Greg Hunter, "Sugar Juice & Fraud Propped Up Failing Biden Economy"

"Sugar Juice & Fraud Propped

Up Failing Biden Economy"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Former Wall Street money manager and financial analyst Ed Dowd of phinancetechnologies.com is back with more data on how the Biden Administration propped up a failing economy during the 2024 election year. Dowd contends “crisis level spending” was being administered, along with some bigtime “fraud.” Dowd says, “We had 10% deficit to GDP during the Great Financial Crisis (2008 – 2009) when we actually had a crisis. We had 8% deficit to GDP during this election year. You have to ask yourself, what was the crisis? The crisis was to get the Biden Administration (and Kamala) re-elected. So, they went on binge spending. They borrowed from the future to try to ensure they won. They did it two ways: They hired massive amounts of government personnel to float the economy, and they also did illegal immigration. We are thinking it was 10 million to 15 million illegal immigrants that came in the last four years. The majority of the illegal immigrants came in the last two years. That stimulated the economy and raised the velocity of money as those people were given money. All the NGO’s that facilitated the illegal immigration also got money, and that stimulated the economy. 

This deficit added $2 trillion, and that was unproductive assets. So, we borrowed from the future to create more government jobs and imported unprecedented amounts of illegal immigrants that don’t add to the economy. That’s what we have, and President Trump’s policies are going to reverse all that sugar juice. There are going to be mass deportations and reduced government spending. That short term juice is going away, and it was not sustainable anyway. The bond markets are revolting, and that could not have gone on much longer.”

But it was not just massive money printing and debt creation that hid how bad the real economy was, it was very crooked data. Dowd says, “We also had bureaucratic incompetence or fraud or whatever you want to call it. They were padding the non-farm payroll numbers to the tune of 1.25 million jobs. If you look at the chart, which we don’t have here, it’s insane. It’s one of the biggest misses between reality and estimates we have ever seen. It’s a seven-sigma event. It’s 1.25 million jobs. It’s already started downward revisions. The 3rd quarter GDP of 3% will be revised down, and when we get the data in February, there will be more GDP economic revisions down. The capital markets made bad decisions on this data. The Fed made bad decisions on this data, and corporations made bad decisions on this data. The price tag is coming due in 2025.

Not only that, but we have a slowing economy across the globe. The amount of foreign assets in our stock market has never been higher, and this is all going to reverse. The price will be paid in 2025. What’s coming is coming. It’s how low do we go, and when do the animal spirits kick in? So, there is pain coming, and it’s up to the Trump Administration to get all their policies enacted. Then we have a hope and a prayer coming out the other side that we will be way better off. The bottom line is there is pain coming regardless. The question is how fast can we restart with Trump’s policies?”

Dowd likes gold as part of a portfolio, and he is suggesting people get some cash in hand. Dowd says the war in Syria is going to intensify, and you will be hearing much more negative news from that area in 2025. Dowd, who wrote the popular book “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023,” says the epidemic caused by the CV19 injections will be with us for the rest of our lives. Dowd released new data that added 800,000 people to the 4 million disabled we already had since the CV19 mRNA vax began. Dowd says, “The other thing that is going on is the increase in cancers. Science is following up. There is cancer causing agents in the mRNA vaccines, and we are seeing cancers on the rise. There are new (medical insurance) claims among young workers, especially cancer claims.  Insurance rates are going up across the board. The answer to what is going on is to raise prices. They are not differentiating between the vaxed and unvaxed. So, everybody’s prices are going up. Health insurance is going to become unaffordable for most people.” There is much more in the 48-minute interview.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with money manager and investment expert Ed Dowd, author of the updated book called “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023. The “sudden deaths” are still happening at epidemic levels!

- https://rumble.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "They’re Coming For Us"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 12/30/24

"They’re Coming For Us"

"Discover the shocking truth about California's latest gas ban and what it means for homeowners and renters. This eye-opening analysis reveals the staggering costs and hidden implications of forcing millions to switch from gas to electric appliances by 2026. A deep dive into the real numbers: $27 million to convert just one 500-unit apartment complex, $20.6 billion estimated total cost for one region, and $37,000 per unit. Who's really paying for this transition? The answer might surprise you. Beyond the gas ban, we're exploring troubling signs in the economy: rising foreclosure numbers, bond market concerns, and why recession predictions keep missing the mark. Plus, get insights on why small businesses are struggling with new labor regulations and minimum wage hikes."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jim Kunstler, "No, The Truth Is Not Just Another Story"

"No, The Truth Is Not Just Another Story"

by Jim Kunstler

"The Democrats are self-immolating on the altar of 

their own tenuous relationship with common decency." 

