Friday, October 2, 2020

"This Real Moron Thing..."

 

"Caution: Low-flying Black Swans"

"Caution: Low-flying Black Swans"
by Jim Kunstler

"The New York Times almost wet its panties breaking the pre-dawn news that the president has tested positive for coronavirus. By the end of day, Democrats across the land - or, at least, up and down the east and west coasts - will be gathering unto Santeria shrines, lighting MAGA hats on fire, sacrificing chickens, drawing Wiccan pentangles in the moonlight, and entreating all the other unseen powers of Providence to rapture Mr. Trump into everlasting oblivion somewhere beyond the crab nebula.

The Judeo-Christian God of our fathers must have a special animus for the Golden Golem of Greatness. He/She/It/or They have heaped more tribulation on Mr. Trump than on the biblical Job of Uz, anguishing in Yahweh’s holy whirlwind. RussiaGate, VeryFinePeopleGate, UkraineGate, BoltonGate, now this! It typically takes about four days for Covid-19 symptoms to present, so early next week sometime the world will know if the bug made the president sick or if he shook it off like just another impeachment effort. The ordeal will also be an interesting test of the hydroxychloroquine + zinc regimen Mr. Trump says he’s been on.

The joyful hysteria in the mainstream news is so boisterous this morning that The Times hasn’t even played its obvious next card, which, I guarantee you, will be an effort to postpone the hearings over SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett on account of coronavirus being on-the-loose among government officials. I’m pretty sure that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will keep a firm hand on the tiller of that ship - even if the darn proceeding has to go full Zoom meeting, they will git’er done (as we say in Deplorable Land).

If the virus doesn’t knock Mr. Trump on his ass, I imagine we’ll be seeing quite a lot of him campaigning by video in quarantine, old game-show performer that he is. I wouldn’t even rule out some updated Oval Office versions of The Apprentice, with the president taking the opportunity to dismiss a few of the seditionists still lurking in government. Gina Haspel, you’re fired! Christopher Wray, you’re fired! Michael Horowitz, take a hike! General Mark Milley, you’re busted to corporal! Remember, the old Chinese word for crisis, weiji, means a combo of danger and opportunity.

Of course, there are small-but-real odds that the disease could make Mr. Trump very ill, or even launch him up to that great boardroom the sky. What then? Does Veep Mike Pence carry on in his place? Or do the Trump forces in the GOP bring in Rick Grenell or Johnny Ratcliffe as an emergency candidate for president? Just as in the case of mass mail-in voting, this is a scenario the country hasn’t run before.

Technically, Mr. Trump’s two-week quarantine will be over by October 15, just in the nick of time for the second debate with Joe Biden. But Ol’ White Joe is sure to demur on that meet-up for reasons of virus exposure risk - though his peeps seemed less than eager for Round Two even before last night’s announcement of the president’s positive test. If that happens, and the president comes through his infection in good shape, then Mr. Biden will be seen as a weakling, which, technically, he is on cognitive grounds, apart from his inherent character deformities.

The focus in days ahead surely will be on Mr. Trump’s medical condition, but there’s plenty more action in the offing as October rolls out. There’s the aforementioned Amy Coney Barrett SCOTUS business, there are new rumblings out of John Durham’s office just in the past few days that something consequential may be up there, and there is the stalemate on a coronavirus relief bill in Congress.

The latter matter hints at the catastrophe lurking in the background of the election: the stupendous mass bankruptcy of unemployed or laid-off middle-class people whose rent and mortgage payment holidays will eventually run out, not to mention car payments and all the other overdue, usual, rotating bills each household must pay to stay above water. After half a year of lockdowns, millions are on the brink of financial ruin.

Of all the things that have made Americans anxious and hysterical this year, this horror of middle-class financial ruin has not quite expressed itself overtly in the public arena - at least, not in the streets. For sure, the Antifas and BLM mobs have been active looting, burning, and smashing things up, but many of these are unemployables, and the ones burdened with college debt may be counting on Democratic Party promises of a jubilee on that.

The foundering middle-class may be people most sympathetic to Trump and Trumpism. You can’t sell them on the identity politics nonsense that has become the Dem’s stock-in-trade. Laid-off airline pilots, hair stylists, and insurance adjusters are probably not interested in critical race theory, gender dysphoria, re-imagining law enforcement, able-ism, and the travails of the “neuro-diverse” (the latest term-of-art for the mentally ill). They may also catch a whiff of yet deeper economic calamity in the Democrats’ relish for more lockdowns, and even in the promised “universal basic income” schemes that would pay the able-bodied to not work. The question for this large group is how many will swap their liberty for the very sketchy and conditional security of a Woke nanny state that requires strict obedience to whatever crazy crusade it thinks up next?

