"New Data From Life Insurance Companies Confirm That Americans Are Dying In Unusually Large Numbers"

"New Data From Life Insurance Companies Confirm

That Americans Are Dying In Unusually Large Numbers"

by Michael Snyder

"Death is in the air. Unless you have been living in a cave for the past 12 months, you already know that this is true. Old people are dying, young people are dying, famous people are dying, and countless hard working Americans that make up the backbone of our economy are dying. For months, I have been writing articles about “the mystery of the missing workers”. For the very first time in U.S. history, we have a severe shortage of able-bodied workers, and this is one of the biggest reasons why we are facing an unprecedented supply chain crisis today. Millions of Americans that were working prior to the pandemic seem to have “disappeared” from the system, and now it has become clear that a lot of them have simply died.

Before I discuss the new life insurance numbers that have been revealed, I want to do a quick review. Earlier this month, I wrote an article about a large life insurance company in Indiana that announced that the death rate for working age people covered by their policies was up 40 percent from pre-pandemic levels… "The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people. “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”

A 40 percent increase in the death rate is really bad news for a life insurance company, because they make money when people don’t die. In fact, Davison said that a 40 percent increase in a single year “is just unheard of”… “Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”

Davison’s remarks sent shockwaves all over the Internet, because they were one of the first hard pieces of evidence confirming the fact that Americans are dying in unusually large numbers. But of course it was going to be extremely important for other life insurance companies to confirm that such a dramatic shift was indeed taking place, and now that is starting to happen.

According to Reuters, the amount of money paid out by global life insurance companies absolutely skyrocketed during the first three quarters of 2021… "The global life insurance industry was hit with reported claims due to COVID-19 of $5.5 billion in the first nine months of 2021 versus $3.5 billion for the whole of 2020, according to insurance broker Howden in a report on Jan 4, while the industry had expected lower payouts due to the rollout of vaccines. “We definitely paid out more than I had anticipated at the beginning of last year,” said Hannover Re board member Klaus Miller."

Let’s assume that claims in the fourth quarter of 2021 came in at the same pace as the first three quarters of 2021. That would add another 1.83 billion dollars, and it would give us a grand total of 7.33 billion dollars for the year.

Wow.

So basically the amount of money that global life insurance companies will pay out for 2021 will be approximately double what they paid out for 2020. Needless to say, that suggests that the death rate for those covered by such policies roughly doubled.

In that same article, it was reported that one life insurance company actually had its claims in the Americas more than triple during the third quarter… "Dutch insurer Aegon, which does two-thirds of its business in the United States, said its claims in the Americas in the third quarter were $111 million, up from $31 million a year earlier."

This isn’t normal. But you already knew that. Reuters is telling us that claims for MetLife and Prudential also “rose”, but we were not given specific numbers for those two insurance giants… "U.S. insurers MetLife (MET.N) and Prudential Financial (PRU.N) also said life insurance claims rose. South Africa’s Old Mutual (OMUJ.J) used up more of its pandemic provisions to pay claims and reinsurer Munich Re raised its 2021 estimate of COVID-19 life and health claims to 600 million euros from 400 million."

So now we have solid confirmation. A lot of people really are dying. Interestingly, an entirely separate investigation by The Epoch Times has also shown that deaths were unusually high in 2021. They analyzed death certificate data from the CDC, and they came to the conclusion that the number of deaths among Americans aged 18 to 49 “increased more than 40 percent in the 12 months ending October 2021 compared to the same period in 2018–2019″…

Health departments in several states confirmed to The Epoch Times that they are looking into a steep surge in the mortality rate for people aged 18 to 49 in 2021 - a majority of which are not linked to COVID-19. Deaths among people aged 18 to 49 increased more than 40 percent in the 12 months ending October 2021 compared to the same period in 2018–2019, before the pandemic, according to an analysis by The Epoch Times of death certificate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)."

This is bombshell information. Americans are dying in enormous numbers, and that trend is almost certainly going to continue throughout the coming year. Most of you that are reading this article know people that have died over the last 12 months. Every time that I hear that someone that I was personally familiar with has passed away, it deeply grieves me. What we are witnessing is such a great tragedy, and a lot more death is on the horizon.

Every moment that we are given is a precious gift, and so let us endeavor to make the most out of every single day. Many people assume that they will live to a ripe old age, but that isn’t always true. Death unexpectedly came for countless Americans in 2021, and countless more will also die in 2022."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

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"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,

 however improbable, must be the truth."

 – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

And what if this is quite intentional? What then? It is...

Oh, I know, you're thinking "They would never do that!"

Well, they did...

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"Unthinkable Thoughts"

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"Everyone Vaccinated For Covid Will DIE, 

Warns French Virologist"

"Wuhan Flu shots were designed to “slow kill” 

the masses through time-delayed death."

