"Market Fantasy Updates AM 12/22/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates AM 12/22/20"

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/22/20:

"Updates: Propaganda, Stocks, Market, Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, Ripple"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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Updated live.

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

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- https://markets.businessinsider.com/

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December 22, 2020: "New York City Restaurant Owners Ban Andrew Cuomo… as 9 of 10 restaurants in New York City can’t pay the full rent."

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Social Security Is A Mess: There Are 6 Million Active Accounts Of People Aged 112+" "Our friends at Open The Books continue to expose government waste - and fraud - and in their latest investigation, they have shone the spotlight on one of the largest wastes in the US government: the Social Security Administration. What they have uncovered is that last year alone, Social Security admitted to $8 billion in improper and mistaken payments. The punchline: when they dug deeper, they found that there are six million active social security numbers of people aged 112 and older... even though only 40 or less or those people exist in the world."

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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Daily Update (Dec. 22nd to 23rd)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Insanity... 

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And now... The End Game...

"Big Media: Selling the Narrative and Crushing Dissent for Fun and Profit"

"Big Media: Selling the Narrative 

and Crushing Dissent for Fun and Profit"

by Charles Hugh Smith


"The U.S. has entered an extremely dangerous time, and the danger has nothing to do with the Covid virus. Indeed, the danger long preceded the pandemic, which has served to highlight how far down the road to ruin we have come.

The danger we are ill-prepared to deal with is the consolidation of the private-sector media and its unification of content into one Approved Narrative which is for sale to the highest bidders. This is the perfection of for-profit Totalitarianism in which dissent is crushed, dissenters punished and billions of dollars are reaped in managing the data and content flow of the one Approved Narrative.

So don't post content containing the words (censored), (censored) or (censored), or you'll be banned, shadow-banned, demonetized, demonized and marginalized. Your voice will be erased from public access via the Big Media platforms and you will effectively be disappeared but without any visible mess or evidence - or recourse in the courts.

That's the competitive advantage of for-profit Totalitarianism - no legal recourse against the suppression of free speech and dissent. And if you're shadow-banned as I was, you won't even know just how severely your free speech has been suppressed because the Big Tech platforms are black boxes: no one outside the profit-maximizing corporation knows what its algorithms and filters actually do or exactly what happens to the disappeared/shadow-banned.

Shadow-banning is an invisible toxin to free speech: if you're shadow-banned, you won't even know that the audience for your posts, tweets, etc. has plummeted to near-zero and others can no longer retweet your content. You only see your post is online as usual, because this is the whole point of shadow-banning: you assume your speech is still free even as its been strangled to death by Big Tech black box platforms.

Since Andy Grove's dictum only the paranoid survive is my Prime Directive, I've paid a bit more to have access to server traffic data. So I can pinpoint precisely when I was shadow-banned: my overall traffic fell off a cliff and the number of readers visiting from links on Big Tech platforms fell from thousands to near-zero.

The new consolidated Big Media Totalitarians play an interesting game of circular sources: in the traditional, now-obsolete/suppressed form of journalism, a reporter would be required to identify a minimum of three different sources for the story, and make at least a desultory effort to present two sides of the issue.

That model is out the window in the USSA's Big Media Totalitarian regime. Now reporters only have to use a completely bogus, fabricated source in another Big Media story. Just being in another Big Media platform/publication is now "proof" that the source is legitimate.

In other words, investigative journalism is nothing but a Potemkin Village of circular sources conjured out of thin air by Big Media. Here's an example from my own experience of being shadow-banned.

1. A completely bogus organization pops up out of nowhere and doesn't bother identifying its owners, managers or sources.

2. This complete travesty of a mockery of a sham fabrication then issues a list of websites which it claims, with zero evidence, are stooges / outlets of Russian propaganda.

3. With zero investigation of this slanderous, evidence-free "source," the venerable Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos) publishes an evidence-free hit piece glorifying this fabrication on Page One.

4. The other Big Media giants then amplify the bogus slander because it came from a "legitimate source," the Washington Post.

Do you understand how circular sourcing works now? Once a flagrantly bogus bit of propaganda is embraced by one Big Media giant as part of the Approved Narrative, then every other Big Media/Big Tech corporation promotes the fabrication as "real news" even as it is obviously the acme of "fake news", a complete fabrication.