There’s your true friction point in the current disposition of things. People used to being busy, productive, and independent may feel a mighty resentment about becoming that kind of society, and they may fight over it. At least they’ll turn out to vote on it. Maybe they’ll do both."

"How It Really Is"

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/02/2020"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/02/2020"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Despite the unfairness of the debate between President Trump and former VP Joe Biden, Trump still destroyed Dem candidate Biden. This was despite the fact that moderator Chris Wallace was also debating President Trump on behalf of Biden. Also, Trump’s microphone was noticeably turned down compared to Biden and Wallace. There is no doubt about this as you can go back and listen to it and measure it on a meter. This is too stupid to be stupid, and it is simply a dirty trick to try to subtly minimize Trump in the debate. There is also speculation that Biden got the questions ahead of time and that he had help by wearing an earpiece and special contact lenses that would act as a teleprompter. This may or may not be true, but who cares. Trump won and Biden got beat. 

Democrats know they are losing and losing badly. Black voters are switching to the GOP and so are Hispanic voters in record numbers. This is why we have the in-your-face vote-by-mail cheating scams. It is also why the DNC and MSM are constantly making up false stories about how Trump is a racist. The Dems also know that polls for independent voters show about 70% of them are turning to Trump and the Republican Party. It all boils down to no cheating will mean no victory for Dems in November. So, they cheat and cheat big or lose big.

The Democrats in the House have passed a new stimulus bill with zero Republican support. Good luck getting it passed thought the Senate as it was only a partisan attempt by Nancy Pelosi who was criticized by members of her own party for not getting bipartisan support. Without a new stimulus bill, there will be more layoffs as restaurants, airlines and other impaired businesses struggle to gain traction."

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he talks about 
these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.

Thursday, October 1, 2020

"Global Food Shortages Are Becoming Very Real & U.S. Grocery Stores Prepare For Worst Case Scenarios"

"Global Food Shortages Are Becoming Very Real & 
U.S. Grocery Stores Prepare For Worst Case Scenarios"
by Epic Economist

"While the world turns the spotlights to failed attempts of fixing broken economic systems, a hunger crisis is spreading across the globe. Amid a sanitary outbreak that is devastating countries politically and economically, and as a consequence of catastrophic natural disasters, recent reports are indicating that we're about to see “famines of biblical proportions”. Countries that once eradicated the dreadful effects of malnutrition are witnessing a reoccurrence of high poverty rates, meaning that a larger portion of their population is now facing deep food insecurity. 

From Asia to Africa to South America, the hunger crisis is leaving a troubling track, and specialists are warning that if the world leaders don't take action soon enough, the repercussion of the widespread food shortages will become more fatal than the current viral outbreak. 

The Executive Director of UN's World Food Program (WFP) David Beasley has repeatedly warned that in addition to the damages that emerged with the global health crisis, the world would face “multiple famines of biblical proportions” that would likely cause 300,000 casualties per day, triggering a hunger crisis. Now, this critical situation is already a reality for many countries. A couple of months ago, while speaking at an online briefing broadcast by the UN on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, the WFP chief disclosed the distressing fact that 821 million people are currently battling with food insecurity. “If we don’t prepare and act now, to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade,” he said, the outcome could lead to a “humanitarian catastrophe in a short few months”. “Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the specter of famine a very real and dangerous possibility,” he added.

Now, grocery stores across the United States are stocking up on products to avoid shortages during a second wave of coronavirus. When the  media starts acknowledging that food shortages are on the horizon, it's a sign things are about to get much worse. The report specified that household products - including paper towels and Clorox wipes - have been difficult to find at times during the pandemic, and if grocery stores aren’t stocked up and prepared for a second wave this winter, runs on products and shortages could happen again.

Furthermore, noting that the food prices will likely increase due to the greedy ambitions of a handful of billionaires, who are profiting at the expense of workers financial pain, which unables them to afford for basic goods. With high demand for groceries comes higher prices in the aisles. Since March, more Americans have been eating at home - and their grocery expenses have been growing. This is partly due to the fact that food manufacturers and grocery stores are rethinking their pricing strategies now because demand is surging.

What is more, on top of the threatening food shortages and soar in prices, other determinants may contribute to the disruption of the food supply chain, since many U.S. farmers have gone bankrupt during this downturn. They revealed that federal payments have actually done very little to keep them afloat. In fact, the initial payments under the Food Assistance Program, which provided $16 billion in direct support and $3 billion in purchases, disclosed an uneven distribution of financial aid, and most of the payments were redirected to large, industrialized farms.

Another distressing event that adds to all these factors is the major natural disasters that happened this year in agricultural areas of many countries, but most concerningly in China, where crops were wiped out on a massive scale, leaving a dent in global food production. For now, most Americans still have access to plenty of food, and we shouldn't take that for granted, because global conditions are swiftly changing and we probably should take this window of opportunity to start preparing for the very challenging times that are ahead of us." 

