Trevor Jones, "Promentory"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, September 18, 2020
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries, some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy. Also known as NGC 772, the island universe is over 100,000 light-years across and sports a single prominent outer spiral arm in this detailed cosmic portrait.
Click image for larger size.
Its brightest companion galaxy, compact NGC 770, is toward the upper right of the larger spiral. NGC 770's fuzzy, elliptical appearance contrasts nicely with a spiky foreground Milky Way star in matching yellowish hues. Tracking along sweeping dust lanes and lined with young blue star clusters, Arp 78's large spiral arm is likely due to gravitational tidal interactions. Faint streams of material seem to connect Arp 78 with its nearby companion galaxies."
Chet Raymo, “Into The Night”
“Into The Night”
by Chet Raymo
“I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s. A screened sleeping porch might be found attached to any southern home of a certain vintage and substance, usually on the second story at the back. On sultry summer nights you could move a cot or daybed onto the porch and take advantage of whatever breezes stirred the air. I slept there when I visited because it was the only place to find a spare bed. I was usually alone in that big spooky space, with only a thin wire mesh separating me from the many mysteries of the night.
Far off in the house I could hear the muffled voice of the big Stromberg-Carlson radio in the parlor, where grown-ups listened to news of the war or the boogie-woogie tunes of the Hit Parade. Outside was another kind of music, nearer, louder, pressing against the screen, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a million scratchy fiddles, out-of-key woodwinds, discordant timpani. These were the cicadas, crickets and tree frogs of the southern summer night, but to me at that time they were the sounds of the night itself, as if darkness had an audible element.
Some nights the distant horizon would be lit with a silent, winking illumination called “heat lightnin’.” And closer, against the dark grass of the badminton court, the scintillations of fireflies- “lightnin’ bugs”- splashed into brightness.
The constellations of fireflies were answered in the sky by stars, which on those evenings when the city’s lights were blacked out for air-raid drills, multiplied alarmingly. I would lie in my cot, eyes glued to the spangled darkness, waiting to hear the drone of enemy aircraft or see the flash of ack-ack. No aircraft appeared, no ack-ack tracers pierced the night, but soon the stars took on their own fierce reality, like vast squadrons of alien rocket ships moving against the inky dark of Flash Gordon space.
In time I came to recognize patterns, although I did not yet know their names: the Scorpion creeping westward, dragging its stinger along the horizon; the teapot of Sagittarius afloat in the white river of the Milky Way; Vega at the zenith; the kite of Cygnus. As the hours passed, the Big Dipper clocked around the Pole. And sometimes, in late summer, I would wake in the predawn hour to find Orion sneaking into the eastern sky, pursuing the teacup of the Pleiades.
One memorable Christmas of my childhood, my father received a star book as a gift: “A Primer for Star-Gazers” by Henry Neely. As he used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.
That book, now long out of print, is still in my possession. A glance takes me back half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our own new home in the Chattanooga suburbs, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines. He told me stories of the constellations as he learned them. Of Orion and the Scorpion. Of the lovers Andromeda and Perseus, and the monster Cetus. Of the wood nymph Callisto and her son Arcas, placed by Zeus in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court. My father also taught me the names of stars: Sirius, Arcturus, Polaris, Betelgeuse, and other, stranger names, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. The words on his tongue were like incantations that opened the enchanted cave of night.
He was a man of insatiable curiosity. His stories of the stars were more than “connect the dots.” He wove into his lessons what he knew of history, science, poetry and myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery, their contemplation a sort of prayer.
That Christmas book of long ago was a satisfactory guide to star lore, but as I look at it today I see that it conveyed little of the intimacy I felt as I stood with my father under the bright canopy of stars. Nor do any of the other more recent star guides that I have seen quite capture the feeling I had as a child of standing at the door of an enchanted universe, speaking incantations. What made the childhood experience so memorable was a total immersion in the mystery of the night- the singing of cicadas, the whisper of the wind in the pines, and, of course, my father’s storehouse of knowledge with which he embellished the stars. He taught me what to see; he also taught me what to imagine.”
The Poet: Maya Angelou, “Alone”
“Alone”
“Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home,
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone.
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong,
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use,
Their wives run round like banshees,
Their children sing the blues.
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone,
But nobody,
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know…
Storm clouds are gathering,
The wind is gonna blow.
The race of man is suffering,
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody,
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody,
Can make it out here alone.”
- Maya Angelou
"Bringing A BazookaTo A Knife Fight"
"Bringing A BazookaTo A Knife Fight"
by Jim Kunstler
"You heard it here first: Joe Biden will call in “sick” to the presidential candidates’ debate on Tuesday, September 29, and within days the Democratic Party will be obliged to replace him. Enough said for now. Wait for it…
Onto the election issue du jour: putting out ideological fires set by political arsonists: namely, the “systemic racism” hustle cooked up by “progressive” anarcho-terrorists to provoke hatred and division in a nation sore beset by propaganda, psy-ops, and seditious subterfuge - not to mention Covid-19 and economic collapse, as if those were not enough. This week, President Trump released an executive order halting all federal agency in-service training programs purporting to address “critical race theory,” “white privilege,” “unconscious bias,” and other hobgoblins of Wokesterism, a scam that has become a multimillion-dollar consulting racket funded by taxpayers.
Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, sent a memo to executive branch agency heads directing them to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any “propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.” When the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) attempted to defy the order and go forward with training to “examine the mechanisms of systemic racism, white supremacist ideology, and systems of structured inequality,” Mr. Vought had to remind the agency to cancel it. So it goes with “the Resistance.”
One consulting outfit, CAST (the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking) has received $16-million from the Department of Education. At its August 2020 conference, attendees (including DOE staff) were told the United States has a “racial contract” that “says it’s okay for white people to kill blacks with immunity [sic]” (Did they mean impunity?) They also advocated abolishing prisons. The DOE press secretary says it’s investigating.
God knows what kind of swamp creatures lie embedded in the lower mudbanks of that agency, but at the top, at least, the department is cleaning up its act. DOE Secretary Betsy DeVos took aggressive action days ago after Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber sent out an open letter to “the Princeton community” stating that “racism and the damage it does to people of color persist at Princeton” and that “racist assumptions” are “embedded in structures of the University itself.”
Click image for larger size.
Okay, it being the case that Princeton officially claims to be a “racist” institution, the DOE has opened an investigation into Title VI violations under US Civil Rights law so as to recover the $75-million in federal funding Princeton has received since Mr. Eisgruber became president of the institution in 2013. Seems fair, dontcha think? The DOE has required Princeton to produce electronic records of every conceivable type - memoranda, emails, calendars, text messages, telephone logs, you name it - in order to determine whether Princeton has made false representation of its compliance with civil rights law - that is, if it is actually racist as its leadership claims it to be.
Click image for larger size.
Princeton is given 21 “calendar days” (includes weekends) to comply. That ought to keep Mr. Eisgruber’s subalterns in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion quite busy in the weeks ahead, a monumental Chinese fire drill that can only end badly for the university. Either they have to come up with proof that Mr. Eisgruber’s asseverations are true - that Princeton is indeed, and has been for a long time, a racist school - or that Mr. Eisgruber and his administrative colleagues have constructed a false narrative to please and mollify the “social justice” mob among its own faculty and student body. In the first case, they are strictly evil; in the second, they are lying cowards. In either case, Mr. Eisgruber must resign, and several vice-presidents and deans along with him. Notify the Princeton board of trustees.
Next up: University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer, whose graduate school of English Language Studies announced that it is “accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies” for the 2020-2021 admissions cycle. (See official U of Chicago announcement.) Hmmmm, no studies at all of literature written by white people allowed? Sounds a little discriminatory, possibly even racist! How much funding are they getting from the US DOE?"
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Free Download: Albert Einstein, “The World As I See It"
“The World As I See It:
Albert Einstein’s Thoughts on the Meaning of Life”
by Paul Ratner
“Albert Einstein was one of the world’s most brilliant thinkers, influencing scientific thought immeasurably. He was also not shy about sharing his wisdom about other topics, writing essays, articles, letters, giving interviews and speeches. His opinions on social and intellectual issues that do not come from the world of physics give an insight into the spiritual and moral vision of the scientist, offering much to take to heart.
The collection of essays and ideas “The World As I See It”* gathers Einstein’s thoughts from before 1935, when he was as the preface says “at the height of his scientific powers but not yet known as the sage of the atomic age”.
In the book, Einstein comes back to the question of the purpose of life on several occasions. In one passage, he links it to a sense of religiosity. “What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know an answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it many any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life,” wrote Einstein.
Was Einstein himself religious? Raised by secular Jewish parents, he had complex and evolving spiritual thoughts. He generally seemed to be open to the possibility of the scientific impulse and religious thoughts coexisting. “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind,” said Einstein in his 1954 essay on science and religion.
Some (including the scientist himself) have called Einstein’s spiritual views as pantheism, largely influenced by the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Pantheists see God as existing but abstract, equating all of reality with divinity. They also reject a specific personal God or a god that is somehow endowed with human attributes.
Himself a famous atheist, Richard Dawkins calls Einstein’s pantheism a “sexed-up atheism,” but other scholars point to the fact that Einstein did seem to believe in a supernatural intelligence that’s beyond the physical world. He referred to it in his writings as “a superior spirit,” “a superior mind” and a “spirit vastly superior to men”. Einstein was possibly a deist, although he was quite familiar with various religious teachings, including a strong knowledge of Jewish religious texts.
In another passage from 1934, Einstein talks about the value of a human being, reflecting a Buddhist-like approach: “The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”
This theme of liberating the self is also echoed by Einstein later in life, in a 1950 letter to console a grieving father Robert S. Marcus: “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”
In case you are wondering whether Einstein saw value in material pursuits, here’s him talking about accumulating wealth in 1934, as part of the “The World As I See It”: “I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can lead us to noble thoughts and deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistibly invites abuse. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?”
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Freely download “The World As I See It”, by Albert Einstein, here:
"'Inflation' and America's Accelerating Class War"
"'Inflation' and America's Accelerating Class War"
by Charles Hugh Smith.
"I recently came across the idea that inflation is a two-factor optimization problem: inflation is necessary for the macro-economy (or so we're told) and so the trick for policy makers (and their statisticians who measure the economy) is to maximize inflation in the economy but only to the point that it doesn't snuff out businesses and starve workers to death. From this perspective, households have to grin and bear the negative consequences of inflation for the good of the whole economy.
