"Final Scene in the Fed’s Fantastic Farce"

"Final Scene in the Fed’s Fantastic Farce"

By Bill Bonner

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "First, we check in on the economy… Here’s CNBC: 'Yelp on  Wednesday released its latest Economic Impact Report, revealing business closures across the U.S. are increasing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic’s economic toll. As of Aug. 31, 163,735 businesses have indicated on Yelp that they have closed. That’s down from the 180,000 that closed at the very beginning of the pandemic. However, it actually shows a 23% increase in the number of closures since mid-July.

In addition to monitoring closed businesses, Yelp also takes into account the businesses whose closures have become permanent. That number has steadily increased throughout the past six months, now reaching 97,966, representing 60 percent of closed businesses that won’t be reopening.'

Almost 100,000 businesses left behind. Like worn out auto parts… yesterday’s sitcoms… and day-old bread.

Full Picture: But that is just part of the picture. Politically, the conservatives – and the restraint they used to bring to public finances – are gone. Socially, the middle ground is disappearing; you’re either red or blue, with us or agin’ us. And economically, the whole kit and kaboodle is headed for an explosive crescendo.

Societies are always evolving… taking up new things… leaving old things behind. Some good. Some bad. A half century ago, they left behind the gold-backed dollar. At the time, to many people, including famed conservative economist Milton Friedman, it seemed like an improvement. Then, it became a hustle. Businesses, households, and the government realized that borrowing money was easier than earning (or taxing) it.

Big Leader: Now, the fake money system is a racket. Why bother to borrow when you can print? Our prediction for today: It won’t be too long before the U.S. dollar itself is left behind (although we’re not fool enough to say exactly when).

We saw yesterday how the Argentines are abandoning their pesos for U.S. dollars. In one day, the peso lost 15% of its value in black market trading. As the price of dollars (in pesos) rises, it becomes harder and harder for the Argentines to pay their hundreds of billions of dollar-based debts. They have to default.

President Juan Perón pioneered the program in 1946 – taking Benito Mussolini as his model. Big government. Big promises. Big spending. Big borrowing. Big printing. And a Big Leader. Perón’s big spending made such a mess of the Argentine economy that by 1955, he was chased from the country and his party was outlawed. Alas, he made a comeback in 1973… and died a year later. Argentina was finally rid of Perón. But it couldn’t shake off Peronism: anaesthetize the masses with giveaways… denounce political enemies as “traitors”… and stir up an “us against them” internal struggle, while presenting yourself as the only one who will maintain law and order.

Spending Spree: Of course, there’s a big difference between the U.S. and Argentina. America has a choice – in theory; Argentina doesn’t. The gauchos can’t print dollars. The U.S. can. This week, for example, the Federal Reserve said it would add nearly $1.5 trillion in new money every year until 2023. It took a hundred years, from 1913 to 2013, for the Fed to run up its first $3 trillion in holdings (a rough measure of the U.S. base money supply). Then, in just three months, from March through May of this year, it added another $3 trillion. And now, the Fed is promising nearly $5 trillion more!

This week, too, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said the White House was in favor of more printing-press money; he said he expected that Republicans and Democrats would soon go on a spending spree (aka another “stimulus” package) together. This will include another flight of “helicopter money” – $1,200 checks dropped promiscuously, which is the only way you can do that kind of thing.

Argentine Experience: Even the Argentines didn’t go this far. Sure, they made the same mistake – locking down the productive economy in order to protect the unproductive part (largely retired people). Then, they, too, tried to replace real output with their fake money – printing pesos and giving them to people who weren’t working. But at least they left the helicopters on the ground. Everyone here knows the government is broke. So, if money were dropped from helicopters, the locals would know exactly what to do with it. They’d head straight for their friendly black-market currency traders… and exchange it for real money – U.S. dollars.

Monetary Naifs: By comparison, Americans are monetary naifs. They have no history of defaults. And inflation – which rose to 13% 40 years ago – is a distant memory. The feds can hand out trillions; no one wonders where it comes from. And no one bothers to imagine that the well might go dry. Yet, no paper currency has ever survived a full credit cycle – from bottom to top… to bottom… and back to top again. The dollar is unlikely to be the first. And now, we begin the final scene in a well-rehearsed farce.

Real yields are at a cyclical low – just as they were when we were born. From there, they rose for the next 30 years… until 1980. Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker put the kibosh on that trend. Yields have been going down ever since – aided and abetted by the Fed. Now, it’s time for the…

Final Act: The lights dim… and the curtain rises on Act Four… in which the fatal flaws of our fake-dollar system take center stage… yields turn up… and the dollar approaches its denouement. So, grab a drink. Pull up a chair. Settle in and enjoy the show. The Fed prints. The government spends. And the people – the bit players in this spectacle – realize their dollars are becoming worthless. And then what? How does it turn out? What black market will develop? For what will Americans trade in their dollars? Where will their money be safe? Tune in next week for the exciting grand finale…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

Musical Interlude: John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me"

John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me"

"How It Really Is"

 

Well, climate change causing hurricanes is a fact, 

just not caused as commonly believed...

