"Shadow Inflation is Affecting Everyone - This Will Not Stop"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, AM 10/12/21:

"Shadow Inflation is Affecting Everyone - This Will Not Stop"

"There are goods and services that we are shorted on each and every day. This is called Shadow Inflation. You are purchasing products and services and getting short changed as you pay for more and businesses give us less."

Gregory Mannarino, "Risk In The Market IS Increasing, However, Watch The Flow Of Credit And Debt"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/12/21:

"Risk In The Market IS Increasing, 

However, Watch The Flow Of Credit And Debt"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"COVID-19: The Weaponization Of Fear & The Loss Of Freedom"

"COVID-19: The Weaponization Of Fear 

& The Loss Of Freedom"

by John MacGhlionn

"Many U.S. citizens wonder if life will ever return to normal. Are masks here to stay? On TV, news channels are busy spreading fear. Meanwhile, some of the most widely read publications in the United States are warning about the next phase of the pandemic.

To live in the United States is to live in a permanent state of fear. This, as many readers know, is by design. A more fearful nation is a more passive one - easier to manipulate and easier to control.

In the United States, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, it’s far “too soon” to tell if Christmas gatherings will be allowed. Considering Christmas is more than two months away, one is forgiven for raising their eyebrows and asking: “What are you talking about, Dr. Fauci?” What is the point of vaccines and booster shots if we cannot be with our loved ones? Haven’t we sacrificed enough over the past 18 to 20 months?

Today, across the country, fear dominates the narrative. As someone currently completing a doctorate in psychology, I am intimately familiar with the mechanics of emotional salience. As a key attentional mechanism that contributes to our survival, fear is currently being weaponized for nefarious purposes.

When it comes to the mechanics of government-induced fear, the economist Robert Higgs is perhaps the most knowledgeable man in America. After reading a fantastic article by City Journal’s John Tierney, I picked up a copy of “Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government,” a book written by Robert Higgs, an economic historian who has been warning about the dangers of government creep for more than 30 years. In “Crisis and Leviathan,” published back in 1987, Higgs discussed a phenomenon known as the “ratchet effect.” Just like a tradesman uses a ratchet to allow effective, one-directional motion, governments often use emergencies to “ratchet” up their responses. By introducing more programs and more oversight boards, such “ratcheting” comes with significant costs - including freedoms we once took for granted. The loss of freedom brings a loss of privacy, and with these losses comes a loss of what it means to be human.

Clearly inspired by Higgs, the U.S. government, aided by mainstream media outlets, has weaponized fear to full effect. Aided by behavioral experts and masters of spin, a number of highly influential people have exploited this deeply wired reaction to further erode human agency. Now, to be clear, fear is a highly complex emotion. Context is everything. If you find yourself being chased by a bear, fear is natural. To feel joy in that situation would likely result in your swift and all too painful demise. However, in modern society, our predisposition toward fear is largely maladaptive. Your chances of being chased by a bear are minimal. In fact, your chances of dying from unnatural causes have never been lower. 

The world has never been safer. With COVID-19, though, we are constantly fed the life or death narrative. The message from the government and MSM is clear: “If you enjoy living, then listen to those in power. If instead you enjoy dying, then, by all means, do your own thing.” Don Lemon, CNN’s anchor and part-time preacher, has spoken about leaving the unvaccinated behind. Again, to be clear, I am not advocating against vaccines, but every adult should be free to make their own decisions. They shouldn’t be coerced or fed false, fear-filled narratives.

A Culture of Fear: We are bombarded with news stories 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - many of these are of the tragic variety. Not surprisingly, as we are hardwired to sense danger, the human mind provides fertile ground for the planting of fears. However, fears, like plants, can also be uprooted. Sadly, our ability to uproot is being compromised by those in positions of genuine power. Because of this, to paraphrase James F. Byrnes, the now deceased politician and judge, too many people now find themselves obsessed by the idea of security. By failing to acknowledge opportunity (also known as freedom), “they seem to be more afraid of life than death.”

