"Just When We Think..."

"Just when we think we figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. So, we have to improvise. We find happiness in unexpected places. We find ourselves back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong."

- "Dr. Meredith Grey", "Grey's Anatomy"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 10/13/20"

by David Leonhardt

10/13/20

• Chinese authorities will test all nine million residents of the city of Qingdao for the coronavirus, in response to an outbreak of nine cases. The move is typical of China’s aggressive - and successful - campaign to control the virus, after initially downplaying the dangers.

• Johnson & Johnson has paused the late-stage clinical trial of its vaccine because of an “unexplained illness” in one of the volunteers.

• What happens when the first vaccines are approved? Expect months of “chaos and confusion,” experts say, as the world learns which work best and how long their protections last.

• The White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, refused to answer reporters’ questions after they asked that he keep his mask on.

• Several companies - including Google, Target, Microsoft, Ford Motor and The New York Times - have extended working from home through next summer.

Oct 13, 2020, 12:14 AM ET:

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 37,805,100 

people, according to official counts, including 7,840,484 Americans.

      Oct 13, 2020 12:14 AM ET: 

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

◆

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

OCT 13, 2020 2:30 PM: "Netherlands, Ukraine Tighten Restrictions As Countries Across Europe See Record COVID-19 Cases: Live Updates"

OCT 13, 2020 10:25 AM: "25-Year-Old Nevada Man First American Confirmed To Have Caught COVID-19 Twice"

OCT 13, 2020 8:10 AM: "Dutch Woman Dies After Being Reinfected With COVID-19, Global Cases See Biggest Weekly Jump Yet: Live Updates"

◆

Updated 10/13/20, 3:24 AM ET

Click image for larger size.

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

"The Illusion Of The Tiny Shadows..."

“In The Republic, Plato imagines human beings chained for the duration of their lives in an underground cave, knowing nothing but darkness. Their gaze is confined to the cave wall, upon which shadows of the world are thrown. They believe these flickering shadows are reality. If, Plato writes, one of these prisoners is freed and brought into the sunlight, he will suffer great pain. Blinded by the glare, he is unable to seeing anything and longs for the familiar darkness. But eventually his eyes adjust to the light. The illusion of the tiny shadows is obliterated. He confronts the immensity, chaos, and confusion of reality. The world is no longer drawn in simple silhouettes. But he is despised when he returns to the cave. He is unable to see in the dark as he used to. Those who never left the cave ridicule him and swear never to go into the light lest they be blinded as well.”

- Chris Hedges

○

”To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood;

It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness.

It cannot be.”

- Frank Herbert

"Our Simulacrum Economy"

"Our Simulacrum Economy"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Readers once routinely chastised me for over-using simulacrum to describe our economy and society. The problem is this word perfectly describes the hollowed-out, rigged economy and social order we inhabit and so synonyms don't quite cut it: it's not the same as simulation or imitation or counterfeit. My use (or over-use) dates back to the 2009 publication of my book "Survival+", which included a chapter titled Simulacrum and the Politics of Experience. I use simulacrum to describe a carefully constructed representation of a once-authentic system that is intended to shape our behavior to suit the interests of those constructing the simulacrum.

The simulacrum has the look and feel of the once-authentic system but it's rigged to benefit the few whose interests are better served by the simulacrum than they could ever be served by an authentic system. As I wrote in "Survival+:" A simulacrum is used to distort a reality that, once revealed, would cause the target audience to act in ways that would not serve the interests of those deploying the simulacrum.

The point of a simulacrum is to mimic an authentic system realistically enough so nobody notices it's rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many. This is different from a simulation--for example, a flight simulator--that models the actual experience. It's also not a faux copy or counterfeit of the authentic system; it is a replacement that's real in every way.

French Postmodernist Jean Baudrillard's 1981 book "Simulacra and Simulation" attempts to differentiate Simulacra and Simulation by noting that a simulacrum is not a copy of an original (i.e. a counterfeit) because the original is no longer accessible. As a result, the simulacrum becomes not just real but hyper-real.

For an example, consider capitalism which in its classical form is the risking of capital to generate financial and social gains that were not possible in a pre-capital economy. The labor and materials needed to construct a major canal, for example, were beyond the reach of villages or even towns, and so their economies remained localized and poor due to the inability to reach distant, more lucrative markets. Once capital could be assembled in sufficient size, the localized, fragmented economies were unified by the canal, and commerce expanded exponentially as a result, benefiting everyone with access to the canal: laborers, farmers, craftspeople, traders and those who risked the money to construct the canal.

Contrast this authentic form of capitalism with the monopoly-finance-state version we inhabit, a simulacrum of authentic capitalism that retains enough superficial similarities to the original that the vast majority of participants don't even realize that their experience of this simulacrum is entirely different from an experience of authentic capitalism.