The fake "source" was called PropOrNot, and the list included dozens of well-respected independent websites, all slandered with a completely fake accusation for one reason: each site had published some content that cast a skeptical eye on the crowning of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the crushing of Bernie Sanders' campaign by Big Media's Approved Narrative.

As long as you post videos of kittens and kids dancing, you're OK because your content (owned and controlled by the platform you posted it on - read the terms of Service) is free to the platforms and they use your content to "engage" users which generates billions in profits. But if you question the Approved Narrative, you put a big day-glo target on your back. Now if you're a multi-millionaire, you know, a top 0.1% per-center, you can afford to keep posting dissenting views even after you've been demonetized and your income falls to near-zero.

The rest of us aren't quite so privileged. This is another of the toxic elements in Big Media/Big Tech's consolidated control of what was once known as free speech: They don't have to ban your content outright, which might cause a few ripples of tame protest; all they have to do is starve you into submission by strangling your source of income.

Thanks to watertight terms of service, even a multi-millionaire is legally powerless against the USSA's Big Media Totalitarian regime. By posting content, you already gave away all your rights. So you can go solo and post content on some obscure corner of the web that no one knows exist, but that's the functional equivalent of being banned and demonetized.

So go right ahead and enter a sound-proof box and scream your head off; nobody can hear you. Welcome to the totally privately owned, legally untouchable Big Tech/Big Media Totalitarian regime that will let you know what's in the Approved Narrative because that's all you're allowed to see.

Gordon Long and I cover these topics and many more in our latest video "Buying the Narrative" (35:41) Since I'd like the video to actually be viewed more than 11 times, I avoided using the terms (censored), (censored) or (censored), and that's the final fatal poison delivered by our profit-maximizing Big Tech/Big Media Totalitarian regime: self censorship. You know what you can't say, so don't say it. Stick with the kitten videos and you'll be just fine.

You'll be just fine but you no longer live in a functioning democracy. The profit-maximizing Big Tech/Big Media Totalitarian regime hasn't just strangled free speech and civil liberties; it's also strangled democracy.

It's all fun and games until the pendulum of Totalitarian Consolidation and its Approved Narrative reaches an extreme (like, say, right now) and the pendulum swings back to an equal extreme at the other end of the spectrum. Keep in mind that hubris and money are no match for history: the more powerful you claim to be, the greater your fall. The way of the Tao is reversal."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

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Related:

Welcome to the U.S.S.A.'s Banquet of Consequences

 (December 8, 2020)

"Google And Facebook Had 'Secret Pact' To 

Divide And Conquer The Ad Market"

"How It Really Is"

 

"Stop Spending Money On Dumb Stuff; Bank Closures; Mindset Is Everything; American Zombies"

Jeremiah Babe,

"Stop Spending Money On Dumb Stuff; Bank Closures; 

Mindset Is Everything; American Zombies"

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Related:

"Pork City: Here Are The Most Ridiculous Pet Projects 

In $900 Billion Stimulus Package"

"Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things

out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from

getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff."

- George Carlin

Musical Interlude: Live, "Overcome"

Live, "Overcome"

"For Millions Of Americans, No Money = No Christmas In 2020"

"For Millions Of Americans, No Money = No Christmas In 2020"

by Epic Economist

"Just as we've seen through the course of the year, this holiday season is being marked by tragic events. Days before Christmas and New Year's Eve, millions have been freshly unemployed as the new restrictions are forcing numerous businesses to shut down once again. The traditional banquets and holiday dinner celebrations are being replaced by increasingly empty cardboard boxes distributed by swamped food banks across the country. Demand for food assistance this year has expanded by 60%, considering multiple American families have fallen deep into poverty and are now right at the bottom of the economic food chain. However, jobless workers aren't the only ones suffering from food insecurity. According to a new study, a considerable amount of active workers is having their hours cut and earning 20 percent less than they used to before the crisis burst. 

