So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, September 25, 2020
"David Stockman on the Economy's Role in The Upcoming Presidential Election"
"David Stockman on the Economy's Role
in The Upcoming Presidential Election"
by International Man
"International Man: Bill Clinton’s infamous phrase during the 1992 presidential election was "It’s the economy, stupid." How important of a role do you think the economy and a continued rally in the stock market will play in the outcome of the presidential election?
David Stockman: Well, in the befuddled mind of Donald Trump, probably a considerable role as manifest in his campaign oratory. And since there are less than 50 days left, he might get away with his groundless boasting. That is, we seriously doubt that the great reckoning will commence before November 3, meaning that he will keep peddling the "but for COVID" canard, claiming that, before that, he single-handedly created the Greatest Economy Ever.
Actually, it’s the greatest BS story ever told. It rests on the utterly misleading circumstance that the Donald entered office in month #90 of what became the longest business cycle expansion in history (at 128 months in February). Consequently, his "record" was artificially flattered by the low U-3 unemployment rates (3.5%) that naturally occur during the last 38 months of the cycle as the inventory of unused labor is finally exhausted. Of course, that’s also exactly what occurred during the final months of the 118-month expansion of the 1990s and the 106-month expansion of the 1960s, when Democrats happened to be incumbent in the Oval Office.
But when measured by something relevant, such as the average real GDP growth rate during his tenure, it turns out that the Donald’s cherished "score" is the very worst among all the presidential terms since 1948.
That’s right. Even after setting aside the economic plunge in Q2, real GDP growth averaged 1.8% per annum during the Donald’s first 38 months in office compared to annualized gains of 1.9%, 2.2%, 2.5%, 2.7%, 3.2%, 3.6%, 3.8%, 5.2%, and 5.5%, respectively, during the terms of Obama, Bush the Younger, Bush the Elder, Eisenhower, Nixon-Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Kennedy-Johnson, and Truman.
Coming in dead last, of course, is not entirely the Donald’s doing, try as he did. The fact is, the US economy was sinking under the dead weight of $77 trillion of public and private debt and the decades of public waste and private malinvestment this debt explosion enabled. Now, Donald’s wrong-headed sponsorship of Lockdown Nation via the recommendations of his malpracticing doctors and the public hysteria they fostered has delivered the coup d’ grace.
So, yes, it is the economy, stupid. That is to say, whoever wins on November 3rd is going to inherit an economy so battered, bruised, and freighted with speculative excess and debilitating debt that they are sure to go down in history as the President who made Herbert Hoover look like a winner.
International Man: The United States appears to be more divided than it has in anyone’s lifetime. Yet, politicians and talking heads on both sides of the aisle seem to wholeheartedly agree on the same destructive fiscal policy that includes money printing, sky-high debts, and freebies.What do you make of all this? What are the consequences for the dollar and for gold?
David Stockman: There is only one thing to do - get out of the casino and sell any security that moves or stands still. That’s because the bipartisan duopoly has lost all contracts with the principles of sound money, fiscal rectitude, and minimalist government intervention on which sustainable capitalist prosperity depends.
For instance, the GOP Senate is so oblivious to the monstrous fraud being perpetrated by the nation’s central bank that it can’t even muster the votes to put a single once and former sound money advocate - Judy Shelton - on the Fed Board of Governors. Indeed, the Judy Shelton nomination failure is the monetary Rubicon. There is literally no hope left that our stupefied elected politicians will move to stop the unelected monetary politburo domiciled in the Eccles Building from utterly destroying the capital and money markets that are at the heart of the capitalist growth engine.
What lies ahead, therefore, is more years of massive monetization of the public debt and never before imagined fiscal profligacy on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Already the public debt at $27.7 trillion stands at 138% of GDP, even as there is zero will in either party to brake its ascent. At some point in the not-too-near future, confidence in the money-printing scam at the Fed will finally evaporate. Then, look out below. The financial sins of 50 years will come crashing all around.
International Man: When the COVID lockdowns first started, the government told us we needed a few weeks to "flatten the curve." The idea was economic activity could be restarted relatively easily. Six months later, most economic activity is at a standstill. Is it possible for Main Street to bounce back? What type of long-term damage do you think this will have?
David Stockman: The damage will be immense and well nigh irreversible. That’s because never before – even during the full military mobilization of WWII - have we had this kind of draconian economic marshal law.
