Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/31/21:
“S&P 500 Hits New Record High;
Trillions In More Debt Will Support The Market”
So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
"America’s Cities Are Being Turned Into Crime-Ridden War Zones, And Murder Rates Are Way Up Again In 2021"
"America’s Cities Are Being Turned Into Crime-Ridden
War Zones, And Murder Rates Are Way Up Again In 2021"
by Michael Snyder
"The wealthy are reveling in their giant mountains of money, but meanwhile our society is literally coming apart at the seams all around us. The stock market has been hovering near all-time record highs, and for those at the very top of the economic pyramid these may seem like the best of times. But for most Americans, the “good old days” are a long distant memory. More than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed over the past year, poverty is absolutely exploding all around us, and crime rates are shooting higher at an unprecedented rate. In fact, one study of 34 big U.S. cities found that their murder rates rose by an average of 30 percent in 2020…
"A study by the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice found that murders increased by 30% across 34 large U.S. cities. In some areas, carjackings, robberies, shootings, sexual assaults and violence have become so common that it seems like the crime literally never stops. Unless you have a death wish, there are certain parts of Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore that you should never enter night or day. If you doubt me, just go wander the streets of the worst neighborhoods of those cities and see what happens to you.
This was supposed to be a year when crime rates began to return to normal, but instead they are on the rise again. One study that looked at 37 large U.S. cities found that murder rates are up by an average of 18 percent so far in 2021… "The big increase in the murder rate in the United States in 2020 has carried over to 2021. A sample of 37 cities with data available for the first three months of this year shows murder up 18 percent relative to the same period last year."
What is truly frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get in America from here on out. So if murder rates are spiking this much under relatively good conditions, what will our cities look like when things get really crazy?
Some of the crimes that we are witnessing are almost too horrible for words. For example, just consider what just happened to a 12-year-old boy in Miami… "A suspect in a black car kidnapped the boy at about 2 a.m. early Saturday morning from a Miami street, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department. He drove a few blocks, raped the boy, and then shoved him out of the car and drove off, police said. A good Samaritan on a bike near the scene of the crime came to the boy’s rescue. He was bleeding from the head and said he had been shot."
How sick do you have to be in order to do something like that? Sadly, I could write about nightmarish crimes such as this every single day of the week if I wanted to, because they happen constantly.
Much of the crime boom is being fueled by gangs. There are more than 100,000 gang members living in the city of Chicago alone, and a steady stream of illegal immigrants ensures that the gangs will always have an influx of new recruits. Securing our borders would go a long way toward solving this problem, but we refuse to do that.
Just recently, a sheriff in Texas took a reporter from the Daily Mail down to “the easiest illegal border crossing along the Rio Grande”… "The crossing point is on private property where an abandoned house sits on a quiet rural street that runs parallel to the Rio Grande, about 5 miles out of town from Del Rio, Texas, 150 miles southwest of San Antonio. Law enforcement has nicknamed it ‘Border Lawn.’ ‘It’s the easiest illegal border crossing along the Rio Grande,’ Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.
When the river is low, immigrants can wade across the Rio Grande in about five minutes. Authorities know that hordes of people come across the border at this spot each week, but they won’t stop it.
Of course any immigrants that are detained need to be held somewhere, and facilities at the border are already packed beyond overflowing. In particular, the infamous facility in Donna, Texas is already holding more than 10 times more migrants than it was designed to hold… "The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) holding facility in Donna, Texas, is supposed to house no more than 250 migrants during the coronavirus pandemic. On Tuesday, the tent complex was holding more than 4,100 migrants, including 3,200 unaccompanied children, according to Oscar Escamilla, a Border Patrol official in the Rio Grande Valley who briefed reporters during the first press tour of a CBP facility under President Biden."
So much of the immigration debate is focused on the unfortunate children that are being held in places such as this, but that is just a drop in the bucket. Each week, thousands of grown men illegally cross the border without being detained at all. Many of those grown men end up in our core urban areas, and with few legitimate employment prospects available many of them turn to crime.
In an article that I published yesterday entitled “We Have Never Seen A Home Buying Frenzy Quite Like This”, I discussed the fact that we have seen a mass exodus from our core urban areas over the past year. Millions of Americans have been looking to buy homes in desirable rural and suburban locations, and this has pushed housing prices into the stratosphere.
Today, I came across another example of this phenomenon. 122 offers were made on a 1,400 square foot home that was listed for sale in Citrus Heights, California in just one weekend…"A Citrus Heights home in a quiet cul-de-sac received 122 offers in one weekend on the market. The 1,400 square feet home has three bedrooms, two baths and a spacious backyard with a swimming pool and an asking price of $399,900.00."