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Related:

Our sun, early morning on Sept. 6, 2020. 

Note the distinct lack of sunspot activity.

"The Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age: 

An Update From Recent Reconstructions and Climate Simulations"

"Is a Mini Ice Age Coming? 'Maunder Minimum' Spurs Controversy"

"David Stockman on How the Stock Market Got to be Out of Touch with Reality"

"David Stockman on How the Stock Market

 Got to be Out of Touch with Reality"

by International Man

"International Man: Thanks to the shutdowns, economic activity on main street is at a standstill. Government, corporate, and personal debt is skyrocketing. Yet, the stock market is in a mania. Has the stock market become out of touch with reality, and if so, what are the consequences of that?

David Stockman: Both ends of the Acela Corridor have lost their marbles. This year, Uncle Sam borrowed $4 trillion in six months, the Fed printed $3 trillion in three months, and Wall Street drove the S&P 500 to 52X reported LTM earnings in the context of a deeper economic plunge than occurred in the worst quarter of the 1930s. Therefore, Washington has become disconnected from any semblance of fidelity to sound money and fiscal rectitude, while Wall Street has turned into an outright casino, valuing stocks based on endless Fed liquidity injections and the delusion that momentum chasing is an investment strategy.

With respect to the rampant folly in the Imperial City, Treasury Secretary Stevie Mnuchin has always reminded us of Alfred E. Neuman of "Me Worry?" fame at Mad Magazine. Recently, he more than earned that moniker when, in the context of the current monetary and fiscal lunacy, he proclaimed that, "Now is not the time to worry about shrinking the deficit or shrinking the Fed balance sheet." That was the so-called Conservative Party speaking, and it is a shrill reminder that the Trumpified GOP has gone utterly AWOL when it comes to its true job in American democracy, namely, resisting the Government Party (Dems) and its affinity for feeding the Leviathan on the Potomac.

That is to say, according to even the Keynesian deficit apologists at the CBO, Uncle Sam will spend $6.6 trillion during the current fiscal year (FY 2020) while collecting only $3.3 trillion in revenue. That’s Banana Republic stuff - borrowing 50% of every dollar spent.

Yet the advisory ranks of the potentially incoming Kamala Harris regency are even worse. They are loaded with "deficits don’t matter" ideologues and MMT crackpots who noisily argue that massive monetization of the public debt is not just a virtue, but utterly imperative.

Needless to say, this bipartisan commitment to all-in stimulus is financial catnip to the Wall Street gamblers because they are actually capitalizing into today’s nosebleed stock prices, not the present drastically impaired economy on Main Street but a pro forma simulacrum of future prosperity based on the delusional presumption that massive debt and money-pumping actually create economic growth and wealth.

The fact is, industrial production in August posted at a level first achieved in March 2006, and manufacturing output weighed in at levels originally attained in December 2004. So the misbegotten lockdowns and COVID-hysteria have cost the US economy 14–16 years of industrial production growth, yet this massive setback was not caused by some mysterious Keynesian-style faltering of "demand" that can allegedly be compensated for by new Fed credits plucked from thin air.

To the contrary, the current depression is the result of the visible shutdown and quarantine orders of the state, which are likely to linger for months to come or even intensify as the fall-winter flu season arrives. Undoubtedly, the Virus Patrol will spur further outbreaks of public fear based on "bad numbers" from the CDC, which are actually an agglomeration of cases and deaths from normal influenza, pneumonia, and a myriad of life-threatening comorbidities, not pure cases of the COVID alone.

But beguiled by "stimulus" and hopium, Wall Street completely ignores the contradiction between over-the-top demand stimulus and what amounts to supply-side contraction owing to economic martial law. So, at 3400 on the S&P 500, the current LTM price-to-earnings ratio ranges between 52.1 times the earnings CEOs and CFOs certify on penalty of jail time ($65 per share) or 27 times the Wall Street brush-stroked and curated version ($125 per share), from which all asset write-offs, restructuring charges, and other one-timers/mistakes have been finessed out.

Of course, these deleted GAAP charges reflect the consumption of real corporate resources, such as purchase price goodwill that gets written off when a merger or acquisition goes sour, or the write-down of investments in factories, warehouses, and stores that get closed. As such, they absolutely do diminish company resources and shareholder net worth over time.

But for decades now, Wall Street has so relentlessly and assiduously ripped anything that smells like a "one-timer" out of company earnings filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it no longer even knows what GAAP earnings actually are. And it pretends that these discarded debits (and credits) to income are simply lumpy things that even out in the wash over time. They do not.

If ex-items reporting was merely a neutral smoothing mechanism, reported GAAP earnings and "operating earnings" would be equal when aggregated over several years, or even a full business cycle. Yet during the last 100 quarters, there have been essentially zero instances in which reported GAAP earnings exceeded "operating income."

