"Always Stand Up..."

"Always stand up for what you believe in… 

even if it means standing alone."

- Kim Hanks

"Standing up for what you believe in comes at a price,

but backing down exacts a toll that your soul never stops paying."

- Lee Goldberg

In the movie  "The Lion in Winter", when the sons, in the dungeon, think they hear Henry coming down the stairs to kill them:
Richard: "He's here! He'll get no satisfaction out of us! Don't let him see you beg! Take it like a man!
Geoffrey: "You fool! As if the way one falls down matters!"
Richard: "Well, when the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal."

"The Democratization/Demonization of Speculation"

"The Democratization/Demonization of Speculation"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Gamed speculation - using knowledge of how markets can be pushed to profit those doing the pushing - has long been decried. Declaring that the unproductive profiteering of greedy speculators will be the death of the Republic goes back to Rome, and in American history, to Alexander Hamilton's battle in 1791 to pay the speculators who had bought up the new nation's war bonds for pennies on the dollar full value plus interest.

Gamed speculation - and the cheery presumption that there will always be a liquid market of chumps willing to buy insiders' pumped-up balloons - inflate and pop bubbles, with devastating consequences not just for the broken speculators but for conventional investors who naively believed "the market" was in fact a market (smirk) rather than a mechanism to enrich those who have the capital and knowledge to engineer profiteering behind the curtain. 

An interesting intersection of dynamics has led to the curtain being ripped aside by the democratized speculations of WallStreetBets, a crowdsourced pool of speculative capital which shares many characteristics with online gaming and live-action role playing (LARP) only the gains and losses are in real dollars (the fortunes made and lost in GameStop (GME) are very real indeed).

Wall Street and the politicos who profiteer as insiders are naturally horrified by both developments:

1. That the curtain of how super-wealthy insiders and their only the wealthy can play entities such as hedge funds have manipulated markets behind the curtain for decades, leading to an unprecedented economic inequality in which the top 10% skim fully 97% of all income from capital. To have their game hijacked by a bunch of young gamers is beyond appalling to the New Nobility, who firmly believe their insider manipulations were the exclusive preserve of their crowd in the castle.

(Recall that ours is a thoroughly Neofeudal Economy, with a New Nobility of financiers, Big Tech monopolists, et al. who own the vast majority of capital and political power, and a restive mass of commoners holding either no capital or phantom capital that will dissipate into thin air in the next financial upheaval.

2. Not only are the mechanisms of manipulation now visible to all, an unruly rabble of commoners has ganged together to play their own version of the speculative game of skimming staggering profits from a rigged "market." How dare they!

No wonder the skimmers and scammers and political refuse that passes for "leadership" in today's America are shocked, shocked by the open and openly gleeful democratized speculation that (like cryptocurrencies) is enriching the wrong people, i.e. commoners. It's as if the debt-serfs, tax donkeys and decapitalized peasants stormed the castle at night and broke open the jewel box and the stash of champagne, and proceeded to swing from the chandeliers, mocking the self-serving privileged who'd been pillaging the nation for decades via their legalized looting.

Mark, Jesse and I discuss these developments in our latest Salon podcast: "AxisOfEasy Salon #36: Democratizing Stock Market Manipulation" (1:03 hrs)

Where do these developments lead? An interesting question. Unfortunately for Wall Street insiders and their political-scum apologists, we can't unsee the levers behind the curtain. The insiders can't put their legalized looting genie back in the bottle, for everyone has seen how "markets" are manipulated to enrich those pulling the levers.

If the political-scum apologists want to end democratized speculation, they're going to face blowback when they try to protect the rights of the New Nobility to continue manipulating markets to their exclusive advantage. The rage against the New Nobility's lock on capital, rigged markets and 97% of all the income generated by capital has been simmering to a boil, and political-scum apologists had best tread carefully.

