Hays, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, December 17, 2021
"The Trick..."
“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,
or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”
- Carlos Castaneda
Chet Raymo, “Why Cranes Fly”
“Why Cranes Fly”
by Chet Raymo
"There were a few Comments here recently about herons, from right around the world. What is the power of this bird to touch our minds and hearts? The naturalist Aldo Leopold was intimately familiar with the cranes of Wisconsin, cousins of our New England great blue heron, the Irish gray heron, and Adam2's aosagi from Japan, and wondered about their ability to move us so deeply. In A Sand County Almanac he watches as a crane "springs his ungainly hulk into the air and flails the morning sun with mighty wings." Our ability to perceive beauty in nature, as in art, begins with the pretty, he says, then moves into qualities of the beautiful yet uncaptured by language. The beauty of the crane lies in this higher realm, he proposes, "beyond the reach of words."
Words may fail, but poets have tried to capture the ineffable.
John Ciardi sees "a leap, a thrust, a long stroke through the cumulus of trees" and stops to praise "that bright original burst that lights the heron on his two soft kissing kites."
Theodore Roethke observes a heron aim his heavy bill above the wood: "The wide wings flap but once to lift him up. A single ripple starts from where he stood."
In Chekhov's "The Three Sisters", sister Masha refuses "to live and not know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why the stars are in the sky. Either you know and you're alive or its all nonsense, all dust in the wind."
Words may fail, but poets have tried to capture the ineffable.
John Ciardi sees "a leap, a thrust, a long stroke through the cumulus of trees" and stops to praise "that bright original burst that lights the heron on his two soft kissing kites."
Theodore Roethke observes a heron aim his heavy bill above the wood: "The wide wings flap but once to lift him up. A single ripple starts from where he stood."
In Chekhov's "The Three Sisters", sister Masha refuses "to live and not know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why the stars are in the sky. Either you know and you're alive or its all nonsense, all dust in the wind."
"You Better Decide..."
“A wise man once said you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. What he meant is nothing comes without a price. So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. Too often, going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right, and letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building. Of course, the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming, when we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick a side or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.”
- “Dr. Meredith Grey”, “Grey’s Anatomy"
"Fare Thee Well"
"Fare Thee Well"
By Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "This is the final Diary you will receive from us via Rogue Economics/Legacy Research. Yes, we’re moving on. But we’ll still be “connecting the dots” as best we can. And any dear readers who still have the stomach for it are invited to join us. But perhaps we owe you an explanation?
Thank You: Let’s begin with a “thank you.” Many dear readers have been suffering through our Reckonings and Diaries now for more than 20 years. Sometimes, they are hard to write; but they must be even harder to read! Because we never know exactly what we are writing about. Instead, we are just looking… and wondering. What’s happening? Why? Where does it lead? Sometimes, the questions take us down blind alleys and waste our time. Often, they simply lead to more questions. Only occasionally do they lead to useful insights.
Still, fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. And writers gotta keep writing. Many thanks to you, Dear Reader, for sticking with us… especially to those dear readers who have taken the time to write and tell us why they thought we were a fascist… a communist… or simply a moron. Heck, they may be right. And we hope you’ll come along for the next part of this adventure. Our dear readers are like our old friends; we would be sad to lose you.
Benefit of Experience: And now, in the home stretch of our career, we hope to make the relationship worthwhile for you. Fortunately, writing about money is one of the few métiers where age is actually a benefit. After all, you have to be over 70 to have lived through, as an adult, the inflation of the 1970s. You have to be at least in your sixties to recall how Paul Volcker stopped it. As you get older, you may become more vulnerable to the coronavirus, but you become more resistant to claptrap. You remember the WIN buttons… the lime-colored leisure suits… and the Vietnam War.
You’ve heard too many something-for-nothing claims, seen too many new gadgets that didn’t work, and voted for too many politicians who didn’t do what they said they would do. We bring this up because we think we are approaching a period of Peak Delusion. A good dose of geezer cynicism may be the only way to survive it. The “new” dollar – without gold backing – was introduced more than 50 years ago. When it came out, the old-timers preached doom. Now, we’re going to see that they were right. No pure paper money has ever survived a full credit cycle. Our guess is that this dollar will be gone, too, when interest rates reach their next top.
Public Interest: Looking back over our half-century of work, we see different stages. First, we thought we could change the world. Young people often think they have the answers; so did we. And we were worried, in the early 1970s, as now, about the growth of government. The central competition in public life is not really between Democrats and Republicans, or liberals and conservatives. It is between those who go about their business… helping each other… providing goods and services to each other… building wealth and families…and those who want to stop them.