Fear works best when an element of truth gets exaggerated to epic proportions. With COVID-19, we know the virus exists; we also know that far too many people around the world, including at least 709,000 Americans, have died. But - and this is of vital importance - if you happen to be reasonably young and reasonably healthy, your chances of dying from the virus are minimal. One of the major reasons COVID-19 has had such a devastating impact in the United States has a lot to do with one, simple fact: 40 percent of the country’s adults are obese. Instead of fear mongering, Dr. Fauci should be advising people to get fitter. This is one of the surest ways to avoid succumbing to the illness. Why does this get excluded from the conversation, either intentionally or otherwise? Because it’s much better to keep control of the masses - including the younger, healthier citizens - if tens of millions live in a perpetual state of fear.

An individual has a far greater chance of being killed in a traffic accident or from the flu than they have of dying from COVID-19. Obviously, no one wants to get the flu or experience a traffic accident. Nevertheless, we don’t live our lives in constant fear of both. That’s because our salience biases, also known as perceptual salience, predispose us to focus on novel threats. What’s more novel than a novel coronavirus? Fear is a prison largely of our own making. Let’s free ourselves.

I will finish with a quote from Frank Herbert, author of “Dune”: “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

Musical Interlude: Sting, "Fields Of Gold"

Sting, "Fields Of Gold"

"A Look to the Heavens"

Full screen recommended.

Juno Flyby of Ganymede and Jupiter

"What would it be like to fly over the largest moon in the Solar System? In June, the robotic Juno spacecraft flew past Jupiter's huge moon Ganymede and took images that have been digitally constructed into a detailed flyby. As the featured video begins, Juno swoops over the two-toned surface of the 2,000-km wide moon, revealing an icy alien landscape filled with grooves and craters. The grooves are likely caused by shifting surface plates, while the craters are caused by violent impacts. Continuing on in its orbit, Juno then performed its 34th close pass over Jupiter's clouds. The digitally-constructed video shows numerous swirling clouds in the north, colorful planet-circling zones and bands across the middle - featuring several white-oval clouds from the String of Pearls, and finally more swirling clouds in the south. Next September, Juno is scheduled to make a close pass over another of Jupiter's large moons: Europa."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"The Hand We're Dealt..."

“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”

- Mia Sheridan

"Grim Reaper Gonna Reap; Airline Chaos; Income Shortage; Food Companies Sold Out"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 10/11/21:

"Grim Reaper Gonna Reap; Airline Chaos; 

Income Shortage; Food Companies Sold Out"

"Panic At Sea: Over 100,000 Sailors Stuck On Abandoned Cargo Ships Without Pay Or Food"

Full screen recommended.

"Panic At Sea: Over 100,000 Sailors Stuck On 

Abandoned Cargo Ships Without Pay Or Food"

by Epic Economist

"Our supply chains are breaking down on a very basic level. While there's a widespread shortage of goods and many products are not arriving where they need to be when they need to be there, a shortage of workers is spreading across every corner of the industry and global leaders are now being warned if conditions do not improve the world's ocean transport system is going to collapse.

Hundreds of thousands of sailors have left their jobs since the onset of the health crisis due to chronic underpayment, lack of assistance, and exceedingly long work hours. To make things worse, many were unable to enter their countries and come back home after having finished their contracts simply because they haven't been vaccinated, in what was known as the crew change crisis.

Now, thousands of sailors are currently stranded at immense cargo ships, living in the worse possible conditions you can imagine. They have been forgotten by their leaders, their country, and their employers. The UN calls it a humanitarian crisis. And according to a new dossier published by the Wall Street Journal, the problem hasn't started over the past year and a half, but almost a decade ago.

The global trade disruptions that erupted as a result of the sanitary outbreak only aggravated the problem. Trillions in government stimulus have contributed to an unprecedented spike in consumer demand, but our stressed supply chains and millions of supply chain workers simply cannot handle the gigantic volume of goods arriving every day anymore. They're reaching their breaking point. However, long before the virus spread all over the planet, shipping companies were already overwhelming these workers whose labor is essential to global trade but whose faces remain invisible.

Over the past decade, an increasing number of carriers have abandoned their own vessels due to mounting debts, including older vessels considered too costly to repair, and that has caused a devastating rise in the number of crewmembers simply being abandoned at sea, often left without resources to survive as they await pay for the work they have done, but most times, it never comes.