How do you unrig a rigged speculative market? You don't. It simply crashes into a putrid sinkhole. Phantom capital vanishes into the thin air from whence it came.  Dang, the levers of the machinery behind the curtain just broke."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

○

Related:

"'This Is For You, Dad': Redditor Shares Heartbreaking

 Reason For Destroying Short-Sellers In WSB Raids"

"As these retail investors band together over Reddit's 'Wall Street Bets' forum and other platforms to crush hedge funds by triggering short-squeezes - some turning meager savings accounts into six-figure positions - several have shared very personal stories of just why they're doing this. One such user, a Redditor who goes by the name Space-Peanut, has a very personal reason for tossing their match onto the pyre. Read below:

"This is for you, Dad. I remember when the housing collapse sent a torpedo through my family. My father's concrete company collapsed almost overnight. My father lost his home. My uncle lost his home. I remember my brother helping my father count pocket change on our kitchen table. That was all the money he had left in the world. While this was happening in my home, I saw hedge funders literally drinking champagne as they looked down on the Occupy Wall Street protestors. I will never forget that.

My Father never recovered from that blow. He fell deeper and deeper into alcoholism and exists now as a shell of his former self, waiting for death. This is all the money I have and I'd rather lose it all than give them what they need to destroy me. Taking money from me won't hurt me, because I don't value it at all. I'll burn it all down just to spite them. This is for you, Dad."

○

"WallStreetBets Versus The Crackdown"

○

"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

The Daily "Near You?"

Weatherford, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Assume Nothing..."

 

"2020: Anno Covidius"

"2020: Anno Covidius"

By Bill Bonner

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "How’s the battle against COVID-19 going? After almost a full year, we thought we should check in. There is no need to remind dear readers – nor they to remind us! – we know nothing about epidemiology. Our views are simply those of someone who reads the news and tries to connect the dots.

And we only bother with the coronavirus dots because it – and the American government’s response to it – just clipped $500 billion off the economy. Here’s Reuters: "COVID-19 Savages U.S. Economy, 2020 Performance Worst in 74 Years". "The U.S. economy contracted at its deepest pace since World War Two in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic depressed consumer spending and business investment, pushing millions of Americans out of work and into poverty. Gross domestic product decreased 3.5% in 2020, the biggest drop since 1946. That followed 2.2% growth in 2019 and was the first annual decline in GDP since the 2007-09 Great Recession." So, was it worth it?

Nobody Knows: Readers will know as well as we do that much of the data is squirrelly. A “case” is not a death. And a positive test result is not necessarily meaningful at all; it depends on what the test was looking for and how the results were read. And if you ask the simplest, most basic question – How many people joined the shades because of the virus? – the answer is: Nobody knows. Most often, the victim had other ailments, so it was not clear what did him in. And some places reported more cases and deaths than they probably should have, while other places reported fewer. Still, corpses don’t lie. And the death counts are the data least likely to be fudged.

So did the mitigation measures – lockdowns, face masks, and social distancing – result in fewer deaths… or not? Answer: We don’t know that, either. But it doesn’t look like it.

Sloppy Experiment: In the U.S., it was a sloppy social science experiment. Some states tried to control the spread of the virus much more vigorously than others. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, and South Dakota, for example, were half-hearted about it, at best. New York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, California, and Illinois, on the other hand, allegedly did a better job. (For example, Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, became a nationwide celebrity, of sorts, for appearing to lead the battle against the coronavirus.)

Well… How did it turn out? Each state has its own particularities. But if the mitigations had any effect, you’d expect to see some sign of it. So let’s look. Here are the deaths per million of the above mentioned states, as of last week:

• Florida – 1212

• Georgia – 1302

• South Carolina – 1341

• Arkansas – 1585

• South Dakota – 1960

• New York – 2221

• Massachusetts – 2082

• Wisconsin – 998

• California – 1002

• Illinois –1663

At first, they look like they’re all over the place. Looking more closely, we see that Andrew Cuomo might have led the charge, but he lost the war. New York has the worst result of the whole bunch. And it appears that even these were understated. Here’s the story from the Associated Press: "New York may have undercounted COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents by thousands, the state attorney general charged in a report Thursday that dealt a blow to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s oft-repeated claims that his state is doing better than others in protecting its most vulnerable.

The 76-page report found an undercount of more than 50%, backing up the findings of an Associated Press investigation last year that focused on the fact that New York is one of the only states in the nation that count residents who died on nursing home property and not those who later died in hospitals."

And if we average out the death rates over the two groups – those with tight controls and those without them – we find that those that tried to stop the virus had an average of 1,593 deaths per million of population, while the others had an average of 1,480. In America overall, the death count is 1,336, so it appears that those places that the plague hit hardest were those that tried hardest to avoid it.

