Friday, March 12, 2021

"Isochronic Tones Cognition Enhancer, Extended Version"

Headphones are recommended.

Jason Lewis - Mind Amend, 
"Isochronic Tones Cognition Enhancer, Extended Version"

"This music can be used for longer study sessions and will help you to maintain a good level of concentration and focus, while at the same time feeling quite relaxed.

This track contains isochronic tones, which is the repetitive beats you hear behind the music. After around 5 or 6 minutes your brainwaves start to synchronize with the frequency of the tones. Then, as the tones change and cycle up and down through a specific frequency range, your brainwaves follow along in step with them. This process is known as brainwave entrainment.

The ‘beat’ frequencies used in this track range between 10 to 20 Hz, which means they beat at between 10 to 20 times per second. At the lowest end of 10Hz, this is known as the Alpha frequency range, which is a reasonably relaxed mental state. At the highest 20Hz frequency you go up into the Beta range. When you are awake, alert and focused during the day, your brain’s dominant frequency will be in the Beta range.

When we are studying or doing things that are mentally taxing, we might feel very alert and focused, but we are also a little tense, perhaps because of the importance of what we are working on, or maybe because we are under a time deadline. This extra pressure can cause mental blocks and make it harder for you to ‘think on your feet’.

This isochronic tones session is designed to help overcome that problem, by increasing your levels of Alpha and Beta brainwave activity, so you get the benefit of having increased beta activity which is good for concentration, but at the same time you have enough Alpha activity to be relaxed, resulting in a state of relaxed focus, where you can think more clearly and overcome mental blocks.

This is an advanced ‘split hemisphere’ isochronic tones session, which stimulates each ear with a different beat frequency. Your right brain is stimulated within the 10 to 14Hz range, and your left brain between 10 to 20Hz, making the left more dominant. The left brain is associated with logic, analysis, maths, language, facts and reasoning, so it can be beneficial to have the left more dominant when studying or other similar mentally taxing activities.

If you are new to this type of audio brainwave entrainment, find out how isochronic tones work and how they compare to binaural beats here: 

"Proper Perspective..."

“Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it. What frustrates us and robs our lives of joy is this absence of meaning. Does our being alive matter?”
- Harold S. Kushner

“All of us have been dying, hour by hour, since the moment we were born. Realizing this, let all things be placed in their proper perspective. Remember, it is always later than you think.”
- Og Mandino

“Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.”
- Grace Hansen

"The Real Reasons Why Millions Of Americans Will Defy COVID Mandates And Vaccines"

"The Real Reasons Why Millions Of Americans
Will Defy COVID Mandates And Vaccines"
by Brandon Smith

"I suspect a large portion of the public is at least partially aware when they are being pushed or lured into a specific way of thinking. We have certainly had enough experience with institutions trying to manage our thoughts over the years. Governments and mainstream media outlets in particular have made the manufacture of public consent their top priority. This is what they spend most of their time, money and energy on. All other issues are secondary.

The media does not objectively report facts and evidence, it spins information to plant an engineered narrative in the minds of its viewers. But the public is not as stupid as they seem to think. This is probably why trust in the media has plunged by 46% in the past ten years, hitting an all time low this year of 27%.

Except for pre-election season spikes, mainstream outlets from CNN to Fox to CBS to MSNBC are facing dismal audience numbers, with only around 2 million to 3 million prime time viewers. There are numerous YouTube commentators with bigger audiences than this. And, if you sift through the debris of MSM videos on YouTube, you’ll find low hits and a majority of people that are visiting their channels just to make fun of them.

The MSM is now scrambling to explain their crumbling empire, as well as debating on ways to save it from oblivion. The power of the “Fourth Estate” is a facade, an illusion given form by smoke and mirrors. Bottom line: Nobody (except perhaps extreme leftists) likes the corporate media or activist journalists and propagandists.

One would think that media moguls and journos would have realized this by now. I mean, if they accepted this reality, they would not be struggling so much with the notion that no one is listening to them when it comes to pandemic mandates and the covid vaccines. Yet, journalists complain about it incessantly lately.

In fact, half the media reports I see these days are not fact based analysis of events, but corporate journalists interviewing OTHER corporate journalists and bitching to each other about how Americans are “too ignorant” or “too conspiratorial” to grasp that journos are the anointed high priests of information.

I actually find this situation fascinating as an observer of oligarchy and being well versed in the mechanics of propaganda. The fundamental narrative of control-culture is that there are “experts” that the establishment chooses, and then there is everyone else. The “experts” are supposed to pontificate and dictate while everyone else is supposed to shut up, listen and obey.

Media elitists see themselves in the role of “the experts” and the public as devout acolytes; a faithful flock of sheep. But what happens when everyone starts ignoring the sheep herders?

The other day I came across this revealing interview on CBS news about a poll of Americans showing at least 30% will refuse to take the covid vaccine outright. The interview is, for some reason, with another journalist from The Atlantic with no apparent medical credentials and no insight into the data surrounding covid.
One thing to note right away is that the discussion itself never addresses any actual facts about the virus, the pandemic, the lockdowns, the mandates, or the vaccines. The establishment keeps telling us to “listen to the science”, but then they dismiss the science when it doesn’t agree with their agenda. When is the the mainstream going to finally acknowledge facts like these:

1) According to multiple official studies, including a study from American College of Physicians, the Infection Fatality Ratio (or death rate) of Covid-19 is only 0.26% for anyone outside of a nursing home. This means that 99.7% of people not in nursing homes will survive the virus if they contract it.

2) Nursing home patients account for over 40% of all Covid deaths across the US. These are mostly people who were already sick with multiple preexisting conditions when they contracted covid.

3) The Federal Government’s own hospital data from the Department of Health and Human Services indicates that capacity for hospital beds is ample in the US and that this has been the case for the past year. Covid patients only take up around 13% of inpatient beds nationally. The stories in the media of hospitals at overcapacity due to covid are therefore inaccurate or they are outright lies.

4) International studies including a Danish study published by the American College of Physicians have proven that wearing masks makes NO significant difference in the spread or infection rate of Covid-19. Interestingly, the states in the US with the most heavily enforced mask mandates have also had the highest infection rates.

5) In March of 2020, head of the NIAID Dr. Anthony Fauci had this to say about mask wearing when being interviewed on 60 Minutes: “Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks. There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is, and often there are unintended consequences – people keep fiddling with the masks and they’re touching their face.”

6) On Twitter in February of 2020, the US Surgeon General had this to say about mask wearing: “Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”

Both the Surgeon General and Fauci later reversed their stance on mask wearing when it no longer suited the control narrative, and are now fervent supporters of enforcing mask mandates. Scientific data continues to show that mask wearing does nothing to stop the spread of Covid.

