Friday, October 16, 2020

"Market Fantasy Updates 10/16/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 10/16/20"
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 Oct 16, 2020: 
"ALERT: Stock Market Going MUCH Higher"
And now. The End game...

"The American Revolution - The Sequel"

"The American Revolution - The Sequel"
by Jeff Thomas

"The US is the most observed country in the world. Since it’s the world’s current empire (and since it is beginning its death throes as an empire), it’s fascinating to watch. Those of us outside of the US watch it like Americans watch TV. It’s like a slow-motion car wreck that we observe almost daily, eager to see what’s going to happen next. We criticize the madness of it all, yet we can’t take our eyes off the unfolding drama. It has all the excitement of a blockbuster movie.

• The national debt is, by far, the highest of any country in history.

• The economic system is a house of cards, getting shakier every day.

• The government has become mired in progress-numbing fascism and increasing collectivism.

• The government is aggressively creating the world’s most organized police state.

• The majority of the population have become wasteful, spendthrift consumers who apathetically hope that their government will somehow solve their problems.

• The media consistently misrepresents international events, prodding the citizenry into accepting that the ongoing invasion of multiple other countries is essential.

• The most popular candidates for president (both parties) are the candidates that are the most egotistical, out-of-control blowhards who preach provocative rhetoric rather than real solutions.

Still, most Americans retain the hope that, somehow, it will all work out.

Hope Is a Desire, Not a Plan: There are growing numbers of Americans who have accepted that the US is unravelling rapidly and is headed for a social, economic, and political collapse of one form or another. Some talk of a new revolution (but hopefully a peaceful one, of the Tea Party sort). Some imagine that, if they can store enough guns and ammunition in their homes, they might be able to make a stand against government authorities. Others mull over the idea of organised secession by some of the states. A small, but growing, number are quietly leaving for more promising destinations.

Except for the last of these, most of the "hopes" are understandable, but any attempt at a "Second American Revolution" is unlikely to succeed. Why? Well, just for a start,

• The power of the US state is far greater than that of King George III in the late eighteenth century.

• The present US state would be fighting on its own ground, not some continent thousands of miles across the ocean.

• The US state is committed to the concept that it dealt definitively (and forever) with the concept of secession between 1861 and 1865.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that a breakup of the union, or complete removal and replacement of the government were possible in the US. What then? Well, unfortunately, here comes the really bad news for those who hope that the US could start over as the free nation it was in its infancy:

In the late eighteenth century, America was a largely agrarian collection of colonies. Colonists had to work hard just to survive, so the work ethic and self-reliance were paramount in the colonists’ makeup. They were a brave people who were accustomed to providing for themselves and physically fighting off those who would challenge them.

Colonists received no significant largesse from the British or local governments. No welfare, no social security, no Medicare or Medicaid, no benefits of any kind. Colonists made their own daily decisions. They had no government schools or media telling them what to think or what choices to make. They relied on common sense and self-determination to guide their decisions and actions.

Today, of course, the opposite is true. Less than 2% of Americans are involved in agriculture. A mere 9% are actually employed in the production of goods. They are rarely directly involved in their own physical protection (Most, if not all, combat is overseas and fought by defence contractors or those who voluntarily serve the military).

Most Americans receive benefits of one type or another from their government. Most recipients regard these benefits as "essential" and could not get by without them.

Most Americans receive their opinions from the media. Although this is not apparent to many Americans, it’s glaringly clear to those outside the US who can only shake their heads at the misinformation proffered by the US media and the wholesale acceptance of this "alternate reality" by so many Americans.

But what bearing does this have on what the future would be for Americans if they were to become determined enough to either remove their entire government or, alternatively, for some states to secede?

There have been many revolutions in the history of the world, both peaceful and otherwise. In the case of the American Revolution of 1776, the colonists themselves were largely self-contained as a people and possessed the ideal ethos to succeed as a productive country. But this has rarely been true in history. Whenever a people have been heavily dependent on the State in one way or another, they had become accustomed to receiving largesse at the expense of others. This is a major, major factor. Such a group is unlikely in the extreme to either produce or elect a Washington or a Jefferson. They almost always choose, instead, to fall in behind someone who promises largesse from the State. In choosing such leaders, the people are more likely to receive a Robespierre or a Lenin. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The pervasive difficulty here lies in the erroneous concept that there can be a return to freedom whilst maintaining the dependency upon largesse from the State. The two are mutually exclusive. Those who seek a return to greater freedom must also accept that "freedom for all" means an end to the State being empowered to steal from one person in order to give to another. Or, as stated by Frédéric Bastiat in the mid-nineteenth century, "Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

Whether the US continues on its present downward progression, or if it breaks free in a bid for greater freedom, the eventual outcome is likely to have more to do with the collectivist mindset of the majority than with the libertarian vision of a few, the economic, political, and social implications of which will impact all of us."