As it was, the US economy was already a hand-to-mouth cripple when the lockdowns came smashing down out of the blue in March. That is, businesses had no dry powder, having freighted down their balance sheets with cheap debt to fund stock buybacks and massively over-valued M&A deals; and, likewise, 80% of US households had borrowed to the hilt and had no rainy day funds to speak of.
Save for nearly $3.5 trillion of the Everything Bailouts, the US economy would be hemorrhaging already in a cascading chain of delinquencies, defaults, and payment lapses. There is no other outcome possible when the household and business sector are each laboring under $16 trillion of debt, and the government and financial sectors are carrying another $45 trillion between them.
Moreover, the massive infusion of borrowed funds from the virtually bankrupt US Treasury is not sustainable and is already beginning to measurably abate as the original bailout programs expire and even the spendthrift US Congress is unable to form a consensus on new measures to keep the Ponzi Scheme going.
Well, they might abjure. After all, the explosion of spending in April was theretofore unimaginable. To wit, government transfer payments soared from a $3.2 trillion annual rate on the eve of the lockdowns in February to a $6.5 trillion annual rate two months later in April, representing an unprecedented explosion of free stuff that was still running at a $4.9 trillion annual rate in July.
All this spending was for the purpose of holding harmless the tens of millions of workers and millions of small businesses sidelined by the writ of the Donald’s malpracticing doctors and the brutal shutdown orders of the Blue State governors and mayors they unleashed. But to take out 10% of GDP through what amounted to economic martial law and backfill it with massive public borrowing was the height of derangement.
That’s because Lockdown Nation battered the economics and personal liberty of 267 million Americans under the age of 65, when their risk of serious illness or death from the COVID was tiny, even as 80% of deaths per the bloated CDC count occurred among the population 65 and older, which could have, and did, self-quarantine out of an abundance of personal medical precaution. That’s right. The normal mortality rate for the under-65 population is about 300 per 100,000, while the with-COVID rate, by the CDC’s own inflated figures, was just 13 per 100,000 as of September 1 or barely 4% of normal mortality.
In that context, knocking $565 billion out of the GDP in the second quarter alone to prevent a marginal change in the mortality rate for the under-65 population was the very essence of national derangement and a reminder that current economic governance is so unhinged that recovery during the decade ahead - when the retired Welfare State-dependent population will grow from 55 million to 73 million - will be well-nigh impossible.
International Man: Recently, the Federal Reserve announced they would seek to create even more inflation, which means the cost of living is about to get more expensive. Why would any sane person want to do such a thing?
David Stockman: The short answer is that they obviously wouldn’t. The baleful truth is that our central bankers are lost in a miasma of groupthink that is devoid of any connection to sound money and the economic prosperity that flows therefrom.
Instead, the Fed has become the pathetic handmaiden of the den of gamblers that now operate on Wall Street. There is literally no minor stumble or tepid correction in the stock indices that fails to elicit a chorus of demands for more "stimulus" on Wall Street, but it is blatantly evident by now that the resulting massive injections of fiat credit into the bank accounts of the Fed dealers never leaves the canyons of Wall Street. It simply inflates, inflates, and inflates again the value of existing debt and equity securities traded in the secondary market pits of pure speculation.
After all, that’s how we get the great ten-to-one anomaly. As it happened, since Greenspan's Irrational Exuberance speech in December 1996, the nominal GDP has gained 136%, while the NASDAQ 100 - the long-standing leading edge of the speculative mania - has gained 1,376%. That’s madness. That’s the smoking gun that shows the degree to which the stock market has been ripped from its proper moorings in the actual income and profits of the Main Street economy.
It’s also the reason for another great anomaly. Namely, that the stock market, which originated as a curb where capital users came to raise investment funds from savers, has now been turned upside down. It is now a place where equity capital is massively and chronically liquidated in favor of massive increases in growth-throttling debt.
Thus, during the last 23 years, there have been only two quarters in which U.S. nonfinancial corporations raised equity capital on a net basis (i.e., new issuance exceeded buybacks). Overall, $7.2 trillion of corporate equity has been liquidated, averaging some $315 billion per year. Old-fashioned economists called this "eating your seed corn." And it still is, whether the Keynesian money-pumpers at the Fed acknowledge it or not - and also notwithstanding the egregious, unearned windfalls that have accrued to speculators in the Wall Street casino.
