So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Must Watch! “Stimulus Payments Are A Disgrace; Americans Using Credit Cards To Pay Rent; Eviction Nightmare”
Jeremiah Babe,
“Stimulus Payments Are A Disgrace;
Americans Using Credit Cards To Pay Rent; Eviction Nightmare”
Must watch!
"The country is collapsing right in front of your very face."
"Be Ready For Housing Market Crash And Mass Evictions In America!"
"Be Ready For Housing Market Crash
And Mass Evictions In America!"
by Epic Economist
"As soon as the health crisis struck in America, things turned upside down in the housing market. As renters lost their jobs and, consequently, their ability to pay rent, landlords started to fall behind in mortgage payments and default their loans. Then, to pay off their debt, several property owners filed eviction orders in an attempt to find paying tenants, leading rent prices to plunge to a level last seen in 2010. Conversely, ever since people started to massively relocate away from big cities, housing prices soared amid a shortage in the U.S. affordable suburban housing supply.
Experts have been warning that the financial damages the real state market has suffered due to months of mass delinquency in rental payments, in addition to the expiration of the CDC's moratorium and the coming eviction tsunami could potentially to trigger a catastrophic economic collapse that is likely to impair the sector's growth for years. Additionally, as natural disasters have become more frequent than ever, a market correction is looming, which means, soon enough we'll be witnessing a housing market crash. That's what we discuss in this video.
The increase in vacancies has put several landlords on the edge of a financial cliff. As a result, they started to do desperate concessions to find new renters. But despite those, a considerable amount of tenants across the U.S. remains delinquent and will stay that way as long as the economy hurts with lockdowns and they can't find opportunities to reinsert themselves into the job market.
That's why analysts are expecting a tsunami of evictions to start as soon as the CDC's order expires. But while low-income renters housing security is on the line, on the other hand, affluent Americans started to move away from urban areas by the millions, and house sales became a sensation during the spring. The phenomenon dubbed by analysts as the Great Relocation was used as a symbol of big cities' struggles amid the ravaging economic meltdown. In turn, the migratory movement led housing demand to soar just as high as prices.
Moreover, the health crisis was an unexpected natural disaster to hit the real state market, but according to John Macomber, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, our failure to acknowledge and confront climate change and several other natural disasters can also add to the list of reasons why experts forecast a collapse in housing prices and an ensuing financial crisis. In an interview with Harvard Business Review, the professor outlined that ignoring the threats associated with climate change may lead the market to a correction. That is to say, to another real state crash.
Macomber disclosed that the damages caused by climate change have accelerated faster than many people anticipated. All across the nation, there were 16 weather/climate disaster events this year, and losses exceed at least $1 billion each, with some having registered much larger figures. As the price of these properties drop due to increased risks of damages, homebuyers become more vulnerable to do tricky investments, since it enables them to make or maintain housing investments that are exposed to more danger than they realize. That's a classic market distortion.
In other words, even though in the short-run many can benefit from propping up housing prices, the exposure to material damages consequent of natural disasters, and the eventual tightening of government budgets - after so many trillion-dollar cash spills to boost the economy - will make buyer’s investments collapse.
In areas that face such risk, housing prices will inevitably plummet. Typically, for homeowners, the equity in their property is their biggest asset. So when that asset drops in value, or case the buyers go negative - when they owe more on their house than its risk-adjusted value - they get in big financial trouble. Additionally, it's important to keep in mind that most American municipalities get the bulk of their revenue from property taxes, which are tied to the value of homes and commercial real estate. So if home values decline, property tax receipts decline accordingly in a city's expenses, and so does its ability to service its municipal bonds.
In simple terms, it means that the ratings of the bonds risk being downgraded, which would lead cities to cut their budgets and create other stresses on government services. That's why a real state crash would be impactful in all of our lives. It wouldn't just affect markets, but people's main financial assets, retirement portfolios tied to tax-bonds, and municipal and governmental budgets. And on top of the financial and economic fallout, it would ultimately touch everyone’s pocketbook. Meaning it would exacerbate the economic deterioration millions are already experiencing and the recession could be extended for much longer than we ever considered."