Could you imagine paying $400,000 for a house that is just 1,400 square feet in size? The real estate agent that listed this property was astounded to receive so many offers, because it wasn’t underpriced at all… “People would think that it was underpriced. It was not underpriced. It was straight on with the comps,” said Deb Brittan, the listing agent for the property. “I had hoped, I thought, maybe if we get 20 offers that would be amazing.” As for the couple that sold the house, they don’t need it anymore because they are moving to Idaho.
As conditions in the United States continue to deteriorate, we will continue to see people flock to rural and suburban communities at an unprecedented rate. So if you are planning to move, I would not wait. Millions of Americans have already been priced out of the market, and the feeding frenzy is not going to subside any time soon."
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/31/21"
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/31/21"
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"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
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"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/31/21:
"It's All A Game. Bitcoin Going Mainstream.
10yr Yield Drops, Dollar Lower."
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:
CNN Fear And Greed Index:
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
March 31st to April 1st, Updated Daily
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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."
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Daily Job Cuts
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And now, the End Game...
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Oh yeah...
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
"Commercial Real Estate Collapse Plunges Property Value By 75% As Debt Wave Trigger Mass Foreclosures"
"Commercial Real Estate Collapse Plunges Property
Value By 75% As Debt Wave Trigger Mass Foreclosures"
by Epic Economist
"The commercial real estate collapse is rapidly accelerating, and economists are warning that the sector is about to suffer a double-whammy with the reopening of the economy. After almost one year of experiencing extensive losses - with hundreds of thousands of tenants who went bankrupt due to government-mandated shutdowns being ruthlessly pushed out of the market, property owners and lenders haven't felt the full force of the impacts of mounting rental delinquencies and a dramatic surge of vacant spaces. The worst is yet to come, they say, as the increase in people working from home is resulting in a major decline in demand for office space, while hiked online purchases are triggering more store closures of brick-and-mortar retailers at shopping centers. As both segments continue to struggle, occupancy rates may never return to previous levels, which in turn, is causing property owners to lose their ability to meet their loan payments, and lenders are at the brink of facing a tidal wave of bad debt amid new working trends and a changing economic landscape.
One of the most likely causes of this drastic downfall is the financial distortion caused by the Fed’s response to the current recession. Before the health crisis started, corporate debt was already skyrocketing, and that was driven by loose monetary policies designed to drive borrowing. However, as several businesses unexpectedly went under, leaving the market without paying what they owed to their landlords, the commercial real estate market was buried in debt, and consequently, property values are falling like a rock while a significant rise in foreclosures is already being registered. Much more distress is ahead, and that's what we're going to expose in this video.
The rationalization of floorspace might be fatal for shopping malls. Dan McNamara, a principal at hedge fund MP Securitized Credit Partners said that mall liquidations are expected to continue as 31 of the 39 malls in CMBX 6 are currently impaired. According to recent reports, malls are registering value losses of up to 75%.
On top of that, the fact that Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, the owner of twenty-seven malls across the country is in desperate need of selling anything it can to lessen the burden of its $32 billion debt load won't help mall valuations at all. Consequently, as the commercial real estate market gets plagued by too much debt and not enough profitable assets, banks are worrying that soon the financial system may get overloaded with a tidal wave of distressed loans.
As for the collapse of the office market, while a tech exodus is happening in San Francisco, after Oracle left the Bay area and headed to Austin, Texas, the total vacant office space in the region, including sublease and direct lease, is now of 13.9 million square feet, a new record, exceeding the levels seen during the dot-com bust and the financial crisis. Roughly 20% of corporate executives, or one-in-five said they plan to reduce office space in 2021, according to the American Institute of CPAs survey.
In New York, the financial district is already registering an enormous glut of office space. In Times Square alone, there's $1.1 billion worth of property loans now considered distressed, according to CREDiQ. Moreover, Federal Reserve data showed that, in the third quarter of 2020, U.S. commercial property debt jumped to an all-time high of $3.06 trillion, and as it seems that borrowers will leave this debt to the lenders, the commercial real estate collapse is threatening to trigger a banking crisis and result in the loss of billions of dollars.
Additionally, according to a new report from ATTOM Data Solutions, foreclosures of commercial properties jumped 16% between January and February, and in 29 states, they're still trending upward. Some say the commercial real estate collapse is a silent crisis no one seems to be paying attention to. Needless to say, that's a particularly dangerous situation because the entire market is reliant on banks, and the occurrence of a banking crisis on top of the looming simultaneous crash of the stock, housing and bond markets will undoubtedly push the United States over the edge.* As our businesses continue to die with each passing day, and both our financial markets and our economy have fallen into a ruinous debt spiral, and we should all be watching very closely to the next developments of this catastrophic downturn, here, on Epic Economist."
