Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Dolmen Ridge"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
"A Look to the Heavens"
"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.
Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”
“The Loss Of Dignity”
“The Loss Of Dignity”
by The Zman
“If you step back and think about it, the normal man can probably list a dozen things he cannot say in public that he grew up hearing on television, usually as jokes. Then the jokes were no longer welcome in polite company and soon they were deemed “not funny” by the sorts of people who worry about such things. The same was true of simple observations about the world. Somehow noticing the obvious became impolite, then it became taboo and finally prohibited.
The reverse is true as well. Middle-aged men can probably think of a dozen things that were unimaginable or unheard of, which are now fully normal. Of course, normal is one of those things that is now prohibited. It implies that something can be abnormal or weird and that itself is forbidden. The proliferation of novel identities and activities that demand to be treated with dignity and respect is a function of the old restraints having been eliminated. When everything is possible you get everything.
The strange thing about all of this is there is seemingly no point to it. The proliferation of new taboos was not in response to some harm being done. In most cases, the taboos are about observable reality. The people turning up in the public square with novel identities or activities demanding respect did not exist very long ago. If they did, not one was curious enough to look into it. The public was happy to ignore people into unusual activities, as long as they kept it to themselves.
Of course, none of what we generally call political correctness is intended to be uplifting or inspirational. The commissars of public morality like to pretend it is inspiring, but that’s just a way to entertain themselves. These new identity groups are not demanding the rest of us seek some higher plane of existence or challenge our limitations. In fact, it is always in the opposite directions. It’s a demand to lower standards and give up on our quaint notions of self-respect and human dignity.
In the "Demon In Democracy", Polish academic Ryszard Legutko observed that liberal democracy had abandoned the concept of dignity. This is the obligation to behave in a certain way, as determined by your position in society. Dignity was earned by acting in accordance with the high standards of the community. In turn, this behavior was rewarded with greater privilege and responsibility. Failure to live up to one’s duties would result in the loss of dignity, along with the status it conferred.
Instead, modern liberal democracy awards dignity by default. We are supposed to respect all choices and all behaviors as being equal. There are no standards against which to measure human behavior, other than the standard of absolute, unconditional acceptance. As a result, the most inventively degenerate and base activities spring from the culture, almost like a test of the community’s tolerance. Instead of looking up to the heavens for inspiration, liberal democracies look down in the gutter.
Dignity comes from maintaining one’s obligations to his position in the social order, but that requires a fidelity to a social order. It also requires a connection to the rest of the people in the society. In a world of deracinated individuals focused solely on getting as much as they can in order to maximize pleasure, a sense of commitment to the community is not possible. Democracy assumes we are all equal, therefore we have no duty to one another as duty requires a hierarchical relationship.
In the absence of a vertical set of reciprocal relationships, we get this weird lattice work of horizontal relationships, elevating the profane and vulgar, while pulling down the noble and honorable. The public culture is about minimizing and degrading those who participate in the public culture. In turn, the public culture attracts only those who cannot be shamed or embarrassed. The great joy of public culture is to see those who aspire to more get torn down as the crowd roars at their demise.
The puzzle is why this is a feature of liberal democracy. Ryszard Legutko places the blame on Protestantism. Their emphasis on original sin and man’s natural limitations minimized man’s role in the world. This focus on man’s wretchedness was useful in channeling our urge to labor and create into useful activities, thus generating great prosperity, but it left us with a minimalist view of human accomplishment. We are not worthy to aspire to anything more than the base and degraded.
It is certainly true that the restraints of Christianity limited the sorts of behavior that are common today, but he may be putting the cart before the horse. The emergence of Protestantism in northern Europe was as much a result of the people and their nature as anything else. Put more simply, the Protestant work ethic existed before there was such a thing as a Protestant. The desire to work and delay gratification evolved over many generations out of environmental necessity.
Still, culture is an important part of man’s environment and environmental factors shape our evolution. It is not unreasonable to say that the evolution of Protestant ethics magnified and structured naturally occurring instincts among the people. With the collapse of Christianity as a social force in the West, the natural defense to degeneracy and vulgarity has collapsed with it. As a result, great plenty is the fuel for a small cohort of deviants to overrun the culture of liberal democracies.