"Second Stimulus Checks Sent Out Tonight, Latest Updates"
DEC 29, 2020 Update 18:40 ET: "In a series of tweets tonight, Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin confirmed that the US Treasury has delivered a payments file to The Fed for "Americans' Economic Impact Payments."
• These payments may begin to arrive in some accounts by direct deposit as early as tonight and will continue into next week.
• Paper checks will begin to be mailed tomorrow.
Eligible individuals will receive an Economic Impact Payment of up to $600 for individuals or $1200 for married couples and up to $600 for each qualifying child. Generally, if you have adjusted gross income for 2019 up to $75,000 for individuals and up to $150,000 for married couples filing joint returns and surviving spouses, you will receive the full amount.
In a later statement, Treasury confirmed that: “Treasury and the IRS are working with unprecedented speed to issue a second round of Economic Impact Payments to eligible Americans and their families,” said Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. “These payments are an integral part of our commitment to providing vital additional economic relief to the American people during this unprecedented time.
Payments will be distributed automatically, with no action required for eligible individuals. If additional legislation is enacted to provide for an increased amount, Economic Impact Payments that have been issued will be topped up as quickly as possible."
Additionally, later this week you can check the status of your payment here.
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DECEMBER 29, 2020 AT 2:34 PM:
"McConnell Counter Offer! $2,000 Stimulus Checks & Biden"
DECEMBER 29, 2020 AT 10:34 AM:
Musical Interlude: Yanni, "Standing in Motion”; "World Dance"
Yanni, Live At The Acropolis, “Standing in Motion”
Full screen a must!
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Yanni, "World Dance"
Full screen a must!
"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, “The Sadist Next Door”
“The Sadist Next Door”
by Chet Raymo
“The TLS (“Times Literary Supplement”) had an absorbing review of American Historian Joel Harrington's book on the manuscript diary of a 16th-century German executioner, Franz Schmidt of Nuremberg. Remarkably, Schmidt kept a full record of the criminals he executed, the crimes they perpetrated, and the gruesome ways they met their fate. It is a tale that would chill most 21st-century readers.
Hangings, beheadings, burnings at the stake, and breakings with the wheel. In the latter custom, a heavy cartwheel is dropped onto the person to be executed, who is tied down spreadeagled on the execution platform, starting with the feet and working the way up to the head. There are also less final punishments: floggings, finger-choppings, ear-choppings, brandings, and an ingenious catalog of tortures.
For Herr Schmidt, it was all in a day's work. He might as well have been a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker. He had a family to support, and he was good at his job. His neighboring townspeople attended the executions. It was good public entertainment.
Of course, there is nothing unique to the 16th century or Germany about any of this. Hideous tortures and executions have been part of human history from the beginning. Think of the Roman gladiatorial entertainments with their cheering crowds. Or the public stonings, beheadings and amputations still common in certain parts of the world today. It seems that only in the post-Enlightenment West do we look with disapprobation on Herr Schmidt's trade, ostensibly at least. We have the grisly torture chambers of the Gestapo and NKVD to remind us that Enlightenment values are fragile.
All of which raises the question: Is taking pleasure in the infliction of pain on others nature or nurture? Are we born with a good angel on one shoulder and a bad angel on the other? How do we explain the huge popularity of slasher movies and shoot-'em-up video games? Is there something of Herr Schmidt in all of us?”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
"We Never See The World..."
“You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually - and this is my belief - that we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is.”
- Maria Popova
“6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful”
“6 Steps to Release Your Fear and Feel Peaceful”
by Nicolas Perrin
“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.”
~ Mary Catherine Bateson
~ Mary Catherine Bateson
“It was a balmy spring morning and I started my day as per usual, but I soon realized that my mind was entertaining fearful thoughts about my financial insecurity. With many new ventures within the seedling stage, my income flow was erratic and unpredictable, while my financial responsibilities were consistent and guaranteed. At the time I ignored these thoughts as “petty,” like a parent dismissing a crying child after a mild fall on the pavement.
What I didn’t realize was that my mind wanted to entertain these fear-based thoughts like a Hollywood blockbuster, and as you may know, what you focus on expands. Before I knew it, my body was in a state of complete anxiety and fear. I literally felt my cognitive and creative centers shutting down. I felt completely powerless, a hostage to my own mind. My body felt paralyzed, and I felt disconnected from my talents and gifts. I felt separate, isolated, and vulnerable. I became a victim of the fear. In this moment I realized the powerful impact thoughts can have on how we feel, mentally and physically. Here is what unfolded through me, and the lessons I treasured from this experience.