“Mortgage Delinquencies Record High; 837K Jobless Claims; Layoffs, Cyberattacks; Retail Closures”

Jeremiah Babe, 
“Mortgage Delinquencies Record High; 837K Jobless Claims;
 Layoffs, Cyberattacks; Retail Closures”

Gregory Mannarino, "IMF: 'We Are In Another Global Debt Crisis.'"

Gregory Mannarino,
"IMF: 'We Are In Another Global Debt Crisis.'"

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, “Zero Degrees Zero, Ambience Minimus”

Liquid Mind, “Zero Degrees Zero, Ambience Minimus"

Free Download: Aldous Huxley, "The Doors of Perception"

 

“There are things known and there are things unknown,
 and in between are the doors of perception”
- Aldous Huxley 

Freely download "The Doors of Perception", by Aldous Huxley, here:

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top right).


Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. In fact, M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old.”

“How Buster Douglas Beat Mike Tyson”

"The image that comes to mind is a boxing ring. There are times when... you just want that bell to ring, but you're the one who's losing. The one who's winning doesn't have that feeling. Do you have the energy and strength to face life? Life can ask more of you than you are willing to give. And then you say, 'Life is not something that should have been. I'm not going to play the game. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to call "out". There are three positions possible. One is the up-to-it, and facing the game and playing through. The second is saying, Absolutely not. I don't want to stay in this dogfight. That's the absolute out. The third position is the one that says, This is mixed of good and evil. I'm on the side of the good. I accept the world with corrections. And may [the world] be the way I like it. And it's good for me and my friends. There are the only three positions."
- Joseph Campbell
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact,
it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are,
what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
- Maya Angelou
“How Buster Douglas Beat Mike Tyson” 
by johnnysmack7

“Going into the fight, Mike Tyson was the undefeated and undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. He held the WBC, WBA, and IBF titles. Despite the several controversies that marked Tyson’s profile at the time, such as his notorious, abusive relationship with Robin Givens; the contractual battles between longtime manager Bill Cayton and promoter Don King; and Tyson’s departure from longtime trainer Kevin Rooney, Mike Tyson was still lethal in the ring, scoring a 93-second knockout against Carl “The Truth” Williams in his previous fight. Most considered this fight to be a warm-up bout for Tyson before meeting up with then-undefeated number 1 heavyweight contender Evander Holyfield (who was ringside for the fight). Tyson was viewed as such a dominant heavyweight that he was not only viewed as the world’s top heavyweight, but often as the number one fighter in the world pound-for-pound (including by “Ring Magazine”), a rarity for heavyweights.

Buster Douglas was ranked as just the #7 heavyweight by Ring Magazine, and had met with mixed success in his professional boxing career up to that point. His previous title fight was against Tony Tucker in 1987, in which he was TKO’d in the 10th round. However, a string of six consecutive wins gave him the opportunity to fight Tyson. In the time leading up to the fight, Douglas faced a number of setbacks, including the death of his mother, Lula Pearl, 23 days before the fight. Additionally, the mother of his son was facing a severe kidney ailment, and he had contracted the flu on the day before the fight.”

“The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. 
That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it.”
- Vince Lombardi

At 2:40 of this video Douglas takes a tremendous uppercut and goes down, kneeling to clear his head; you can see him wondering to himself if he should get up. No one at all expected him to, but he reached for something deep inside himself, found an inner strength perhaps even he was unaware of, and got back up to continue the fight. The rest, as they say, is history… and real glory. 
– CP
Full screen mode suggested.

"The Madman"

 

"The Madman"

"It was in the garden of a madhouse that I met a youth with a face pale and lovely and full of wonder. And I sat beside him upon the bench, and I said, “Why are you here?” And he looked at me in astonishment, and he said, “It is an unseemly question, yet I will answer you. My father would make of me a reproduction of himself; so also would my uncle. My mother would have me the image of her seafaring husband as the perfect example for me to follow. My brother thinks I should be like him, a fine athlete. And my teachers also, the doctor of philosophy, and the music-master, and the logician, they too were determined, and each would have me but a reflection of his own face in a mirror. Therefore I came to this place. I find it more sane here. At least, I can be myself.” Then of a sudden he turned to me and he said, “But tell me, were you also driven to this place by education and good counsel?”
And I answered, “No, I am a visitor.”
And he answered, “Oh, you are one of those who live in the madhouse on the other side of the wall...”
- Kahlil Gibran

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "I Want A Lot"

 

"I Want A Lot"

"You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.
But what you love to see are faces
that so work and feel thirst...

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"The Essence Of Human Existence..."

"Curiosity is the essence of human existence. 
'Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?'
I don't know. I don't have any answers to those questions.
I don't know what's over there around the corner. But I want to find out."
- Eugene Cernan

The Daily "Near You?"