"Enemies..."

"You know the saddest thing about betrayal? 
It never comes from an enemy."
- "Michael Corleone"

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
- John F. Kennedy

"The Clocks Struck Thirteen"

"The Clocks Struck Thirteen"
by Jim Kunstler

"Was it just me, or did you also notice that NBC’s Savannah Guthrie decided to play Special Prosecutor in Thursday night’s “town hall” gotcha-fest with Mr. Trump, who they had perched on some Modernista stool-of-punishment? The hectoring interrogation started from the get-go — the “townies” distributed around the set apparently just props — while Ms. Guthrie barked over the President with various renderings of the old shyster’s retort, but do you still beat your wife?

Over on ABC, Ol’ White Joe Biden lounged comfortably in low light and cushy seating with his therapist, George Stephanopoulos, free associating on the wonders and marvels he will bring about in the Kingdom Come of his presidency. Strangely, the subject of his family’s lucrative business dealings in Ukraine, China, and Russia a few years back never came up in the confab, a therapeutic omission that seemed to amount to malpractice.

I speak of the evidence found on a laptop computer apparently belonging to R. Hunter Biden, Ol’ White Joe’s crackhead son, outlining the many services Biden & Co. rendered to bigwigs in foreign lands for millions of dollars when Pop, “the big guy,” was vice-president. The Democrats’ new Ministry of Truth played a DEFCON-3 defense on these matters when it all broke in The New York Post at midweek. Twitter labeled it “unsafe” and banned all transmission of the news. Facebook’s Communication’s Director Andy Stone, a former Democratic Party employee (House Majority Political Action Committee Director; Press Secretary to Sen. Barbara Boxer), likewise squashed any links to the story on FB’s social network.

The New York Times rolled out the latest Ministry of Truth strategy Friday morning, in a tortured front-page story resorting to the tried-and-true claim that the laptop evidence was “Russian disinformation.” Sh’yeah…. The laptop had languished in the possession of Christopher Wray’s FBI since December 2019. The evidence contained in its some-40,000 emails pertained exactly to the matters at issue in the impeachment of President Trump at that time, i.e. Ukraine favor-seeking. The Delaware repair shop owner who handed over the machine burned a copy of its hard-drive, and when the FBI just sat on all that, he turned the drive over to Rudy Giuliani, one of the President’s attorneys.

One would have to suppose a number of things about these explosive revelations: For instance, that the FBI conducted some kind of forensic study of the laptop and its contents, and that it would not be too difficult to ascertain that the email trove was authentically the “work product” of R. Hunter Biden. If so, Mr. Wray has an awful lot to answer for.

Likewise, one might suppose that Rudy Giuliani, working on an extremely consequential case for a sitting president, and being a former distinguished federal attorney experienced with, and fastidious about, the handling of evidence, took some pains to ascertain the authenticity of the documents he received. Having done so, one might also suppose that Mr. Giuliani had handed off this material to the Attorney General, Mr. Barr — along with documentation he’s known to have collected about the Biden family’s money-laundering trail through the Baltic states to process additional payments for services rendered above and beyond the millions paid to R. Hunter Biden by Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company whose board of directors he was installed on in 2014.

What all that evidence speaks of is a Biden & Co. foreign influence-peddling scheme that amounts to selling out the USA while Ol’ White Joe was vice-president carrying out official tasks in the countries that paid his son enormous sums of money. The evidence clearly contradicts Mr. Biden’s basic claim that he never spoke with his son, Hunter, about his business dealings. The evidence also indicates clearly that Mr. Biden, then vice-president, received a cut of the collected lucre distributed among the family members. In a normal America, these issues would prompt some sort of official inquiry possibly leading to indictments. But these are the most abnormal times, and the final weeks of a vicious national election that is an existential threat to that coterie of Deep State seditionists whose careers, reputations, and livelihoods are at stake in the outcome.

So, of course, their Ministry of Truth is pulling out all the stops to squash the story. But their hubris is showing. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Jack Dorsey of Twitter, being mega-billionaires, probably think that they have the resources to hire every attorney in the known universe to guard their empires. One important lesson for the nation might come out of this: that lawyers and lawfare do not amount to a supernatural protection force. The truth has a mighty power of its own and there are moments in history when it manages to overcome organized evil."
Related:

"How It Really Is"

 

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/16/2020"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/16/2020"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"For months, Democrat Presidential candidate Joe Biden denied he knew anything about his son’s business dealings. New emails released by the New York Post show a different story. Joe Biden not only knew about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in foreign countries such as Ukraine and China, but he got a piece of the action. Some of these dealings are linked to the transfer of U.S. technology to the Chinese military. This comes at a time when tensions are mounting between the U.S. and China over trade and Taiwan. Is it a campaign ender for Joe Biden? Nope, because the mainstream propaganda media, along with big tech, are covering for Joe.