Fear is a closed energy, referred to as inverted faith. Fear exists when we do not trust our connection to the infinite part of who we are and buy into a story about what’s unfolding in our life. The emotions we feel are created from the thoughts that we choose to focus on, consciously or unconsciously. The emotions act as markers to let us know if we are focusing on expansive, empowering thoughts or fearful, limiting thoughts.
If I were to relate this in a story, it may be like a pilot believing he no longer had any guidance or support from the airport control tower in a large storm, and no instruments on board to detect if he was on a collision course with another airplane. If the control tower represents the infinite part of who we are, which always knows what’s best for us, it can be understandable why the pilot with no other guidance except for his own eye sight would be fearful of the situation at hand. An alarm on the plane beeping at the pilot would represent the emotions. The alarm’s purpose is to get the attention of the pilot so he can focus and realize he is off the path. Once our emotions start to take a grip of our physical body, what can we do to move from a state of limitation and fear into an open, tranquil, peaceful state?
1. Come back to the present moment. The first step is to bring your awareness to the present moment. To do this, take three deep breaths through your nose and exhale through your mouth. After the air has filled your lungs and you’ve felt your stomach rise, exhale through your mouth by forcing the air through your teeth, as if you were hissing out loud. This detoxifies your body from the heavy emotions you’re experiencing and brings you back into the present moment. When I do this, I place my awareness into my feet so I am in a feeling space within my body, rather than being in my mind, entertaining the stories that swirl around with vigor, like a dangerous hurricane. Imagine that all your emotions are in a large sludge bucket. This breathing technique will empty the bucket out so you are empty and free.
2. Put things in perspective. Now that you are present, acknowledge the experience and ask yourself this question: “What is the worst case scenario that can happen to me?” Once we can accept this and realize we will be okay if that happens, we are free from the fear. When I realized I’d blown things out of proportion with my fears, I was able to detach from the story and put things into perspective. I like to imagine that in every moment I have two wolves I can feed (per the Native American myth): the fear wolf or the love wolf. The one that gets stronger and wins is the one I feed.
3. Become an observer of your thoughts. What has served me well in moments like this is to say, “I’m not these thoughts. I’m not these emotions. I’m not this body. I’m an infinite being having a human experience.” In saying this, we immediately detach from the story and allow ourselves the choice of suffering or to become the observer. Imagine that your life is represented in a book, and the story you are living out comes from the words on the page. We can change the words of the story at any point in time.
4. Change your experience. The fourth step is to place your awareness and your right hand on the heart center, which is located near the sternum. Close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and make the following command: “I am now connected to the infinite part of who I am, which already knows how to be whole and complete. I take full responsibility and accountability for this creation, I recognize how it has served me, and I am now ready to let it go. I command that the fear energy be transmuted into unconditional love now. Thank you. It is now done.” This process is incredibly empowering. We allow ourselves the opportunity to experience being our own inner master and a co-creator of our reality.
5. Prevent your mind from sabotaging you. Visualize a stone being thrown into a pond. Observe the ripples it creates when it enters the water. This is to simply distract your mind and allow the process to unfold without doubt or self-sabotage. It is only our mind that can interfere with our own healing.
6. Be grateful. Express gratitude and appreciation for the integration and healing you have received.
The key to happiness is awareness. When we become aware that our mind is wandering, we can gently bring it back to the present moment. It’s only in the present moment that we are empowered and can consciously choose the thoughts we engage with. The thoughts we focus on will determine where our energy flows, and thus what is created in our life. Each thought has a vibration, which is reflected by the feeling we experience in our body. To be able to move from a fear-based experience to an open, peaceful experience we must first take full responsibility and accountability that on some level we created the experience, and nobody else is to blame. The choice is truly ours. Do we choose to experience a fearful, limited life or do we choose a happy joyful life?"
"I Am An Invisible Man..."
"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything and anything except me."
- Ralph Ellison, "Prologue to Invisible Man"
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"Be Like The Bird..."
"What matter if this base, unjust life
Cast you naked and disarmed?