○

Free Download: "The Vaccine Death Report"

by David John Sorenson and Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, MD

"Purpose: The purpose of this report is to document how all over the world millions of people have died, and hundreds of millions of serious adverse events have occurred, after injections with the experimental mRNA gene therapy. We also reveal the real risk of an unprecedented genocide.

Facts: We aim to only present scientific facts and stay away from unfounded claims. The data is clear and verifiable. Over one hundred references can be found for all presented information, which is provided as a starting point for further investigation.

Complicity: The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world. The severity of this situation compels us to ask this critical question: will we rise to the defense of billions of innocent people? Or will we permit personal profit over justice, and be complicit? Networks of lawyers all over the world are preparing class-action lawsuits to prosecute all who are serving this criminal agenda. To all who have been complicit so far, we say: There is still time to turn and choose the side of truth. Please make the right choice."

Freely download "The Vaccine Death Report" here:

- https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/

○

"Video: Graphene Oxide:

 A Toxic Substance in the Vial of the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine?"

Jim Kunstler, "Win-Win, Lose-Lose"

"Win-Win, Lose-Lose"

by Jim Kunstler

"They all hate us anyhow…

so let’s drop the Big One now."

- Randy Newman

"The world is waiting to know: will “Joe Biden” bomb Guatemala back to the stone age for sending incursions of its (very fine) people across America’s southern border? All of a sudden borders are sacred again, you know. Of course, there’s that old problem Colin Powell used to raise back in the Iraq War days of you break it, you own it. But, hey, don’t we already own Guatemala? And isn’t it already sort of broken?

Well, you can own a dog, say, a pitiful, broke-down, half-lame, scrofulous, rheumy-eyed, junkyard kind of old dog, and that doesn’t stop the dog from taking a dump on the neighbor’s property across the street. Anyway, the only thing Guatemala is dumping in Texas and Arizona is new voters, and that just means more democracy for us - a “win-win” as they say in the cabinet room! (Though, Yamiche Alcindor might still want to ask “JB” at the next presser if he would risk the US supply of bananas. We’re having enough trouble getting auto parts, fer chrissake.) Such are the quandaries of US foreign policy.

Then there’s this Shangri-La called Ukraine. Can anyone find it on the map? It’s nowheres around here. Let’s face it: Ukraine is not sending us any new voters or bananas. What good are they? You might argue: they exported the Vindman twins to America (win-win); they supported Hunter Biden’s cocaine habit for six or seven years and paid the mortgage on The Big Guy’s beach house. So, maybe we do owe them.

But then, it’s said that Russia is lurking on Ukraine’s border like a hungry bear at the edge of a sheep pasture, licking its chops, fork and knife in its fisted paws, napkin tied around its throat, visions of mutton-filled perogies dancing in its head. The whole DC foreign policy establishment says we should take a few potshots at that bear, teach it a lesson. I say, just throw Guatemala over the fence, let the bear chew on that, including a few bananas for dessert. There it is: problem solved.

Another possibility, which the “Joe Biden” admin seems to favor a little, is World War Three. We couldn’t lose that, could we? Well, at worst it would be a “lose-lose” so at least nobody else would win. Would the US be any worse off without New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and a few more population centers teeming with homeless junkies? (Who rarely show up at the polls to vote, by the way… and if you asked, could they even tell you who’s running for president?) World War Three begins to look like our silver linings playbook. London, Paris, and Berlin are not our problem, to be blunt about it. Even as you read this, “Joe Biden” is striving to explain his thoughts on these vexing matters, but he’s talking out of his ass so much it’s hard to tell whether he is setting forth actual policy or just breaking wind.

Isn’t it refreshing to not have to lede with Covid-19? It looks like “Joe Biden’s” effort to change the channel is working. Even so, there is some interesting Covid-19 news, like: the whole endless, heartbreaking, demoralizing episode is winding down. Whoa! That’s a shock! What will Western Civ do without it? In the UK, Boris Johnson put a stop to all restrictions, mask mandates, and vaxx passports, just like that (snap) on Wednesday. Then France announced it would lift most Covid-19 restrictions in February, which is a little more than a week from now, for those of you who haven’t mastered the new maff. Then, on Thursday, Austria’s parliament voted to approve mandatory vaccinations for everybody in the country - say, what? - leading the casual observer to wonder whether half of everybody in that country is maybe super pissed-off at their government, seeing how France and the UK are going the opposite way.

Let’s be honest: it’s getting laughable to seriously advocate vaxxing up a whole goshdarn population when it’s perfectly obvious now that the vaxxes don’t work and are making a lot of people sick with everything that can go wrong in a human body, plus Covid-19. Are nations such as Austria and Germany not looking plumb insane now? Can the European Union endure such wildly contradictory policy among its member states, and not make itself ridiculous? Let’s just say, the situation in Europe is in flux and events are moving fast.