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They write "at the brink of facing a tidal wave of bad debt."
Yeah, something like this...
*multiple globally interconnected tidal waves.
Stipendium peccati mors est.
Full screen recommended.
Greg Hunter, "CV-19 Vaccine Warning – CV-19 Cure – Must Watch Videos"
"CV-19 Vaccine Warning – CV-19 Cure – Must Watch Videos"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"The Covid 19 (CV-19) headlines out so far this week are downright confusing and contradictory. One says “Covid-19’s Fourth Wave is hitting the U.S Hard.” Another says, “Texas Hits Record Low Covid Cases 3 Weeks After Lifting All Pandemic Restrictions.” What are you to believe? The mainstream media (MSM), CDC and most politicians have been lying about almost everything. The idea they are pushing that only a vaccine is the answer to what many people call a “Plandemic” is a huge lie. Let me prove it.
Please join Greg Hunter as he posts three videos: An introduction video by Hunter along with two “must watch” videos by top experts, so you can be informed about taking a vaccine (or not) or a treatment that can save your life. Big Tech, MSM and the CDC do not want you to hear what these experts have to say."
"There have been lots of reported problems with the so-called vaccines when, in fact, they are approved for “emergency use only” and, therefore, are “experimental.” This is not told to the public. Also, being kept from the public are the many reported problems after taking the shots. Some of these problems include, but are not limited to: blood clotting, sterilization of young women, miscarriages, Bell’s palsy and even death that far exceed death rates of many other vaccines - combined. It is also not explained to the public that this plan to fight CV-19 is simply a mass drug trial masquerading as some sort of vaccine. It is, in fact, “genetic engineering” where DNA is modified or changed. These are all sourceable medical facts that are provided by top medical doctors and even the “vaccine” manufacturers themselves. The most stunning fact is the vaccine makers have zero liability for the damage this experimental medical test causes. I have two videos I am embedding for you to see. The first, I am calling a “CV-19 Vaccine Warning.” (Please view this on Rumble as YouTube dislikes Rumble embeds. - CP)
Is vaccinating everyone on a global basis the right thing to do? Not according to one of the top virology experts in the world. His name is Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche. He is appealing to the World Health Organization (WHO) in the following video to stop these mass vaccinations immediately and to engage in public scientific debate on the best way to combat CV-19. Dr. Vanden Bossche says mass global vaccines are not the answer and gives a chilling reason why. If Big Tech gets its way, this urgent message from one of the world’s top virus doctors will never see the light of day. Please watch his 2 minute video I am calling a “CV-19 Vaccine Cry of Distress,” which contains a dire warning given to the WHO by Dr. Vanden Bossche below: (This is being embedded from YouTube, so you better watch it before they take this down.)
The second video, I am calling a “CV-19 Cure.” This video was taken off YouTube mid-March 2021 after tens of thousands of views. The video featured Dr. Pierre Kory during a Senate hearing in mid-December 2020 about alternative treatments to CV-19. Dr. Kory is an academic and expert in critical care. In his hearing, he is advising the use of the “miracle drug” called Ivermectin. Dr. Kory testifies that many peer reviewed medical studies say that Ivermectin will “cure CV-19” if taken long before people reach the hospital for treatment in dire condition. This video is less than 10 minutes long, and it is well worth your time." Please view this video here:
This is Greg Hunter, and I say, “The MSM is lying to you. I worked in the MSM for 9 years, and I can tell you it has really turned into a propaganda arm of the New World Order Globalists, Deep State, Democrats and even some Republicans too. I left CNN in 2008 and started USAWatchdog.com in 2009. If there is one thing I know how to do, it is to know what a verifiable reliable source is with top credentials. Please do your own research, and listen to the experts who put their reputations on the line to inform the public and save lives.”
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Related:
A Comment: This post, and others like it, could very well get this blog deleted like the original one was. This is a fight for our lives, folks, have to expect casualties. If that happens I'll instantly bounce back with version 3. No worries, mate! - CP
"Stop Buying Dumb Things; Bank Accounts Wiped Out; Home Prices Soar"
Jeremiah Babe,
"Stop Buying Dumb Things; Bank Accounts Wiped Out;
Home Prices Soar"
Gerald Celente, “Trends Journal: Dr. Strangevax, Vaccinate the World”
Gerald Celente,
“Trends Journal: Dr. Strangevax, Vaccinate the World”
Gerald's in fine form here... lol
Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind VII, "Reflection"
Full screen recommended for reflection, contemplation.