Rather than draw benefits from this hyper-real monopoly-finance-state version, the vast majority of participants are exploited, as the value of their labor and capital is extracted by the simulacrum version of "capitalism" which divvies up the extracted value between the monopolies / cartels who control most of the valuable economic activity, the financial sector that parasitically feeds on the real economy and the state, which extracts wealth to feed its vast network of dependents, enforcers and minders of the entire system.

In this hyper-real simulacrum, a vast fortune is never more than a couple of stock gambles, TikTok clips or YouTube videos away. Or for those wary of the casino, the enormous mortgage taken on for life promises access to the riches of the Everything Bubble. In the hyper-real casino, everyone has access to the terrors of losing, but only a few know the joys of the rigged games that guarantee a few big winners by design and a fortunate few who stumbled into the game at a propitious moment.

As Baudrillard anticipated, the authentic original version of capitalism is no longer accessible. The simulacrum that we call capitalism is rigged, and the mechanisms are so cleverly obscured that the vast majority of participants willingly allow themselves to be exploited, disempowered or marginalized because they have no experience or even reference point to the authentic original version, as it no longer exists. Everything they know and experience - the economic models, symbols, signifiers, narratives, adverts, etc., and their own conceptions of value and agency, have all been so thoroughly debauched that they have no idea that the authentic original has been lost.

The problem is our system only survives by cannibalizing its weakest parts, and once they've been consumed, the system can no longer sustain itself and it expires. Simulacra are not fake, but they are profoundly unstable and prone to collapse. Everything gluing the monopoly-finance-state system together is unraveling due to the excesses of extraction and exploitation the system has perfected.

Once the rigged system collapses, we'll have an opportunity to assemble an authentic economy, a new original that isn't rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many. This is what I discuss in my new book "A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet," (free excerpt (PDF)."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Choice..."

"Except for totally impulsive or psychotic behavior, every human

decision comes down to the choice between two alternatives."

- Jeff Duntemann

"What’s Behind No-show Joe"

"What’s Behind No-show Joe"

by Jim Kunstler

Something even stranger and more sinister than the Covid-19 virus is creeping across the USA: Joe Biden’s Flying Dutchman campaign which, like the ghost-ship of legend, plies the vasty electoral seas with a skeleton crew and no hope of ever landing. Late last week, the candidate blew into Yuma, AZ, for a rare, joint appearance with veep pardner Kamala Harris and, guess what, absolutely no civilians (i.e. voters) showed up at the event, though the local TV news had publicized it. Weird, a little bit?

Face it: we’re living in the days of fantastic high-tech information mischief. Virtually all of the traditional news media, plus the powerful new social media, plus the news media of foreign lands, and scores of other embeds in the federal bureaucracy, are behind the story that Ol’ White Joe and his understudy, Ms. Harris, are way ahead in the polls. Do you ask yourself, as I must, whether this is all a gigantic psy-op? And why would it be?

All right, I know that many readers are cross-eyed to the point of nausea over the Barr-Durham investigation, especially the failure to deliver indictments before the election. The complete absence of leaks from that outfit has been crazy-making itself for many. But I take that as a sign of the profound seriousness of the investigation. Durham’s crew is methodically making a case for the worst and largest seditious conspiracy in US history. It requires the most extreme care. They are not going to blow it by allowing any suspicion that it is being used as a campaign ploy on behalf of Mr. Trump.

Sometime after the election and before the 20th of January, a great big hammer is going to come down on the people who organized the RussiaGate op and many of its spinoffs. As the late Tom Petty observed, the waiting is the hardest part, and not only for those in the Counter-resistance who have already connected the felonious dots based on publicly available documents, but also for the targets of the Barr-Durham RussiaGate probe, the Resistance itself - the long log of Obama Admin officials, Clinton campaign minions, and even senators who worked to prevent Donald Trump’s election by foul means and then tried to disable and overthrow him when it didn’t work, in order to cover up their criminal culpability.

You understand that the targets of Barr and Durham are almost all lawyers, Democratic Party-connected lawyers, that is. And so, what they are doing in the shadows of Joe Biden’s ghost campaign is attempting to mount a last-ditch lawyers’ assault on their antagonists, who have regained control of a rogue Justice Department. Thus: Lawfare. If RussiaGate was the most dastardly crime of government against itself ever in US history, then the final result will be the most awful roundup and prosecution of disgraced former officials ever seen in the history of the world’s great nations. Criminal liability may even extend into the news media itself - though they may only be named as unindicted co-conspirators.