It looks like a big tech censor storm has hit this election season. Anyone trying to make the Joe Biden email story go viral is being denied and even ejected from Twitter in some cases. Facebook is also blocking the story from the New York Post for going viral. Back to Twitter, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was thrown off of Twitter for posting the NY Post story. The Trump campaign was also taken down off Twitter. The censorship is off the charts this election season, and it is all in favor of Democrats and Joe Biden.

The economy continues to flounder. Unemployment filings got closer to 1 million with 890 new filings this past week. States like Illinois are borrowing money from the Fed to close big budget shortfalls. Is Illinois going to be the first financially failing state in the USA? It looks like it."

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

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 10/16/20"

by David Leonhardt
10/16/20

• New daily coronavirus cases have reached their highest point yet in 17 states, including Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin. In no state are cases clearly on the decline.
• Pfizer’s chief executive confirmed its vaccine won’t be ready until at least late November, disappointing Trump’s hope for a pre-election announcement.
• Nationwide, first-year enrollment has dropped 16 percent at four-year colleges, and 23 percent at community colleges. Enrollment has risen at for-profit colleges, which have a weak overall record. “This is an unmitigated disaster,” Susan Dynarski, an economist, said.
• Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor recently hospitalized with Covid-19, said he was “wrong” not to wear a mask at a White House event.

Oct 16, 2020, 12:11 AM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 38,922,400 
people, according to official counts, including 8,019,028 Americans.

      Oct 16, 2020 12:11 AM ET: 
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
Updated 10/16/20, 4:24 AM ET
Click image for larger size.
A highly recommended "must read":

Unemployment Crisis Rocks America; Goodbye Middle Class; Economic Reckoning; Jobless Claims Surge”

Jeremiah Babe;
“Unemployment Crisis Rocks America; Goodbye Middle Class;
 Economic Reckoning; Jobless Claims Surge”

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Gregory Mannarino, "And It's Gone... But The Freak Show Continues! Or Is It A Clown Show?"

Gregory Mannarino, 
"And It's Gone... But The Freak Show Continues! Or Is It A Clown Show?"

"The Fed Finally Admits It"

"The Fed Finally Admits It"
by Brian Maher

"We have it on highest authority - the Federal Reserve itself - that it may never permit free markets again. Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles: "The Treasury market is now so large that the U.S. central bank may have to continue to be involved to keep it functioning properly."

Next we come to the president of the Federal Reserve’s San Francisco outpost - Mary Daly by name: "I am not willing to trade millions of jobs for people who need a ladder rung up in order to keep the stock market from going up for a few who have those holdings." That is, Ms. Daly tacitly concedes that the institution for which she toils accounts heavily for the stock market’s ludicrous outperformance.

The Federal Reserve was originally fashioned to be the “lender of last resort.” Yet that designation is presently a cruel and mocking jest. It has passed from lender of last resort to stockjobber. Long have we known it. Now they admit it.

“Free Markets”: We will hear no more gabble about the stock market being a mirror of the economy. We will hear no more gabble about the stock market “discounting the future.” Indeed... we will hear no more gabble about free markets. Only traces, scraps, vestiges remain. Reduce it to its essentials, and the message is this: The Federal Reserve can never turn back. Massive intervention is here to stay, world without end. It is as permanent as stone, as permanent as the stain on a politician’s honor.

One Intervention Leads To Another: The central trouble with intervention is that one intervention invites another, invites another, invites another. Intervention puts out one fire only to start a second. Another intervention douses the second and a third erupts somewhere else. The firemen are on permanent duty. Let us cling to our fiery theme…

The wildfires presently raging in California are largely the result of poor forest management. Under sound management, authorities initiate controlled burns to clear out the deadwood and underbrush that feed a blaze. If a natural fire erupts, there is less combustible material to spread the trouble… and the fire is easier to barricade. But the state of California has neglected to clear away the deadwood. And so otherwise manageable fires have become hellish infernos that fanned out in horrific contagion.

The Fed’s Poor Forest Management: The Federal Reserve is the state of California. It will not allow controlled burns. Through its interventions it lets rotting and dying businesses and industries pile up - deadwood. The rotten timber accumulates and accumulates in the economy. The forest becomes too big to fail. When a fire does ignite - as in 2008 - the entire forest is soon a riot of flames.

The Federal Reserve would not allow a small fire... so it got a near conflagration… which required greater intervention yet to contain. Scroll the calendar forward to 2020. The pestilence ignited the greatest economic fire since the Great Depression. Or rather... authorities allowed the pestilence to ignite the greatest economic fire since the Great Depression.