For that reason, recent reports are describing that during this festive period, several households will have absolutely nothing under their Christmas trees. In fact, those who can still place a tree in their homes are amongst the privileged ones, since more and more people are fearing the coming evictions and already started to live in their cars. The rental debt accumulated so far is surpassing the 70 billion dollar range, which signalizes that next year much more economic pain will be registered, especially because of the grim economic prospects that are causing gradually lower reinsertions on the labor market. In this video, we expose the reality of the millions who won't have Christmas this year as well as the staggering level of financial instability our citizens have been coping with. 

In modern times, we have never witnessed so much pain, despair, and poverty amongst jobless Americans as we are seeing right now. In a time when festivities used to warm our citizens' spirits, a large share of our population is undergoing heart-breaking situations all across the country. Numerous unemployed Americans are experiencing acute financial desperation. According to the latest estimates, an additional 8 million people have fallen into poverty since the summer. At this stage of the crisis, millions of households have thousands in back rent debt, and in about 10 days they are bound to face a renewed threat of eviction as the CDC's order is programed to lapse on the 31st. 

Unless dramatic action is taken to avoid the occurrence of an unprecedented wave of evictions at the beginning of 2021, the suffering that our citizens are going to experience is going to be off the charts. According to recent projections, nearly 16% of Americans, or about 52 million people, were already among the ranks of the poor in November. However, the poverty ranks aren't being solely constituted by unemployed workers. In reality, a substantial figure of those who are still working had their hours cut, and aren’t able to make as much in tips, commissions, or bonuses as they did before the recession has started. Latest forecasts suggest that employment among those who are paid less than $27,000 a year was still down 20% from pre-outbreak levels in mid-November.

A similar survey found that a whopping 42 percent of U.S. households have affirmed their income is way below what it was before the outbreak struck. The survey also discovered that most workers saw their incomes decline as a result of shutdowns, layoffs, pay cuts or reduced hours. Additionally, almost 85 percent of the polled are worried about a lasting negative impact on their income moving forward. Evidently, with lockdowns depressing what is left of our economy, it is understandable why so many Americans can feel harder days approaching.

Small businesses are being obliterated while big corporations keep struggling to make it through the winter by reducing their activities or temporarily closing down their stores and cutting off their staff. Even leading tech companies such as Apple just announced the closure of all of their stores in the entire state of California. Every day it passes, more restrictions are issued and more individuals feel the weight of the financial strains brought by the repercussions of the health crisis. Without money, several households disclosed they won't have ways to celebrate Christmas. In some cases, nothing is going under their trees, there simply will not be any presents at all.

Painful stories are being documented everywhere. The enormous financial difficulties experienced by millions of Americans have pushed several charity and assistance programs over the edge. Toy drives and food banks are reporting shortages of volunteers and donations, as demand continues to climb. This Christmas is going to be an exceptionally bitter one, and the worst part is the year ahead is not looking promising at all. This is what an economic depression looks like, and what we have experienced so far is just the start."

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "East of the Full Moon"

Deuter, "East of the Full Moon"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Is the heart and soul of our Galaxy located in Cassiopeia? Possibly not, but that is where two bright emission nebulas nicknamed Heart and Soul can be found. The Heart Nebula, officially dubbed IC 1805 and visible in the below view on the right, has a shape reminiscent of a classical heart symbol. Both nebulas shine brightly in the red light of energized hydrogen.

Several young open clusters of stars populate the image and are visible above in blue, including the nebula centers. Light takes about 6,000 years to reach us from these nebulas, which together span roughly 300 light years. Studies of stars and clusters like those found in the Heart and Soul Nebulas have focussed on how massive stars form and how they affect their environment.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140211.html

"Why You Can Do Anything You Want… And Why You Can’t"

"Why You Can Do Anything You Want…

And Why You Can’t"

by Paul Rosenberg

"People frequently tell children “You can do anything you want.” And this causes a lot of confusion, because in the real world, they can’t. And after their first clash with the aforesaid real world, the child is left wondering all sorts of unpleasant things:

Did mom and dad lie to me?

Are they just ignorant?

Am I defective?

Should I find someone to blame?

