“Here is a spectacular detail of the Eagle Nebula, a gassy star-forming region of the Milky Way Galaxy, about 7,000 light-years away. This particular spire of gas and dust was recently featured on APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day). The Eagle lies in the equatorial constellation Serpens. If you went out tonight and looked at this part of the sky - more or less midway between Arcturus and Antares - you might see nothing at all. The brightest star in Serpens is of the third magnitude, perhaps invisible in an urban environment. No part of the Eagle Nebula is available to unaided human vision. How big is the nebula in the sky? Hold a pinhead at arm's length and it would just about cover the spire. I like to think about things not mentioned in the APOD descriptions.
If the Sun were at the bottom of the spire, Alpha centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor, would be about halfway up the column. Sirius, the brightest star in Earth's sky, would be near the top. Let's say you sent out a spacecraft from the bottom of the spire that travelled at the speed of the two Voyager craft that are now traversing the outer reaches of the Solar System. It would take more than 200,000 years to reach the top of the spire.
The Hubble Space Telescope cost a lot of money to build, deploy, and operate. It has done a lot of good science. But perhaps the biggest return on the investment is to turn on ordinary folks like you and me to the scale and complexity of the universe. The human brain evolved, biologically and culturally, in a universe conceived on the human scale. We resided at its center. The stars were just up there on the dome of night. The Sun and Moon attended our desires. "All the world's a stage," wrote Shakespeare, and he meant it literally; the cosmos was designed by a benevolent creator as a stage for the human drama. All of that has gone by the board. Now we can travel in our imagination for 200,000 years along a spire of glowing, star-birthing gas that is only the tiniest fragment of a nebula that is only the tiniest fragment of a galaxy that is but one of hundreds of billions of galaxies we can potentially see with our telescopes.
Most of us still live psychologically in the universe of Dante and Shakespeare. The biggest intellectual challenge of our times is how to bring our brains up to speed. How to shake our imaginations out of the slumber of centuries. How to learn to live purposefully in a universe that is apparently indifferent to the human drama. How to stretch the human story to match the light-years.”
"Life is a journey filled with lessons, hardships, heartaches, joys, celebrations and special moments that will ultimately lead us to our destination, our purpose in life. The road will not always be smooth; in fact, throughout our travels, we will encounter many challenges. Some of these challenges will test our courage, strengths, weaknesses, and faith. Along the way, we may stumble upon obstacles that will come between the paths that we are destined to take. In order to follow the right path, we must overcome these obstacles. Sometimes these obstacles are really blessings in disguise, only we don't realize that at the time.
Along our journey we will be confronted with many situations, some will be filled with joy, and some will be filled with heartache. How we react to what we are faced will determine what kind of outcome the rest of our journey through life will be like. When things don't always go our way, we have two choices in dealing with the situations. We can focus on the fact that things didn't go how we had hoped they would and let life pass us by, or two, we can make the best out of the situation and know that these are only temporary setbacks and find the lessons that are to be learned.
Time stops for no one, and if we allow ourselves to focus on the negative we might miss out on some really amazing things that life has to offer. We can't go back to the past, we can only take the lessons that we have learned and the experiences that we have gained from it and move on. It is because of the heartaches, as well as the hardships, that in the end help to make us a stronger person.
The people that we meet on our journey, are people that we are destined to meet. Everybody comes into our lives for some reason or another and we don't always know their purpose until it is too late. They all play some kind of role. Some may stay for a lifetime; others may only stay for a short while. It is often the people who stay for only a short time that end up making a lasting impression not only in our lives, but in our hearts as well. Although we may not realize it at the time, they will make a difference and change our lives in a way we never could imagine. To think that one person can have such a profound effect on your life forever is truly a blessing. It is because of these encounters that we learn some of life's best lessons and sometimes we even learn a little bit about ourselves.
People will come and go into our lives quickly, but sometimes we are lucky to meet that one special person that will stay in our hearts forever no matter what. Even though we may not always end up being with that person and they may not always stay in our life for as long as we like, the lessons that we have learned from them and the experiences that we have gained from meeting that person, will stay with us forever.
It's these things that will give us strength to continue with our journey. We know that we can always look back on those times of our past and know that because of that one individual, we are who we are and we can remember the wonderful moments that we have shared with that person. Memories are priceless treasures that we can cherish forever in our hearts. They also enable us to go on with our journey for whatever life has in store for us. Sometimes all it takes is one special person to help us look inside ourselves and find a whole different person that we never knew existed. Our eyes are suddenly opened to a world we never knew existed- a world where time is so precious and moments never seem to last long enough.
Throughout this adventure, people will give you advice and insights on how to live your life but when it all comes down to it, you must always do what you feel is right. Always follow your heart, and most importantly never have any regrets. Don't hold anything back. Say what you want to say, and do what you want to do, because sometimes we don't get a second chance to say or do what we should have the first time around.
It is often said that what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. It all depends on how one defines the word "strong". It can have different meanings to different people. In this sense, "stronger" means looking back at the person you were and comparing it to the person you have become today. It also means looking deep into your soul and realizing that the person you are today couldn't exist if it weren't for the things that have happened in the past or for the people that you have met. Everything that happens in our life happens for a reason and sometimes that means we must face heartaches in order to experience joy."
“Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans to gain or maintain power. What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy. If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
– J. K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement, June 5, 2008
"I can't convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at. "
"In the social media era, public displays of wealth have become a way to show the world that you are “somebody”. Of course our value as human beings has absolutely nothing to do with how much money we have, but it is undeniable that those that have tremendous wealth are often idolized in our culture. Just think of how much we fawn over Bill Gates, Elon Musk and countless social media “influencers” that have become household names. Sadly, this has created an environment in which people increasingly feel a need to flaunt their wealth, and that is extremely unfortunate.
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, 8 million more Americans have fallen into poverty, 10 million more Americans are now in danger of being evicted from their homes, and more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed. With so many people deeply suffering, it is extremely insensitive to publicly flaunt your wealth, but many rich people are doing it anyway.
Recently, social media influencer Kylie Jenner has gotten a lot of attention for photos that she has been posting to Instagram. In one, her daughter poses with a $1,390 designer bag in front of a $225,000 Lamborghini…"Kylie, 23, posted a new picture of her toddler today, as the two enjoyed the Calabasas sun." The Instagram model showed off Stormi’s outfit, consisting of gray sweatpants, a matching tank top, colorful sneakers, and a $1390 mini tan Prada bag. As if the high-end bag wasn’t enough of a flash of wealth, the photo was taken in front of Kylie’s $225K bright orange Lamborghini. The caption “chill days w mommy” was posted under the photo.
How are the millions of Americans that have had to wait in line for hours at local food banks supposed to feel when they see something like that?
Another way that wealth is being flaunted is through the purchase of NFTs. On Monday, a tech executive paid 2.9 million dollars for an NFT of Jack Dorsey’s very first tweet… "Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, offered for sale as a nonfungible token, was sold on Monday for 1,630.58 ether, a cryptocurrency. That’s equivalent to about $2.9 million based on ether’s price at the time of sale." The tweet, which said “just setting up my twttr,” was first published on March 21, 2006. It was listed for sale as an NFT on March 6. By March 9, the highest offer was from Sina Estavi, CEO of Bridge Oracle. Estavi won the auction, though his bid was worth about $2.5 million it was placed. Of course Sina Estavi doesn’t actually own Jack Dorsey’s first tweet now. All he owns is a digital collectible that memorializes Jack Dorsey’s first tweet.
How ridiculous is that? Even worse, someone recently spent 69 million dollars for an NFT “work of art” that was created by a digital artist named “Beeple”… "Last week, the auction house Christie’s announced the artist Beeple sold a piece of artwork for more than $69 million, the third highest price for a living artist. But “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” isn’t a physical work of art. It’s all digital. The work was sold through an NFT, a burgeoning technology that could potentially change how we own everything from art work and concert tickets to our homes."
If you want to know how to get rich quick in America these days, just change your name to something really stupid like “Beeple” and start pumping out NFT “artwork”. You don’t even have to paint anything, and you can make millions of dollars in the process.
Meanwhile, about two-thirds of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are just trying to survive from month to month. The gap between the wealthy and the poor has never been greater, and there is a tremendous amount of resentment building toward the ultra-rich right now.
In such an environment, you would think that religious leaders would be extremely cautious about flaunting wealth, but in many instances they are some of the most brazen examples of all. A man named Ben Kirby started the @PreachersNSneakers Instagram account in 2019, and today it has more than 210,000 followers. For more than a year, he has been posting photos of some of the most famous preachers in America wearing extremely expensive designer clothes…
"On his feed, Kirby has showcased Seattle pastor Judah Smith’s $3,600 Gucci jacket, Dallas pastor T.D. Jakes’s $1,250 Louboutin fanny pack and Miami pastor Guillermo Maldonado’s $2,541 Ricci crocodile belt. And he considers Paula White, former president Donald Trump’s most trusted pastoral adviser who is often photographed in designer items, a PreachersNSneakers “content goldmine,” posting a photo of her wearing $785 Stella McCartney sneakers."
When I was growing up in the 1970s, I never heard of this sort of thing happening. In those days, preachers wore very conservative suits and ties, and they were usually not paid very well at all. But now a new brand of “celebrity preacher” has emerged, and they are often treated like rock stars…
The absolutely vilest of hypocrites...
Full screen!
"In his book, Kirby writes that these pastors who have enormous social media followings aren’t simply pastors anymore, he writes. Often they are motivational speakers, corporate coaches and leadership consultants. Kirby said he has heard of churches where a volunteer was designated solely for the purpose of carrying the pastor’s Bible. Often, he writes, these pastors have private entrances, reserved parking spaces, security details and a gaggle of personal assistants or handlers. And, often, they promise blessings from God to their followers if their followers bless the church." One example below, we have many more if you'd like...
Such suffering and despair! My heart breaks, it breaks I tell you!
Well, no, it doesn't, but I can't say here what I really think...
“Like Hollywood - a world so often criticized by the pietistic - these institutions and their leaders celebrate and reward the ‘blessing’ of fame, popularity and influence,” he writes. “Pastors function like ‘talent’ performing for an audience or like a spokesman for the church’s ‘brand.’”
And they all conveniently forget this...
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:21-23)
If this is how corrupt our churches have become, what hope is there for the nation as a whole?Flaunting wealth and throwing money around recklessly might be fun for a while, but there will be a price to pay. Even as I write this article, the resentment that the “have nots” are feeling toward the “haves” is growing. When things get bad enough in this country, a breaking point will come, and the “have nots” will be looking to extract some revenge."