So, in aggregate terms, several trillions of corporate write-downs and losses have been swept under the rug. During the second quarter of 2020, for example, GAAP earnings reported to the SEC totaled $145.8 billion for the S&P 500 companies, while the ex-items earnings curated by the street posted at $222.3 billion. That amounts to the deletion of nearly $77 billion of write-downs and mistakes, and it inflated the aggregate earnings number by more than 52%.

The game is all about goosing the earnings number in order to minimize the apparent price-to-earnings multiple, thereby supporting the fiction that stocks are reasonably valued and that nary a bubble is to be found, at least in the broad market represented by the S&P 500.

Still, valuing the market at 52 times trailing-12-month earnings during the present parlous moment in time—or even 27 times if you want to give the financial engineering jockeys in the C-suites a hall-pass for $77 billion of mistakes and losses this quarter alone—is nothing short of nuts.

Yet, the gamblers in the casino hardly know it. Wall Street has already decided that current-year results don’t matter a whit: the nosebleed-level trailing P/E multiples currently being racked up are simply being shoved into the memory hole on the presumption that the sell side’s evergreen hockey sticks will come true about four quarters into the future, and if they don’t, a heavy dose of ex-items bark-stripping will gussy up actual earnings when they come in.

Still, if you think that a forward P/E multiple of, say, 17.5 times is just fine and that flushing the one-timers is OK, then you still need $193 per share of operating earnings by the second quarter of 2021 to justify today’s index level. Then again, a 54% gain in operating earnings over the next four quarters ($193 per share in the second quarter of 2021 versus $125 per share in the second quarter of 2020) is not simply a tall order; it’s downright delusional.

International Man: What could derail the Fed’s ability to pump up the stock market casino with all this easy money? They simultaneously want zero interest rates and more inflation. It seems something has to give.

David Stockman: Yes, what’s going to "give" sooner or later is the entire house of monetary cards erected by the Fed and its fellow-traveling global central banks over the last several decades. What they are doing is based on the triple error that inflation is too low, that deeply repressed and falsified interest rates fuel real growth, and that private savers are a hindrance to optimal economic function and need to be euthanized via confiscation of the real (after-inflation) value of their capital.

In the first place, as Paul Volcker pointedly reminded, there is nothing in the pre-1990 textbooks that says 2.00% inflation is desirable and is to be pursued with fanatical intensity—even if actual inflation comes in only a few basis points below the magic target. Indeed, if the 2% target is zealously pursued via prolonged pegging of interest rates to the zero bound and the massive purchase of bonds and other securities, the result is actually inimical to economic growth and sustainable gains in real wealth.

That’s because falsified interest rates and inflated financial asset values lead to massive malinvestment via rampant financial engineering in the corporate sector and reckless borrowing to fund transfer payments and economic waste in the public sector. Nor is that a mere theoretical possibility. The rolling 10-year real GDP growth rate has now fallen to just 1.5% per annum, or barely one-third of the 3–4% per year rolling averages which prevailed during the heyday of reasonably sound money and fiscal rectitude prior to 1971.

Beyond that, there really hasn’t been any inflation shortfall from the 2% target, unless measured by the Fed’s flakey yardstick called the PCE deflator. For instance, since December 1996, when Greenspan uttered his irrational exuberance warning, the CPI is up by 2.09% per annum and the more stable 16% trimmed-mean CPI is up by 2.12% per annum. That hardly constitutes a "shortfall" from target, but the Eccles Building money-printers make the claim anyway because the PCE deflator gained slightly less over that 23 year period, averaging an increase of 1.71 per annum.

The truth is, no one except groupthink besotted central bankers would think that a mere 30 basis point shortfall over more than two decades justifies the massive financial fraud of pumping trillions of fiat credit into the financial system. That’s especially the case because the PCE deflator drastically underweights shelter costs and doesn’t even measure the purchasing power of money against a fixed basket of goods and services over time, anyway. Instead, it is actually a tool of GDP accounting that reflects the changing mix of goods and services supplied to the household sector.

That is to say, if someone chooses to live in a tepee and spend nearly all of their paycheck on computers, TVs, and other high-tech gadgets that have been rapidly falling in price, that doesn’t improve the exchange value of the dollar wages they earn; it just means that their tepee may be getting crowded with tech gadgets. The same is true of the aggregate level. Just because the mix of goods and services changes over time, that doesn’t miraculously rescue the purchasing power of the dollar from the ravages of inflation.

Nor does it alleviate the savaging of lower- and middle-class living standards that are the direct product of the Fed’s misguided commitment to inflation targeting. In fact, during that same 23-year period, the annual rate of increase for professional services, shelter, food away from home, medical services, and education expense has been 2.6%, 2.7%, 2.8%, 3.5%, and 4.5%, respectively.