-Tom Luongo

"It must be obvious that the incoming government under Mr. Trump has one primary duty overall: sorting out truth from lies so the nation can reestablish a baseline reality to function upon. America is so punch-drunk from official lying that many intelligent people who ought to know better now proclaim that reality is unknowable, which is just a surrender to nihilism - the rejection of moral principle, a belief that the human project is meaningless.

This awful condition has led to the point where you know for sure that “Joe Biden” cannot possibly discharge his duties as chief executive, and yet nobody cares enough to investigate who is running things behind the front he puts up. That would generally be the job of the news media, which is supposed to function as the public’s auditor. Now, of course, you are persuaded that this was never really their job, that it was a sham, but that is just another lie.

The news was not flawless, but neither was it presented as nothing more than opinion. The news existed to register what happened day-to-day. It was not so much concerned with why things happened, which was much more difficult to establish, and usually reserved for the pages labeled “opinion,” so that you knew it was somebody’s conjecture. I know this because I worked as a newspaper reporter in the 1970s. I actually found out what was going on about this-and-that, wrote it up, and saw it in print hours later. The facts.

Journalism had some simple rules for reporting the facts about anything - and it’s hilarious that anyone thought it required a graduate degree from some credentialing mill like the Columbia U. School of Journalism. The news was often meddled-with by interested parties, government and business, but they did not completely overwhelm the ant-like labors of x-thousands of reporters in the field, and the stream of fact they circulated. Not all of it was subject to dispute, meddling, or opinion because it was self-evident: Joe Blow got shot...a helicopter crashed in Ohio...a volcano erupted in Peru...

Only over time, the past thirty years especially, our government grew and grew and one of the things that grew out of it was the nefarious “blob” dedicated to protecting the self-enlarging perquisites and interests of that government. Blobs will absorb things they encounter, and in a predatory way, the US government blob absorbed the US news media. The blob transformed the news into an engine for suppressing the facts or spinning them narratively when they could not be suppressed, in order to maximize the advantage of the government and to protect the operations of the blob itself.

It is also a fact that this blob is aligned mostly with Democratic Party, because that party is most avid for the continuing growth of government, and its members overwhelmingly dominate in the officialdom that dwells inside the DC Beltway. The numbers speak for themselves on the DC voter rolls.

So, a new government under Mr. Trump is feared cringingly by the news media. For one thing, the incoming government has tasked itself with reducing government substantially, eliminating many of its perquisites, and surgically excising the nefarious blob that is draining the purpose, meaning, and vitality out of our national life. The news media is terrified of being found-out for having acted as the blob’s chamberlain. We may find out exactly how that worked - how, for example, professional liars such as Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC were paid. What accounted for the amazing coordination of talking-points from day-to-day across all networks and newspapers?

We are about to find out how a whole lot of mystifying things have happened in recent years. For instance, those fantastic vote switcheroos in “Joe Biden’s” favor that occurred visibly right on TV in the wee hours of November 4, 2020? How did William Barr conceal the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop from Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys in the 2019 impeachment over a phone call to Ukraine? Who really has been making “presidential” decisions behind the false front of “Joe Biden?" Who in White House news reporters’ pool among the Cable News networks, The New York Times, and The Washington Post happened to know which officials were running the White House operation (did they not have sources)? 

How did the FBI engineer the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and with how many agents and operatives on-site? Who was in charge of the DNC pipe bomb caper? How has George and Alex Soros’s network of money-dispensing NGOs been allowed to buy law enforcement offices all over country? How did Merrick Garland’s errand boys get to New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County DA Fani Willis? What has been done with the billions of dollars sent to Ukraine? Why is the CDC still advertising and promoting mRNA Covid vaccines that they must know have killed and disabled millions of people? Who thought it was a good idea to fill the ranks of the US military with transexuals? How did the order to throw the US-Mexican border wide open move through the chain-of-command, exactly? Things like that.

It is going to be a great shock for many to hear the facts about these things and a lot more and to learn that we don’t just dwell in some matrix of tales told by idiots. The nihilism will eventually dissipate. Many enterprises in the news business won’t survive this, but human beings will insist on being informed, and the news business has been very busy rearranging itself. Even the body politic is capable of self-healing

Meanwhile, the “Joe Biden” Catering Company, Inc, has been busy preparing a whole lot of shit sandwiches to serve at the Trump inauguration, mostly in the form of financial chaos. The catering staff better be cognizant that their pranks will be found-out, too, along with all the other treasonous business of the wicked times we’ve lived through."