 
Belleville, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"A Corrupt Elite Strangles the Economy"

"A Corrupt Elite Strangles the Economy"
by Bill Bonner

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "We begin today with a new study by the RAND Corporation. It tallies a little more of the hidden cost of House Arrest. ABC News reports: "Now, new data shows that during the COVID-19 crisis, American adults have sharply increased their consumption of alcohol, drinking on more days per month, and to greater excess. Heavy drinking among women especially has soared. […]

“The magnitude of these increases is striking,” Michael Pollard, lead author of the study and a sociologist at RAND, told ABC. “People’s depression increases, anxiety increases, [and] alcohol use is often a way to cope with these feelings. But depression and anxiety are also the outcome of drinking; it’s this feedback loop where it just exacerbates the problem that it’s trying to address.”

The bills will continue to trickle in for years. Jobs lost. Companies bankrupted. Careers and families stifled and stunted.

Job Cuts: Yesterday came more news of job cuts. Here’s Bloomberg: "American Airlines Group Inc. and United Airlines Holdings Inc. will start laying off thousands of employees as scheduled, spurning Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s appeal for a delay as he negotiates with Congress over an economic relief plan that includes payroll support for U.S. carriers. American is furloughing 19,000, while United is laying off about 13,000."

Bloomberg also reports: "Tens of thousands of job cuts announced by blue-chip companies in a 24-hour period are a warning sign for the world’s recovery and emerge just ahead of two key reports forecast to show limited progress in the U.S. labor market.

In one of the biggest layoff announcements since the pandemic caused widespread economic shutdowns, Walt Disney Co. said late Tuesday that it’s slashing 28,000 workers in its slumping U.S. resort business. In the hours that followed, the pace of job cuts at some of the world’s biggest companies – across a range of industries from energy to finance – quickened. On Wednesday, Allstate Corp., the fourth-largest car insurer in the U.S., said it will cut 3,800 jobs, roughly 8% of its workforce. And Bloomberg reported that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. plans to cut roughly 400 jobs after temporarily suspending job reductions at the beginning of the crisis."

High Price: When the figures are eventually toted up, they will show that the U.S. paid a very high price – for nothing. Different countries (and different states) tried different techniques to control the spread of the coronavirus, from strict lockdown (as here in Argentina) to a light touch (as in Sweden). Their results are all over the place. Northern Italy had a high death rate; Southern Italy had a low rate. Sweden’s death rate was high in nursing homes, but low in the general population.

America, with the most sophisticated and expensive medical care in the world, has had more deaths than any other nation. But some areas had almost none at all. Africa, with minimal medical services, has had relatively few. As near as we can tell, it doesn’t matter what the feds do. The virus has a mind of its own.

Why Do It? But today, we are puzzling over a larger phenomenon: How come? If the payoff from LockDown-LockUp policies was so uncertain, why do it? Old people are about 1,000 times more at risk from the virus than young people (and seniors are 10 times more likely to die from something other than the coronavirus). Why not just advise them to lay low? Why inconvenience millions of young people for the convenience of a few old ones? Why make 300 million fearful… when only 30 million had much to worry about?

But a similar question could be asked about a lot of things. Why are so many things set up that way? Each new bugaboo sends the nation into hysterics; many suffer and only a few benefit. The War on Terror benefited a few military/industrial/consulting companies in Northern Virginia; it cost the rest of the nation $6.4 trillion. The anti-racism industry makes billions; it puts everyone else at each other’s throats.

Likewise, the poverty fighters have been gaining wealth and status on the front lines of the War on Poverty; poor people are just as poor as ever. The government’s medical care giveaways are designed, chiefly, for old people; the young pay.

The Federal Reserve’s fake-money/fake-interest-rate policies have shifted more than $30 trillion to the richest people in the country over the last 30 years; the poor and middle classes got nothing. Getting right to the point, the fix is in – a few benefit… most pay.

Optical Illusion: And now, a geriatric elite controls the country… its businesses… its armed forces… its money and its government. Donald Trump is 74. Joe Biden is 77. Nancy Pelosi is 80. Mitch McConnell is 78. Jerome Powell is 67. Anthony Fauci is 79. Biden, Pelosi, McConnell, and Fauci have been in government for a combined 185 years. Naturally, they arranged the furniture to suit them. And what suited them all was a scammy, modern look – heavy on the trompe l’oeil, where things are never quite what they appear. That’s why the subject never came up in the presidential debate. The reds and blues may disagree on the details – Who’s more corrupt? Who’s more dangerous, Antifa or Proud Boys? But there is one thing they agree on so completely that it is never even mentioned…

Complete Agreement: The biggest threat to the U.S., and most of its people, remains hush-hush… like the source of a mobster’s wealth… And whatever else may happen… nothing can be allowed to interfere with it. The flimflam must go on. Not since the French Revolution has there been an elite so desperate to hold on to its privileges. The French aristocracy hoped to remain exempt from taxes. But the American geriatric aristocracy seeks an exemption from the laws of economics! More to come…"

"The New York Fed was in charge of almost all of the secret $29 trillion in bailouts during the 2007 to 2010 financial crisis. Congress never approved these loans or was even aware of where the money was going. After the Fed lost a multi-year court battle to keep its bailouts a dark secret from the American people, we learned that Morgan Stanley was one of the largest recipients, receiving a cumulative total of $2.04 trillion according to the audit conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)."