So once you set aside the foolishness of 2% inflation targeting and the Fed’s sawed-off inflation measuring stick (the PCE deflator), what you really have is growth stunting monetary madness. There is no other way to explain a Fed balance sheet that went from $4.2 trillion on March 4 this year to $7.2 trillion by June 10.

After all, the first $3 trillion of Fed balance sheet took nearly 100 years to generate, from its opening in 1914 to breaching the $3 trillion marker for the first time in March 2013. That the Fed has now become a monetary doomsday machine, therefore, is no longer in doubt."

- internationalman.com

"Market Fantasy Updates 9/21/20"

 

"Market Fantasy Updates 9/18/20" 

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Updated live.

- 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 18th to 21st)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "The U.S. Economic Collapse And Meltdown Is Accelerating"

Gregory Mannarino,

"The U.S. Economic Collapse And Meltdown Is Accelerating"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 9/18/20"

 

By David Leonhardt

SEP 18, 2020 7:51 AM ET:

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 30,197,800 
people, according to official counts, including 6,698,762 Americans.

      SEP 18, 2020 7:51 AM ET: 
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

 09/18/2020 - 05:00: "Death, Taxes, & COVID-19: Things That Cannot Be Avoided"

◆

Updated 9/18/20, 5:22AM ET

Click image for larger size.

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

"The Long Dark"

"The Long Dark"

by Chris Floyd

"We are in the Long Dark now. Both hope and despair are the enemies of our survival. We must live in the awareness that we might not see the light come back, without ceasing to work - with empathy, anger and knowledge - for its return.

We must be here, in the moment, experiencing its fullness (whatever its horrors or joys), yet be elsewhere, removed from the madness pouring in from every side, the avalanche of degradation. We must be here, now, but also in a future we can’t see or even imagine.

We must see that we are lost, with no clear way forward, no sureties or verities to cling to, no roots to anchor us, no structures within or without that will always keep their coalescence in the chaotic, surging flow.

We must live in discrete moments of illumination and connection, pearls hung on an almost invisible string winding through the darkness. Striving, always striving, but not expecting; striving without hope, without despair, without any certainty at all as to the outcome, good or bad.

These are the conditions of the Long Dark, this is what we have to work with, this is where we find ourselves in the brief time we have in this vast, indifferent, astounding universe. As I once wrote long ago, quoting the old hymn: “Work, for the night is coming.”

So do we counsel fatalism, a dark, defeated surrender, a retreat into bitter, curdled quietude? Not a whit. We advocate action, positive action, unstinting action, doing the only thing that human beings can do, ever: Try this, try that, try something else again; discard those approaches that don't work, that wreak havoc, that breed death and cruelty; fight against everything that would draw us down again into our own mud; expect no quarter, no lasting comfort, no true security; offer no last word, no eternal truth, but just keep stumbling, falling, careening, backsliding, crawling toward the broken light.

And what is this "broken light"? Nothing more than a metaphor for the patches of understanding – awareness, attention, knowledge, connection – that break through our darkness and stupidity for a moment now and then. A light always fractured, under threat, shifting, found then lost again, always lost. For we are creatures steeped in imperfection, in breakage and mutation, tossed up – very briefly – from the boiling, chaotic crucible of Being, itself a ragged work in progress toward unknown ends, or rather, toward no particular end at all. Why should there be an "answer" in such a reality?

What matters is what works – what pulls us from our own darkness as far as possible, for as long as possible. Yet the truth remains that "what works" is always and forever only provisional – what works now, here, might not work there, then. What saves our soul today might make us sick tomorrow.

Thus all we can do is to keep looking, working, trying to clear a little more space for the light, to let it shine on our passions and our confusions, our anger and our hopes, informing and refining them, so that we can see each other better, for a moment – until death shutters all seeing forever."

- http://www.chris-floyd.com/home/

"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

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/18/20"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/18/20"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"The science and data say that CV19 is over, but why are Democrats wanting to keep it all locked down until after the November Election? It’s all about politics. The Democrats think this is the way to victory. Who cares how many people this hurts? This is the crazy Dem strategy of lie, cheat, steal, riot, cause pain, destruction and then blame it all on Trump. Polls say this ain’t working, but it’s all they got.

The U.S. economy is better than most in the world, but it has been severely damaged by the CV19 overreaction and brutal lockdowns. It is so bad that every time new unemployment claims fall under one million, it’s time to celebrate even though more than 50 million have filed new unemployment claims in just the past 26 weeks. The economy should open up now.

The Democrat plan of loot, burn and blame it on President Trump has backfired. Record amounts of traditional Dem voters are publicly saying they have had enough and are voting for President Trump. Last week, I went on record that it’s going to be a blowout landslide for Trump, and there won’t be enough cheating to overcome him getting a second term. Watch Joe Biden’s wife, Jill–she is key to Joe. I predict that the upset will be so big Jill Biden will step in and use the leverage of conceding victory to President Trump on or shortly after Election night to try to get some sort of a no-prosecution deal for Joe and son Hunter."