It is the difference we described in much more detail in our book, “Win-Win or Lose,” between those who make and those who take… between those who get what they want by honest, consensual exchange and those who use armies, sanctions, laws, and regulations. It is the difference between violence and persuasion. We were naïve and foolish. We saw the tilt toward coercive government as some kind of “mistake,” that people just failed to realize that “win-win” was a better way to go.
Private Interest: But after seven years in Washington, heading up a group called the National Taxpayers Union, we finally had to face facts: A lot of people prefer power to prosperity… and that includes almost all the denizens on both sides of the Potomac. We left “public interest” and decided to focus on private interest.
We were supremely lucky. It was just the beginning of the financialization phase of the U.S. economy. In 1971, the feds had switched to a paper money system, unconnected to and unrestrained by gold. It was off to the races. Everyone wanted to know what horse to bet on. We were, however, woefully unprepared for our new role. We didn’t understand much about economics or investing.
So we teamed up with people who did. Gary North, Mark Hulbert, Adrian Day, Doug Casey, Jim Davidson, John Dessauer, Porter Stansberry, Steve Sjuggerud, Alex Green, and many others. Sometimes, they were right. Sometimes, they were wrong. But we were always learning. And we are grateful to them all.
Starved for Wisdom: Then, in the late 1990s, along came the internet. People said it would make “information” available – for free – to everyone. That would put us newsletter publishers out of business, they said. But we knew that “information” was worthless… less than worthless… without context, trust, training, preparation, circumstance, and all the other things that give it value.
“Imagine Napoleon on the retreat from Moscow,” we invited readers. “His soldiers are freezing to death. Starving. Getting slaughtered by partisans. And then… as if by some miracle… someone hands him the plans for building a nuclear bomb! What value would that have had? Zero.” Our point was that the precise “information” you need, when you need it, is extremely valuable. Otherwise, it’s just excess baggage.
We went on to speculate that with the buildout of the internet, “the world may soon be stuffed with information… and starved for wisdom.” In the following years, investors gorged on ideas, recommendations, and revelations… about new tech breakthroughs, trading techniques, cryptos, pot stocks, penny stocks, and much, much more. Many of these turned out to be astonishingly profitable. But your editor, who began writing a daily “blog” in 1998, was a wet blanket. He doubted that these innovations would produce lasting wealth – after all, what did they produce at all? As to the new tech, he urged caution.
Trade of the Decade: In retrospect, his counsel lost money for many dear readers… and made money for many others. He eschewed investments in dotcoms… even in the most successful of them all – Amazon. He wondered aloud if the whole “information revolution” was anything more than a time waster. And he ridiculed many of the most sacred tenets of tech believers… including the doctrine that technology always means progress and that progress will free humans from work, thrift, and sin.
On the other hand, his very simple “Trade of the Decade” – sell stocks, buy gold – turned out to be the best trade of two decades. At the end of the 1990s, gold was trading at $282 an ounce. The Dow was just over 11,000. Since then, gold has gone up about 6 times. The Dow is only up three times. Investors who made our trade have coasted calmly through the three major crises of the 21st century… and are still way ahead.
Search for Wisdom: But now, we see a bigger challenge ahead. Wisdom seems to have disappeared. Where it still appears in residual clumps, like survivors after a worldwide plague, it is furtive… fearful… and almost ashamed of itself. Nature knows that real progress… and real wealth... require real work, real investment, real reflection, and real self-discipline over what is generally a really long time.
So that is our goal. We’ve joined up with Dan Denning and Tom Dyson to plug our ears with wax and tie ourselves to the mast. Yes, we search for the rarest and most precious thing in the financial world – wisdom. And we fully recognize that we may not find it. We leave it to you to judge. We’ll be back at the keyboard on Monday morning. We hope you’ll still be with us."
"The Fed Knows When the Recession Will Start - The Countdown Has Begun"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 12/17/21:
"The Fed Knows When the Recession Will Start -
The Countdown Has Begun"
"It’s not all good news. The Fed has discussed tapering its asset purchases in the spring time. The bank of England has just started to raise interest rates to curb inflation. The Fed has issued a new warning saying that they know the “countdown to recession.“
Gregory Mannarino, "Expect A Massive 3rd Wave Of Inflation To Hit And More Control - You Must Comply"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/17/21:
"Expect A Massive 3rd Wave Of Inflation
To Hit And More Control - You Must Comply"
"Where Do You Stand?"
"Where Do You Stand?"
by Jim Kunstler
"The public health bureaucrat who styles himself as “the Science” is at it again. In his quest to eliminate the control group for his experiment in hazardous mRNA injections, Dr. Anthony Fauci reiterated his warning that the nation faces “a crisis of the unvaccinated.” Omicron is upon us, he told a US Chamber of Commerce meet-up this week, and the hospitals will soon be overwhelmed by the unvaxxed.