7) The Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines are made with a brand new technology that has had limited testing. The NIAID used minimal animal testing on mice, but these mice were NOT a type that is normally susceptible to contracting covid the way humans are. These tests were completely inadequate, yet the mRNA vaccines were released for human use anyway.

8) The new vaccines do not contain the virus that triggers COVID-19, as a conventional vaccine might. Instead, Moderna and Pfizer researchers used a new technique to make messenger RNA (mRNA), which is similar to mRNA found in SARS-CoV-2. In theory, the artificial mRNA will act as instructions that prompt human cells to build a protein found on the surface of the virus. That protein would theoretically trigger a protective immune response. The entire Covid vaccine effort was essentially a giant shortcut. This is not an advantage, as the long term effects of any vaccine from 1 year to 5 years to 10 years should be understood before it is injected into human beings.

9) Multiple medical industry professional including the former VP of Pfizer have signed a petition warning about the new mRNA vaccinations. They say far more testing is needed before humans are exposed, and they warned that the vaccines may cause severe autoimmune responses or even infertility.

10) Numerous polls also show that at least 30% to 50% of medical professionals including nurses and doctors plan to refuse the vaccines as well. These people are facing the risk of losing their jobs, but they are still not going to accept the shot. That is how potentially volatile the mRNA vaccines could be; long term health is more important than short term risk.

When all of these facts are taken into account, along with numerous others that I do not have space to mention here, it is not so outlandish for millions of Americans to be skeptical of medical mandates and vaccination over covid.

Why should we worry about getting vaccinated over a virus that 99.7% of the population will survive without difficulty? Why should we allow economic shutdowns, medical passports or invasive contact tracing at all, let alone over a pandemic that less than 0.3% of the population is susceptible to? Beyond that, why should we volunteer to be guinea pigs for a new vaccine technology without knowing what the long term consequences might be?

Even if covid was a legitimate danger, no crisis justifies handing over our civil liberties in response. The basic establishment narrative is this: “Covid is an existential threat to the public, therefore, we are justified in taking away people’s freedoms, their economy and their privacy. It is for the “greater good of the greater number”. Vaccination is infallible and cannot be questioned. The “experts” are infallible and cannot be questioned. It’s not your body and it is not your choice. Your body is property of the government and if you do not voluntarily take injections of whatever experimental cocktail we give you, then we will continue to erode your freedoms until you give in and submit. Then, once you have submitted, your freedoms will still never be given back.” It’s not really a persuasive argument for lot of people.

Media outlets like CBS will rarely mention the overall issue of control and oppression tied to the pandemic response, just as they will never address any facts that run contrary to their message. What they will do is misrepresent the situation in order to gain compliance. The Atlantic journo basically admits this in the interview above, arguing that the media in particular needs to change the message to better attach incentive to vaccine compliance. In other words, people are easier to manipulate when they are tricked into thinking there is more to gain by submission rather than rebellion.

The medical passport system is the personification of false incentive. The media presents the notion that no one will be “forced” to take the vaccines; but what they don’t mention is that without the vaccine they will not get a medical passport, and without a medical passport they will be cut off from the normal economy. You can be vax free, but you will be punished through poverty and zero access until you give in.

My question is, why do they care so much if people don’t want or trust the vaccine? Why are they so obsessed? If the mRNA cocktail actually works and is not a health hazard, then they should be perfectly safe from infection. The idea that people who refuse are a danger to others is nonsense.

If we are going to start talking about potential “mutations” that bypass vaccine protections, then why take any vaccine? If mutations are really a threat and are not obstructed by current vaccines, then taking a vaccine now is useless.

And, why the constant attempts at public division? CBS and The Atlantic use an obvious ploy to assert that black and brown Americans have different reasons for refusing to comply when compared to apparently white conservatives. Why do they assume that black and brown people are not conservative or that we do not have ample reasons in common? This is never explained or supported.

Finally, as always the media seeks to gaslight anyone that disagree with the prevailing agenda as “conspiracy nuts”, presenting strawman arguments while ignoring all legitimate arguments on the side of liberty. There is such a thing as conspiracy REALITY, and none of these journos would survive a debate on a level playing field against those of us in the alternative media when it comes to covid and the vaccines.

The media and the government’s stalker mentality when it comes to people skeptical of covid restrictions and vaccines is unsettling. They act more like a jilted psychopathic ex-girlfriends rather than people concerned with saving lives. This tells me they are afraid. Their agenda is uncertain, and they have doubts. This is a good thing.

At bottom, covid is a non-issue that has been inflated into a crisis of epic proportions through storytelling and selective fact checking. Millions of people around the world die every year from a myriad of illnesses, some of them as infectious as covid. We don’t shut down our lives, wear diapers on our faces, inject ourselves with untested cell altering cocktails or sacrifice our freedoms because of this. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness continues. Those who wish to take away our self determination in these matters are the real threat; covid is not."

"Don't You Dare..."

 

Thursday, March 11, 2021

"At A Certain Point, Even the Gestapo Had To Stop Cancelling People"

"At A Certain Point,
 Even the Gestapo Had To Stop Cancelling People"
by Simon Black

"On April 26, 1933, the interior minister for the German state of Prussia issued a decree creating a new secret state police, or Geheime Staats Polizei, abbreviated: Gestapo. The Gestapo was tasked with stamping out all opposition to Germany’s new Chancellor and the party he brought to power one year earlier. It operated by collecting tips from ordinary citizens, including even school children. And this network of Gestapo informants changed Germans’ behavior almost overnight.

Even a joke about the ruling party could land you in a Gestapo interrogation room. Talking politics around your children became a dangerous gamble. According to Erik Larson’s book "In the Garden of Beasts", 37% of denunciations “arose not from heartfelt political beliefs, but from private conflicts with the trigger often breathtakingly trivial.” For example in one case, a grocery store clerk reported a customer who insisted on receiving the wrong change. The customer was accused of tax fraud. Another man lent a banned book to his friend, and was quickly denounced by his friend’s wife.

The new Chancellor - who encouraged the behavior - was so shocked by the citizens’ eagerness to rat out their neighbors that he remarked, “We are living at present in a sea of denunciations and human meanness.” That Chancellor, of course, was Adolf Hitler.

The secret police didn’t need wire taps in every home or spies on every street corner. They found an army of willing, eager informants in the general population. The volume of denunciations was so great, in fact, that the Gestapo actually had to ask people to stop reporting political crimes to them, because they were overwhelmed and found it impossible to process them all.

Obviously Germany in the 1930s is an extreme case, and I’m not saying that the West today is in the same boat. Not even close. The similarity, however, is how quickly things changed. In Nazi Germany, the entire culture changed literally within a few months. In early Spring of 1933, people were still civil to one another. By the summer, they were ratting out their friends and neighbors to the secret police.