In the investigative report, The Wall Street Journal described the shocking reality of thousands of crew members that were left adrift after companies abandoned, sold, or transferred vessels, or simply couldn't pay their debts.

These workers struggle to find food, water, and other essential resources even while moored close to resort locations in places such as Dubai - or in some cases, while stuck at Black Sea ports. "The $14 trillion shipping industry, responsible for 90% of world trade, has left in its wake what appears to be a record number of cargo-ship castaways," the report highlights. "Abandonment cases are counted when shipowners fail to pay crews two or more months in wages or don’t cover the cost to send crew members home, according to the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency."

The UN revealed that the number of abandoned sailors has doubled in 2020, and it will probably grow once again in 2021 as hundreds of thousands cannot reenter their countries due to the lack of vaccination. The exact number of international crew members that are currently abandoned is still unknown because many of them are still reluctant to come forward for fear of not getting hired by other freight companies. Only last month, the industry labor union, International Transport Workers’ Federation, reported that over 1,000 more sailors were left adrift. But according to the WSJ, the total number of those left aboard container ships and bulk carriers whose transport operations have been halted is in the range of the hundreds of thousands.

Abandoned sailors often describe the ships as a "prison" in which they have been forced to work for years without any compensation. Recently, some of the world’s biggest shipping and transport organizations urged for help from the UN, arguing the supply chain crisis may escalate to a whole new level if governments fail to send aid to sailors and other supply chain workers in time, an act that could lead to the total collapse of the global transport system, they warned. In addition to the devastating impact this crisis is having on the lives of hundreds of thousands of stranded maritime workers, millions of people all over the planet can also be affected by the consequences of this situation as the supply chain crisis intensifies and pushes the price of everything to new record highs. That's why you should start preparing for the turbulence ahead while you still can because the time is almost up."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

"A Trillion-dollar Game of Chicken"

"A Trillion-dollar Game of Chicken"

by Jim Rickards

"Most of my readers have followed the ongoing debates in Washington, D.C., about the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion welfare bill now pending in Congress. Here’s a quick recap of the state of play: The infrastructure bill is only about one-third related to real infrastructure such as tunnels, bridges, roads and airports. The rest involves welfare for union workers and pork-barrel projects that do not benefit the public at large. Still, the real infrastructure provisions are popular, and this bill has received bipartisan support. Republicans and Democrats both want to pass the bill so they can run on this accomplishment in the 2022 midterm elections.

As of now, the bill has passed the Senate and has been sent to the House of Representatives. It could be passed easily by the House and become law except that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to hold the bill hostage while she pushes the $3.5 trillion welfare bill. Her goal is to pass both bills at once and send them as a package to President Biden. But the Senate will never pass the welfare bill in its current form.

Stalemate: The Democrats need all 50 Democratic senators to agree on the bill. That would give them a 50-50 tie in the Senate (since none of the 50 Republicans will vote for it), but Vice President Kamala Harris could break the tie, which would give Democrats a win. Two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have said they will not vote for the $3.5 trillion bill. They might vote for something like a $2 trillion bill, but even that is not clear.

Meanwhile, progressive radicals in the House say they will not vote for the infrastructure bill unless the Senate clears the $3.5 trillion welfare bill. And they threaten to vote against the welfare bill if it is presented in the $2 trillion version that’s favored by the Senate.

There you have it. The entire process is in stalemate, and nothing is getting done. The stalemate may be cleared in the weeks ahead with some compromise, but right now it looks like a trillion-dollar game of chicken where no one is ready to blink. With all of this political noise, not many have taken the time to look inside the $3.5 trillion welfare package to see what it would actually provide.

The Most Radical Transformation Since the Great Society: This bill will be the most radical transformation of U.S. society since the Great Society days of the 1960s under Lyndon Johnson or FDR’s New Deal of the 1930s before that.

The Pelosi welfare bill calls for the following: Low-income first-time home buyers would get a free $20,000 down payment with no strings attached. Homeowners would get a $14,000 rebate for installing new home heating and air conditioning systems provided they use union labor. Another $1.48 billion is awarded to union community organizers. Union dues would become tax deductible, a disguised government subsidy. Companies that resist union efforts would see penalties increased 1,000%. The list of welfare and union subsidies goes on.