Two Options: Once again the crisis presented the Federal Reserve two options. The first was to let the fire complete the job the 2008 burning began. The second was intervention on a vastly mightier scale. Explains Lance Roberts of Real Investment Advice: "Allow capitalism to take root by allowing corporations to fail and restructure after spending a decade leveraging themselves to [the] hilt, buying back shares and massively increasing the wealth of their executives while compressing the wages of workers. Or… Bail out the “bad actors” once again to forestall the “clearing process” that would rebalance the economy and allow for higher levels of future organic economic growth."

The Federal Reserve selected option two of course. That is, it chose intervention on a supergargantuan scale. Was it necessary under the nightmare circumstances? Perhaps it was. Yet condemns the United States economy to a lost decade of stagnation… and drowsiness.

Debt Is a Drag: As we have explained before: Each intervention piles up additional debt within the system. The system sags and groans under the added burden. Progress slows as inefficient enterprises absorb capital - capital that could have flowed into worthier hands.

As summarized by Wikipedia, a central bank exists to: (1) protect the money stock instead of saving individual institutions; (2) rescue solvent institutions only; (3) let insolvent institutions default… The Federal Reserve fails on all counts — 1,2,3.

The weak and inefficient know they will not succumb to the flames. The authorities will have the hoses on them if needed. They survive. But thrive?

A Titanic Burglary of the Future: Plunging into debt introduces a sort of hand-to-mouth living. It diverts cash flow to the service of existing debt - often unproductive debt. And so investment in the future never makes it past the present. It is a titanic burglary of the future, a grand heist.

Explains Daily Reckoning contributor Charles Hugh Smith: "Debt has one primary dynamic: Borrowing money to consume something in the present brings forward consumption and income. If we choose to consume now, we have less income to save for future consumption or investments. If we sacrifice consumption today, we have more money in the future for consumption or investing. Those who brought their consumption forward can no longer add to present consumption, as their future income is already spoken for."

Fifty years ago, $1 of debt may have yielded an additional dollar of economic growth, real or otherwise. Perhaps even more. That is of course because the national debt burden was vastly lighter. Each dollar borrowed since 2008 has yielded under $1 of growth. It is perhaps 40 cents by some estimates we have encountered. It is a dismal calculus.

Deficits, Deficits, Deficits: Meantime, this year’s budget deficit will likely near $4 trillion - the largest in history. Goldman Sachs estimates a $6 trillion combined deficit over the next two years alone. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (do not laugh!) projects publicly held debt will eclipse its post-WWII record by 2023.

Debt service is already rising faster than any other federal shell-out. Prior to this crisis the Congressional Budget Office had already projected debt service would scale $915 billion by 2028 - nearly 25% of the entire budget. The Lord only knows the ultimate figure. But it will likely be far higher absent a drastic reversal of economic fortune.

How will the government afford to pay for anything else? And so our shoulders stoop and our head lowers, forlorn. Yet we cling to hope, as a drowning man clings to a life ring - or as a drunkard clings to his bottle. But the nation’s debt is not a crisis, argue the spenders. That is because “we owe it to ourselves.” But one scalawag takes them at their word. “Note to self,” he writes: “Pay up.”

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Cycle of Time"; "Challenge From Heaven"

2002, "Cycle of Time"

Please view in full screen mode. 
Simply, transcendentally, beautiful...

2002, "Challenge From Heaven"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the above gorgeously detailed image was recently taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch. 

The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130422.html

Chet Raymo, “A Sense Of Place”

“A Sense Of Place”
by Chet Raymo

“It would be hard to find two writers more different than Eudora Welty and Edward Abbey. Welty was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of stories and novels who lived all her life in Jackson, Mississippi, in the house in which she was born, the beloved spinster aunt of American letters. Abbey was a hard-drinking, butt-kicking nature writer and conservationist best known for his books on the American Southwest. Both writers are favorites of mine. Both were great champions of place. I always wondered what it would have been like if they got together. As far as I know, that never happened. But let’s imagine a conversation. I have taken extracts from Welty’s essay “Some Notes on River Country” (1944) and from Abbey’s essay “The Great American Desert (1977) and interleaved them.

“This little chain of lost towns between Vicksburg and Natchez.”

“This desert, all deserts, any deserts.”

“On the shady stream banks hang lady’s eardrops, fruits and flowers dangling pale jade. The passionflower puts its tendrils where it can, its strange flowers of lilac rays with their little white towers shining out, or its fruit, the maypop, hanging.”

“Oily growths like the poison ivy – oh yes, indeed – that flourish in sinister profusion on the dank walls above the quicksand down those corridors of gloom and labyrinthine monotony that men call canyons.”

“All creepers with trumpets and panicles of scarlet and yellow cling to the treetops. There is a vine that grows to great heights, with heart-shaped leaves as big and soft as summer hats.”