Similarly, it wasn’t that long ago that people in the west felt free to speak their minds and state an opinion. Today saying the wrong words can get you fired, cancelled, and your life turned upside down. For example, lately there’s been a number of so-called “fact checkers,” i.e. self-appointed censors, who are upset about a new app called Clubhouse. If you haven’t heard of it, Clubhouse allows people to discuss different topics in audio-only chat rooms. The audio-based content does not allow recording. And that means there is no record of conversations.

As one fact-checker laments: “…there are no screenshots. There is no way to drag up old Clubhouse posts years later like a user might do on Twitter. There is no way to record conversations - meaning there is no way to prove that someone said anything controversial at all. . . Users on Clubhouse know, or at least believe, that they can openly speak their mind with zero repercussions.”

The horror!

This drives the ‘fact checkers’ bananas. They want people to be afraid to speak their minds. They want people to fear being denounced if they do not adhere to the doctrine of wokeness. One particularly angry fact checker penned a virtriolic article noting that the Chinese government has already banned Clubhouse. She then asks the reader, “If Xi Jinping’s administration isn’t ignoring Clubhouse, why should fact-checkers? Why should you?”

Apparently, the repressive Chinese regime is a shining example that the fact checkers think we should all follow. Just like the West followed China’s lead on imprisoning people inside their homes in the name of stopping the spread of Covid-19, the West should apparently stamp out any platform that allows intellectual dissent.*

Of course, intellectual dissent covers a lot of ground these days. For example, a professor at John Hopkins School of Medicine wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal recently predicting “We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April”. The author has impeccable credentials; in addition to his MD, he obtained a Maser of Public Health from Harvard, served at the World Health Organization, and was recommended by the American College of Surgeons to become the Surgeon General of the United States.

But the fact checkers don’t think that his view should be repeated. So Facebook’s fact checkers stuck a “misinformation” label on the article, stating: “Missing Context. Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” Sure, there are scientists who think that herd immunity is a long way off. But Facebook’s fact-checkers decided for everyone which scientists’ opinions were ‘correct’ and which scientists’ opinions should be censored.

The aim of these people is to put reinforce a specific narrative, and denounce anything contrary to that narrative as “misinformation” or “hate speech”. And anyone who is caught sharing or espousing such views is derided as a conspiracy theorist… or worse. Accept the opinions they tell you are correct, or be denounced.

What’s incredible is that this culture has emerged in basically less than a year. The US, along with many western countries, have clearly changed. Freedom is no longer the widely accepted cultural value it once was. It’s been replaced by compliance, censorship, and fanaticism. If this doesn’t make you start thinking about a Plan B, I’m not sure what will."
Hat Tip to The Burning Platform for this material.
* Of course, they could always just delete your blog... just sayin'.
Sept. 10, 2020: "Blog has been removed.
Sorry, the blog at coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com
 has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs."

Must Watch! “People Feel Rich Today; Wall St. Casino; Paper Millionaires; Jobless Claims; Housing Crisis”

Jeremiah Babe,
“People Feel Rich Today; Wall St. Casino; 
Paper Millionaires; Jobless Claims; Housing Crisis”

Musical Interlude: Mecano, "Hijo de la Luna"

Mecano, "Hijo de la Luna"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“First came the trees. In the town of Salamanca, Spain, the photographer noticed how distinctive a grove of oak trees looked after being pruned. Next came the galaxy. The photographer stayed up until 2 am, waiting until the Milky Way Galaxy rose above the level of a majestic looking oak.
From this carefully chosen perspective, dust lanes in the galaxy appear to be natural continuations to branches of the tree. Last came the light. A flashlight was used on the far side of the tree to project a silhouette. By coincidence, other trees also appeared as similar silhouettes across the relatively bright horizon. The featured image was captured as a single 30-second frame and processed to digitally enhance the Milky Way.”

The Poet: Arthur O’Shaughnessy, "Music and Moonlight"

"Music and Moonlight"

"We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone seabreakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems…
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Ninevah with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth."

- Arthur O’Shaughnessy

"Assumptions..."

 

"So This Is How The U.S. Dollar Dies…"

Full screen recommended.
"So This Is How The U.S. Dollar Dies…"
by Epic Economist

"The U.S. dollar collapse is being triggered by our government's reckless spending, and soon enough the world's reserve currency may literally become worthless paper. The House and the Senate have both just passed a new 1.9 trillion dollar relief bill that it's on its way to the president's desk for his signature. But as we repeatedly stressed in several videos, America does not have 1.9 trillion dollars lying around to be spent in whatever way our leaders decide to do. In fact, we will have to borrow every single dollar in that bill, which means we're now underway to add 1.9 trillion to our already alarming 28 trillion national debt.

Our politicians are convinced that monumental amounts of dollars can be printed, borrowed and spent indefinitely without any consequences. Worse even, they have been trying to sell the narrative that this is the only way to save our economy, and the public is buying it. However, much of that spending isn't directed to support our workers, businesses, and households. Instead, representatives managed to include a long list of projects that are completely unrelated to our current priorities. That is to say, our sovereign currency is being destroyed only to fulfill authorities' delusional and greedy eagerness for spending. That's what we are going to analyze in this video.

Just yesterday, a new relief bill has passed the Senate and the House featuring a 1.9 trillion spending plan that includes a tremendous amount of unnecessary projects and reckless expenses. Our politicians are using the coming stimulus checks as a headline for the fiscal package, but keeping the description of the total spending out of the public's sight. Most Americans are completely unaware that we simply do not need that entire sum to boost the economy and provide support to our workers and businesses. More concerningly, perhaps, is the fact that most people do not understand how that will debase the value of our money and unleash runaway inflation.

As a matter of fact, a recent poll found that 78 percent of our population agrees with that colossal spending, including 90 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans. As our nation grows more politically divided than ever, it seems that affairs of national importance are becoming a battleground to separate winners and losers. However, the truth is that everybody will ultimately lose. No matter on what side of the partisan divide you're at, it's essential to look past our own preferences and always remember that politicians' priority is politics, not the people.

Although relief is needed to ease the financial burden brought on by the health crisis, 1.9 trillion is a sum that could provide assistance for years and years if properly spent. At this stage, there's no turning back. That's why we should all worry about what these measures are doing to our currency. The dollar collapse is now an indisputable reality. What authorities and policymakers have already done to our currency is certainly nightmarish.

The more money we have on the system, the less intrinsic value every dollar will have. Experts have been warning for a long time that the current monetary policy would not only cause a dramatic dollar collapse, as it would downgrade our living conditions, our individual earning and spending ability, and our capacity of ever reaching a full economic recovery, because pretty much everything, every sector and every industry will enter an overly-inflated bubble and prices will keep reaching sky-highs. And since we're talking about bubbles and soaring prices, we cannot forget the impacts we're about to witness inside the stock market.