If the ground breaks beneath your step,
Have you not your soul?
Your soul! You fly away,
Escape to realms refined,
Beyond all sadness and whimpering.
Be like the bird which on frail branches balanced
A moment sits and sings;
He feels them tremble, but he sings unshaken,
Knowing he has wings."
- Victor Hugo
"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/29/20"
"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/29/20"
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DECEMBER 29, 2020 AT 2:52 PM: "Colorado Confirms 1st Case Of "Mutant" COVID; California Extends Lockdown Order: Live Updates"
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Dec. 29, 2020 2:04 PM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 81,625,000
people, according to official counts, including 19,421,685 Americans.
At least 1,781,600 have died.
Dec. 29, 2020 2:04 PM ET:
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count○
"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/
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Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases,
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
- https://covidtracking.com/
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"We All Got Problems..."
"We all got problems. But there's a great book out called "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart. " Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin' about what's wrong, because everybody's had a rough time, in one way or another. "
- Quincy Jones
“Welcome to Life. There Are Only Hard Facts and Harder Decisions”
“Welcome to Life.
There Are Only Hard Facts and Harder Decisions”
by Ryan Holiday
“One thing this pandemic has shown is that people have a problem facing facts. I don’t mean facts in the sense of the scientific data, although that’s clearly a problem as well judging by the litany of conspiracy theories that have become acceptable even in polite company. I mean “facts” in the more colloquial sense – of coming to terms with reality and accepting it on reality’s terms. Just look at COVID-19.
We’ve taken a merciless, apolitical, indifferent but pretty well-understood virus, scientifically speaking, and turned it into a divisive, partisan argument. Every molecule seems subject to debate, because we have somehow come to believe that what we think about it, or our own personal needs in relation to it, have some relevance to its airborne spread from person to person, and its ability to kill with ruthlessness and painful efficiency.
Perhaps nothing captures this impotent rage better than a tweet I saw from Laura Ingraham:
OK, Karen, would you like to speak to COVID-19’s manager?
Back here in reality where the rest of us live, it is an inescapable truth of human existence that there are some crises and problems so bad that they force those affected by them to live with the uncertainty that the crises create. They force us to stop doing things we’d like to do. They cost us things we really can’t afford. But, alas, there is no degree of forcefulness to an opinion nor staggering amount of need that can change those facts.
Imagine someone living in America in 1942. No one could have told them when they’d be able to travel to Europe to see their aging parents again. No one could have told them when the rationing would stop. No one would have been able to say when their son would be released from the Army. No one could promise them that they were safe in their homes and would ultimately survive. The world war was a fact, and everybody had to deal with it. Like it or not.
Life is like this. It’s uncertain. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t really care whether we really want or need something. It doesn’t care about us at all, really, it just is.
Many years ago, I wrote a piece about our tendency to think that we could “vote on reality,” and how the internet was designed to encourage this impulse. From Twitter to Facebook to blogging, the platforms of social media are designed around the insidious idea that your opinion about things changes what they unflinchingly are.
I think this is what Foster the People is singing about in their song, “The Truth”:
“Well an absolute measure won’t change with opinion
no matter how hard you try
It’s an immovable thing…”
We are seduced by the idea that not liking some element of reality is powerful enough to will it to be different. That a simple objection is more powerful than objectivity. Of course, the Stoics had no time for this. Facts are facts, they say. Fate or Fortune or death have no care for your opinion.
They were like Civil War historian James McPherson who, responding to Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 claim that European allies seemed to care more about tiny Northern defeats than his major victories, said simply: “Unreasonable it may have been, but it was a reality.”
When we talk about facing facts, we are in part talking about making the hard choices that life demands – which usually means doing the harder thing. “At the top,” Secretary of State Dean Acheson once observed about the presidency, “there are no easy choices. All are between evils, the consequences of which are hard to judge.” He meant that all the simple, easy stuff gets handled by people lower down on the chain. The obvious stuff never makes it to the Oval Office. And so it is with life, too – the easy stuff is never much of an issue. There’s never any uncertainty about the things that don’t require any sacrifice and pain.
I think he also means that it’s not the choices that are hard. In fact, the right thing is often obvious. It’s the consequences and the costs of that choice that are hard. It’s the complicated, difficult, unpleasant stuff that we adults end up having to wrestle with on the other side of our decisions that make the decisions seem so difficult.