The worst thing about this, however, is that the child is likely to have their opinion of themselves reduced. And that’s tragic. As I’ve noted many times, we are magical creatures. Humans, alone in the known universe, are able to create willfully… are able to reverse entropy willingly. The child should think of his and her self as magical… because they really are! So, let’s make some sense of this problem.

Why You Can: Humans are radically amazing. Sure, we’ve been long trained to consider each other to be sacks of crap – a belief that’s essential to rulership – but it simply isn’t true. We are stunningly capable beings, and we generally behave pretty well, even under the reign of self-debasement.

Take a look around you. Wherever you live, you’re surrounded by buildings, roads, and cars. All of them exist only because of human virtues. Without human creativity, they could not exist. Without human cooperation, they could not exist. And they are everywhere. We’ve filled the Earth with hospitals and airplanes and food and computers and medicine. And the list could go on almost indefinitely.

More than that, we’ve learned how to cooperate very well. Forget wars; they’re run by competing states and will exist as long as states do. Instead, look at your local soccer league, little league, church choir, and family gathering.

And remember that we’ve been trained to see one flaw in a cooperative group and condemn the whole from it. (And to hypnotically accept any and every flaw of the state.) A few flaws are meaningless compared to modes of cooperation that thrive over decades, centuries, and millennia. Does being less than perfect make us monsters? Does anything less than 100% equal zero?

So, we are wonderful creatures. And how much better might we be if we dared consider that possibility? Here’s a quote from G.K. Chesterton that I’d like you to read: "There runs a strange law through the length of human history – that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility."

Can we dare imagine that Chesterton was right? And if not, why not? That kind of imagination is what the child needs, and it is that kind of imagination that results in human thriving, as noted by Leon Battista Alberti, the epitome of the Renaissance Man: "A man can do all things if he will."

Yes, that’s a bit overstated, but we have the essential ability to do amazing things, and if we thought and acted like it – thought and acted like Leon Battista Alberti – we’d do a lot more amazing things.

Why You Can’t: There are two reasons you can’t do anything at all. The first is simple: Nature stands in your way. No matter how much we imagine we can do something, if nature doesn’t agree, we can’t do it. We can work with nature to do “impossible” things (building flying machines for example), but we can’t simply violate it.

The second reason is also simple: Other human wills oppose us and stand ready to use violence against us. This second reason is habitually cloaked in confusing and deceptive terminology of course, but the truth is that adversarial wills and their violence oppose us all.

What we lack is what we can call “a life affording scope.” Limitations of our scope – weaponized wills set against us – have been colorfully covered by Reason magazine’s “Brickbats” section for decades, but the problem goes much farther than that. I’ll give you a few thoughts on that, then bring this column to a close:

• Regulation forbids adaptation.

• Obligation supplants compassion.

• Only violent and corrupt human wills deserve restriction.

And one more, the "14 words" we used in a previous article: "We are a beautiful species, living in a beautiful world, ruled by abusive systems." This is why I’ve been drawn to the cryptosphere. Our scope of life within that realm is not obstructed by weaponized wills. It’s a special place."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "Do You Remember?"

"Do You Remember?"

"Do you remember still the falling stars

that like swift horses through the heavens raced

and suddenly leaped across the hurdles

of our wishes - do you recall?

And we did make so many! 

For there were countless numbers of stars: 

each time we looked above we were

astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,

while in our hearts we felt safe and secure

watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,

knowing somehow we had survived their fall."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

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"We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars... everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."

- Thornton Wilder

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Do you remember?

"We Must Ask Ourselves..."

''As Americans, we must ask ourselves: Are we really so different? Must we stereotype those who disagree with us? Do we truly believe that ALL red-state residents are ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying roadkill-eating tobacco juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks; or that ALL blue-state residents are godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-wing communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts?''

- Dave Barry

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

"When we're headed toward an outcome that's too horrible to face, that's when we go looking for a second opinion. And sometimes, the answer we get just confirms our worst fears. But sometimes, it can shed new light on the problem, make you see it in a whole new way. After all the opinions have been heard and every point of view has been considered, you finally find what you're after - the truth. But the truth isn't where it ends, that's just where you begin again with a whole new set of questions."

- "Grays Anatomy"

The Daily "Near You?"

Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Thanks for stopping by!