International Comparison: Looking at the rest of the world, we find more puzzlements. France has a lower body count – with 1,144 deaths per million. Britain is higher, at 1,515. But Germany has 671. The Dutch have 805 deaths per million, while Canada’s death toll is 518. Did the Germans, the Dutch, and the Canadians do a better job of keeping the illness at bay?

Then what about Iraq, with even fewer COVID-19 corpses, at 320 per million… or Pakistan, with 52 per million? Did they do a better job, too? Oh… and there’s Sweden at 1,144 – lower than Britain or the U.S. Sweden famously took a path less traveled (at the start). And that has made little difference at all. When, in the early spring of 2020, it became clear that Sweden was not going to go into lockdown, media scolds were quick to issue warnings. The country would soon resemble the classic Swedish movie, The Seventh Seal, they said, which shows a knight returning from the Crusades to a country overrun by the plague. Death is everywhere. 

The New York Times put ink to paper, describing the coming Nordic apocalypse. It portrayed Sweden as a failed state, a “world’s cautionary tale,” against letting people ignore Dr. Fauci’s advice. So what happened? Well, a lot of people just failed to die. We have in front of us a study: “Final Report on Swedish Mortality 2020, Anno Covidius.” It appears, at least to us, to be a very reputable étude. The authors took the raw numbers…and adjusted them for population growth… and an aging population… (more people = more deaths; more old people also = a higher death rate per million)… and then smoothed them over two years (if fewer old people died in 2019, the 2020 death toll might naturally be higher)… and then took out the immigrants (one out of five people in Sweden was born somewhere else. The immigrants are younger than the native-born population. They are more mobile, with different health habits and different living standards – thus skewing the results in one way or another…)

The result? The report found that 2020 was almost like every other year! Here are the actual conclusions: "Yes, COVID-19 was real (and continues to be real, at least until spring 2021, as is the case with all seasonal viruses). The number of deaths in 2020 was higher than it should have been, whichever way we define “excess.” Not exceptionally higher, and far from all the disaster scenarios painted by media, politicians, and failed scientists.

Was COVID-19 our generation’s “Spanish Flu”? No. Far from it… Age-adjusted mortality in 2020 was on par with 2013. Was the Swedish government’s response adequate? To a large extent, yes…

Where “The Strategy” failed was in protecting the frail and elderly, particularly those in the care homes… "The psychological effect on populations having spent a year or more in lockdown, thus missing most of what makes life and living worthwhile, will be interesting to observe… as will be whether social interaction patterns and behaviors eventually return to normal, or whether our future social interactions will be so deeply ingrained by Anno Covidius that we will, similar to Pavlov’s dogs, continue regarding fellow human beings as potentially deadly virus vectors." You can make of this whatever you want. We take away two things.

Indiscriminate Killer? First, transmission was much harder to stop than the authorities believed… On this point, Holman Jenkins of The Wall Street Journal came to the same conclusion: "A 9-year-old could see the math didn’t work. Covid spreads more easily than the flu. An overwhelming share of cases are asymptomatic or indistinguishable from ailments that millions of Americans suffer every day. In a country as big, mobile and open as the U.S., there was zero chance of catching and isolating enough spreaders to matter."

That was also the conclusion of Tufts Medical Center epidemiologist, Shira Dorn: "Businesses and restaurants have not been shown to be a significant source of spread of infection, and it’s not clear that the additional measures that were instituted in November and December actually helped."

Our second observation is that the coronavirus, as an indiscriminate killer, was greatly overrated."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

○

Related:

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/29/21"

JAN 29, AT 10:05 AM: "NYC To Reopen Indoor Dining; Dr. Fauci Says Vaccine Makers Must Keep Up With Mutating Virus: Live Updates"

"All Of Us..."

"So long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let 

ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe through cowardice..." 

- William Faulkner

"The Man Who Isn’t There"

"The Man Who Isn’t There"

by Jim Kunstler

"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. "

- Henry Wallace, 9 April 1944

"Those who can make you believe 

absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

- Voltaire

"One might ask: why is it so easy to put over narratives on at least half the people in this country? Here’s the answer: because we are living in a time when nothing adds up and there are no consequences - but especially no consequences for the folks in charge of things that don’t add up.