In reality, when it comes to a pandemic or a bankruptcy or a failing marriage, the choices are easy to the extent that they are simple and clear. It’s this or this. It’s A or B or C. The difficulty comes with the hard facts that must be swallowed as a consequence of picking one of those easy choices. Don’t you dare think that Acheson, when he said the consequences were hard to judge, was excusing leaders who preferred their own fantasies or wishful thinking to the hard realities of geopolitics.
I see this with some of my friends, now considering whether to send their kids back to school. Even though most of the advice is against it; even though they regularly go overboard protecting their families from all sorts of much less dangerous things than a pandemic; even though they are otherwise good people who care about how their actions affect others—here they are saying something to the effect of “Well, it’s just so hard to know what the right thing is.” Or my favorite: “How much longer can this go on?” Truth goes on as long as it’s true!
What we’re saying when we throw up our hands at something like reopening the schools is, “I have a sense that I’m not making the right decision, but if I act bewildered, it excuses me from the consequences.” Or they are saying, “I get that generally this is a really bad idea, but my specific circumstances should be exempt from the otherwise unfavorable facts because it hasn’t been a problem in my town yet and the consequences of the other choice are more difficult than I’m comfortable with.” No!
How has the track record for not listening to expert opinion gone in the United States over the last 10 months? Oh, right, it’s created one of the worst coronavirus breakouts in the world, one that has seen US citizens banned from international travel en masse, and has mayors from Texas to New York City requesting extra freezer trucks to support their overflowing morgues. 1,764,300 dead worldwide! 588 9/11s. 31 Vietnams. 90 times more than the American Revolution. (And the fact that lots of people also die of heart disease is not a response. They are dying of that too.) The country that, for a century, was called to rescue other countries from natural disasters is now the unlikely recipient of pity from New Zealand, Italy and Denmark. People love to talk about American exceptionalism – well, we are being exceptionally stupid.
And so we are now entering another phase of the crisis that will undeniably be shaped by people who, instead of dealing honestly and critically with the reality of the situation, are letting all sorts of other factors shape what they’re seeing (note: obviously the real blame lies with the feckless leaders who put them in the position in the first place). No sane person would look at a country with 500,000 new cases and 2,196+ deaths a day and think: “I should probably send my kid to hang out with thousands of other kids in small rooms, right?” Yet here we are, talking about how life has to go back to normal sometime… But kids need school! you reply.
I am reminded of a conversation between Col. Harry G. Summers and a North Vietnamese colonel after the Vietnam War. Summers pointed out that the US was never beaten on the battlefield. The man replied, “That is true. It is also irrelevant.”
We need a lot of things. My kids certainly do. But the facts come first, so we’re staying home. Not because we want to, but because, in truth, there is no choice. It’s why my businesses remain closed too.
There is not much upside in a pandemic – not one that has killed 336,400 Americans and 1,764,300 people worldwide. But there is a lesson in it. It’s a lesson that we have done our best not to learn, that we have fought for some time now. That lesson is this: Life is hard. It is filled with hard facts and hard decisions. You cannot flee it. You can only defer the consequences for so long or, perhaps, if you are content to be an assh*le, shirk them onto some other innocent person.
Facts don’t care how hard they are. Just because you can’t bear something doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be borne. Just because you have an opinion – or a need – doesn’t mean it’s relevant. “There is a truth,” it says in the song I mentioned earlier, “I can promise you that.”
It’s time to wake up, put on our big boy pants, and accept that we are living through a period of great discomfort and frightening uncertainty, and what you think or feel about that fact has precisely zero impact on the truth of our new reality We have to face the truth. Do the hard thing.”
Musical Interlude: Moby, "Love Of Strings"
Moby, "Love Of Strings"
Full screen highly recommended!
Life, magnificent, precious Life...
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 12/29/20"
"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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Gregory Mannarino,
"Important Updates: "Stock Market, Ripple,
Bitcoin, Gold, Silver, Dollar, Debt, More!"
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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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"Economic Market Snapshot AM 12/29/20"
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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:
CNN Fear And Greed Index:
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Daily Updates, Dec 28th to 29th
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Daily Job Cuts
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And now, the End Game...
