"Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself from thinking.
People intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are."
- Aldous Huxley
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, August 14, 2021
"Banks Have a Playbook to Close Accounts and Credit Lines - It’s Game On"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly AM 8/14/21:
"Banks Have a Playbook to Close
Accounts and Credit Lines - It’s Game On"
"Dear Fed: Are You Insane?"
"Dear Fed: Are You Insane?"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"History definitively shows that speculative bubbles always pop—always. Every speculative bubble mania, regardless of its supposed uniqueness- "it's different this time"- pops. No speculative bubble has ever "reached a permanently high plateau" and then remained on the plateau for years. So what does the Federal Reserve do? It inflates the biggest speculative bubble in modern history and then implicitly promises it will never pop.
Dear Fed, are you insane? You might as well make a public pronouncement that stocks have "reached a permanently high plateau" that will be followed by a permanent ascent to ever-higher plateaus, as that is the implicit message you've been sending punters and pundits.
Is The Fed Trying to Accelerate Revolution and Collapse? To promise a speculative mania that never ends is insane, yet that is precisely what the Fed is doing. Nothing else matters except "the Fed has our back." The Fed is also effectively promising that debt, leverage and wealth/income inequality will also all ascend higher forever. Once again history moots this happy story, as soaring wealth/income/ political power asymmetries that serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many inevitably generate revolution or regime collapse.
Dear Fed: is your "plan" to accelerate revolution and collapse? If so, you are insane. Has your hubris reached new extremes in la-la-land or are you so disconnected from reality that you're closing your eyes and going to your happy place where it all magically works out without the extremes you've single-handedly created reverting to the mean?
So sorry, America, but your central bank is certifiably insane, and it's not going to magically work out. The speculative bubbles in credit, leverage and assets will pop and the extremes of wealth/income/political power inequality will swing to the opposite extreme. The Fed is so fixated on “demand” and Keynesian economics, it can’t conceive of any realistic alternatives. But let’s compare the world of the 1930s to today…
Demand, Demand, Demand: To the degree that we inhabit an economic order dominated by Keynes and "demand," then any discussion of inflation has to circle round to Keynes and his magic solution to all economic ills: "demand," otherwise known as money burning a hole in your pocket.
Keynes' solution to depression, unemployment and virtually every other economic ill was to stimulate demand for goods and services by giving people more money and making it easier for them to borrow more money, with the key incentives being to promote more spending, not more savings and investment. The more people were encouraged to borrow and spend, the more demand for goods and services would increase and this growth would solve all economic ills.
Productivity and supply aren't issues in the magical world of Keynesian economics: Keynes famously suggested that paying people to dig holes and then fill them was one way to get more money into pockets for people to spend. In this economic order, inflation is a useful incentive to nudge people into spending their money rather than saving and investing it, as all cash will buy less next year in an inflationary regime.
1932: Here's the problem with the Keynesian economic order: it stopped the gold watch in 1932 when the world's supply of oil and other resources could still be viewed as semi-infinite: supply was just waiting for more demand as a signal to increase. If demand increased, supply would always magically increase in parallel. In this magical kingdom of Keynes, any scarcity shortage would be transitory for two reasons:
1) stuff was basically infinite; there was always some new source to mine, drill, extract, etc., and
2) there is always a substitute for whatever is temporarily scarce: if the beef supply can't be ramped up to meet demand, then people can buy a substitute, which is presumed to be in unlimited supply.
In 1932, the world was still awash in oil, and hydrocarbons and minerals seemed abundant beyond measure. The human population was growing but nowhere near utilizing the planet's agricultural and fresh water supplies. Everything was essentially infinite; scarcities were transitory or localized.
2021: Set the gold watch for 2021 and none of these conditions apply. The human populace has roughly quadrupled from 2 billion to 8 billion, the energy consumed per capita in developed nations has skyrocketed, resources are limited by depletion and costs of extraction, and as a result, scarcities are not transitory, they're permanent.