And how are you doing, Good Citizen? 

“The Important Thing Is to Not Be Afraid”

“The Important Thing Is to Not Be Afraid”
by Ryan Holiday

“There was no virtue more important to the Stoics than courage, particularly in times of stress or crisis. In scary times, it’s easy to be scared. Events can escalate at any moment. There is uncertainty. You could lose your job. Then your house and your car. Something could even happen with your kids. Of course we’re going to feel something when things are shaky like that. How could we not?

Even the Stoics, who were supposedly masters of their emotions, admitted that we are going to have natural reactions to the things that are out of our control. You’re going to feel cold if someone dumps a bucket of water on you. Your heart is going to race if something jumps out from behind a corner. These are things the Stoics openly discussed.

They had a word for these immediate, pre-cognitive impressions of things: phantasiai. No amount of training or wisdom, Seneca said, can prevent us from having these reactions. What mattered to them, and what is urgently needed today in a world of unlimited breaking news about pandemics or collapsing stock markets or military conflicts, was what you did after that reaction. What mattered is what came next.

There is a wonderful quote from Faulkner about this very idea. “Be scared,” he wrote. “You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.” A scare is a temporary rush of a feeling. Being afraid is an ongoing process. Fear is a state of being. The alertness that comes from being startled might even help you. It wakes you up. It puts your body in motion. It’s what saves prey from the tiger or the tiger from the hunter. But fear and worry and anxiety? Being afraid? That’s not fight or flight. That’s paralysis. That only makes things worse.

Especially right now. Especially in a world that requires solutions to the many problems we face. They’re certainly not going to solve themselves. And inaction (or the wrong action) may make them worse, it might put you in even more danger. An inability to learn, adapt, to embrace change will too.

There is a Hebrew prayer which dates back to the early 1800s: כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד והעיקר לא לפחד כלל. “The world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is not to be afraid.” The wisdom of that expression has sustained the Jewish people through incredible adversity and terrible tragedies. It was even turned into a popular song that was broadcast to troops and citizens alike during the Yom Kippur War. It’s a reminder: Yes, things are dicey, and it’s easy to be scared if you look down instead of forward. Fear will not help.

What does help? Training. Courage. Discipline. Commitment. Calm. But mainly, that courage thing – which the Stoics held up as the most essential virtue. One of my favorite explanations of this idea comes from the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. “It’s not like astronauts are braver than other people,” he says. “We’re just, you know, meticulously prepared…” Think about someone like John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, whose heart rate never went above a 100 beats per minute the entire mission. That’s what preparation does for you.

Astronauts face all sorts of difficult, high stakes situations in space – where the margin for error is tiny. In fact, on Chris’ first spacewalk his left eye went blind. Then his other eye teared up and went blind too. In complete darkness, he had to find his way back if he wanted to survive. He would later say that the key in such situations is to remind oneself that “there are six things that I could do right now, all of which will help make things better. And it’s worth remembering, too, there’s no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse also.” That’s the difference between scared and afraid. One prevents you from making things better, it may make them worse.

After the stock market crash in October 1929, America faced a horrendous economic crisis that lasted ten years. Banks failed. Investors were wiped out. Unemployment was some 20 percent. Herbert Hoover, who’d only been in office barely six months when the market collapsed, tried and failed repeatedly for the next 3.5 years to stem the tide. FDR, who succeeded him, would have never denied that things were dangerous and that this was scary. Of course it was. He was scared. How could he not be? Yet what he counseled the people in his now-legendary first inaugural address in 1933 was that fear was a choice, it was the real enemy to be fought. Because it would only make the situation worse. It would destroy the remaining banks. It would turn people against each other. It would prevent the implementation of cooperative solutions.

And today, whether the biggest problem you face is the coronavirus pandemic or the similarly dire economic implications – or maybe it’s both those things plus a faltering marriage or a cancer diagnosis or a lawsuit – you have to know what the real plague to avoid is.

This life we’re living – this world we inhabit – is a scary place. If you peer over the side of a narrow bridge, you can lose the heart to continue. You freeze up. You sit down. You don’t make good decisions. You don’t see or think clearly.

