"Once Upon a Time, The End"

"Once Upon a Time, The End"

by Martin Zamyatin

 "Those that can make you believe absurdities 

can make you commit atrocities."

- Voltaire

"The small group of devoted followers gathered around Chicago housewife Dorothy Martin sat in stunned silence as the clock on her suburban living room wall struck midnight on the twentieth of December, 1954…and nothing happened. Many had left jobs and spouses and given away all their money and possessions in order to await the arrival of alien beings from the planet Clarion, who Martin had assured them would descend at that appointed hour, carrying the faithful few off in their flying saucers just before huge floods engulfed the planet Earth. Finally, four hours after their scheduled departure time, Martin broke her silence. 

As the group readjusted their bras, belts, and zippers - having been instructed to discard any metal objects which might interfere with the aliens’ telepathic radio transmissions - their tearful host revealed the reason why their intergalactic rescuers had failed to appear: Apparently it had all been only an elaborate test of faith, and the group’s advanced state of enlightenment had saved the entire planet from a watery destruction!

Surprisingly, only one or two of Martin’s followers were unconvinced by this perfectly rational explanation. Among them, however, was social psychologist Leon Festinger, who had secretly infiltrated the group. Festinger would later write about Martin - using the pseudonym of Marian Keech - in his groundbreaking 1958 book, "When Prophecy Fails." (Not surprisingly, Festinger is credited with coining the psychological term ‘cognitive dissonance.’) 

Following publication of Festinger’s book, the group predictably collapsed under the weight of public ridicule. Martin fled to Peru to warn the clueless natives about the imminent re-emergence of Atlantis, before later resurfacing in Arizona, where she joined crackpot L. Ron Hubbard’s nascent pseudoscientific movement, Scientology.

It seems that for as long as people have inhabited the world, they have anticipated its imminent demise. (In fact, the oldest known apocalyptic prediction is depicted on Assyrian tablets from 2800 BC.) In what may be the earliest example in European folklore, a Frankish villager wandered off into the forest in 591, only to be accosted by a swarm of ravenous flies. Overwhelmed, the poor fellow completely lost his mind and returned to his village clothed in animal pelts, claiming he was Jesus Christ, sent to gather his flock before the coming Rapture. (Perhaps resenting the competition, a local bishop hired a gang of thugs to capture the Lord of the Flies, who they rapturously hacked into little bits.)

The failure of one apocalyptic prophecy not only failed to deter its devoted followers but in fact spawned several entirely new religions. When the world failed to end as predicted in the ‘Great Disappointment’ of 1843-44, Massachusetts preacher William Miller’s tens of thousands of followers splintered off to found the Seventh Day Adventists, as well as the obnoxious doorknockers known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. When the next fateful year of 1874 passed without the desired fireworks, the latter’s charismatic founder, Charles Taze Russell, explained that Jesus had indeed returned, but was invisible to all except the truly devout. (Predictably, few dared admit to being lacking in the requisite level of faith.) 

The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, had declared way back in 1832 that 1890 would be the year of Jesus’s long awaited return engagement. (Later jailed for fraud, Smith somehow failed to predict his own deliverance by an angry mob at age 39.) Russell revised the fateful year to 1881…then 1914…and finally, 1918. (The latter dates spanned World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic, events that while apocalyptic for many, fell short of being world ending.)

Our own time has seen the horrors of the Peoples Temple - in which 914 adults and children committed suicide in the jungles of Guyana in 1978; the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists - 75 of whom died in the FBI standoff at Waco in 1993; Aum Shinri Kyo -whose poison gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1994-95 left 19 innocent people dead; and -neither least nor unfortunately, last - Heaven’s Gate, 39 of whose members committed suicide in 1996, fully expecting (like Dorothy Martin) their spirits to be carried away by aliens hiding in the wake of an approaching comet.

It was probably no coincidence that all of these cults were acting in anticipation of an impending Bible-inspired Day ofJudgement. One is tempted to blame these kinds of incidents on the delusions of a small minority of misguided religious fanatics, except that millions of people alive today are expecting an imminent Biblical apocalypse. In a 2012 global poll, fully one out of 7 people said they thought the world would end during their lifetime - and rather ominously, Americans topped the list of doomsayers at 22%. Since their government has the means to fulfil their death wish many times over, one can only hope their gloomy prediction won’t one day become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just call it a bedtime story for humanity."