Inflation isn't just a mechanism to incentivize borrowing and spending now rather than later, it's a policy of impoverishment of the bottom 90%. The wealthy have income and capital gains from assets which bubble higher in the magical kingdom of Keynes, while those who depend on wages for their living lose ground every second the watch ticks forward in time.
Keynesian magic can't conjure substitutes for fresh water, wild fisheries, cobalt or even semiconductor-grade sand. In the world of 2021, demand is not the issue; supply is the issue, and the Keynesian magicians are literally blind to the consequences of this change.
It’s the Supply, Stupid: The problem isn't there isn't enough money burning a hole in consumers' pockets; the problem is the price of goods extracted from the physical world and shipped across the world is rising far faster than the Keynesians can stuff money into pockets. The other problem is that there are no substitutes for what is scarce, and unless the Keynesian conjurers can magically turn dirt into cobalt, make heat and pollution vanish and provide magic carpets for moving stuff around frictionlessly, then the economy will increasingly be dominated by scarcities and shortages of resources and other inputs for which there are no substitutes.
It's a different world, people, so move your gold watches from 1932 to 2021, or suffer the consequences of delusional faith in fake magic. Demand isn't the problem, supply is the problem, and it can't be resolved by printing more currency or lowering interest rates or cranking up inflation."
"We Can Only Choose.."
"Our world is not safe. It is a toxic swamp populated by predators and parasites. The odds are stacked against us from the moment of conception. We survive only because we fight the elements, hunger, disease, each other. And, although civilization promises us safe harbor, that promise is a fairy tale. Only the storm is real. It comes for each of us. And we cannot win. We can only choose how we will suffer our defeat. We can meekly take our beatings, and die like lemmings, finding solace in the belief that we shall one day inherit the earth. Or, we can plunge into the chaos with eyes wide open, taking comfort instead from the bruises, scars, and broken bones which prove that we fought to live and die as gods. "
- J.K. Franko, "Life for Life"
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"The worst part is wondering how you'll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you'll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it's treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself. "
- Louis-Ferdinand Celineo
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"In the movie 'The Lion in Winter', when the sons, in the dungeon, think they hear Henry coming down the stairs to kill them:
Richard: "He's here! He'll get no satisfaction out of us! Don't let him see you beg! Take it like a man!"
Geoffrey: "You chivalric fool! As if the way one falls down matters!"
Richard: "Well, when the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal. "
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"Who Lost America's Longest War?"
"Who Lost America's Longest War?"
by Pat Buchanan
"In April, President Joe Biden told the nation he would have all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever on the continental United States. Given the turn of events of the past week, that 20th anniversary may be celebrated by a triumphant Taliban, now on the cusp of victory over the Americans and their Afghan allies, with gruesome public executions of their surrendered and captured enemies.
Sept. 11, 2021, could see U.S. Marines and diplomats fleeing Kabul to escape the retribution of the Taliban whom we ousted in 2001.
Consider. From Friday, a week ago, to today, the Taliban have overrun 10 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals. Mazar-e-Sharif in the north is now surrounded. Kandahar and Herat, second and third largest cities, are under siege. The Kandahar-Kabul road has been cut. The defense minister escaped assassination in the capital. The government’s media director did not. The Taliban now control half of the 400 regions of Afghanistan and two-thirds of its territory.
Some Afghan soldiers have fought bravely. Others have retreated into their bases, surrendered, or fled into neighboring countries such as Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. An entire Afghan army corps with its U.S. weapons, equipment and vehicles was surrendered in Kunduz city.
U.S. military say the fall of Kabul could come within 90 days, with some saying privately the regime could fall to the Taliban within a month. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has summarized the situation: “The complete, utter failure of the Afghan national army, absent our hand-holding, to defend their country is a blistering indictment of a failed 20-year strategy predicated on the belief that billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars could create an effective democratic central government in a nation that has never had one.”