Oh really? In fact, the gravest threat to America’s public health is… Dr. Tony Fauci and his debauchery of medical science. This will surely come as a surprise to readers of The New York Times, who see in the two-year (so far) Covid-19 event a splendid opportunity to hasten the destruction of the US economy and our culture in order to consolidate their own power to coerce and control the population. Clear the offices! Shut down the social spaces! Make ordinary business as difficult as possible! Cancel Christmas! That’ll git’er done!
In fact, Dr. Fauci is likely responsible for a preponderance of the total 802,000 US Covid deaths — putting aside the number of people who actually died from highway accidents, cancer, diabetes, old age, and other causes, but were listed as covid deaths by hospital accounting personnel avid for federal subsidy cash.
It was Dr. Fauci who organized the suppression of easily marshaled and inexpensive early treatments for the disease, namely hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoxamine, budesonide, azithromycin, monoclonal antibodies, Vitamin D, etc. It was Dr. Fauci who promoted the protocol of sending sick patients home from the ER without any treatment to await the further development of fatal clotting in their lungs. It was Dr. Fauci who designated the drug remdesivir — which he developed years ago for hepatitis-C (it did not work) with a financial stake in the patents — as the primary inpatient treatment for Covid-19. And then it turned out that remdesivir destroys patients’ kidneys and is ineffective anyway in late treatment of the disease when viral loads wane and spike proteins have already created the fatal capillary clots in the alveoli of the lungs and in other organs.
It’s Dr. Fauci who is responsible for the emergency use authorization on the mRNA “vaccines” that may have killed hundreds of thousands more Americans — based on the CDC’s VAERS system and statistical analysis of its inherent under-reporting at only 2.2 percent of all actual events— and you can add multiples more in non-fatal adverse reactions, including permanent disabilities. It’s Dr. Fauci who finagled the inadequate and botched trials of the mRNA vaccines in order to rush them into use. And now it’s Dr. Fauci who wants to vaxx up all the children in America, despite evidence that the mRNA shots permanently disable children’s innate natural immune systems and can cause lasting heart, blood vessel, brain, and reproductive damage, and also despite the fact that few children are susceptible to serious Covid illness in the first place.
The omicron moment may be the power-mad little weasel’s last stand. Reports so far indicate that omicron is a mild form of the virus. The one death reported to date did not include any information about the patient’s co-morbidities. For all we know, it was a motorcycle wreck with an omicron-positive label slapped on.
Dr. Fauci is now warning that America’s hospitals will be overwhelmed (and that it will be the fault of the unvaxxed). Consider this: He predicted the same thing for the first wave of the virus in the winter of 2020 and then the giant emergency hospital set-up in New York’s convention center was never used, nor was the US naval hospital ship brought up for Covid duty. Consider also: going forward, there may be more deaths from the delayed pernicious effects of the vaxxes — namely, the spike proteins which are now observed to linger in the organs and blood vessels as long as fifteen months after the shot — than deaths from the Covid-19 virus itself.
By the way, while Dr. Anthony Fauci may represent the leadership of the corrupt US public health bureaucracy, we cannot let the medical establishment itself off-the-hook for this epic fiasco of crisis mis-management. There are roughly a million doctors in America, and all but a tiny fraction of them have gone along with Dr. Fauci’s wrongful and harmful edicts. The doctors were the ones who flushed sick people out of their ERs without treatment. The doctors had to be forced by court orders to administer useful non-vaxx treatments to sick patients. The doctors continue to administer remdesivir despite its obvious toxcicity and uselessness. US Doctors went along with the lockdowns and the destruction of livelihoods, households, and futures. Doctors appear to support vaxx “passports” and other coercive measures. And now US doctors are going along with the malevolent effort to vaxx-up all the kids.
American doctors have proven to be cowards, cravens, zombies, and fools facilitating Dr. Fauci’s evil campaign — in concert with the rapacious pharmaceutical industry and a government in thrall to sinister forces that seek to destroy the country. The doctors have disgraced and dishonored themselves. The doctors have probably undermined their own vocations, as well as the entire armature of US health care, which they have allowed to become history’s worst racketeering operation. You can be sure it is going to collapse now, along with the equally degenerate financial system and, alas, much of the on-the-ground daily business of our country. For that you can also blame the geniuses behind “Joe Biden.”
The question is: will the people of this land submit to continued coercion and to the engineered demolition of their lives? So far, we have not rolled over like the pathetically servile Europeans and Australians. Here, there is apparently some will to resist further pushing around by this demonic elite. Several federal judges recently defined clear constitutional red-lines in their published decisions against the vaxx mandates.
Plenty of ordinary citizens are furious over the insidious and insane incursions of the political Wokery hitched to the Covid emergency — the race and gender hustles, the efforts to rig elections, the absurd spending programs aimed at countless grifting operations, the disastrous monetary inflation, and the invasion of opportunists from all over the world across our border with Mexico. Even at Christmas time, with all its transient preoccupations, it’s not too much to ask: where do you stand?"
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 12/17/21"
"Economic Market Snapshot AM 12/17/21"
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"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:
CNN Fear And Greed Index:
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Dec. 16th to 24th, Updated Daily
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Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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Daily Job Cuts
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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And now, the End Game...
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Oh yeah...
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Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/17/21"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/17/21"
Evil Globalist Narratives Failing Everywhere
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Everywhere you look you see failing narratives. On the Covid front, they are telling people to get the boosters. They have gotten two shots already and they are getting Covid. Another study out of Israel this week says natural immunity is better than injections. Another study out of Harvard a few weeks ago says the same thing. Now, the CDC is admitting that 80% of the Omicron cases are with the “Fully Vaxed.” 33% of those cases are with people vaxed and boostered. YouTube just censored a video from Joe Rogan with cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough warning about how the Deep State is stopping treatments like Ivermectin that work. The censorship from YouTube has now become part of the failing narrative and is a big story in and of itself.
The entire narrative is falling apart, and Joe Biden keeps losing in court for his precious mandates for experimental vaccines for everyone. In pro sports, the NFL is fighting new Covid cases by the dozens, and the organization is at least 95% vaxed. Their answer to the Covid problem they cannot hide? More shots are required, and that means getting a booster and more of what does not work. There are also many new videos of soccer players falling to the ground and grabbing their chests. They are all vaxed up and having public heart problems while playing a game. There is nothing to see here. It’s all just a coincidence as some of the mainstream media tries to explain away why young people in the prime of physical condition are having heart problems after being vaxed.
On the financial front, the temporary or “transitory” inflation has changed to “persistent,” according to Fed Head Jay Powell. He says he’s going to fight inflation and, yet, passes on raising rates off the near 0% mark this week. His anti-inflation narrative is failing too, and that means much more inflation is on the way. Either way, many are going to end up poor."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 12/17/21:
Thursday, December 16, 2021
"Bank Of America: A Catastrophic Stock Market Crash Is Inevitable In December"
Full screen recommended.
"Bank Of America: A Catastrophic Stock
Market Crash Is Inevitable In December"
by Epic Economist
Notice: The first 2:42 if this video is an advertisement
for PIA VPN. Begin viewing at 2:43.
"Earlier this week, Wall Street chaos further accelerated as new inflation data continued to show an acute rise in prices while some big tech names saw stock prices steadily dropping. The Nasdaq, the S&P 500, and the Dow Jones have all ended the trading session in negative territory. The tech market bubble continued to deflate this week, with Microsoft, Adobe, Netflix, Apple, and Amazon recording significant losses. Tesla stocks, one of the market's favorites, have also collapsed as CEO Elon Musk sold another $906.5 million in shares. The speculative meme stock bubble has also popped. On Monday, GameStop and AMC Entertainment were hardly hit by a broader market sell-off as top investors massively dumped risky stocks and repositioned their portfolios to safe havens.
GameStop, the main attraction of the meme stock mania, plummeted by 30%, while shares of AMC hit their lowest level since June, dropping by more than 31%. Several other names that have been popular amongst Reddit’s WallStreetBets investors have faced steep losses as well amid the overall risk-off sentiment and higher volatility. “The large-cap names are now starting to fall by the wayside, which is exactly what happened in 2018, the last time we had sort of that rolling correction idea,” Morgan Stanley chief investment officer Mike Wilson explained.
To make things even worse, yesterday, the Federal Reserve ditched the "transitory inflation" narrative, and admitted that the inflation outlook is much more alarming than previously expected. That's why Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced that the central bank will issue three interest rate hikes until mid-2022, the first one starting next week. But instead of triggering an irreversible meltdown, the announcement actually sparked a melt-up, with investors in total denial still trying to push the collapsing bubble higher.
Several agencies, firms, and market watchers are warning that the Fed's turbo taper is about to trigger much more chaos in the coming weeks. On a recent note to clients, Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson warned that "the Fed's pivot to a more aggressive tapering schedule poses a larger risk for asset prices than most investors believe". Wilson said that the rolling correction that has already begun continues under the surface, and makes spiking indexes "a very bad gauge of the overall health of the stock market, or the economy, in our view."
The most worrying warning, however, came from Bank of America. The bank's latest weekly report suggested that a dot-com-style crash of big tech stocks is coming on the heels of the Fed rate hike, and investors should start selling right now before this massive bubble burst wipes out all the gains for good. "Investors should sell the rally in stocks ahead of upcoming Fed interest rate hikes," Bank of America's analysts wrote on a note released Friday. The bank also highlighted the striking similarity between today's market conditions and the unwind of the tech bubble burst during the 2000 dot-com crash.
Bank of America's Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett said that this week's "recovery rally represents an opportunity for investors to sell ahead of an upcoming Fed interest rate shock". He expects the Fed to aggressively raise interest rates, shocking those who don't see it coming. For that very reason, Hartnett recommends investors "'sell the rip' rather than 'buy the dip' in stocks as interest rate hikes are about to rock Wall Street, and amid a strikingly similar unwind in tech stocks compared to the dot-com bubble in 2000," he wrote. "The bubble in speculative froth has popped," the Bank of America's strategist warned.
So, as you can imagine, with inflation soaring to the highest level in 40 years, the Fed is going to be forced to drive a liquidity crunch like no other. And soon, the whole market will start to freak out about it. This is the first time in nearly a decade that the market will have to say goodbye to all that excess liquidity that made it hit one record-high after the other despite the worsening economic fundamentals.
The possibility of an 80% drop is growing by the day, and with retail investors putting all their capital on the table and boosting the bets with margin and leverage, we might be headed to the biggest wealth loss event of the century, as the legendary investor, Jeremy Grantham, has cautioned months ago. Timing is everything in a stock market crash and 'hell is the truth seen too late'. That is to say, when investors choose to ignore the risks and lose the chance to preserve their capital, they end up losing everything. So we all must start getting ready right now!"
"Prepare For A Brutal 2022; Cash Disappeared; Inflation Locomotive Off Tracks; FED In A Jam"
Jeremiah Babe, PM 12/16/21:
"Prepare For A Brutal 2022; Cash Disappeared;
Inflation Locomotive Off Tracks; FED In A Jam"
"Covid: The Truth Behind The Lies, Dr. Peter McCullough"
Peak Prosperity, Chris Martenson,
"Covid: The Truth Behind The Lies, Dr. Peter McCullough"
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Part 2 of this interview is here:
“Responsible Governing”
“Responsible Governing”
by Brian Maher
"Responsible governing has won on this exceedingly important issue." These are the words of Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, Democrat, New York State. Sen. Schumer refers to the elevation of the country’s debt roof. On Tuesday the United States Senate voted to raise the ceiling $2.5 trillion above existing heights. This morning the president blessed the bill with his official signature.
And so a federal government “shutdown” is skirted. Reports CNBC: "President Joe Biden signed a debt ceiling increase into law Thursday, ensuring the U.S. will not default on its debt for the first time ever. The country inched close to economic peril. Biden signed the borrowing limit hike a day after the date that the Treasury Department estimated it would run out of tools to keep paying the country’s bills."
This $2.5 trillion debt-raising should keep Washington in funds through early 2023. Incidentally – or not incidentally – early 2023 ranges beyond the November 2022 midterm elections. Is this coincidence? We do not believe this is coincidence. That is because we have a political animal on our hands. This creature has calculated that the budget should see him through the 2022 election. It will neutralize the opposition’s sting.
Nonetheless, claims Sen. Schumer: "The American people can breathe easy and rest assured there will not be a default." Yet today our breathing is not free. It is instead labored, distressed, full of gasps and pants. That is because the United States Senate has consented to plunge the nation ever deeper into the red ocean of debt, the abysm of debt. What is more, we believe strongly it is not productive debt. It is unproductive debt.
We would rather the United States government lower the debt ceiling for society’s good. Economist Mark Thornton: "If Congress passed legislation that systematically reduced the debt ceiling over time, the economy could be rebuilt on a solid foundation. Entrepreneurs in the productive sectors would realize that an ever-increasing proportion of resources (land, labor, and capital) would be at their disposal, while companies that capitalized on the federal budget would have an ever-declining share of such resources…"
Of course, reducing the debt ceiling would force the government to stop borrowing so much money from credit markets. This would leave significantly more credit available for the private sector. The shortage of capital is one of the most often cited reasons for the failure of the economy to recover.
Lowering the debt ceiling would force federal-government budget cutting on a large scale, and this would free up resources (labor, land, and capital) and force a cutback in the federal government's regulatory apparatus. This would put Americans back to work producing consumer-valued goods.
This will happen once hell is an ice sheet, several miles in depth. Yet we must conclude that elevating the debt roof is not “responsible governing.” It is ultimately irresponsible governing. Alas, it is a commonplace of American democracy in the 21st century. We are occasionally inspired to republish a thought piece of ours comparing democracy to monarchy. Today is one such day. Is democracy necessarily superior to monarchy? Read on."
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"Democracy vs. Monarchy"
By Brian Maher
"Today we trample sacred ground… trumpet a message of heresy… and offend the pieties. For we challenge the cherished and soothing assumptions of democracy. In 2001, academic Hans-Hermann Hoppe scribbled a book bearing the soaring title "Democracy: The God That Failed." Hoppe’s work is a dart levelled against that holiest of secular divinities.
Hoppe’s primary tort against democracy? It wastes. It exhausts its capital. It forever takes the short view. Hoppe uses the economic concept of time preference to nail his point through. A Jill with low time preference delays her gratification until the future. She is disciplined. She is willing to have her cake later — only after she has tended to her duties. But a Jack with high time preference orients toward present consumption. He wants his cake now - and the future can go scratching.
Democracy, in Hoppe’s regard, “wants it now.” It is a spendthrift; a profligate; a child at large in a candy store. As the drunkard cannot see beyond the next drink… democracy cannot see past the next election. The problem, says Hoppe, is that democratic leaders do not own the machinery of government. It is theirs on temporary loan. Thus the democratic politician is a mere placeholder. But is that not our system’s cardinal virtue - that power is not permanently lodged in a single vessel? A rotating roster of rogues is far superior to one alone, you counter. Otherwise, the American Revolution was a vast swindle, and the 4th of July is a blackguard’s holiday.
A Pre-Arranged Raid on the Treasury: But because a leader under democracy does not own the government apparatus, argues Hoppe, he has no incentive to maximize its value. Instead, he tends to deplete it. His limited time horizon forces him toward immediate gratification. That is, he must get while the getting is there to be gotten.
Consider the aspiring democratic official who seeks the franchise of a demanding public. He may feel the tug of fiscal conscience. But should he fail to gratify the crowd’s clamorings, he knows the other fellow will. And our democratic aspirant will lose his election. So he offers up the requisite sweets.
If Social Security benefits must increase to sweep him into office, they will increase. Will it take more Medicare benefits, more unemployment insurance, more welfare? Then these you will see. His election represents a pre-arranged raid upon the Treasury. If the national purse is thin, if the burden cannot be met from existing stocks, then let it go upon the credit card. Is the business sordid? Might it eventually throw the Republic into bankruptcy? Well, eventually is a long way off, he says. Let it fall into the next fellow’s lap. Besides, we’ll simply grow our way out of it. This is the office-seeker under modern democracy. Compare, for a moment, democratic government with a rented automobile…
Who Ever Washed a Rental Car? The renter does not own the auto. He, therefore, has no regard for its long-term health. So he over-accelerates the engine. He pummels the brakes. Down its gullet, he pours the lowest-test gasoline. Would he ever check the oil? And who, may we inquire, has ever run a rental through a wash?
Here Hoppe applies the theory to democratic government: "It must be regarded as unavoidable that public-government ownership results in continual capital consumption. Instead of maintaining or even enhancing the value of the government estate, as a king would do, a president (the government’s temporary caretaker or trustee) will use up as much of the government resources as quickly as possible, for what he does not consume now, he may never be able to consume… For a president, unlike for a king, moderation offers only disadvantages."
Hoppe speaks of a king. Unlike democracy, Hoppe contends, monarchy takes the long view. The monarch owns the apparatus of government. As will his heirs. So he naturally inclines to policies that increase the value of his property over time. If Social Security, Medicare and the rest begin to deplete the government’s stocks, the monarch will announce a halt to them.
“It’s welfare you want, subject? I understand the church runs a charity.” “Social Security, you seek? I suggest you begin planning early for your retirement. And remember to save against the rainy day.” “You say you want health care. I hope you don’t smoke or drink too much. And let me mention it now - sugar is a far-from-healthful substance. Besides, there are private insurers. I can refer you to several if you wish.”
The People Tell the King to Get Bent: Is such a system undemocratic? Certainly. Callous, perhaps? Well, perhaps it is. But is it fiscally stable? Yes. Would it incur massive debts it could never repay? Unlikely. In brief, monarchy is better with money than democracy. It is a superior steward of wealth - at least by this theory.
Once again, Hoppe: "While a king is by no means opposed to debt, he is constrained in this “natural” inclination by the fact that as the government’s private owner, he and his heirs are considered personally liable for the payment of all government debts (he can literally go bankrupt, or be forced by creditors to liquidate government assets)."
Consider, as one example: "In 1392, England’s King Henry III was in arrears to the Pope in Rome… and required 1,000 pounds towards satisfaction of his debt. He did not have it. So old Hank was forced to appear before the citizens of London with an open hat. Moreover, they refused him."