$600 Stimulus Checks Won't Pull America Out Of This Mess"
$600 Stimulus Checks Won't Pull America Out Of This Mess"
by Michael Snyder
"Well, it looks like we are going to get $600 stimulus payments from the federal government after all. Oh goody! For the millions of Americans that are on the brink of being evicted from their homes, that will be enough for about half a mortgage payment or about half a month of rent. Many are referring to this as America’s “let them eat cake moment”, and that probably is not too far off target. As our politicians spend hundreds of billions of dollars on other nonsense, we are supposed to be deeply grateful to them for tossing a few hundred bucks our way. But the truth is that $600 dollars does not go as far as it once did. 20 years ago, it would have bought more groceries than any of us could have possibly put into a single vehicle, but today it will buy about two carts of food and maybe a tank of gas.
If we are going to go “full Weimar” and destroy any hope of ever getting our national finances under control, we might as well make the checks big enough to smile about.
But while you get a measly $600, the federal government is spending $6,900,000 on a “smart toilet” which can actually recognize a user’s “analprint”: "In his latest report on federal government waste, a project he completes every year, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) highlights $54.7 billion in government spending that he deems wasteful. Among the items noted this year is the creation of a $6.9 million “smart toilet,” which operates with three cameras, one of which can identify a user’s “analprint.” As explained in The Festivus Report 2020, researchers at Stanford University used $6,973,057 in funds granted through the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create a so-called “smart toilet.”
Really? Just when I think that it can’t possibly get any worse, the federal government comes up with even more bizarre ways to waste our tax dollars. At least if we were only spending what we brought in I could live with that. But instead, we have been stealing more than $100,000,000 dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day ever since Barack Obama first entered the White House.
I am not just picking on the Democrats. At this point most Republicans have abandoned any pretense of fiscal responsibility, and that fact makes me sick to my stomach. Today, we are 27.5 trillion dollars in debt, and soon it will be 30 trillion dollars.
If we are going to liquidate the nation anyway, let’s give people checks that are so large that they will be dancing in the streets. Because giving people $600 checks in this economic environment is essentially the equivalent of spitting into Niagara Falls. Let me try to illustrate what I am talking about. Right now, there are 12 million U.S. renters that are more than $5,000 behind on their rent and utilities: "The newest data from Moody’s Analytics shows about 12 million renters are now at least $5,850 behind in rent and utilities payments - and eviction protections expire in weeks."
Okay, so let’s assume that all of those people get $600 payments on a timely basis. In the end, on average they will still be about $5000 behind on their payments, and the start of a new month is right around the corner. And there are millions of other Americans that are living so close to the edge financially that they have been putting their rent payments on a credit card:
"There’s been as much as a 70% percent increase from last year in people paying rent on a credit card, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. “If you’re putting your rent payments on to a credit card, that shows you’re really at risk of eviction,” says Shamus Roller, executive director of the nonprofit National Housing Law Project. “That means you’ve run out of savings; you’ve probably run out of calls to family members to get them to loan you money.”
Yes, $600 will help. But not much. For 32-year-old Jo Marie Hernandez, $600 might buy a little bit of time, but what she really needs is a new job: "Jo Marie Hernandez doesn’t know how she and her 4-year-old daughter will survive after her unemployment aid lapsed this weekend. Hernandez, who lives in Olean, New York, is on the brink of losing her home in days after she lost her job as a customer service associate at a gas station in the spring. Enduring prolonged unemployment, she’s struggled to make ends meet and has nothing left in savings to keep her afloat."
I can’t even imagine the emotional pain that she must be going through right now. When you have a young child and you are about to be thrown out into the streets, nothing else really matters: “I only have $100 left to my name. My whole world is shattered,” says Hernandez, 32, who was forced to put her car up for sale. “We can’t wait a few weeks for help. We’re starving and will be out on the street soon.”
Sadly, there are millions and millions of other Americans that are facing similar scenarios right now. This is what an economic depression looks like, and economic conditions are going to continue to deteriorate moving forward.
Many on the left are assuming that future stimulus checks will be bigger once Joe Biden gets into the White House. But every additional dollar that we borrow makes our long-term problems even worse. Our national debt continues to spiral wildly out of control, the money supply is shooting up at an exponential rate, and we are mired in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s despite unprecedented government intervention. This is the big meltdown that everyone has been waiting for, and we are still only in the very early chapters.
