Full screen! lol
Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home" (Penguins)
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, July 10, 2021
"A Look to the Heavens With Chet Raymo'
“Learning And Yearning”
by Chet Raymo
“This photograph of the Eagle Nebula made by a rather modest telescope - the 0.9 meter instrument at Kitt Peak, Arizona - appeared on APOD (click to enlarge). I sat in front of the computer screen for ten minutes, breathless. One tiny corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of tens of billions of galaxies that we can potentially see with our telescopes! At the center are the so-called "Pillars of Creation" from a famous Hubble photograph.
I recall when the Hubble photograph appeared in the media hundreds of viewers claimed to see the face of Jesus in the billowing clouds. Which prompted these observations from "Skeptics and True Believers": "In an article on the psychological basis of belief, the psychologist James Alcock proposed that two aspects of the human brain might be called the "yearning unit" and the "learning unit." He probably didn't mean these terms to be taken literally, as referring to separate compartments of the brain, but yearning and learning are certainly central to the way we interact with the world. It is hard to imagine how we can be fully human without a little of each. Finding the proper balance between the two is a task that can keep us occupied for most of our lives.
We yearn when we dream of fulfillment, of greater happiness, of knowing more. We yearn when we love, when we laugh, when we cry, when we pray. Yearning is wondering what is around the next bend, over the rainbow, beyond the horizon. Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, philosophy, and religion.
Learning is listening to parents, wise men, shamans. Learning is reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments, being skeptical. Learning is looking behind the curtain for the Wizard of Oz, touching the stove to see if it's hot, not taking anyone's word for it. In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is wrong as to prove it right, even if that something is a cherished belief.
Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd, the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, weeping statues. Yearning without learning is buying tabloid newspapers with headlines announcing "Newborn baby talks of Heaven" and the like. Yearning without learning is looking for UFOs in the sky and the meaning of life in horoscopes.
Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, dogmatic belief. Learning without yearning is believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty. Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas."
We yearn when we dream of fulfillment, of greater happiness, of knowing more. We yearn when we love, when we laugh, when we cry, when we pray. Yearning is wondering what is around the next bend, over the rainbow, beyond the horizon. Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, philosophy, and religion.
Learning is listening to parents, wise men, shamans. Learning is reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments, being skeptical. Learning is looking behind the curtain for the Wizard of Oz, touching the stove to see if it's hot, not taking anyone's word for it. In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is wrong as to prove it right, even if that something is a cherished belief.
Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd, the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, weeping statues. Yearning without learning is buying tabloid newspapers with headlines announcing "Newborn baby talks of Heaven" and the like. Yearning without learning is looking for UFOs in the sky and the meaning of life in horoscopes.
Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, dogmatic belief. Learning without yearning is believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty. Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas."
"A Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness"
"It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive."
- Gregory David Roberts, "Shantaram"
•
"A Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness"
"If I have harmed anyone in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through my own confusions
I ask their forgiveness.
If anyone has harmed me in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through their own confusions
I forgive them.
And if there is a situation
I am not yet ready to forgive
I forgive myself for that.
For all the ways that I harm myself,
negate, doubt, belittle myself,
judge or be unkind to myself
through my own confusions
I forgive myself."
"Tell Yourself..."
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
- Louise Erdrich
"The Heart of Humanity"
"The Heart of Humanity"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM
"Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and we will come out the other side. The last thing most of us want to hear or think about when we are dealing with profound feelings of sadness is that deep learning can be found in this place. In the midst of our pain, we often feel picked on by life, or overwhelmed by the enormity of some loss, or simply too exhausted to try and examine the situation. We may feel far too disappointed and angry to look for anything resembling a bright side to our suffering. Still, somewhere in our hearts, we know that we will eventually emerge from the depths into the light of greater awareness. Remembering this truth, no matter how elusive it seems, can help.
The other thing we often would rather not hear when we are dealing with intense sadness is that the only way out of it is through it. Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and the faith that we will come out the other side. With courage, we can allow ourselves to cycle through the grieving process with full inner permission to experience it. This is a powerful teaching that sadness has to offer us—the ability to surrender and the acceptance of change go hand in hand.