The reality of that grim assessment raises many questions. Who is responsible for the colossal U.S. failure in Afghanistan? Who is responsible for America’s impending defeat in her longest war? Over the last 20 years, the U.S. lost 2,500 troops with 20,000 wounded and invested $1 trillion to create an Afghan army, only to see that army crumble and disintegrate as soon as we departed.
Wednesday, Biden conceded that truth: “Look, we spent over $1 trillion over 20 years; we trained and equipped … over 300,000 Afghan forces. Afghan leaders have to come together. They’ve got to fight for themselves.” We are facing in Afghanistan a wipeout of the investment of a generation to convert Afghanistan into a democracy with the ability to hold the allegiance of its people and to defend itself.
Why did we fail? Did the U.S. generals, statesmen, politicians and journalists who went to Afghanistan during these last two decades, and came back to testify to our steady progress, delude themselves? Or did they deceive us? How many U.S. generals knew what was going on but declined to risk their careers by telling Congress or the country that the Afghan army and regime we had stood up would likely collapse like a house of cards once the Americans departed and they had to face the Taliban alone?
Today, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, is in Qatar threatening the Taliban that if they overrun the country and impose a victor’s peace, they risk being denied diplomatic recognition by the U.S. and its Western allies and a forfeiture of future foreign aid. But to brand the Taliban terrorists and pariahs is not new to them. What they seek is something for which they have proven they are willing to die.
What is critical for them is to restore the Taliban to their previous dominance; to create an Islamic Emirate; to make themselves the moral, social and political arbiters of a more purely Islamic Afghanistan. And to be rid of the outsiders and their alien values. They want to be able to stand up and say to the Muslim world: “We have shown you how to do it. We fought America, the world superpower, for 20 years until we forced the Americans, tails between their legs, to get out of our land, and then put their puppets up against a wall.”
While our strategic defeat will leave Americans reluctant to attempt any such future imperial interventions, there needs to be an accounting. The questions that need answering:
• Was not the attempt to transplant Madisonian democracy into the soil of the Middle and Near East a fool’s errand from the beginning?
• How many other U.S. allies field paper armies, which will collapse, if they do not have the Americans there to do the heavy lifting?
• Is what we have on offer - one man-one vote democracy - truly appealing in a part of the world where democracy seems to have trouble, from the Maghreb to the Middle East to Central Asia, putting down any deep roots?
The Taliban’s God is Allah. The golden calf we had on offer was democracy. In the Hindu Kush, their god has proven stronger."
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Related, highly recommended:
Friday, August 13, 2021
"Hyperinflation Next, Then The Greatest Depression 2.0"
Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/13/21:
"Hyperinflation Next, Then The Greatest Depression 2.0"
"The Greatest Stock Market Bubble In Financial History Is About To Burst"
Full screen recommended.
"The Greatest Stock Market Bubble
In Financial History Is About To Burst"
by Epic Economist
"Amid one of the craziest bull runs in stock markets in all of our history, calling out a bubble can be quite scary for many investors, but not for Jeremy Grantham. In a frenetic era of meme stocks, cryptocurrencies, and bidding wars, most people tend to overlook the risks and focus on the promise of future gains. However, there is an imminent and growing danger that this unprecedented mania might end up triggering the greatest stock market crash ever recorded. That's what the chairman of the board of famed asset managers GMO has been warning, stressing that we're in the middle of the greatest financial bubble ever seen. Grantham, an experienced investor who spent decades analyzing how bubbles are formed, has lived through and called numerous modern booms and bursts, including the dot-com crash in 2000, the market peak in 2008, and the market collapse of 2009. Now, he says that we're headed to a similar fate.