Investors have been long-waiting for the passing of this bill, because, in short, it means that another tsunami of money is coming and they will be able to continue expanding the massive and unsustainable stock market bubble. The Wall Street casino is about to get juiced up with another liquidity injection, as at least “37% of Main Street investors” disclosed plans to pour their stimulus money directly into the markets, according to a recent survey. The thing is that the more the stock bubble is inflated with money printed out of thin air, and the rally is fueled by an unrealistic perception of the future of our economy, the sharpest will be the price collapse. And as we've repeatedly warned, we're only one trigger event away from a catastrophic stock market crash.

We are endlessly printing, borrowing, and spending our way into a tragic dollar collapse and a massive debt apocalypse. We're letting our leaders set the stage for our Republic to die while murdering the reserve currency of the entire planet at the same time. None of this will end well, and if you didn't know that before, now you have been warned."

The Daily "Near You?"

Maple Plain, Minnesota, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/11/21: "Crude Rips Higher! Three New Record Highs For Stock Market Indices"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/11/21:
"Crude Rips Higher! 
Three New Record Highs For Stock Market Indices"
Related:

"The New American Nightmare"

"The New American Nightmare"
by Doug Casey

"An International Man lives and does business wherever he finds conditions most advantageous, regardless of arbitrary borders. He’s diversified globally, with passports from multiple countries, assets in several jurisdictions, and his residence in yet another. He doesn’t depend absolutely on any country and regards all of them as competitors for his capital and expertise.

Living as an international man has always been an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it, since the U.S. used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so there was no pressing reason to become an international man.

Things change, however, and being rooted like a plant – at least if you have a choice – is a suboptimal strategy if you wish to not only survive, but prosper. Throughout history, almost every place has at some point become dangerous for those who were stuck there. It may be America’s turn.

For those who can take up the life of an international man, it’s no longer just an interesting lifestyle decision. It has become, at a minimum, an asset saver, and it could be a lifesaver. That said, I understand the hesitation you may feel about taking action; pulling up one’s roots (or at least grafting some of them to a new location) can be almost as traumatic to a man as to a vegetable.

As any intelligent observer surveys the world’s economic and political landscape, he has to be disturbed – even dismayed and a bit frightened – by the gravity and number of problems that mark the horizon. We’re confronted by the consequences of Covid-19, economic depression, looming financial chaos and collapse, serious currency inflation, onerous taxation, crippling regulation, a developing police state, and, worst of all, the prospect of a major war. It seems almost unbelievable that all these things could affect the U.S., which historically has been the land of the free.

How did we get here? An argument can be made that things went bad because of miscalculation, accident, inattention, and the like. Those elements have had a role, but it is minor. Potential catastrophe across the board can’t be the result of happenstance. When things go wrong on a grand scale, it’s not just bad luck or inadvertence. It’s because of serious character flaws in one or many – or even all – of the players.

So is there a root cause of all the problems I’ve cited? If we can find it, it may tell us how we personally can best respond to the problems. In this article, I’m going to argue that the U.S. government, in particular, has been overrun by the wrong kind of person. It’s a trend that’s been in motion for many years but has now reached a point of no return. In other words, a type of moral rot has become so prevalent that it’s institutional in nature. There is not going to be, therefore, any serious change in the direction in which the U.S. is headed until a genuine crisis topples the existing order. Until then, the trend will accelerate.

The reason is that a certain class of people – sociopaths – are now fully in control of major American institutions. Their beliefs and attitudes are insinuated throughout the economic, political, intellectual, and psychological/spiritual fabric of the U.S.

What does this mean to you, as an individual? It depends on your character. Are you the kind of person who supports “my country, right or wrong,” as did most Germans in the 1930s and 1940s? Or the kind who dodges the duty to be a helpmate to murderers? The type of passenger who goes down with the ship? Or the type who puts on his vest and looks for a lifeboat? The type of individual who supports the merchants who offer the fairest deal? Or the type who is gulled by splashy TV commercials?

What the ascendancy of sociopaths means isn’t an academic question. Throughout history, the question has been a matter of life and death. That’s one reason America grew; every American (or any ex-colonial) has forebears who confronted the issue and decided to uproot themselves to go somewhere with better prospects. The losers were those who delayed thinking about the question until the last minute.

I have often described myself, and those I prefer to associate with, as gamma rats. You may recall the ethologist’s characterization of the social interaction of rats as being between a few alpha rats and many beta rats, the alpha rats being dominant and the beta rats submissive. In addition, a small percentage are gamma rats that stake out prime territory and mates, like the alphas, but are not interested in dominating the betas. The people most inclined to leave for the wide world outside and seek fortune elsewhere are typically gamma personalities.

You may be thinking that what happened in places like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and scores of other countries in recent history could not, for some reason, happen in the U.S. Actually, there’s no reason it won’t at this point. All the institutions that made America exceptional – including a belief in capitalism, individualism, self-reliance, and the restraints of the Constitution – are now only historical artifacts.

On the other hand, the distribution of sociopaths is completely uniform across both space and time. Per capita, there were no more evil people in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, Amin’s Uganda, Ceausescu’s Romania, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia than there are today in the U.S. All you need is favorable conditions for them to bloom, much as mushrooms do after a rainstorm.

Conditions for them in the U.S. are becoming quite favorable. Have you ever wondered where the 50,000 people employed by the TSA to inspect and degrade you came from? Most of them are middle-aged. Did they have jobs before they started doing something that any normal person would consider demeaning? Most did, but they were attracted to – not repelled by – a job where they wear a costume and abuse their fellow citizens all day.

Few of them can imagine that they’re shepherding in a police state as they play their roles in security theater. (A reinforced door on the pilots’ cabin is probably all that’s actually needed, although the most effective solution would be to hold each airline responsible for its own security and for the harm done if it fails to protect passengers and third parties.) But the 50,000 newly employed are exactly the same type of people who joined the Gestapo – eager to help in the project of controlling everyone. Nobody was drafted into the Gestapo.

What’s going on here is an instance of Pareto’s Law. That’s the 80-20 rule that tells us, for example, that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your salesmen or that 20% of the population are responsible for 80% of the crime.

As I see it, 80% of people are basically decent; their basic instincts are to live by the Boy Scout virtues. 20% of people, however, are what you might call potential trouble sources, inclined toward doing the wrong thing when the opportunity presents itself. They might now be shoe clerks, mailmen, or waitresses – they seem perfectly benign in normal times. They play baseball on weekends and pet the family dog. However, given the chance, they will sign up for the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB, the TSA, Homeland Security, or whatever. Many seem well intentioned, but are likely to favor force as the solution to any problem.