This narrative, so typical of economics, ignores the core reality of "inflation" in America: it's a battleground for the class war that's accelerating. Allow me to explain.
"Inflation" affects different classes very differently. I put "inflation" in italics because it's not one phenomenon, it's numerous phenomena crammed into one deceptively simple word. When "inflation" boosts the value of homes, stocks, bonds, diamonds, quatloos etc. to the moon, those who own these assets are cheering. When "inflation" reduces the purchasing power of wages, those whose only income is earned from their labor suffer a decline in their lifestyles as their wages buy fewer goods and services. They are suffering while the wealthy owners of soaring assets are cheering.
The Federal Reserve and federal authorities are not neutral observers in this war. The Fed only cares about two things: enriching the banking sector and further enriching the already-rich.
The banking sector makes money by lending newly created currency to borrowers. No borrowers or new loans--banks go broke. So the Fed must generate the right kind of "inflation": it must lower the cost of borrowing money (deflating the cost of borrowing) by reducing the rate of interest borrowers pay, and it must "inflate" the market value of the collateral banks and Wall Street need to support more debt: commercial buildings, homes, stocks, bonds, etc.
This "inflation" of asset valuations makes those who already own these assets richer, while impoverishing those who must buy them with wages that are losing purchasing power. The Fed doesn't care if small businesses go broke or households slide into poverty; the Fed's only concerns are maintaining "inflation" in asset valuations and "deflation" in the cost of borrowing, so that debt-serfs, zombie corporations, local and federal government - everyone - can borrow more money, further enriching banks and Wall Street.
This is the sole goal of the Fed. Everything else is distracting PR.
There are downsides to this, of course, but they fall on "the little people" so economists, the Fed and federal officials don't bother to even track the downsides. Thus we have the nonsensical games government statisticians play to keep official measurements of "inflation" low. This serves to obscure the reality that real-world "inflation" in the cost of education, childcare, health insurance, rent, and so on - all the big-ticket household costs - is soaring, stripping away the purchasing power of wages.
Here's an example of how wages and purchasing power can be understood. Back in the day, I could rent my own studio apartment for half a week's pay. I was young and not well-paid, but I could still rent a crummy apartment for half a week's pay: 2.5 day's wages. Try finding an apartment for half a week's pay in a major city. Young workers are paying two week's pay just to rent a room. This is a massive loss in the purchasing power of labor.
Meanwhile, those with the right kind of assets are experiencing fantasic increases in their unearned income. These increases in income (and wealth) far exceed the modest impacts of real-world inflation on these owners of the right kind of assets.
Let's start with the the wrong kind of asset: a savings account. Where savers earned 5.25% on their savings as a regulatory requirement in the 1960s, now they earn less than nothing: even the bogus "official inflation" is 2%, while savers get 0.1% or less on savings. So savers lose money every day.
Those who bought bonds and stocks and real estate - the right kind of assets - have scored enormous gains in wealth and income. There's just one little tiny problem with the right kind of assets: the vast majority are owned by the top 5% of households, with the top 1% owning 40% and the top 0.1% owning 20% - more than the bottom 80% own.
There aren't just wealth-income classes - those who own these assets and those who don't - there are demographic and age classes, too. Young wage earners are mostly priced out of buying these assets with wages, unless they borrow staggering sums of money and devote most of their income to servicing their debts (student loans, auto loans, mortgage, etc.).
Retirees have been forced into gambling their retirement funds in the Fed-rigged casinos, which just so happen to crash every decade or so, wiping out the naive punters who believed "the Fed has our backs."
"Inflation" isn't an abstract debate - it's class war. And it's not just between two classes, those who depend on wages/earned income and those reaping the trillions in unearned income and wealth; there are warring classes fractured by age, demographics, political loyalties and issues of who's hoarding what: every one of these fractured classes is competing for scarce resources, scarce income and scarce security.
Those who don't see the fragmentation, the scarcities and the battlelines being drawn will be surprised by the acceleration of the unraveling. As noted here previously, The banquet of consequences is being laid out, and there won't be much choice in the seating."
"Our Task As Humans..."
“We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.
Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” D.H. Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”
- Albert Camus
"Final Scene in the Fed’s Fantastic Farce"
"Final Scene in the Fed’s Fantastic Farce"
By Bill Bonner
SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "First, we check in on the economy… Here’s CNBC: 'Yelp on Wednesday released its latest Economic Impact Report, revealing business closures across the U.S. are increasing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic’s economic toll. As of Aug. 31, 163,735 businesses have indicated on Yelp that they have closed. That’s down from the 180,000 that closed at the very beginning of the pandemic. However, it actually shows a 23% increase in the number of closures since mid-July.
In addition to monitoring closed businesses, Yelp also takes into account the businesses whose closures have become permanent. That number has steadily increased throughout the past six months, now reaching 97,966, representing 60 percent of closed businesses that won’t be reopening.'
Almost 100,000 businesses left behind. Like worn out auto parts… yesterday’s sitcoms… and day-old bread.