Liquid Mind VII, "Reflection"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Large, dusty, spiral galaxy NGC 4945 is seen edge-on near the center of this rich telescopic image. The field of view spans nearly 2 degrees, or about 4 times the width of the Full Moon, toward the expansive southern constellation Centaurus.
About 13 million light-years distant, NGC 4945 is almost the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. But X-ray and infrared observations reveal even more high energy emission and star formation in the core of NGC 4945. The other prominent galaxy in the field, NGC 4976, is an elliptical galaxy. Left of center, NGC 4976 is much farther away, at a distance of about 35 million light-years, and not physically associated with NGC 4945.”
"We Are All Alone..."
“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and – in spite of True Romance magazines – we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely – at least, not all the time – but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
- Hunter S. Thompson
“If your happiness depends on someone else, then you do have a problem.”
- Richard Bach
Chet Raymo, “The Silence”
“The Silence”
by Chet Raymo
“The hiding places of my power
Seem open; I approach, and then they close;
I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,
May scarcely see at all, and I would give,
While yet we may, as far as words can give,
A substance and a life to what I feel…”
“These few lines from Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” leapt off the page at me. They capture well enough what my life has become. All those years of teaching, of writing in the Boston Globe, were years of sharing public knowledge, knowledge that had been vetted by the scientific community. The work was not about me. The teacher was me, the writer was me, but what I taught and wrote was reliable, consensus knowledge of the world. A student in my classes or a reader of my newspaper columns would have been hard pressed to know my politics or my religion or the nature of the questions that came in the darkest hours of the night. And that is the way it should have been; that was my homage to objectivity.
Those were valuable years, years of building up a sturdy polder in the sea of mystery, a place to stand with a firmness of foot. And now, in retirement, with time on my hands- and on my mind- I find myself more inclined to explore what Wordsworth called “the hiding places of my power.” I approach. They close. I touch with my hand the surface of the pond that Pat wrote about the other day; my hand comes out of the depths to meet me. I see by glimpses. It is, I suppose, a kind of forgetting. With the forgetting comes a certain freshness. My fingertip touches the surface of the world from above and from below, and concentric circles spread outwards, rippling, like a soundless sound, and I struggle, in words, as best I can, to give a substance and a life to what I feel.
This does not mean, I trust, that I am going soft, finding supernaturalist religion or getting all New Age squishy as “age comes on.” I keep my feet planted on solid fact and read my weekly “Science” and “Nature” along with my Wordsworth. No, it is rather a simple freedom to explore the hiding places, attending to private particulars as opposed to public universals, listening for the small voice that whispers from the nooks and crannies of yet unassimilated reality.
There is a passage in “The Prelude” where a young Boy (the poet?), standing in evening air by the glimmering lake, makes a mimic hooting with his hands to his mouth and the owls answer. Twooo-twooo. And the reply. Twooo-twooo. Then, unaccountably, the answers cease. And in the silence the boy becomes more keenly aware than ever of water, rocks, and woods, and mountain torrents, “that uncertain heaven, received into the bosom of the steady lake.” Thoreau has something similar. He rejoiced in owls; their hoot, he said, was a sound well suited to swamps and twilight woods. The interval between the hoots was a deepened silence, suggesting, to Thoreau, “a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.” It is that that I now attend: the deepened silence between the hoots.”
"The Hand We're Dealt..."
“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”
- Mia Sheridan
“Touched With Fire”
“Touched With Fire”
by Paul Dalio
“My name is Paul Dalio. I’m a filmmaker, husband of my NYU film school classmate, father of two children and bipolar. Of these labels, the one I’m certain stands out in your mind is bipolar - and not in a good way. That’s no fault of your own, since you probably don’t know much about it other than what you’ve heard. I’m either right about this assumption or wrong about it. But either way, I’m certain of it because of my past experiences with the stigma that surrounds it.
So how do I deal with this label? I could remove the “I am” part to avoid it defining me and just say “I have” in which case I would have to add the word “disorder” to “bipolar,” which isn’t exactly the ideal fix. I could say I have a mental illness or am manic-depressive. But other than that, what label do I have to choose from that’s not a disorder, disease, illness or defect in my humanity?
The recent attempts to fight stigma have been to say “you are not your illness,” but I and others of my kind can’t swallow that because we can’t get around the fact that God weaved that illness into the fabric of our DNA, since bipolar is genetic and has been running through our family trees since the origin of our being.