Rumi, "The Guest House"

"The Guest House"

"This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."

~ Rumi

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"Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi was a 13th century Afghan poet and philosopher who heavily influenced both eastern and western poetry. His poetry is divided into categories: the quatrains and odes of the "Divan," the six books the "Masnavi," the discourses, the letters and the "Six Sermons." Rumi's major poetic work is "Matnawiye Ma'nawi," a six-volume poem, considered by many literary critics to be one of the greatest works of mystical poetry ever written. Rumi's prose works included "Fihi Ma Fihi," "Majalese Sab'a" and "Maktubat." His prose work largely contains sermons and lectures given by Rumi to his disciples and family members. Following Rumi's death, his followers founded the Mevlevi Order, also known as the "Whirling Dervishes."

Free downloads:

Freely download " The Divan" here:

- http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/divaneshams.pdf

- Freely download "The Masnavi" here:

- https://holybooks.com/

"Crabs in a Bucket"

"Crabs in a Bucket"

by Sarah Robinson

"When I was a little girl, I lived very close (an hour and fifteen minutes) to the Florida panhandle beaches. Which meant we spent a TON of time there. Early evening was one of my favorite times to walk the beach with my mom and my older brothers. We were all clean and fed and slightly sun weary but still desperate to be outside. So, we would grab flashlights, dip nets and a bucket and search the ocean’s edge for crabs. We would catch a bucket full in an evening and drag them back home where my mom or my grandmother would cook them up into something delicious. (Yes, I was traumatized by the crabs being put into boiling water, but that story is for another day.)

The problem was that as we made that long walk home carrying crabs, there were always one or two who figured out how to climb up to the edge of the bucket in an attempt to escape. Every now and then we would have to tap the edge of the bucket to knock them back down. Because I was too little to carry the bucket very far, I got the job of watching for potential escapees. And I noticed something... well… odd. More often than not, as a crab would begin to inch its way higher to the edge of the bucket, the other crabs would latch on to him and pull him back down. I watched this scenario play out again and again, year after year.

Fast forward to this morning. As I was drinking my coffee and perusing my twitter stream, and up pops this gem from @paulocoelho (He wrote "The Alchemist", one of my all time favorite books): “Only mediocrity is safe. Get ready to be attacked, and be the best.” Maybe it was the early hour. Maybe it was my post-event mushy brain. I don’t know. But the minute I read Paulo’s tweet, I thought of those crabs in a bucket. So I sent him this tweet: “I’m thinking of crabs in a bucket. They always try to pull down the one who’s figured out how to escape.”

Paulo liked my analogy so much that he retweeted it and I’ve spent my morning connecting with people all over the world who liked it, too. It resonated deeply for a lot of people. I did a quick Google search and discovered that “Crab Mentality” is actually an official phrase that roughly means “if I can’t have it, neither can you.” And it is talked about. A lot.

There will always be people who will subtly or not so subtly try to keep us from escaping. Why? Because our escape threatens their mediocre existence. Pulling us down, sabotaging our efforts, picking apart our brilliant ideas – all of that keeps them feeling safe. And living undisturbed mediocre lives.

So what if we added a new piece to the crab mentality picture? Imagine a crab, or a group of crabs on the other side of the bucket building a ladder to aid your escape. They managed to crawl out of the bucket in spite of all the energetic attempts to pull them backwards. Because they’ve tasted freedom and they know your struggle, they are putting energy into aiding and abetting your escape.

I believe that for those of us determined to get out of the bucket, such a group exists. It may take some time to find them, but they are there, ready to throw a safety rope over the edge and pull us out. Start listening for them. Start looking for them. They are there. Reach just a little further and they’ll meet you at the edge of the bucket."

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

"History Repeats Itself..."

"History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that 

we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done." 

- Sydney Harris

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/21/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/21/20"

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

DEC 21,  2020  - 19:00: "Lockdowns Do Not Control The Coronavirus: The Evidence"

DEC 21, 2020 - 15:31: "California Gov Newsom Quarantines After Staffer Infected, Warns COVID Lockdown Will Be Extended: Live Updates"

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DECEMBER 21, 2020: Globalintelhub.com: "Do Mask Mandates Work? New Analysis Suggests They Don’t"

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 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Dec. 21, 2020 2:08 PM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 77,147,600 

people, according to official counts, including 17,986,703 Americans.