The important thing is that we are not afraid. That we don’t overthink things. That we don’t get distracted with the worst-case scenario on top of the worst-case scenario on top of the collision of two other worst-case scenarios. Because that doesn’t help us with what’s right in front of us right now. It doesn’t help us put one foot in front of the other, whether it’s on a spacewalk or a tough business call. It doesn’t help us slow our heart rate down whether we’re re-entering the earth’s atmosphere or watching a plummeting stock portfolio. It doesn’t help us remember that we’ve trained for this, that there is a playbook for how to proceed.

Remember, Marcus Aurelius himself faced a deadly, dangerous pandemic. His people were panicked. His doctors were baffled. His staff and his advisors were conflicted. His economy plunged. The plague spanned fifteen years of his reign with a mortality rate of between 2-3%. Marcus would have been scared – how could he not have been? But he didn’t let that rattle him. He didn’t freeze. He didn’t relinquish his ability to lead. He got to work.

“Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole,” he wrote to himself, as it was happening. “Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, ‘Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?’ You’ll be embarrassed to answer.” The crisis could have crippled him. But instead he stood up. He not only endured it, but he was a hero. He saved lives. He prevented panic from turning the battle into a rout.

Which is what we must do today and always, whatever we’re facing. We can’t give into fear. We have to repeat to ourselves over and over again: It’s OK to be scared, just don’t be afraid. We repeat: The world is a narrow bridge and I will not be afraid.

We have to focus on the six things, as Chris Hadfield might say, that we can do to make it better. And we can’t forget that there are plenty of things we can do to make things worse. Foremost among them, giving into fear and making mistakes. Rather, we have to keep going. Now is the time for everyone to show courage, like the thousands of generations who have come before us. Because time marches in only one direction – forward.”

"If You Want To Know..."

 

"The Great Stagger"

"The Great Stagger"
by The Zman

"One of the curious things about the Roman Empire is how it managed to stagger on for so long after the second century. The third century is actually called The Crisis of the Third Century, because the empire was in chaos. Yet, the empire managed to get through that period and carry on for roughly two more centuries. In time, Historians will probably puzzle over the same question regarding America. How is that it staggers on despite the obvious problems?

A popular theme in science fiction is one where the human explorers stumble upon alien technology and they are baffled as to what it does. It’s not that they know the purpose but cannot figure out how to make it work. It’s that they don’t understand the purpose of the technology. The implication is that the aliens were so advanced that they were creating tools to solve problems humans have yet to contemplate. The gap between the aliens and humans is so great that it cannot be bridged.

It is a useful thing to keep in mind when thinking about the modern world. The evidence is pretty good that Western man is dumber than his ancestors. We have more overall knowledge than our ancestors, but our ability to add to it is in sharp decline along with our ability to use it. The people in charge now struggle to do the basics of government, like maintain order and the infrastructure. In America, streets are crumbling and there are regular power failures in parts of the country.

A good small-scale example is the city of Baltimore. All of the machinery that was put in place back when it was an important city is still in place. The people running that machinery today are not doing so well. They clearly lack the intellectual firepower to operate that machinery. Baltimore is one of the most dangerous cities in the world and it is suffering from a steady population decline. The political class is so incompetent they can’t even run the graft system properly.

This was all true before the Covid panic. One thing that kept Baltimore afloat was the tourist and sports industry. In the summer, tourists would come to the well-guarded inner harbor. People from the surrounding areas would come in for sports games and the surrounding restaurants. All of that was shuttered by the panic, which means the tens of millions in tax dollars never arrived. Then there is the cost of the Covid panic itself, which has further crippled the city administration.

When you look at many American cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Newark and so on, the question is not “How did they get to this point?” The question is, “How have they not collapsed by now?” Part of it, of course, is the surrounding infrastructure that keeps them propped up. In the case of Baltimore, the rest of the state is taxed to keep Baltimore City government going. Federal dollars pour in to keep the cops on the streets and the schools open for business.

That’s fine for cities, but that cannot work for the country as a whole. Like those cities, the national government is increasing incompetent. Both official political parties are in such steep decline that the next election will offer a choice between a carny barker and a dementia patient. The sober minded will always feels as if the current age sits on the shoulder’s of giants, but the gap between the best we have today and just a few generations ago is breathtaking.

The only thing the political elite is good at doing is keeping the public at one another’s throat over trivia. This is why Trump in President. His main skill as a politician is to stir the pot and cause outrage. He’s a terribly inflamed hemorrhoid on the political ass of the establishment. The upcoming circus over the Supreme Court nominee promises six weeks of television mayhem. The shouting and shrieking, of course, will be from the political class itself, not an outraged public.

One can dismiss that as “bread and circuses” but that does not explain how the country staggers on despite it all. For six months the government at all levels has been sabotaging the economy and civic life with the Covid panic. Tens of millions have been thrown out of work. No one knows how many businesses have closed for good due to the Covid lock downs. Food lines are popping up in the suburbs. How is it that none of this has resulted in civil unrest or at least a few protests?

Of course, no one can really know what is happening. The media told us over 50 million people were thrown out of work due to the panic. The empty streets seem to confirm it, but they also tell us unemployment is below 10%. The stock market has returned to the levels it was at before the panic. The media also tells us that the riots we saw over the summer were a figment of our imagination. How can anything work when no one can be sure of anything being told to them by the rulers?

Like Rome for close to three centuries, America staggers on, despite the problems and the decline of the ruling class. In the case of Rome, there was no organized force capable of toppling her. In the case of America, the global order assumes America will be the pivot point, the fulcrum on which order balances. As long as people are being fed and have shelter, they will not rise up to challenge the rulers. Like Rome, the great stagger will continue until the corpse of the empire collapses."

"Hold Up Your Head!"

“Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country – hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.” 
- Mark Twain

"Market Fantasy Updates 10/1/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 10/1/20" 
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
Gregory Mannarino,
AM 10/1/20 UPDATE: 
“Alert! Mass Layoffs Begin. New Bailout.”"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 10/1/20"

Updated October 1, 2020, 7:48 A.M. E.T.

• A large new study in India found that children of all ages can spread the coronavirus. The study is not the last word in the debate, but it adds to the evidence that school openings are likely to lead to new outbreaks.
• The White House overruled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and will allow cruise ships to begin sailing again after Oct. 31, rather than February.
• The governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, refused to extend the state’s mask mandate. “We should not use the heavy hand of government more than it is justified,” Reeves said.
• For the first time this season, the N.F.L. postponed a game - between the Tennessee Titans and the Pittsburgh Steelers - after an eighth member of the Titans organization tested positive.

OCT 1, 2020 7:48 AM ET:
 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 33,967,100 
people, according to official counts, including 7,262,630 Americans.

      OCT 1, 2020 7:48 AM ET: 
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
Updated 10/1/20, 5:23 AM ET
Click image for larger size.

"How It Really Is"

 

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

"Chamath Palihapitiya Slams Airline Bailouts: 'Giving More Money To These CEOs Is Idiotic And Dumb'"

"Chamath Palihapitiya Slams Airline Bailouts:
 'Giving More Money To These CEOs Is Idiotic And Dumb'"
by Tyler Durden


"Good live TV is tough to pull off, especially on CNBC, but once in a while, an otherwise boring debate about the economy or policy will fly 'off the rails' and traders and other financial professionals will turn the volume up and tune in.

That happened back in the spring, when Ventuer Capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya debated CNBC's Scott Wapner about whether the Trump Administration should bail out the airlines, and other industries suffering from the pandemic. Palihapitiya famously asserted that the government should "Let them fail" before explaining that these companies burnt up their rainy day funds and took on unnecessary debt to finance share buybacks. And since airlines are asset rich, the businesses will survive bankruptcy intact, along with all or most of the staff.

This response horrified Wapner, and we chronicled the resulting clash. Thrilled with the response, CNBC has brought Palihapitiya and Wapner together for at least one interview since that initial encounter, and on Wednesday, the pair sat for yet another interview as part of CNBC's "Seeking Alpha" Conference, which was hosted digitally this year.

Remarkably, the two men essentially circled back to their original debate about bailouts, and Palihapitiya delivered on the colorful quotes. Troubled airlines shouldn't be bailed out, Palihapitiya argued, because they have been so poorly managed. Handing government money to the airline CEOS and their boards would be "idiotic and dumb".

CNBC has frequently hosted airline executives and lobbyists to argue the other side - that not delivering on the bailouts could put the industry in jeopardy (while implying that customer safety could ultimately be impacted). But Mnuchin's comments this morning seemed to put hopes for a bail out to rest, even though President Trump promised that the airlines would be taken care of.

But instead of blaming COVID-19 for the airlines' woes, Palihapitiya pointed out that the companies essentially put themselves in this situation. Instead of building up reserve funds, these companies focused on buying back stock and bolstering the company's valuation. It was "the most absolutely horrid and idiotic form of capital allocation you could imagine," he said.

"Not a single extra dollar should go to these companies. All this money should be focused on those people." Chamath Palihapitiya says people out of work should be assisted through unemployment benefits and eviction protections."
- CNBC (@CNBC) September 30, 2020

If governments are going to hand out money to corporations every 10 years, then the government should impose new restrictions on how that money is spent, Palihapitiya said, hinting at support for making share buybacks illegal, or subject to greater restrictions. "This has been happening for the last 15 or 20 years," Palihapitiya said. "If you were going to give these folks money, you should have created some much tighter guardrails for what you were going to do in the future."

Instead of topping off the rescue programs instituted by Congress and the Fed, Palihapitiya argued that any future stimulus funds should go to small business owners and individuals only. “If you really believe in trickle-down economics, then let’s actually see how trickle-down economics would work. Give money into the hands of ordinary Americans...What I guarantee you they will do is they will spend." "We should be improving unemployment benefits, we should make sure they don't get forced out of their homes, to the extent that they have loans that are coming due...they need to be compensated," Palihapitiya.

Prodded again by Wapner about the tens of thousands of airline employees who may lose their jobs this week, the venture capitalist who recently launched a SPAC of his own, stood his ground and insisted that "not another dollar" should go to "these CEOs and boards".

Moving on to the subject of politics, Palihapitiyah dismissed Tuesday night's debate as "shambolic" and called it a "Dumpster fire" that was "so bad". However, he also said that, in a way, it was also "incredibly clarifying," before cautioning that a shift toward brand over substance could one day lead to Kim Kardashian, the pioneering reality TV starlet, to the White House."

Gregory Mannarino, "Middle-Class Meltdown; Updates"

Gregory Mannarino,
"Middle-Class Meltdown; Updates"
Related:


"This Explosion Of Bankruptcies And Layoffs In The U.S Is Unlike Anything We Have Ever Seen Before"

"This Explosion Of Bankruptcies And Layoffs In The U.S
 Is Unlike Anything We Have Ever Seen Before"
by Epic Economist

"The U.S. economy was supposed to be turning a corner by now, but instead it looks like we are headed for an exceedingly painful winter. All over the country, big companies are laying off thousands of workers, and in some cases the numbers are even larger than that. 

Even before the viral outbreak had started, businesses were filing for bankruptcy, but the unemployment rates that resulted from the present collapse were unexpectedly high, especially after witnessing the historic low in February. The first spike was shocking, with over 1 million jobless claims registered in a week, and although the numbers haven't peaked that high in recent days, last week, another 800,000 claims were filed, and forecasts for the winter indicate that tens of thousands of workers will be permanently laid off by the end of the year. 

According to a recent piece published by the WST, we are on a path to set new records for retail store closings, retail bankruptcies, and retail liquidations this year. The publishing states that "retail store closings in the U.S. reached a record in the first half of 2020 and the year is on pace for record bankruptcies and liquidations as the sanitary crisis accelerates industry changes, particularly the shift to online shopping, according to a report on the downturn’s severity. 

If the current trends continue, the 2020 retail bankruptcies will exceed the ones that happened in 2010, when 48 retailers went bankrupt during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. This tendency has been going on for a while now. In 2019, 22 retailers filed for bankruptcy, summing to a total of 5,998 store closures up until this point. And every week more and more companies announce they will be shutting their doors for good. Last week, coffee giant Starbucks disclosed that 400 of its restaurants would close, while Telecom behemoth AT&T will have 250 of its locations shut down. Bed Bath & Beyond will downsize 200 of its outlets and Macy’s will be closing 125 of its stores. 

In any case, the retail sector isn't the only one that has been absolutely hammered in face of this unprecedented economic collapse. - the broader commercial real estate market, by contrast, continues to implode at the epicenter of New York City, "where nearly 6,000 business closures, has resulted in a 40% eruption in bankruptcy filings across business districts of all five boroughs this year," reported Bloomberg. Moreover, the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit membership organization of NYC's top businesses, alerted that the effects of the health-crisis-related restrictions could potentially close a third of the 230,000 businesses across all five boroughs for good. The Bloomberg report also described that bankruptcy filings in the region have soared since mid-March, which was when the state of New York reported its first casualty from the viral outbreak, leading Governor Andrew Cuomo to close all nonessential businesses. 

Court records show that there were 610 filings in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York from March 16 to September 27, marking a 40 percent surge from the same period in 2019 and the highest by far for any year since the financial crisis. 

And, on top of all this overwhelming announcements, here comes even more concerning news: the airline industry is on the brink of a historical fall-out if the federal government doesn't proceed to enact a massive bailout. According to Wolf Richter on his daily Wolf Street economic examination, "October 1 is the day US airlines that accepted their portion of the $25-billion bailout under the CARES Act can start involuntary layoffs of their employees. They’ve been shedding large numbers of employees since March but through voluntary buyouts, early retirements, and other programs that induced employees to temporarily or permanently leave. 

Now the airlines are engaged in a desperate lobbying effort to get legislation signed into law that would provide the next $25-billion bailout package. Threats have been flying, so to speak, to motivate Congress to get this done. American Airlines CEO Doug Parker told CBS News on Sunday that if there isn’t a new bailout program, “there are going to be 100,000 aviation professionals who are out of work, who wouldn’t be otherwise.” This would include the 18,000 employees American Airlines has threatened to lay off." All these crushing events are going to resonate on winter's unfoldings, and soon we will unfortunately see more people in financial distress and more businesses disintegrating. From where we stand, the economic future doesn't look any more promising. The dominoes are falling and our society is crumbling. We do hope America still has the resilience to deal with everything that is coming for us.
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