For instance, the January 6 riot at the US Capitol building. The Deep State axis of interests - politicians, permanent bureaucrats, Beltway contractors, K-Street influencers, shady international NGOs, and most of the news media - needed something that would overrule objections to certifying the election. They got what they needed in just the right place for it to happen, the very house of Congress. The objection procedure was neatly sabotaged.

The riot launched Donald Trump back into civilian life under a cloud of odium, labeled an “insurrectionist.” It enabled the Democrats to paint their opponents as “domestic terrorists” and manufacture a narrative that America was under attack by “white supremacists.” Troops occupying the center of Washington since Joe Biden’s inauguration are there to reinforce the story that the government is “under siege.” The tech companies de-platform anyone who writes about or speaks of “election fraud.” Next, the new regime cooks up legislation to intensify surveillance of US citizens. Worked out perfectly for the Party of Orwell.

Have we gotten a satisfactory accounting of exactly who led the incursion inside the building? I don’t think so, though after three weeks you’d think the FBI could have ID’d many of the characters captured on thousands of videos posted online. Everybody knows the guy in the horned helmet now, one Jacob Chansley (a.k.a Jake Angeli), but he was a very conspicuous street agitator in Phoenix, AZ, well-known to the FBI before January 6 and there’s reason to believe he has been playing more than one side in this game. The DC federal attorney, Michael Sherwin, says they have a list of 400 suspects. Any hints about their actual affiliations? Of course not. By the way, the authorities still haven’t identified the Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt dead. Is it a state secret, or what?

Any chance that Antifa or BLM were involved on the scene that day? How is it possible that they would forego the opportunity to mix in with the MAGA crowd and make some trouble happen on Capitol Hill? What could have been easier, or more obvious? All they had to do was put on a red hat. One we know for sure is John Sullivan, the founder of Insurgence USA, a BLM spinoff, but mainly because he also happened to be an attention-whore who went on CNN afterward where Anderson Cooper introduced him to the nation as “a left-wing activist.” Was he the only left-wing activist on duty at the Capitol that day? Somehow, I doubt it.

The New York Times, mouthpiece of Wokery, is working triple overtime to sell the narrative of white supremacists on the loose. Anyone to the right of Woke is now an enemy of the state. Last time I looked, it was Antifa and BLM tearing up the streets, setting federal courthouses and police stations on fire, looting stores, destroying businesses, and injuring policemen — in the case of Portland, OR, and Seattle, WA, all summer long. Democrats somehow omitted to label them as any kind of threat to the public interest. Vice-president Kamala Harris (then-senator), led a campaign to raise bail money for Antifas and BLMs arrested during last year’s riots. Woke District Attorney’s dropped charges against hundreds of them. Governors and mayors sat on their hands. There were no consequences for any of that.

If anything, the political right-wing of the USA has shown miraculous self-restraint through four years of FBI/DOJ/CIA sedition, tech company tyranny, impeachment chicanery, and the rage-fueled calumnies of Pelosi and Company, all aggravated by questionable Covid-19 lockdowns, and climaxing in a fraud-inflected election that has not had been subject to any adequate judicial audit.

How much of the current artificial hysteria these first weeks of the “Biden” regime is designed to divert attention from the question of who is actually running Joe Biden? My guess would be Barack Obama via Susan Rice, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and formerly Mr. Obama’s National Security Advisor. I would suppose that Ms. Rice is on the phone with Mr. Obama bright and early every morning, and for more than casual conversation. She is surely plugged into the rest of the Obama network, too, in effect a shadow government, which may explain the seeming flimsiness of the crew assembled around Joe Biden. Seems to work for now. But how many weeks will go by before the whole country realizes that Mr. Biden is not actually functioning as president?"

- https://kunstler.com/

And who's pulling Obama's strings?

Musical Interlude: Marvin Gaye, "Inner City Blues, Make Me Wanna Holler"

Marvin Gaye, 

"Inner City Blues, Make Me Wanna Holler"

"How It Really Should Be"

 
Wall St.

That would just break my heart, I tell you...

"This Assumption..."

"It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge."

- H. L. Mencken

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 1/29/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 1/29/21"

○

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will

do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

- John Maynard Keynes

○

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Updated as available.

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/29/21:

"Important Updates: 

Full-On Sh!t Show And NOTHING Is What It Seems "

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

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

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

○

A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

Jan 28th to Feb 1st, Updated Daily 

○

Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

○

Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

○
Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

And now, the End Game...