- http://www.321gold.com/editorials/

“Economic Nightmare; Dangerous Times Ahead; Wealth Destruction; Inflation”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Economic Nightmare; Dangerous Times Ahead; 

Wealth Destruction; Inflation”

○

Related:

"Economic War with China is the Final Step Before the 'Great Reset'”

"When There are No Consequences for Anything"

 

"When There are No Consequences for Anything"

by Jim Kunstler

"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague." 

- Marcus Tullius Cicero, from a speech given to the Roman Senate, 

recorded in approximately 42 B.C. by Sallust.

"The Democratic Party with its deep state auxiliaries begins to look like a monstrous hybrid of Matt Taibbi’s fabled Vampire Squid and the skulking Kraken of the maelstrom, devouring the innards of our republic in its deep, dark depths one institution at a time while a storm rages on the surface and citizen’s eyelids flutter in horror, frozen like sleepers in the paralysis of a nightmare, at the rising havoc and ruin. Or, to put it plainly: what the f**k is going on in America?

Ongoing sedition is the answer, with fetid slime trails across the political landscape everywhere you look. We’re informed hours ago, for instance, that the top lawyers in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel operation wiped all the records from their cell phones before the DOJ Inspector General could collect evidence of their communications from the SC team’s three-year exercise in overthrowing a president. How is that not an obstruction of justice, and who will answer for it?

That’s on top of many other bits of essential evidence in the RussiaGate coup and other perfidious acts mysteriously gone missing - Special Agent Joe Pientka’s original “302” document from the Flynn interrogation, thousands of Strzok-and-Page’s text messages, official verifications of the Steele Dossier submitted to the FISA court, communications between the FBI “small group” (Comey, McCabe, Priestap, Carlin, McCord, Baker, et al.) plus CIA Chief John Brennan and DNI James Clapper with Senators Burr and Warner on the Senate Intel Committee, communications between “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, Col. Alexander Vindman and House Intel Committee chair Adam Schiff, records of CIA prop Stephan Halper’s doings with the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, all communication records between State Department official Jonathan Winer and British ex-spy Christopher Steele….

And now, like a fever building to climax, comes the news right out-front that the Democratic Party intends to foment insurrection if the election goes against them. They’re supporting the coming siege of Lafayette Square set to kick off fifty days of “protest” across from the White House beginning Sept 17 as a warm-up for anarchy in the streets across the nation following the Nov 3 vote. Behind us is the summer of riots, arson, and looting, and who paid to support all that? Who paid for flying Antifa and BLM personnel from city to city, feeding and housing them, paying for their “commercial-grade” fireworks, pallets of bricks, gas masks, lasers, bullhorns, black riot outfits? Why is it hard to find out who bought the plane tickets, booked the hotels?  Months have gone by since all that started. Is someone in the DOJ following the money? And following their communications (especially considering the crimes against property they’ve committed)?

Why is Christopher Wray still director of the FBI? Why is Bruce Ohr still collecting a paycheck from the DOJ? Why is Eric Ciaramella still keeping a seat warm at the CIA? What exactly was US Attorney John Huber doing for two years? Why is Mark Esper still running the Pentagon? Why is General James Mattis not facing a military court of inquiry for proposing a coup against the president? Why is Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan still defying the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the case against General Flynn? Why is it taking years to resolve the legal issues around Julian Assange while he rots in jail? Where exactly does William Barr stand with all this? And is it possible that John Durham’s efforts to unravel the giant hairball of sedition begins-and-ends with one lame guilty plea of petty fall-guy Kevin Clinesmith?

It may sound paranoid, but I feel compelled to ask: is Barack Obama running some kind of shadow government from his Kalorama fortress  - that is, issuing suggestions (or instructions) to scores of loyal high officials in federal agencies for opposing and undermining everything the current president attempts to do - such as Mr. Trump’s executive order this week to cease and desist the depraved “critical race theory” and “white privilege” struggle sessions run all over DC by obscenely highly-paid “diversity-and-inclusion” consultants? And what role is Hillary Clinton playing behind-the-scenes these pre-election days, since her foundation is so heavily invested in the DNC, and she is issuing directives on subverting the election through a complicit news media?