I remember when I received the label at age 24. It was just after I could have sworn I saw God lift the veil and unfold the entire miracle of the universe before my eyes. I was thrown into a hospital, pumped full of drugs and came down only to be told that I wasn’t experiencing anything divine; I just triggered a lifelong illness that would swing me from psychotic manias to suicidal depressions with progressive intensity until I would most likely fall into the 1-in-4 suicide statistic - unless I took my meds, which made me feel no emotion.
If you can imagine missing feeling sad, it’s the only thing worse than pain. All every medical book had to offer was that if I stayed on these meds, I could live a “reasonably normal life.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I was pretty sure it sounded like “just get by.” So I stepped out of the hospital, knowing I wouldn’t be the sane person I used to be and not wanting to be this new human diseased me.
Six months later, I came across a book, "Touched with Fire", by Kay Jamison. It was the first medical text showing a tangible correlation between bipolar and artistic genius, profiling some of the greatest artists in history. Kay Jamison is a psychologist who in the middle of her time at UCLA went manic. She was going to hide it at first, afraid of how her psychiatric community would react, but she decided to be open about it and write books about it, one of which was "Touched with Fire."
For the first time, I heard words, shining right through every medical book’s thick printed clinical ink, describing something I could be proud to be. I was like, Yeah, that’s what I am. I’m “touched with fire.”
It would be destructive for me to deny all four seasons of the bipolar fire. When summer’s mania exceeds its stay and the fall shadows grab hold of your brain, you can feel your will within each withering leaf clinging to the trees of the entire forest surrounding you slipping as they fall down on you. When winter rolls around and your soul retreats deep beneath the frozen ground, and it’s calling your body down, it feels like your ashes are fighting gravity. And when spring comes again, it extends a warm invitation to rise too high and repeat the bipolar cycle that will lay waste to your lives.
Likewise, it would be unwise for a doctor to deny that on those manic summer nights, when we look out our hospital windows, we can see the stars pulsing spirals of fire across the sky, as God lifts the veil and unfolds the entire universe before our eyes. We know that humanity’s most beloved image of the sky was seen through a sanitarium window with Van Gogh’s manic eyes, and that scientists have recently discovered a phenomenon in nature that occurs in the sky called turbulence which, while painted perfectly in Van Gogh’s manic sky, is invisible to the human eye.
The reasons why it would be unwise for a doctor to deny this is because if the doctor acknowledged that maybe there was something to it, that maybe it wasn’t just some misfiring synapsis flashing through a crack in our minds, maybe we saw something that was just too beautiful to prove, he would also be able to remind the patient that while Van Gogh may have seen that sky through manic eyes, he didn’t paint it when he was manic, because he didn’t need the mania to have the fire.
And that doctor would then be able to assure the patient that he doesn’t want to stomp out that fire, that over time with gradual adjustments in medications they would work together to make sure the patient keeps that fire, and sustains it without letting it get out of control and burn down his mind, leaving his life in ashes.
How much more receptive would a patient be to treatment if the patient was told that the treatment was to nurture a gift they had, instead of terminate a disease they had? When out of all the poets who received the Pulitzer - the prize awarded to those who made the biggest contributions to the human spirit - 38 percent of them were bipolar, how can we simply label it a human disorder? Think how much more they could contribute to the human spirit if they knew it could be used as a gift to humanity, instead of something to hide from humanity?
However, in order for this to work, the doctor has to be able to trust the patient just as much as the patient has to be able to trust the doctor. My doctor trusted me, since he saw I was impeccable with my health habits, I was patient, willing to wait years before finally feeling full rich emotion, and that I would be satisfied without mania. So in return, he was never satisfied until I felt I had full rich emotion. I now feel deeper, richer emotion and more creativity than I ever did before bipolar, to the point where I can call it a gift, so much that given the opportunity I wouldn’t want a “cure.”
Still, I know I’ll always be walking a tightrope, but you get better at it over time, and like the guy who crossed the twin towers, you learn not to fall. And the higher the stakes and tighter the wire, the stronger and more disciplined you’re forced to become in order to survive. It’s only when things are so dark you can’t see hope one inch in front of your eyelids and it’s so cold, your soul is so numb, you don’t even know if it still exists, when just as your dim glow is this close to being blown out by your own lips a sudden spark of grit and will to live breaks into a flame of desperation, raging to blaze its way into the light of day again. So by the time you finally rise, the light in all those sunbathing souls combined couldn’t hold a candle to the fire in just one of your eyes. And when you combine that with the bipolar fire, no matter what anyone labels you, that’s something they can’t deny.