Full Picture: But that is just part of the picture. Politically, the conservatives – and the restraint they used to bring to public finances – are gone. Socially, the middle ground is disappearing; you’re either red or blue, with us or agin’ us. And economically, the whole kit and kaboodle is headed for an explosive crescendo.
Societies are always evolving… taking up new things… leaving old things behind. Some good. Some bad. A half century ago, they left behind the gold-backed dollar. At the time, to many people, including famed conservative economist Milton Friedman, it seemed like an improvement. Then, it became a hustle. Businesses, households, and the government realized that borrowing money was easier than earning (or taxing) it.
Big Leader: Now, the fake money system is a racket. Why bother to borrow when you can print? Our prediction for today: It won’t be too long before the U.S. dollar itself is left behind (although we’re not fool enough to say exactly when).
We saw yesterday how the Argentines are abandoning their pesos for U.S. dollars. In one day, the peso lost 15% of its value in black market trading. As the price of dollars (in pesos) rises, it becomes harder and harder for the Argentines to pay their hundreds of billions of dollar-based debts. They have to default.
President Juan Perón pioneered the program in 1946 – taking Benito Mussolini as his model. Big government. Big promises. Big spending. Big borrowing. Big printing. And a Big Leader. Perón’s big spending made such a mess of the Argentine economy that by 1955, he was chased from the country and his party was outlawed. Alas, he made a comeback in 1973… and died a year later. Argentina was finally rid of Perón. But it couldn’t shake off Peronism: anaesthetize the masses with giveaways… denounce political enemies as “traitors”… and stir up an “us against them” internal struggle, while presenting yourself as the only one who will maintain law and order.
Spending Spree: Of course, there’s a big difference between the U.S. and Argentina. America has a choice – in theory; Argentina doesn’t. The gauchos can’t print dollars. The U.S. can. This week, for example, the Federal Reserve said it would add nearly $1.5 trillion in new money every year until 2023. It took a hundred years, from 1913 to 2013, for the Fed to run up its first $3 trillion in holdings (a rough measure of the U.S. base money supply). Then, in just three months, from March through May of this year, it added another $3 trillion. And now, the Fed is promising nearly $5 trillion more!
This week, too, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said the White House was in favor of more printing-press money; he said he expected that Republicans and Democrats would soon go on a spending spree (aka another “stimulus” package) together. This will include another flight of “helicopter money” – $1,200 checks dropped promiscuously, which is the only way you can do that kind of thing.
Argentine Experience: Even the Argentines didn’t go this far. Sure, they made the same mistake – locking down the productive economy in order to protect the unproductive part (largely retired people). Then, they, too, tried to replace real output with their fake money – printing pesos and giving them to people who weren’t working. But at least they left the helicopters on the ground. Everyone here knows the government is broke. So, if money were dropped from helicopters, the locals would know exactly what to do with it. They’d head straight for their friendly black-market currency traders… and exchange it for real money – U.S. dollars.
Monetary Naifs: By comparison, Americans are monetary naifs. They have no history of defaults. And inflation – which rose to 13% 40 years ago – is a distant memory. The feds can hand out trillions; no one wonders where it comes from. And no one bothers to imagine that the well might go dry. Yet, no paper currency has ever survived a full credit cycle – from bottom to top… to bottom… and back to top again. The dollar is unlikely to be the first. And now, we begin the final scene in a well-rehearsed farce.
Real yields are at a cyclical low – just as they were when we were born. From there, they rose for the next 30 years… until 1980. Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker put the kibosh on that trend. Yields have been going down ever since – aided and abetted by the Fed. Now, it’s time for the…
Final Act: The lights dim… and the curtain rises on Act Four… in which the fatal flaws of our fake-dollar system take center stage… yields turn up… and the dollar approaches its denouement. So, grab a drink. Pull up a chair. Settle in and enjoy the show. The Fed prints. The government spends. And the people – the bit players in this spectacle – realize their dollars are becoming worthless. And then what? How does it turn out? What black market will develop? For what will Americans trade in their dollars? Where will their money be safe? Tune in next week for the exciting grand finale…"
"How It Really Is"
Well, climate change causing hurricanes is a fact,
just not caused as commonly believed...
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Related:
Our sun, early morning on Sept. 6, 2020.
Note the distinct lack of sunspot activity.
"David Stockman on How the Stock Market Got to be Out of Touch with Reality"
"David Stockman on How the Stock Market
Got to be Out of Touch with Reality"
by International Man
"International Man: Thanks to the shutdowns, economic activity on main street is at a standstill. Government, corporate, and personal debt is skyrocketing. Yet, the stock market is in a mania. Has the stock market become out of touch with reality, and if so, what are the consequences of that?
David Stockman: Both ends of the Acela Corridor have lost their marbles. This year, Uncle Sam borrowed $4 trillion in six months, the Fed printed $3 trillion in three months, and Wall Street drove the S&P 500 to 52X reported LTM earnings in the context of a deeper economic plunge than occurred in the worst quarter of the 1930s. Therefore, Washington has become disconnected from any semblance of fidelity to sound money and fiscal rectitude, while Wall Street has turned into an outright casino, valuing stocks based on endless Fed liquidity injections and the delusion that momentum chasing is an investment strategy.