What does an everyday, hardworking taxpayer get out of this bill? Absolutely nothing. This bill would only put an enormous burden of more regulation, higher taxes and higher costs on the economy. The Biden administration will slow U.S. and global growth with a combination of higher taxes, more regulation and wasteful spending on programs such as the Green New Deal.

“Stimulus”: Biden administration deficit spending, which will approach $6 trillion of new authorizations in fiscal 2021, is continually claimed as stimulus. In fact, there is no stimulus from such spending because the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is now approaching 130%. There is good evidence that debt-to-GDP ratios in excess of 90% produce less growth than the amount of new debt itself. In other words, there is no stimulus and only an increasing debt-to-GDP ratio that makes the situation worse.

Let’s hope the impasse in Washington continues. But don’t count on it. Investors should expect slower growth ahead if this bill becomes law. But the U.S. was facing slower growth in the years ahead with or without the Biden administration’s policies because of high debt and a central bank that does not understand monetary economics.

The New Depression Continues: Now that Biden’s policies are fully revealed and becoming law, it is clear that growth will be even worse than would otherwise be expected. As I’ve explained before, this is characteristic of a new Great Depression. A recession is technically defined as two or more consecutive quarters of declines in GDP. A depression is not technically defined but is understood as a prolonged period of growth that is either below the long-term trend or below potential growth.

We are in a new depression now. Growth declined in 2008. The 2009–2019 recovery averaged annual growth of about 2.2%, well below the long-term trend of 3.5–4.5%. GDP declined again by 3.4% in 2020, the steepest one-year decline since 1946.

The December 2019 level of output was not recovered until July 2021. Annualized growth for the first half of 2021 is 6.4%, but that is slowing quickly. The Atlanta Fed's latest forecast for annualized Q3 growth is 1.3%.

Forget the high growth, reopening and inflation narratives. We're back in the same rut we were in before the pandemic, and it will get worse. This is characteristic of a new Great Depression that can last for many years. Once the inflation narrative fades and the disinflation narrative comes to the fore, we can expect a stock market correction as asset prices adjust to the return of an era of slow growth.

Looking out even further ahead, the effects of the pandemic on the economy will be intergenerational. Most financial panics or recessions are followed by recovery within a year or less. Pandemics produce different patterns.

30 Years to Recover: One study from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in collaboration with outside academics showed that of the 15 highest-fatality pandemics since the Black Death in the mid-1300s, the average time needed to return to normal levels of interest rates, growth and employment is more than 30 years.

In the shorter term, things are about to get worse because of the Fed. The economy’s slowing down and supply disruptions are producing shortages, some of which are serious and will probably get worse. Friday's disappointing employment report (194,000 new jobs, far short of the 500,000 predicted) will not impact the Fed's plan to taper in November. The Fed never reacts to one report; they like to see three or more in a row. They never do anything quickly, except in a crisis. So the taper will start in November. It's a mistake but that’s the Fed for you. They make one mistake after another. Get ready for a new recession in 2022."

- dailyreckoning.com

Gregory Mannarino, "Shocker! Another Crisis? People, Be Ready For Anything!"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 10/11/21:

"Shocker! Another Crisis? People, Be Ready For Anything!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"The Waiting Is The Hardest Part"

"The Waiting Is The Hardest Part"

by Jim Kunstler

"Ol’ Tom Petty sure got that right: the waiting is the hardest part. The lines are drawn: vaxed on one side and unvaxed on the other. Can it be that the unvaxed know rather specifically what the dangers of the vax actually are? That they are making a rational decision, taking a stand, against a toxic hacking of their immune systems and systemic damage to their organs? It’s not that hard to understand, after all. Those spike proteins can kill you, if not right away, then steadily, steadily over the weeks and months. So, now we’re left to wait as the light wanes and we slide into fretful darkness.

And can it be that the vaxed are so clue-deprived that they have not seen the news? Sure, information was suppressed pretty tightly for two years since this madness started, but the news media, turns out, is as leaky as the mRNA vaccines. If you were even moderately aware, you could discover that the vaxes create havoc in your bloodstream. It’s right ‘out there,’ documented and for real. But now, if you vaxed up, and you happened to snag a clue since then, you have a powerful incentive for denying that you might have made a mistake and acquired a serious problem. And you have a support group of about half the nation to reinforce that denial and even demonize those unvaxed who keep hectoring you with conspiracy theories. Hard to fathom how much you hate them for it.