For want of doubt, here is a very opposite picture. While the Fed-corrupted financial markets were busy shrinking the stock of equity capital, they were also inducing the C-suites to borrow hand over fist. Between December 1996 and the present, in fact, nonfinancial corporate debt has soared from $3.2 trillion to $10.5 trillion, or by 3.3 times. Obviously, that was far faster than the growth of GDP, or, more to the point, the increase in corporate value added. In fact, cumulative growth in corporate debt of 223.4% far exceeded the growth of gross value added, which rose by just 137.1%.
In short, they are doing what no one in their right mind should be doing. The negative consequence in both the fiscal profligacy of the public sector and the financial engineering folly of the corporate sector speak for themselves.
International Man: In addition, the Fed said it will continue to manipulate interest rates to the lowest levels they have ever been. In other words, people can forget about earning any meaningful return on their savings. How does any prudent individual protect and preserve their savings in such an environment?
David Stockman: Buy gold and either forget or (if you are courageous) short the rest."
"Market Fantasy Updates 9/25/20"
"Market Fantasy Updates 9/25/20"
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 24th to 25th)
"Something Like Reverence..."
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 9/25/20"
By David Leonhardt
"Even as coronavirus cases spike across much of Europe, hospitalizations are not rising much in some countries. It’s possible that they may begin rising soon. But some experts argue that the virus has lost potency since it first arrived in Europe, or that it is now infecting mostly younger people, who are less likely to experience severe symptoms.
In other virus developments:
• Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York announced that the state would not automatically accept the federal government’s recommendations on vaccines. “Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion,” Cuomo said.
• The Pac-12 Conference - home to Oregon, Stanford and U.C.L.A. - announced it would resume its college football season in November. All of the sport’s major conferences now plan to play this year."
SEP 25, 2020 12:02 AM ET:
Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 32,225,300
people, according to official counts, including 7,004,600 Americans.
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Updated 9/25/20, 5:23 AM ET
Click image for larger size.
"The Gathering Super Tantrum"
"The Gathering Super Tantrum"
by Robert Gore
"It’s time for a divorce. Russiagate, impeachment, the coronavirus power grab, riots, overhyped Trump “scandals” that came and went, and nonstop venom, vitriol, and vituperation come together under this label: the Continuing Tantrum. The presidential election is less than two months away, and we’re being promised the tantrum to end all tantrums, a Super Tantrum, if the harpy and the dotard don’t win.
Children don’t have a shadowy cabal and mainstream political, business, and media figures encouraging (and funding) their tantrums. Unlike Continuing Tantrum partisans, children who tantrum can be spanked or put in time out, they don’t burn down cities or launch coups, and some of them grow up.
The cabal and its useful idiots are giving the rest of us a “your money or your life” proposition. We either elect Harris/Biden or the cabal launches a coup and their thugs destroy the country. Hillary Clinton already has told Biden not to concede under any circumstances. It’s a regime-change operation similar to those the cabal has waged around the globe for decades. BLM and Antifa are kissing cousins to the US’s cat’s-paw Islamic extremists and Ukrainian neo-nazis. Fomenting violence and chaos, they’re the violent cover for their sponsors’ intrigues. Order won’t emerge from their chaos, unless your idea of order is Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, and Ukraine.
It’s all laid out in the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), a blueprint of how the cabal intends to install Harris/Biden regardless of the actual election results. Couched in the plausible deniability language of war-gaming and projections, every one of its scenarios - other than a clear Harris win - leads to a constitutional bonfire fueled by street violence, court battles, legislative legerdemain, media propaganda, and possible military intervention. Its authors are circumspect, but one man’s war-gaming and projections are another man’s call to action and instruction manual.
The TIP has about the same chance as a poker player drawing to an inside straight. Trump may deserve to be the fifth white male on Mr. Rushmore if for no other reason than he forced the cabal out of the shadows. He has exposed the unholy alliance of scheming bureaucrats, political figureheads, intelligence operatives, military brass, contractors, second-rate academics, media moguls, and Hollywood airheads that presume to rule us. “The Deep State” was a fringe term when Trump became president, now it’s part of the vernacular. With exposure comes ridicule and scorn; it’s nowhere near as smart or competent as once supposed. Russiagate and the impeachment were maladroit melodramas manipulated by mendacious mediocrities.