- https://www.kunstler.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 12/30/24"

"Economic Market Snapshot 12/30/24"

○

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

o

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

○

- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

○

Comprehensive, essential truth.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

○

Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

○

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

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And now... The End Game...

o

"Alert! Bad News, Russia Rejects Trump Plan, Nuclear Arms Race Begins; 48 Hours No More Gas; Bird Flu"

Canadian Prepper, 12/29/24

"Alert! Bad News, Russia Rejects Trump Plan, 

Nuclear Arms Race Begins; 48 Hours No More Gas; Bird Flu"

Comments here:

-https://www.youtube.com/

"We've Discovered Time Travel But It's Not What You Think"

Full screen recommended.

Clayton Morris, Redacted 12/29/24

"We've Discovered Time Travel But

 It's Not What You Think"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "The Future Of America: Thousands Of Stores Shutting Down"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/30/24

"The Future Of America: 

Thousands Of Stores Shutting Down"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Michael Jackson, "Earth Song"

Full screen recommended.

Michael Jackson, "Earth Song"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The rim of the large blue galaxy at the right is an immense ring-like structure 150,000 light years in diameter composed of newly formed, extremely bright, massive stars. AM 0644-741 is known as a ring galaxy and was caused by an immense galaxy collision. When galaxies collide, they pass through each other and their individual stars rarely come into contact. The large galaxy's ring-like shape is the result of the gravitational disruption caused by a small intruder galaxy passing through it. When this happens, interstellar gas and dust become compressed, causing a wave of star formation to move out from the impact point like a ripple across the surface of a pond. 

Other galaxies in the field of view are background galaxies, not interacting with AM 0644-741. Foreground spiky stars are within our own Milky Way. But the smaller intruder galaxy is caught above and right, near the top of the frame taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Ring galaxy AM 0644-741 lies about 300 million light years away toward the southern constellation Volans."

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

"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

"James Baldwin on How to Live Through Your Darkest Hour and Life as a Moral Obligation to the Universe"

"James Baldwin on How to Live Through Your 

Darkest Hour and Life as a Moral Obligation to the Universe"

by Maria Popova

“Yesterday has already vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yet emerged from the future. You have found an intermediate space,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote of life’s most haunting hour. But what we find in that intermediate space between past and future, between the costumed simulacrum of reality we so painstakingly construct with our waking lives and reality laid bare in the naked nocturnal mind, is not always a resting place of ease - for there dwells the self at its most elemental, which means the self most lucidly awake to its foibles and its finitude.

The disquietude this haunted hour can bring, and does bring, is what another titanic writer and rare seer into the depths of the human spirit - James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–December 1, 1987) - explored 130 years after Hawthorne in one of his least known, most insightful, and most personal essays.

In 1964, as the Harlem riots were shaking the foundation of society and selfhood, Baldwin joined talent-forces with the great photographer Richard Avedon - an old high school friend of his - to hold up an uncommonly revelatory cultural mirror with the book "Nothing Personal" (public library). Punctuating Avedon’s signature black-and-white portraits - of Nobel laureates and Hollywood celebrities, of the age- and ache-etched face of an elder born under slavery and the idealism-lit young faces of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Georgia, of the mentally ill perishing in asylums and the newlyweds at City Hall ablaze with hope - are four stirring essays by Baldwin, the first of which gave us his famous sobering observation that “it has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within.”

At no time does the terror within, Baldwin argues in the third essay, bubble to the surface of our being more ferociously than in that haunting hour between past and future, between our illusions of permanence and perfection, and the glaring fact of our finitude and our fallibility, between being and non-being. He writes:

"Four AM can be a devastating hour. The day, no matter what kind of day it was is indisputably over; almost instantaneously, a new day begins: and how will one bear it? Probably no better than one bore the day that is ending, possibly not as well. Moreover, a day is coming one will not recall, the last day of one’s life, and on that day one will oneself become as irrecoverable as all the days that have passed. It is a fearful speculation - or, rather, a fearful knowledge - that, one day one’s eyes will no longer look out on the world. One will no longer be present at the universal morning roll call. The light will rise for others, but not for you."

Half a century before the physicist Brian Greene examined how this very awareness is the wellspring of meaning to our ephemeral lives and a century after Tchaikovsky found beauty amid the wreckage of the soul at 4AM, Baldwin adds: "Sometimes, at four AM, this knowledge is almost enough to force a reconciliation between oneself and all one’s pain and error. Since, anyway, it will end one day, why not try it - life - one more time?"