It looks like all of Hollywood’s zombie dreams will be coming true: civil war between the walking dead and the rest of us, who, let’s face it, cannot be faulted for getting the spooky feeling that we are being hunted down now. It’s kind of serious when you are deprived of your income, and also of access to all the common activities of daily life. Yet just this weekend we see what could be the opening skirmish, the Bull Run, of this new civil war: the “sick-out” of Southwest Airlines pilots and other employees whom the company is attempting to coerce into vaxing. These Southwest Airlines rebels threw quite a spanner in the works. Will the country even understand what happened? Will other vax-averse cohorts of sore-beset employees at other companies follow? Wait….

Meanwhile, we have the arrival on-the-scene of another joker: Merck’s new anti-Covid-19 drug molnupiravir, said to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death from Covid by 50 percent. Merck and its partner, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, have applied for an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the FDA for this new drug, the same legal loophole that Pfizer and Moderna got for their mRNA vaxes. “Joe Biden” promised to spend $1.2 billion procuring a big batch of the new drug, so bringing it on must be a done deal.

The catch is, molnupiravir is in the same order of nucleoside analogue drugs as remdesivir, a clinically-proven failure in the treatment of Covid 19. The stuff killed patients left and right. Molnupiravir’s mutagenic mechanism is supposed to mess with the RNA of Covid-19 viruses, incrementally disabling them and killing them off. The trouble is, mutagenic drugs are notorious for broad spectrum action, so molnupiravir might do the same thing to the various cells in your body, too: instant cancer. I guess we’ll have to stand-by and see how that works out. It pays to remember, though, that the EUA didn’t work out so well for the Covid-19 vaccines, did it? The waiting is the hardest part.

Molnupiravir was shoved out onstage after two years of the public health authorities (Drs. Fauci, Collins, et al.) and the corporate news media casting curses on the existing suite of cheap drugs that proved clinically effective in the early treatment of Covid-19, namely ivermectin (a.k.a. “horse paste”), hydroxychloroquine, fluvoxamine, prednisone, etc. If you were paranoid, you might suspect that something was up in this attempt to roadblock cheap, safe, and effective treatments in favor of untested novelties that would just happen to be another multibillion-dollar boon for drug companies.

The thundering question, of course, is: who exactly are the authorities behind all this Covid-19 mischief? I’d suggest if you find out who installed “Joe Biden” in the White House, and who is running him, you’d have a few clues. It kind of looks like they intend to kill a lot of people. Pretty soon we’ll have a fair idea of whether it worked or not as the micro blood clots accumulate in 100-million-odd human lab-rats here in America and many more millions around the world.

They’ve also poured enough sand into the engines of the global economy to put it out of business - and, of course, the US economy leads all that. No heat for you this winter as you sit around waiting to clot up and check out. The unvaxed are watching this go down, goggling in horror at the fantastic credulousness of the doomed Woke, the legions of Zombies who foolishly allied themselves with forces of genuine evil. They’ve been on their knees worshipping Dr. Fauci, the FBI, the CIA, “Joe Biden,” and Rachel Maddow and everybody else brandishing cattle-prods of coercion and propaganda at them. They followed their marching orders obediently, like good little boys and girls, and took their shots. The lines are drawn. Pushing the unvaxed further will avail nothing (except now maybe a mighty push back). Mulder was right: the truth is out there. Wait for it. (Yes, the waiting is the hardest part.)"

- https://kunstler.com/

○

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, "The Waiting"

The Daily "Near You?"

Chelsea, Massachusetts, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Cruelest Joke Of All..."

“The smallest decisions made had such profound repercussions. One ten-minute wait could save a life… or end it. One wrong turn down the right street or one seemingly unimportant conversation, and everything was changed. It wasn’t right that each lifetime was defined, ruined, ended, and made by such seemingly innocuous details. A major life-threatening event should come with a flashing warning sign that either said ABANDON ALL HOPE or SAFETY AHEAD. It was the cruelest joke of all that no one could see the most vicious curves until they were over the edge, falling into the abyss below.”