The cabal places great store in narrative management. Back in the 1960s and 1970s allegations were first voiced, mostly from the fringe, that the FBI and CIA had infiltrated the mainstream media. There were also complaints, always dismissed, about the media’s liberal bias. Trump derangement syndrome has put the liberal bias on full display, nobody even pretends it doesn’t exist. As for intelligence agency infiltration, the owner of the Washington Post has a huge contract from the CIA and television and cable networks hire ex-spooks as commentators.
Narrative management was easy when there were only three television networks and a few “papers of record.” Now it’s much harder to suppress the truth. The intelligence agencies and their media mouthpieces are subject to constant scrutiny from the alternative media. Once it opens people’s eyes, they stay open; regular AM readers don’t return to mainstream lies.
While the cabal protects its own- the most powerful perpetrators of Russiagate and the impeachment attempted coups may escape punishment - the official and media cover afforded cabal skullduggery is nowhere near as effective as it was for, say, the Kennedy assassinations. Back in the media’s halcyon days, it took a decade before any significant number of people started waking up to the truth about the assassinations. Now we see Plot Holes exposed in real time.
Cable networks broke the television networks’ oligopoly and the information dam began springing leaks. Leaks became gushers with the advent of the Internet and sites devoted to independent investigative journalism, scathing commentary, and non-mainstream news aggregation. The cabal tries buying off the rebels, and if that doesn’t work it deplatforms or demonetizes them. Nevertheless, the rebel alliance continues to find ways to circumvent the Empire. New sites and social media alternatives spring up like weeds and bought-off sites like the Drudge Report see precipitous declines in viewership.
The gathering Super Tantrum, given added impetus by the Supreme Court situation, advertises itself as righteous revolution, but it would be the cabal deposing an outsider and installing chosen insiders. A real revolution overthrows insiders, so call this another attempted coup. Give into your kids’ tantrums and you’ll suffer rule by screams. The cabal thinks it can turn violence on for regime-change and off once it’s successful. That’s wishful thinking. Violence is a race to the bottom and the most bloodthirsty win. Coups often devour their sponsors - you get someone to do the dirty work and you become the dirty work.
Parents who cave in to their children’s tantrums ruin any chance they’ll grow into productive, happy adults. If the Super Tantrum steals the election, the America experiment is over. The Harris Democrats will rejigger the rules so they’ll never lose and America will become a one-party banana republic featuring permanent bio-totalitarianism.
California, New York, and Illinois are previews of coming attractions. They increasingly look like collectivist third-world dumps: the favored few ultra-rich, vanishing middle classes, masses of poor, and rampant crime, corruption, squalor, and seething unrest. And this before their underfunded pensions and welfare systems’ inevitable collapse.
If the Super Tantrum coup succeeds, millions of Trump supporters will know they’ve been robbed and see the writing on the wall for what remains of their freedom and way of life. They’ll be angry, and most of them have firearms. There’s no telling how they’ll respond, but probably not with the restraint to which they responded to the riots or the docility to which they responded to coronavirus totalitarianism. They may launch a righteous revolution of their own, or at least a guerrilla war. The US government hasn’t had much luck with guerrilla wars the last few decades. A once great nation would become ungovernable and unlivable, especially in the urban hellholes.
To paraphrase divorce decrees, the factions can no longer live in comity, a separation is necessary. That conclusion doesn’t have to be universally embraced. It won’t be embraced by those few who disparage the deplorable productive but dimly realize they’re the golden geese. It will be embraced by people fed up with the garbage. Judging by the numbers of refugees fleeing collectivist states, it already has. They’re taking their outdated fondness for families, livable towns and cities, law and order, property and contract rights, voluntary exchange, hard work, deferred gratification, saving, fiscal sobriety, limited government, individual rights, civility, decency, God, guns, and other cherished hallmarks of their civilization with them. Once they leave, all the children will have are their tantrums."
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Buddy Brown,
"Ain't Gonna be a CIVIL WAR....Here's Why"
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/25/2020"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/25/2020"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"If you want to know who to blame all the violence on, you can find many guilty parties. It’s billionaires like George Soros funding prosecutors that will not prosecute in liberal cities. It’s Black Lives Matter and Antifa. It’s some of the biggest corporations in America, and it’s most definitely the mainstream media that hides the facts and acts as a biased information arm of the communist/Marxist Democrat party. It’s not journalism. It’s propaganda, and it’s helping to fuel the violence in America.