Van Gogh said, “What am I in the eyes of most people? - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”
I’m sure what he meant is, if you step out of the MoMA after seeing “Starry Night” and you walk by a crazy man gazing up at the sky with wide crazy eyes, before you cross the street to avoid walking past him, maybe you’ll see him differently now that you saw through his eyes. And instead of saying “he’s bipolar,” maybe you’ll say, or at least think, “Oh, he’s touched with fire.”
Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/30/21: "This Is A Set Up... Market Poised For A Big Move. BE READY!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/30/21:
"This Is A Set Up... Market Poised For A Big Move. BE READY!"
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Related:
TUESDAY, MAR 30, 2021 - 02:30 PM: "The Largest Tax Hike In Generations" Could Pay For Up To 75% Of Biden's Next Spending Plan"
On Wednesday, President Biden will unveil the first part of a two-part stimulus plan aimed at infrastructure, climate change, and social programs. While initial reports pegged the next round of stimulus at $3 trillion, the Washington Post's Jeff Stein now reports that new spending could top $4 trillion, while new taxes to pay for it - some of which Biden will also unveil Wednesday - could total over $3 trillion.
The two-pronged package Biden will begin unveiling this week includes higher amounts of federal spending but also significantly more in new tax revenue — with possibly as much as $4 trillion in new spending and more than $3 trillion in tax increases, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private dynamics. One person familiar with the matter said that the early infrastructure draft did not include every tax increase the White House was eventually considering including in its ultimate proposal, and that the administration believes the tax hikes can also advance its goal of reducing income inequality. -WaPo"
"A Better Friend Than We Deserve..."
“You’d help if you could, wouldn’t you, boy?” I said. “It’s no wonder they call you man’s best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by…”
- Connie Willis
A Timely Repost: “Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent”
Full screen highly recommended.
“Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song
Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent”
By Melanie Curtin
“Everyone knows they need to manage their stress. When things get difficult at work, school, or in your personal life, you can use as many tips, tricks, and techniques as you can get to calm your nerves. So here’s a science-backed one: make a playlist of the 10 songs found to be the most relaxing on earth. Sound therapies have long been popular as a way of relaxing and restoring one’s health. For centuries, indigenous cultures have used music to enhance well-being and improve health conditions.
Now, neuroscientists out of the UK have specified which tunes give you the most bang for your musical buck. The study was conducted on participants who attempted to solve difficult puzzles as quickly as possible while connected to sensors. The puzzles induced a certain level of stress, and participants listened to different songs while researchers measured brain activity as well as physiological states that included heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing.
According to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, which conducted the research, the top song produced a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date. In fact, listening to that one song- “Weightless”- resulted in a striking 65 percent reduction in participants’ overall anxiety, and a 35 percent reduction in their usual physiological resting rates. That is remarkable.
Equally remarkable is the fact the song was actually constructed to do so. The group that created “Weightless”, Marconi Union, did so in collaboration with sound therapists. Its carefully arranged harmonies, rhythms, and bass lines help slow a listener’s heart rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
When it comes to lowering anxiety, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Stress either exacerbates or increases the risk of health issues like heart disease, obesity, depression, gastrointestinal problems, asthma, and more. More troubling still, a recent paper out of Harvard and Stanford found health issues from job stress alone cause more deaths than diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or influenza.
In this age of constant bombardment, the science is clear: if you want your mind and body to last, you’ve got to prioritize giving them a rest. Music is an easy way to take some of the pressure off of all the pings, dings, apps, tags, texts, emails, appointments, meetings, and deadlines that can easily spike your stress level and leave you feeling drained and anxious.
Of the top track, Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson said, “‘Weightless’ was so effective, many women became drowsy and I would advise against driving while listening to the song because it could be dangerous.” So don’t drive while listening to these, but do take advantage of them:
10. “We Can Fly,” by Rue du Soleil (Café Del Mar)
9. “Canzonetta Sull’aria,” by Mozart
8. “Someone Like You,” by Adele
7. “Pure Shores,” by All Saints
6. “Please Don’t Go,” by Barcelona
5. “Strawberry Swing,” by Coldplay
4. “Watermark,” by Enya
3. “Mellomaniac (Chill Out Mix),” by DJ Shah
2. “Electra,” by Airstream
1. “Weightless,” by Marconi Union
I made a public playlist of all of them on Spotify that runs about 50 minutes (it’s also downloadable).”
The Poet: Maya Angelou, “Alone”
“Alone”
“Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home,
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone.