○

Oh yeah...

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 1/29/21"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 1/29/21"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Both establishment Democrats and RINO Republicans are wanting Trump voters, and this includes many Democrats, to publicly say that Joe Biden won the 2020 Election legitimately, even though the evidence and numbers say otherwise. Why? Is it because the Fraud is so big it will never go away. Is it because the Deep State wants the Biden Administration to be seen as legitimate, even though many think the government is, in fact, illegitimate. Is it because the fraud is so big that Trump will have to be returned to office one way or another? Who knows, but many strange things are going on in our nation’s capitol that we have never seen before. We live in interesting times. That is the only thing you can say for sure.

The Democrats and some Republicans voted to try to impeach President Trump for a second time, and this charge is more bogus than the last. They say his claims about the massive election fraud that happened nationwide with the 2020 Election are false. So far, not a single court, including the U.S. Supreme Court, has heard any evidence. This is a stunning fact, even though more than 40 cases have been filed and rejected. This includes four cases on hold at the U.S. Supreme Court. Again, they have been rejected without hearing one bit of evidence. With the Impeachment in the House and trial in the Senate, President Donald Trump will finally have his day in court. Trump will be able to show evidence of massive voter and election fraud. This impeachment will backfire. Let’s hope the American people will finally see the evidence that their vote and their country have been stolen by the Deep State.

Another 847,000 people filed for unemployment benefits this week. It is a stunning number, and with the Biden Administration, that number is not going to shrink but continue to grow. The economy is sick, and it will be getting sicker with policies of Joe Biden and his puppet masters.”

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter as he talks about these stories and 

more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up on Rumble here:

- https://rumble.com/

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/29/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/29/21"

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Jan. 29, 2021 12:10 AM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 101,451,600 

people, according to official counts, including 25,805,522 Americans.

Globally at least 2,190,200 have died.

  Jan. 29, 2021 12:10 AM ET: 

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

- www.nytimes.com

○

"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/
○

- https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/

○

Coronavirus World Map: Tracking The Spread Of The Outbreak

January 28, 2021 8:05 AM ET

○

Where I Live:

- CP

"Is This The Next Big Hedge Fund To Blow Up... And What Happens Next"

"Is This The Next Big Hedge Fund To Blow Up... 

And What Happens Next"

by Epic Economist

"Who would imagine GameStop would be the pivot of one of the most frenetic stock market rallies and spark the blow-up of a major hedge fund? Until last summer, the video game retailer was quietly fading at the brick-and-mortar background and it suddenly saw its stocks sent to astronomical highs as a Reddit group named WallStreetBets started to massively buy them, putting Melvin Capital Management - a hedge fund that shorted GameStop stocks - in big trouble. But, apparently, the hedge fund was only the first to explode and another target is already on the line. That's what we're going to expose in this video.

Not long ago, GameStop was just one of the thousands of retail chains silently decaying as brick-and-mortar operations continue to collapse amid the rise of e-commerce and, of course, the restrictions brought on by the health crisis. Sales have been declining for years, the video game retailer was losing money, and its stocks traded for around $4 a share. But yesterday, GameStop stocks were trading at $339 a share. On Tuesday, they were at $148, and three days earlier, at $38. Which means that shares went up almost ten times in less than a week.

In August 2020, the founder of the online pet store Chewy, Ryan Cohen, sold his business and made a considerable profit. Then, he started buying GameStop shares. Cohen outlined that the company needed to keep up with the modern changes of the digital era, close several branches and make an entrance into the online realm. Several investors followed the move and snapped up the shares of the struggling retailer in hopes of a better future, which tripled their price by the end of November. Conversely, some major hedge funds, most notably Melvin Capital Management, began shorting GameStop, arguing that the idea of a recovery for the video game chain was unrealistic. 

On the other hand, a Reddit group named WallStreetBets recently started to talk about GameStop stocks and buying its shares. But they weren't motivated to do the massive purchases just to make some money, they actually intended to spark chaos amongst investors while bankrupting some hedge funds. Consequently, the share prices of the video game retailer skyrocketed and those who shorted on it like Melvin were forced to cover. Just like that, GameStop has found itself in the middle of one of the greatest stock market bubbles in modern history. 