With respect to the rampant folly in the Imperial City, Treasury Secretary Stevie Mnuchin has always reminded us of Alfred E. Neuman of "Me Worry?" fame at Mad Magazine. Recently, he more than earned that moniker when, in the context of the current monetary and fiscal lunacy, he proclaimed that, "Now is not the time to worry about shrinking the deficit or shrinking the Fed balance sheet." That was the so-called Conservative Party speaking, and it is a shrill reminder that the Trumpified GOP has gone utterly AWOL when it comes to its true job in American democracy, namely, resisting the Government Party (Dems) and its affinity for feeding the Leviathan on the Potomac.
That is to say, according to even the Keynesian deficit apologists at the CBO, Uncle Sam will spend $6.6 trillion during the current fiscal year (FY 2020) while collecting only $3.3 trillion in revenue. That’s Banana Republic stuff - borrowing 50% of every dollar spent.
Yet the advisory ranks of the potentially incoming Kamala Harris regency are even worse. They are loaded with "deficits don’t matter" ideologues and MMT crackpots who noisily argue that massive monetization of the public debt is not just a virtue, but utterly imperative.
Needless to say, this bipartisan commitment to all-in stimulus is financial catnip to the Wall Street gamblers because they are actually capitalizing into today’s nosebleed stock prices, not the present drastically impaired economy on Main Street but a pro forma simulacrum of future prosperity based on the delusional presumption that massive debt and money-pumping actually create economic growth and wealth.
The fact is, industrial production in August posted at a level first achieved in March 2006, and manufacturing output weighed in at levels originally attained in December 2004. So the misbegotten lockdowns and COVID-hysteria have cost the US economy 14–16 years of industrial production growth, yet this massive setback was not caused by some mysterious Keynesian-style faltering of "demand" that can allegedly be compensated for by new Fed credits plucked from thin air.
To the contrary, the current depression is the result of the visible shutdown and quarantine orders of the state, which are likely to linger for months to come or even intensify as the fall-winter flu season arrives. Undoubtedly, the Virus Patrol will spur further outbreaks of public fear based on "bad numbers" from the CDC, which are actually an agglomeration of cases and deaths from normal influenza, pneumonia, and a myriad of life-threatening comorbidities, not pure cases of the COVID alone.
But beguiled by "stimulus" and hopium, Wall Street completely ignores the contradiction between over-the-top demand stimulus and what amounts to supply-side contraction owing to economic martial law. So, at 3400 on the S&P 500, the current LTM price-to-earnings ratio ranges between 52.1 times the earnings CEOs and CFOs certify on penalty of jail time ($65 per share) or 27 times the Wall Street brush-stroked and curated version ($125 per share), from which all asset write-offs, restructuring charges, and other one-timers/mistakes have been finessed out.
Of course, these deleted GAAP charges reflect the consumption of real corporate resources, such as purchase price goodwill that gets written off when a merger or acquisition goes sour, or the write-down of investments in factories, warehouses, and stores that get closed. As such, they absolutely do diminish company resources and shareholder net worth over time.
But for decades now, Wall Street has so relentlessly and assiduously ripped anything that smells like a "one-timer" out of company earnings filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it no longer even knows what GAAP earnings actually are. And it pretends that these discarded debits (and credits) to income are simply lumpy things that even out in the wash over time. They do not.
If ex-items reporting was merely a neutral smoothing mechanism, reported GAAP earnings and "operating earnings" would be equal when aggregated over several years, or even a full business cycle. Yet during the last 100 quarters, there have been essentially zero instances in which reported GAAP earnings exceeded "operating income."
So, in aggregate terms, several trillions of corporate write-downs and losses have been swept under the rug. During the second quarter of 2020, for example, GAAP earnings reported to the SEC totaled $145.8 billion for the S&P 500 companies, while the ex-items earnings curated by the street posted at $222.3 billion. That amounts to the deletion of nearly $77 billion of write-downs and mistakes, and it inflated the aggregate earnings number by more than 52%.
The game is all about goosing the earnings number in order to minimize the apparent price-to-earnings multiple, thereby supporting the fiction that stocks are reasonably valued and that nary a bubble is to be found, at least in the broad market represented by the S&P 500.
Still, valuing the market at 52 times trailing-12-month earnings during the present parlous moment in time—or even 27 times if you want to give the financial engineering jockeys in the C-suites a hall-pass for $77 billion of mistakes and losses this quarter alone—is nothing short of nuts.
Yet, the gamblers in the casino hardly know it. Wall Street has already decided that current-year results don’t matter a whit: the nosebleed-level trailing P/E multiples currently being racked up are simply being shoved into the memory hole on the presumption that the sell side’s evergreen hockey sticks will come true about four quarters into the future, and if they don’t, a heavy dose of ex-items bark-stripping will gussy up actual earnings when they come in.
Still, if you think that a forward P/E multiple of, say, 17.5 times is just fine and that flushing the one-timers is OK, then you still need $193 per share of operating earnings by the second quarter of 2021 to justify today’s index level. Then again, a 54% gain in operating earnings over the next four quarters ($193 per share in the second quarter of 2021 versus $125 per share in the second quarter of 2020) is not simply a tall order; it’s downright delusional.