Another teaching of sadness is compassion for others who are in pain, because it is only in feeling our own pain that we can really understand and allow for someone else’s. Sadness is something we all go through, and we all learn from it and are deepened by its presence in our lives. While our own individual experiences of sadness carry with them unique lessons, the implications of what we learn are universal. The wisdom we gain from going through the process of feeling loss, heartbreak, or deep disappointment gives us access to the heart of humanity."
"Always True To Our Story..."
“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."
- Scott Morse
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"What can we know? What are we all?
Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Vangelis, "Alpha"
This tune always made me think, and yet,
despite ourselves, of the March of Mankind across the ages...
"Big Trouble Is Here; The Wealthy Love Assets, The Masses Love Debt; Stop Buying Dumb Stuff"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/10/21:
"Big Trouble Is Here; The Wealthy Love Assets,
The Masses Love Debt; Stop Buying Dumb Stuff"
"A Conspiracy to Murder – The Government and the Big Pharma-Dependent Medical Profession Are Hiding the Facts About Covid and the Vaccine"
"A Conspiracy to Murder – The Government and
the Big Pharma-Dependent Medical Profession
Are Hiding the Facts About Covid and the Vaccine"
by Paul Craig Roberts
UPDATE: "Just received this from an accomplished highly intelligent attorney I have known for many years: “I have just spent 10 hours a day In the hospital with my son since July 2, he is now stable but essentially went into A Fib they cannot fix now because of a clot (vaccine induced I am sure) after being sick 10 days following his second Pfizer shot. It’s too much to go into now, we almost lost him. He’s 32. No history of hypertension or heart problems. Vegetarian. “
It is happening all over. See, for example, this. There are a huge number of cases of life-threatening reactions to the “safe” vaccine, especially among the young. Yet the social media nazis and google continue to deplatform those who give the alarm. That part of the medical profession that blindly without thought follow the Big Pharma “guidelines” issued by NIH, FDA, CDC, and WHO are accomplices to murder.
The idiot people overcome by orchestrated fear have ruined the health of a large percentage of the population. In this 25 minute video Dr. Ryan Cole explains the adverse impact on the human body of the spike protein that is characteristic of both the Covid virus and the vaccine. Most people are not in serious danger from the virus. These people should not expose themselves to the danger of the vaccine. "Vaccine Taboos"
The failure of public health authorities to treat Covid with known safe inexpensive treatments enabled the generation of fear and panic that supported mass vaccination with an untested and unapproved experimental technology. This primarily benefited Big Pharma’s profits and government encroachments on civil liberty and has harmed public trust in government and health authorities.
The vaccine adverse reporting system, which at best captures only 10% of vaccine-induced injuries - shows more death and injuries from the experimental Covid vaccine than from all vaccines combined over the past 30 years. Never before in history has a vaccine with such a high death and injury rate been permitted to be administered.
The facts have been kept from the people. Big Pharma has enough scientists on its payroll and supported by its research grants that their careers force them to serve as advocates for Big Pharma’s agendas. The presstitutes follow the hired scientists, not the independent ones. The American medical profession in general lost its independence because of Obamacare. After Obamacare hospitals bought up independent practices. One consequence has been the reliance of doctors on NIH, CDC, FDA, WHO guidelines—guidelines heavily influenced by Big Pharma’s interests—instead of thinking for themselves about how to treat patients. As so many medical practitioners are employees of large organizations, relying on official guidelines is a form of protection. In other words, Obamacare produced more bureaucratization of medicine.
It is the doctors and scientists who think for themselves who have devised the cures for Covid and who have raised the questions of the vaccine’s safety. As they are individuals and not large official organizations, they are outgunned by the material interests of the organized groups.
In place of debate and examination of the data there is the suppression of the evidence. Doctors and scientists who raise issues are censored and deplatformed. A recent example is the resignation of scientists on the board of the professional journal Vaccines to force retraction of a peer-reviewed article that compared deaths from Covid with deaths from the vaccine. Some who resigned were involved in the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine or had research grants from Big Pharma. They claimed the article was faulty because it assumed all deaths following vaccination were caused by the vaccine. Of course, these same scientists did not complain when all deaths from flu, co-morbidities, and all other causes were attributed to Covid in order to create fear in the public that would cause people to line up for the untested experimental vaccine. Even the inventor of the mRNA technology that is used in the vaccine has been erased for warning of the dangers of the technology.