But it doesn’t end there, because 20% of that 20% are really bad actors. They are drawn to government and other positions where they can work their will on other people and, because they’re enthusiastic about government, they rise to leadership positions. They remake the culture of the organizations they run in their own image. Gradually, non-sociopaths can no longer stand being there. They leave. Soon the whole barrel is full of bad apples. That’s what’s happening today in the U.S.

It’s a pity that Bush, when he was in office, made such a big deal of evil. He discredited the concept. He made Boobus americanus think it only existed in a distant axis, in places like North Korea, Iraq and Iran, which were and still are irrelevant backwaters and arbitrarily chosen enemies. Bush trivialized the concept of evil and made it seem banal because he was such a fool. All the while, real evil, very immediate and powerful, was growing right around him, and he lacked the awareness to see he was fertilizing it by turning the U.S. into a national security state after 9/11.

Now, I believe, it’s out of control. The U.S. is already in a truly major depression and on the edge of financial chaos and a currency meltdown. The sociopaths in government will react by redoubling the pace toward a police state domestically and starting a major war abroad. To me, this is completely predictable. It’s what sociopaths do."
Related:

"Fauci Admits There Is No 'Science' Behind Continued Lockdown"

"Fauci Admits There Is No 'Science' Behind Continued Lockdown"
by Steve Watson via Summit News

"In a rare moment of truth of CNN Wednesday, Anthony Fauci admitted that there is no scientific reason why people who have had the COVID vaccine are still having their freedoms restricted. CNN host John Berman asked Fauci “What’s the science behind not saying it’s safe for people who have been vaccinated – received two doses, to travel?” “When you don’t have the data and you don’t have the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call,” Fauci replied, declaring that Americans will just have to trust the CDC:

"Fauci, asked “what’s the science” for denying vaccinated Americans a return to travel, can’t explain. “When you don’t have the data and you don’t have the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call." pic.twitter.com/lftvNzgA6J
- Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 10, 2021

As we reported this week, CNN announced that the CDC is graciously allowing vaccinated Americans some ‘limited freedoms’, prompting a huge backlash on social media where people pointed out that the health body doesn’t grant anyone their God given freedoms.

"The CDC does not give or take my freedom."
- Rob M (@Dr_RobM) March 8, 2021

"So, there is no science and the CDC is making a judgement call about how ‘free’ Americans can be. Hmmm. "We need data, and science. First we will see what vaccinated people do in their house, then where they travel, go to a store or a haircut." Sounds like a centrally planned economy of a socialist state. USA IS DEAD."
- Rodrigo (@RodrigoFaria94) March 10, 2021

All this comes as a little-remarked new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the very epicenter of the pro-lockdown public health establishment, found the positive effects from mask-wearing were decidedly modest in scale. "Part of the problem for Dr. Fauci," Stanford University Professor of Medicine Jay Bhattacharya said, "is that he is blind to the harms of the lockdown. He seems not to understand that the lockdown creates all kinds of physical problems, psychological problems, harms that I've never seen him talk about."
Related:

"It Doesn't Matter..."

"Biden Delivers a Sucker Punch"

"Biden Delivers a Sucker Punch"
By Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "You’ve already heard the news. Yesterday, Congress passed the latest spending lollapalooza… $1.9 trillion of rancid pork…money for working people… money for non-working people…money for cities… money for states…money for Planned Parenthood…money for “socially disadvantaged” farmers (We are puzzled… Does wheat grow less well for a farmer who is not a member of the local country club?)…money for K-12 schools… colleges… digital media companies (Why would they need money from the government?)…money for federal workers on leave… money for childcare and school lunches… for pregnant and postpartum women…for Amtrak and “communities under economic distress”…for testing animals for COVID-19…for foreign affairs…for science… for space! Wait… What’s all this got to do with COVID-19 relief?

No Sunset: Oh, don’t be silly, Dear Reader. Most likely, not a single life will be saved as a result of this boondoggle. Nor does it really redress the harm done by government busybodies, when they created a panic and shut down the economy.

GDP fell about 2.3% last year. That’s about $498 billion. Last year’s “relief” measures have already offset that with $3.1 trillion. This latest “relief” package brings the total “stimulus” handed out by the feds in response to the coronavirus pandemic to $5 trillion – more than 10 times the actual economic loss. And according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), many of these provisions in the latest “stimulus” package have sunset clauses… meaning they are scheduled to expire sometime in the future. That is how the total cost – as grand as it is – stays under $2 trillion.

But what will most likely happen is that as the sun begins to set, the politicians will agree to extend the programs. In the end, says the CRFB, the cost will probably end up closer to $4 trillion than to $2 trillion.

Pointless and Absurd: So what gives? Why bankrupt the nation? Here’s Joe Biden’s explanation: "This legislation is about giving the backbone of this nation – the essential workers, the working people who built this country, the people who keep this country going – a fighting chance."

What a strange thing to say. Every penny the feds give away must come from the taxpayers… one way or another, sooner or later. Even when they print up fungible tokens, representing dollars that haven’t even been earned yet… perhaps by people who have not even been born yet… all the wealth that those dollars claim must be produced by the taxpayers; there’s no other source.

And if they give to the backbone, they must take from somewhere else – the leg bone… or the skull. It is like a blood transfusion from the left arm to the right one – pointless and absurd – leaving the patient weaker than ever. And if they give money to the people who “keep this country going,” that is, to the truckers, the butchers, the ad men, the poets, and the chicken farmers – whose sweat and toil provides the products and services that keep the country housed, fed, clothed, and entertained – from whom will they take it? From people who don’t work?

Left alone, the taxpayer, present or future, spends his money as he pleases. How does taking it away from him in order to hand it over to people who neither need it, earn it, nor have any right to it make him better off? It is as if some magic happened… that this money – passing through the hands of the parasitic class of lobbyists, connivers, cronies, special interests, and the Deep State – is blessed, like holy water, so that it now gives the people from whom it is taken away a “fighting chance.”

No Fighting Chance: But this is La Bubble Epoch. Things don’t have to make sense. They don’t even have to add up. Logical thought is a faux pas. Common sense is a hindrance. Experience, wisdom, and real skill are just part of the burden of patriarchy, to be shucked off and hidden away, like a Confederate monument, as soon as possible.

Yes, the entire nation has taken off its thinking cap and suspended its disbelief… so that even the most unlikely, mysterious, or miraculous thing will be greeted with a straight face… and treated as though it were a proven, scientific fact. For who doesn’t believe that more money from the feds will produce a boom? The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says world growth is headed for 5.6% this year. Goldman Sachs is calling for 6.8% GDP growth in the U.S. in 2021.