- Sherrilyn Kenyon

"The Champ"

"The Champ"

by CP

"Ding, ding, ding, you hear the bell for the start of the fight, hear the crowd, noisy, excited to see this rematch between you and Life. You're here, and still the Champ, right? Fought this guy so many times before, always beat him, too, though you took many a beating yourself in the process, each fight a little tougher, taking a little more out of you each time. You meet in the center of the ring... damn, has this guy grown somehow? He looks bigger, more muscled, and has a real confident look in his eye. So what? You're the Champ, still standing, right? Let'sget it on!

Ding, ding, ding, you meet him in the center of the ring, toe to toe, jabbing, bobbing and weaving, feeling each other out. He seems faster than you remember, while your own punches are a hair slower, not quite able to connect solidly, while his land solidly, crisply, heavily. He lands a tremendous body shot to your side, knocking the air right out of you, and you clinch him desperately, sucking in as much air as you can while he hammers away at you, your forearms blocking most, but not all, of those heavy, heavy punches.

Ding, ding, ding, the bell ends the round and you sit on your stool, hearing the trainers tell you how to fight this guy, "Don't clinch with him, he's too strong, he'll bust you up!" "Dance, man, side to side, bob and weave, don't give him anything to hit! Jab and dance away, jab, jab, jab..." words you've heard so many times before. You think of previous bouts with this guy, the loss of a job when you had a family to support, the bitter divorce, the deaths of loved ones, and every time he came wanting to knock your head off, but your will power, training and instincts always kept you standing at the end, still the Champ, right? But this time, something's not right, something's different somehow.

Yeah, time's gone by, not so young or strong as you once were, not as fast, don't recover as fast, but haven't been taken out yet, right? And everybody knows the rules, the only way he wins is to knock you out, you just gotta hang on, take his best shots and give him all you got until that bell rings for the end of the fight, and if you're still there, still standing, you win. Still the Champ, right? Round after round after round...

Ding, ding, ding, last round, you're feeling so tired, legs almost gone, no snap to the punches, but he looks fresh, strong, and bores in with a mean intent, landing hammer blows, knocking you back towards the corner where he wants you, you try dancing sideways, he cuts off the ring, no escape that way, and keeps coming in. A thunderous right cross lands smack on your chin, everything turns black for a second, legs about to go as the instincts kick in and you throw your body back out of the way, sucking in as much air as you can, shaking your head to clear the blurriness, but you're in the corner now, where he wants you, and here he comes with a vengeance, fast, strong, wanting the knockout, but you're still standing, still the Champ, right? Right?

Ding, ding, ding..."

"Truth..."

“Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees, reminding us that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all its immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble.”

- Dean Koontz

"Our Economy Is Starting To Break Down On A Very Basic Level"

"Our Economy Is Starting To Break Down On A Very Basic Level"

by Michael Snyder

"Do you remember how much optimism there was last January? Many Americans were entirely convinced that really bright days were just around the corner, but instead things have taken a dramatic turn into the dumpster over the last 9 months. The Afghanistan debacle was the worst foreign policy embarrassment in modern American history, the Biden administration is trying to deal with an unprecedented crisis on our southern border, and the way that our politicians are handling the pandemic is causing extremely deep divisions throughout our society. In addition, our economy is starting to break down on a very basic level. On a widespread basis, goods are not getting to the places they need to be when they need to be there, and services are often not available when people need them. As time has passed, the “malfunctioning” of our economy has spread, and now the coming mandates threaten to make things a whole lot worse.

Just look at the chaos that was caused in Florida on Sunday… "Southwest has canceled 1,018 Sunday flights as of 2 p.m. ET, according to flight tracker FlightAware. That’s 28% of the the airline’s scheduled flights and the highest of any U.S. airline by a wide margin. American Airlines has canceled 63 flights, or 2% of its operation, while Spirit Airlines canceled 32 flights, or 4% of its flights, according to FlightAware. Overall, more than 1,800 flights were canceled during the weekend, and Southwest is publicly blaming the problems on “weather challenges”…

“We experienced weather challenges in our Florida airports at the beginning of the weekend, challenges that were compounded by unexpected air traffic control issues in the same region, triggering delays and prompting significant cancellations for us beginning Friday evening,” the spokesperson told FOX Business.