Even so, there does seem to be something else. Liberal democracy has not produced great art or great architecture. The Greeks and Romans left us great things that still inspire the imagination of the man who happens to gaze upon them. The castles and cathedrals of the medieval period still awe us. The great flourishing of liberal democracy in the 20th century gave us Brutalism and dribbles of pain on canvas. The new century promises us primitives exposing themselves on the internet.
There is something about the liberal democratic order that seeks to strip us of our dignity and self-respect. Look at what happened in the former Eastern Bloc countries after communism. Exposed to the narcotic of liberalism they immediately acquired the same cultural patterns. Fertility collapsed. Religion collapsed. Marriage and family formation collapsed. These suddenly free societies got the Western disease as soon as they were exposed to western liberal democracy.
The reaction we see today is not due to these societies being behind the times, but due to seeing the ugly face of liberal democracy. It is much like the reaction to the proliferation of recreational drugs in the 1970’s. At first, it seemed harmless, but then people realized the horror of unrestrained self-indulgence. That’s what we see in the former Eastern Bloc. Their leaders still retain some of the old sense of things and are trying to save their people from the dungeon of modernity.
That still leaves us with the unanswered question. What is it about liberal democracy that seems to lead to this loss of dignity? It is possible that such a fabulously efficient system for producing wealth is a tool mankind is not yet equipped to handle without killing ourselves. Maybe we are just not built for anything but scarcity. Want gives us purpose and without it, we lose our reason to exist. Either way, without dignity, we cannot defend ourselves and the results are inevitable.”
The Poet: Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear The Mask”
“We Wear The Mask”
“We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!”
- Paul Laurence Dunbar
"The Cruelest Joke Of All...
“The smallest decisions made had such profound repercussions. One ten-minute wait could save a life… or end it. One wrong turn down the right street or one seemingly unimportant conversation, and everything was changed. It wasn’t right that each lifetime was defined, ruined, ended, and made by such seemingly innocuous details. A major life-threatening event should come with a flashing warning sign that either said ABANDON ALL HOPE or SAFETY AHEAD. It was the cruelest joke of all that no one could see the most vicious curves until they were over the edge, falling into the abyss below.”
- Sherrilyn Kenyon
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/5/21: "Critical Alert! THE FEDERAL RESERVE ADMITS THAT MORE INFLATION IS COMING"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/5/21:
"Critical Alert!
THE FEDERAL RESERVE ADMITS THAT MORE INFLATION IS COMING"
"Covid Has Triggered The Next Great Financial Crisis"
"Covid Has Triggered The Next Great Financial Crisis"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Imagine a once modest but sturdy home built near a cliff to maximize the vistas. Over the decades, the foundation slowly degraded and the house moved imperceptably closer to the unstable edge of the cliff. Those who observed the slippage and the potential for eventual disaster were either derided as alarmists or ignored.
Given the enviable location and views, the home rose in value and a series of increasingly gaudy additions were added, completely obscuring the once-modest exterior with cheap imitations of long-lasting, time-tested materials (plastic trim and brittle fake-marble veneers). The foundations of these ostentatious additions were slapdash, shallow and poorly made, as the goal was not durability but appearance.
The low-quality additions accelerated the slide to the unstable cliff edge, and in 2019 the viewing deck broke away and crashed into the canyon below. The repairs were hasty and the residents were assured all was well - in fact, better than ever. In 2020, the weak foundation of the gaudiest, lowest-quality addition crumbled. The response of the owners was to fill the widening crack in the decaying structure and spray on a new coat of paint. There--good as new, the residents were told. But this was not true. The house is now teetering on the precariously unstable cliff edge. Ironically, the vast majority of the residents have moved to the game room, which is now cantilevered over thin air. The slightest movement will tip the entire decayed structure over the cliff.
That decayed, precariously unstable structure is the U.S. economy, and Covid was the catalyst that nudged the economy right to the edge. Gordon Long and I discuss the causes and consequences in our new video program below, "Covid Has Triggered The Next Great Financial Crisis" (34:46).
Chief among the many causes is a very basic one that's easy to understand: America has consumed more than it has produced for decades, and filled the gap with imports purchased with borrowed money and currency created out of thin air. As Gordon and I explain, this is a very well-worn path to instability and collapse: governments (which now include nominally independent central banks) have always responded to declines in productivity and affordable energy/materials, the expansion of a parasitic elite and excessive spending with the same bag of financial tricks:
1. They borrow more money, eventually borrowing more to pay interest on existing debts, greasing the slide to default and insolvency.
2. They defraud the users of their currency by devaluing the currency. In the old days, this was accomplished by substituting base metals for silver or gold in the minting of coinage. Eventually the coins contained only a trace of silver. Users soon caught on and the result was the coinage lost purchasing power, a.k.a. inflation destroyed the value of the officially issued money. In today's fiat currency regime, central banks create trillions of new units of "money" with a few keystrokes, effectively diluting the value of all existing currency.
3. Desperate for revenues, governments raise taxes, which despite all claims to the contrary by political leaders, fall most heavily on the productive middle class. Since the parasitic elite will never accept any consequential reduction of their wealth or power, the higher taxes and economic stagnationthat result from these three policies crush the middle class, which was the engine of productivity and demand that enabled the parasitic elite to live large.
These are key dynamics in what Gordon calls the killing of the golden goose, the productive synergies that generate widespread prosperity and opportunity. What's left are the fatal synergies of soaring debt and leverage, diminishing returns on stimulus, the substitution of credit for savings and the coming deflationary tsunami (53 min) that pops all the speculative bubbles, setting up the destabilization and cliff-dive of the entire decayed, flimsy structure--The Next Great Financial Crisis that cannot be papered over with more central bank legerdemain."
There's more in our 34-minute video program:
"We Are Dangerously Close To 'The Tipping Point'”
"We Are Dangerously Close To 'The Tipping Point'”
by Michael Snyder
"Every dollar that the federal government borrows and spends puts us even closer to a day of reckoning. Many Americans (especially those on the left) seem to think that we can endlessly spend trillions upon trillions of dollars without ever suffering any consequences. If that was true, why hasn’t any other society in all of human history ever been able to do such a thing? Unfortunately, the truth is that the United States is not immune to the laws of economics. Wildly creating money and driving up our national debt to absurd heights is inevitably going to crush our economic system. And at this point, our debt-to-GDP ratio is already higher than Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio was when the economy of that country finally collapsed…
But it’s worth noting that the US debt-to-GDP ratio - essentially a country’s debt compared to its annual economic output - was 129 percent at the end of 2020. In other words, the official US debt was nearly a third larger than the entire US economy. That is considerably higher than Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio in 2010, when it received a bailout from the International Monetary Fund to avoid defaulting on its obligations.
Even though we are already at such a dangerous level, the Biden administration wants Congress to pass another four trillion dollar spending package… "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Monday that he did not expect any Republican senator to support President Biden’s push for a $4 trillion spending package on infrastructure and other projects.
Biden has outlined a two-part tax and spend proposal with funding for physical infrastructure projects as well as initiatives favored by his administration, such jobs training, elderly care and universal preschool. McConnell reiterated that the $4 trillion price tag was a nonstarter for Republicans, as well as some Democrats, who favor a smaller plan directly tied to infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges."
We simply don’t have the money to do what Biden wants. In fact, we didn’t have the money for any of the “stimulus packages” that have been passed since the start of the pandemic. We had to borrow every single dollar that went out in the “stimulus checks”, and now Democratic lawmakers are “clamoring” for a fourth round of those checks… "Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of Congress are clamoring for a fourth round of stimulus checks to help Americans who are still struggling financially during the coronavirus pandemic. Such a move could lift more than 7 million people out of poverty, according to a recent analysis from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank."
If more money is the solution, then why don’t we send out five billion dollars to every American citizen? That would certainly fix all of our problems, right? Everyone would be a “billionaire”, and then life in American would be glorious. Or not.
Sadly, the truth is that our “leaders” are systematically destroying the value of our currency and are plunging us into an abyss of debt from which our nation will never recover. I warned that once the government started sending checks directly to the American people that it would never be enough.
At this point, people are begging for more checks even though 34 percent of all U.S. income now comes directly from the federal government… Putting that number in perspective, in the 1950s and 1960s, transfer payment were around 7%. This number rose in the low teens starting in the mid-1970s (right after the Nixon Shock ended Bretton-Woods and closed the gold window). The number then jumped again after the financial crisis, spiking to the high teens. And now, the coronavirus has officially sent this number to a record 34%!
And that’s how creeping banana republic socialism comes at you: first slowly, then fast. We are not on the road to socialism. We are already there. In fact, the U.S. has been a socialist country for quite a while now. We may not use the term “socialist” to describe ourselves, but that is precisely what we have become.
As our system melts down right in front of our eyes, many in the financial community are trying to figure out how to protect themselves. For example, legendary investor Sam Zell has never been very enthusiastic about gold, but now he is suddenly changing his tune… “Obviously one of the natural reactions is to buy gold…It feels very funny because I’ve spent my career talking about why would you want to own gold? It has no income, it costs to store. And yet, when you see the debasement of the currency, you say, what am I going to hold on to?”
Other Americans are preparing for the coming meltdown in other ways. As crime rates in our cities continue to spike, more Americans than ever before are buying guns… "The FBI conducted more than 3.5 million gun-related background checks last month, a 20% year-over-year increase from April 2020, according to the latest FBI figures released Monday. Nearly 1.7 million of those gun background checks were specifically for gun purchases, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group that cross references FBI data with actual sales figures provided by gun merchants to determine how many guns are sold monthly. NSSF spokesman Mark Oliva said the firearms industry sold more guns last month than in any April on record."
Deep in their guts, most people can feel that our society is rapidly approaching a “tipping point”. Nobody knows the exact moment when we will have passed the point of no return, but just about everyone can sense that it is coming. Every single day, U.S. consumers go into even more debt. And every single day, U.S. corporations continue to binge on debt as if tomorrow is never going to arrive.
State and local governments continue to pile up record levels of debt, and the federal government is literally stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day. We should be thankful that this unprecedented debt bubble has been able to persist for as long as it has, but there is no way that this party can go on forever. Soon it will end, and that means that our current way of life will soon come to an end as well."
"FUBAR"
"FUBAR"
by Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Poor Bill and Melinda. They are calling it quits. It’s all over but the long road and the sad songs. Apparently, the COVID-19 lockdowns are responsible for a lot of marriage break-ups. After spending so much time in close quarters, Bill and Melinda may have decided that they couldn’t stand each other anymore. Maybe Bill left the cap off the toothpaste or the toilet seat up. Hard to figure. Nice people. Spoke the same language. Both committed to world improvement. Shame they couldn’t get along.
Prepared for Failure: But ours is not to wonder why it went wrong… Ours is only to marvel at how easy it was to end it. Things didn’t work out. They split. And now, Bill will load a few things in his car – a lamp… a favorite picture… his tennis racket and shaving cream – and head off to a rental unit.
One of the few advantages of getting old is that we’re prepared for things like this. We’ve seen enough businesses, investments, marriages, careers, lives, and hopes that didn’t pan out that we’re ready for failure. We even expect it. A new crypto? Another NFT? After all the hundreds of federal programs to make the world a better place… another one to make it even better? Sometimes, even at a wedding, for example, we can barely help ourselves. “That’ll never work,” we blurt out. This cranky attitude does not make us the life of the party. But it leaves us in a position to say, “I told you so,” when, in fact, things don’t work out.
FUBAR: We only bring this up to introduce our destination for today’s perambulation. We stumbled upon the subject, by accident, on Monday. We were looking at how mistakes are corrected. We noticed that private life clears away its mistakes regularly – swiftly, brutally, unequivocally. In the public sector, on the other hand… errors are much harder to correct. Today, we go back for a more careful study.
Context: The feds are making trillions of dollars’ worth of “investments.” Some are bound to go bad. How will they ever be corrected? You will not be surprised at our conclusion: Disastrously.
Divorce, default, destitution… crime and punishment… humiliation… bankruptcy… and the ledge. The private world has its remedies. You spend too much money – you quickly run out of money to spend. You want to borrow more… but who, apart from the feds, will lend to a spendthrift?
In the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP), the Small Business Administration allegedly gave out billions in “loans” without so much as looking at a photo ID. Friends tell us they were shocked at how easily they got money. Watchdogs tell us that much of the loot went to organized and disorganized crime (not our friends, I’m sure). The idea of the PPP was to “protect jobs” in the midst of a plague. But such a desperate shambles was the lending process, that each job “saved” was estimated to have cost $377,000.
In other words, the program was a disaster. A mistake. An error. FUBAR, as we used to say in the Navy.
Win-Lose Model: Of course, this is just one program. There are dozens… hundreds… thousands of agencies and programs… all making “investments” in a better world.In the real world of Main Street, as we’re becoming monotonous for saying, real goods and services are exchanged. One gives. Another takes. And the world becomes a richer place as each person tries to please the other with better goods and services, delivered with ever bigger smiles. Bad exchanges are quickly stopped. You don’t like the bread your baker is making for you; you go to a different baker.
Hygiene is the hidden secret of capitalism. Bad restaurants are emptied. Bad ideas are purged. Mistakes are corrected. But governments operate on a pre-civilized, win-lose model. There is take, but no give. The feds never have to satisfy a customer or show a profit. And their “investments” are almost all losers.
Funny Money: From Baltimore, for example, comes news that the city will receive $670 million from the American Rescue Plan. This, we’re told, is an investment in getting the city back on track after pulling out of the COVID swamp. WBFF has more details: "The bill sets some guidelines but the Mayor’s Office has a lot more leeway this time around to decide who will receive this money."
Oh stop! Talk about FUBAR! We’re laughing so hard, we can barely sit upright. Imagine Baltimore’s corrupt and incompetent city government deciding how to “invest” $670 million of “free” money from Washington. (Will someone please call Mercedes-Benz and tell them to increase inventories!) The spending is supposed to have something to do with COVID-19 relief. But what doesn’t these days?
Which of the mayor’s friends has not been affected by the disease? Which of his relatives doesn’t have an idea about how to make the city a better place… with the appropriate spending, of course? Which pocket in the Baltimore political/elite class is so shallow that it can’t accept another $1 million or so?
Zero Return: You know, gentle reader, as does everyone in Baltimore, that this “investment” is likely to produce zero positive return… and, by diverting people from honest business (if there’s any left)… much harm. But who will ever know? Whether it is the billions sent to cities like Baltimore… the stimmy checks given to businesses and individuals… the subsidies… the giveaways… no return on investment will ever be calculated.
The money will disappear in dribs and drabs… showing up in new houses… new cars… and beach pads in Ocean City. Nobody will ever admit failure. No reckoning will ever happen. No one – in shame and regret – will ever open a window of the Bank of America building and take a leap. Nope. No scrubbing. No soap. No hygiene will happen. No divorces. No bankruptcies. And no corrections.
Never-Ending Wars: The war on poverty has been going on since the 1960s. No victory yet! The war on drugs began in the 1970s. And now, we are declaring a $9 trillion war on viruses… on temperature changes… on recessions and stock market corrections… And the scum, muck, and toxic sludge gets deeper and deeper. Then what? Stay tuned…"
"Economic Market Snapshot 5/5/21"
"Economic Market Snapshot 5/5/21"
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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 5/5/21:
"UPDATES: Stocks, Crypto, DASH,
Debt, Fed, Dollar, Inflation, MORE!"
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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.
May 4th to May 7th, 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, May 4, 2021
Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: Freedom is Dead, The Politicians Killed it and the Mindless Masses Let Them"
Gerald Celente,
"Trends Journal: Freedom is Dead,
The Politicians Killed it and the Mindless Masses Let Them"
Must Watch! "Home Prices Exploding; Food Prices Soar; Housing Crash Will Be Epic; The Good Times"
Jeremiah Babe,
"Home Prices Exploding; Food Prices Soar;
Housing Crash Will Be Epic; The Good Times"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"To some, it looks like a giant chicken running across the sky. To others, it looks like a gaseous nebula where star formation takes place. Cataloged as IC 2944, the Running Chicken Nebula spans about 100 light years and lies about 6,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Centaur (Centaurus).
The featured image, shown in scientifically assigned colors, was captured recently in a 12-hour exposure. The star cluster Collinder 249 is visible embedded in the nebula's glowing gas. Although difficult to discern here, several dark molecular clouds with distinct shapes can be found inside the nebula."
"I Assure You..."
"You may wonder about long-term solutions. I assure you, there are none. All wounds are mortal. Take what's given. You sometimes get a little slack in the rope but the rope always has an end. So what? Bless the slack and don't waste your breath cursing the drop. A grateful heart knows that in the end we all swing."
- Stephen King
"You Know..."
“You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually - and this is my belief - that we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is.”
- Maria Popova
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/4/21: "We Are In Full Blown Currency Crisis Right Now! Get On The Right Side Of It"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/4/21:
"We Are In Full Blown Currency Crisis Right Now!
Get On The Right Side Of It"
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