How on earth can responsible adults pretend that the empty shell of Joe Biden is a plausible candidate for president? What will Joe do in the two scheduled debates without his teleprompter or an earpiece? He can’t possibly perform without them (and barely even with them, it appears lately). When was the last time Joe Biden took impromptu questions from reporters? When has he stood before a crowd of actual voters, not live-action-role-players picked by his handlers? Who is trying to hustle the USA out of existence and what are you going to do to stop them?"

- https://kunstler.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "The Middle Class Is Going EXTINCT By Design!"

Gregory Mannarino,

"The Middle Class Is Going EXTINCT By Design!"

 - https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: Neil H, "The Remembering"

Neil H, "The Remembering"

"A Look to the Heavens"

Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the gorgeous island universe is one of the largest Hubble images ever made of a complete galaxy.

Click image for larger size.

NGC 1300 spans over 100,000 light-years and the Hubble image reveals striking details of the galaxy's dominant central bar and majestic spiral arms. In fact, on close inspection the nucleus of this classic barred spiral itself shows a remarkable region of spiral structure about 3,000 light-years across. Like other spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, NGC 1300 is thought to have a supermassive central black hole.

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200611.html

"Life Grows in the Soil of Time; This I Believe"

"Life Grows in the Soil of Time; This I Believe"

by Thomas Mann

"What I believe, what I value most, is transitoriness. But is not transitoriness - the perishableness of life - something very sad? No! It is the very soul of existence. It imparts value, dignity, interest to life. Transitoriness creates time - and “time is the essence.” Potentially at least, time is the supreme, most useful gift.

Time is related to - yes, identical with - everything creative and active, with every progress toward a higher goal. Without transitoriness, without beginning or end, birth or death, there is no time, either. Timelessness - in the sense of time never ending, never beginning - is a stagnant nothing. It is absolutely uninteresting.

Life is possessed by tremendous tenacity. Even so its presence remains conditional, and as it had a beginning, so it will have an end. I believe that life, just for this reason, is exceedingly enhanced in value, in charm.

One of the most important characteristics distinguishing man from all other forms of nature is his knowledge of transitoriness, of beginning and end, and therefore of the gift of time. In man, transitory life attains its peak of animation, of soul power, so to speak. This does not mean man alone would have a soul. Soul quality pervades all beings. But man’s soul is most awake in his knowledge of the interchangeability of the terms “existence” and “transitoriness.”

To man, time is given like a piece of land, as it were, entrusted to him for faithful tilling; a space in which to strive incessantly, achieve self-realization, move onward and upward. Yes, with the aid of time, man becomes capable of wresting the immortal from the mortal.

Deep down, I believe - and deem such belief natural to every human soul - that in the universe prime significance must be attributed to this earth of ours. Deep down, I believe that the creation of the universe out of nothingness and then of life out of inorganic state ultimately aimed at the creation of man. I believe that man is meant as a great experiment whose possible failure by man’s own guilt would be paramount to the failure of creation itself.

Whether this belief be true or not, man would be well-advised if he behaved as though it were."

- https://thisibelieve.org/essay/16783/

German-born novelist, essayist, and philosopher Thomas Mann won the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature principally for his novel "Buddenbrooks," which is recognized as one of the classic works of contemporary literature. Other of his novels include "Death in Venice" and "The Magic Mountain." Mann died in 1955 at the age of 80.

○

Hans Zimmer, "Time"

"It Strikes Me..."

“It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can’t get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. There are people, particularly dumb people, who are in terrible trouble and never get out of it, because they’re not intelligent enough. It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry - or laugh.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

"Dear Jerry and James: You’re Both Wrong About New York"

"Dear Jerry and James: 

You’re Both Wrong About New York"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"So let's look at the urban exodus that's exciting so much commentary. Two essays pin each end of the urban exodus spectrum: James Altucher's "NYC Is Dead Forever, Here's Why" focuses on the technological improvements in bandwidth that enable digital-economy types to work from anywhere, and the destabilizing threat of rising crime. In his telling, both will drive a long-term, accelerating urban exodus.