So no, $600 stimulus payments won’t actually fix anything. But hopefully they will ease the suffering slightly as the U.S. economy continues to relentlessly steamroll toward oblivion."
"Today Is Mine..."
"Today is mine. It is unique.
Nobody in the world has one exactly like it.
It holds the sum of all my past experiences and all my future potential.
I can fill it with joyous moments or ruin it with fruitless worry.
If painful recollections of the past come into my mind,
or frightening thoughts of the future, I can put them away.
They cannot spoil today for me. "
Free Download: Jack London, "The Iron Heel"
"I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy."
- Jack London
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Freely download "The Iron Heel", by Jack London, here:
Read online The Project Gutenberg eBook
of "The Iron Heel", by Jack London, here:
"Get Up, Get Up..."
Michael Bolton,
"When I'm Back On My Feet Again"
"You can never tell what people have inside them
until you start taking it away, one hope at a time."
- Gregory David Roberts
Monday, December 28, 2020
“Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck; 2021 Economic Crisis Unavoidable; Credit Destruction”
Jeremiah Babe,
“Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck;
2021 Economic Crisis Unavoidable; Credit Destruction”
"Delusions of Grandeur… Or Cloak of Modesty?"
"Delusions of Grandeur… Or Cloak of Modesty?"
By Bill Bonner
"A dear reader objects to our use of the “royal we”:
“Hello Bill, for the most part, I enjoy reading your Diary. However, I do find your use of the ‘royal we’ in all your writings very off-putting. Even though I’m Canadian, I despise the monarchy, and I’m sure that many in your great republic to the south share my feelings on this. Am I missing something? Has it already been explained, perhaps? If not, what is the rationale for this?”
The Queen uses the “royal we” to signify that she is not speaking for herself, but for the Crown… an institution that was around for hundreds of years before she was born and will, presumably, outlast her by hundreds more.
Here at the Diary, we do not use the “royal” we. We use the “common” we… a plebian, down-market, gutter kind of we, with no pretension to grandeur, nor even mediocrity.
For here we are, writing from a house we didn’t build… in a country that is not ours… wearing clothes we didn’t design… looking out on rain we didn’t cause… and passing along ideas that are not original. Even when we think we have had a new idea, we discover later that someone had the same idea 2,000 years ago.
Not one molecule in our body, thought in our brain, or feeling in our heart is of our own making. It would be vanity to use first-person singular; there is nothing singular about who we are or what we do.
No, we have neither scepter nor orb; all we have is a laptop computer.
We wear no royal purple. We favor brown and grey. We dress in dull colors so we may think in vivid ones.
We have no throne, no influence, no privilege, no position, and no armed guards to protect us.
We speak not for the Crown, but for all those common people who try to put two and two together… And we use “we” to recognize all those real thinkers whose ideas we have dragooned into our service… all those tortured poets whose songs we have misunderstood and misused… all those clever people whose insights we have purloined and presented as if they were our own… all those scientists, statisticians, and economists whose numbers we have hijacked and abused… and all those generations that have come before us and – by bad luck, bad manners, and bad judgment – learned painful lessons so we might be spared from learning them again…
“We” speak for them all – as best as we can.
Time and Love: As time passes, the conceits of youth… the illusion of timelessness… the passions and competitions – to have the biggest bank account, the biggest car, the biggest house, the biggest muscles, and the biggest you-know-what – all get dropped along the way, like discarded pianos on the Oregon Trail. All that is left is the shriveled up, naked reality… of time, love… and death.
And “I”? Does it matter what “I” do? What “I” want? “I” am too small… too nothing… too ephemeral. “I” am here, but “I” will be gone soon… in a flash, vanished, like a lost civilization or a forgotten language. Not even I care what “I” think.
So let us at least speak for a group… not of royals, but of commoners… and use “we” in sympathy with all those sinners, geniuses, half-wits, saints, and jackasses that came before and will come after us…
Those who will delight in Heaven for reasons we will never understand… or cry in Hell for all eternity because they forgot to fill out their census form. Yes, let us speak for all those who feel most intensely and horribly the vacant truth… They are as meaningless as we are."
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