The voter fraud schemes by Democrats are emerging and seeing the light of day. They are blatant attempts to swing the November Election through voter fraud and so-called ballot harvesting. No doubt, this is going to end up in the Supreme Court, which is why Trump wants his pick on the bench by Election Day.
Yet another week where it was celebrated that less than 1 million new claims for unemployment were filed last week. Tens of millions have filed first time claims for unemployment, and this week it’s looking a little worse."
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he talks
about these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.
"Unprecedented Monetary Overhaul: Fed Preparing To Deposit Digital Dollars Directly To Each American"
Epic Economist,
"Unprecedented Monetary Overhaul: Fed Preparing
To Deposit Digital Dollars Directly To Each American"
"The Fed has plans to create a hybrid digital legal tender, which differs from reserves that are stuck within the financial system, in that way, it could make direct deposits into US consumer accounts. How is that different from the previous forms of helicopter money? Essentially, it isn't. Apart from the consideration that it would have direct access to consumers information regarding transactions and any other monetary proceedings. Nothing major, right?
Furthermore, Loretta Mester, Cleveland Fed president, has publicly stated in the Chicago Payment Symposium, in a section titled Central Bank Digital Currencies that the experience with the current health-crisis-related emergency payments "has brought forward an idea that was already gaining increased attention at central banks around the world, that is, central bank digital currency (CBDC)". And after the unexpected reveal, she goes on explaining that the "legislation has proposed that each American have an account at the Fed in which digital dollars could be deposited, as liabilities of the Federal Reserve Banks, which could be used for emergency payments."
The boldness - to say the least - of their proposal doesn't end there. By launching in digital cash, the institution would manage to find a way to eliminate the "anonymous" physical currency in its entirety, and then be able to track every single banknote that they have created, knowing the destination of every transaction ever made during the whole time it was in action. And, at some point, the Fed could not only exterminate the digital currency when it becomes convenient, as it could practically disintermediate commercial banks because it would concede loans to US consumers and also deposit funds into their accounts directly, that is to say, they would have the power to make the whole traditional banking system obsolete.
So here we quote Loretta Mester's detailing of the program's functioning, published on the Cleveland Fed website, which explains that the proposal "would create a new payments instrument, digital cash, which would be just like the physical currency issued by central banks today, but in a digital form and, potentially, without the anonymity of physical currency," admitting they can crack the public's privacy data as they please. She continues outlining that "depending on how these currencies are designed, central banks could support them without the need for commercial bank involvement via direct issuance into the end-users’ digital wallets combined with central-bank-facilitated transfer and redemption services," also acknowledging that it has the potential to separate itself from the current banking system and possibly crash its entire operation if it ever becomes fitting to their goals.
With all the evidence on the table, it's possible to understand that the strategy of depositing digital dollars to all Americans gives the Fed powers that were once exclusive to Congress, meaning that they would be able to concede fiscal stimulus at its will, therefore, it will possibly boost a spectacular reflationary spike, since it is the lower-income segments of the American society that are the marginal price setters for economic goods and services.
The bank will have the perfect excuse to constantly keep the inflation high, while the American standard of living crumbles to the benefit of a small group of asset holders. To avoid being swallowed up by the huge federal debt, as ZeroHedge cleverly pointed out "the Fed is now finalizing the last steps of a process that revolutionizes the entire fiat monetary system, launching digital dollars which effectively remove commercial banks as financial intermediaries, as they will allow the Fed itself to make direct deposits into Americans' "digital wallets", in the process also making Congress and the entire Legislative branch redundant, as a handful of technocrats quietly take over the United States." So don't be misled by thinking their money will come without consequences, because this proposal will likely end the monetary freedom of the whole population, while it acts as a new surveillance system."
Gregory Mannarino, "Fed. Warns, US Economy In Free-Fall, More Money For Wall St."
Gregory Mannarino, Post-market Report 9/24/20:
"Fed. Warns, US Economy In Free-Fall, More Money For Wall St."
"Economic Impact of Second Covid Lockdowns Will Be Severe"
Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity
"Economic Impact of Second Covid Lockdowns Will Be Severe"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae. For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae.
Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.”