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong,
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use,
Their wives run round like banshees,
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone,
But nobody,
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know…
Storm clouds are gathering,
The wind is gonna blow.
The race of man is suffering,
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody,
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody,
Can make it out here alone.”
- Maya Angelou
"I Hope I End Up..."
“I don’t want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don’t want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, “Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case.” I will turn and say to them, “It is you who are the basket case! For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn’t even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!” And maybe, the passersby will drop a coin into my cup.”
- Henry Rollins
"A Walk in the Woods"
"A Walk in the Woods"
by Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "It must have looked like this in 7th century Europe. Largely deserted. Overgrown. The ruins of an earlier civilization… covered in vines and trees. We are wandering in our own woods… and exploring the downswing of civilization. What causes it to walk backward? How do people forget how to do things… or lose track of what made them prosperous and free? Why does progress go into reverse?
Every day, here at the Diary, we see the bread and circuses – trillions of dollars’ worth of real wealth (purchased with phony “dollar” tokens) squandered – $5 trillion in the last 12 months… and more coming. We see, too, how the fake money – like fake road signs – sends people off in the wrong directions. Investors bet on money-losing companies. The government throws away trillions on delusions, boondoggles, and vote-buying. Households stop saving. Businesses shift from trying to create real wealth on Main Street to chasing after fast profits from SPACs, cryptos, and NFTs. Everybody wants to get rich. But nobody wants to do the hard work of building real wealth.
Battle Against Nature: Funded by an apparently inexhaustible well of EZ money, Americans wallow in fantasies that must make the gods roar with laughter. They think they can borrow their way out of debt… and print their way to prosperity. And if they can create fake money, why not fake math?
Yesterday, we saw that activists are targeting arithmetic as “racist” or “patriarchal.” Two plus two only equals four, they claim, because dead white males say so. But over in the English department, the battle against nature has been raging for years. "Everybody believes they can” is now correct, according to the woke grammarians (to avoid using the masculine pronoun “he” to refer to a person of unknown or inconsequential gender).
And there are new “rules” popping up all the time. Jane Austen and Emily Brontë could write about “females.” But no more. Here’s Buzzfeed: "When you refer to a woman as a female, you’re ignoring the fact that she is a female human. It reduces a woman to her reproductive parts and abilities. Also, not all women are biologically female, and the conflation of “female” to “woman” erases gender-nonconforming people and members of the trans community."
And here’s the latest trend from WND News: "Rutgers University recently determined that speaking and writing English correctly is – just like math – also totally racist. The school’s English department is altering its grammar standards to “stand with and respond” to the Black Lives Matter movement and emphasize “social justice” and “critical grammar” over irrelevancies like correct spelling and grammar. The English Department is even offering an internship titled “Decolonizing the Writing Center” to make writing “more linguistically diverse.”
What brings down an empire? These trivialities and vanities? Or the big issues – money and war? Probably both.
Inflation Sightings: When the money goes, everything goes. And now… there goes the money! Here’s MarketWatch: "Even now, the housing market is on fire, with prices surging across the world. “This is a way of spending that can also drag in some of that surplus labor,” [former Morgan Stanley managing director Manoj Pradhan] said. But the rise in house prices doesn’t show up in official measures of inflation.
The Fed already is trying to address the challenge of coming inflation readings that, into May and June, may show 3.5% to 4% year-over-year gains. “I will tell you that anything above 3.5%-4% will create a significant breakdown in correlations [between stocks and bonds], because people have not seen inflation really in a big way in the advanced economies for the last 30 years,” he said.
“The real challenge will come in 2022, when a lot of spending will have been deployed into goods or into housing, monetary aggregates will still be high with velocity rising,” he said. He expects the yield curve to steepen further, and that if the Fed implements another Operation Twist or yield curve control, it will push inflation even higher."
Also of interest… While inflation is on the upswing, sperm counts are falling. USA Today has the details: "Sperm counts among men in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand declined more than 59% from 1973 to 2011, according to a meta-analysis [Shanna] Swan co-wrote in 2017. At the current rate, half of men in those countries would have no sperm by 2045, while many others would have very low counts, Swan told USA TODAY."
Rising prices. Falling sperm counts. Innumeracy. Illiteracy. Overspending. Dumb wars. Money-printing. Claptrap. An incompetent, greedy elite? What else do you need?
Fallen Empire: Collective human life has both ups and downs. Exploring our own – largely derelict – farm here in Ireland, we find traces of ups from 200 years ago. Some from 500 years ago. The wood structures are long gone. But the stones – walls and bridges – are still here. But now, they are overgrown. Tumbledown. Forgotten. Lost. What happened?