Thus too, the unanimity in the news media on not reporting the documents lately declassified by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe, and his predecessor Rick Grenell. What had been a slow dribble of documents zealously protected by seditionists still in office - namely CIA chief Gina Haspel and FBI director Christopher Wray - is becoming a torrent of incriminating information as it is finally pried from their hands. The real story is getting out there, into the public realm, by other means despite the attempts to suppress it - and none of it is coming from Barr and Durham. Their work constructing a difficult case goes on independent of those declassified releases. It is driving the Resistance batshit crazy.

Hence, all the noises emanating from Lawfare circles about the monumental legal battle to come over the mail-in vote. So high are the stakes - so many careers possibly broken and celebrated figures sent to trial, maybe even prison - that the Democratic Party’s Lawfare gang will dare to confound the resolution of a presidential election and disrupt a 200-plus year history of orderly government. They will mount scores of lawsuits in every swing state against its slate of electors in an effort to thwart an electoral college vote scheduled for December 14. They won’t care whether they turn the USA into a failed state. They just desperately want to get their friends and colleagues off the hook.

All this is why the Biden-Harris campaign is such a dispirited fiasco. They don’t matter. Their only “policy” is to front for a lawyer network aimed at protecting its members at any cost. Their aim is to hijack what’s left of America’s legal system in order to destroy it. They went public with the scheme in the so-called Transition Integrity Project and the “war game” it ran over the summer. That scenario seemed feasible up to the sudden death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court will change the odds of that scheme greatly against them… and they know it."

- https://kunstler.com/

"We Destroyed the World’s Greatest Economy for No Reason"

"We Destroyed the World’s Greatest Economy for No Reason"

by Jim Rickards

"Everyone knew the second quarter of 2020 was going to be a disaster, and it was. The U.S. economy fell by 31.4% (annualized) in the second quarter. But, the expectation was that we’d have a V-shaped recovery with a sharp bounce-back in the third quarter, a reopening of closed businesses, rehiring of the unemployed and a rising stock market. But so far, the economy is not following the script laid out for it by the politicians and experts.

The stock market did rally, but that was mainly because the stock index components are heavily weighted to companies least affected by the pandemic including Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet (Google), Facebook and Microsoft. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the Federal Reserve printed $4 trillion of new money and backstopped money markets, corporate bonds, municipal bonds, foreign central banks and other facets of capital markets with direct purchases, guarantees or currency swaps. Even at that, stocks have been struggling since hitting new highs on September 2.

And yes, there was growth in the third-quarter (the best estimate is that the economy will grow at about a 35% annualized rate, but we won't have official figures until October 29). The 35% third-quarter recovery was to be expected as Americans got back to work after the lockdown. That 35% rate might sound like the third quarter will basically make up for the second quarter, but it won’t.

Not as Good as It Sounds: The 35% gain is applied to the lower level of output resulting from the 31.4% loss. If you take 100 as a starting place, reduce it by 31.4% you get to a new level of 68.6. If you increase that level by 35% you get back to 92.6. That still leaves you 7.4 percentage points in the hole, not counting the 5% drop in the first quarter. When you apply 7.4% to a $22 trillion economy, that means you still have $1.6 trillion of lost output on an annualized basis even after the 35% third-quarter recovery.

The V-shaped recovery looks more like an “L” with flattish growth beyond the third-quarter. Things will not necessarily get much better from there, and progress is very much in doubt. The lockdown continues in many places. The virus has not gone away, and the caseload and fatalities continue to grow.

A second wave of layoffs has now begun as companies that were able to hang on thanks to Payroll Protection Plan loans find that the money has run out, and their businesses are still closed. They are now being forced to let go of workers who might have survived the first layoffs in March and April. So the letter to describe the recovery isn’t a “V” or even an “L” but possibly a “W,” with another recession right around the corner.

Beyond the second wave of layoffs, there is a persistent problem of the long-term unemployed whose businesses are shut down or dead in the water with no prospect of any return of demand. This is a combination of factors the economy has not seen since the 1930s. It’s worse than a technical recession, it’s a depression, and its effects will be felt for years, or even decades, to come.

When Will Output Return To 2019 Levels? The U.S. will not regain 2019 output levels until at least 2022, and growth going forward will be even worse than the weakest-ever growth of the 2009–2020 recovery. The post-2009 recovery produced only 2.2% growth. It was an L-shaped recovery. It was a real recovery, yet the output gap between the former trend and the new trend was never closed.

The U.S. economy suffered over $4 trillion of lost wealth based on the difference between the former strong trend and the new weaker trend. That lost wealth was a serious problem for the U.S. before the New Great Depression. Now the prospect is for even lower growth than the weak post-2009 recovery.

The U.S. economy would have to grow 10% a year in 2021 and 2022 to return to 2019 levels of output. First, is 10% growth even a reality? Past history says no. Since 1943, U.S. annual real growth in GDP has never exceeded 10%. In fact, post-1980 recoveries averaged 3.2% growth. And since 1984, growth has never exceeded 5%.