For surely, with so much new liquidity sloshing about, there is bound to be an increase in spending. And gambling. And wild-eyed weirdness. Sure, consumer prices will rise. But that will be a good thing, no? Like giving the common man a pair of brass knuckles, no? At least, that’s what the pundits and sell-side philosophers will say. It will be a sign… that Joe Biden’s big spend-a-thon was paying off.

For surely then, the economy will “take off”… and we will all enjoy a “temporary prosperity”… before the “permanent ruin” settles in. Then, we will see that the fight was rigged all along… and that Joe Biden gave the working man not a “fighting chance.”

Savior of the Empire: Whatever happens, Joe Biden must be gambling that history will fumble… and give him credit, not for knocking out the poor working stiff with his reckless gamble, but for having been in his corner… helping him, encouraging him with a fantasy so obviously numbskull that it wouldn’t fool a six-year-old. And he’s probably right. We’re all on the internet now… and so well informed are we, that we’re ready to believe anything. And when the history books are written, we may find Biden revered – like that other big humbug, Franklin Roosevelt – as a great hero.

And maybe, sitting around campfires many generations from now (the technique of central heating having disappeared when the great economic/financial/social bubble of the 21st century blew up), people will sing rousing ballads about how Joe Biden brought the country out of its post-COVID funk with his bold programs.

They’ll recall how he scored his first success with his $1.9 trillion everything bailout… and was emboldened to go even bigger… with trillions more for a great infrastructure program (perhaps they will look around at unfinished highways… or the rusty tracks of a high-speed railway that never saw a locomotive…) “He had the courage to act,” they will chant (forgetting that former Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke had a copyright on the phrase).

Sucker Punch: Yes, Joe Biden continues in that heroic tradition… George W. Bush… Barack Obama… Donald J. Trump…all with the same basic, empire-destroying formula – make war abroad… spend money at home… bomb and print, murder and fraud…each administration taking it further and further…until finally, the poor working man is flat on his back. Then, we see more clearly that the fight was rigged… and he never had a chance…and that, in 2021, Joe Biden delivered the sucker punch."

Musical Interlude: Talking Heads, "Road To Nowhere"

 

Talking Heads, "Road To Nowhere"

"All this had happened before, perhaps a million times, and because of this was doomed. There was no ordinary future any more, only this ecstatic tormented terrified present. The future had passed through the present like a sword. We were already, even eye to eye and lip to lip, deep in the horrors to come."
 - Iris Murdoch, "The Black Prince"

"How It Really Is"

 

Absolute Must View! "Shot in the Dark: Medical Doctor Exposes Deadly Dangers of Covid-19 Vaccines"

"Shot in the Dark: 
Medical Doctor Exposes Deadly Dangers of Covid-19 Vaccines"
Related:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/11/21: "Economy In Free-fall Collapse; Stock Market New Record Highs"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/11/21:
"Economy In Free-fall Collapse; Stock Market New Record Highs"

"The 'Wait and See' Economy's Moment of Truth"

"The 'Wait and See' Economy's Moment of Truth"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"The defining phrase of the U.S. economy for the past year is "wait and see": every enterprise impacted by the pandemic that didn't close immediately has been in "wait and see" mode, clinging on to the hope that once the pandemic ends then everything will roar back to life, bigger and better than before.

With the promise of herd immunity fast approaching, the moment of truth for "wait and see" is also fast approaching. The conventional view is that the trillions of dollars in stimulus kept business as usual alive and ready to soar back to the good old days. The almost $2 trillion injection of financial smack currently in progress will ignite the afterburners and the economy will rocket higher than anyone can imagine.

The problem with this rosy view is the economy was on fumes before the pandemic, as Gordon Long and I highlighted in our 53-minute presentation, "The Coming Deflationary Tsunami", below. Interest rates had been falling for 40 years and there was little leeway for more of the magic of falling rates. The spending of the upper middle class had already rolled over as the awareness that the longest expansion in U.S. history was faltering seeped into financial decisions--and no wonder, since every trick in the book had been required to keep it alive: zero interest rates, quantitative easing galore, tax cuts, massive deficit spending and speculative bubbles in every asset class.

Then there was the spot of bother in the repo markets. Something had broken in the financial plumbing (a massive break in the sewers?) and the Federal Reserve rushed freshly printed billions to stop the sewage from seeping into the precarious economy. Though nobody dared discuss it, the economy was creaking under the burden of overcapacity in just about everything: too many cafes, too many channels of this and that, too many office towers built for get-rich-quick techies planning to sell out to Big Tech and retire at 25, too many resorts, and so on.

One driver of the overcapacity was the rise of Zombie Corporations - companies that only remain among the living if they can borrow ever more money at lower rates to fill the holes in their balance sheets and cash flow. The Fed's implicit goal was to never let a single Zombie die because that might send the wrong signal, i.e. that creative destruction was allowed. Creative destruction is no longer allowed by the Fed, never ever ever. So the economic landscape is cluttered with Fed zombies.

Also ignored was the inconvenient fact that wages for the bottom 95% have stagnated for decades and so where was all this money being blown coming from? From debt, of course, and the phantom wealth generated by speculative bubbles.

Then there are the demographic headwinds illuminated by Chris Hamilton, most recently in "The Narrative Of Inflation Amid Depopulation." The working-age population has leveled off, along with the expansion of employment, while the number of those with claims on future earnings - the elderly and those "permanently out of the workforce" - are rising.

As Chris points out, speculative asset bubbles are just peachy for those who already own the assets - the top 10% who own close to 90% of financial assets - but of little value to the bottom 90% who get a pathetic 3% of all capital income. Those greatly enriched by the Fed's bubble-blowing are mostly older, those who can't afford homes and other inflated assets are mostly younger, burdened with stagnant wages, student loan debts and an economy that's rigged to favor the few at the expense of the many.

A great many young people are delaying or foregoing marriage and having children because they don't have the means and security do so. So who's going to be paying all the taxes needed to fund the enormous retirement and healthcare costs of 70 million retirees? No problem, we'll just borrow another couple trillion a year forever. (Free fish for everyone forever!)

Nice, but the rest of the world has opted out of buying into our funny-money fantasies. So the Fed will have to buy all the trillions in bonds being issued, and that unleashes second-order effects that have the potential to go non-linear, i.e. actually have negative consequences in the real world.

Then there's the private changes in behaviors and risk assessment that add up to tidal changes in the economy. People are reassessing their exposure to risk, and letting go of activities and expenses they once took for granted. Maybe the $300 trips to the ballpark are no longer worth it; maybe the costs of eating out are recognized as unaffordable. The majority of residents in over-touristed locales no longer want tourism at the same scale. Residents discovered that once the tourists were gone, life was good, even if the tourist-dependent businesses closed and unemployment rose.