Jerry Seinfeld's sharp rebuttal, "So You Think New York Is 'Dead', focuses on the inherent greatness of NYC and other global metropolises based on their unique concentration of wealth, arts, creativity, entertainment, business, diversity, culture, signature neighborhoods, etc. Today I'm publishing a guest essay on the topic by correspondent R.J.:

"Dear Jerry and James:

You're both wrong about New York, And I doubt you'll ever be able to see why. Fifty years ago, cartoons of New York Mayor John Lindsay were splashed across the editorial pages of American media. Pockets emptied and with a comical expression, he was depicted as a pathetic beggar, hoping somebody, anybody would loan his city the money it desperately needed to continue paying its bills. His challenge was reflected in just about every other major city, where commercial flight, infrastructure rot, and population loss was on-going and devastating to already corrupt civic finances.

Turned out cities weren't selling what people wanted to buy. People wanted space, property, and autonomy - the supplies of which cities are specifically designed to restrict for their leader's own personal aggrandizement. The unprecedented prosperity of the postwar years created a large American middle class with options. And they opted to move out. So the city's economic model fell apart.

Yet twenty years later after John Lindsay went begging, most large cities were experiencing a civic renaissance - with investments in world-class infrastructure, an influx of youth and talent, and rates of population growth that would rival previous heydays. Budgets were even being balanced.

What happened?

Back when Lindsay was begging, the idea of the Federal government bailing out a city like New York was extremely controversial, even more so than bailing out individual states today. It had never been done before. Why? Our currency had value. It was backed, at least in part, by gold.

Then in 1971, to prevent the last of the nation's gold hoard from redemption and export as a result of years of trade deficits; President Nixon signed an executive order 'temporarily' suspending the convertibility of the dollar to the precious metal. The currency of America was officially valueless -unmoored from reality, able be created in whatever amounts plausibility and confidence could support. Back then there were certain hard asset markets that could still serve as honest markers of currency value; real estate, oil, precious metals - but eventually all could be undermined by corruption and manipulated by leverage.

Cities such as New York where such markets already existed could be cultivated and embraced as centers where the 'advantages' of the now unmoored fiat could be exploited to maximum effect.

For top efficiency in these efforts, physical proximity of the looters to each other was essential. Such proximity also supported the natural need of these sociopaths to compare individual results through possessions, hookers, and blow. And as the immense proceeds of financialization piled up, competitive philanthropy and the drive for personal safety also led to a vastly improved local quality of life.

Increased policing, improved infrastructure, cultural amenities - all were funded by peacocking financializers who in turn were funding themselves by pulling future demand forward through leveraging a fiat currency which was rapidly depreciating to its real value - zero.

Yes, the real rate of inflation could be hidden through manipulating the official calculations of metrics such the CPI (consumer price index). Sure, the widening gaps in the real return of labor vs. capital could be masked by lowering interest rates and easing credit access. Of course, the 'deaths from despair' in the countryside would rise as reality caught up with those not poor enough for a safety net nor wealthy enough to get in on the skim.

But the cities themselves would thrive - because even in a connected world they themselves were essential. They, like Las Vegas casinos for the mob, were the centralized locations where the skim itself was worked. But there was never any actual 'Renaissance' of our cities. No DaVinci, No Michelangelo, No Botticelli. Our scholars were credentialed classist legacies or confidence tricksters; our businessmen, financial engineers; our artists, propagandists. It was all, as Elaine Benes (how appropriate) would say, "Fake, Fake, Fake."

But, boy did that New York have energy! Today, financialization has reached its limit. There's very little demand left to pull forward. There's very little upside to financialize. It takes a whole lot of new debt to generate one additional dollar of new revenue. And the people themselves have gotten wise to the skim off their labor. They're realizing that the only way to win is not to play. The deflationary effects of massive oversupply will be something to see.

You don't even have to live next door to keep up with the Jones's, you can just fake it on Instagram. The city, as a tool for financialization, has outlived its usefulness. And therefore, there will be no additional outside investment, there is no reason for anyone to do so. The "system" known as a city, now bloated and overgrown by decades of mal-investment, will be forced to become self-supporting.

For these cities, the rule of law is now a center of cost. Your residency, a center of revenue. Your ethnic and racial identity, a source of someone else's political power. Those who can leave such places should not let the fallacy of sunk costs hold them in place. The assets you think you own in these cities aren't real. They're illusions; ephemera whose value was propped up by the same forces that created the phantasm of Giuliani's Times Square.

The smartest money left a decade ago when the connectivity of technology outweighed the value of the ego comparisons of wealth and status. Heck, Michael Bloomberg was mayor and even he didn't actually live in the city he led. The 'inertia' money, those still hooked on status and nostalgia, are just leaving now. They're taking losses, but at least they're taking something. Check out the vacancy rates on the Upper West Side or in the Tenderloin District. I'm looking for the Seinfelds, the Gaffigans, and the Stephanopolises to be selling their co-ops soon. It's not just unsafe, its unlivable.

The next outmigration will be those who leave all their assets behind. As of this writing, Minneapolis actually is charging owners to remove the remains of the property they were previously taxed on and that the city couldn't/wouldn't protect with the services paid for by those very taxes the property owners were coerced to pay.

The final outmigration will be those who don't leave at all, not even with their lives. New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, even Kenosha for heaven's sake. Get what you can for your financial assets, coordinate with your social capital and run. Sure, this suppression of price might be intentional, but for you it's not coming back. Make the best of a bad situation and start anew.

Sadly, if back in the 70s these cities had simply been left alone to decay in a linear manner, there may have been some hope. There were still strong, self-supporting social communities among the decay. Left to their own devices, they would have sorted themselves out, created their own systems, and reached a livable equilibrium.

But the Potemkin of 90s New York and similar cities pulled the pendulum so far back that those social communities and the social capital that supported them are well and truly gone. As the pendulum swings back, the barbarity and mayhem that are about to occur will be a sight to behold.

These cities, both from without and from within, will sack themselves; over, and, over, and, over again. And the equilibrium reached at the end won't be blight but rather. . .

abandonment,

legend,

and wonder."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

The Poet: Langston Hughes, “Life is Fine”

“Life is Fine”

“I went down to the river,

I set down on the bank.

I tried to think but couldn’t,

So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!

I came up twice and cried!

If that water hadn’t a-been so cold

I might’ve sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator

Sixteen floors above the ground.

I thought about my baby

And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!

I stood there and I cried!

If it hadn’t a-been so high

I might’ve jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I’m still here livin’,

I guess I will live on.

I could’ve died for love -

But for livin’ I was born.

Though you may hear me holler,

And you may see me cry -

I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,

If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!”

- Langston Hughes

The Daily "Near You?"

Harare, Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe. Thanks for stopping by!

"In Our Age..."

“In the first ages they were wise men; in the middle age, madmen; in these latter ages, cunning men: in the earliest time they were honest; in the middle time, rogues; in these last times, fools: at first they dealt with nature; then with the Devil; and now not with the Devil, or with nature either: in the first ages the magicians were wiser than the people; in the second age, wickeder than the people; and in our age, the people are both wiser and wickeder than the magicians.”

- Daniel Defoe

"Never Forget 9/11"

"Building 7 Was Not Hit, Fell At Free Fall Speed Into Its Own Footprint"

by IWB

"This compilation shows the collapse of Building 7 at 5:20pm 

on September 11, 2001 from several different angles. 

We call that controlled demolition."

Of course YouTube oddly refuses to embed this video here...

Do you really want to know the truth?

"If You Feel Like Something Really, Really Bad Is About To Happen, You Are Definitely Not Alone"

"If You Feel Like Something Really, 

Really Bad Is About To Happen, You Are Definitely Not Alone" 

by Michael Snyder

"If this is “the recovery”, what are things going to look like once economic conditions start to deteriorate again? As you will see below, more than half of all households in some of our largest cities “are facing serious financial problems”, and Americans continue to file for unemployment benefits at a rate that the United States had never seen before prior to 2020. When 695,000 workers filed for unemployment benefits during a single week in 1982, it established a record which stood for nearly 38 years. But now we have been way above that old record for 25 weeks in a row. On Thursday, we learned that another 884,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week:

"Weekly jobless claims were worse than expected last week amid a plodding climb for the U.S. labor market from the damage inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic. The Labor Department on Thursday reported 884,000 first-time filings for unemployment insurance, compared with 850,000 expected by economists surveyed by Dow Jones. The total was unchanged from the previous week."

Of course it is always important to look at the non-adjusted numbers, and according to those numbers we actually saw an increase over the previous week: "The Labor Department changed its methodology in how it seasonally adjusts the numbers, so the past two weeks’ totals are not directly comparable to the reports from earlier in the pandemic. Claims not adjusted for seasonal factors totaled 857,148, an increase of 20,140 from the previous week."

This is the second week in a row that the non-seasonally adjusted initial claims have risen. That definitely wasn’t supposed to happen. We are supposedly in a “recovery” right now, and things are supposed to be getting better. But instead they appear to be getting worse. 

According to Wolf Richter, continuing claims under all state and federal programs were way up last week: "Total continued claims for unemployment insurance (UI) under all state and federal programs rose by 380,000, to 29.6 million people (not seasonally adjusted), the highest since August 1, according to the Department of Labor this morning. This was the second weekly increase in a row, after the 2.2-million jump last week."

At any other time in American history, the numbers that were just reported would be considered “catastrophic”, but we have been getting these sorts of catastrophic numbers for so long that we have become desensitized to them. But at least the unemployment numbers are not as bad as they were earlier this year, and other economic figures seem to have hit a bit of a plateau as well.

So for the moment there is relative calm, but it won’t last for very long. If you feel like something really, really bad is about to happen, you are definitely not alone. There are countless others that are also waiting for “the other shoe to drop”, and I believe that it could literally happen at any time. But for now we wait.

I would encourage you to enjoy these remaining days of summer while you still can. This weekend, put some burgers on the grill and enjoy some time with your family. Unfortunately, there are many Americans that are under such financial stress that it is hard to enjoy much of anything right now. In fact, one recent survey found that 50 percent or more of the households in some of our largest cities are currently facing “serious financial problems”: "There’s no question the coronavirus pandemic has forced many Americans into financial hardship, but a new NPR/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation survey provided a clearer picture of the extent of the struggles in the United States’ four largest cities.

At least half of all households in those cities - 53 percent in New York City, 56 percent in Los Angeles, 50 percent in Chicago, and 63 percent in Houston - reported facing serious financial problems, including depleted savings, problems paying credit card bills, and affording medical bills." How can that be possible if we are in the midst of a tremendous “recovery”? Of course the truth is that we aren’t in any sort of a recovery, but at least things are a whole lot better than they will be after the upcoming election.

I had such an ominous feeling coming into 2020, and I shared this repeatedly with my readers, and now I have such an ominous feeling about the rest of 2020 and beyond. In particular, I am extremely concerned about what will happen in November. No matter who is ultimately declared the winner, the other side is going to be convinced that the election was stolen from them and that is likely to throw our nation into a state of chaos.

And we are already being told that we probably will not know the winner until long after election day. That period of uncertainty is almost certainly going to spark more civil unrest, and I believe that faith in the integrity of our elections will be greatly shaken.

Before I end this article, there is one more thing that I wanted to mention that I found to be extremely interesting. This year the Federal Reserve has been buying up mortgage bonds worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and according to Mish Shedlock the Fed now owns nearly a third of that entire market: 

• "The Fed has snapped up $1 trillion of mortgage bonds since March. It bought around $300 billion of the bonds in each of March and April, and since then has been buying about $100 billion a month.

• The Fed now owns almost a third of bonds backed by home loans in the U.S. 

• Buying the securities has pushed mortgage rates lower, with the average 30-year rate falling to 2.91% as of last week from 3.3% in early February. 

• Morgan Stanley analysts pointed out in late March that the buying was running at eight times the pace seen in prior episodes of Fed purchasing under programs known as quantitative easing."

No matter who wins the election, the direction of the Fed is not going to change. They are going to continue to engage in exceedingly reckless manipulation of the markets, and that is going to have very serious long-term implications. All around us, we can see our society being thrown into convulsions as all of our systems begin to fail. I know that so many of you out there are feeling the exact same way that I am. A sense of anticipation hangs in the air, and millions of people are waiting for the next big crisis to erupt."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"The Things We Beg For..."

“These are the things we beg for. A root canal, an I.R.S. audit, coffee spilled on our clothes. When the really terrible things happen, we start begging the god we don’t believe in to bring back the little horrors, and take away this. It seems quaint now, doesn’t it? The flood in the kitchen, the poison oak, the fight that leaves you shaking with rage. Would it have helped if we could see what else was coming? Would we have known that those were the best moments of our lives?”

- “Meredith”, “Grey’s Anatomy”

"Another Big Step Down"

"Another Big Step Down"

By Bill Bonner

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "A K-shaped recovery. The “rich” on the upstroke… The “poor” headed down. The rich working remotely… The poor barely working at all. The “rich” in their suburbs, vacation homes, and Zoom Towns… The poor struggling to pay their rent or mortgage.. The “rich” enjoying their stock market gains… The poor waiting for their next check from the government. The rich, fat, and sassy, ready to send in their ballots… The poor picking up rocks, ready for a revolution.

Yesterday, we looked at what has happened so far in the 21st century. Boom… bust… war… debt… disappointment. But that took us only up to 2020. This year, the disappointment intensified… with two of the most boneheaded decisions in government history crowded into the space of just 30 days.

First, the feds shut down the source of real wealth for 90% of the population – the Main Street economy. Then, they tried to use their quack medicine – fake money – to revive it. But this time, they didn’t merely give the magic elixir to Wall Street, hoping some of it would dribble off its chin into the real economy. This time, they gave money directly to Main Street, too.

The trouble is, while counterfeit money (with no real wealth behind it) works for Wall Street, it doesn’t work for Main Street. The latest unemployment numbers – even the official ones – show new jobs lagging. Here’s The New York Times: "Despite some signs of economic revival, the outlook for American workers remains treacherous, with layoffs continuing to claim hundreds of thousands of jobs a week.

The weekly figures on unemployment claims from the Labor Department on Thursday showed no relief, reflecting what Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Barclays, said was “a transition to a slower pace of recovery, and one that will be more uneven.” The department reported that more than 857,000 workers filed new claims for state unemployment insurance last week, before seasonal adjustments, a slight increase from the previous week. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the total was 884,000, unchanged from the revised figure for the previous week."

Downsizing: You may say that is “only because of the virus.” But it seems to be more than that. Attitudes have changed. Habits, too. From our office in Baltimore comes this update: "We’re downsizing. We now only need half as much space. We found that we could work perfectly well remotely. Now, the office is open, but only a few people are coming here to work. The rest work from home. All we really need are a few offices and a few meeting rooms." This is great news. It means we can save on office space, cutting our rental costs in half. But what about the landlords? What about property prices?

Manipulate and Control: Meanwhile, from New York comes news that restaurants will be allowed to open for indoor dining next week – but only at one quarter capacity. Let’s see… How does that work? How many restaurants can survive high New York rents with only a quarter of the customers? Like Sweden, now that the virus has cut through the Empire State, the number of new COVID-related deaths has dropped to the floor. In New York restaurants today, you are more likely to die by choking on a piece of meat than from catching the coronavirus.

But the politicos/world improvers have found a new way to manipulate and control the masses. We doubt they’ll give it up easily. In airports, travelers still submit to screening and pat downs – 19 years to the day after the 9/11 attack. Now, to enter a restaurant in Manhattan, they will have their temperature taken. Will restaurant owners still be checking diners’ temperatures in 2039? And don’t expect a “deus ex vaccine” to suddenly return things to normal. No vaccine for a coronavirus has ever been proven effective. And even if one is eventually developed, it won’t be widely employed any time soon.

America’s Descent: Meanwhile, people are getting used to a new economy – one where they depend more heavily than ever before on the government… not just to tell them what to do, but to give them money. That is what marks a big step down in America’s descent. The Federal Reserve can support Wall Street; the “benefit” is immediate and unmistakable. The harm, on the other hand, is long-term and almost invisible.

As we’ve seen over and over, the fake money raises asset prices and makes investors happy. It also shifts their attention from long-term, productive investment – new factories, new products, new employees – to short-term money-hustles. Share buybacks, mergers and acquisitions, and borrowing money to fund bonuses and dividends – all provide quick gains for investors, but no real benefit to the economy.

As a result, GDP growth rates have been falling for the last 50 years. In the first three years of the Trump Administration, they averaged only half what they had been in the 1970s and 1980s. This year, they are negative.

Same Treatment: And now, the feds are giving the same scammy treatment to Main Street that they’ve been giving to Wall Street for decades. But what happens when you give money to the 90% of people who don’t own stocks? What do you get? Do you make them all richer? Richer than whom?

Ah… there’s the flimflam. Counterfeit money never adds to a nation’s wealth; it merely moves it around. The investor is “richer” when he can cash in his stocks and buy more goods and services in the Main Street economy. He’s “richer” than the 90% without financial assets. But who will the 90% be richer than? From whom will they buy real goods and services? Only themselves.

What you get when you try to “stimulate” the Main Street economy is more people with more money bidding against each other. Again, this is no problem on Wall Street. Prices go up; everybody’s happy. But when it happens on Main Street, it’s a whole ‘nuther thing. More to come…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"That's Just Where You Begin Again..."

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and the more you realize you don’t know.”

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"Market Fantasy Updates 9/11/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 9/11/20"
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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- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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Daily Update (September 10th to 11th)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/
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Gregory Mannarino, 

AM 9/11/20: “More Easy Money For Wall St. But NOT For The Middle Class”

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 9/11/20"

 

9/11/20

By David Leonhardt

"The virus is a marathon: Last week’s newsletter comparing the U.S. coronavirus death toll to the global average helped spark a continuing debate: What’s the fairest expectation of how bad the pandemic should have been in this country? Your answer to that question guides your judgment of the Trump administration’s response. Ross Douthat of The Times has argued that it was merely mediocre, while Vox’s German Lopez and The Atlantic’s David Frum consider it to have been far less effective than other countries’ responses.

One of the people who’s weighed in - via email - is Donald McNeil. By now, you may know him as the Times science reporter who has frequently appeared on “The Daily” podcast to talk about the coronavirus. Donald makes a fascinating point: Don’t look only at snapshots, like a country’s per capita death toll. “It’s not fair to pick one point in time and say, ‘How are we doing?’” he writes. “You can only judge how well countries are doing when you add in the time factor” - that is, when the virus first exploded in a given place and what has happened since.

The pandemic, he adds, is like a marathon with staggered start times. The virus began spreading widely in Europe earlier than in North America. Much of Europe failed to contain it at first and suffered terrible death tolls. The per capita toll in a few countries, like Britain, Italy and Spain, remains somewhat higher than in the U.S. But those countries managed to get the virus under control by the late spring. Their caseloads plummeted.

In the U.S., the virus erupted later - yet caseloads never plummeted. Almost every day for the past six months, at least 20,000 Americans have been diagnosed with the virus. “Europe learned the hard lesson and applied remedies,” as Donald says. “We did not, even though we had more warning.” This chart makes the point:

Click image for larger size.

By The New York Times | Sources: Johns Hopkins University and World Bank

The population-adjusted death toll in the U.S. surpassed Western Europe’s two months ago. The U.S. toll is far above those of France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Australia and many other countries - and is on pace to overtake Italy’s in the next few days and Britain’s and Spain’s not long after that.

Donald does add one important caveat. “We won’t really be able to judge until it’s over,” he says. Cases have recently begun rising again in Spain and some other parts of Europe, raising the possibility that Europe is on the verge of a new surge of deaths. In the U.S., Labor Day gatherings and the reopening of some schools may cause new outbreaks - or may not.

For now, the simplest summary seems to be this: Adjusting for time, there is no large, rich country that has suffered as much as the U.S."

SEP 11, 2020 12:39 AM ET:
 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 28,152,000 
people, according to official counts, including 6,416,757 Americans.

      SEP 11, 2020 12:39 AM ET: 
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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Updated 9/11/20, 3:28 A ET

Click image for larger size.

- https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

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