I warned that would-be tyrants, whether they are on the left or the right, always use a map to close down democracies, and that they always take the same ten steps. Whether it’s “Invoke a Terrifying Internal and External Threat,” “Create a Thug Caste,” “Target the Press,” or the final step, “Suspend the Rule of Law,” these steps are always recognizable; and they always work to crush democracies and establish tyrannies. At that time, the “global threat” of terrorism was the specter that powers invoked in order to attack our freedoms.
The book was widely read and discussed, both at the time of its publication and for the last 12 years. Periodically over the last decade, people would ask me when and if we had reached “Step Ten.” We – my brave publisher, Chelsea Green, and I — are releasing the first and last chapters of The End of America now, in 2021, for free, and I am calling the sequel to this book, which I am now writing, Step Ten – because as of March of last year, we have indeed, I am so sad to say, arrived at and begun to inhabit Step Ten of the ten steps to fascism.
Though in 2008, I did not explicitly foresee that a medical pandemic would be the vehicle for moving the entire globe into Step Ten, I have at various points warned of the dangers of medical crises as vehicles that tyranny can exploit to justify suppressions of civil rights. Today, a much-hyped medical crisis has taken on the role of being used as a pretext to strip us all of core freedoms, that fears of terrorism did not ultimately achieve.
In 2015, I cautioned that infectious diseases could be used as a justification for ushering in a suppression of liberties, always under the guise of emergency measures. In 2019, a book of mine, "Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love", showed how terrible infectious disease epidemics such as cholera and typhus had been exploited in the 19th century by the British state, in order to crush freedoms and invade people’s privacy; I wrote about how the first anti-vaccination movements arose among British parents in the Victorian period. That book was initially cancelled, and its message of warning has been continually assailed.
But that book too was prescient. In early March of 2020, of course, a global pandemic was announced: Covid-19. In the immediate wake of the announcement and narrativization of that pandemic, most of the elements of a locked-in 360 degree totalitarianism have been put into place, in most of the countries of the West, including in what had been robust democracies. It all happened very quickly and comprehensively. In the United States we now have:
1. Emergency measures in many states, which suspend due process of law. This is the hallmark of a police state. Covid-19 is invoked as the reason for the introduction of emergency law – but there is no endpoint for lifting these emergency laws.
2. The closures of schools, which break the social contract with the next generation.
3. Bills being passed for “vaccine passports,” which bypass the Fourth Amendment to the constitution by allowing the government and Big Tech companies to intrude on medical privacy and to create a comprehensive digital surveillance state.
4. Forced closures of businesses. By intervening directly in the economy and allowing certain businesses to flourish (Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target) at the expense of small businesses, Main Street shops, restaurants, and sole proprietor businesses in general, the State has merged government and corporations in a way that is characteristic of Italian fascism, or of modern Chinese communism. (Indeed the fact that tech stocks rose by 27% in one quarter of the pandemic shows one driver of this war against human freedoms and human society: every minute human beings spend in a classroom, at the pub or restaurant, or in a church or synagogue, is time that tech companies lose money by being unable to harvest that data. Covid policies driven by “Covid-19 Response” – tech companies – ensure that humans are not allowed to connect except via digital platforms. The reason is profit as well as social control).
5. Restrictions on assembly. Some states such as California are fining people for seeing their friends in their homes, and making it unlawful for kids to have playdates with their friends. Massachusetts restricted gatherings of more than ten people at a time, forcing synagogues and churches to stay closed, in spite of a Supreme Court ruling against states forcing churches to close. Parks, playgrounds and beaches have been closed off. In countries such as Britain, people are fined for leaving their homes for more than an hour’s exercise a day.
6. Forced face coverings. In Massachusetts, people are fined if they are not wearing masks outdoors – even children as young as five are forced to do so by law. Again this mandate has not been undergirded by peer-reviewed studies showing medical necessity; and there is no endpoint proffered for these extraordinary violations of personal freedom.
7. Suppression of free speech. Big Tech companies are censoring critics of Covid policy and vaccine policy, as well as censoring views that are on the right hand of the political spectrum. “Incitement,” a word that has a long history in the 20th century for closing down free speech, has been weaponized by the left to shut down First Amendment freedoms of expression. In other forms of censorship and management of speech and public debate, tycoons such as Bill Gates have been funding major news outlets, with millions of dollars directed to “Covid education.” As a result, dissenting voices are marginalized and shamed, or even threatened with legal action or job losses.
8. Science has been hijacked in the interests of “biofascism.” By heavily funding scientific commentators such as Dr Fauci in the United States, Imperial College and SAGE in the UK, and Dr Christian Drosten in Germany, a dominant set of policies and pronouncements about Covid that benefit a small group of bad actors – notably tech and pharmaceutical interests, acting in concert with governments – have had secured credentialled supporters. But when other scientists or institutions seek debate or transparency, they are threatened with job loss or reputationally attacked, as in the case of Dr Simon Goddeke of the Netherlands, who was told to keep quiet by his university, when he challenged the flawed Covid PCR test protocols.
9. Data have been hijacked to serve the interests of this biofascism. This manipulation of truth, which I foreshadowed in The End of America, is typical of the Soviet censors. Covid platforms such as Covid19tracking and John Hopkins University, funded by technocrats such as Michael Bloomberg, serve unverifiable Covid data that directly affect the stock markets. Again, while this un-American merger of corporate interests and public policy is reminiscent of Italian Fascism, the twist provided by digital data presentation and its relationship to the stock market is very much of the 21st century.