“Everything in the desert either stings, stabs, stinks, or sticks. You will find the flora here as venomous, hooked, barbed, thorny, prickly, needled, saw-toothed, hairy, stickered, mean, bitter, sharp, wiry and fierce as the animals.”

“Too pretty for any harsh fate, with its great mossy trees and old camellias.”

“Something about the desert inclines all living things to harshness and acerbity.”

“The clatter of hoofs and the bellow of boats have gone. The Old Natchez Trace has sunk out of use. The river has gone away and left the landings. But life does not forsake any place.”

“In the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix will get you if the sun, snakes, bugs, and arthropods don’t. In the Mojave Desert, it’s Las Vegas. Up north in the Great Basin Desert, your heart will break, seeing the strip mines open up and the power plants rise…”
 
“The Negro Baptist church, weathered black with a snow-white door, has red hens in the yard. The old galleried stores are boarded up. The missing houses were burned – they were empty, and the little row of Negro inhabitants have carried them off for firewood.”

“…the highway builders, land developers, weapons testers, power producers, clear cutters, oil drillers, dam beavers, subdividers.”

“Eventually you see people, of course. Women have little errands, and the old men play checkers at a table in the front of the one open store. And the people’s faces are good.”

“Californicating.”

“To go there, you start west from Port Gibson. Postmen would arrive here blowing their horns like Gabriel, after riding three hundred wilderness miles from Tennessee.”

“Why go into the desert? Really, why do it? That sun, roaring at you all day long. The fetid, tepid, vapid little water holes full of cannibal beetles, spotted toads, horsehair worms, liver flukes. Why go there?”

“I have felt many times there is a sense of place as powerful as if it were visible and walking and could touch me. A place that ever was lived in is like a fire that never goes out. Sometimes it gives out glory, sometimes its little light must be sought out to be seen.”

“Why the desert, when you could be camping by a stream of pure Rocky Mountain spring water. We have centipedes, millipedes, tarantulas, black widows, brown recluses, Gila monsters, the deadly poisonous coral snakes, and the giant hairy desert scorpions. Plus an immense variety of near-infinite number of ants, midges, gnats, bloodsucking flies, and blood-guzzling mosquitoes.”

“Much beauty has gone, many little things of life. To light up the night there are no mansions, no celebrations. Wild birds fly now at the level where people on boat deck once were strolling and talking.”

“In the American Southwest, only the wilderness is worth saving.”

“There is a sense of place there, to keep life from being extinguished, like a cup of the hands to hold a flame.”

“A friend and I took a walk up beyond Coconino County, Arizona. I found an arrow sign, pointed to the north. Nothing of any unusual interest that I could see – only the familiar sun-blasted sandstone, a few scrubby clumps of blackbush and prickly pear, a few acres of nothing where only a lizard could graze. I studied the scene with care. But there was nothing out there. Nothing at all. Nothing but the desert. Nothing but the silent world.”

“Perhaps it is the sense of place that gives us the belief that passionate things, in some essence, endure.”

“In my case, it was love at first sight. The kind of love that makes a man selfish, possessive, irritable…”

“New life will be built upon these things.”

“…an unrequited and excessive love.”

“It is this.”

“That’s why.”

“Binaural Beats Music For Deep Focus, Concentration, Super Intelligence”


Greenred Productions, 
“Binaural Beats Music For Deep Focus, 
Concentration, Super Intelligence”

“Greenred Productions meditation music with binaural beats (brainwave music) can work as sleep music, studying music, relaxing music and many more. Relaxation music can also be used as Spa music and Massage music. Here you can find powerful self-help hypnosis including healing music, Zen music and yoga music. Some sessions are produced for your inner transformation: to overcome fear, elevate your mood and energy levels, and lose weight faster. Meditation music recordings also include reiki music, Zen meditation music and deep trance hypnosis sessions.

We compose instrumental and electronic music that is specially designed to enhance brain function and concentration, spa and massage therapy, and healing music therapy. For this reason, we use binaural beats. There are many types of beats for different daily meditation purposes: Delta Waves – Sleep Music/NREM sleep, Alpha Waves are neural oscillations, Theta Waves (cortical theta rhythm and Hippocampal theta rhythm). Beta waves associated with muscle contractions in isotonic movements, Gamma waves can help to release serotonin, endorphin and dopamine, so it works as happiness music for depression treatment.”

Turn it on. Go about your business. It works. As simple as that.
- CP

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, “The Geranium”

“The Geranium”

“When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine -
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she’d lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)
The things she endured!
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.
Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me -
And that was scary -
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.
But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.”

- Theodore Roethke

"There Are Times..."