-https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he talks 

about these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.

Must Watch! “Small Business Dead On Arrival; Greatest Depression Confirmed; Welfare State; System Collapse”

- Jeremiah Babe,

“Small Business Dead On Arrival; Greatest Depression Confirmed;

Welfare State; System Collapse”

Full screen mode recommended for on-site scenes. (11:05)

"How to Survive The Imminent Economic Collapse And Next Great Depression"

"How to Survive The Imminent Economic Collapse 

And Next Great Depression"

by Epic Economist

"To say that life is uncertain right now would be an understatement. Everyone is holding their breaths, waiting to see what it's coming in the next chapters of the economic collapse, and wondering how long do we have before total chaos takes over. The economic disaster will be bigger and more complex than the 1930's Great Depression, with several critical factors that may leave many of us completely unassisted. Millions of families are already suffering around the globe, not even being sure about the next meal or if it will be possible to pay for rent for one more week. The threat of homelessness and starvation has never been more real, and as debt rates are higher and higher and so is unemployment every week. 

Even though some sectors of the economy are reopening, experts have been discussing that re-hires might not last long, since a second surge of the virus is expected and it will affect the labor market directly yet again. We cannot count on our leaders and even less on the financial markets to solve anything. For that reason, today, we decided to gather some helpful tips and valuable lessons we can learn with those who survived the Great Depression. In that way, you can prepare yourself in advance and save your family from the forthcoming turbulence.Stay tuned with us and don't forget to like and subscribe if you'd like to support our community. So here are 16 things you can do to survive the imminent economic collapse. "

- https://www.epiceconomist.com

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Have you contemplated your home galaxy lately? If your sky looked like this, perhaps you'd contemplate it more often! The featured picture is actually a composite of two images taken last month from the same location in south Brazil and with the same camera -- but a few hours apart. The person in the image -- also the astrophotographer -- has much to see in the Milky Way Galaxy above. 

Click image for larger size.

The central band of our home Galaxy stretches diagonally up from the lower left. This band is dotted with spectacular sights including dark nebular filaments, bright blue stars, and red nebulas. Millions of fainter and redder stars fill in the deep Galactic background. To the lower right of the Milky Way are the colorful gas and dust clouds of Rho Ophiuchi, featuring the bright orange star Antares. On this night, just above and to the right of Antares was the bright planet Jupiter. The sky is so old and so familiar that humanity has formulated many stories about it, some of which inspired this very picture."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191015.html

Chet Raymo, “The Seeds of Contemplation”

“The Seeds of Contemplation”

by Chet Raymo

“Do a Google search for “Cuthbert” and you’ll get two main hits: a stunning blonde Canadian actress who I never heard of, and the 7th-century Anglo-Saxon monk I was looking for. Make that an image search and poor Saint Cuthbert gets washed away in a sea of unclad sexiness that would probably have rattled the poor abbot/bishop to his core.

Well, we don’t really know, do we? We don’t really know what was on Saint Cuthbert’s mind. Certainly he had an impressive career as a Church administrator, but be seems to have been irresistibly drawn to the life of an anchorite. For a while he was prior at the famous abbey of Lindisfarne on the coast of Northumbria, then bishop of the same place, but he gave all that up for a solitary cell on the nearby island of Farne. According to tradition, his severe abode had no windows or doors, and no views of scenery or humans. It was circular and open only to the sky. There Cuthbert lived, like a mouse at the bottom of a coffee can.

Was his mouse-eye view of the sky enough to feed his soul? Presumably he didn’t see rainbows, since rainbows don’t appear near the zenith. He was far enough north (56° 37′) not to see the sun at all, even in summer, depending on how wide was the angle of his view of the sky. Only a few bright stars illuminated his night: Capella, Vega, and Deneb (taking into account the 18 degrees of precession since his time). In late summer the Milky Way would have been draped overhead, although- alas- the least bright part of the galaxy. The aurora would have entertained him on occasion, and “shooting stars.”

How much is enough? Thoreau had his pond, and dinner at the Emersons whenever he wanted. Henry Beston had the whole wide sea crashing outside his “outermost” house on Cape Cod. Annie Dillard’s Tinker Creek was in a valley, but her patch of sky was supplemented by woods and fields and the always changing theater of the creek itself. Many of us have longed at one time or another for greater simplicity, for a life lived deliberately, for the intensely-experienced few rather than the trivialized many. It’s all a matter of finding the balance, between the harsh parsimony of the anchorite’s cell and the rush and clutter of 21st-century, media-saturated overload.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"What We Owe To Ourselves..."

 

“That we can never know,” answered the wolf angrily. “That’s for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we’re bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything.”