To identify a bubble, it doesn't take much, he argues. You can see something is terminally wrong in the market when it makes the front pages instead of the financial pages when the news is full of stories of people getting cheated when new coins are being created every month. "The scale of these things is so much bigger than in 1929 or 2000," he stresses. The current stock market bubble has been fueled by artificial government policies that led many investors to believe overvalued assets could be justified by a booming economy. But as Grantham highlights, the economy isn't actually booming because there was no real growth in production, and very soon investors will have to confront that reality. And when they do, things will start to rapidly change in the market, leading this bubble to an epic burst.
Grantham believes that the next stock market crash will cause an enormous negative wealth effect, bigger than it has ever been, compared to any other previous bubble burst. "It's the first time we have bubbled in so many different areas – interest rates, stocks, housing, non-energy commodities. On the way up, it gave us all a positive wealth effect, and on the way down it will retract, painfully," he warns. "This bubble is the real thing, and everyone can see it. It's as obvious as the nose on your face. Today, it is clear to me that this is the most dangerous package of overpriced assets we have ever seen in the US,” says Jim Grant, describing that we have the most overpriced fixed-income market in the history of the world.
At this point, bubbles are emerging everywhere. Housing, equity, bonds, stocks, crypto. If they simultaneously crash, as most economists predict they will, this will undoubtedly be the sharpest collective loss of wealth ever recorded. That's why, Grantham is sounding the alarm to the greatest bubble in financial history, warning investors that history is about to repeat itself, and this time, the stage is set for an apocalyptic financial meltdown.
Sharing a similarly dire forecast, finance, and economic expert, Alasdair Macleod, affirms that one of the biggest catalysts to the coming inflationary collapse were government policies that recklessly expanded our money supply, downgraded our living standards, our currency, and left Americans struggling with runaway inflation in that process.
The expert emphasizes that “this has gotten to a point where we can’t go any further. We are at the top of the bubble. What happens when this market tops out? The dollar goes down with it”. Macleod adds to the predictions that the everything bubble burst is fast approaching: “Look at the fundamentals in the economy. They are talking about economic recovery, but look at all the shops that are closed and never to be reopened. This is not a healthy economy. This is a very bad economy. The reason why prices are rising is you’ve got all this money being put into the consumers’ hands. This is the middle class here, and they are spending this money, and where is the production to satisfy the spending? It’s not there, it’s closed down. There is no solution. We are getting to the point that there is actually no exit from this mess,” he warned. A financial disaster of unprecedented proportions seems just a matter of time. With so much debt, and so little resilience, our over-leveraged financial system is doomed to face a reckoning and everyone that have seen this happening before is telling us right now that conditions in the markets are increasingly unsustainable. Those who have chosen to ignore the dark clouds that rising on the horizon will soon find themselves amidst the most devastating financial catastrophe of our lifetime."
"A Look to the Heavens"
“What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar winds and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas. Located only 8,000 light years away, the Wizard nebula, pictured above, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer.
The active star forming region spans 100 about light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon. The Wizard Nebula can be located with a small telescope toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus) Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being formed may outlive our Sun.”
Chet Raymo, “Telling Stories”
“Telling Stories”
by Chet Raymo
"When the pulse of the first day carried it to the rim of night, First Woman said to First Man, "The people need to know the laws. To help them we must write the laws for all to see"... And so she began, slowly, first one and then the next, placing her jewels across the dome of night, carefully designing her pattern so all could read it. But Coyote grew bored watching First Woman carefully arranging the stars in the sky: Impatiently he gathered two corners of First Woman's blanket, and before she could stop him he flung the remaining stars out into the night, spilling them in wild disarray, shattering First Woman's careful patterns."
This episode from the Navajo creation story of is from "How the Stars Fell Into the Sky", a children's book by Jerrie Oughton. It is a lovely story, full of ancient wisdom. For centuries, Navajo children heard the story at an elder's knee. The story was taken literally, or at least accepted with a willing suspension of disbelief. I heard a similar creation story in my youth - of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Serpent. I accepted the story with a willing suspension of disbelief.