"Let It Roll Off Our Back: Dodging and Deflecting"
"Let It Roll Off Our Back: Dodging and Deflecting"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM
"When we are criticized or attacked it is important to not take it into our heart space. One of the most difficult challenges in life is learning not to take things to heart and hold on to it. Especially when we’re younger, or if we’re very sensitive, we take so much of what comes our way to heart. This can be overwhelming and unproductive if it throws us off balance on a regular basis. When we are feeling criticized or attacked from all directions, it becomes very difficult for us to recover ourselves so that we can continue to speak and act our truth. This is when we would do well to remember the old saying about letting certain things roll off us, like water off a duck’s back.
Most of the time, the attacks and criticisms of others have much more to do with them and how they are feeling than with us. If we get caught up in trying to adjust ourselves to other people’s negative energy, we lose touch with our core. In fact, in a positive light, these slings and arrows offer us the opportunity to strengthen our core sense of self, and to learn to dodge and deflect other people’s misdirected negativity. The more we do this, the more we are able to discern what belongs to us and what belongs to other people. With practice, we become masters of our energetic integrity, refusing to serve as targets for the disowned anger and frustration of the people around us.
Eventually, we will be able to hear the feedback that others have to offer, taking in anything that might actually be constructive, and releasing that which has nothing to do with us. First, though, we tend ourselves compassionately by recognizing when we can’t take something in from the outside without hurting ourselves. This is when we make like a duck, shaking it off and letting it roll off our back as we continue our way in the world."
- http://www.dailyom.com/
"I'd Still Swim..."
"If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told
the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim.
And I'd despise the one who gave up. "
- Abraham Maslow
The Poet: John Clare, “I Am”
“I Am”
"I am - yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes -
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes;
And yet I am, and live - like vapors tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange - nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept,
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below - above the vaulted sky."
- John Clare
About the poet: John Clare (13 July, 1793- 20 May, 1864) was an English poet. He was born in Northamptonshire, England in the family of a farm laborer. Clare's poetic work mostly showcases his celebratory representations of the English countryside. In his time, Clare was commonly known as "Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" His early work delights both in nature and the cycle of the rural year. "I Am" is a commentary on the complexity of existence.
•
“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering - these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for.”
- “Dead Poets Society”
"Top Twenty Lessons Learned In 2020"
"Top Twenty Lessons Learned In 2020"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"This year has been a shock. Here is an early sketch of what I think I’ve learned.
1. Governments are fully capable of doing the unthinkable, and doing so suddenly with no exit plan, little consideration of cost, and a callous disregard for individual rights.
2. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights are largely irrelevant when governments declare an emergency.
3. The business lobby is far less powerful than I had previously assumed.
4. Many politicians care more about their personal power than public opinion.
5. People in general are less committed to their freedoms than I had previously believed.
6. Economic understanding is rare.
7. There is no such thing as settled science; scientists disagree, sometimes radically, and many times for political reasons.
8. The structure of law and the regime are fully capable of dramatic and even overnight change.
9. Influence is mysterious: the media report what fits their preferred narrative and ignore everyone with a different view.
10. Professional credentials are useful but not decisive for any argument: in a crisis they are weaponized.
11. People under duress, in the shock of lockdown, are capable of stunning lies and cruelty.
12. Most people haven’t the slightest clue about how to think about statistics and hard science; for many people, data are mere abstractions.
13. Hardly any political lobby or interest group genuinely cares about the poor, working classes, or marginalized groups, at least not enough to put their interests above a political agenda.
14. Very often people’s proclaimed “principles” are nothing but social signalling devices.
15. The propagation of truth is burdened by disadvantages relative to error and lies.
16. Known science is fully capable of vanishing in one generation.
17. No matter how seemingly intelligent and impressive are our institutions, they are neither created nor managed by equally intelligent people.
18. Markets are adaptive beyond anything I ever imagined possible.
19. Psychological health for most people is bound up with possessing rights and freedoms.
20. Individual moral courage is the society’s most precious treasure, as rare as it is powerful."
"Job Losses 'Stunning'”
"Job Losses 'Stunning'”
by Brian Maher
"The S&P entered “correction” this morning - down 10% from its most recent high. It later resumed its erring ways, gaining 9 points by closing whistle. The Dow Jones duplicated the mistake. It ended up gaining 52 points of its own after the opening wobbles. Technology stocks saved the day. Someone decided it was a grand occasion to “buy the dip.” The Nasdaq posted a 39-point gain on the day. But what explained this morning’s swoon? Here is the reason widely on offer: The latest unemployment numbers...