“If the sun is shining, stand in it- yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass- they have to- because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centered. What you are pursuing is meaning- a meaningful life… There are times when it will go so wrong that you will be barely alive, and times when you realize that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else’s terms.”
- Jeanette Winterson

"Lockdown More Deadly Than the Coronavirus"

"Lockdown More Deadly Than the Coronavirus"
By Bill Bonner

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "Over the weekend, the World Health Organization threw a petard into the Lockdown/No Lockdown debate: "WHO Warns Against COVID-19 Lockdowns." "WHO envoy Dr. David Nabarro said such restrictive measures should only be treated as a last resort, the British magazine the Spectator reported in a video interview. “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.”

Nabarro said tight restrictions cause significant harm, particularly on the global economy. “Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” he said. “Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition.” Hungry children? Millions of them?

Trillions’ worth of real output are at stake… trillions’ worth of phony stimulus… and millions – maybe billions – of lives. But America’s president looked at the news and saw only his own reflection: “The World Health Organization just admitted that I was right,” he tweeted. And America’s most important “newspaper of record,” The New York Times, could only think of a political angle: "Trump Overstates W.H.O.’s Position on Lockdowns."

Grim Outlook: Meanwhile, much of the world – with quack experts in the drivers’ seats – heads for a crack-up. In the UK, GDP is said to be running about 10% below last year… In the U.S., in GDP alone, it looks like the lockdowns will take about $1 trillion out peoples’ pockets. But the losses are not distributed evenly. If the Federal Reserve pushes up a billionaire’s wealth by just 10%… 99 million other people could actually get poorer. But the headlines would still tell us we were all getting richer – on average. At the top, even millions of dollars – up or down – don’t make much difference. But at the very bottom – where the World Bank says there are some 700 million people living on less than $2 per day – an economic slowdown can mark the frontier between life and death.

The “experts” say to lock the doors… stay at home… cover up… and stay away. But it wasn’t the medical experts who brought us longer lives; it was the plumbers, the farmers, and the builders. It was the entrepreneurs, tinkers, and business builders, not the public health professionals.

Improved living standards raised life expectancies all around the world. This from professors Maryaline Catillon and David M. Cutler, both of Harvard, and Thomas E. Getzen of Temple University: "Growth in life expectancy during the last two centuries has been attributed to environmental change, productivity growth, improved nutrition, and better hygiene, rather than to advances in medical care."

Keep the plumbers and bakers at home and living standards fall… So, it is reasonable to expect, as the WHO implies, that when the economy goes down, life expectancies will decline, too. And we can guess what happens next: For every year of life saved for the rich geezers by shutting down the economy… there may be hundreds of years lost by the poor all over the world.

Lockdown Again: On Monday, we got word that our province here in Argentina – Salta – has gone back into panic mode. There are new cases of the coronavirus in the city; the roads in the region have been closed. From Europe, word comes that Ireland has banned home visits… France has imposed a curfew in its major cities… and London has closed bars and restaurants.

A waste of time? Worse? A dear reader, Rich B., comments: "Last week, I looked up COVID-19 deaths, as reported by the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 website. It turns out that Sweden – a country that did NOT lock down its businesses and schools – has suffered 575 COVID-19 deaths per million residents. But Sweden’s surviving residents are enjoying the lifestyle that Americans were enjoying a year ago. Lockdown-USA, on the other hand, has suffered 600 deaths per million, high unemployment, and a miserable lifestyle, i.e. alive, but not really living."

So who says that lockdowns save lives? Nonsense. Further, Sweden isn’t worried about if/when a vaccine will appear, because its populace is now mostly immune. While other Europeans are now being assaulted by a second wave of the plague, Swedes remain largely unaffected

But in the simple-minded view of the Coronavirus Cavalry, détente is out of the question. Only one thing matters: beating the virus. Liberty? Constitutional rights? Happiness? Child hunger? Who cares about those when there’s a killer on the loose!

War Footing: Within two weeks of President Trump announcing his State of Emergency back in mid-March, it was clear that there was no emergency at all. From the initial numbers coming from Italy, we saw that the killer was no mass-murderer. Instead, he was like a nursing home psychopath, singling out the weakest, the oldest, and the sickest. The first data told us that an old person – over the age of 80 – was about 1,000 times more likely to die from the coronavirus than a person under the age of 20.

The prudent approach would have been to bring in a few good detectives; let them figure out how to keep old people and the virus away from each other. Instead, the feds declared war, with almost the whole economy put on a war footing!

Martial Law: Now, seven months and $4 trillion down the drain… the data hasn’t changed much. A lot of people get the virus. But few are harmed by it. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), if you are aged between 20 and 49, there’s no point in worrying about it. Only 0.02% of the people in that age group who get it will die from it.

Even from there up to the age of 70, it shouldn’t be a big worry. If you get the disease, you have only a 0.5% chance of dying – that’s one in 200. Over 70, the odds get worse. The old-timers should stay away from it. But even for them, nearly 19 out of 20 who get the disease come out okay.