10. Attacks on religious minorities. The orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, and Christian churches in California, have been singled out for punishment if they do not follow Covid rules – a targeting of religion that is characteristic of Communist policies on the left, especially in China.
11. Policies that weaken bonds between human beings and weaken the family have been introduced and policed. This is the most serious development of all.
The new biofascism in the West, very much driven by Big Tech leaders, and soon to be exploited by our enemies geopolitically, is a war against free human beings and against the qualities that make us human.
Masks break human beings’ ability to bond face-to-face and enjoy human contact, smiles and jokes. Masks turn down the effectiveness of human “technology,” by making it hard for us to “read” each other and to pick up social cues. Forbidding assembly keeps us from forming human alliances against these monstrous interests. Forbidding human assembly also prevents new cultures, new heroes and new business models from arising. We are all stuck with the Rolodex and the ideas we had in March of 2020.
Forcing kids to distance at school and wear masks ensures a generation of Americans who don’t know HOW to form human alliances, and who don’t trust their own human instincts. Those are counterrevolutionary training techniques.
Driving all learning onto (already prepared) distance learning platforms ensures that kids do not know how to behave in human space, space not mediated by technology.
Many Covid policies seem designed to ensure that humans will have no “analog” space yet or “analog” culture left – no way to feel comfortable simply gathering in a room, touching one another as friends or allies, or joining together.
Lastly, driving all human interaction onto Zoom is not only a way to harvest all of our tech, business secrets and IP – it is a way to ensure that intimacy and connection in the future will be done online and that human face-to-face contact will be killed off.
Why is this? Why develop policies that punish, encumber and restrict human contact in analog (unsurveilled, unmediated) spaces? Because human contact is the great revolutionary force when it comes to human freedom and resistance to this form of comprehensive biofascism – the biofascism represented by the New Normal – the medico-fascist Step Ten.
Now let me recap from the year 2008, and read you my intro to The End of America, as well as the warning at the close of that book. Its message has never, sadly, been more timely. This time, threats to freedom justified by terrorism then, have reclothed themselves in the trappings of a medical pandemic. But this time we do not just face a war on freedom. This time we face a war on human beings, and on all that makes us human."
“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that!”
"The entire planet is getting increasingly more unstable due to a series of natural disasters that have been ravaging several parts of the world. Millions of people have already been affected and millions more are about to face extra challenges and hardships as global emergencies are quickly starting to aggravate, and a lot more chaos seems to be on the horizon. In this video, inspired by a recent article published by the economic collapse writer Michael Snyder, we're going to expose 7 different plagues that are hitting the planet right now.
A mice plague is devastating eastern Australia: Can you imagine living in a community infested by hundreds of thousands of hungry rats? That's what happening right now in Queensland and New South Wales, Australia, where an out-of-control mouse infestation is impacting the lives of farmers, grocers, and several other citizens of the eastern Australian states. They are ruining local farmers' entire grain harvests, and even hotels were forced to close because it has become impossible to keep the critters out of the rooms. A local farmer argued in an interview with Reuters that given the incredibly rapid pace of breeding in mice, the current plague was "likely just beginning, since a single breeding pair can produce a new litter every 20 days or so, birthing more than 500 offspring in a season."
Large earthquakes are occuring: In 2021 may 7 earthquakes magnitude 7.0 or greater already occurred. One of them was a 7.0 seismic tremor that completely shook Japan. It struck the coast of Ishinomaki, a city located just 65 miles from Fukushima. The USGS reported that the recent earthquake had a depth of 34 miles, and the tremor could even be felt across several areas of Tokyo. Hours after the quake, Japanese government officials reported dangerous changes in sea level and issued a tsunami warning advising citizens to flee the area.
Multiple volcanos are erupting all over the world: The latest data released by Volcano Discovery showed that 29 volcanoes are roaring back to life and currently erupting across several countries. Most notably, an Icelandic volcano that had been dormant for the past 6,000 years has just come to life last Friday, in the Fagradals Mountain. The Icelandic Police notified residents should stay indoors and maintain doors and windows firmly closed to prevent gas pollution.
A new "Megadrought" is spreading across the Southwestern states of the United States: A severe drought was already affecting the state of California over the past few months, but now the weather seems to be worsening as almost two-thirds of the whole nation are abnormally dry. The federal government's spring forecast revealed that there is “little hope for relief” for the foreseeable future. Weather service and agriculture officials alerted for possible water use cutbacks, in addition to higher chances of wildfires, and the fact that local reservoirs are hitting historically low levels. On top of that, multiple wheat crops suffered irreversible damages.
An enormous swarm of locusts is ruthlessly devouring millions of crops across several parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia: A single locust swarm could contain 80 million locusts that can to fly up to 80 miles a day depending on the wind. In that process, locusts lay millions of eggs, which hatch within 15 days or less. Every day, each locust can eat its own weight in vegetation and that multiplies in a twenty-fold every three months. A single swarm can effortlessly eat as much food as 35,000 people in one day and multiple two dozen times in about three months.
H5N8 Bird flu is suffering rapid mutations in Russia: Experts are worried that soon the virus could start being transmitted from human to human. According to the head of the Russian health watchdog, Anna Popova, the new strain has “a fairly high degree of probability” of human-to-human transmission. Furthermore, outbreaks of H5N8 have already been reported outside Russia, in some parts of Europe, China, the Middle East, and North Africa - but so far only in poultry.