“The Labor Market Losses Are Stunning”: We learn this morning that 870,000 Americans filed unemployment claims last week. Economists had soothsaid 840,000. That is, the report was a “miss” — to the downside. Chris Rupkey, chief business economist for MUFG Union Bank: "The labor market losses are stunning in that they show there isn't enough work out there yet in the middle of September nine months after the Covid-19 virus shut the economy down."
And so the rambunctious recovery we were promised has proven a chimera, a phantom... elusive as quicksilver… and as illusory as swamp fire. Where is the cavalry to rescue the day? Where is the man atop the white steed charging in? The cries for aid go out. Yet they are met with silence…
We Need Fiscal Stimulus!!! Jerome Powell paces the floor back at headquarters, pleading for reinforcements. He has done what he can do. But he alone lacks the firepower to break the enemy, he appears to concede. Yesterday, he appeared before Congress and whinnied: The recovery would pack more oomph “if there is support coming both from Congress and from the Fed,” adding: “Direct fiscal support may be needed.” Thus, his men begin to question his generalship… and cough sadly behind their hands at his feebleness.
Strategist Dennis DeBusschere claims the Federal Reserve is “diminishing its own credibility by continually emphasizing the ineffectiveness of monetary policy and begging for fiscal support.” We were unaware the Federal Reserve retained any credibility whatsoever. But let it go. The fiscal support for which it begs is not forthcoming. It is a casualty of politics, the unfolding Battle of the Supreme Court.
No Reinforcements Until 2021: Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs: We think it is now clear that Congress will not attach additional fiscal stimulus to the continuing resolution (to avoid a government shutdown). This implies that after a final round of extra unemployment benefits that is currently being disbursed, any further fiscal support will likely have to wait until 2021.
Goldman Sachs - incidentally - has downgraded its Q4 GDP projections. Previously a 10% annualized rate, it now envisions a 4% annualized growth rate. Yet if a fresh wave of the virus rolls ashore this fall — a true plausibility — harsh lockdowns may resume. Millions more could be turned from their jobs. And growth could lag further yet. It is a grim possibility. Yet it is a possibility. But a vaccine is on the way, the sunshine-blowers assure us. Worry not. Yet we are not half so convinced it is true…
Don’t Count on a Vaccine: COVID-19 is of course a coronavirus. And as we have written before: "Not once - despite all the angels and saints - have medical men brewed a successful vaccine against a coronavirus. Decades of effort have led them down blind alley after blind alley after blind alley. We are further informed that the respiratory system is generally unreceptive to vaccination… as a round hole is unreceptive to a square peg. It is walled off, inaccessible to the vaccinary machinery.
Dr. Ian Frazer - a scientist - has himself helped develop vaccines. Says he: "It’s a separate immune system, if you like, which isn’t easily accessible by vaccine technology. It’s a bit like trying to get a vaccine to kill a virus on the surface of your skin." Not only are these vaccines poor respiratory disease fighters. They sometimes turn their coats… and go over to the enemy side: "One of the problems with corona vaccines in the past has been that when the immune response does cross over to where the virus-infected cells are it actually increases the pathology rather than reducing it. So that immunization with SARS corona vaccine caused, in animals, inflammation in the lungs, which wouldn’t otherwise have been there if the vaccine hadn’t been given."
In conclusion: "I think it would be fair to say even if we get something which looked quite encouraging in animals, the safety trials in humans will have to be fairly extensive before we would think about vaccinating a group of people who have not yet been exposed to the virus." Of course, it is possible the medical men will mix a vaccine that proves both safe and effective. Heaps and heaps of scientists labor furiously for that very purpose. But history is against them. And the possibility of a functioning vaccine in the near future appears… unlikely. What is likely - what is certain - is the continued yelling for fiscal stimulus…
The Myth of Consumer Spending: From the general run of financial analysts, to economists of nearly every model and make, to the Federal Reserve itself… we are told fiscal stimulus is the potion for our ills. And the larger the dose, the quicker the recovery. That is, spending money the nation does not have is the way up. That is, plunging deeper into debt is the royal route to prosperity. In back of it all is the conviction that consumption is king. Consumption represents 70% of the United States economy, they bellow. When consumption teeters the economy reels. We must therefore pry open wallets and set cash registers jingling. Americans must consume - lest the heavens fall.
