was quite the opposite. Its purpose from its inception was to control the economy and the government by controlling the issuance of the currency. In addition, it was to be a system of taxation. Typically, a population accepts a certain amount of direct taxation but has its limits of tolerance. Yet, the bankers understood that a less direct method of taxation was infinitely more profitable and infinitely safer from criticism.

Inflation as a Profit System: Inflation was not always the norm. At one time, prices were relatively static from one generation to the next. But the Federal Reserve touted the idea that "controlled" inflation was in fact necessary for a prosperous economy. Of course, the greater the debasement of the currency through inflation, the more the central bankers profited. But at some point, the currency would have lost virtually all its value and it would be time for a reset. The currency would need to collapse and a new one created. And so, the Fed set about its hundred-year program of continuous inflation. Although there have been periods of lower inflation (and even deflation), the program stayed more or less on course, and now, its hundred-year life has all but ended: the dollar has been devalued almost 100%.

And so, we find ourselves at the day of reckoning. The economic crisis we are now facing (not only in the US; it will be felt, to a greater or lesser extent, worldwide) is not a mere anomaly that we need to "push past". It’s a systemic crisis. It’s been created by design and the system must collapse. Of course, the central banks are in the process of protecting their interests, to make sure that, whilst this will be a major economic calamity, they themselves will continue to profit. The damage will be borne by the general public.

This began in earnest in 1999, with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, allowing banks to create a massive, reckless mortgage spree. It was backed by the government’s "too big to fail" policy that guaranteed that, when the banks predictably became insolvent as a result of the loans, government would bail them out. (And by "government" we mean "the taxpayer"; it was he who picked up the bill for the banks’ recklessness.)

The next step in getting ready for the collapse is an all-out effort to confiscate the wealth of the public. This can be seen in the effort to push investors away from solid forms of wealth protection such as gold and silver and into stocks, bonds and bank deposits. More recently, we’ve seen the emergence of an effort to end the use of safe deposit boxes and a push to end the use of paper currency in making transactions.

The end objective is to force as much money as possible into deposits in banks, then take it. The US, EU and a few other countries have passed confiscation legislation, allowing the banks carte blanche to confiscate and/or refuse to release deposits.

Of course a reset of these proportions will not be without its fallout. The public will be horrified at the outcome, at the realisation that the very institutions they thought had been created to protect them had never been intended to serve their interests at all. Once they realize that the world’s greatest Ponzi scheme has been foisted on them, they will be hopping mad and justifiably so. Those who had not had the foresight to internationalize themselves, to remove themselves as much as possible from the system, will most certainly want to get even in some way.

And this makes clear why governments, particularly that of the US, are working so hard to create a police state. Unless a totalitarian state can be created, those who are presently taking the wealth may not be able to fully realize their objectives. The coming train wreck is no accident. It has long been planned. That the "smart fellows in charge" will somehow save the day is therefore a vain hope indeed. It’s still possible to back out of the system, but it’s getting more difficult every day. The window is closing."

- https://blog.pmi.ky/

Musical Interlude: Yanni, "To The One Who Knows; You Only Live Once"

Full screen recommended.

Yanni,

"To The One Who Knows; You Only Live Once"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.

Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”

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