- David Clement Davies

“The Eleventh Marble”

“The Eleventh Marble”

by Michael Rivero

“Any five-year old child knows that if you put ten marbles into a tin can, you can only take ten marbles back out. No amount of wishful thinking, dreaming, or praying, will yield that eleventh marble from inside that can. That eleventh marble does not exist. It never did, and it never will. All discussions about the eleventh marble are the product of imagination. The eleventh marble is a fantasy.

Private central bankers issuing the public currency as interest-bearing loans operate on the belief that they can put ten marbles (dollars) into a tin can (the world) and magically get 11 marbles (dollars) back out. Thus, we may conclude that the bankers are dumber than five-year old children! But unlike five-year old children, the bankers will take your home, your business, and your nation when they don’t get that eleventh marble! The spoiled child may cry and throw a tantrum, but that will be the end of their upset. The spoiled banker, however, in his or her arrogant rage that they cannot have the eleventh marble their imagination says must still be in that tin can, may start a war before they will admit that eleventh marble was never really there.

Economies are like tin cans. Before you can take a marble out, you must have put a marble in. Nobody can give you a marble that does not exist, yet this simple reality is lost to the priests of that fantastic religion called “economics” in that unholiest of temples called the Private Central Bank. Their religious doctrine seems to be that there must always be an eleventh marble inside the tin can, and that the tin can unfairly withholds that eleventh marble, indeed cheats them of their right to the eleventh marble, purely out of spite. That faith in the existence of the eleventh marble, unseen and improvable, is the article of faith the religion of banking rests on. It is far easier to burn the heretics than to question the dogma.

Today we see the bankers, having already retrieved their ten marbles from the tin can, flogging the world for that missing eleventh marble. Greece does not have that eleventh marble, so they turn to Germany and ask, “Do you have an eleventh marble”, and Germany replies, “Sorry, but the bankers already took the ten marbles they put in our tin can, and we are searching for an eleventh marble ourselves. Try the Americans.” The Americans, of course, have only just surrendered the last of their ten marbles back to the bankers and are looking under seat cushions for that missing eleventh marble nobody seems able to find. But the eleventh marble will never be found. After all that mayhem brought down on the tin can there still will be no eleventh marble. It does not exist. It never did, and it never will.

The problem with all modern reserve banking systems is that the moment the first bank note goes into circulation as the proceed of a loan at interest, more money is owed to the banks than actually exists. Ten marbles have been put into the tin can, but the bankers see 11 marbles owed back to them. Sooner or later the non-existence of that eleventh marble will create a crisis of faith. People will stop believing in the religion called private central banking, and that crisis of faith will bring the system crashing down, as did the Temple of Baal in ancient times when the Syrians saw through the priests’ trickery. This evil magic of creating money out of debt was a fraud all along, as fraudulent and silly as the idea that one can put ten marbles into a tin can, and take out eleven.

In ages to come economists will look back at this failed experiment in debt-based currency, and dump it into the same category of human folly as Tulip mania, The Nation of Poyais, Credit Mobilier, the Great South Seas Company, and Mortgage-Backed Securities.”

- http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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The Poet: Ruth Feldman, “Detour”

 

“Detour”

“I took a long time getting here,

much of it wasted on wrong turns,

back roads riddled by ruts.

I had adventures I never would have known

if I proceeded as the crow flies.

Super highways are so sure of where they are going:

they arrive too soon.

A straight line isn’t always the shortest distance

between two people.

Sometimes I act as though I’m heading somewhere else

while, imperceptibly, I narrow the gap between you and me.

I’m not sure I’ll ever know the right way, 

but I don’t mind getting lost now and then.

Maps don’t know everything.”

- Ruth Feldman

The Daily "Near You?"

 
Lutz, Florida, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"In These Downbeat Times..."

“In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot live in the twenty-first century at each other’s throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation – and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so.”

- Cornel West

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! Expect Another Industry Wide Bailout! And Again The American People LOSE"

Gregory Mannarino,

"Alert! Expect Another Industry Wide Bailout! 

And Again The American People LOSE"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"This Is Why Inflation Will Rip Everyone's Face Off"

"This Is Why Inflation Will Rip Everyone's Face Off"

by Charles Hugh Smith 

"This is how market capitalism is supposed to work: consumers decide (for whatever reason) to buy more toilet paper. This increase in demand strips the shelves of TP and pushes the price up as demand exceeds supply. In response, capital flows to enterprises that ramp up production of TP to meet this new demand / scarcity of supply. Price returns to equilibrium.

Yea for our wunnerful market capitalism... but oops, this isn't what actually happens in our economy. What actually happens is less of a happy story. As correspondent A.P. explained in "Our Wile E. Coyote Economy: Nothing But Financial Engineering" (June 12, 2020), the real money in the American economy isn't made by increasing production of goods and services or making better quality products; it's made with debt that funds financial trickery like stock buy-backs.

The "business" is just the facade used to justify the corporate bonds, loans, stock buy-backs, etc. Corporate America has perfected this game, and so have Wall Street and SillyCon Valley, which produces one money-losing unicorn after another that IPOs for tens of billions of dollars, all based on the pixie dust of future profits and valuations.