So 10% is a very optimistic forecast to begin with. Here’s the problem: Using 100 as a yardstick for 2019 output and assuming unrealistic back-to-back years of 10% real growth in 2021 and 2022, one still does not get back to 2019 output levels. It would take the highest annual real growth in over 40 years, sustained for two consecutive years, to get close to 2019 output levels. It’s far more realistic to assume real growth will be less than 10% per year. That puts the economy well into 2023 before reaching output levels last achieved in 2019.

Another “L”-shaped Recovery: The new recovery, far from the 10% growth discussed in the example above, may only produce 1.8% growth, even worse than the 2.2% growth before the pandemic. It’s another L-shaped recovery, the second in a row. Now the bottom of the L is even closer to a flat line, and the output gap compared with the long-term trend is even greater. All of this economic devastation was not caused directly by the virus. It was caused by the policy response to the virus, specifically the extreme lockdowns ordered by many state governors. Was it all worth it? The likely answer is "no."

90% of Lockdown Benefits at Only 10% of the Cost: Many top scientists agree that lockdowns don't work. The virus will spread with or without a lockdown. Some measures make sense such as washing hands, keeping social distance and wearing masks in crowded spaces. But there's no evidence masks do any good at all when the wearer is alone, outdoors or at a reasonable distance from others. We could have followed these basic rules and gotten 90% of the benefit of a lockdown at only 10% of the cost.

Those supporting lockdowns have ignored the costs of increased suicides, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and the depression and anxiety that result from lack of social interaction. There was never a good reason to close every bar, restaurant, salon, boutique and public space.

“We Destroyed the World's Greatest Economy for No Good Reason”: Even the World Health Organization is coming out against lockdowns. Dr David Nabarro, the WHO's special envoy on COVID-19, says: "We really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method… We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus. The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it."

We destroyed the world's greatest economy for no good reason."

- dailyreckoning.com

"Alert: $27 Trillion Dollar Government Debt Heading To Economic Collapse & Stock Market Crash"

"Alert: $27 Trillion Dollar Government Debt Heading 

To Economic Collapse & Stock Market Crash"

by Epic Economist

"The government debt has become so massive, it will exceed the entire size of the economy by the end of next year. Additionally, the national budget deficit is expected to hit record highs, also pushing the economy into another, more intricate collapse, and consequently, spreading fear on the stock markets that will unavoidably experience a crash.

This scenario corroborates with the assertion that the US economic collapse has just begun. For that reason, in this video, we discuss how the huge national debt and the budget deficit will lead us to a catastrophic path of financial and economic depression, and we present to you a report that shows regardless of who's the winner of the elections, the national debt bubble will explode in any way.

Recently, the national debt surpassed $27 trillion, about three months ago, the debt was standing at $24 million. It took the nation 210 years to run the National Debt up to $2 trillion. It took exactly 2 months and 2 days to add the most recent $2 trillion. At the same time, the federal government set a new record for the biggest budget deficit in any fiscal year. 

The federal response to the health crisis was the main catalyst for the massive spike in the budget deficit. For Fiscal Year 2020 the budget deficit will be at least $3.7 trillion, or 17.9% of projected GDP, and it could reach even larger levels in face of a second surge of infection cases. This figure is more than three times as much as the 2019 default and more than double the levels seen after the market collapse and Great Recession of 2008-09. 

The expansion of the deficit will boost the federal debt to exceed annual gross domestic product next year, to levels last witnessed following World War II. However, when debt levels exploded as a consequence of the enormous borrowing to finance the WW2 effort, those levels swiftly declined during the postwar boom. 

Right now, we won't see these levels receding any sooner, since the federal spending tendency is to create more debt. In fact, behind the facade President Trump called “the greatest economy in the history of America", the federal government was already engaged in fiscal stimulus. 

Even before the outbreak has arrived in America, the deficit featured numbers you would expect to see during a massive economic slowdown. The federal response to it, just put spending and debt in hyperdrive.

As we approach the November 3rd elections, a report warns that despite who wins, the spending trend will continue and, in both scenarios, the national debt will likely explode. The report outlines that under current law, trillion-dollar annual budget deficits will become the new normal.

If things were bad before, from now on they're only getting worse, because after analyzing the spending and tax proposals from both candidates, the organization discovered that in either case, economic prospects will be bleak. The difference between both agendas is derisive and the main discrepancy would be defined by how the two candidates would manage to arrive at these deficits. 

What our leaders are failing to do is to help to end the health crisis and effectively rescuing the economy, addressing these unsustainable long-term deficits. But by taking advantage of the current monetary policy, debt levels won't cease to grow. The administration has the responsibility to balance its spending not to put the financial markets rebound at the expense of people's lives.