At least 1,698,000 have died.

  Dec. 21, 2020 2:08 PM ET: 

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

- www.nytimes.com

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"The COVID Tracking Project"

Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 

hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.

- https://covidtracking.com/

"Market Fantasy Updates AM 12/21/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates AM 12/21/20"

"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

○

Updated live.

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

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- https://markets.businessinsider.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

DEC 21, 2020 - 13:10: "Here's A Breakdown Of Everything Inside The $900BN Stimulus Bill, And What It Means For The US Economy"

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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Daily Update (Dec. 21st to 22nd)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Insanity... 

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And now... The End Game...

"How It Really Is"

 

"For Millions Of Americans, No Money = No Christmas In 2020"

"For Millions Of Americans,

 No Money = No Christmas In 2020"

by Michael Snyder

"In modern times, there has never been a Christmas like this in America. Millions are freshly unemployed, another wave of lockdowns is forcing countless businesses to close their doors, and people are waiting in line for hours at food banks all over the nation just to get a little bit of food for their families. Of course those at the bottom end of the economic food chain are being hit the hardest. It is being reported that employment among those that make $27,000 a year or less is down 20 percent from pre-pandemic levels. That is an extremely shocking number, and it helps to explain why the number of Americans living in poverty rose to 52 million during the month of November.

But it isn’t just the unemployed that are suffering. Many of those that are still working have had their hours cut or they aren’t able to make as much in tips, commissions or bonuses as they did prior to the pandemic. Tens of millions of households are bringing home less income these days, and this has become a major national crisis. In fact, one brand new survey discovered that a whopping 42 percent of U.S. households are currently making less money than they did prior to the pandemic: "Nine months into the pandemic, 42% of Americans say their household income is still below what it was before the coronavirus outbreak began, according to a new survey from Bankrate.com."

And that same survey found that 85 percent of Americans are concerned about how their incomes will be affected by this pandemic moving forward: "As the financial fallout from the pandemic continues and with expanded unemployment benefits and eviction moratoriums set to expire at the end of the year, 85% of adults are worried about a lasting negative impact to their income. That’s an increase from the percentage of people who reported that same concern in June."

With less money to go around, this is not a “normal Christmas” for millions of U.S. families. And in some cases, there simply will not be any presents at all. For example, an unemployed nurse in Kansas named Sierra Schauvilegee says that her children “will not open a single gift” on Christmas morning this year: "There will be no presents under the Christmas tree this year for Sierra Schauvilegee and her children. Schauvilegee lost her job as a nurse when the residential care facility she worked for permanently closed down at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Finding new work has proved impossible.

“This is the first year my children will not open a single gift, nothing under our tree,” said Schauvilegee, who lives in Ingalls, Kansas. “I used all my savings to survive and I begged my mother to move in until I received rental assistance and food stamps, that is all I literally have.”

There are so many others that are in the same boat, and that includes 60-year-old Melinda Cawthorne Shannon of Tampa, Florida: Sadly, her case is not an isolated one. “Since July 26, 2020, we have been surviving on an unemployment income of $900 a month after taxes which is Florida’s maximum unemployment payment. This amount does not even cover the cost of rent for our tiny apartment,” Cawthorne Shannon said. “We have sold all personal items, except for a car, that had any value just to pay a bill. So now we sleep on palettes or lawn chairs.” She is unsure whether they will be able to stay in their apartment after New Year. For Thanksgiving, Cawthorne Shannon and her daughter were only able to afford to have stuffing and cranberry sauce sandwiches. This year for Christmas, they can’t afford to celebrate it at all. They are hoping next year will be better.

Could you imagine sleeping on a lawn chair? But at least she still has a roof over her head, and that is more than 57-year-old Randy Chase has: "Randy Chase has lived in his pickup truck for months. Luckily, the tiny cab of his 1996 Nissan is easy to heat and that’s a life saver in the sub-freezing winter chill outside of Denver.