A visitor to England in 600 AD or 700 AD must have seen the same sort of thing. Broken-down villas. Markets covered in vines. Roads neglected. Roman civilization was kaput. Both Roman-era observers, Polybius and Plutarch, noted that birthrates had fallen – first in the upper classes, later in the lower classes. Whether this was true or not, we don’t know.
But we know that Rome went broke, with its currency so worthless that soldiers refused to accept it in payment of wages. The government itself demanded tax payments in gold or silver. So heavy was the tax burden, as the government tried to keep up with its expenses, that farmers sometimes walked away from their land and sold themselves and their families into slavery.
On Your Own: From there, things got worse. Overstretched, with almost constant civil wars, Rome was overrun by Barbarians in the 4th and 5th centuries. Trade came to a halt. Skilled craftsmen went back to tilling the earth. No more aqueducts. No more “Roman” roads. No more high-quality goods, arriving from all over the Empire. The Empire was finished.
In the late 300s, while the Romans struggled to keep the Vandals, the Visigoths, the Sueves, and the Alans beyond the Rhine, Romanized Britannia had its own barbarians to contend with – raiding tribes of Picts, Scoti, and Saxons. Then, around 400, the last of the Roman troops were called away to defend Rome itself. So the Barbarians stepped up their raids. And in 410, leaders in Britannia pleaded with Rome to send back the troops. “You’re on your own,” came the reply from Emperor Honorius.
End of an Era: It wasn’t long after that that Roman rule in Britain came to an end (Ireland was never colonized by the Romans). And so did the Roman-era economy, along with its consumer goods, its money, its skills and technologies, its markets and commercial enterprises, and its comforts.
For a period of roughly 300 years, stonemasonry disappeared from England. During the period of Roman rule, there were thousands of skilled artisans, who knew how to quarry stone… how to burn lime to make mortar… and how to cut and fit the stones together to make fine villas. They knew how to construct a house with mosaics on the floor and central heating beneath it – and a clay tile roof. But in the 6th century, they forgot. And by the 7th century, there was perhaps not a single person in all of Britain who knew how to make a lime mortar. Or “spin” a pot.
There were no more imports from the Mediterranean – wine, olive oil, tableware, jewelry, spices, wheat. Nor was there any market to buy them in… or any money to buy them with. The mints closed. The only money still around had been minted before the Roman Empire collapsed.
People still made earthenware pots and bowls, but they were crude; the potters had forgotten how to make a pottery wheel, and how to get the fine clay they needed.
Farming techniques, tools, and organization were dealt a blow, too – perhaps because so many people died in the Barbarian invasions. Crops were stolen or destroyed. Barns were burnt. Cows, pigs, horses, and chickens were taken away or slaughtered. Fields, pastures, estates, farms, and gardens went “back to nature.”
Gone forever was the gracious, orderly life of the Roman era – with running hot and cold water, courtyards, and frescoes. In its place, were rude wooden huts with dirt floors. Gone, too, were the books… the essays… the ideas and the histories.
Derelict Abbey: Today, there are about 1,200 written works surviving from the Classical Period – Ancient Greece and Rome. There are some from the “dark ages,” too – but they are few and mostly religious texts. No Euclid. No Aristotle. No Plutarch or Pliny. Many of these old “classical” works survived the “dark ages” only because they were hidden away in monasteries… had been translated into Arabic… or copied by monks, who may not have had any idea what they were copying.
One of those monasteries, along the Blackwater River, just down the hill from us, was called Molana.
Molana Abbey (Source: Geograph.ie)
It was founded in 510, but the ruins we see there now were built by Raymond Le Gros (Fat Raymond), one of the Norman conquerors of the 12th century. Raymond was a lieutenant of the Norman leader Richard de Clare, also known as Strongbow. He is also thought to be the builder of the castle on the other side of the road from our lodge house. The stone work there – as well as the scale of it – is different from that of most of the buildings and walls you see in Ireland. It is older. Bigger. The walls are thicker and higher, too. The castle walls are still there… broken in some places, bent in others. They, too, speak to the upside and the downside.
Protection from the Enemy: It must have taken an army of masons – or slaves – to put them together. Perhaps, when the last of the Viking raiders came up the river, the locals took shelter behind the castle walls. Or maybe they used them to protect themselves from the English, who invaded later. Or from each other, for the Irish were always quarreling – the O’Briens against the O’Donnells against the O’Tooles against the McMahons… against the McSweeneys… against the McCravashys and the Sheehans… and on and on. There were ups and downs for them, too. It’s amazing any of them survived. To be continued…"
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