Everyone is holding their breath waiting to surface, but many of the enterprises that have clung on in "wait and see" mode will find that things have changed, and time cannot be reversed to summer 2019. All those holding defaulted loans based on a full return to summer 2019 are also holding their breath, hoping that the back rent will be paid in full, the overdue mortgages paid in full, and so on.

The reality is overcapacity, over-indebtedness and stagnant earnings are all deflationary. The "wait and see" economy is about to face its moment of truth, and one truth is the $1.9 trillion being passed out like candy is already spent - as is the economy and the Fed's bag of tricks."
Gordon T. Long, 
"Coming Deflationary Tsunami - w/ Charles Hugh Smith"
Related:

Greg Hunter, "As Rates Spike Bubbles Pop - Michael Pento"

"As Rates Spike Bubbles Pop"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Money manager and economist Michael Pento warns the era of super low Fed manipulated interest rates is coming to an end. This is big trouble to the bond market and the overall economy. Pento explains, “I think what’s happening now is about 35 years of government manipulation of markets is about to end. The faith that we have in our government and the faith that we have in our central banks is coming to an end. As evidence of that, the 7-year note auction was the worst auction in U.S. history. It just goes to show you the faith in our bond market is eroding.”

Now, we are facing multiple bubbles as opposed to just the sub-prime crisis in 2007-2008. Pento points out, “So, we have another bubble in real estate, but back in 2007, all we had was a bubble in real estate. We really didn’t have a massive bubble in the stock market. The total market cap to GDP was only 100% back in 2007. Now, it’s 191% of GDP, and, of course, you have a massive bubble in the bond market. You have $15 trillion in negative yielding sovereign debt and a U.S. Treasury at .3% in March of 2020. So, we have a triumvirate of bubbles that are all held together by this artificially low interest rate. Here’s the catch 22... We are sending more checks to people, $1,400 checks in Biden’s Covid relief package. So, we are monetizing debt. We are creating inflation. If you continue to print money, borrow money and monetize that debt, inflation is going to wax higher and higher. You are going to blow up the bond market. If you blow up the bond market, you will blow up high yield, you will blow up credit, you will blow up the real estate market and then the stock market. If they stop, the only buyer of U.S. Treasury bonds is the Federal Reserve. If they lose the bid of the Fed and it stops printing money and buying, rates spike, and then you see a massive deflationary bubble from a massive fiscal and monetary cliff. It’s game over either way, and that’s where we are now. If you keep printing and keep manipulating markets, you have a bond market crisis. Stop printing, you have a deflationary crash of asset prices. That’s it, that’s where we are headed.”

When is this going to come undone? Pento predicts later this year and points to the third or fourth quarter of 2021. Pento says, “This is a very fragile economy. When you see the credit market freeze and these zombie companies can’t issue new debt, and borrowing costs go into double digits and companies start closing the doors and laying off people and you get a massive depression that follows, what is going to be the solution from the central banks? The Fed can’t lower interest rates. They can only increase QE (money printing). How do you bail out an inflationary crisis in the bond market by creating more inflation? That’s the problem.”

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One 
with economist and money manager Michael Pento.

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

"All At Once..."

"All at once I feel desperate, outraged. Why am I alone doomed to spend nights of torment, with an unseen jailer, when all the rest of the world sleeps peacefully? By what laws have I been tried and condemned, without my knowledge, and to such a heavy sentence, too, when I do not even know of what or by whom I have been indicted? A wild impulse comes to me to protest, to demand a hearing, to refuse to submit any longer to such injustice. But to whom can one appeal when one does not even know where to find the judge? How can one ever hope to prove ones innocence when there is no means of knowing of what one has been accused? No, there's no justice for people like us in the world: all that we can do is to suffer as bravely as possible and put our oppressors to shame."
-   Anna Kavan, "Asylum Piece"

"Commercial Real Estate Collapse Heading To Catastrophic Bankruptcies And Foreclosures"

Full screen recommended.
"Commercial Real Estate Collapse Heading To 
Catastrophic Bankruptcies And Foreclosures"
by Epic Economist

"The commercial real estate collapse has pushed countless retail chains over the edge throughout the past few years, but ever since the health crisis struck, we have seen big retailers that once seemed too big to fail going bankrupt and shutting down their entire operations overnight. Last year, we witnessed the closure of thousands of retail stores all across the country, and the trend is expected to continue in 2021, as several iconic brands already announced they will be closing hundreds of stores just on the first quarter, with many more to come as consumers are increasingly turning to online shopping.

The reopening scheduled to happen later this year will finally allow us to see how the devastating effects of the recession have emptied out our economic landscape, and the gap created by so many closures is putting the existence of shopping malls at risk According to experts, 25% of all U.S. shopping malls are forecasted to disappear until 2022, adding extra pressure to the commercial real estate collapse and possibly contributing to trigger another massive wave of lay-offs. That's what we are going to investigate in this video.

As e-commerce has been significantly rising, brick-and-mortar retail stores were being wiped out by the thousands every year, particularly those belonging to huge retail chains like Sears and J.C. Penney. Before the health crisis exploded in America, the widespread decay of the retail sector had been prompted by a variety of different factors, including market saturation and the shrinking of the middle class, as our living conditions have considerably deteriorated over the last decade.

Sadly, according to newly available data, as numerous retailers have experienced unrecoverable losses, many of our most beloved iconic brands are likely to fall victim to the retail apocalypse in the coming months. The findings outline that the health crisis might have been the final nail in the coffin of several brands that have been struggling in recent years.

Now, the future of these brands remains uncertain, and it is very unlikely they will ever come back to "normal". The rise of Amazon and other online retailers has pushed brick-and-mortar stores to the brink well before we ever imagined America would face a dramatic economic collapse triggered by a global sanitary emergency. But while it’s indisputable that retail stores were facing challenges for a long time, the impacts of the outbreak cannot be understated.

Measures introduced to supposedly control the spread of the virus, including nationwide lockdowns, accelerated the downfall of many of these companies. Some chains decided to close a portion of their stores to avoid further losses, while others faced a much more brutal fate and were forced to shut down completely or file for bankruptcy. In fact, a recent report from Coresight Research warned that things are bound to get worse as approximately 25,000 stores could be closing permanently as a result of the current recession, and at least 15,000 brick-and-mortar stores could disappear by the end of 2021.

The truth is that the retail apocalypse is leading mall operators to face a reckoning. Many Green Street analysts are highlighting that level of disruption experienced recently was expected to occur over five to 10 years instead of taking place over just two. According to Moody's commercial real estate, in 2020, the national retail vacancy rate increased to 10.5% in the fourth quarter, the highest since 2013, while the mall vacancy rate went up from 0.4% to 10.5%, the highest in decades. Right now, there's "trouble brewing" even at upper-tier malls that once seemed invulnerable to the problems of lower-tier ones.