The health crisis isn’t over: Even though mass vaccinations have started in many countries, the new variants found in Brazil might be resistant to the already-developed vaccines. A major difference between the first strain and the strain detected in Brazil, known as P1, is that P1 affects young healthy adults. The new mutation is 2.2 times more transmissible, and even those who already caught the virus could be vulnerable.
It appears that we're living in times when everything that can be shaken will be shaken. It's safe to say that this is all just beginning. We should all start getting ready for what lies ahead because it's evident that things definitely aren’t going to get any easier."
"This popular group leaps into the early evening sky around the March equinox and the northern hemisphere spring. Famous as the Leo Triplet, the three magnificent galaxies found in the prominent constellation Leo gather here in one astronomical field of view. Crowd pleasers when imaged with even modest telescopes, they can be introduced individually as NGC 3628 (right), M66 (upper left), and M65 (bottom). All three are large spiral galaxies but tend to look dissimilar, because their galactic disks are tilted at different angles to our line of sight.
NGC 3628, also known as the Hamburger Galaxy, is temptingly seen edge-on, with obscuring dust lanes cutting across its puffy galactic plane. The disks of M66 and M65 are both inclined enough to show off their spiral structure. Gravitational interactions between galaxies in the group have left telltale signs, including the tidal tails and warped, inflated disk of NGC 3628 and the drawn out spiral arms of M66. This gorgeous view of the region spans over 1 degree (two full moons) on the sky in a frame that covers over half a million light-years at the trio's estimated distance of 30 million light-years. Of course the spiky foreground stars lie well within our own Milky Way."
"Happily men don't realize how stupid they are, or half the world would commit suicide. Knowledge is a will-of-the-wisp, fluttering ever out of the traveller's reach; and a weary journey must be endured before it is even seen. It is only when a man knows a good deal that he discovers how unfathomable is his ignorance. The man who knows nothing is satisfied that there is nothing to know, consequently that he knows everything; and you may more easily persuade him that the moon is made of green cheese than that he is not omniscient."
"The Federal Reserve met last week and voted to keep interest rates unchanged. What a shock! The Fed also gave an upbeat forecast of economic growth, predicting that the U.S. economy will grow 6.5% this year, its highest rate in nearly 40 years. Its December 2020 forecast projected 4.2% growth. he Fed also expects that the economy could return to full employment next year and that inflation could hit 2.4% this year before declining again. In effect, the central bank said they were willing to let the economy run "hot" and risk higher inflation in order to capture the benefits of stronger growth.
Zero rates are essentially a given as far as the eye can see. What about that growth forecast? The Fed has one of the worst forecasting records of any financial institution in the world. My expectation is that growth is slowing now and will get worse as the year progresses. I believe this will be especially true as the Biden administration policies of higher taxes, more regulation, and open borders that import cheap labor take effect. Biden has also shut down new oil and gas exploration and wants to push a Green New Deal that will guarantee higher energy prices. Higher energy prices are a burden on the economy.
Little Cause for Optimism: Where's the evidence that growth is slower than the Fed expects? Inflation measures remain weak. The annual core consumer price inflation rate moved down from 1.7% in September 2020 to 1.3% in February 2021. The overall consumer price inflation rate (including food and energy) rose modestly from 1.4% in September 2020 to 1.7% in February 2021. On a year-over-year basis, the core personal consumption expenditures rate of increase (the Fed’s preferred index) moved from 1.4% in October 2020 to 1.5% in January 2021. All of these inflation measures show declines or only modest gains and are well under the Fed’s 2% inflation goal. (More lies. Truth here. - CP)
Meanwhile, retail sales fell 3% in February on a month-over-month basis after a January gain. January retail sales were boosted by the $600 per person government handout at the end of December. February retail sales slumped because there was no government handout that month. A new handout is coming, this time $1,400, so we may see a boost in retail sales again in March. When the government distributes free money, sales pick up but then fall back when the handouts stop. How long can the government keep handing out checks? The point is that there is no underlying, strong demand. Here’s some more cold water on the Fed’s optimistic forecast…
Depression-Level Unemployment: On March 16, the Commerce Department reported that February industrial production dropped 2.2% month-over-month. It’s true, the U.S. economy is mostly service-based, but the better-paying jobs with benefits for blue-collar workers are in the industrial sector. What about unemployment overall?
Still, that improvement masks the fact that the so-called U6 unemployment rate, which includes those not counted in the labor force and those with part-time jobs who are seeking full-time jobs, is stuck at 11.1%, a level associated with economic depressions. (So if 11.1% is "a level associated with economic depressions", what do you call it when the true rate is 25.8%? - CP)
The unemployment rate has gone down, not because there is tightness in the labor market, but because the pool of job seekers has declined. Buried in the latest jobs report is the fact that average weekly earnings declined from $1,045 in January to $1,038 in February 2021. We are a long way from slack in the labor market. New claims for unemployment grew 770,000 last week, an increase from the prior week and the 52nd consecutive week of claims above the pre-pandemic record of 695,000 claims.
Surging Savings Rate: Additionally, the personal savings rate has surged. Immediately after the pandemic struck, the savings rate increased to 33.7%. It declined to 12.5% by November 2020, then spiked again to 20.5% in January 2021. These are extraordinarily high savings rates by U.S. standards. This means that the government can mail out checks in the trillions of dollars as so-called COVID relief, but people aren’t spending the money. They are saving the money, paying off debt (another form of saving), or investing in stocks, which feeds asset bubbles. (Look at your own life, look around, is that true? We all know it's not... - CP)
In short, the hard data paints a picture of low inflation, weak job creation, high savings and only modest GDP growth going forward, the opposite of what the Fed expects. Look for high interest rates on 10-year Treasury notes to reverse sharply once the slow-growth reality sinks in.
The one thing that’s not slowing down is government spending. Quite the opposite, in fact... Many believed that the new $1.9 trillion COVID-relief bill recently signed by Joe Biden would be the last bailout law and end the deficit spending binge needed to pull the U.S. economy out of the pandemic-related slump. To those believers, we say, “Guess again.”
Welfare, Pure and Simple: Democrats didn’t even wait for the ink to dry on Biden’s signature before beginning to plan a new deficit spending bacchanal, this time perhaps as much as $4 trillion. I’m not sure why it’s needed considering the most recent $1.9 trillion of deficit spending had little to do with COVID.
Only about $250 billion went for pandemic projects, such as vaccine production, vaccination centers, aid to hospitals, medical equipment and therapeutics. The other $1.65 trillion went to earned-income credits (that no longer have to be "earned;” you get them for doing nothing), child-care credits, union pension fund bailouts, higher unemployment benefits, extended unemployment benefits, student loan relief, and all-purpose blue state bailouts for New York and California. You can debate the merits of each one of these programs, but the fact remains that they are not directly related to COVID relief. They’re welfare programs, pure and simple.
The new bill being considered by Democrats will focus on climate change, legalization of illegal immigrants and infrastructure. Again, these programs have nothing to do with COVID-relief and everything to do with the longstanding wish list of political goodies.
Towards MMT: The White House and Congress are apparently under the sway of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which says that deficits don't matter, debt levels don't matter, and there is no limit on Treasury borrowing or Fed money printing as long as there is slack in the labor market. Most members of Congress have probably never heard of MMT until very recently (if at all), but they’re marching to the beat of the drum as sounded by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The historic reason for not pushing the national debt to the absolute limit except in time of war was to make sure there was some slack in the bond market in case of war. You kept your borrowing capacity in check as a form of dry powder in case it was needed for an existential crisis. MMT ignores this constraint and pushes debt to the limit leaving nothing in reserve. Let's hope we don't have a real war that may have to be funded under stretched conditions. History says we may not be so lucky."
"All sins, of course, deserve to be treated with mercy: we all do what we can, and life is too hard and too cruel for us to condemn anyone for failing in this area. Does anyone know what he himself would do if faced with the worst and how much truth could he bear under such circumstances?"
"The Great Reset is much in the news - the proposed top-down plan for combating climate change designed by the global elites, who then as now will be jetting around in private aircraft while dictating exactly how the rest of us will reduce our carbon footprints.
It's difficult for many people to imagine a world in which the incentives are to consume as little energy and resources as possible and waste as little as possible, but money and the economy are human constructs: they can be changed at will. Change the way money is created and people are paid, and you change the incentive structure and thus the outcome.
We are so accustomed to staggering waste that we cannot imagine how we could manage without burning 90 million barrels of oil a day (and vast quantities of natural gas and coal). What never ceases to amaze me is how many people seem to have forgotten that great civilizations and cities flourished without fossil fuels. The capital of the wondrous Tang Dynasty in China (near present-day Xian) contained upwards of 1 million people circa 700-900 A.D., and was a complex entrepot of trade and treasure from distant lands.
The great Thai capital of Ayuttaya also had nearly a million residents in the 1600s and early 1700s before it was sacked and burned by the Burmese army; Westerners had carved out their own small quarters in the sprawling city.
Neither Imperial Rome nor the Song Dynasty's capital, Hangzhou (circa 1100-1275 AD) consumed much hydrocarbon energy. For more on what daily life was like in Hangzhou, find a copy of the marvelous 1964 book "Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276."
Paris and the other great cities of Europe thrived in the same timeframe (1600s and 1700s) with (by today's standards) extremely modest use of fossil fuels. Those who expect a decline in energy availability to immediately lead to civilization-ending chaos overlook how similar life was in 1906 San Francisco, when hydrocarbons generated (by today's standards) modest amounts of power and biofuel transportation (i.e. horses) were the common form of drayage.
The machinery of that era was terribly inefficient. With current technologies, very modest amounts of energy could power a very rich lifestyle if we measure lifestyle not by wasteful consumption but by having enough food to eat, useful work to do, mobility and access to various entertainments.
Consider this film of Market Street in downtown San Francisco shot a few days before the catastrophic earthquake and fire of 1906. A trip down Market Street before the fire (Library of Congress)
Full screen recommended.
"San Francisco, a Trip Down Market Street, April 14, 1906"
"Upscaled with neural networks trip down Market Street, San Francisco, 1906. This film was shot on April 14, 1906, just four days before the San Francisco earthquake and fire which killed an estimated 3,000 people and destroyed over 80% of the city of San Francisco. This is actually a staged shoot, so it's not actual traffic from that time: The film records a total of thirty cable cars, four horsecars, and four streetcars. At first there also appear to be many automobiles; however, a careful tracking shows that almost all of the autos circle the camera many times—one of them ten times. This traffic was apparently staged by the producer to give Market Street the appearance of a prosperous modern boulevard with many automobiles."
Yes, there are plenty of jalopies (autos) careening through the traffic, but note the wealth of transport options. An endless string of cable cars moves up and down Market Street (that they are cable cars is evidenced by the cable trough running between the rails). To the right, a procession of horse-drawn carts and wagons head down toward the Bay - the 1906 equivalent of today's diesel trucks.