All cultures, everywhere on Earth, have stories, passed down in scriptures, traditions or tribal myths, that answer the questions: Where did the world come from? What is our place in it? What is the source of order and disorder? What will be the fate of the world? Of ourselves? No people can live without a community story. The problem comes when the community story becomes so disconnected from empirical experience that it no longer commands a suspension of disbelief. For many of us in the West, that is the case with the creation stories that have undergirded Western civilization.
Today, a New Story exists for those who choose to accept it. It is the product of thousands of years of human curiosity, observation, experimentation, and creativity. It is an evolving story, not yet finished. Perhaps it will never be finished. It is a story that begins with an explosion from a seed of infinite energy. The seed expands and cools. Particles form, then atoms of hydrogen and helium. Stars and galaxies coalesce from swirling gas. Stars burn and explode, forging heavy elements - carbon, nitrogen, oxygen - and hurling them into space. New stars are born, with planets made of heavy elements.
On one planet near a typical star in a typical galaxy life appears in the form of microscopic self-replicating, carbon-based ensembles of atoms. Life evolves, over billions of years, resulting in ever more complex organisms. Continents move. Seas rise and fall. The atmosphere changes. Millions of species of life appear and become extinct. Others adapt, survive, and spill out progeny. At last, consciousness appears. One of the millions of species on the planet looks into the night sky and wonders what it means. Feels the spark of love, tenderness, responsibility. Makes up stories - of First Woman and Coyote, of Adam, Eve and the Serpent - eventually making up the New Story. The New Story places us squarely in a cosmic unfolding of space and time, and teaches our biological affinity to all humanity. We are inextricably related to all of life, to the planet itself, and even to the lives of stars.
This episode from the Navajo creation story of is from "How the Stars Fell Into the Sky", a children's book by Jerrie Oughton. It is a lovely story, full of ancient wisdom. For centuries, Navajo children heard the story at an elder's knee. The story was taken literally, or at least accepted with a willing suspension of disbelief. I heard a similar creation story in my youth - of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Serpent. I accepted the story with a willing suspension of disbelief.
All cultures, everywhere on Earth, have stories, passed down in scriptures, traditions or tribal myths, that answer the questions: Where did the world come from? What is our place in it? What is the source of order and disorder? What will be the fate of the world? Of ourselves? No people can live without a community story. The problem comes when the community story becomes so disconnected from empirical experience that it no longer commands a suspension of disbelief. For many of us in the West, that is the case with the creation stories that have undergirded Western civilization.
Today, a New Story exists for those who choose to accept it. It is the product of thousands of years of human curiosity, observation, experimentation, and creativity. It is an evolving story, not yet finished. Perhaps it will never be finished. It is a story that begins with an explosion from a seed of infinite energy. The seed expands and cools. Particles form, then atoms of hydrogen and helium. Stars and galaxies coalesce from swirling gas. Stars burn and explode, forging heavy elements - carbon, nitrogen, oxygen - and hurling them into space. New stars are born, with planets made of heavy elements.
On one planet near a typical star in a typical galaxy life appears in the form of microscopic self-replicating, carbon-based ensembles of atoms. Life evolves, over billions of years, resulting in ever more complex organisms. Continents move. Seas rise and fall. The atmosphere changes. Millions of species of life appear and become extinct. Others adapt, survive, and spill out progeny. At last, consciousness appears. One of the millions of species on the planet looks into the night sky and wonders what it means. Feels the spark of love, tenderness, responsibility. Makes up stories - of First Woman and Coyote, of Adam, Eve and the Serpent - eventually making up the New Story. The New Story places us squarely in a cosmic unfolding of space and time, and teaches our biological affinity to all humanity. We are inextricably related to all of life, to the planet itself, and even to the lives of stars.
