Morrill, Maine, USA. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Sunday, July 11, 2021
"Container Shipping Shortage Triggers Freight Rate Spike Of 500 Percent: The Worst Is Still Ahead"
Full screen recommended.
"Container Shipping Shortage Triggers Freight Rate
Spike Of 500 Percent: The Worst Is Still Ahead"
by Epic Economist
"The global shipping industry is facing the worst crisis in the history of container freight - and a massive wave of disruptions is ahead. According to the big boss of a major logistics business, Rob Lewis, the operations director of Meachers Global Logistics, a "perfect storm" is leaving global supply chains in total chaos as freight rates just skyrocketed to the highest level ever recorded. This catastrophic mess in global supply chains started during the first rounds of lockdowns when countless businesses were shut down and shipping companies reduced the number of cargo vessels being sent out. However, when stimulus money started to frenziedly fuel consumer demand, global supply chains simply couldn't cope with the unexpected boom in business.
As a result, it's getting incredibly difficult - and expensive - for stores to restock their shelves, while manufacturers, carmakers, and builders can't get the parts they need, and farmers - particularly small farmers and ranchers across the U.S. - simply cannot afford to export their products anymore. All of these reasons, analysts say, are contributing to a huge jump in consumer prices. But so far, most people remain unaware of the full impact the current shipping crisis will have on higher prices for consumer goods.
Those increased shipping costs and delays are starving the economy of the products it needs and contributing to widespread shortages. But not only consumers and retailers are being affected: most American exporters are reporting that shipping companies are so desperate to rapidly get containers back to China that they're just emptying the containers and promptly returning to the Pacific without waiting to fill them back up with products made in the U.S. Consequently, this is leading millions of small U.S. exporters to the edge of financial ruin and only expanding our ballooning trade deficit.
This week, amid continued reports of container shortages, shipping capacity constraints, port congestion, and a sudden uptick in consumer demand, new data released by Drewry Supply Chain Advisors indicated that the cost of shipping goods from Asia to Western countries has exploded to new highs. In 2020, the average port-to-port spot rate from Shanghai to Los Angeles was at around $1,500 per 40-foot container, but in the week ended July 8, 2021, that price had soared to $9,631, marking an increase of over 500% from early 2020.
Drewry says this phenomenon is a major “market shock” that likely began shortly after stimulus money started fueling an e-commerce boom in June 2020. However, a recent study has shown that those skyrocketing freight costs are having a detrimental impact on small and medium-sized exporters. "This competitive environment affected many but especially all the SMB exporters who were burdened by these high costs,” it said. The study estimated that this year alone, almost $200 billion in losses resultant from non-shipped products will weigh upon the balance sheets of small and medium American businesses. In other words, the "economic boost" provided by the Federal Reserve is actually causing our economy to stall as millions of U.S. businesses simply cannot afford to send their products overseas.
Needless to say, U.S. consumers haven't seen the worst of rising prices just yet. Part of the reason why consumer prices have been surging recently is due to a global container shortage aggravated by congestion in several key ports. But another reason why it's getting so hard for companies to find space in shipping containers is that a new virus outbreak in China has led authorities to shut down several key ports for weeks, clogging several spots critical to global trade, triggering a shipping backlog that could take months to clear and cause to shortages during the year-end holiday shopping season.
Although the rate of infections has improved since then, for global trade, the damage has been already done. In other words, Americans are about to experience exceedingly painful years of inflation. The ongoing freight crisis is just one of the many factors contributing to the surge in consumer prices. Keeping in mind that our country is going through the most devastating drought ever recorded, with millions of acres of crops being destroyed or abandoned due to the lack of irrigation water, while commodity prices have been reaching new highs and more shortages are expected to happen in the coming months, food costs are set to explode to levels most people aren't prepared for. Meanwhile, numerous industries are still waiting to get the imported products they need to properly operate - and the longer the imbalances between supply and demand persist, the more devastating will be the effects for both businesses and consumers."
Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/11/21: "Markets, A Look Ahead: BANNED! Y@uTube is Playing Games"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/11/21:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: BANNED! Y@uTube is Playing Games"
Greg Hunter, "Censoring Reality"
"Censoring Reality"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter has been predicting the financial system is going to go down. It’s not a matter of if, but when. One of the things that will make this coming so-called “reset” even worse is people are going to be totally blindsided because accurate and truthful information is censored. Holter explains why, “One thing that is extremely dangerous, and I know it has affected USAWatchdog.com, you have had your channel taken down by YouTube. The amount of censorship that is going on across the board, and it’s censorship of conservatives, but it is censorship of reality. It’s censorship of truth. That is so dangerous. If you read the book "1984", we are out-Orwelling George Orwell. The way I view this is very dangerous, and it’s part of the planned reset. Quite simply, if you get taken down or information is taken down, that information is directly over the target.”
Holter says there are huge changes coming to the financial system in the coming “reset.” Holter says, “You are looking at a system that is upside down in the belief that everything is going to be fine because everything is insured. You cannot eliminate risk. You can only move risk from one to another or another. You cannot eliminate risk. The risk is there, it is systemic.”
Systemic risk is plaguing all major markets, according to Holter, “It is the everything bubble. Everything is in a bubble. What they have done is create the most leveraged system in the history of history. I hate to say this, and I have not said this publicly, but I view this as a depopulation event. The vaccine is part of it, but the big depopulation event is crashing markets and crashing the credit markets. People are not going to be able to go to their Walmart or their local grocery store or wherever because goods are not going to be available. If you live in the city, God help you because I have no idea how you are going to survive.”
In closing, Holter warns, “The powers that be have told us that we are going to have a “reset.” Everybody wants to know what the reset is going to look like. The reset, in my opinion, is going to be the rug being pulled out from under everything. The real estate sector, which is 25% of the economy, is going to collapse. You have equities at all-time highs, all-time high valuations, not points. This is a coordinated effort, and they are going to pull the plug. Once the average person realizes the workforce has been impaired, that’s going to bleed over into the equity market, credit market and the real estate market. The real estate market is in the process of ending these eviction moratoriums–it’s all over for the real estate market. So, there is your reset.”
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with financial
writer, precious metals expert and broker Bill Holter of JSMineset.com.
Saturday, July 10, 2021
Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home" (Penguins)
Full screen! lol
Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home" (Penguins)
"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
○
"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
○
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."
○
Related:
○
○
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."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)