As a matter of fact, the investment banking company Credit Suisse predicted 25% of all malls in America would be closed by 2022. That's why many experts have been worried the domino effect triggered by store closings and bankruptcies will not only worsen the commercial real estate crisis, as it will also decimate hundreds of thousands of jobs over the two coming years. With almost half of all mall-based department stores expected to close in 2021, at least 1,5 million jobs are on the line, which means the scenario won't only be apocalyptic to retailers but to a large chunk of the U.S. workforce. A massive wave of retail and mall-related lay-offs could potentially take place over the course of 2021. And the impacts of it will send us further away from a recovery than ever before. Darker days are still on the horizon as the widespread collapse of America has just begun."

“Stimulus Crumbs Are A Joke; America Is Producing Massive Debt; Bubbles Are Overheating; Inequality”

Jeremiah Babe,
“Stimulus Crumbs Are A Joke; America Is Producing Massive Debt; 
Bubbles Are Overheating; Inequality”

"The Government’s Greatest Con Job"

"The Government’s Greatest Con Job"
by Brian Maher

"Dollar: a paper money, silver or cupronickel coin, and monetary unit of the United States, equal to 100 cents. So runs the dictionary definition. But if one dollar equals 100 cents… what then is a cent? The answer is one-hundredth of one dollar. And what again is one dollar? 100 cents. And so we begin an infinite chasing of the tail - one dollar is 100 times one cent, one cent is one dollar divided by 100.

Trillions upon trillions of dollars are rolling from the presses. Many more will follow. We should understand what in fact they are. We seek clarity. We must therefore turn to the Coinage Act of 1792: "The money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars or units… of the value [mass or weight] of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure… silver." That is, the dollar was defined by weight - some 371 grains of pure silver - or 0.7734375 of one ounce.

The Coinage Act of 1792 further authorized the production of $10 gold Eagles - “each to be of the value of ten dollars or units and to contain two hundred and forty-seven grains, and four eighths of a grain of pure… gold." One ounce of gold equaled roughly 15 ounces of silver. The Gold Standard Act of 1900 later defined the dollar as “twenty-five and eight-tenths grains of gold nine-tenths fine” - or 0.05375 troy ounces.

Here is the central lesson: Defined in silver, defined in gold… the dollar was nonetheless defined by weight. Today the dollar is defined in cents — cents themselves defined by the dollar. A delirium of confusion surrounds it. In today’s reckoning, we track the evolution of a mighty swindle...

Good as Gold: We begin with this $10 banknote, dated 1928:
The 1928 $10 note bears this inscription: “Redeemable in gold on demand at the United States Treasury, or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank.” In those antique days, a fellow could march into a bank. He could hand the clerk a slip of paper, as illustrated above... And he could demand the denominated amount in gold coin - payable on the nail.

The system imposed a reasonable discipline upon banks… and held inflation in checkmate. Federal Reserve banks were required to keep a 35% reserve of “gold or lawful money" on hand, lest they make a liar of the United States Treasury secretary - in this case, the Hon. Andrew William Mellon. In effect, the private citizen locked the banking system behind golden bars.

Sorry, No Gold: But one Great Depression, one New Deal and one world war later… we come now to a $10 banknote, dated 1950:
In appearance, it is nearly a perfect twin to the 1928 model — with one infinitely telling exception. Can you sniff it out? Recall, the 1928 note claims it is: “Redeemable in gold on demand at the United States Treasury, or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank.”

But here reads the 1950 version: “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private, and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or at any Federal Reserve Bank.” The fine print disguises a vast mischief: The gold provision was stricken from the record. The bankers had broken free from their golden prison… and no longer could a private citizen bring them to honest account. But what about “lawful money”? What is it?

‘I Want My Lawful Money’: In 1947, a certain gentleman - A.F. Davis by name - dispatched the following note to the United States Treasury, accompanied by a $10 note: "I am sending you herewith via registered mail one $10 Federal Reserve note. On this note is inscribed the following: "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private, and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or at any Federal Reserve bank." In accordance with this statement, will you send me $10.00 in lawful money?"

The acting treasurer, M.E. Slindee, responded after this fashion:

"Dear Mr. Davis,

Receipt is acknowledged of your letter of Dec. 9 with enclosure of one ten-dollar ($10.) Federal Reserve note. In compliance with your request, two five-dollar United States notes are transmitted herewith."

And so, Mr. Slindee began chasing his tail - what the philosophical men call circular reasoning.

The Government Gives Up: In exchange for his $10 note, Mr. Davis received by mail two $5 bills bearing the same pledge to redeem in lawful money. But this Davis fellow would not be so easily shooed off. He returned one of the $5 bills, once again demanding lawful money in exchange.

Finally, Mr. Slindee threw up the sponge:

"Dear Mr. Davis:

"You are advised that the term "lawful money" has not been defined in federal legislation. It first came to use prior to 1933 when some United States currency was not legal tender but could be held by national banking associations as lawful money reserves.

Since the act of May 12, 1933, as amended by the Joint Resolution of June 5, 1933, makes all coins and currency of the United States legal tender and the Joint Resolution of Aug. 27, 1935, provides for the exchange of United States coin or currency for other types of such coin or currency, the term "lawful money" no longer has such special significance. The $5 United States note received with your letter of Dec. 23 is returned herewith."

In 1963, all promises to redeem notes in lawful money were stricken from United States currency.

The Evolution of a Swindle: Here, in graphic detail, the devolution of American money:
A Modest Defense of Paper Money: Say what you will of paper money. But in one sense, it is redeemable - if you’ll forgive the expression in the present context. Like gold and silver, paper money files a claim upon Earth’s resources. It is woven from cotton and fashioned into linen. A paper dollar is tangible. A fellow can hold it in his hand, in his wallet, in his mattress. It cannot be erased at the stroke of a key. The paper dollar is also anonymous. Once out of your hands, it washes its hands of you.

None of these happy virtues apply to digital money… If paper money invites abuse... what about digital money?

Bound to Get Into Trouble: Digital money removes all natural checks on monetary production. It has no tangible existence. It is limited only by the discretion of men. Wispy as fog, slippery as oil, it is conjured into existence… as if by the magician’s wand. Digital money is therefore the type of money bound to get itself into trouble. And it gets around the world at electronic speeds.

It is the ideal money for a government swollen to ghastly dimensions - its issue being unlimited in theory. Digital money can also disappear at a keystroke. The bank can freeze you out of it. Every transaction goes on your permanent record. And if the electricity is out, if the power grid is ungridded, how do you purchase your essentials with digital money?

Paper money can see you through. Thus we raise a half-throated defense of paper money today... We cannot transact in lawful money as originally defined by statute - gold and silver. In its absence, we will settle for paper money. That is, a money we can at least keep our hands on… and our eyes on..."
Related: