"Freedom Saves Lives Too"

"Freedom Saves Lives Too"

by Simon Black

"On the evening of December 12, 1799, George Washington, who at that time was 67 years old and happily retired from public life, came down with a minor cold and sore throat. The next day he lost his voice and began having trouble breathing. On the morning of December 14, his wife Martha sent word to several doctors asking them to come to the Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon. Three different doctors arrived, and each of them performed a ‘bloodletting’ to treat George Washington. Bloodletting was a popular treatment at the time in which a physician attempted to ‘drain’ sickness from the body by deliberately bleeding the patient.

But when Washington’s condition failed to improve, the doctors doubled down on the bloodletting. They were certain that their approach was the correct one. Modern historians estimate that doctors removed FORTY PERCENT of Washington’s total blood supply that day. In addition, one doctor also gave Washington an enema, and another gave Washington a potent mixture to induce vomiting. So not only did Washington lose an incredible amount of blood, he was also extremely dehydrated. Big shocker - his condition worsened further, and finally that evening - December 14, 1799 - George Washington passed away.

We’ll never know what might have happened if Washington had just laid in bed and drank tea. But it’s hard to imagine that removing 40% of his blood and completely dehydrating him helped the situation. To the doctors, it seemed like doing something was better than nothing. And even when the results showed that their methodology was deeply flawed, they continued to believe that they were right.

Now, a year into a global pandemic, politicians and public health officials have tried just about everything they could think of to stop the spread of Covid-19. They forced people to wear masks in public; locked up healthy people in their homes devoid of sunlight or exercise; isolated everyone from friends and loved ones; and destroyed countless jobs and businesses. Conversely, a small handful of places took a relatively light-handed approach to addressing the pandemic. Finally we have the data to compare the two strategies . And one of the biggest contrasts is between California and Florida.

In California, kids have still not gone back to school, masks are still required even when you’re outside, and indoor activities are strictly limited. Californians are still only supposed to leave home for “necessary” government-approved reasons.

Meanwhile in Florida, the Governor never issued a statewide mask mandate. Bars and restaurants have been back at full capacity since September. Florida schools have been open all school year. Families gathered for the holidays. And the state hosted the Super Bowl.

In 2020, Florida’s beaches stayed open for Spring Break, while California closed most beaches.

Disney World in Florida has been open since July, while Disney Land in California remains closed.

But Florida has the disadvantage of an older population— 20.9% of Floridans are above the age of 65, versus 14.8% of Californians, according to US Census data. And since people over 65 account for the preponderance of Covid deaths, Florida has a much higher percentage of at-risk population.

We’ve also been hearing from our media overlords for months about how wonderful and effective the harsh lockdowns in California are, and how dangerous things are in Florida. So it would be easy to think that Covid case rates and death rates in Flordia would be dramatically higher than in California. But that’s not the reality.

CDC statistics show that the Covid-19 case rates and death rates since the beginning of the pandemic are nearly identical in both states. (Unsurprisingly, Florida’s death rate is a whopping 40% lower than in the State of New York, along with dozens of other states.) Yet despite California and Florida having nearly identical public health outcomes, their diverging strategies have had an enormous economic impact:

• In January 2020, California’s unemployment rate was 3.9%. Today, it is 9.3%.

• In January 2020, Florida’s unemployment rate was 3.3%. Today it is 5.1%.

• The national average unemployment rate is 6.7%, so Florida’s labor market is much healthier.

• Leisure and hospitality jobs fell by 30% in California, and only 15% in Florida.

• Twice as many people have started businesses in Florida, compared to California in the last year.

• Comparing the third quarter of 2019 vs. 2020, California’s economic decline was 33% worse than Florida’s, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The data is quite clear: California disregarded civil liberties, violated the Constitution, locked people in their homes, destroyed businesses, and ravaged the economy. But it turns out their harsh methods didn’t make a bit of difference. And it cost an unknown number of lives to suicide, substance abuse, increased poverty, and a more sedentary lifestyle. Florida’s freedom, on the other hand, resulted in nearly the same number of Covid deaths as California, yet dramatically improved the economic outcome.

You’d think that the lockdown states would change their ways and realize they’ve bled their patients too much. But that’s not happening. Instead, they keep insisting that their harsh approach is right. It’s no wonder Florida’s housing market is on fire. This isn’t the 12th century; people aren’t feudal serfs tied to the land. And because of the shift to working from home, tens of millions of people can pick up and move now.

Keep in mind that in many places, the strict Covid rules were on a local basis. You might find freedom and economic opportunity one town over. Or maybe you have to move to another state or province in order to find the lifestyle you’re looking for.

But the same logic also applies if you want to move overseas. There is no point in limiting your options if opportunity lies outside of your homeland. For some people, that might be a big leap. But there are options to ease into an expat life and try it out. For example, over a dozen countries around the world currently offer visas to digital nomads, freelancers, and self employed people to live and work there for a full year. And that might just be the escape you need."

- https://www.zerohedge.com

Musical Interlude: Blue Jays, "I Dreamed Last Night"

Blue Jays, "I Dreamed Last Night"

"Chinese Banks Bracing For A Catastrophic Collapse As 40 Trillion Debt Bubble Is Out Of Control"

Full screen recommended.

"Chinese Banks Bracing For A Catastrophic Collapse 

As 40 Trillion Debt Bubble Is Out Of Control"

- Epic Economist

"Chinese officials have been urging local governments to tighten their belts because the 46 trillion yuan debt bubble is spiraling out of control. But as authorities started scrutinizing states' balance sheets to perform budget cuts, they found over 14 trillion yuan of hidden debt, and credit firms say the real figure may be in the range of an astounding 40 trillion. In an attempt to fight the devastating effects of the health crisis, the Chinese government requested local governments to increase infrastructure investments to shore up growth, but they weren't expecting states to get massive off-budget borrowings to do so, and now Beijing was forced to sound the alarm for a potential credit crunch, warning regional banks to brace for a tidal wave of bad debt. This could put China's financial stability at risk, as the debt has been bought by all kinds of financial institutions, including banks, brokerages, and trust funds. Thus, the country's $50 trillion financial system may soon find itself facing fiscal disaster. That's what we're going to investigate in this video.

In 2020, the Chinese government debt totaled 46.55 trillion yuan. The staggering debt load accounts for 45.8 percent of last year’s gross domestic product, and experts say, that since implicit liabilities are often hidden in the records of state firms or public-private partnerships, the real risks posed by the colossal debt bubble are definitely much bigger than the official figures can describe. Throughout the whole year of 2020, authorities alerted the Chinese government that the monetary policies enacted would cause major financial imbalances. The finance minister Lou Jiwei harshly criticized Chinese financial regulators late last year, affirming they were ignoring dangerous systemic risks. During a State Council meeting, the government cabinet specifically demanded a reduction in the government’s debt level. “Governments at all levels must tighten their belts,” the statement says. Moreover, Beijing has also ordered "all levels of government across China to lower their debt levels."

A major investigation into local government’s implicit debt has started after officials began scrutinizing states' balance sheets to detail local assets and liabilities and perform budget cuts in anticipation of the government’s debt-reduction campaign. They have found massive amounts of off-budget loan guarantees and other commitments and reported that, all together, local governments had 14.8 trillion yuan of hidden debt last year alone, and the figure is expected to rise even further as control agencies dig deeper to find buried liabilities. Tianfeng Securities estimated in a study that the actual size of local government hidden debt could be way over 40 trillion yuan.

The main driver of the huge implicit spending was the pressure placed upon local governments to make infrastructure investments and boost economic growth during the health-crisis-induced recession. However, the central government wasn't expecting states to resort to off-budget borrowing to achieve their goals. According to Liu Lei, a senior researcher at the National Institution for Finance and Development, state officials will continue to find ways to "increase hidden debt because they are still under pressure to expand investment”.

That is to say, the many decades relying on fiscal spending have increased overall debt risks. Even when attempting to curb the debt load, the government is bound to engage in extra spending to meet its economic plans. In view of the size of this uncontrollable bubble, Beijing was forced to sound the alarm for a potential credit crunch and warned regional banks to brace for a tidal wave of bad debt. Regional banks are worried that the coming wave of nonperforming debt will undermine the financial health of the vulnerable lenders. Even more concerningly, the imminent credit crunch can jeopardize the stability of China’s financial system, as the debt has been bought by all kinds of financial institutions, including bank, brokerages and trust funds. In other words, this could set the stage for a dramatic collapse on the country's $50 trillion financial system.

And given that China is still dealing with lots of headwinds, uncertainties brought on by the sanitary outbreak, and global economic issues that are spilling over into the nation's economy, if authorities take a wrong turn when addressing this matter, we may soon find ourselves in the middle of another brutal global financial crisis. Only this time, the two biggest economic forces of the planet will be simultaneously collapsing, and they won't be there to bail out the rest of the world."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Musical Interlude: Celine Dion & Josh Groban, "Live, "The Prayer"

Full screen!

Celine Dion & Josh Groban, "Live, "The Prayer"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"These are galaxies of the Hercules Cluster, an archipelago of island universes a mere 500 million light-years away. Also known as Abell 2151, this cluster is loaded with gas and dust rich, star-forming spiral galaxies but has relatively few elliptical galaxies, which lack gas and dust and the associated newborn stars. The colors in this remarkably deep composite image clearly show the star forming galaxies with a blue tint and galaxies with older stellar populations with a yellowish cast.

The sharp picture spans about 3/4 degree across the cluster center, corresponding to over 6 million light-years at the cluster's estimated distance. Diffraction spikes around brighter foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy are produced by the imaging telescope's mirror support vanes. In the cosmic vista many galaxies seem to be colliding or merging while others seem distorted - clear evidence that cluster galaxies commonly interact. In fact, the Hercules Cluster itself may be seen as the result of ongoing mergers of smaller galaxy clusters and is thought to be similar to young galaxy clusters in the much more distant, early Universe.”

-  http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140625.html

"A Realistic Attitude..."

"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."

- Philip José Farmer

"It May Be Necessary..."

"You may encounter many defeats, but you must 

not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to

 encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, 

what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it."

- Maya Angelou

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "I Want A Lot"

"I Want A Lot"

"You see, I want a lot.

Perhaps I want everything:

the darkness that comes with every infinite fall

and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing

and are raised to the rank of prince

by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces

that so work and feel thirst...

You have not grown old, and it is not too late

to dive into your increasing depths

where life calmly gives out its own secret."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Blind to Billionaire, PM 3/24/21: "New Update! $1,400 Stimulus Check"

Blind to Billionaire, PM 3/24/21:

"New Update! $1,400 Stimulus Check"

"This is an update on the third stimulus check otherwise known as the $1400 stimulus check for Social Security, SSDI, SSI, VA and direct express." IRS never received authorization forms from Social Security! 70 million possibly affected. FUBAR, indeed...

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/24/21: "Updates; No! It Is NOT MY FAULT That They Blocked The Suez Canal"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/24/21:

"Updates; No! It Is NOT MY FAULT That They Blocked The Suez Canal"

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

This was not an "accident"...

"Ever Given, the Giant Ship Blocking Suez Canal, 

Paralyzes Trade for Second Day"

"Tugs and diggers have so far failed to dislodge a massive container ship stuck in the Suez Canal on Wednesday, increasing the chances of prolonged delays in what is arguably the world’s most important waterway. Work to re-float the ship was suspended until Thursday morning in Egypt, shipping agent Inchcape said, citing the Suez Canal Authority. Dredgers are still trying to loosen the vessel before any attempt to pull it out, the ship’s manager said.

It’s taxing to even grasp how big this ship is. About a quarter mile long (400 meters) and weighing in at 200,000 metric tons, its sheer size is overwhelming the efforts to dig it out. A huge yellow excavator, itself about twice as tall as its driver, looked like child’s toy parked next to the ship’s bulking bow.

The situation has gotten so desperate that an elite salvage squad is due to arrive Thursday to work on prising the Ever Given from the bank of the canal, where it’s blocking oceangoing carriers that haul everything from oil to consumer goods.

About 12% of global trade goes through the canal, making it so strategic that world powers have fought over the waterway since it was completed in 1869. For now, all that traffic is backed up with the Ever Given aground in the southern part of the canal, creating another setback for global supply chains already strained by the e-commerce boom linked to the pandemic.

“The Suez Canal blockage comes at a particularly unhelpful time,” said Greg Knowler, European editor at JOC Group, which is part of IHS Markit Ltd. “Even a two-day delay would further add to the supply chain disruption slowing the delivery of cargo to businesses across the U.K. and Europe.”

The incident began on Tuesday when strong winds blasted through the region and kicked up sands along the banks of the 120-mile-long canal, which connects the Mediterranean in the north with the Red Sea in the south. The waterway is narrow - less than 675 feet wide (205 meters) in some places - and can be difficult to navigate when there’s poor visibility.

But Ever Given stayed its course through the canal, on its way to Rotterdam from China. As gusts that reached as high as 46 miles an hour swept up dust around it, the crew lost control of ship and it careened sideways into a sandy embankment, blocking nearly the entirety of the channel." 

"The Hole Is Already Too Deep"

"The Hole Is Already Too Deep"

by Brian Maher

"A man shovels himself deep into a hole. He then wishes to climb out. What must he do first? He must stop the digging. Yet the United States government has shoveled itself into a $28 trillion hole. How does it plan to rise out of it? By digging deeper… and deeper… and deeper. Within one year… the United States government has shoveled up nearly $6 trillion of “pandemic relief.”

$6 trillion is plenty fantastic - nearly one-third 2019 GDP. And consider: The inflation-adjusted cost of America’s overseas jousts - 1917 through 2021 - runs to $7.9 trillion… combined. Thus we find: The latest year of butter-buying approximates one entire century of gun-buying. Bloomberg: "In inflation-adjusted dollars, the U.S. spent about $4.1 trillion waging World War II. It also spent more than $300 billion each on World War I and the Korean War, and $738 billion on the Vietnam War. The bill for the wars the U.S. has waged in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is $2.3 trillion and counting. All told, the U.S. has spent about $7.9 trillion on warfare since World War I."

At Least War Costs Crushed the Axis: But last year’s spending did not put boots on feet. It did not put rifles in hands. It did not put workers in factories. It did not scotch Hitler… Mussolini… Tojo. The prior year’s spending instead put feet up on furniture and channel changers in hands. It put workers not in factories but on couches. That is, the last year’s spending paid men not to produce - but to lounge - and loaf.

Does a nation grow in wealth by producing less? We are unaware of any historical example. Professional men insisted the idleness was necessary to “stop the spread.” Men of action may have been required to knock off a Hitler, they allowed. But men of inaction are required to rout the virus. Government needed to support these heroic couch-loungers in their idleness. Hence the multiple issuances of “stimulus” cheques. But how much stimulation was necessary? Our former colleague David Stockman had a run at the numbers...

$6 Trillion to Fill a $274 Billion Hole: Mr. Stockman found that: "Through December 2020... incomes dropped merely 3.4% from their pre-pandemic (February 2020) heights - $276 billion in all." Yet the steam shovels swung into fevered action... The federal government has undertaken a mighty $6 trillion excavation project to fill a $274 billion hole. Mr. Stockman: "The Washington politicians are [throwing] nigh onto $6 trillion at a $274 billion hole in the nation’s wage bucket. That’s a solution 22X bigger than the putative problem!" 22 times!

Meantime, our agents report worrying whispers… Small businesses cannot attract labor. That is because prospective candidates are hauling in more from loafing than from the hard toil of work. Who can fault them? Who would plunge himself into drudgery for $8 the hour when his government will hand him $12 to loaf?

Nearly 8 Times the Size of the Hole: GDP, meantime, absorbed a 3.6% blow across the same 10-month space (February-December 2020). But Q4 2020 GDP jumped 4.1%. Q4 2019 GDP exceeded it by only $270 billion. Add lost wages to lost GDP. Mr. Stockman finds the $6 trillion dig fills all the holes - several times over: "Even if you want to count everything, including losses from the $2.5 trillion of imputed activity in the GDP, the pending $6 trillion of Everything Bailouts is 7.7X the size of the problem!"

And so the fellow asks - as we ask: "Why does Washington have the right to burden future taxpayers with permanent debt service payments in order to make whole a $276 billion loss of income and 3.4% inconvenience among taxpayers today?"

Mr. Stockman knows the answer, of course. In two words, it is special interests. In one word, it is politics.

Gimme, Gimme! Teachers, corporations, unions, Amtrak, governments state and local… the list runs yet... All are angling to get a bucket in the stream, to get a snout in the trough, to catch a penny… to pick a taxpayer’s pocket or two. And the party presently directing the show is eager to grant them access. There is the next election to consider - after all - and the election after that.

We believe Politico hooks onto something when it claims: "A radical change in the social fabric of the United States has become a reality - and with it, an opportunity for the Democratic Party no one could have imagined 50 days ago."

And so the shoveling continues at a rate truly astonishing. In reminder: The federal government shoveled out more money this past year than to wage the entire Second World War. Will the digging lift the gross domestic product… as the diggers claim? That is, will a deeper hole bring the nation up higher? You know the answer, of course...

Nonproductive Debt: The economy may take an initial step up. But we hazard it will prove transient and fleeting. Each borrowed dollar packs less and less wallop than the last. That is especially true when that debt funds consumption. That is, debt digs holes when it is nonproductive - which much of today’s debt is.

Nonproductive debt impoverishes the future to gratify the present. Mr. Michael Lebowitz of Real Investment Advice: "When debt is used productively, the interest and principal are covered with higher profits and sustained economic activity. Even better, income beyond the cost of the debt makes the nation more prosperous.

Conversely, unproductive debt may provide a one-time spark of economic activity, but it yields little to no residual income to service it going forward. Ultimately it creates an economic headwind as servicing the debt in the future replaces productive investment and or consumption… The U.S. economy is overly dependent on unproductive debt. Not surprisingly, secular growth rates have been trending lower for three decades. The massive amount of unproductive debt added in the last year will only further reduce future growth rates."

But aren’t the crackerjacks of the Federal Reserve aware of the central dilemma? The Fed is keenly aware of this weakness but refuses to acknowledge the problem or incentivize productive debt. Instead, they tout the temporary economic benefits of more debt with exceedingly low interest rates. In doing so, they egg on speculation and consumption, not productive debt.

Each economic “recovery” since 2000 has grown progressively weaker… as progressively more debt has gone heaping on. We discern no reason why the present recovery will break the evil trend - and every reason why the evils will continue. Meantime, the authorities continue digging us deeper and deeper into the impossible depths… with no end in prospect… Until they dig clear through to China..."

- dailyreckoning.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Marysville, Ohio, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

“A Nation Without Faces”

“A Nation Without Faces”

by George Gilder

“While flying home, I received a serious warning from an attractive Alaska Airlines Flight Attendant. I smiled but she did not have a sense of humor to go with the buxom body I ogled in the absence of any way to see her face. I was told that I was seriously jeopardizing the safety of guests and employees by my failure to fully cover my nose with my face mask. The human brain is geared to respond to faces, but in the absence of faces, less refined mental responses arise.

I tried to explain that as an 80-year-old man, I use my nose to breathe. I guess I was feeling facially feisty, as an after-effect of my recent trip to Moscow, Idaho, where I was interviewed by Pastor Douglas Wilson on his Man Rampant interview show. His healthy congregation of 1,400 gathers unmasked, with Wilson maintaining that its worship services are a protest demonstration protected by the First Amendment. But “Man Rampant” or not, in these dark days, I do not recommend talking back to the healthcare nomenklatura.

Masks Don’t Stop the Virus: Alaska Airlines upholds the prevailing fiction that “wearing face coverings significantly reduces transmission of the COVID-19 virus.” To a virus thousands of times smaller than the mesh of a mask, a cloth appears like an immense lattice of large and completely open windows and doors. The cloth confines larger bacteria, aerosols, and sputum near receptive surfaces, such as your eyes, nose, and mouth and thus cultivates both mental and physical disease.

Its chief effect is to make politicians and bureaucrats feel important. A thorough study by Swiss researchers pored through dozens of peer-reviewed analyses on the impact of masks and found no significant benefits and several downsides. Oh well. Such evidence is no longer relevant in America. Almost utterly suppressed are the key facts in the central debate in our politics.

Comply or Else! Handing me an alarming yellow card, Alaska informed me: “This is your final notice to comply with our policy.” Reading on anxiously to determine whether I would be arrested on arrival at O’Hare or whether I might instead be cast out of the plane before landing, I learned my fate. “If you do not [comply], you will not be permitted to fly with us again, for as long as our policy remains in effect. This suspension will occur immediately on landing, and will include cancellation of any remaining portion of your itinerary (connecting and return flights).”

This may result in my confinement for 14 days in a quarantine near O’Hare, under the wanton violation of the interstate commerce clause by posturing governors playing their silly tit-for-tat games.

“Put Your Mask Back On!” The Alaska Airlines flight was rather full and several people wanted to shift seats in order to sit with their friends. But because of the masks these ordinarily routine negotiations were unsuccessful. Amid the noise of the plane, and missing the usual context of facial signals, people from different cultures could not understand what each other were saying or feeling.

One young Asian woman in an aisle seat took off her mask to make herself clearer to the young man in the window seat who was seeking to move. Under normal circumstances being addressed by a beautiful face would be a pleasant experience. But he recoiled, barking, “Put your mask back on!” The woman in front of her who was seeking to move next to the man at the window then turned around to join the fray. “Please put on your mask before you speak to me!” she exclaimed. By the time the plane took off no one was in their wanted seat and everyone was seething.

Call the Police! Later during the flight, the man in the window seat needed to get up to use the bathroom. The young woman on the aisle was plunged into a paralyzed state and seemed unable to move or speak. She just sat in a trance looking straight ahead through glazed eyes. He eventually called the flight attendants and they clumbsily, facelessly, forced her to move.

Greeting the Asian woman on arrival was a cluster of Chicago police, who, surrounded by faceless people speaking in a blur, could not understand what had happened. The woman had disrupted the plane by removing her mask and later refusing to move. She was in the wrong, but it was an utterly unnecessary fiasco.

Put it down as another incident of mental illness, miscommunication, conflict, and resentment caused by the egregious overreach of politicians reducing their constituents to a faceless mass of fearful and fractious non-entities. But I don’t really blame Alaska Airlines, or the poor faceless flight attendants. It’s an effect of runaway media and power mad politicians gratuitously attacking a crucial dimension of the personal identity of fully healthy American citizens.

But hey, I could be wrong. The U.S. population could be entirely demented and actually imagine that a mask with meshes a thousand times larger than a virus could fend off disease. But I think Americans are smarter than that. But it’s not just politicians that are mask crazy. Many of the smartest people in the world are falling for the COVID scam.

Cautionary – or Stupid? Nassim Nicholas Taleb is surely brilliant about nonlinearities, black swans, anti-fragility, compounding effects, and other mathematical phenomena. He has many arguments about the compounding and nonlinear gains of mask usage. But he is an upholder of the cautionary principle, which expounds the idea that any possibly existential threat (meteors, or plagues, or climate changes that might destroy human life) justifies any remedy.

Taleb previously regarded climate change, for example, as a possibly planetary threat that readily justifies a complete, vast and costly transformation of the energy economy. In other words, he recommends a succession of costly remedies for various theoretical threats. He does not grasp that a series of such remedies will reliably inflict a compounding paralysis on the world economy.

As smart as Taleb is, he is stupid about the cautionary principle. On the basis of the possible lethality of COVID, he justifies lockdowns and masks that collectively are causing a global depression. The likely result will be a vast spread of starvation, taking a likely 280 million lives according to the U.N.

Taleb may understand more than he confesses in his case for masks. He’s sealing off his own face in goggles. Taleb apparently knows that ordinary masks offer no assured benefits. He just hopes that they have enough effect so that with everyone wearing them, the benefits will compound into non-linear gains. I doubt it.

A Nation Without Faces: The human race has thrived, not through vast efforts to stop every notional catastrophe, on which few scientists agree, but through the systematic taking of entrepreneurial risks. It is freedom and creativity, not draconian mandates that ultimately protect humans from disaster.

A nation without faces cannot be free or civilized. A nation without faces cannot even talk to one another. We cannot rise to seek a common truth epitomized by the face of a unitary God. We are consigned to C.S. Lewis’s mythical nation of “Glome” in his novel “‘Till We Have Faces.” Glome is a barbaric, pre-Christian world, where the heroine learns that we cannot grasp the will of the gods or the nature of the universe, “till we have faces.” I’m just looking to the day when we can all have faces again.”

- dailyreckoning.com

"Oh, the Places You'll Go!"

"Oh, the Places You'll Go!"

by Dr. Seuss

"Congratulations!

Today is your day.

You're off to Great Places!

You're off and away!

You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

any direction you choose.

You're on your own. And you know what you know.

And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.

You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care.

About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."

With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,

you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any

you'll want to go down.

In that case, of course,

you'll head straight out of town.

It's opener there

in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen

and frequently do

to people as brainy

and footsy as you.

And then things start to happen,

don't worry. Don't stew.

Just go right along.

You'll start happening too.

OH!

THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!

You'll be on y our way up!

You'll be seeing great sights!

You'll join the high fliers

who soar to high heights.

You won't lag behind, because you'll have the speed.

You'll pass the whole gang and you'll soon take the lead.

Wherever you fly, you'll be best of the best.

Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don't.

Because, sometimes, you won't.

I'm sorry to say so

but, sadly, it's true

that Bang-ups

and Hang-ups

can happen to you.

You can get all hung up

in a prickle-ly perch.

And your gang will fly on.

You'll be left in a Lurch.

You'll come down from the Lurch

with an unpleasant bump.

And the chances are, then,

that you'll be in a Slump.

And when you're in a Slump,

you're not in for much fun.

Un-slumping yourself

is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.

Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.

A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!

Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?

How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...

or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?

Or go around back and sneak in from behind?

Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,

for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused

that you'll start in to race

down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace

and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,

headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come, or a plane to go

or the mail to come, or the rain to go

or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

or the waiting around for a Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite

or waiting for the wind to fly a kite

or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting.

NO!

That's not for you!

Somehow you'll escape

all that waiting and staying

You'll find the bright places

where Boom Bands are playing.

With banner flip-flapping,

once more you'll ride high!

Ready for anything under the sky.

Ready because you're that kind of a guy!

Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done!

There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.

And the magical things you can do with that ball

will make you the winning-est winner of all.

Fame! You'll be as famous as famous can be,

with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don't

Because, sometimes they won't.

I'm afraid that some times

you'll play lonely games too.

Games you can't win

'cause you'll play against you.

All Alone!

Whether you like it or not,

Alone will be something

you'll be quite a lot.

And when you're alone, there's a very good chance

you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.

There are some, down the road between hither and yon,

that can scare you so much you won't want to go on.

But on you will go

though the weather be foul.

On you will go

though your enemies prowl.

On you will go

though the Hakken-Kraks howl.

Onward up many

a frightening creek,

though your arms may get sore

and your sneakers may leak.

On and on you will hike,

And I know you'll hike far

and face up to your problems

whatever they are.

You'll get mixed up, of course,

as you already know.

You'll get mixed up

with many strange birds as you go.

So be sure when you step.

Step with care and great tact

and remember that Life's

a Great Balancing Act.

Just never foget to be dexterous and deft.

And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed!

(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So...

be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray

or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,

You're off to the Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting.

So...get on your way!"

"Get The Facts!"

“What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history” -  what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!”

- Robert A. Heinlein

And always remember...

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,

however improbable, must be the truth."

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"

"How It Really Is"

 

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/24/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/24/21"

○

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

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

- John Maynard Keynes

○

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/24/21:

"Capital Goods Orders CRATER. 

Crude Oil POPS. The Creature Feature Continues"

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

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

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

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

○

A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

March 24th to 25th, Updated Daily 

○

Financial Stress Index

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

○

Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

○
Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

And now, the End Game...

○

Oh yeah...

"Katastrophenhausse"

"Katastrophenhausse"

by Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND– "The Germans have marvelous words for things. Katastrophenhausse, for example. Even without knowing the language, you know you’re not going to like it. Yesterday, colleague Tom Dyson reported seeing a glimpse of it coming: "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."

Tom quotes The Wall Street Journal for further detail: "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."

Crack-Up Boom: You can inflate a tire. You can inflate a balloon. Or you can inflate the money supply… and an economy. It’s this last form of inflation that leads to Katastrophenhausse. It loosens the moorings of a society… so that it is soon floating high above the ground… in a kind of miracle fog, where everything seems possible – even replacing real jobs and real earnings with fake money…And then it crashes.

It was Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises who called it a “Katastrophenhausse,” usually translated as a “crack-up boom.” As you can see, there are two parts to it – the boom… and then the crack-up. Lottery winners often go through a similar phenomenon. First, they get a lot of money. Then, they lose their wives, their jobs, their friends… and finally, their money, too.

So did the Japanese enjoy a catastrophic triumph when they bombed Pearl Harbor. They celebrated for six months. Then, the Battle of Midway marked the beginning of the “Katastrophen” phase. Four years later, Yokohama, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and dozens of other cities were smoking ruins… with 3 million dead, including about 600,000 civilians.

Catastrophic Decision: And now, with the printing presses running night and day, Americans feel like young boys whose school has just burned down. They are enjoying a truant’s delight, a vacation from real life… a brief interlude leavened by counterfeiting.

Last year, the American government – federal and state – made one of the most catastrophic decisions in history, causing mass panic and destroying millions of jobs and small businesses. Then, by printing trillions of new money, it gave the impression that no real harm had been done by the lockdowns… and that the economy can be rescued by printing even more money. According to a recent Bloomberg report – mentioned yesterday – the Biden Bunch is planning to go “Full Katastrophenhausse,” spending another $3 trillion it doesn’t have, in addition to the $1.9 trillion it didn’t have.

Two Sides: Investors are watching… either warily or greedily. On the one hand, older investors are fearful that rising bond yields (up more than 200% since last August) and “inflation” sightings (currently at their highest level in 12 years) will force the Federal Reserve to react with more normal, tighter money policies.

On the other hand, younger players think there is nothing to worry about. Most of them weren’t even born when the last serious bout of inflation occurred in the 1970s. They believe either that inflation is never a problem… or that it is a good thing; it drives up stock prices. (More about that tomorrow…)

Catastrophic Prediction: Here at the Diary, however, we think they are both wrong. In our view, inflation is a problem, and the Fed will not be able to control it. We’ve already gone too far, stayed too long… And now, we can’t get back. Like the Japanese fleet, we wait to be sunk. And here is our prediction. Please cut this out… and put it on your refrigerator. Refer back to it… if it proves prescient. If not, kindly toss it in the waste can…

The first stage of the coming Katastrophenhausse is most likely the “inflation scare.” Scottish economist Russell Napier says that inflation has become not just cyclical but structural. It no longer rises with a growing economy (more demand), but as a matter of government policy. He sees a U.S. inflation rate of 4% by some time next year. That will be enough to set off alarms.

The Fed will make a limp gesture toward “normalizing” interest rates and slowing its asset purchases. Then, stocks and bonds will crash, as investors’ fear puts an end to the Bubble Epoch. This will all happen very quickly. Investors will anticipate Fed action… the Fed will react timidly, hesitantly… Market prices will fall… There will be weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. People will fear deflation/depression/defunding and deleveraging…

And then, all Hell will break loose.

Whatever It Takes: It will then become obvious that either the nation endures the Katastrophe it has coming… or the feds make it worse by once again printing up more fake money to try to stall it. We know how that will turn out…

The politicians will be out in force, promising to “protect hardworking families.” Treasury secretary Janet Yellen will tell Congress it needs to act immediately, “or we may not have an economy on Monday.” Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell will pledge to do “whatever it takes” to keep the jig up. But none of it – neither the BS words nor the BS money – will stop the crack-up.

More to come…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

Greg Hunter, "They Are Hiding the Losses"

"They Are Hiding the Losses"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter has been predicting the financial system is going to go down sooner than later. He says the signs are the lies being told to the public to try to hold the system together. Holter explains, “If you look at everything, nothing is natural. Everything is contrived. We are lied to about pretty much everything 24/7. They lied about everything regarding Covid. They have lied about the election. They are lying about the unemployment rate. They are lying about inflation. They are lying about the true amount of total debt outstanding. They are lying about everything. And one other tidbit, 36% of all dollars outstanding have been created now, were created in the last 12 months. Oh, and the Fed is no longer going to publish M2. How can you make a business decision if you don’t know how much money is outstanding?”

This leads us to all the digital dollars sloshing around and Crypto currencies. Holter says, “Crypto currencies are a perceived exit from the system. They are perceived as a safe haven. If Bitcoin, which is nothing but digital air, can become $65,000 per unit, what can something real become worth? What these crypto currencies are doing is illustrating a debasement of all the fiat currencies.”

Bill Holter says big loses in the financial world are being hidden from the public. Take real estate, for example. Holter points out, “The average mall in the United States is appraised 60% lower than it was a year ago. That’s a 60% drop. It’s now worth 40%. There is debt on these things they owe. These malls were not bought, built and created out of cash. They were created with credit. So, now, the underlying collateral has crumbled, but because the bankruptcies, foreclosures and evictions have a moratorium on them, from single family homes all the way up to the malls, you are not actually getting to see the real pricing. The devastation has happened, but it’s not become public - yet. 11 million houses across the country are behind on their mortgage payments - 11 million houses. Putting that moratorium on means all that does is hide what really happened. The central banks have become the buyers of last resort. If it were not for the central banks (printing massive amounts of money), it would be game over. It’s not natural for the central banks to do what they are doing, but they have to because the system cannot survive without life support. This economy is a patient that has been on life support for more than 12 years.”

In closing, Holter says, “I have no idea on the timing. Could it be in April? Yes, and it could be tomorrow. It is mathematical that the system will implode because there is more debt outstanding than can ever be repaid. That tells you there has to be a default. Either a default of non-payment or, the more likely and more politically acceptable, just smoke the currencies. Make the debt payable by devaluing them by 40% or 90%. Currencies are going to get smoked.”

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with financial

 writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter of JSMineset.com.

- https://rumble.com/