If government officials aren’t held accountable for their decisions, their tendency is to always enact fiscally reckless policies. By looking at both spending proposals, we can clearly see that we can't rely on Team Red or Team Blue to save the day. What many may not understand is that the national debt is not only a federal problem. We are the ones who are going to pay for it.

It means we will be seeing these massive numbers translated into higher taxes and massive inflation, as a result, less income, higher prices, and more bills to pay. Politicians will not lead us out of the current fiscal calamity they have put us into. Instead, they will use our economic illiteracy to keep us into a loop where we endlessly jump from an economic rock bottom to the next."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com

Musical Interlude: Chuck Wild, Liquid Mind, “Dream Ten”

Chuck Wild, Liquid Mind, “Dream Ten”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The most distant object easily visible to the eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy some two and a half million light-years away. But without a telescope, even this immense spiral galaxy - spanning over 200,000 light years - appears as a faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda. In contrast, details of a bright yellow nucleus and dark winding dust lanes, are revealed in this digital telescopic image. 

Narrow band image data recording emission from hydrogen atoms, shows off the reddish star-forming regions dotting gorgeous blue spiral arms and young star clusters. While even casual skygazers are now inspired by the knowledge that there are many distant galaxies like M31, astronomers seriously debated this fundamental concept in the 20th century. Were these "spiral nebulae" simply outlying components of our own Milky Way Galaxy or were they instead "island universes" - distant systems of stars comparable to the Milky Way itself? This question was central to the famous Shapley-Curtis debate of 1920, which was later resolved by observations of M31 in favor of Andromeda, island universe.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100109.html

"Teach Them..."

"Teach them a spider does not spin a web. Spiders spin meaning. 

Cut one strand and the web holds. Cut many, the web falls. 

With the web's fall, so too falls the spider. 

Break the web. Break the spider. So breaks the circle of life."

- Frederic M. Perrin

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “I Happened to Be Standing”

  

“I Happened to Be Standing”

“I don’t know where prayers go,

or what they do.

Do cats pray, while they sleep

half-asleep in the sun?

Does the opossum pray as it

crosses the street?

The sunflowers? The old black oak

growing older every year?

I know I can walk through the world,

along the shore or under the trees,

with my mind filled with things

of little importance, in full

self-attendance. A condition I can’t really

call being alive

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,

or does it matter?

The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.

Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing

just outside my door, with my notebook open,

which is the way I begin every morning.

Then a wren in the privet began to sing.

He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,

I don’t know why. And yet, why not.

I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe

or whatever you don’t. That’s your business.

But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be

if it isn’t a prayer?

So I just listened, my pen in the air.”

- Mary Oliver

"Actually..."

“I’d been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it’s sort of depressing,

 thinking how many times I’d been in them. But if experience had taught me anything,

 it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse.”

- Jim Butcher

"How We Institutionalized Incompetence"

"How We Institutionalized Incompetence"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"You've probably noticed things no longer work as well as they once did. For example, the store's online inventory says something is in stock and when you get to the store, it's not on the shelf. A small issue, but telling nonetheless. Or you might call a local government agency to get an explanation of how a new fee is calculated, and nobody's ever available to explain it - or sort out your punitive late fee even though you paid on time.

You've probably noticed services cost a lot more now, but the quality has eroded. Sure, it's easy to blame it all on the pandemic, but quality has been eroding as costs have risen for years.

You've probably noticed massive cost overruns in public projects. That $1 billion bridge is now $3 billion - oh, sorry, make that $4 billion. If we ever get it finished, better estimate $5 billion.

You've probably noticed that enormous investments in infrastructure, education, reducing homelessness, etc. don't actually improve the situation or fix what's broken. Even the most basic projects take years or decades, congestion and homelessness increase, and education that's not aligned with the real economy flounders on.

You've probably noticed that all the highly paid analysts, academics, think-tank gurus, private-sector hotshots, etc. are either clueless, incoherent or delusional. All their "solutions" boil down to one recommendation: keep the feeding trough filled to the brim, no matter how many hogs are gorging themselves.

Incompetence is now so ubiquitous, so embedded, so obvious and so intractable that we finally have to recognize that America has institutionalized incompetence. Why? That's an interesting question with no one answer. Broadly speaking, self-interest is all that matters. Every decision is made to maximize self-interest while cloaking the predation with sickly-sweet propaganda of the most transparent type.

Institutions protect insiders because every insider must mask their self-interest and the general failure of the institution. Insiders protect other insiders lest transparency reveal the insiders' skims and scams and the failure of the institution to fulfill its purpose.

Risk is to be avoided at all costs because any failure might reveal the systemic failure of the entire organization. So as Louis-Vincent Gave recently explained, CYA Is the Guiding Principle Of Our Time. If insiders just maintain the status quo and don't rock the boat with any risky innovations or policies, no one will look too deeply at the systemic failures or the rising risks of the whole rotten mess collapsing. This is how we've devolved to doing more of what's failed spectacularly. Indeed, spectacular failure is the excuse for bigger budgets, more staffing, more studies, etc.

America's core businesses are monopoly and corruption. In either case, the customer/end-user can be ignored because they have no real choice. Or the choice is false: your choice of healthcare insurance provider, Internet provider, etc. is between two equally predatory companies. As a result of the network effect, quasi-monopolies abound in Big Tech. Yes, there are alternative platforms for posting videos other than YouTube, but few will see your content because "everybody goes to YouTube." So content providers have to not just promote their content, they have to promote the alternative platform in a system that's rigged to favor the monopoly-platforms.

Corruption also limits transparency and competition just like monopolies and cartels. Insiders rig the hiring process so cronies and relatives get the jobs, and so on. Those tasked with oversight look the other way because their cushy post-retirement position awaits them if they just keep their mouth shut.

Then there are the incompetent elites at the top. They've punched all the right cards - elite university, multiple diplomas, internship with the right judges, investment bank, etc. - but they've learned absolutely nothing other than how to navigate a corrupt system that protects or even rewards incompetence. What the ruling elites learn in America is somebody will bail me out. The government will fund the financial bailout, the fines will be wrist-slaps, the university will slip me into a highly paid position out of the limelight, and so on. And always, always, always, the feeding trough will be filled to the brim, no matter what the cost or the incompetence. Sacrifice and discipline have been reduced to platitudes in America's elites, whose core competence is issuing mea culpas when caught.

An enormous percentage of well-paid "work" is compliance-related. As the pursuit of self-interest has decayed competence, we've become obsessed with monitoring and ticking endless boxes to conform to accepted practices, whether they make sense or not. This is the essence of BS work: all the compliance busy-work has nothing to do with the actual production of goods and services or innovation or excellence; as the late David Graeber said of BS work: everyone doing it knows it's worthless.

Compliance is the perfect cover for institutionalized incompetence. The irony is rather rich: systemic incompetence is papered over by incompetent compliance measures, all of which drain the feeding trough. There's only one way left to fill the feeding trough being drained by systemic incompetence: trillions in "free money" forever. That this extravaganza of endless "free money" debauches the currency is ignored, because all the ruling incompetents have been trained to be utterly confident that somebody will bail me out.

And so we face the ultimate irony: bailing-out-everything destroys the entire rotten system. Competence now means successfully navigating incompetent systems corrupted by self-interest. This means avoiding all risk and leaving everything as it is, lest someone notice the systemic failure. What we've institutionalized is run to failure: we'll just keep doing more of what's failed spectacularly until the entire status quo collapses in a fetid heap of greed, self-interest and gross incompetence."

-https://www.oftwominds.com/

Musical Interlude: John Denver, "Calypso"

John Denver, "Calypso"

“With his iconic red beanie and famed ship ‘Calypso,’ Jacques Cousteau, the French marine explorer, inventor, filmmaker, and conservationist sailed the world for much of the late 20th century, educating millions about the Earth's oceans and its inhabitants - and inspiring their protection.” - Ker Than, for National Geographic News.

Full screen mode recommended.

The Daily "Near You?"

 
Werribee, Victoria, Australia. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Number of Americans That Have Filed for Unemployment Benefits in 2020 Exceeds the Number That Voted for Trump in 2016"

"The Number of Americans That Have Filed for Unemployment Benefits

 in 2020 Exceeds the Number That Voted for Trump in 2016"

by Michael Snyder

I am not trying to make a political statement with this article. I am simply pointing out that the number of Americans that have filed initial claims for unemployment benefits in 2020 is almost unimaginable. In 2016, a total of 62,984,828 votes were cast for Donald Trump. Here in 2020, a total of 63,600,000 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits since the middle of March. So the number of Americans that have filed for unemployment during this pandemic is now greater than the number of Trump voters in the last election. Of course if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, we would be saying the exact same thing about her in a couple of weeks. Back in 2016, she received a grand total of 65,853,514 votes. The point is not to assign political blame to one side or the other, because neither side knew that COVID-19 was coming. Rather, I am trying to get my readers to understand that we have witnessed a collapse in employment during this pandemic that is absolutely unprecedented.

And more layoff announcements keep rolling in with each passing day. For instance, we just learned that ESPN will be laying off hundreds of workers: "ESPN could lay off hundreds of employees in the coming weeks, sources told Front Office Sports. One source pegged the potential number of job losses between 300 and 700 employees. Another estimated 400 possible lost jobs. The cuts are expected to hit hardest among ESPN employees who work behind the camera." For many, working in sports television is a dream job, and it hurts me to think that many of those employees will soon lose jobs that they truly love.