Can you imagine a president of the United States upon his knees before the citizens of Washington? And these citizens being allowed to refuse him?
Freeman Tilden, from his neglected 1936 masterwork, "A World in Debt:"* "Kings had power enough to contract debts, but found it much more difficult to take advantage of that power than the legally curbed monarchs [that followed later]. The feudal system, with its insecurity and constant clash of petty divisions, was not calculated to invite credit."
In distinct contrast, Hoppe argues, we find the democratic president: "A presidential government caretaker is not held liable for debts incurred during his tenure of office. Rather, his debts are considered “public,” to be repaid by future (equally nonliable) governments. Perhaps this explains - pandemic aside - why the national debt of the United States runs to some $29 trillion?
It is a capital fact beyond all dispute: Most democratic nations groan beneath bloated government… extortionate taxation… and Himalayan levels of debt.
Taxes: How does this lovely, lovely state compare with the barbarous age of monarchs, Mr. Hoppe? During the entire monarchical age until the second half of the 19th century… the tax burden rarely exceeded 5 percent of national product. Since then it has increased constantly. In Western Europe it stood at 15–20 percent of national product after World War I, and in the meantime it has risen to around 50 percent.
Government spending ran to roughly 10% of GDP prior to World War I. It currently nears 50% in many democratic countries. Total government spending in this Land of the Free amounts to 36% of GDP - nearly 40%. Perhaps in retrospect, the world might have been made safe for monarchy in 1917.
And maybe our Colonial forefathers should have left old King George alone in 1775. His tax bite was so light… it failed to break the skin. Our researches reveal that American Colonial taxation ran to about 1% of total income - 1%. And between 1764 and 1775, claims political scientist Alvin Rabushka: "The nearly 2 million white Colonists in America paid on the order of about 1 percent of the annual taxes levied on the roughly 8.5 million residents of Britain, or one twenty-fifth, in per capita terms…"
As traitorous as it may appear, we are half-tempted to disinter King George’s innocent bones and throw them a much overdue parade. But let us entertain no more thoughts of heresy.
The Worst System of Government… Except for the Rest: Hoppe’s book is actually no call for monarchy. As the author himself states at the onset - “I am not a monarchist and the following is not a defense of monarchy.” His primary purpose is to diagnose an illness - not to prescribe a cure. Hoppe’s sins against democracy are nonetheless of the mortal variety. And mainstream academics put him under excommunication for his blasphemies.
But to repeat, Hoppe does not call for monarchy. Nor do we. Beneath our seditious motley beats the heart of an American patriot… and our blood runs true under red, white and blue. Besides, a king could be every inch the scoundrel as an American president. And since he faces no election, how could we possibly count upon him to say amusing and idiotic things? Let us, therefore, not discount the comedic value of democratic government.
In addition, monarchy is certainly no guarantee against bankruptcy - as history records well. More than a few ne’er do well kings have driven their realms to rack and ruin. Who can dispute it? But it is due more to incompetent kingmanship than kingmanship itself. A Henry VIII can inherit a throne as easily as a Solomon. Regardless, it matters little… Hoppe’s monarchic utopia will never be - not in today’s age of mass democracy.
But does it soften his case? Winston Churchill famously quipped that democracy was the worst form of government except for the rest. But upon further reflection, perhaps monarchy is the worst form of government… except for the rest…"
Gerald Celente, "Trends in The News Live"
Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, "Trends in The News Live"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Musical Interlude: Simon & Garfunkel, "The Boxer"; "The Sounds of Silence"; "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
Simon & Garfunkel, "The Boxer"
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Simon & Garfunkel, "The Sounds of Silence"
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Simon & Garfunkel, "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"This popular group leaps into the early evening sky around the March equinox and the northern hemisphere spring. Famous as the Leo Triplet, the three magnificent galaxies found in the prominent constellation Leo gather here in one astronomical field of view. Crowd pleasers when imaged with even modest telescopes, they can be introduced individually as NGC 3628 (right), M66 (upper left), and M65 (bottom). All three are large spiral galaxies but tend to look dissimilar, because their galactic disks are tilted at different angles to our line of sight.
NGC 3628, also known as the Hamburger Galaxy, is temptingly seen edge-on, with obscuring dust lanes cutting across its puffy galactic plane. The disks of M66 and M65 are both inclined enough to show off their spiral structure. Gravitational interactions between galaxies in the group have left telltale signs, including the tidal tails and warped, inflated disk of NGC 3628 and the drawn out spiral arms of M66. This gorgeous view of the region spans over 1 degree (two full moons) on the sky in a frame that covers over half a million light-years at the trio's estimated distance of 30 million light-years. Of course the spiky foreground stars lie well within our own Milky Way."
Chet Raymo, “Dewy-eyed”
“Dewy-eyed”
by Chet Raymo
“I believe I have mentioned before that many years ago, before I started writing for the Boston Globe, I had a column in the college newspaper called "Under a Skeptical Star." The phrase came from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment."
That was nearly half-a-century ago. I'm still astonished. Easily astonished. I don't require magnificent vistas, frozen waterfalls, spectacular sunsets. I don't need the Red Sea parted or Lazarus raised from the dead. I've been astonished by comets and eclipses, but I don't need a comet or eclipse. A leaf will do. A snowflake. The tip-tip-tip of a nuthatch heard but not seen in a piney wood. A lop-sided spider web wet with dew. Don't tell me about answered prayers. Premonitions that came to pass. The paranormal and preternatural. That's when my skeptical star kicks in, the one I was born under. That's when an irrepressible voice in the back of my head whispers: "There's nothing less astonishing than the apparently miraculous."
I'll settle for the commonplace. The ordinary. The quotidian. The flower in the crannied wall. The universe in a grain of sand. A single silicon dioxide molecule is astonishment enough to set my chin agog. How many silicon dioxide molecules in a grain of sand? About a trillion billion by my rough calculation. That's a lot of astonishment. A lop-sided spider web wet with dew. Even the words are astonishing.”
That was nearly half-a-century ago. I'm still astonished. Easily astonished. I don't require magnificent vistas, frozen waterfalls, spectacular sunsets. I don't need the Red Sea parted or Lazarus raised from the dead. I've been astonished by comets and eclipses, but I don't need a comet or eclipse. A leaf will do. A snowflake. The tip-tip-tip of a nuthatch heard but not seen in a piney wood. A lop-sided spider web wet with dew. Don't tell me about answered prayers. Premonitions that came to pass. The paranormal and preternatural. That's when my skeptical star kicks in, the one I was born under. That's when an irrepressible voice in the back of my head whispers: "There's nothing less astonishing than the apparently miraculous."
I'll settle for the commonplace. The ordinary. The quotidian. The flower in the crannied wall. The universe in a grain of sand. A single silicon dioxide molecule is astonishment enough to set my chin agog. How many silicon dioxide molecules in a grain of sand? About a trillion billion by my rough calculation. That's a lot of astonishment. A lop-sided spider web wet with dew. Even the words are astonishing.”
“50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind”
“50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind”
by Marc Chernoff
"These questions have no right or wrong answers, because sometimes asking the right questions is the answer.
1. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
2. Which is worse, failing or never trying?
3. If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?
4. When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?
5. What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world?
6. If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich?
7. Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?
8. If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently?
9. To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken?
10. Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?
11. You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire. They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend. The criticism is distasteful and unjustified. What do you do?
12. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be?
13. Would you break the law to save a loved one?
14. Have you ever seen insanity where you later saw creativity?
15. What’s something you know you do differently than most people?
16. How come the things that make you happy don’t make everyone happy?
17. What one thing have you not done that you really want to do? What’s holding you back?
18. Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?
19. If you had to move to a state or country besides the one you currently live in, where would you move and why?
20. Do you push the elevator button more than once? Do you really believe it makes the elevator faster?
21. Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton?
22. Why are you, you?
23. Have you been the kind of friend you want as a friend?
24. Which is worse, when a good friend moves away, or losing touch with a good friend who lives right near you?
25. What are you most grateful for?
26. Would you rather lose all of your old memories, or never be able to make new ones?
27. Is is possible to know the truth without challenging it first?
28. Has your greatest fear ever come true?
29. Do you remember that time 5 years ago when you were extremely upset? Does it really matter now?
30. What is your happiest childhood memory? What makes it so special?
31. At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?
32. If not now, then when?
33. If you haven’t achieved it yet, what do you have to lose?
34. Have you ever been with someone, said nothing, and walked away feeling like you just had the best conversation ever?
35. Why do religions that support love cause so many wars?
36. Is it possible to know, without a doubt, what is good and what is evil?
37. If you just won a million dollars, would you quit your job?
38. Would you rather have less work to do, or more work you actually enjoy doing?
39. Do you feel like you’ve lived this day a hundred times before?
40. When was the last time you marched into the dark with only the soft glow of an idea you strongly believed in?
41. If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today?
42. Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by 10 years to become extremely attractive or famous?
43. What is the difference between being alive and truly living?
44. When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go ahead and do what you know is right?
45. If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?
46. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
47. When was the last time you noticed the sound of your own breathing?
48. What do you love? Have any of your recent actions openly expressed this love?
49. In 5 years from now, will you remember what you did yesterday? What about the day before that? Or the day before that?
50. Decisions are being made right now. The question is: Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you?"
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