International Man: What could derail the Fed’s ability to pump up the stock market casino with all this easy money? They simultaneously want zero interest rates and more inflation. It seems something has to give.
David Stockman: Yes, what’s going to "give" sooner or later is the entire house of monetary cards erected by the Fed and its fellow-traveling global central banks over the last several decades. What they are doing is based on the triple error that inflation is too low, that deeply repressed and falsified interest rates fuel real growth, and that private savers are a hindrance to optimal economic function and need to be euthanized via confiscation of the real (after-inflation) value of their capital.
In the first place, as Paul Volcker pointedly reminded, there is nothing in the pre-1990 textbooks that says 2.00% inflation is desirable and is to be pursued with fanatical intensity—even if actual inflation comes in only a few basis points below the magic target. Indeed, if the 2% target is zealously pursued via prolonged pegging of interest rates to the zero bound and the massive purchase of bonds and other securities, the result is actually inimical to economic growth and sustainable gains in real wealth.
That’s because falsified interest rates and inflated financial asset values lead to massive malinvestment via rampant financial engineering in the corporate sector and reckless borrowing to fund transfer payments and economic waste in the public sector. Nor is that a mere theoretical possibility. The rolling 10-year real GDP growth rate has now fallen to just 1.5% per annum, or barely one-third of the 3–4% per year rolling averages which prevailed during the heyday of reasonably sound money and fiscal rectitude prior to 1971.
Beyond that, there really hasn’t been any inflation shortfall from the 2% target, unless measured by the Fed’s flakey yardstick called the PCE deflator. For instance, since December 1996, when Greenspan uttered his irrational exuberance warning, the CPI is up by 2.09% per annum and the more stable 16% trimmed-mean CPI is up by 2.12% per annum. That hardly constitutes a "shortfall" from target, but the Eccles Building money-printers make the claim anyway because the PCE deflator gained slightly less over that 23 year period, averaging an increase of 1.71 per annum.
The truth is, no one except groupthink besotted central bankers would think that a mere 30 basis point shortfall over more than two decades justifies the massive financial fraud of pumping trillions of fiat credit into the financial system. That’s especially the case because the PCE deflator drastically underweights shelter costs and doesn’t even measure the purchasing power of money against a fixed basket of goods and services over time, anyway. Instead, it is actually a tool of GDP accounting that reflects the changing mix of goods and services supplied to the household sector.
That is to say, if someone chooses to live in a tepee and spend nearly all of their paycheck on computers, TVs, and other high-tech gadgets that have been rapidly falling in price, that doesn’t improve the exchange value of the dollar wages they earn; it just means that their tepee may be getting crowded with tech gadgets. The same is true of the aggregate level. Just because the mix of goods and services changes over time, that doesn’t miraculously rescue the purchasing power of the dollar from the ravages of inflation.
Nor does it alleviate the savaging of lower- and middle-class living standards that are the direct product of the Fed’s misguided commitment to inflation targeting. In fact, during that same 23-year period, the annual rate of increase for professional services, shelter, food away from home, medical services, and education expense has been 2.6%, 2.7%, 2.8%, 3.5%, and 4.5%, respectively.
So once you set aside the foolishness of 2% inflation targeting and the Fed’s sawed-off inflation measuring stick (the PCE deflator), what you really have is growth stunting monetary madness. There is no other way to explain a Fed balance sheet that went from $4.2 trillion on March 4 this year to $7.2 trillion by June 10.
After all, the first $3 trillion of Fed balance sheet took nearly 100 years to generate, from its opening in 1914 to breaching the $3 trillion marker for the first time in March 2013. That the Fed has now become a monetary doomsday machine, therefore, is no longer in doubt."
"Market Fantasy Updates 9/21/20"
"Market Fantasy Updates 9/18/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Updated live.
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Daily Update (September 18th to 21st)
Gregory Mannarino, "The U.S. Economic Collapse And Meltdown Is Accelerating"
Gregory Mannarino,
"The U.S. Economic Collapse And Meltdown Is Accelerating"
"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 9/18/20"
By David Leonhardt
SEP 18, 2020 7:51 AM ET:
Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 30,197,800
people, according to official counts, including 6,698,762 Americans.
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09/18/2020 - 05:00: "Death, Taxes, & COVID-19: Things That Cannot Be Avoided"
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Updated 9/18/20, 5:22AM ET
Click image for larger size.
"The Long Dark"
"The Long Dark"
by Chris Floyd
"We are in the Long Dark now. Both hope and despair are the enemies of our survival. We must live in the awareness that we might not see the light come back, without ceasing to work - with empathy, anger and knowledge - for its return.
We must be here, in the moment, experiencing its fullness (whatever its horrors or joys), yet be elsewhere, removed from the madness pouring in from every side, the avalanche of degradation. We must be here, now, but also in a future we can’t see or even imagine.
We must see that we are lost, with no clear way forward, no sureties or verities to cling to, no roots to anchor us, no structures within or without that will always keep their coalescence in the chaotic, surging flow.
We must live in discrete moments of illumination and connection, pearls hung on an almost invisible string winding through the darkness. Striving, always striving, but not expecting; striving without hope, without despair, without any certainty at all as to the outcome, good or bad.