Elsewhere, Amtrak has just announced that they could soon be eliminating 2,400 more jobs: "Amtrak will need to cut 2,400 more jobs and could see “drastic impacts” on its rail service if Congress does not intervene and provide emergency funding for the passenger rail provider, the company announced Thursday. In a letter to lawmakers, Amtrak President and CEO William Flynn requested nearly $4.9 billion in fiscal year 2021 to help it close massive budget gaps it faces amid the pandemic."

I know that I am probably boring my readers by discussing layoff announcements day after day after day, but I am trying to make a very important point. We are not in any sort of a “recovery”. Instead, we have entered a horrifying economic downturn which isn’t going to end any time soon. If they actually believed that it was going to end soon, all of these big corporations would not be laying off large numbers of workers. And without jobs, a whole lot of people out there are deeply, deeply suffering.

Right now, millions upon millions of Americans haven’t been paying rent, haven’t been paying their mortgages, haven’t been making their vehicle payments and haven’t been making their credit card payments. And I was absolutely stunned to learn that payments are being made on only 11 percent of federal student loans right now: "Less than 11% of people with federal student loans are repaying them during the pandemic, according to data analyzed by higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. That means about 4.6 million out of 42 million borrowers are continuing to pay down their debt."

Eventually the federal government will be requiring everyone to start making their payments again, but for now this break is helping a lot of people get through this very challenging time. But when will this challenging time finally be over? After the election? In 2021?

So many Americans are looking forward to having economic conditions return to “normal”, but the truth is that our entire system is in the process of melting down and things are never going to be as good as they once were. For decades, we enjoyed an unprecedented bubble of debt-fueled prosperity that allowed us to have a massively inflated standard of living, but now that bubble is bursting.

But for the moment, there is still one bubble that has stubbornly refused to end. Thanks to the Federal Reserve, stock prices continue to go up even in the midst of this economic depression, and this has made the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us wider than ever before: "The poorest 50 percent of Americans, or roughly 165 million people, collectively owned about $2.08 trillion in wealth in the second quarter of 2020, according to Federal Reserve data released last week. That’s less than the net worth of the nation’s 59 richest billionaires, who have a combined fortune of about $2.09 trillion, Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index shows - a number that’s grown this year despite the COVID-19 crisis kneecapping the global economy."

Just think about that. 59 Americans have as much wealth as the 165,000,000 poorest Americans combined. And overall, billionaires around the world are now worth more than 10 trillion dollars: "Billionaire wealth reached record high levels amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a report by UBS and PwC found, as a rally in stock prices and gains in technology and healthcare helped the wealth of the world’s richest break the $10 trillion mark.

The report, covering over 2,000 billionaires representing some 98% of the cohort’s total wealth, found billionaire wealth grew by more than a quarter during the early months of the pandemic to reach $10.2 trillion in July, breaking the previous record of $8.9 trillion at the end of 2019."

Meanwhile, Americans are lining up for miles to get handouts at food banks all over the nation, and it is being projected that more than 50 million Americans will soon not have enough food to eat on a regular basis. But the mainstream media is going to continue to try to put a happy face on things. In fact, they are telling us that “stocks will probably rise no matter who wins the presidential election”, and that has to be music to the ears of most wealthy investors. Of course it is just a matter of time before a day of reckoning comes for those wealthy investors too.

I believe that the months ahead are going to represent a major turning point for our country. Millions of Americans will have their hopes brutally crushed by the outcome of this upcoming election, and millions of others will be plunged into despair as our nation continues to be rocked by one major crisis after another. If your life is defined by the system that the elite have created, the times that are approaching are going to be exceedingly difficult for you because that system is failing.

But if you choose to live for the things that really matter, you won’t be overwhelmed no matter how bad things get. And as bad as things are right now, the truth is that all of this is nothing compared to what is eventually coming."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

Look at the people in the graphic at top... what are they supposed to do?

"Maybe, Just Maybe..."

"What would it hurt for me to give that homeless guy a couple bucks? Who the hell cares if he spends it on beer? Maybe beer is a step up for him from the harder stuff that knocked him onto the streets in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, he’s actually going to spend it on food (homeless people do eat, right?). Maybe, he really is a desperate human being who is trying to change his situation.”

- Dan Pearce

○

And these days, there but for the grace of God go you or I...

Phil Collins, "Another Day In Paradise"

"Altered States"

"Altered States"

By Bill Bonner

"The president is, shall we say, in an altered state right now."