Toward the end of the film, as the trolley approaches the Ferry Building, you can see a small horse-drawn trolley entering Market Street (the rear sign identifies it as a "Montgomery Street" trolley.)
Electric trolleys (note the overhead arm to the conducting wire) crossed the street numerous times. You will also see many people on foot - still a reliable mode of transport, as well as bicyclists and an occasional rider on horseback.
On several occasions, people are almost struck by cars; pedestrians, as in Developing World countries today, had to keep their wits about them. Those unfortunate enough to be struck very likely did not sue the city or the owner of the vehicle; if you couldn't manage crossing the street competently, then it was assumed you knew better than to try.
There are no street lights or even police guiding traffic. This is very much like the semi-chaotic traffic which is commonplace outside the First World.
To the First World resident accustomed to being told what to do and ordered about at all times, this seems like madness. But notice how it all works quite well without a huge costly structure to organize and control conformity. Indeed, it is a truism of city-street traffic control that people drive more cautiously and thus more safely when there are limited or no traffic controls.
Our present culture cannot grasp the potential of energy devolution. When I heard James Howard Kunstler speak a few years ago, he observed that many people approached him expecting a pat on the back for buying a Prius. Jim noted that these souls did not yet "get it" -the automobile-centric and suburban, auto-dependent economy and culture was the problem, and the Peak-Lithium auto is no different from the Peak-Oil vehicle. (Manufacturing the Peak-Lithium auto consumes even more oil than manufacturing the Peak-Oil vehicle.)
From a very basic point of view, the more decentralized options that are available, the better; just as monoculture crops lead to disease and crop failures, so mono-systems lead to extreme vulnerabilities. The "modern" (infinite growth, maximize profits) impulse is to "fix" the vulnerabilities created by mono-systems with more costly and complex "fixes." Then as these "fixes" trigger more unforeseen consequences, another round of ever-more complex and costly engineering is applied to "fix" the "fix." This is how systems become so high-energy, high cost and complex that the returns of further investments become ever more marginal, and the system eventually collapses under its own weight.
The idea that a great city could depend largely on human power, animal power, water/wind-based transport and energy-efficient transport strikes those inculcated with the "infinite growth" religion/mindset as "primitive." But if we were able to go back in time and ask the well-fed, well-dressed, well-educated (and oh-so-busy) passersby on the streets in 1906 if they were living a "primitive," "deprived" life in a "chaotic" city, they would very likely have reckoned that you had lost your mind.
Perhaps we have collectively "lost our mind." Perhaps what we need is not a new technology but a new way of living that uses existing technologies to echo "old ways" that worked rather well on much lower energy densities and much lower energy consumption."
DRIGGS, IDAHO – They’re accelerating bond purchases… Between July 8, 2020 and January 13, 2021, the Federal Reserve grew its balance sheet at a pace of $15.3 billion per week. (A period of 27 weeks.) From January 13, 2021 until today – a period of nine weeks – the Fed has grown its balance sheet at a pace of $39.9 billion per week. It could be nothing. Or it could be the next stage of the balance sheet hyperinflation starting…
Gargantuan Demand for Dollars: For two years we’ve argued that there aren’t enough lenders to satisfy the Treasury’s gargantuan demand for borrowing dollars at the current low interest rates. By suppressing interest rates while the government runs $3 trillion annual deficits, we predicted the Fed would end up inviting large portions of the government bond market onto its balance sheet. We also predicted that inflation would further exacerbate this imbalance. And that’s exactly what’s happening…
Of the $4.4 trillion in net new debt the Treasury issued in 2020, the Fed purchased 54% of it, according to Tavi Costa of Crescat Capital. (Foreigners purchased 5.2% and U.S. banks bought 17%.) With the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan just signed into law this month and a big infrastructure bill slated for later this year, the Treasury’s gargantuan demand for borrowing dollars will only increase.
Meanwhile, inflation is soaring. The bond market expects the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to increase by 2.5% per year for the next five years, judging by the difference in yields between the 5-year Treasury and the 5-year inflation protected Treasury (TIPS). That’s a 12-year high.
The Wall Street Journal reports: "Prices are surging for the raw materials used to build American homes. Lumber, one of the biggest costs in home-building after land and labor, has never been more expensive and is more than twice the typical price for this time of year. Crude oil, a starting point for paint, drain pipe, roof shingles and flooring, has shot up more than 80% since October. Copper, which carries water and electricity throughout houses, costs about a third more than it did in the autumn. Prices for granite, insulation, concrete blocks and common brick have all pushed to records in 2021… Drywall and ceramic tiles are short of records but have also climbed."
Final Stages of the Greatest Financial Experiment: Inflation further reduces demand for government bonds, all else being equal. Last June, the Fed pledged to buy Treasury bonds at a pace of $80 billion per month… or about $17.5 billion per week. We've known this wouldn’t be enough… and we’ve been waiting for them to increase their bond buying. It looks like that time is now…
The Fed’s balance sheet is currently at $7.7 trillion. If we’re right, the Fed’s balance sheet could be about to inflate to $10 trillion… $15 trillion… even $25 trillion… much faster than anyone expects.
Powell says they have the tools to control inflation, should it keep rising (which I think it will). By tools, he means “tighter credit conditions.” But wait a minute. The last time the Fed started tightening credit conditions (in 2016), the stock market ended up having a 20% meltdown in the fourth quarter of 2018. (It probably would have gone down even more, but Powell relented on the tightening.)