Randy normally works as a construction worker, but work in his area has really dried up during this pandemic.  Now he spends his nights trying not to freeze to death in his truck, and that was made more difficult after his truck was “partially wrecked by a hit-and-run driver”: Chase has suffered misfortune after misfortune since the spring: Unemployment benefits have been stuck in limbo. Work opportunities have been sporadic. Now, the cold makes it hard to find jobs in his trade, as a mason on construction crews. His savings depleted and his truck partially wrecked by a hit-and-run driver, Chase can’t move somewhere where jobs are more plentiful."

Have you ever spent a night sleeping in a vehicle in a strange location? If not, you should try it some time. I promise you that it will be an experience that you will never forget.

Unfortunately, millions more Americans could soon find themselves thrown out into the streets. According to CNBC, over 11 million U.S. households have piled up $70,000,000,000 in unpaid rent: By January, more than 11 million households will owe more than $6,000 in back rent, utilities and late fees, on average - about four months’ worth, according to an estimate from Moody’s Analytics. That’s a collective deficit of $70 billion. In past articles, I have warned about the unprecedented wave of evictions that we could see in 2021. Unless something dramatic happens, the suffering that we are going to witness is going to be off the charts.

Of course what we really need is for the lockdowns to end so that the economy can start getting back to normal, but instead a new round of lockdowns is depressing economic activity all over the nation. Today, I was stunned to learn that Apple is temporarily closing all of their stores in the entire state of California. The good news is that those stores will eventually open back up again, but countless other businesses that are shutting down right now won’t be so fortunate.

This is what an economic depression looks like, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning. If you still have a warm home, plenty of food on the table and money for some of the luxuries in life, you should consider yourself to be extremely blessed. Because for tens of millions of Americans, this Christmas is going to be an exceptionally bitter one, and the year ahead is not looking very promising at all."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"Yuletide Visitations"

"Yuletide Visitations"

by Jim Kunstler

"Welcome to the longest night of the year, the moment of maximum mystification and terror for frail humanity, fretting that the sun might be going away for all the rest of time. Scanning the smoke signals from America’s loudest engine of mystification, The New York Times, one searches in vain for some evidence that Joe Biden still exists. There is barely a cookie-crumb trail of some hypothetical cabinet appointments, plus a few obviously insincere and artificial sugarplums about “healing the nation.” Where-oh-where is the party’s avatar and the country’s savior, Ol’ White Joe, in these fraught hours? Has the fabled basement become his tomb? Will his revenant float transparently out into the night sky on Christmas Eve and pass through the walls of the “residence” at 1600 Pennsylvania to rattle his chains like Jacob Marley’s ghost at the foot of the president’s bed, wailing, “I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond the awful shackles of the CEFC Energy Company - mark me! - in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our family’s money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me! Oooooohhhhhhhh…?

It says something, does it not, that the corporeal Joe Biden is missing-in-action? You’d think he’d be bustling around like crazy out there, trying to, at least, give some impression of being at-large-and-in-charge, preparing to launch a score of battles against the enemies of peace and prosperity lately afflicting this sore-beset nation, yo-yo-ing back and forth between Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow to reassure their cringing viewers of Wokedom come, wolfing down plates of field peas, ham hocks, and cornbread to display his allyship with the downtrodden masses of this-and-that color, gender, flavor, and texture, comforting the homeless on the pitiless streets of the ailing cities, volunteering to get stuck with vaccine needles of every pharma company on the S & P, with side orders of hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, and famotidine, huddling with the nabobs of Wall Street to halt the sinking dollar, visiting the troops with plane-loads of turkey dinners - you know… rallying the worried people of this anxious land in their time of trouble….

And what of Kamala Harris? Did she steal off to some Caribbean beach to mull over her options? It appears that she’s still holds that seat in the US Senate, let’s face it, a very cushy sinecure that “fixes” its exalted members for life, and in more ways than one, if you know what I mean. Of all the thoughts racing through Ms. Harris’s skull these dark days, I suspect the dimmest of them concerns the actual possibility she may actually end up as president. She acts like someone who knows something, and knows that the something she knows is not altogether a good something. Notice the giggling has ceased.