– House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

"Fresh out of hospital last week, POTUS called off negotiations on a bailout bill. This surprised us. We figured the Trump team would no more want to stand between voters and their free money than they would between a hungry Doberman and a greasy steak… But by Wednesday, Trump’s craven ministers had spelled it out for him: “Hey, you’re behind in the polls.” Within hours, the president was tossing out the meat. He said he was “ready to sign” a giveaway to the voters of $1,200 each.

Total Fraud: As a “stimulus” measure, this is a total fraud. All it will really stimulate is the Robinhood traders, neighborhood drug dealers, web-based retailers… and inflation. But the false money, delivered under false pretenses, may give voters a false sense of prosperity. And then, economists will look at the spending that will inevitably follow – which they say makes up 70% of GDP – and say: “Wow… What a recovery!”

But if you really could “stimulate” growth by dropping money from helicopters, the skies would be full of them. Even as a “relief” measure – to the poor, “hardworking” Americans, who have lost jobs and income in the COVID shutdown – “stimulus checks” are a fraud. The official unemployment rate is only 8%.(Officially", you know better, Good Citizen. - CP) If that is true, it means that 92% of the workforce is still working. And yet, Mr. Trump is proposing to send out 160 million checks – with his name on them. In other words, The Great Benefactor would send $1,200 each to about 150 million people who still have jobs. As an emergency relief measure!

Bombs Away: But the president didn’t stop there. He also proposed to immediately give the airline industry some $25 billion. Why? Because the big four U.S. airlines – American, Delta, Southwest, and United – are holding about 50,000 employees by their heels… threatening to drop them. With the collusion of their unions, they say either they get money from the government… or it’s bombs away.

The last time air transportation workers blackmailed the government was back on August 3, 1981, when the air traffic controllers went on strike. They wanted more money, shorter hours… the usual things. Instead, Ronald Reagan gave them 48 hours to report for work. Those who didn’t – 11,000 of them – were fired. Not furloughed. Not slapped on the wrist. They lost their jobs – permanently. No muss. No fuss. Planes continued flying. New air traffic controllers were hired. Problem solved. This time, no problem will be solved. The president didn’t defy the blackmailers… He gave in to them.

Real Threat: Of all the dumb things that have been done with the public’s money, this has to rank as one of the dumbest. But it is a natural and inevitable phase of late, degenerate capitalism. First, the government destroys real capitalism. Then, it supports an ersatz version. Business… government… leaders and followers – all are altered by a new reality.

Together, the big four U.S. airlines earned about $37 billion in free cash flow during the last six high-flying years. You’d think they might have held on to a little of the money… just in case they ran into some headwinds. Nope. Instead, they spent every penny, and – their reality altered by the Federal Reserve’s ultra-low interest rates – borrowed $14 billion more in order to buy their own shares (thus rewarding their shareholders). And now, short on capital of their own, they look to the feds for a bailout… and threaten to throw their employees out of the cargo door if they don’t come through with the money.

Real Loss: But why should the public pay for more employees than the industry needs? If you pay money to someone to do something with no real value – say, run a poverty program… attack Iraq… provide PR services for a senator… attend a climate change symposium… hand out loans under the Paycheck Protection Program… serve on the Federal Reserve board – you might just as well throw the money away.

But wait… the money is counterfeit anyway. What difference does it make? Well, yes… But even counterfeit money can be used to buy things. Money is just the measure of the loss. The real loss is the time, food, fuel, parking places, machinery, and all the other things that are used up. Those are real… and they can never be recovered. Time goes by. It doesn’t come back.

Let’s suppose you work for the federal Economic Development Administration (which the Government Accountability Office recently found to be completely useless)… or for a company such as Uber, that loses money year after year. You drive your car to work… park… sit at a desk… use electricity… eat lunch… go to a meeting… go home. Everything you do, everything you touch, everyone you talk to – all of it makes the world a poorer place. Money just tells us “how much.”

More Giveaways: But as the week bumbled along, the altered state became clearer and clearer. Nobody in government – neither Republican nor Democrat – cares about wasting money… time… or anything else. Instead, all seem intent on squandering the last of the nation’s solvency. On Thursday, Trump’s man at the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, said he was willing to increase the amount of the giveaway. And it was worth letting the Democrats win this round, he seemed to say, if it got the money to the voters before November.

And then, on Friday came more thick steaks from POTUS himself. Here’s Bloomberg: "Trump Says He Now Wants Bigger Stimulus Than Democrats Offering." “I would like to see a bigger stimulus package, frankly, than either the Democrats or the Republicans are offering,” Trump said on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, saying he’s going in the “exact opposite” direction from his earlier stances. “I’m telling you something I don’t tell anybody else because maybe it helps or maybe it hurts negotiations,” Trump told Limbaugh. “I would like to see a bigger package.”

Wow… What a guy! What a week! What a hopeless mess! Regards,"

- www.rogueeconomics.com