Today, the economy is 22% more leveraged (on a debt-to-GDP basis) than it was at the end of 2018… the stock market is 24% more overvalued (per the S&P’s CAPE ratio, a common valuation measure)… and the unemployment rate is 59% higher (per the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Even if inflation keeps rising, there’s no way Powell will have the courage to tighten credit… and crash the stock market.
Our stance remains the same. We’re in the final stages of the greatest financial experiment in history. And it’s not going to end well."
"Is there some kind of game on in the USA? Have our public affairs ever looked so false and disordered? Is it ever more wondrous that Joe Biden somehow managed to win the Super Tuesday primary, let alone the national election?
The country has gotten exactly what it saw all through the autumn of 2020: the empty shell of a broken politician. Back in October, Ol’ Joe hiding in his basement was played as a bad joke in a nervous zeitgeist. Nothing to see, according to the captive news media. Wasn’t that exactly it, though? Nothing to see and nobody home, the essence of our now-president, Joe Biden. How on earth did this happen?
My own theory: it was the strange byproduct of the political establishment fumbling to cover up its crimes, an endeavor so transparently inept that the rest of the world goggles at us in nauseated incredulity, watching our leadership flounder, our institutions fail, our economy vaporize, and our power dissolve, like a some dying blob in an epic horror movie. Even our most devoted adversary, North Korea, marvels out loud at the spectacle of American collapse. They joke about it, but it must make them awfully uncomfortable to realize that the USA runs under a shadow government, and runs so ineptly!
Who or what is this shadow government? I’d say it amounts to a small group around former president Obama and former attorney general Eric Holder, plus a coterie of Intel Community figures led by John Brennan, all awkwardly funneling instructions through Susan Rice to the hacks in the White House, who form a flimsy cocoon around the barely-pulsating organism within: Mr. Biden. I will boldly suggest that this cabal is actually controlling the executive branch of the government, and doing it with stunning incompetence. If it sounds like a conspiracy, that’s probably because it is a conspiracy.
What were those crimes of theirs? Mainly the actions they took the past four years to cover-up their intense and sedulous ongoing corruption of previous years, especially all the channels of moneygrubbing that ran from Wall Street and K Street through the halls of Congress, and secondarily their political agenda to destroy by any means necessary the opposition vested in a weak and ineffectual Republican Party at odds with its own elected leader, Mr. Trump.
The “means” turned out to be one dishonest exploit after another aimed at disabling and eliminating the uncontrollable Mr. Trump: RussiaGate, the Flynn case, the Mueller Investigation, Ukraine Phone Call Gate (impeachment No. 1), Coronavirus hysteria, identity politics hysteria (including the 2020 summer riots), the social media companies’ censorship and “cancellation” initiative, and, finally, the engineered ballot fraud in the 2020 national election, with a re-play in the Georgia senatorial special election of January, 2021. How did you miss all this?
I think it worked this way: John Brennan’s CIA enlisted a desperately failing news media in an ideological campaign to propagandize and lie to the American public based on Brennan’s own past ideological disposition as a self-declared “communist.” Yes, he actually said that about himself, though his Marxism and that of his allies was a mash-up of foolish utopianisms used to cover a sheer wish to annihilate any opposition frustrating their will-to-power. I’d venture to suppose that Mr. Brennan continued to influence and even direct these agit-prop operations long after he was removed as CIA Director, even as he fought off accusations for his role in helping Hillary Clinton gin up RussiaGate.
Hillary’s crimes in particular, especially her Uranium One deal and the Skolkovo scam, involved large networks of accomplices in the State Department and in Intel, including the FBI when it was under Robert Mueller, and since they were conducted under the Obama administration, they implicated Mr. Obama too, and many around him. People-of-color and the gender-muddled were useful idiots in the game to bamboozle the public, and were allowed to turn their own grievances into lucrative hustles. Thus, everything became a “racist” and “sexist” boobytrap used to nullify anybody seeing through this game, while garnering new social advantages and large sums of money for the aggrieved, especially the Black Lives Matter org.
All of these cynical power games were, and still are, playing out against the very real collapse of America’s economy and culture. That is the part of the story that nobody controls or can even hope to control. The manufacturing part of the economy has been going-going-gone for forty years, but Coronavirus paranoia has been mobilized to destroy any remaining small business or service, leaving the shell of a commercial sector represented only by rapacious chain stores. The oil industry is on the ropes, confounded by the high costs of getting shale oil out of the ground and the shortage of investor money for an obviously profitless activity. All that’s really left are the financial rackets tied to the Federal Reserve and Wall Street — and they amount to the sheerest vapor given the de-linking of capital formation from genuine productive activity.
Last week’s antics featured two dazzling failures of American diplomacy under the Obama-Biden shadow government: the president’s stupid obloquies against Vladimir Putin, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s feckless negotiation with China — in which China nullified our “human rights” complaints involving the Uyghurs on account of America’s incessantly self-declared “systemic racism.” Coming up this week, Joe Biden’s long-delayed premiere “news conference.” Even though the “questions” are all pre-submitted and vetted, and the answers will be scrolling on a teleprompter, Mr. Biden will be working without a net. His handlers must be cross-eyed with anxiety over what might happen. Pretty soon, the game will be up. The election fraud story won’t go away against all efforts to suppress it. The shadow government will get outed as the nation sinks deeper into economic and civil disorder, and some people will have to do something."
“Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees, reminding us that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all its immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble.”