So after discovering that Melvin Capital was shorting not only some of the biggest day trading darlings but also some of the most shorted names, the fund has become the main target of the violent bull raid of WallStreetBets, but some strategists have been arguing that there most certainly will be other casualties, and it seems that the new candidate for a second hedge fund collapse is Maplelane Capital. 

Taking a quick look at the company's latest 13F, we can see that Maplelane not only has the very same shorts that almost led Melvin Capital to total liquidation, as it has even more puts. In other words, all the troubles Melvin Capital is currently facing might also impact Maplelane very soon. That aggravates the situation even further, considering that with an even deeper book of puts, the Reddit community will now have even more stocks to ramp up in an attempt of forcing a short squeeze either at Maplelane or any other hedge fund that follows the same shorting tendencies as the company.

Overall, it seems like WallStreetBets is indeed behind the market right now. By analyzing some of the industry's favorite longs shows, experts affirmed that they are collapsing while the most shorted names keep soaring. Bubbles like this always end in a crash. In short, this whole situation outlines how the continuous rise in stock prices we have been witnessing since 2009 shows to us how the financial system is completely disconnected with the U.S. economic reality. It's important to highlight that the main enabler to the formation of this new bubble is the Fed. Trillions in printed money injected into the financial markets have created a biblical flood of money with nowhere to go but speculative assets.

Now, the only thing we know it will certainly happen is that, soon enough, this will all end in tears, no matter if stocks go up or down. And as it appears that we will see one hedge fund blow up after the other, and a market crash is looming, a financial disaster might as well arise to spread the destruction caused by the imminent correction all over the economy."

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, “GameStop Proves Markets Rigged To Favor The Bigs”

Gerald Celente, 

“GameStop Proves Markets Rigged To Favor The Bigs”

"The Hyphen..."

"Life is the hyphen between matter and spirit."

- A.W. and J.C. Hare, 

"Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers," 1827

○

"Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to 

encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.

This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity." 

- Paulo Coelho, "The Alchemist"

"The Definition Of Hell..."

 

“There Is No Free Market; Robinhood Ripoff; You Can Sell But Not Buy? Stock Market Crazy”

Jeremiah Babe,

“There Is No Free Market; Robinhood Ripoff; 

You Can Sell But Not Buy? Stock Market Crazy”

Neil H, "Candlelight Dreams"

Neil H, "Candlelight Dreams"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon. 

Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110906.html

Chet Raymo, “The Journey”

“The Journey”

by Chet Raymo

“Here’s a deep-deep sky map of the universe from the March 9, 2006 issue of Nature. The horizontal scale is a 360 view right around the sky; the vertical gaps at 6 hours and 24 hours are the parts of the universe that are blocked to our view by the disk of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The vertical scale – distance from Earth – is logarithmic (10, 100, 1000, etc.) measured in megaparsecs (a parsec equals 3.26 light-years). Across the top is the Big Bang, and the oldest and most distant thing we can see, the cosmic microwave background, the radiation of the Big Bang itself. A few relatively nearby galaxies are designated at the bottom. All that stuff in the middle that looks like smoke or dusty cobwebs are quasars and galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

A smoke of galaxies! (2 trillion galaxies according to latest estimates.- CP) A universe cobwebbed with Milky Ways! Each galaxy itself a smoke of stars, hundreds of billions of stars, many or all of them with planets. My book, “Walking Zero,” is about the human journey from the omphalos of our birth into the world of the galaxies, a journey many of us are disinclined to make. Here is how the Prologue to the book begins:

“Each of us is born at the center of the world. For nine months our physical selves are assembled molecule by molecule, cell by cell, in the dark covert of our mother’s womb. A single fertilized egg cell splits into two. Then four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Ultimately, 50 trillion cells or so. At first, our future self is a mere blob of protoplasm. But slowly, ever so slowly, the blob begins to differentiate under the direction of genes. A symmetry axis develops. A head, a tail, a spine. At this point, the embryo might be that of a human, or a chicken, or a marmoset. Limbs form. Digits, with tiny translucent nails. Eyes, with papery lids. Ears pressed like flowers against the head. Clearly now a human. A nose, nostrils. Downy hair. Genitals.

As the physical self develops, so too a mental self takes shape, not yet conscious, not yet self-aware, knitted together as webs of neurons in the brain, encapsulating in some respects the evolutionary experience of our species. Instincts impressed by the genes. The instinct to suck, for example. Already, in the womb, the fetus presses its tiny fist against its mouth in anticipation of the moment when the mouth will be offered the mother’s breast. The child will not have to be taught to suck. Other inborn behaviors will express themselves later. Laughing. Crying. Striking out in anger. Loving.

What, if anything, goes on in the mind of the developing fetus we may never know. But this much seems certain: To the extent that the emerging self has any awareness of its surroundings, its world is coterminous with itself. We are not born with knowledge of the antipodes, the plains of Mars, or the far-flung realm of the galaxies. We are not born with knowledge of Precambrian seas, the supercontinent of Pangea, or the Age of Dinosaurs. We are born into a world scarcely older than ourselves and scarcely larger than ourselves. And we are at its center.

A human life is a journey into the grandeur of a universe that may contain more galaxies than there are cells in the human body, a universe in which the whole of a human lifetime is but a single tick of the cosmic clock. The journey can be disorienting; our first instincts are towards coziness, comfort, our mother’s enclosing arms, her breast. The journey, therefore, requires courage – for each individual, and for our species.

Uniquely of all animals, humans have the capacity to let our minds expand into the space and time of the galaxies. No other creatures can number the cells in their bodies, as we can, or count the stars. No other creatures can imagine the explosive birth of the observable universe 14 billion years ago from an infinitely hot, infinitely small seed of energy. That we choose to make this journey – from the all-sustaining womb into the vertiginous spaces and abyss of time – is the glory of our species, and perhaps our most frightening challenge.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Biden Accuses Himself of Dictatorship"

"Biden Accuses Himself of Dictatorship"

by Brian Maher

"We have it on reliable authority - his own - that President Joe Biden is a menace to American democracy... By his own admission... he has exercised dictatorial powers contrary to the prerogatives of his office. Candidate Joe Biden, October 2020: "I have this strange notion. We are a democracy. Some of my Republican friends, and some of my Democratic friends occasionally say‘ well if you can’t get the votes, by executive order you’re going to do something.’ You can’t do it by executive order, unless you’re a dictator. We’re a democracy, we need consensus."

Just so. What actions did President Biden undertake, January 20, 2021, his first day in office? He authored 19 executive orders. By day seven… he authored 37. How many executive orders did Dictator Trump author in his initial week? Four. How many did Mr. Obama author in his first week? Five. Bill Clinton authored one… while fascist George W. Bush authored none. Yet this Thomas Jefferson issued 37 — nearly four times the executive edicts the prior four presidents issued… combined.

A Blow for Liberty? What precisely did the chief executive order?

Did he issue a dictate reauthorizing gold and silver as legal tender - as Article I, Section I, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution specifies?

Did he issue a dictate to shutter the Department of Education or some other bureaucratic atrocity?

Did he issue a dictate to balance the budget? To dismantle the Federal Reserve?

That is, did he strike a blow for the American people?

He did none of it - we have looked through his orders. Perhaps then he ordered a federal holiday in honor of Donald J. Trump? Again, the answer is no. He did not.

“I Decree”: What then did the president mandate? Here is a partial list:

Require masks, physical distancing and other health measures while on federal property…

Direct the acting education secretary to pause federal student loan payments and collections and keep the interest rate at 0%...

Expand protections for federal workers, including putting federal agencies on a path to require a $15 minimum wage for contractors…

Increase the amount of federal spending that goes to American companies and orders an increase in domestic content…

Sets climate change as a key consideration for U.S. national security and foreign policy, establish a National Climate Task Force, pause new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters "to the extent consistent with applicable law," sets the goal of achieving a carbon pollution-free electricity sector by 2035…

Require that all residents of a state be counted in the census, regardless of immigration status…

Halt construction and funding of the border wall…

Revokes the Pentagon's ban on transgender people serving in the military…

Directs Health and Human Services secretary to mitigate "racially discriminatory language in describing the COVID-19 pandemic," among other measures.

We do not here judge the substance of the president’s directives. Perhaps he is doing the devil’s work. Or the angels’ work. But is he doing Mr. Madison’s work? Does the United States Constitution grant the president power to issue these edicts?

Article II of the Constitution: We lift our pocket Constitution from our breast pocket, where it is permanently stationed - near our heart. Thus we are informed Article II limits presidential powers to: Signing or vetoing legislation. Bossing the military and naval forces. Requesting the written opinion of his Cabinet. Convening or adjourning Congress. Granting reprieves and pardons. Receiving ambassadors.

Where does the Constitution authorize the president to mandate wages of federal contractors… suspend oil production on federal lands or offshore waters… to halt construction and funding of a border wall? Is this not the work of the legislature? We concede it - we are incapable of the abstruse and nuanced insights of the legal scholar. The “penumbras and emanations” glowing from the constitutional text are visible to him. They are invisible to us. That is, we are incapable of distinguishing Article I from Article II. We are incapable of distinguishing “shall” from “shall not.” Thus we are disqualified from service upon the Supreme Court of the United States.

Yet, we expect fully the president to issue an executive order impeaching himself for usurping the rightful powers of Congress. For in the president’s words, “We are a democracy. We require consensus.” He indicts himself of dictatorship. You say impeachment is the prerogative of Congress - not the executive. Well, is setting wages the prerogative of the executive? Article, section and clause, please.

A Bipartisan Enterprise: Please understand, we do not mean to isolate President Biden for razzing. Republican and Democratic presidents alike have issued executive orders through United States history. Old Abe Lincoln issued the first official executive order in 1862. Presidents before him mandated hundreds of similar (unnumbered) orders - Washington among them.

Some presidents issued them in such staggering numbers… cries of caesarship came thundering from below. Roosevelt I - Theodore, that is, a Republican - put out no fewer than 1.081. Cousin Franklin Delano dictated 3,728. Of course, Franklin’s arose in response to a national emergency, the Great Depression.

President Biden likewise invokes emergency - climate emergency: "We have already waited too long," Mr. Biden moaned this week. "And we can't wait any longer." Act “we” have. And act we will. There is always an emergency in crying need of remedy.

Congress Cedes Its Powers: But we do not claim Mr. Biden is usurping Congressional powers. Congress has handed them away. Our legal men inform us Congress has delegated 136 statutory powers to the executive branch. Of these, only 13 require additional Congressional say-so. 123 do not. Why should the latest president refuse the offer? Elections - after all - yield consequences. We might hold Congress responsible and the courts that blessed it. Yet we hold no one responsible - and everyone responsible. It was nearly inevitable…

Republic to Empire: The young, vital commercial republic went “not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” By the late 19th century, it took up the hunt. It has remained on the hunt to this day. At home the federal leviathan has come to regulate every last detail of life. No sparrow falls without its knowledge. Nor does any tree. As befitting an empire, power has concentrated increasingly in the executive authority.

The ancients warned of it; the Founders warned of it. The constitutional Republic’s skeletal structure is intact. It has its three branches of government. It has its separation of powers. It has its decorums and its procedures. Yet look closer. Peer within. The words are the same... but the definitions are not. It is as if Webster has altered their meaning. But the process is so gradual few notice it, as the frog in its pot of gradually warming water fails to notice the heat.

“The Executive Has All the Power He Needs to Do Practically Anything”: Our co-founders Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin, from “Empire of Debt”: "Institutions have a way of evolving over time - after a few years, they no longer resemble the originals. Early in the twenty-first century, the United States is no more like the America of 1776 than the Vatican under the Borgia popes was like Christianity at the time of the Last Supper, or Microsoft in [2021] is like the company Bill Gates started in his garage.

Still, while the institutions evolve, the ideas and theories about them tend to remain fixed; it is as if people hadn’t noticed. In America, all the restraints, inhibitions, and modesty of the Old Republic have been blown away by the prevailing winds of the new empire. In their place has emerged a vainglorious system of conceit, deceit, debt, and delusion. The United States Constitution is almost exactly the same document with exactly the same words it had when it was written, but the words that used to bind and chaff have been turned into soft elastic.

The government that couldn’t tax, couldn’t spend, and couldn’t regulate, can now do anything it wants. The executive has all the power he needs to do practically anything. Congress goes along, like a simple minded stooge, insisting only that the spoils be spread around. The whole process works so well that a member of Congress has to be found in bed “with a live boy or a dead girl” before he risks losing public office."

The “parchment barrier” of the Constitution could never restrain men determined not to be restrained. As 19th century individualist Lysander Spooner lamented: "Whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it..." Sign away, Mr. President…"

- dailyreckoning.com