After singing some beautiful and heartbreaking Bessie Smith lyrics into his essay - lyrics from “Long Road,” a song about reconciling the knowledge that one is ultimately alone with the irrepressible impulse to reach out for love, “to grasp again, with fearful hope, the unwilling, unloving human hand” - Baldwin continues: "I think all of our voyages drive us there; for I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time."

That alone, Baldwin insists, is reason enough to be, as Nietzsche put it, a “yea-sayer” to life - to face the uncertainty of our lives with courage, to face the fact of our mortality with courage, and to fill this blink of existence bookended by nothingness with the courage of a bellowing aliveness.

In a passage that calls to mind Galway Kinnell’s lifeline of a poem “Wait,” composed for a young friend on the brink of suicide, Baldwin writes: "For, perhaps - perhaps - between now and the last day, something wonderful will happen, a miracle, a miracle of coherence and release. And the miracle on which one’s unsteady attention is focused is always the same, however it may be stated, or however it may remain unstated. It is the miracle of love, love strong enough to guide or drive one into the great estate of maturity, or, to put it another way, into the apprehension and acceptance of one’s own identity. For some deep and ineradicable instinct - I believe - causes us to know that it is only this passionate achievement which can outlast death, which can cause life to spring from death."

And yet, so often, we lose faith in this miracle, lose the perspective we call faith - so often it slips between the fingers fanned with despair or squeezes through the fist clenched with rage. We lose perspective most often, Baldwin argues, at four AM: "At four AM, when one feels that one has probably become simply incapable of supporting this miracle, with all one’s wounds awake and throbbing, and all one’s ghastly inadequacy staring and shouting from the walls and the floor - the entire universe having shrunk to the prison of the self - death glows like the only light on a high, dark, mountain road, where one has, forever and forever! lost one’s way. And many of us perish then."

What then? A generation after Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry composed his beautiful manifesto for night as an existential clarifying force for the deepest truths of the heart, Baldwin offers: "But if one can reach back, reach down - into oneself, into one’s life - and find there some witness, however unexpected or ambivalent, to one’s reality, one will be enabled, though perhaps not very spiritedly, to face another day… What one must be enabled to recognize, at four o’clock in the morning, is that one has no right, at least not for reasons of private anguish, to take one’s life. All lives are connected to other lives and when one man goes, much more goes than the man goes with him. One has to look on oneself as the custodian of a quantity and a quality - oneself - which is absolutely unique in the world because it has never been here before and will never be here again.

Baldwin - whom U.S. Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks described as “love personified” in introducing his last public appearance before his death - wedges into this foundational structure of soul-survival the fact that in a culture of habitual separation and institutionalized otherness, such self-regard is immensely difficult. And yet, he insists with the passion of one who has proven the truth of his words with his own life, we must try - we must reach across the divides within and without, across the abysses of terror and suspicion, with a generous and largehearted trust in one another, which is at bottom trust in ourselves.

Echoing his contemporary and kindred visionary Leonard Bernstein’s insistence that “we must believe, without fear, in people,” Baldwin adds what has become, or must become, the most sonorous psychosocial refrain bridging his time and ours: "Where all human connections are distrusted, the human being is very quickly lost."

More than half a century later, "Nothing Personal" remains a masterwork of rare insight into and consolation for the most elemental aches of the human spirit. For a counterpoint to this nocturnal fragment, savor the great nature writer Henry Beston, writing a generation before Baldwin, on how the beauty of night nourishes the human spirit, then revisit Baldwin on resisting the mindless of majority, how he learned to truly see, the writer’s responsibility in a divided society, his advice on writing, his historic conversation with Margaret Mead about forgiveness and responsibility, and his only children’s book."

- https://www.themarginalian.org/

Freely download "Nothing Personal", by James Baldwin, here:

- https://scholarworks.umass.edu/

The Daily "Near You?"

Stockholm, Sweden. Thanks for stopping by!

"And There Comes A Time..."

“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Don Miguel Ruiz, "Don't Take Anything Personally"

"Don't Take Anything Personally"

by Don Miguel Ruiz

"Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally. Using an earlier example, if I see you on the street and I say, "Hey, you are so stupid," without knowing you, it's not about you; it's about me. If you take it personally, perhaps you believe you are stupid. Maybe you think to yourself, "How does he know?  Is he clairvoyant, or can everybody see how stupid I am?"

You take it personally because you agree with whatever was said. As soon as you agree, the poison goes through you, and you are trapped in the dream of hell. What causes you to be trapped is what we call personal importance. Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about "me." During the period of our education, or our domestication, we learn to take everything personally. We think we are responsible for everything. Me, me, me, always me!

Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.

Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly, it has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, and the opinions they give are according to the agreements they have in their own minds. Their point of view comes from all the programming they received during domestication.

If someone gives you an opinion and says, "Hey, you look so fat," don't take it personally, because the truth is that this person is dealing with his or her own feelings, beliefs, and opinions. That person tried to send poison to you and if you take it personally, then you take that poison and it becomes yours. Taking things personally makes you easy prey for these predators, the black magicians. They can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you whatever poison they want, and because you take it personally, you eat it up.

You eat all their emotional garbage, and now it becomes your garbage. But if you do not take it personally, you are immune in the middle of hell. Immunity to poison in the middle of hell is the gift of this agreement.

When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts. You make something big out of something so little, because you have the need to be right and make everybody else wrong. You also try hard to be right by giving them your own opinions. In the same way, whatever you feel and do is just a projection of your own personal dream, a reflection of your own agreements. What you say, what you do and the opinions you have are according to the agreements you have made- and these opinions have nothing to do with me.

It is not important to me what you think about me, and I don't take what you think personally. I don't take it personally when people say, "Miguel, you are the best," and I also don't take it personally when they say, "Miguel, you are the worst." I know that when you are happy you will tell me, "Miguel, you are such an angel!" But, when you are mad at me you will say, "Oh, Miguel, you are such a devil! You are so disgusting. How can you say those things?" Either way, it does not affect me because I know what I am. I don't have the need to be accepted. I don't have the need to have someone tell me, "Miguel, you are doing so good!" or "How dare you do that!"

No, I don't take it personally. Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is nothing personal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me. Others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system, so nothing they think about me is really about me, but it is about them.

You may even tell me, "Miguel, what you are saying is hurting me." But it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself. There is no way that I can take this personally. Not because I don't believe in you or don't trust you, but because I know that you see the world with different eyes, with your eyes. You create an entire picture or movie in your mind, and in that picture you are the director, you are the producer, you are the main actor or actress. Everyone else is a secondary actor or actress. It is your movie.

The way that you see that movie is according to the agreements you have made with life. Your point of view is something personal to you. It is no one's truth but yours. Then, if you get mad at me, I know you are dealing with yourself. I am the excuse for you to get mad. And you get mad because you are afraid, because you are dealing with fear. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will get mad at me. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will hate me. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will be jealous or sad.

If you live without fear, if you love, there is no place for any of these emotions. If you don't feel any of those emotions, it is logical that you will feel good. When you feel good, everything around you is good. When everything around you is good, everything makes you happy. You are loving everything that is around you, because you are loving yourself. Because you like the way you are. Because you are content with you. Because you are happy with your life. You are happy with the movie you are producing, happy with your agreements with life. You are at peace, and you are happy. You live in that state of bliss where everything is so wonderful, and everything is so beautiful. In that state of bliss you are making love all the time with everything that you perceive.”

- http://www.livinglifefully.com/

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "I Worried"

"How It Really Is"

We all are...

If you were facing a firing squad, and we all are...

wouldn't you at least want to know why?

And who stood you against the wall?

"Everyday High and Higher Prices"

"Everyday High and Higher Prices"

by Joel Bowman

"Too many factors must be known, 

and no one can know them."

~ Henry Hazlitt

"Everyday low and lower prices. That's the free market's promise to you. And if the free market were allowed to operate properly, that is to say, if it were left to function as the name suggests, freely, lower prices are precisely what you would expect to see. Lower prices at the grocery store... at retail outlets... at the gas pump and online...at the game and at the wing bar.

And yet, as inquiring minds fairly recognize, that's simply not the case. Rather than enjoying a cornucopia of hyper-abundance, brought about by the turbo-charged purchasing power of the dollar, the average working stiff has witnessed his greenbacks plummet in value. In real terms - that is, adjusted for inflation - household net income has gone virtually nowhere in the U.S. over the past half a century. This despite the fact that most households now send two warm bodies off to the daily production line...How could this be?

Road to Nowhere: With all that extra input... with a growing population... mechanized machinery... Moore's Law... the ubiquitous wonders of the digital age... cryptos... EVs... NFTs... ChatGPTs... and all the rest... shouldn't we expect the price of production and, therefore, the cost of associated goods and services, to fall... or, dare we utter the dreaded D-word... "deflate"?

Price deflation is progress, after all. Lower prices – ceterus paribus – are a surefire sign we're getting better at "making stuff." It means we're becoming more efficient. This happy outcome is the result of increased competition and scale in the marketplace. It’s the glowing, cherub-cheeked lovechild of Schumpeter's "creative destruction" and the compounding effect of "learned processes." Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that.

In this way, lower prices ought to serve as a "kind of dividend for the working man,” as Jim Grant, editor of the venerable Grant's Interest Rate Observer, once (ahem) observed.

“Not so fast!” cry the know-it-all federales. After a year of grinding, multi-decade high inflation, consumers are growing weary of watching the price of their favorite goods ticking up every time they visit the store... or disappearing from the shelves altogether. See everything from baby formula to toilet roll... eggs to prescription medicine... cement to champagne.

As we've pointed out the prices of real world goods, paid for by real world people, satisfying real world needs and demands, are through the roof. Flour was 23.4% more expensive in dollar terms in 2022… lettuce was up 24.9%… butter by 31.4%… and margarine by 43.8%. Then there’s airfares, eggs and school lunches, up 28.5%… 59.9%… and 305%, respectively, for the year.

Whatever happened to “price stability”... one half of the Fed’s own so-called “dual mandate.” (The other half being “maximum employment.”)"

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"What Really Drives the World"

"What Really Drives the World"

by Brian Maher

"O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;

It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock

The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss

Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;

But, O, what damned minutes tells he o’er..."

Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!"

- Iago speaks to Othello, William Shakespeare, "Othello

"The world in not driven by greed. It’s driven by envy.” Here is the sage conclusion of Mr. Charles Munger, aged 98 years. Mr. Munger is of course the partner of Warren Buffett and legendary vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. What human vice ranks fourth among the seven lethal sins? That is correct - envy. Today we evaluate the acid emotion of envy. We further document how envy can wreck a man’s wealth… as easily it can wreck his soul.

“Hate the Man Who Is Better off Than You Are”: “The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence,” argued economics journalist Henry Hazlitt long ago: “Hate the man who is better off than you are.” Continued Hazlitt: "Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence or stupidity."

The History Pages Are Filled With Hatred: “Hate the man who is better off than you are…” History is a detailed diary of this very hatred.

Jealousy: The average man is not jealous of the champion golfer who once shot 60… but the fellow duffer in his weekend foursome who once broke 80. He is not jealous of the Hollywood movie actor who hauls in the unparalleled and unattainable beauty. He is jealous instead of his acquaintance who hauls in the pretty-enough gal he himself set his cap for - the seven out of 10 gal. Is the average man jealous of a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk with their billions and billions? He is not. Yet he is jealous of the insurance salesman down the street who takes in $10,000 more than himself.

The Sage of Baltimore - H.L. Mencken - once defined a wealthy man as “a fellow who earns $100 more than his wife’s sister’s husband.” Be assured, the wife’s sister… and her husband… feel that $100 keenly.

Envy Is Never Contented: Envy sees only what it lacks. Not what it has. Today’s average fellow lives royally compared with actual royalty of yesteryear. Next to them he wallows in a sort of oriental luxury. Yet the envious man of today does not rank himself against the royalty of yesterday. He ranks himself against the royalty of today, though it wears no crown on its head. Envy gives him a mighty itch he is forever scratching. It is never soothed.

The Never-ending Chase: That is why a man’s eye is forever glued to the next rung of the ladder… the prettier plum just out of reach… the grass on the other side of the fence that is greener. A poor man may tell himself he’d settle for the middle class. But once he finds himself lodged therein, discontentment soon bubbles within him. He lights out for the upper classes. If by grace he attains it, he at once takes notice of the floor above him. And he begins another merry chase up the ladder. There is always another.

Such is man. He focuses not on what he has… but on what he lacks. He is forever chasing rainbows.

It’s Not Always Negative: Here we do not criticize. We merely observe. And your editor, by his own admission, offers no exception. Be assured he has his sights on a thing - or three - beyond his outstretched grasp. Besides, it is this ceaseless striving that accounts for all material progress. A contented civilization does not erect skyscrapers, amass empires or rocket into space. Yet beware of envy’s tempting snares. They surround you on all sides - particularly in the forms of television and social media.The French Revolution. Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution. China’s Cultural Revolution. Perhaps even America’s unfolding cultural revolution of its own.

We cite but some examples. They all set out to fix wrongs. They mostly ended up wrecking rights. The right to life itself was often among them.

Jealousy Isn’t Envy: Yet let us distinguish jealousy from envy. The two are siblings - yet they are not twins. It is said a man is jealous of his betters. Yet it is only partly true. The average man harbors no jealousy for the great man. He is not jealous of the Alexanders… the Caesars… the Napoleons of this world. These are men stamped from a finer metal. And the average man inwardly acknowledges it is not his metal. The sparrow understands its place is not among the soaring eagles. No. The subject of the average man’s jealousy is his peer - the average man.

Envy Poisons Your Investment Decisions" Here you see various “stars” and “influencers” soaring on wings of leisure… rocketing from one good time to the next… enjoying the high life. They appear to have life by the snout. And it may arouse your envy.

Yet this very envy may poison your investments. Mr. Marcelo Perez of Alhambra Investments: "In a day and age where… keeping up with the Joneses (or the Kardashians, or the Windsors) is no longer a silent, Sisyphian struggle but a top-rated TV series or Netflix special, it is only natural for this poison to seep into the investing world…"

YouTube stars dole out “investment strategies” left and right, extolling the benefits of the newest and coolest moneymaking venture, as per views, of course. Message boards are full of posts containing stock and option trades that yielded percent returns in the hundreds and thousands, over the course of no more [than a] few days. Virtually riskless, they say…:And even if we are skeptical, we become befuddled with amazement, consumed by “Why not me?” We are driven by envy as much as we are by greed. We see that our neighbor is excelling, or so we think, so we change our own course, or regret that we didn’t take the plunge."

The Siren Call of Envy: You must instead resist envy’s siren cries. As Odysseus of old, you must chain yourself to the mainmast so that you cannot yield to the false temptations… and crash your vessel against the punishing rocks. As Mr Perez notes: Premier celebrities such as Matt Damon, Kim Kardashian and Tom Brady all promoted cryptocurrencies. Many followed because they yearned “to be covered in that heavenly glitter ourselves and open an account at FTX.”

Mr. Perez: "In investing (and in life), we need to stop constantly peering into the lives of others who appear to have what we want. We must try to avoid the siren song of high returns without taking risk into account. We must try to avoid the fool’s gold and the snake oil that cures all…" Avoiding envy, and its associated pitfalls, is one of the simple secrets to a successful investment portfolio, and life.

The Wisdom of the Ancients: Can you do it? It is not easy. The sirens are extremely enchanting. Yet maybe, perhaps on some distant tomorrow… men will learn to take ease in their own inn, however modest… and wherever they happen to find it. It seems they will find peace nowhere else. We all might recall the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.”

- dailyreckoning.com

"The Only Animal..."

"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is

struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be."

- William Hazlitt

Free Download: Henry Hazlitt, "Economics In One Lesson"

"'Economics In One Lesson':

 A Review of a Classic"

by Sean Ring

"If you’ve ever found yourself cornered at a dinner party by that one guy with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye and a penchant for explaining why the economy is “just a series of smoke and mirrors,” you’ll appreciate Henry Hazlitt’s "Economics in One Lesson." It’s The Book that offers the economically curious a set of brass knuckles to face the muddled nonsense of popular economic “thought.” And by “thought,” I mean whatever passes for it in political speeches, social media debates, or the average op-ed.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, a quick primer: Hazlitt’s book is an economics classic, albeit one that uses plain language to dismantle the kind of Keynesian tomfoolery that has turned deficit spending into a national sport. Published in 1946, it’s a slim volume that packs a heavyweight punch. Think of it as the literary equivalent of Muhammad Ali in his prime - quick, elegant, and devastatingly effective.

A Double-Edged Sword: Hazlitt begins with the titular “One Lesson”: the art of economics consists of not just looking at the immediate effects of any policy but at the longer-term effects, as well. Further, it demands that the consequences of that policy be examined for all groups, not just one. A lesson so obvious it seems like common sense - until you realize it’s precisely what most policymakers and pundits ignore.

Why? Looking at all the consequences of an economic policy requires work, patience, and critical thinking. It’s far easier to promise free lunches than to explain why those lunches aren’t free. Hazlitt’s brilliance lies in his ability to show how economic fallacies perpetuate precisely because they focus on immediate, visible effects while conveniently ignoring long-term, invisible ones. The result? Politicians handing out economic band-aids while ignoring the arterial bleeding beneath.

Smashing Windows (and Fallacies): Hazlitt’s first stop is the famous “Broken Window Fallacy.” You’ve heard the argument before, even if you didn’t realize it: destruction stimulates economic activity. The idea is that rebuilding a shattered window, for example, creates jobs for glaziers, boosts spending, and pumps life into the economy. What could possibly be wrong with that? Everything.

Hazlitt dismantles this nonsense by pointing out the unseen cost: the money spent on the new window could have been used for something else - perhaps a new pair of shoes. Instead of creating new value, we’ve merely replaced what was lost. It’s like celebrating a flat tire because it “supports” the tire repair industry. Hazlitt’s takeaway: destruction doesn’t create wealth; it squanders resources. So, the next time someone extols the “economic benefits” of rebuilding after a hurricane or a riot, feel free to remind them that their logic is as sound as a screen door on a submarine.

Not Free, But Taxpayer-Funded: Ah, public works! The bread and circuses of modern governance. Hazlitt addresses the perennial myth that government spending on infrastructure - roads, bridges, statues of politicians with dubious legacies - is a magic wand for economic growth.

But wait, you ask, aren’t those things good? Sure, they can be. The problem, Hazlitt reminds us, is that taxes fund such projects. And taxes, lest we forget, take money out of the pockets of individuals and businesses. What could those people have done with that money? We’ll never know because the government has already spent it on a bridge to nowhere. Hazlitt’s biting critique should be required reading for anyone who still believes in the economic tooth fairy.

Luddites of the World, Unite! Ever since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, there’s been a persistent fear that machines will destroy jobs. Hazlitt gleefully trashes this notion, pointing out that technological progress doesn’t eliminate jobs; it reallocates them. Machines increase productivity, lower costs, and free up human labor for other pursuits - like writing snarky economic reviews. It’s a shame Barack Obama didn’t read this book. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bemoaned how ATMs took the jobs of bank tellers. (They didn’t; see here.)

The real “curse” of machinery isn’t job destruction; it exposes the economic illiteracy of those who cry wolf every time a new technology emerges. Remember when computers were going to put us all out of work? Funny how that turned out.

The Donald Should Read About Tariffs: Hazlitt’s takedown of tariffs is a masterclass in economic wit. Hazlitt argues tariffs are a tax on consumers disguised as “protection” for domestic industries. Yes, they shield those businesses from foreign competition. But they shield them at the expense of everyone else. Higher prices, reduced choices, and economic inefficiency are the actual costs of protectionism. So, the next time someone suggests that tariffs are a “win” for the economy, remind them that taxing your citizens to prop up uncompetitive industries is about as bright as burning your house down to keep warm.

Inflation: The Illusion of Prosperity: Hazlitt’s chapter on inflation is remarkably prescient in today’s economic climate. He explains inflation is a stealthy way for governments to rob their citizens, not a sign of prosperity. It’s a tax that a central bank unethically levies, not a legislature. Inflation erodes the value of savings, distorts investment, and wreaks havoc on the economy. And yet, inflation is often sold to the public as a necessary evil or even a good thing. Hazlitt’s advice? Don’t buy it. Inflation benefits debtors (read: governments) at the expense of savers and wage earners. It’s the economic equivalent of a shell game, and you’re the sucker being fleeced.

Profit: Capitalism’s Dirty Word: Perhaps one of Hazlitt’s most important lessons is his defense of profits. In an era where “profit” is often treated as a four-letter word, Hazlitt reminds us that profits are essential for economic progress. They signal where resources should be allocated, incentivize innovation, and reward risk-taking. Destroy profits, and you destroy the engine of growth. It’s a message that should resonate with anyone who’s ever complained about greedy corporations while simultaneously complaining about them by posting on X from their iPhones while wolfing down avocado toast and an egg nog latte.

Why You Should Read This Book (Again): Hazlitt’s "Economics in One Lesson" is a survival guide for navigating the economic nonsense that permeates modern discourse. So, the next time someone tells you that we need more government spending, higher tariffs, or artificially low interest rates, do yourself a favor: hand them a copy of "Economics in One Lesson" and watch as their arguments crumble faster than a house caught in a tornado’s path.

Wrap Up: Hazlitt’s "Economics in One Lesson" is a welcome relief in a world celebrating economic illiteracy. It reminds us that good economics is about understanding the unseen, the long-term, and the big picture. So, grab a copy, pour yourself a stiff drink, and prepare to see the world - and its economic absurdities - in a new light. Just be warned: once you’ve read Hazlitt, you’ll never be able to watch the news without yelling at your TV."

- https://dailyreckoning.com/

Freely download "Economics In One Lesson", by Henry Hazlitt, here:

- https://www.liberalstudies.ca/