These are the conditions of the Long Dark, this is what we have to work with, this is where we find ourselves in the brief time we have in this vast, indifferent, astounding universe. As I once wrote long ago, quoting the old hymn: “Work, for the night is coming.”
So do we counsel fatalism, a dark, defeated surrender, a retreat into bitter, curdled quietude? Not a whit. We advocate action, positive action, unstinting action, doing the only thing that human beings can do, ever: Try this, try that, try something else again; discard those approaches that don't work, that wreak havoc, that breed death and cruelty; fight against everything that would draw us down again into our own mud; expect no quarter, no lasting comfort, no true security; offer no last word, no eternal truth, but just keep stumbling, falling, careening, backsliding, crawling toward the broken light.
And what is this "broken light"? Nothing more than a metaphor for the patches of understanding – awareness, attention, knowledge, connection – that break through our darkness and stupidity for a moment now and then. A light always fractured, under threat, shifting, found then lost again, always lost. For we are creatures steeped in imperfection, in breakage and mutation, tossed up – very briefly – from the boiling, chaotic crucible of Being, itself a ragged work in progress toward unknown ends, or rather, toward no particular end at all. Why should there be an "answer" in such a reality?
What matters is what works – what pulls us from our own darkness as far as possible, for as long as possible. Yet the truth remains that "what works" is always and forever only provisional – what works now, here, might not work there, then. What saves our soul today might make us sick tomorrow.
Thus all we can do is to keep looking, working, trying to clear a little more space for the light, to let it shine on our passions and our confusions, our anger and our hopes, informing and refining them, so that we can see each other better, for a moment – until death shutters all seeing forever."
"For Nothing Is Fixed..."
“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”
- James Baldwin
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/18/20"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/18/20"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"The science and data say that CV19 is over, but why are Democrats wanting to keep it all locked down until after the November Election? It’s all about politics. The Democrats think this is the way to victory. Who cares how many people this hurts? This is the crazy Dem strategy of lie, cheat, steal, riot, cause pain, destruction and then blame it all on Trump. Polls say this ain’t working, but it’s all they got.
The U.S. economy is better than most in the world, but it has been severely damaged by the CV19 overreaction and brutal lockdowns. It is so bad that every time new unemployment claims fall under one million, it’s time to celebrate even though more than 50 million have filed new unemployment claims in just the past 26 weeks. The economy should open up now.
The Democrat plan of loot, burn and blame it on President Trump has backfired. Record amounts of traditional Dem voters are publicly saying they have had enough and are voting for President Trump. Last week, I went on record that it’s going to be a blowout landslide for Trump, and there won’t be enough cheating to overcome him getting a second term. Watch Joe Biden’s wife, Jill–she is key to Joe. I predict that the upset will be so big Jill Biden will step in and use the leverage of conceding victory to President Trump on or shortly after Election night to try to get some sort of a no-prosecution deal for Joe and son Hunter."
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he talks
about these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.
Must Watch! “Small Business Dead On Arrival; Greatest Depression Confirmed; Welfare State; System Collapse”
- Jeremiah Babe,
“Small Business Dead On Arrival; Greatest Depression Confirmed;
Welfare State; System Collapse”
Full screen mode recommended for on-site scenes. (11:05)
"How to Survive The Imminent Economic Collapse And Next Great Depression"
"How to Survive The Imminent Economic Collapse
And Next Great Depression"
by Epic Economist
"To say that life is uncertain right now would be an understatement. Everyone is holding their breaths, waiting to see what it's coming in the next chapters of the economic collapse, and wondering how long do we have before total chaos takes over. The economic disaster will be bigger and more complex than the 1930's Great Depression, with several critical factors that may leave many of us completely unassisted. Millions of families are already suffering around the globe, not even being sure about the next meal or if it will be possible to pay for rent for one more week. The threat of homelessness and starvation has never been more real, and as debt rates are higher and higher and so is unemployment every week.
Even though some sectors of the economy are reopening, experts have been discussing that re-hires might not last long, since a second surge of the virus is expected and it will affect the labor market directly yet again. We cannot count on our leaders and even less on the financial markets to solve anything. For that reason, today, we decided to gather some helpful tips and valuable lessons we can learn with those who survived the Great Depression. In that way, you can prepare yourself in advance and save your family from the forthcoming turbulence.Stay tuned with us and don't forget to like and subscribe if you'd like to support our community. So here are 16 things you can do to survive the imminent economic collapse. "
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Have you contemplated your home galaxy lately? If your sky looked like this, perhaps you'd contemplate it more often! The featured picture is actually a composite of two images taken last month from the same location in south Brazil and with the same camera -- but a few hours apart. The person in the image -- also the astrophotographer -- has much to see in the Milky Way Galaxy above.
Click image for larger size.
The central band of our home Galaxy stretches diagonally up from the lower left. This band is dotted with spectacular sights including dark nebular filaments, bright blue stars, and red nebulas. Millions of fainter and redder stars fill in the deep Galactic background. To the lower right of the Milky Way are the colorful gas and dust clouds of Rho Ophiuchi, featuring the bright orange star Antares. On this night, just above and to the right of Antares was the bright planet Jupiter. The sky is so old and so familiar that humanity has formulated many stories about it, some of which inspired this very picture."
Chet Raymo, “The Seeds of Contemplation”
“The Seeds of Contemplation”
by Chet Raymo
“Do a Google search for “Cuthbert” and you’ll get two main hits: a stunning blonde Canadian actress who I never heard of, and the 7th-century Anglo-Saxon monk I was looking for. Make that an image search and poor Saint Cuthbert gets washed away in a sea of unclad sexiness that would probably have rattled the poor abbot/bishop to his core.
Well, we don’t really know, do we? We don’t really know what was on Saint Cuthbert’s mind. Certainly he had an impressive career as a Church administrator, but be seems to have been irresistibly drawn to the life of an anchorite. For a while he was prior at the famous abbey of Lindisfarne on the coast of Northumbria, then bishop of the same place, but he gave all that up for a solitary cell on the nearby island of Farne. According to tradition, his severe abode had no windows or doors, and no views of scenery or humans. It was circular and open only to the sky. There Cuthbert lived, like a mouse at the bottom of a coffee can.
Was his mouse-eye view of the sky enough to feed his soul? Presumably he didn’t see rainbows, since rainbows don’t appear near the zenith. He was far enough north (56° 37′) not to see the sun at all, even in summer, depending on how wide was the angle of his view of the sky. Only a few bright stars illuminated his night: Capella, Vega, and Deneb (taking into account the 18 degrees of precession since his time). In late summer the Milky Way would have been draped overhead, although- alas- the least bright part of the galaxy. The aurora would have entertained him on occasion, and “shooting stars.”
How much is enough? Thoreau had his pond, and dinner at the Emersons whenever he wanted. Henry Beston had the whole wide sea crashing outside his “outermost” house on Cape Cod. Annie Dillard’s Tinker Creek was in a valley, but her patch of sky was supplemented by woods and fields and the always changing theater of the creek itself. Many of us have longed at one time or another for greater simplicity, for a life lived deliberately, for the intensely-experienced few rather than the trivialized many. It’s all a matter of finding the balance, between the harsh parsimony of the anchorite’s cell and the rush and clutter of 21st-century, media-saturated overload.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
"What We Owe To Ourselves..."
“That we can never know,” answered the wolf angrily. “That’s for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we’re bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything.”
- David Clement Davies
“The Eleventh Marble”
“The Eleventh Marble”
by Michael Rivero
“Any five-year old child knows that if you put ten marbles into a tin can, you can only take ten marbles back out. No amount of wishful thinking, dreaming, or praying, will yield that eleventh marble from inside that can. That eleventh marble does not exist. It never did, and it never will. All discussions about the eleventh marble are the product of imagination. The eleventh marble is a fantasy.
Private central bankers issuing the public currency as interest-bearing loans operate on the belief that they can put ten marbles (dollars) into a tin can (the world) and magically get 11 marbles (dollars) back out. Thus, we may conclude that the bankers are dumber than five-year old children! But unlike five-year old children, the bankers will take your home, your business, and your nation when they don’t get that eleventh marble! The spoiled child may cry and throw a tantrum, but that will be the end of their upset. The spoiled banker, however, in his or her arrogant rage that they cannot have the eleventh marble their imagination says must still be in that tin can, may start a war before they will admit that eleventh marble was never really there.
Economies are like tin cans. Before you can take a marble out, you must have put a marble in. Nobody can give you a marble that does not exist, yet this simple reality is lost to the priests of that fantastic religion called “economics” in that unholiest of temples called the Private Central Bank. Their religious doctrine seems to be that there must always be an eleventh marble inside the tin can, and that the tin can unfairly withholds that eleventh marble, indeed cheats them of their right to the eleventh marble, purely out of spite. That faith in the existence of the eleventh marble, unseen and improvable, is the article of faith the religion of banking rests on. It is far easier to burn the heretics than to question the dogma.
Today we see the bankers, having already retrieved their ten marbles from the tin can, flogging the world for that missing eleventh marble. Greece does not have that eleventh marble, so they turn to Germany and ask, “Do you have an eleventh marble”, and Germany replies, “Sorry, but the bankers already took the ten marbles they put in our tin can, and we are searching for an eleventh marble ourselves. Try the Americans.” The Americans, of course, have only just surrendered the last of their ten marbles back to the bankers and are looking under seat cushions for that missing eleventh marble nobody seems able to find. But the eleventh marble will never be found. After all that mayhem brought down on the tin can there still will be no eleventh marble. It does not exist. It never did, and it never will.
The problem with all modern reserve banking systems is that the moment the first bank note goes into circulation as the proceed of a loan at interest, more money is owed to the banks than actually exists. Ten marbles have been put into the tin can, but the bankers see 11 marbles owed back to them. Sooner or later the non-existence of that eleventh marble will create a crisis of faith. People will stop believing in the religion called private central banking, and that crisis of faith will bring the system crashing down, as did the Temple of Baal in ancient times when the Syrians saw through the priests’ trickery. This evil magic of creating money out of debt was a fraud all along, as fraudulent and silly as the idea that one can put ten marbles into a tin can, and take out eleven.
In ages to come economists will look back at this failed experiment in debt-based currency, and dump it into the same category of human folly as Tulip mania, The Nation of Poyais, Credit Mobilier, the Great South Seas Company, and Mortgage-Backed Securities.”
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