In the United States today there is no longer any debate or examination of evidence. In universities, in print and TV media, and among scientists funded by interest groups and government, there is no debate. There is an official narrative and everything else is off-limits.
This is how we got a Covid pandemic, which never existed, and this is how we got half the population injected with an experimental technology about which scientists were mistaken. The spike in the vaccine has not remained at the point of injection but against expectations moves throughout the body, concentrating in the ovaries, causing blood clots, spontaneous abortions, and heart inflammation and death among the young never threatened by Covid.
This message cannot get out because so many scientists are owned by Big Pharma, because there is no integrity and independence in the media, because public health authorities have a revolving door with Big Pharma and legislators’ election campaigns are dependent on Big Pharma’s contributions.
The virus is mainly dangerous to elderly people with co-morbidities and impaired immune systems. The current push to force vaccination on children and young adults in the face of the massive evidence that the vaccine is more dangerous to them than the virus is nothing short of a conspiracy to murder. It proves beyond all doubt that the agenda being served is not a public health agenda."
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Related:
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Related, an absolute Must Read:
Friday, July 9, 2021
Alarming Must Watch! "What Does Wells Fargo Know? Something Big Is Coming - Bank Collapse?"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/9/21:
"What Does Wells Fargo Know?
Something Big Is Coming - Bank Collapse?"
"Wells Unexpectedly Shuts All Existing Personal Lines Of Credit, Hinting US Economy On The Edge"
Full screen recommended.
"Wells Unexpectedly Shuts All Existing Personal Lines Of Credit,
Hinting US Economy On The Edge"
by Epic Economist
"As the credit market heats back up due to the growing consumer demand amid the reopening, America's third-largest bank, Wells Fargo, unexpectedly announced this week that it will permanently shut down all of its existing lines of credit - a very popular product provided by the retail-focused Wall Street giant - and the move is already infuriating a legion of customers. The revolving credit lines that are about to be discontinued in the coming weeks typically allowed customers to borrow from $3K to $100k. When they were launched in the first place, the bank's goal was to offer users a way to consolidate higher-interest credit-card debt, pay for home renovations or avoid overdraft fees on checking accounts attached to the loan. In a statement released on Thursday, the bank said the decision came as an effort to simplify their product offerings, so they chose to no longer offer personal lines of credit as the bank feels it can better meet the borrowing needs of their customers through credit card and personal loan products.
Another major disruption caused by the sudden shutdowns is that many customers will be left without what may be considered as a critical source of liquidity. Even though the bank didn't reveal how many customers used the credit lines it is eliminating, recent data showed that Wells Fargo had had $24.9 billion in loans in a category called "other consumer" as of March, and that category was 26% lower this year than during the same period last year.
Many of the users of the credit lines that are shuttering will actually be the ones penalized by the bank's decision. According to the CNBC report, it will get much harder for the customers whose credit lines will be involuntarily closed to receive credit from a new source because their FICO scores will be penalized as if they had elected to close the credit line willingly. Economists have been advising users to stop making withdrawals and turn their attention to repayment to avoid disruptions in their credit scores. According to one CNBC analyst, "once the account is closed and you can no longer draw from it, your annual percentage rate will be frozen and that’s the rate you’ll pay on the remaining balance".
In essence, the move is Wells Fargo's latest in a series of lending products closures. In 2020, the bank announced it would no longer provide home equity lines of credit for its customers and that it would stop giving auto loans to most independent car dealerships. Back then, financial analysts argued that happened because the bank was having a hard time making enough money to keep these areas going since the Federal Reserve placed penalties and growth limits on its business.
The last time Wells restricted consumer credit was because of the mounting uncertainty about the remaining purchasing power of the American consumer amid what was the worst economic recession facing the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But that uncertainty pretty much vanished ever since trillions of dollars in federal stimulus money were pumped into the financial markets, and fueled several asset bubbles and an unprecedented boom in both stock and housing markets. That's why the timing of this latest decision is sparking so much curiosity amongst financial experts.
It seems that the bank is engaging in some prudent risk-management as it could already realize that the U.S. economy is on the edge of an inflationary collapse that will likely force the Fed to hike interest rates much sooner than expected. As Wells Fargo tries to restructure its operations and takes cautionary measures to prevent future losses, the bank's move says more about our overheating economy and a bleak outlook for the reopening than many can realize. Those who have previously seen warning signs indicating that a catastrophic financial crisis was approaching already know that they have to run for the exits before the whole system starts melting down while triggering huge losses and acute financial imbalances. One thing is certain: when big banks suddenly start to close down their credit lines is because they can see that trouble is ahead."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"M82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact, through ensuing supernova explosions and powerful winds from massive stars, the burst of star formation in M82 is driving a prodigious outflow. Evidence for the superwind from the galaxy's central regions is clear in sharp telescopic snapshot. The composite image highlights emission from long outflow filaments of atomic hydrogen gas in reddish hues. Some of the gas in the superwind, enriched in heavy elements forged in the massive stars, will eventually escape into intergalactic space.
Triggered by a close encounter with nearby large galaxy M81, the furious burst of star formation in M82 should last about 100 million years or so. Also known as the Cigar Galaxy for its elongated visual appearance, M82 is about 30,000 light-years across. It lies 12 million light-years away near the northern boundary of Ursa Major."
The Poet: William Stafford, “Starting With Little Things”
“Starting With Little Things”
“Love the earth like a mole,
fur-near. Nearsighted,
hold close the clods,
their fine-print headlines.
Pat them with soft hands -
Like spades, but pink and loving; they
break rock, nudge giants aside,
affable plow.
Fields are to touch;
each day nuzzle your way.
Tomorrow the world.”
- William Stafford
"Millions Of Low Paying 'Jobs' Are Available, But Most Americans Can’t Afford To Take Them"
"Millions Of Low Paying 'Jobs' Are Available,
But Most Americans Can’t Afford To Take Them"
by Michael Snyder
"There are more job openings in the United States than ever before, but the vast majority of the available “jobs” pay so little that most Americans don’t want them. If working extremely long hours for some employer is not even going to lift you out of poverty, then you are probably better off taking whatever government assistance that you can get until a decent paying job eventually comes along. For example, if you get a job that pays 10 dollars an hour and you work full-time hours every week, you will earn somewhere around $1,600 a month before taxes. Needless to say, you can’t survive in most U.S. cities on $1,600 a month these days. It would have been tough to make it on $1,600 a month before the pandemic, but now we are in a highly inflationary environment. Housing costs are absolutely skyrocketing, health insurance premiums are at extremely ridiculous levels and food prices have been rising aggressively. The higher the cost of living gets, the less attractive low paying jobs are going to become.
Having said that, it is still good news that the number of job openings is sitting at a record high right now… "Job openings in the U.S. rose slightly in May to a record 9.21 million, reflecting an insatiable demand for labor as the economy fully reopens and businesses scramble to keep up with soaring sales for their goods and services."
The number of available jobs has set a record for three straight months. Job openings had fallen to as low as 4.6 million last year after the coronavirus pandemic briefly shut down much of the economy. Having lots of jobs available is better than not having a lot of jobs available, but of course the vast majority of those “jobs” could not support a middle class lifestyle for an average American family. Some have been using the term “labor shortage” to describe what is going on out there, but in reality what we are really facing is a shortage of jobs that people are actually willing to work.
Even though there are supposedly so many “jobs” available at this moment, the unemployment rate in this country actually went up last month… “There’s simply no labor shortage when you’re talking about finding house cleaners for a hotel - there is a shortage of workers who want to work at what you’re offering,” said Sylvia Allegretto, a UC Berkeley labor economist. She said the country is experiencing a “wage and benefits shortage.”
A labor shortage implies there aren’t enough available workers to fill open jobs, but this is not the case nationally, or in California. National unemployment in June was 5.9%, up from 5.8% in May, in part because the number of people looking for jobs grew, according to data from the Labor Department on Friday. California’s unemployment is tracking higher, at 7.9% in May.
Of course it doesn’t help that being unemployed pays quite handsomely in many states these days. If you can make more money doing nothing, it simply doesn’t make sense to work. In order to encourage more people to work, many large chains in the restaurant industry are now raising wages substantially… "Job openings in the accommodation and food services sector increased from 1.16 million in April to 1.25 million in May. To entice workers to stay — and to hire more people — restaurants have been raising wages. Darden Restaurants (DRI), which owns Olive Garden, announced in March that it is hiking pay. McDonald’s (MCD), too, announced wage hikes for employees at corporate-owned stores in May. Others have done the same."
Large corporate chains can do this because they have deep pockets. But millions of small businesses all over the country that deeply struggled during the pandemic are not in the same position. Ultimately, a lot of small business owners find themselves doing more and more of the work themselves because they simply can’t find enough people to work for the wages that they are offering. Here is just one example… "Jarvis Young, who owns a Papa John’s in Los Angeles with his wife, is struggling to staff up at all levels, from managers to delivery drivers. He employs 16 workers and said he needs closer to 23.
He has started borrowing employees from other Papa John’s franchises to keep up with demand. Until they hire one, his wife is acting as the general manager. The two of them sometimes deliver pizzas - not quite what they envisioned for themselves as franchise owners. “At the end of the day, this is our business,” he said."
Today, there are tens of millions of Americans that are considered to be among the “working poor”, and that number is growing with each passing day. The cost of living is rising far faster than our paychecks are, and an increasing number of Americans are not even able to afford the basics.
For instance, everyone needs a place to live. Unfortunately, home prices have surged so dramatically this year that the percentage of Americans that say that it is a “bad time to buy a home” has risen to the highest level ever recorded… "The percentage who said that it was a “bad time to buy a home” spiked over the past three months from record to record and in June hit 64%. Consumers cited home prices as the predominant reason. A record low 32% of the respondents said that it was still a good time to buy a home, while the percentage of fence-sitters who didn’t know dropped to 4%."
And just trying to buy enough food to eat is becoming a challenge for a lot of people. When I went to the grocery store this week, I was stunned to see how high prices had become. Of course some manufacturers are trying to hide price increases by shrinking the sizes of their packages, and this is something that NPR did an article on the other day… "A couple of weeks ago, Edgar Dworsky walked into a Stop & Shop grocery store in Somerville, Mass., like a detective entering a murder scene.
He stepped into the cereal aisle, where he hoped to find the smoking gun. He scanned the shelves. Oh no, he thought. He was too late. The store had already replaced old General Mills cereal boxes - such as Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs - with newer ones. It was as though the suspect’s fingerprints had been wiped clean."
But Dworsky’s story didn’t end there. He decided to check out the back of the store, and it was there that he discovered what he was searching for... "Then Dworsky headed toward the back of the store. Sure enough, old boxes of Cocoa Puffs and Apple Cinnamon Cheerios were stacked at the end of one of the aisles. He grabbed an old box of Cocoa Puffs and put it side by side with the new one. Aha! The tip he had received was right on the money. General Mills had downsized the contents of its “family size” boxes from 19.3 ounces to 18.1 ounces. Dworsky went to the checkout aisle, and both boxes - gasp! - were the same price. It was an open-and-shut case: General Mills is yet another perpetrator of “shrinkflation.”
As I discussed a few days ago, we are going to be in a high inflation environment for the foreseeable future. That means that low paying jobs will just become less and less attractive. So employers can boast that they have as many “job openings” as they want, but if wage growth continues to lag way behind the real rate of inflation most of those jobs will continue to remain empty."
"Trouble is Coming! Lines of Credit Closed Without Warning"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, IAllegedly PM 7/9/21:
"Trouble is Coming! Lines of Credit Closed Without Warning"
"Trouble is coming! Wells Fargo bank has just announced that it will be closing lines of credit on the individuals and businesses without warning. This will dramatically affect peoples ability to get a new line of credit and lower their FICO scores."
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Peter Schiff Interview:
"We Are About To Suffer Big Time"
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"Wells Fargo Shuts Down All Lines Of Credit!
Looting Causes Target To Close Stores! - Full Spectrum Survival"
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"Possibly a Real Warning: Go Fill Up Your Gas Tank Now -
Something May Be Going Down"
"THE WARNING: Flying J, Pilot, and all of their subsidiaries have been told that the next shipment of gas will be their last shipment, and to shut the pumps off when they reach 10 percent. Secondary confirmation said Cenex, which is not associated with Flying J/Pilot got the same message."
"Traitors – All of Them!"
"Traitors – All of Them!"
by Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "We write today with a jolly prediction: The war against inflation will be long… with sturm and drang… boom and bust… tears and laughter. Looking ahead, there will be battles won… and battles lost. A crash on Wall Street might produce a shocking deflation. Then, the forces of inflation will counterattack. Ultimately, this is a war inflation can’t lose. Because America will be betrayed by its own brass and blowhards.
Inflation Update: Here’s the latest on the battle, from The Wall Street Journal: "Supermarkets are stocking up on everything from sugar to frozen meat before they get more pricey, girding for what some executives anticipate will be some of the highest price increases in recent memory. Some supermarkets said they are buying and storing supplies to keep their shelves full amid stronger demand. Grocery sales in the U.S. for the week ended June 19 rose about 15% from two years earlier and increased 0.5% from a year earlier, according to Jefferies and NielsenIQ data. Stockpiling by food retailers is driving shortages of some staples, grocery industry executives said, and is challenging a U.S. food supply chain already squeezed by transportation costs, labor pressure and ingredient constraints."
Dear Reader Randy C. reports from the front lines: "I just had my car serviced at the dealership. Took a stroll through the lot. EVERY new car – every single one – had a supplemental sticker beside the manufacturer’s sticker: a $3,500 “market adjustment” addition. No inflation worries? Uh huh. Yeah, right. Move along now. Nothing to see here."
And CNN elaborates: "Normally, a dealer selling a one-year-old used car will get about 80% to 85% of its original price, according to Edmunds.com. But, according to the site’s most recent figures, car dealers can now sell one-year-old used cars for about 95% of the original price. That’s the average. And some used cars and trucks are worth even more than they cost when they were new."
Last War Against Inflation: Let us put this in the simplest perspective. Forty years ago, Field Marshall Paul Volcker led a successful war against inflation. He blasted it with higher reserve requirements to prevent the banks from lending money… and bombed it with a 20% interest rate on money lent to the banks by the Federal Reserve. The battlefield was littered with casualties – dead companies… failed investments… and desperate households. It was the worst economic calamity in America since the Great Depression. But when the smoke cleared, Tall Paul was still standing… and inflation was on the run.
Inflation Attack: Now, four decades later, inflation is again on the attack. But what could you expect? America’s “base money” (the Fed’s balance sheet) was less than $1 trillion in the summer of 2008. Now, it’s over $8 trillion. That’s an 8x increase in the space of 13 years.
And here’s colleague Dan Denning on federal spending: "…the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected this year’s federal deficit to reach $3 trillion, or 13.4% of GDP. It may be even bigger than that, if President Biden and Congress collude on more spending. But as is, it would be the second-largest deficit as a percentage of GDP since 1945."
Those stimmy checks and unemployment toppers are giving people money to spend. But the free money doesn’t produce more goods and services. It only produces higher prices.
How Today’s War Might Evolve: Now, try to imagine how today’s war against inflation might evolve. Imagine the Fed’s key lending rate not at today’s 0.25%… but at 80 times that amount, at 20%…Imagine mortgage rates not under 4%, but over 13%… Imagine a grim recession imposed by the Fed itself…
Imagine Joe Biden standing behind the Fed chief, even as the mob calls for his head… against the deafening howl and disgust of the Washington Post press, the Krugman economists, the Pelosi and Warren Congress, the Pentagon, the universities, and Wall Street. Unimaginable, right?
White Flag: Right. The trouble with a war against inflation today is not that it is unwinnable. The problem is that it is unfightable. Every sector of the Establishment is in cahoots with the enemy. None will oppose it seriously. And there… leading them all… will be the Commander-in-Chief himself, Joe Biden…with a white flag in his hand."
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