It has been the task of many of us gathered here on this cyber porch to help wed the New Story to the spiritual quest, to create what Thomas Berry calls an "integral story." In his introduction to Kathleen Deignan's collection of Thomas Merton's nature writing, Berry writes: "Today, in the opening years of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in a critical moment when the religious traditions need to awaken again to the natural world as the primary manifestation of the divine to human intelligence. The very nature and purpose of the human is to experience this intimate presence that comes to us through natural phenomena. Such is the purpose of having eyes and ears and feeling sensitivity, and all our other senses. We have no inner spiritual development without outer experience. Immediately, when we see or experience any natural phenomenon, when we see a flower, a butterfly, a tree, when we feel the evening breeze flow over us or wade in a stream of clear water, our natural response is immediate, intuitive, transforming, ecstatic. Everywhere we find ourselves invaded by the world of the sacred."
Berry reminds us that we will neither love nor save what we do not experience as sacred. The older creation stories locate the source of the sacred outside of the creation. The New Story, the scientific story of creation, provides unique opportunities to experience the creation itself as holy and good.
We should treasure the ancient stories for the wisdom and values they teach us. We can praise the creation in whatever poetic languages and rituals our traditional cultures have taught us. But only the New Story has the global authority to help us navigate the future. Of all the stories, it is certainly the truest. It is the only story whose feet have been held to the fire of exacting empirical experience.”
The Poet: William Stafford, "You Reading This, Be Ready"
"You Reading This, Be Ready"
"Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life.
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?"
- William Stafford
"A Sad Fact..."
"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
- Richard Ford
"Don't Wonder..."
"Don't wonder why people go crazy. Wonder why they don't.
In the face of what we can lose in a day, in an instant,
wonder what the hell it is that makes us hold it together."
- "Grey's Anatomy"
"Return Of The Wolfman"
"Return Of The Wolfman"
by Bill Bonner
"Homo homini lupus."
– Latin proverb, meaning “Man is wolf to man.”
POITOU, FRANCE – "We saw a strange beast early this morning. Driving to the train station, an animal slouched onto the road ahead of us. At first, we thought it was a wild boar. There are a lot of them in the area. Then, it saw us coming and dashed back into the woods. But it was taller and longer than the typical boar, and it moved more like a dog than a pig. “It was a wolf,” concluded a neighbor. “We found one dead on the railroad tracks a few months ago. They’re all over France now.”
In the mid-20th century, this area became a major producer of sheep. But only after wolves were exterminated. Now, with the wolf making a comeback, will the sheep be next to go? Readers may want to keep that in mind… as we consider the affairs of men in the next few hundred words. In short, the wolfman is back…
Lunar Lunacy: Usually, civilized life goes on in a give-and-take, live-and-let-live kind of fashion. But sometimes, when the moon is full, people go a little mad; they grow furry ears and long teeth. That’s what happened in the early 20th century… first with the Bolsheviks… then the National Socialists (Nazis). In each case, a determined group – often very small at the beginning – believed that it had the one and only TRUTH… and that all others must bend to it. Or else…
Then, as the howling grows louder, and the predators get control of the government, other groups are eager to join. The media is first; it wishes to be part of the glorious new future. Politicians, bureaucrats, opinion mongers, view shapers – none wants to be left behind. Religious groups and nonprofits join the pack; they begin to see how the new faith connects to their old one. And business – partly trying to protect itself… and partly trying to gain special privileges – soon takes its place among the beasts.
Even ordinary people, who might otherwise get on with their own honest and dignified lives, are inspired to snarl and yelp. And then, the whole lot of them are headed for trouble. And now, as the moon grows brighter… is that a dog we hear… or a wolf?
Cancel Culture: Let us begin with the supposition that almost everything we hear in the news is either a lie or a fraud. Of course, we will be wrong occasionally, but probably not often. The public has better things to do (idly scrolling through Facebook!) than trying to understand the issues in any depth. Besides, reporters are too lazy – and have little incentive – to dig beneath the popular narrative to find out what is really going on. And anyone who dares try to put forward a contrary view is quickly censured.
Recall that Donald Trump – who won more votes than any Republican in history – was cut off from Twitter; the company didn’t like his views of the election results. (Note that we offer no opinion as to the election results themselves… We just call attention to the extraordinary situation in which a major public figure is censured for his views.)
Just in the last few days, Senator Rand Paul was cut off from YouTube after he cited studies critical of mask mandates… and blasted the censors for cutting others off. The video sharing platform also tried to remove Dr. Dan Stock’s speech on the virus to the Mount Vernon Community School Corporation in Indiana after it went viral. That is to say, YouTube tried to take it down because people wanted to see it… and because it had the wrong point of view.
You might say, “YouTube is a private company. It can do what it wants.” Which is perfectly okay with us, too. We’re just exploring a phenomenon here, not arguing about the law. If we’re right, America’s “private” sector and its most important institutions have been corrupted by public sector money. The press asks no “hardball” questions. The universities no longer teach people how to think; they teach them WHAT to think. Businesses have figured out that it’s the feds who butter their bread.
Preposterous Policies: Returning to the legal issue, last year, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz made the remarkable claim that people “have no right not to be vaccinated.” What kind of Brave New World is this? People have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but not to decide what is put into their bodies? What kind of world is it where private companies act as censors for the feds?
And how come the press goes along with some of the most intrusive and preposterous government policies in history – the trillion-dollar deficits… stimmy checks… the invasion of Iraq… the COVID-19 shutdowns…?
Real Mischief: Yes, Dear Reader, people seem to go mad from time to time. And now, you can start a war and kill thousands of women… and then go on to a comfortable retirement berth as an elder statesman (George Bush Jnr.). But pinch just one woman (or more) on the derrière, and your career is sunk (Andrew Cuomo).
You can tell all the lies you want (Petraeus, Flynn, Milley, Mattis, et al.)… and move on to a rich reward at Raytheon or Lockheed Martin… but tell the truth just once, and you’ll go to jail (former National Security Agency intelligence analyst Daniel Hale).
You can print trillions of fake dollars and you will become the most admired public servant since Pontius Pilate (Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell)…but try to pass off just one fake $20 bill, and the police will kill you (George Floyd).
The media condemned Floyd’s killer – even before trial! – but it never once raised doubts about the system that was fatal to him. Instead, it went after the soft target – the alleged “racism” of others, the Trumpian white trash – and gave a pass to the furry elite’s real mischief – militarizing the police… the War on Drugs… the War on Poverty… punishing savers… eliminating good-paying jobs… and shifting $30 trillion to itself by backstopping the stock market and funding its pet projects.
Today, we come to no conclusion. We just note that the moon, big and yellow already, is waxing…and trouble is afoot."
Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 8/13/21: Critical Updates"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/13/21:
"Critical Updates"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/13/21:
"MELTDOWN 2.0: Artificial Liquidity Is Fueling
The System In An Attempt To Push Off A CREDIT FREEZE"
"I Feel Like I Am Living In Crazytown"
"I Feel Like I Am Living In Crazytown"
by Michael Snyder
"We haven’t had an extended bout of painful inflation like this since the days of the Carter administration, and our leaders in Washington have decided that the best way forward is to rapidly create even more inflation. They keep using words like “transitory” to describe the current inflation crisis, but then they turn right around and talk about the need to create, borrow and spend even more money. It is utter madness, but at this point there is nobody that is going to stop them. We are all passengers on a “highway to Weimar”, and those that have their hands on the wheel have gone completely nuts.
On Wednesday, we learned that on a year-over-year basis inflation continues to rise at the fastest pace that we have seen since the last financial crisis… "Federal data released on Wednesday showed that for the 12 months through July, the consumer price index rose 5.4 percent, unchanged from June and at the highest level since the Great Recession in 2008."
But since the way that the rate of inflation is calculated has literally been changed dozens of times over the decades, the only way to get an apples for apples comparison is to calculate what the rate of inflation would be if it was still calculated the same way it was at some previous moment in our history. John Williams of shadowstats.com has done just that. According to Williams, if inflation was still calculated the same way it was back in 1990, we would be at about 9 percent at this moment. And if inflation was still calculated the same way it was back in 1980, we would be way into double digits right now.
Many Americans had assumed that we would never again see the sort of crazy inflation that we witnessed during the Carter years, but now it is here. In particular, food prices, gas prices and vehicle prices are rapidly becoming quite painful… "New vehicle prices rose 6.4 percent on the year, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending January 1982. Gasoline was also up 42 percent.
The prices of many everyday items have jumped sharply in the past year. Bacon was up 11 percent and whole milk and beef roast were both 8 percent higher on the year.
Travel expenses jumped hugely from last summer’s depressed base level, with hotels up 24 percent and airfare up 19 percent."
Needless to say, this is having a substantial impact on our standard of living. Even though wages are rising, they aren’t rising nearly as fast as the cost of living is… "It is getting harder and harder for American workers to make ends meet as rising inflation outpaces pay gains, pushing down inflation-adjusted compensation at a pace almost never seen before. Adjusted for inflation, hourly compensation fell 2.7 percent in the second quarter, data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the nonfarm business sector showed Tuesday."
Inflation is a tax on all of us, and it is going to whittle down the size of the middle class with each passing month. And this is just the beginning. In recent days, many corporate executives have been very vocal about the fact that more price hikes are ahead.
For example, Shake Shack has publicly announced that another round of price increases is incoming… "The popular burger chain Shake Shack announced it will be implementing yet another price hike in 2021 to fight inflation. During a conference call with analysts last week, Shake Shack’s chief financial officer Katherine Fogerty said customers will be paying three to 3.5 percent more for their food in the fourth quarter of 2021."
And the CEO of Tyson Foods is warning that costs keep rising even more quickly than his company can raise prices for consumers… "Tyson Foods Inc., the top chicken producer in the U.S., confirmed in an earnings call that food inflation continues to push prices higher. Tyson’s CEO Donnie King said higher costs are hitting the firm faster than the company can lift prices, and retail prices are set to rise on Sept. 5."
My friends, this is going to get bad. Really bad.
So what are our leaders doing in response? Well, they have decided to create, borrow and spend even more money. In fact, the Senate just passed a 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure package and then immediately began working on a 3.5 trillion dollar spending package… "The Senate on Tuesday passed a $1 trillion infrastructure package and sent it to the House for consideration. The upper chamber then started work on a second $3.5 trillion package of further government spending. President Joe Biden will have to knit his party together to pass the larger measure. Already moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, have voiced concern about the impact of the $3.5 trillion measure on the $29 trillion national debt."
I feel like I am living in Crazytown. They know that they are causing inflation, but they just can’t help themselves. At this point, even a top Democrat is warning that there will be “grave consequences”… "U.S. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin on Wednesday said he had “serious concerns” about Senate Democrats’ planned $3.5 trillion spending plan, potentially gumming up efforts to move ahead with President Joe Biden’s top priorities. Manchin, in a statement, said that although he voted to move ahead and debate the plan, he was worried about the “grave consequences” of such spending on the nation’s debt as well as the country’s ability to respond to other potential crises."
But even though some of our politicians may pay lip service to fiscal responsibility once in a while, in the end most of them just keep voting for these insane spending packages. So what can we do? I often say that we should “hope for the best and prepare for the worst”, but in this case there is no hoping for the best. We know what they are going to do, and we know where this road leads. So my recommendation is to prepare for the worst, and then do some more preparing, because things will eventually get really, really bad.
Congress is going to pass wild spending package after wild spending package, and the Fed is just going to continue to pump billions upon billions of fresh dollars into the financial system. This is the greatest financial bubble in the history of the world, and it will be fascinating to watch how long it can last before it finally implodes."
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