And so, we pass through a weekend of predictable news that Congress has authorized another gazillion dollars to bail out stock markets and banks, under the guise of helping ordinary Americans hopelessly crushed by lockdowns and government-induced small business failures, and we hurtle toward what’s likely to be the bluest Christmas in memory with the republic in the balance. The president… that would be Mr. Trump… is portrayed in the nervous mainstream news media as flailing wildly around the West Wing, confabbing with Krakens, battling with his “closest advisors,” all importuning him to concede the election. D’ya think so? Maybe, but I’m not so sure.

Something more orderly and momentous might be playing out, and on the q.t., something that may turn-around the odious sham that was the election phase of the long-running coup against the chief executive. Joe Biden, or the ghost of Joe Biden and the people who manage his hologram, must not be allowed to occupy the Oval Office and seize the levers of power. It should be impossible to ignore the evidence of his previously bought-and-paid-for obligations to the folks who run China, though the people who bring us the “news” do exactly that, and are probably acting as accessories to what will amount to one of the greatest attempted political crimes of history.

It also appears that, in the course of all these fractious election hijinks, foreign actors have penetrated America’s most sensitive computer networks, including the treasury department, the nuke labs, and the electric grid. Why not then the computers that tabulated the recent election? They were, after all, hooked up to the Internet, though they were not supposed to be. All this is right in the wheelhouse of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the least you can say is that President Trump anticipated it when he shifted out the old DOD top management a month ago and replaced them with, shall we say, a more reliable crew. What remains to be seen this fretful Christmas week is exactly what, and who, will be flying over America’s rooftops on the eve of the Great Day.

A toast to all my readers, and even the rowdy comment gang, this hallowed week of our darkest days, and a merry Christmas to all!"

- https://kunstler.com/

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/21/20: "Global Markets CRATER On 'New Virus' Strain. Critical Updates"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/21/20:

"Global Markets CRATER On 'New Virus' Strain. Critical Updates"

- https://traderschoice.net/

How Times Have Changed"

"How Times Have Changed"

by LLPOH

"On October 24, 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest just before he was scheduled to deliver a speech. Coughing into his hand and determining he was not lung shot, he carried on with the speech. He spoke for 84 minutes, refusing all attempts to administer him care. They were unable to remove the bullet that was lodged deep in his chest. Whatever else he may have been, for sure and certain he was, as he described himself, a bull moose.

Compare that man to the soy boy metrosexuals that voted for Biden, that can today be seen everywhere. The faux tattooed toughness is a disgrace. How the mighty have fallen.

My father was tough as old leather boots, a child of the Dustbowl. He would at times give me some horrifically hard task to do, like the time he told me to wrench a tree up by its roots as it was “too small to waste time using a shovel on”.

Having made the mistake previously of saying something or other was too hard, I tussled mightily with that redwood (a small deciduous in reality) for some time trying to rip it up. He eventually walked over and tore it out of the ground. He used force of will more than physical strength, I believe, plus he was experienced. It had been his job once – he once worked at a tree nursery where he tore trees out of the ground. Hard to believe but true story, all of it.

He never told me to do something that he himself could not do. If I dared say something was impossible, or that I could not do it, he would come do it, then give me a serious belting. The message was clear – there is little that a man cannot do if he bows his back and gets after it. And saying it was impossible was not an option. I saved myself a hiding by fighting hell out of that tree. I gave it my all. I would have been around 15. And in the end, he helped. The lessons were hard learned, but never forgotten.

I helped a young man move house a couple of years ago, as I had a truck. He enlisted several friends of his as well. Four of them grabbed his couch to load it in the truck. I asked them “what in the hell are you doing?” They could not understand the question. I explained that no couch needs four men. That they should be ashamed. They were outraged. I told them that one guy could do it in a pinch, and that I had done so many times myself (and it is true – I would flip it onto my back and off I would go). And I told them that they should look hard in the mirror until they figured out that being competent at physical tasks is one mark of being a man. They took it better than I should have expected, but doubt they gave it a moments thought.

Where have all the hard men, and women, gone? Will they ever return? I have watched the steel steadily disappear from young men over the decades. It is long gone, to where I do not know. But we need it back. Right now."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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