But the sword wavers had their blood up. It suited their vanity… their careers… their lust for power and glory. They saw that by frightening the public with a health scare, they could get away with almost anything. In a matter of days, they had much of the country under martial law. And their field marshal, Anthony Fauci, after sitting in his lonely National Institutes of Health (NIH) barracks polishing his boots for the last 52 years, was now on the cover of magazines… and on TV, at the right-hand side of the Commander-in-Chief himself.

Political Issue: Then, of course, state governors began grandstanding… and the whole spectacle soon became a sordid political issue. The Democrats were determined to show that Trump was cruel and incompetent, even though he had mostly gone along with the experts’ crackpot advice. The Republicans were afraid to contradict the experts… and couldn’t come up with an alternative anyway. And the result was yet another god-awful debacle, a health crisis made worse by the feds, the media, politics… and the experts themselves.

At least the World Health Organization seems to be coming to its senses."

The Daily "Near You?"

 
Lalitpur, Nepal. Thanks for stopping by!

"That's The Feeling..."

“You are put in school to be trained to become exactly what they want you to be: not them, anything but them. They live on a golden island and have the key to the only bridge. Your parents are not millionaires, so it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are, you aren’t invited to their party. That’s the great shame. The idiots have the gold, and the poor die to give it to them. So you better start to laugh, because this world is one big joke written by the few, at the expense of the masses. Look around you, that feeling your life isn’t going anywhere? That’s the feeling that makes you part of the masses.”
- Craig Stone

"Goodbye Middle Class: Half Of All American Workers Made Less Than $34,248.45 Last Year"

"Goodbye Middle Class: Half Of All American
 Workers Made Less Than $34,248.45 Last Year"
by Epic Economist

"If you are making less than $3,000 a month, you have plenty of company, because about half of the country is in the exact same boat. The Social Security Administration just released new wage statistics for 2019, and they are pretty startling. To me, the most alarming thing in the entire report is the fact that the median yearly wage was just $34,248.45 last year. In other words, half of all American workers made less than $34,248.45 in 2019, and half of all American workers made more than $34,248.45. That isn’t a whole lot of money. In fact, when you divide $34,248.45 by 12 you get just $2,854.05. Needless to say, it is not easy to survive in America today on just $2,854.05 a month, and this may help to explain why we have been seeing so many people fall out of the middle class in recent years.

And of course all of the figures that I am sharing with you in this article are just for 2019. This year, we have seen more than 63 million Americans file new claims for unemployment benefits as the U.S. economy has imploded during this pandemic, and so the final wage numbers for 2020 could be quite a bit worse than the numbers for 2019 were. Please keep that in mind as you go through the rest of this video.

Once upon a time in America, a single income could easily support a middle class household in most cases, but those days are long gone. The cost of living has been rising far faster than our paychecks have, and as a result many Americans have been working themselves to the bone just to survive financially from month to month. To give you an idea of just how bad things have gotten, I would like to share with you some key numbers from the report that the Social Security Administration just released:

• 32.26 percent of American workers made less than $20,000 last year.
• 44.79 percent of American workers made less than $30,000 last year.
• 56.46 percent of American workers made less than $40,000 last year.
• 65.91 percent of American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

Today, the poverty level for a household of five in the United States is $30,680. That means that close to half of all workers in this country do not even make enough to get a family of five above the poverty level.

Wow.

There are tens of millions of Americans that are referred to as “the working poor” because they are living in poverty even though they are employed and are working extremely hard. Many of you that are reading this article know exactly what I am talking about. Some of you are working way more than 40 hours a week, and yet there never seems to be enough money at the end of the month.

Sadly, the truth is that our system has evolved in a manner that makes it almost impossible for most Americans to ever build up much wealth. If you are making the median monthly wage of just $2,854.05, there simply is not going to be much left over after all of the bills are paid. First of all, you are going to need some place to live. In the middle of the country you may be able to find something habitable for under $1,000 a month, but in most of our major metropolitan areas that simply is not going to be realistic.

Secondly, you are going to need to pay your utility bills. If you can keep the combined cost of your power, water, phone, television and Internet bills to about $250 a month, you are doing quite well.

Thirdly, you will need a vehicle in order to get around, and these days it is hard to buy or lease a vehicle for less than $300 a month. In addition, you will also need insurance, and that will set you back even more.

Fourthly, you will need health insurance. If you are young and single, maybe you can find a plan for just a few hundred dollars a month, but most Americans pay far more.

Fifthly, you will probably want to eat, and that will cost you several hundred dollars a month as well.

At this point almost all of your money is already gone, and there are so many expenses that I haven’t even mentioned yet. And of course you never even started with $2,854.05 in the first place, because all sorts of taxes were taken out of your paycheck before you even got it.