“We’ve continued diligent work throughout the weekend to reset our operation with a focus on getting aircraft and crews repositioned to take care of our customers,” the spokesperson added. “With fewer frequencies between cities in our current schedule, recovering during operational challenges is more difficult and prolonged. We’re working diligently to accommodate our customers as quickly as possible, and we are grateful for their patience.”

Of course that is complete and utter nonsense. A large number of Southwest pilots in Florida engaged in a “sickout” over the weekend to protest Southwest’s vaccine mandate, and apparently at least some air traffic controllers joined them… "On the record, they’re denying any sort of protest - but there are reports, citing airline sources, that a massive “sickout” went down, and that ripple effects are still being felt."

Regardless of what the truth here is… it’s screwing a lot of people, and causing a lot of problems. And, IF there is merit to the sickout speculation - it could also be a bad sign of what’s to come in other industries that might try to enforce vaccines on employees. As I write this article, there are rumblings that pilots at American Airlines are organizing similar efforts.

Good for them. In fact, we need bold people in every industry in America to start doing this sort of thing. Perhaps if enough people start standing up, those that are trying to impose these mandates will start backing down.

Right now, we are already facing the most epic labor shortage in U.S. history, and economic activity is badly gummed up as a result. If millions more qualified people are thrown out of work in the months ahead due to these absurd mandates, that is going to cause unprecedented chaos all across America. A weekend of canceled flights might be bad, but it is nothing compared to the complete and utter nightmare our society will be facing if all of these mandates go through.

Even the military will be deeply affected. On Sunday, it was being reported that “hundreds of thousands” of our service members have chosen to resist the mandates… "Hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members remain unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated against the coronavirus as the Pentagon’s first compliance deadlines near, with lopsided rates across the individual services and a spike in deaths among military reservists illustrating how political division over the shots has seeped into a nonpartisan force with unambiguous orders."

So what would it do to the state of our military if hundreds of thousands of service members are kicked out in the months ahead? That is a question that we need to be asking, because it appears that this is actually what is going to happen.

On top of everything else, now we are facing a severe global energy crisis… "Energy is so hard to come by right now that some provinces in China are rationing electricity, Europeans are paying sky-high prices for liquefied natural gas, power plants in India are on the verge of running out of coal, and the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States stood at $3.25 on Friday - up from $1.72 in April."

Most Americans may not realize it yet, but this is a really big deal. There are more than 1.3 billion people living in India, and coal is in such short supply there that officials are warning that there could soon be widespread blackouts… "Just like Chinese authorities ordering energy firms to conserve supplies at all costs, numerous power plants across India could be forced to adopt rolling blackouts as coal supplies run low. A minister in Indian capital New Delhi warned Sunday that blackouts could rock the massive city over the next two days. But the nation’s capital city isn’t alone in suffering energy shortages: it joins two Indian states – Tamil Nadu and Odisha – which have issued warnings about the growing possibility of blackouts due to dwindling coal supplies."

Other nations are facing similar issues. In fact, Lebanon just emerged from a blackout that lasted about 24 hours… "Lebanon has finally got the lights back on some 24 hours after the country was plunged into total darkness by fuel shortages. The Mediterranean country is battling one of the planet’s worst economic crunches since the 1850s in the wake of last year’s devastating blast that levelled a huge part of the capital Beirut."

If things are this bad already, how crazy will things get in the middle of winter when demand for energy is at the highest?

People need to wake up, because the times that we are moving into are going to be completely different from what we have grown accustomed to. It isn’t just the U.S. economy that is crumbling. Literally, the economic infrastructure of the entire globe is falling to pieces, and experts are warning that things will continue to break down in the months ahead. So many of the things that you have been warned about are starting to transpire right in front of our eyes, and this winter looks like it will be very dark indeed."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

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Related:

"Lebanon Plunged Into Darkness; India Faces Rolling Blackouts; 

NYC Pharmacy Shelves BARE As Global Collapse Accelerates, 

Leading To Rolling Blackouts Across The USA"

"How It Really Is"

 

"Be Open Minded..."