Yet we have challenged the mother myth that consumer spending equals 70% of the United States economy. That is because official GDP calculations do not include heaping piles of economic goings-on. These piles include business investment and spending on “intermediate” goods. These are inputs required for the production of final goods - hence intermediate. The steel in the automobile, the sugar in the candy, the wood of the furniture… these are intermediate goods. Yet their purchase does not classify as consumer spending - else they would be double-counted.
Consumer Spending Is Only 30% of GDP? Explains economist Mark Skousen: GDP only measures the value of final output. It deliberately leaves out a big chunk of the economy -intermediate production or goods-in-process at the commodity, manufacturing and wholesale stages - to avoid double counting.
Now mix in expenditures on intermediate goods. What do we find? We find consumer consumption only constitutes perhaps 30% of GDP: I calculated total spending (sales or receipts) in the economy at all stages to be more than double GDP… By this measure - which I have dubbed gross domestic expenditures, or GDE - consumption represents only about 30% of the economy, while business investment (including intermediate output) represents over 50%.
Assume the foregoing is true. If business investment constitutes over 50% of the economy… perhaps business investment should be the grail… rather than consumption. Production must come first. We must produce before we can consume. “Products are paid for with products,” argued Jean-Baptiste Say over two centuries ago. Yet the consumption-mongers place the wagon cart of consumption before the draft horse of production. They would have us consume before we have produced. And their fiscal stimulus would yield little production. Thus they produce moonshine. And they would have all of us consume it. Barrels of the hooch will likely arrive early next year… with the hangover to follow."
"Of All Tyrannies..."
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
- C.S. Lewis
"The Internet Archive: The Resurrection Of Running 'Cause I Can't Fly"
As you may know the original "Running 'Cause I Can't Fly" blog was deleted by Blogger on Sept.8, for what I considered nonsensical reasons. Appealing for reinstatement wasn't possible considering their advice to retain an attorney to dispute certain allegations, with appalling monetary penalties should the appeal fail, and the risks were far too dangerous to a pauper like me lol. Discussing this with our friend Ray Esquivel, he mentioned the "WayBack Machine", which I failed to investigate until now. And there apparently, to my astonishment and for anyone interested, is a representative sampling of the original blog, as part of the Internet Archive!
Click image for larger size.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20131001000000*/http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/
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About the Internet Archive
The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.
We began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral - but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today we have 20+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and we work with 625+ library and other partners through our Archive-It program to identify important web pages.
As our web archive grew, so did our commitment to providing digital versions of other published works. Today our archive contains:
- 330 billion web pages
- 20 million books and texts
- 4.5 million audio recordings (including 180,000 live concerts)
- 4 million videos (including 1.6 million Television News programs)
- 3 million images
- 200,000 software programs
Anyone with a free account can upload media to the Internet Archive. We work with thousands of partners globally to save copies of their work into special collections.
Because we are a library, we pay special attention to books. Not everyone has access to a public or academic library with a good collection, so to provide universal access we need to provide digital versions of books. We began a program to digitize books in 2005 and today we scan 1,000 books per day in 28 locations around the world. Books published prior to 1923 are available for download, and hundreds of thousands of modern books can be borrowed through our Open Library site. Some of our digitized books are only available to the print disabled.
Like the Internet, television is also an ephemeral medium. We began archiving television programs in late 2000, and our first public TV project was an archive of TV news surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. In 2009 we began to make selected U.S. television news broadcasts searchable by captions in our TV News Archive. This service allows researchers and the public to use television as a citable and sharable reference.
The Internet Archive serves millions of people each day and is one of the top 300 web sites in the world. A single copy of the Internet Archive library collection occupies 45+ Petabytes of server space (and we store at least 2 copies of everything). We are funded through donations, grants, and by providing web archiving and book digitization services for our partners. As with most libraries we value the privacy of our patrons, so we avoid keeping the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of our readers and offer our site in https (secure) protocol. You can find information about our projects on our blog (including important announcements), contact us, buy swag in our store, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Welcome to the library!
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Hat tip to our friend Ray Esquivel for this information!
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