Are you starting to understand why so many families in America are deeply, deeply struggling today?

We have an economy that works for those at the very top of the food chain, but pretty much everyone else is desperately trying to stay afloat. And now we have entered an economic downturn during which tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were being used the real unemployment rate in the U.S. would be 26.9 percent right now, and that would rival the worst levels that we witnessed during the Great Depression of the 1930s."
Related:

"At A Time Like This..."

"At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced." 
- Frederick Douglass

"The Day After Tomorrow"

"The Day After Tomorrow"
by The Zman

"The general consensus regarding the future of the American Empire is that it is headed for demise like all empires. The rapidly declining quality of the ruling elite in general and the political class in particular is the biggest sign. Then there is the changing demographics, which will reach a point where the human capital of the empire can no longer support empire. Then there is the life cycle of all empires. This one, while short lived, seems to be in the late phase of that cycle.

Most people focus on the question of when the empire will collapse, as that provides the most thrilling scenarios. The truth is though, empires collapse in slow motion, rather than in a bang. It is like a fall down a long flight of stairs, in which the empire hits some long landings where it seems to right itself for a period. Then it is another tumble down the stairs until it hits another landing. It is only in the fullness of time that the decline and fall of the empire looks like the familiar arc.

A different question worth pondering is what will the decline and fall look like for the average person living in the empire? For the people living in the provinces, it will look like the past, in that Europe and Asia will simply gain their independence. France may become a vassal of Germany or Russia, but that is just the same condition with a different management team at the top. Europe will get poorer and more violent, but that will mostly be due to massive migration from Africa.

In North America, we have some hints as to what post-empire America will look like for the typical person. This post on American Greatness goes into the third world nature of large swaths of current year America. California now looks more like Sinaloa Mexico than the old America of the young empire. There are nice modern parts for sure, but there are backward primitive parts, as well. Just like the Roman Empire, it is the infrastructure that is the leading edge of decline.

Empires that can no longer maintain their borders tend to attract large peasant classes, because long after the empire’s peak, it remains a better place to be poor than outside the empire. America lost control of its borders a generation ago, so something like fifty million people have relocated to America. There may be that many more operating inside the country illegally. The fact that no one knows or cares about the illegal population is one of those signs of collapse.

Another vision for post-empire America, is post-empire Spain. One of the interesting aspects of that period is how power devolved to local power centers. The Visigothic Kingdom ruled over what is now Spain. They were central Europeans who had moved west from the Danube Valley, first under the protection of the Western Roman Empire, but then by conquest after the fall of Rome. The kingdom maintained independence for about three centuries.

The thing is though, the kingdom was a polite fiction in many ways as the Gothic rulers had limited control of their territory. They were dependent on those local power centers that evolved in the late Roman empire. The emerging Catholic Church was one power center, but so were local ruling elites located in cities like Seville and Toledo. This is the root of antisemitism, by the way. Jews were powerful players in Gothic politics, a rival to the Church for influence over the secular authorities.

That’s probably the future of North America. The federal government will carry on long after it can exert control over the whole of the country. We see that today with the inability of the political class to do the obvious with the tech oligarchs. Today, global enterprise, finance and technology are outside the scope of government authority and often the whip hand in the relationship. We’re seeing states and cities in open revolt now, refusing to abide by federal laws.

One question no one in power thinks about is whether or not these new oligarchs can survive without the national government. The oligarchs that emerged from the Soviet empire were rooted in practical things like oil and gas. American oligarchs have power over abstract concepts that exist only because the state protects them. Both finance and technology are able to siphon off the wealth of the middle-class, because the middle-class supports the state, which protects this racket.

Put another way, Bolshevism made the Soviet empire artificially poorer, as it compelled inefficiency in the economy. It also proved to be a costly form of rule. Collapse freed the economy of the empire, allowing the new oligarchs to emerge. Liberal democracy makes the empire artificially richer, as it relies upon financial legerdemain to pull forward the proceeds of labor and capital. The cost of rule is subsidized by the social capital it consumes to perpetuate itself.

Is it possible for local power centers to emerge in North America, when the regions no longer have an identity of their own? Is it possible for local rule, when the local elites are just as inept and corrupt as the national elites? It is hard to imagine California lasting very long as an independent state. Its ruling class is clownish and stupid, a collection of petulant children. How hard would it be for the drug cartels to push them aside and turn the state into another narco-state?

The Soviet system rewarded cleverness and intrigue but it was founded on force, so there was always a role for those willing to act. The American system rewards guile, but increasingly has no role for assertiveness and force. It is why America has become so bad at waging war. It is possible that we now lack the required lions to push aside the foxes, even when the foxes die. It means a long period of chaos in which a new generation of lions can emerge to seize control."