 

"A Night at the Opera"

"A Night at the Opera"

by Bill Bonner

"Now on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be

 dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor."

– Groucho Marx in "A Night at the Opera"

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – The end of last week brought joy – the debt ceiling was raised… the bars were open. And Republicans and Democrats, after pretending to be at each other’s throats, were necking in the parlor. The whole episode deserves at least a footnote in economic history, for rarely has a public spectacle been so completely phony. It was like a funeral for someone who wasn’t dead yet; unsatisfying for everyone. We will try to memorialize it here… for future economic historians to laugh at.

Dramatic Tension: The dramatic tension came, we were told, from the need to raise the debt ceiling. With mock solemnity, the newscasters, opinion mongers, economists, professional investors, and politicians told us that our future (and by inference, the future of the whole planet) depended on raising the debt ceiling for the 79th time.

Here’s American historian, Heather Cox Richardson, who regularly misunderstands almost everything. She imagines the debt ceiling standoff as another battle between Democrats (good) and Republicans (bad): "Today, [last Thursday] Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) backed down from his obstructionism, agreeing to let the Democrats raise the debt ceiling by a simple majority rather than by the 60 votes they needed when the Republicans kept filibustering their bills."

A quick recap: the issue at stake was whether the United States would default on its debts, which it has never done before. The threat to default was purely a political ploy on the part of the Republicans to try to force the Democrats to abandon their very popular infrastructure measure.

Political Theater: As we have pointed out many times, this was untrue. Both protagonist and antagonist were in agreement. That is why the conclusion was never in doubt. Everything else was political theater of the lowest, most debauched grade. But it was the only show the press wanted to see. Reporting the real truth would have left the whole flimflam exposed.

All the elite – all of it – was lined up in favor of the obvious outcome. It not only wanted Congress to raise the debt ceiling… but to eliminate it altogether. All agreed, too, that the Fed should continue to use this money to buy bonds… so as to keep interest rates at fake, ultra-low levels… so that stocks (owned almost exclusively by the upper 10%… including politicians of both parties, the media, the bureaucracy, Wall Street, university and medical care functionaries… and all the apparatchiks and nomenclatura of the Deep State elite)… would remain at fake levels…and so that the government – whether red or blue – would be able to use the fake money to fund its grifter programs.

Flaming Scam: As we’ve seen, government programs are intended to fail… and rarely miss the mark. And in last week’s fraudfest, neither side… Republican nor Democrats… nor any mainstream news media… ever even whispered the truth – that the whole thing was a flaming scam.

Fake money, fake interest rates, fake asset prices, fake programs, with fake objectives, presided over by fake politicians, performing a fake show… for the benefit of a fake media, that doesn’t even try to get to the truth…

And all agreed that if the fakiness were suddenly interrupted… it would be a “catastrophe.” Here’s Joe Biden’s “old buddy,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon (a card-carrying member of the super-elite), speaking to the president last week: "America’s role in the world is essential. We are the bedrock – the American Treasury is the bedrock. […] We’re being watched right now by our allies and, unfortunately, our enemies. Our credibility is absolutely essential. Trust in America and the U.S. dollar and the financial system is critical to the world economy and eventually, actually, world peace."

Really? The U.S. has to keep spending money it doesn’t have… on things it doesn’t need – including military garrisons all over the globe – for the benefit of world peace?

Right.

Claptrap and Deceit: Last week’s debt-ceiling brouhaha brought fraud to a new level – a crescendo of claptrap… a denouement of deceit… an acme of absurdity. The feds have plenty of money to pay the debt – with tax receipts of $3.8 trillion this fiscal year – and to keep the major boondoggles in business. There was never a need to raise the debt ceiling… except one, single reason: It allows the elite to continue ripping off the public."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Real Estate is Unraveling - Another Real Estate Crisis"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, AM 10/11/21:

"Real Estate is Unraveling - Another Real Estate Crisis"

"Forbearance is over. There will be a catastrophic amount of inventory entering the real estate marketplace very soon. Over 25% of the people that are exiting forbearance can not afford their homes now. This excess inventory is a real problem."