Production is for losers. Financial engineering is for winners. Simply put, capital has no interest in gambling on building factories and training employees. Not only is that risky, it's a low margin endeavor, which makes it of zero interest to capital.

How many billionaires have been minted in America in the past 20 years for building anything? Billionaires become billionaires by either hijacking the human mind's receptors for attention and addiction or by selling corporate bonds and leveraging the debt to skim billions of dollars.

Not only is capital not available to boost production, neither is the expertise or labor. A great many of the people with the hands-on experience needed to build stuff and manage complex production processes have retired or will soon retire, and there isn't a second team ready to take the field.

If production is absolutely necessary, then Corporate America will have it done on the cheap overseas. Sure, the quality is terrible but the American consumer will buy without question; that's why corporations went to all the trouble of establishing a heavily moated monopoly or cartel: the consumers have either no choice or a false choice between members of a cartel offering the same lousy quality and high prices.

But Corporate America's go-to solution to everything - globalization - is running out of rope, and the cliff beckons. Corporate America's tired trick of offering a couple bucks more per hour for the opportunity to double your workload no longer works because the issue isn't the couple bucks per hour; it's that the workforce no longer has the requisite skills because our educational system and Corporate America have failed.

The Federal Reserve can conjure up trillions of dollars out of thin air to further enrich the nation's parasitic scum, but they can't print experienced, motivated workers or people with entrepreneurial skills. Corporate America gave up training its workforce a long time ago, and SillyCon Valley has perfected the art of poaching employees from competitors rather than invest in training.

As for the underpaid workforce who's supposed to do the real work - as I've noted here many times, the pandemic has given many workers an opportunity to reassess their options, and some consequential percentage (including many small business owners) have concluded that the wisest course of action is to follow Johnny Paycheck's suggestion to "Take This Job and Shove It".

The top 5% - speculators, technocrats, managers and the chattering classes - haven't grasped that America is now a variation on the old Soviet joke: The Soviet joke was we pretend to work and you pretend to pay us. In America, the joke is: we work like crazy to make you rich and you pretend to pay us.

This is why inflation will rip everyone's faces off: production will continue to stagnate no matter how many trillions the Federal Reserve prints and throws around. With capital addicted to financial engineering and the purchasing power of labor's wages in permanent decline, we're about to reap the consequences of hollowing out our real economy to benefit the most parasitic and socially useless sociopaths at the top."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"How It Really Is"

 
"Believe It Or Not, 2021 Is Looking Worse Than 2020"

"The Fed’s Latest Announcement Is Really Stupid"

"The Fed’s Latest Announcement Is Really Stupid"

By Bill Bonner

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – “It’s madness. Weep for the nation.” Our neighbor stopped by yesterday. He was talking about his nation – Argentina. But Dear Readers might want to save a tear for their own.

Running Low: The Argentines are running out of money. Real money. For them, real money is U.S. dollars. Compared to their pesos, the dollar is, well, golden. According to Bloomberg, they only have $6 billion left in storage. Not a lot when you have $323 billion in foreign debt. Of course, the gauchos have been down this road so many times, they can drive it with their eyes closed. In 2001, they set a record, defaulting on $95 billion in loans. This past May, they defaulted on $65 billion. They are now lifting the seat cushions, looking for loose change. And on Tuesday, the government here announced new measures to stop people from dumping the peso and stocking scarce U.S. dollars. But we’ll come back to that in a minute.

Out of Style: This week, we’re rummaging around in the junkyard of economic history… We looked at the jobs that have been lost… like old carburetors… and the people left behind like burnt-out mufflers. We saw “old economy” companies, too – GM, J&J, GE, P&G – like stick-shifts “on the column” that nobody knows how to use anymore.

Free Enterprise is as out-of-style as giant tail fins and heavy chrome bumpers. This morning, for example, Business Insider reports that the President thinks that neither the investors nor the managers, nor even the customers, should decide who owns a tech company. He thinks it’s up to him: "Trump said during a press conference Wednesday that he was “not prepared to sign off” on the proposed deal [between TikTok and Oracle] as he hadn’t yet been briefed, but that he wouldn’t support it if ByteDance retains a majority share."

And then, later in the day, the Big Man tossed the very last hubcap of the old jalopy over the junkyard wall. He wants to give away more fake money than the Democrats! Here’s his tweet yesterday: "Democrats are “heartless”. They don’t want to give STIMULUS PAYMENTS to people who desperately need the money [...]. Go for the much higher numbers, Republicans, it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!)."

Yes, the government meddling in the economy… the Fed meddling in the markets… giveaways… money-printing – it will all blow back on the USA… but not the way the President imagines. And in the meantime, we will all get with the new program.

Really Stupid: Out with the old and in with the new! Let’s turn away from the junkyard and look at the shiny new cars across the road. While the U.S. federal government – conservatives and liberals alike – replaces the old free economy with a new model (based loosely on Soviet designs), the Federal Reserve unveils its new post-free-market financial system. The New York Times brings the latest news: "Fed Pledges Low Rates for Years, and Until Inflation Picks Up." "Federal Reserve officials expect to leave interest rates near zero for years – through at least 2023 – as they try to coax the economy back to full strength after the pandemic-induced recession, based on their September policy statement and economic projections released Wednesday."

And here, we will depart from our usual judgment-free observations to say that this is really stupid. Times change. Tastes evolve. People may well decide that they are tired of freedom… even as a goal. They don’t want to have to earn their own money… or pay for their own medical care… or choose where and how they live.

They want leaders – Big Leaders – who make decisions for them; even telling them when they can go outside! But does anyone really think 12 old jackasses on the Federal Open Market Committee can fix the most important price in finance, the price of credit, better than the free market? If so, where is the evidence? And when the Fed puts the rate near zero, doesn’t that mean that credit – money lending – has no value? Who believes that? We don’t know… but whoever it is, the person is a moron.

Poppycock: Alas, in the modern world – with its public education, Facebook, and time wasters – morons are as common as voters. So the latest Fed proclamation was greeted neither with roaring laughter nor undisguised contempt. Instead, the analysts and dreamers took it in the spirit in which it was intended – as fantasy, but a fantasy in which they were all complicit.

The New York Times offers its opinion: "Nudging price gains slightly higher would buy Fed officials more room to stimulate the economy when needed, since rates incorporate inflation. A little inflation is also thought to grease the wheels of the economy, giving employers room to pass along price increases and raise wages."

Let’s see, businesses can raise prices… and then pay their employees more, too. Is there any sentient being who cannot see what disgraceful poppycock this is? And yet, there is Fed chair Jerome Powell, out in public, and New York Times financial reporters treating him as if he weren’t retarded. Trouble is, when you build on fantasies, you end up with monstrosities.

Fantasyland: Which brings us back down to Argentina, which has been in fantasyland, off and on, ever since the Big Man himself – Juan Perón – promised to build 100,000 houses for the poor in 1945. In a matter of months, the old “conservatives” were gone. Free markets, property rights, free enterprise, and sanctity of contracts… financial independence and responsibility – all of them were suddenly out of style. Instead, the government would take care of everyone… taxing the rich, spending, controlling prices, borrowing… and finally, printing money.

And now, 75 years later, the fantasies still dominate politics… while financial policies are little more than duct tape and lies. Here’s Bloomberg: "Going forward, Argentines seeking to purchase dollars for savings will need to pay a new 35% tax on top of the previous 30% so-called solidarity tax, and they’ll still be limited to buying no more than $200 a month. The extra levy will also affect credit-card purchases in dollars."

Slow Default: But Argentines can spot thieves, even with their masks on. Within seconds of Tuesday’s announcement, there were lines in front of the black-market currency dealers, eager to trade wads of pesos for a few U.S. dollars (effectively undermining the government’s efforts to keep the dollar down). The exchange rate soared from 130 pesos to the dollar on Tuesday morning to 150 yesterday.

At least Argentina’s default is out in the open. In a few years, it will be all but forgotten. America’s default will take more time. It will be more underhanded… and much more costly. Stay tuned…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Market Fantasy Updates 9/17/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 9/17/20" 

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Updated live.

- 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 16th to 17th)

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

AM 9/17/20: “Uncertainty Hits Stocks; Critical Updates”

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 9/17/20"

 

By David Leonhardt

"Trump scorns his own scientists: Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Congress that universal mask-wearing could bring the pandemic under control within a few months. Redfield also said vaccines might not be available for most Americans until the middle of 2021. Hours later, Trump rebuked Redfield, questioning the value of masks and saying a vaccine would be available to the public more quickly. Public health experts said it was the latest example of the president giving false or misleading information about the coronavirus.

Other virus news:

• The Big Ten reversed its decision to call off the football season after coming under intense pressure from coaches, players, fans and Trump.

• An experimental drug based on the antibody of a Covid-19 patient appears to be effective in treating the virus, the drug’s maker, Eli Lilly, announced. Independent experts have not yet vetted the research."

SEP 17, 2020 12:14 AM ET:

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 29,855,300 
people, according to official counts, including 6,653,236 Americans.

      SEP 17, 2020 12:14 AM ET: 
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

SEP 17, 2020 11:04 AM: "NYC Mayor Delays Start Of School For 2nd Time; Global COVID-19 Cases Near 30 Million: Live Updates"

SEP 17, 2020 8:44 AM: "India Sees 100k Daily Cases In New Global Record; 30 Million Milestone Nears: Live Updates"

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Updated 9/17/20, 2:22AM ET

Click image for larger size.

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

"The Real Damage..."

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves – or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

- Sophie Scholl