Here in our exceptional nation, it is lately discovered - to the chagrin of the elite managerial classes - that The Science personified by Dr. Anthony Fauci is not medical science after all but rather political science. Ah! I see now why so much confusion has been sown over Dr. Fauci’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic. If he actually represented medical science, he might not have killed several hundred thousand people in this country by withholding and suppressing effective treatments and promoting deadly vaccines. He might not have disgraced the entire medical establishment and half-wrecked the system it works in. But, to paraphrase another eminent political scientist of yore, Josef Stalin, while one death is a tragedy, a half-million is a mere statistic. There’s science anyone can understand!"

- https://kunstler.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Fear Trade Underway"

Ignore blank start screen. Click to begin.

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/21/22:

"Fear Trade Underway"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Food Shortage Update 1/20/22"

Full screen recommended.

Let's Talk Prepping,

 "Food Shortage Update 1/20/22"

"Here is a look at the empty shelves at Walmart in Rhode Island. As you watch this video ask yourself have we resigned ourselves to seeing empty shelves and accepting it as normal now? The food shortages are still here and seem to be getting worse. We need to prep as much as we can. It is still possible to get the food you need but there are more and more empty shelves every day."

"This Is Your Last Chance", Part 1

"This Is Your Last Chance", Part 1

by Robert Gore

This is Part One, Part Two will be posted 1/21.

"The indictment is long and strong. A cabal of politicians, governments, courts, medical authorities, pharmaceutical companies, multinational agencies, the mainstream media, academics, and foundations, particularly the World Economic Forum, have concocted responses to a virus and its variants that have robbed the people of rightful liberties, are a mechanism for the imposition of global totalitarianism, and have amplified rather than reduced the virus’s dangers, inflicting severe injury and death that will last years, perhaps decades, and afflict millions, if not billions, of victims (See “The Means Are The End,” Robert Gore, SLL, November 13, 2021).

This is their last chance. They can reverse course and pray to whatever demonic deity they pray to that it’s enough to prevent the retribution they deserve, or they can perish in the destruction they’ve created. They will reap what they have sown, their time is up.

This is it, the last gasp of the psychopaths who express their contempt and hatred for humanity by trying to rule it. Compulsion, not voluntary and natural cooperation. Power, pull, and politics, not incentives, competition, honest production, and value-for-value trade. From each according to his virtue to each according to his depravity.

“The Last Gasp,” Robert Gore, SLL, March 24, 2020

Their time is up. This assertion may appear as recklessly foolish as Luke Skywalker’s ultimatum—“Jabba, this is your last chance, free us or die!”—did to Jabba the Hut at the Sarlacc Pit. It’s not, but to understand why requires an understanding of slow moving (on human time scale) but enormously powerful forces. Most history studies the wrong things and most predictions are straight line projections of the present and recent past.

The linchpin of history is innovation, not governments and rulers. We don’t know who ruled whom when humanity lived in caves, but we do know that someone tamed fire, someone planted seeds and cultivated them for food, and someone invented the wheel. With such steps humanity emerged from the caves and began building civilization. Even at this early stage one thing was clear: innovation creates new capabilities and opportunities and serves as the basis for further innovation.

Government is the acquisition of resources that enables those who govern to exercise control over those whom they govern. This presupposes resources, which presupposes production. Government is always subsidiary to production, yet most history focuses on the former and treats the latter as a secondary matter. This is looking down the telescope from the wrong end. Before a government can take someone must make.

History as studied is a dreary succession of violent takers: their kingdoms and empires, their exactions from the populace, their wars, their depredations, their monuments, and so on. Most of this is trivial compared to the innovation that gets short shrift.

Who ruled which nations in 1440 and what effect does whatever they did have on us today? There’s not one person in ten million who can knowledgeably answer those questions. Ask instead if the moveable-type printing press that Johannes Gutenberg invented that year has had an effect on their lives and most will acknowledge its inescapable importance.

The few rulers who have ruled wisely are largely forgotten. Wise rule is maintaining the conditions that allow the people themselves to create, innovate, and produce, what’s been called the night watchman state. Protecting them and their property from invasion, violence, theft, and fraud are the important but minimalist assignments for such governments. Crucially, such protection of the people extends to protection from the government itself. This type of government offers would-be rulers no opportunity for the larceny, self-aggrandizement, and power they crave, which is why they’ve been so rare.

The perfect night watchman state has never been achieved. There have only been a few that have come close. Conditions of relatively greater freedom, however, have coincided with the explosions of innovation and productivity that have bequeathed to humanity most of its progress.

The United States’ explosion was the Industrial Revolution, which launched virtually every important industry we have today and took the nation from its agrarian roots to industrial preeminence. With the exception of Theodore Roosevelt, an outlier in many unfortunate ways, the presidents who presided during the Industrial Revolution (1865-1913) have passed into obscurity, always a desirable fate for presidents. (See “The Magnificent Eleven,” Robert Gore, SLL, May 3, 2017. For a fictional treatment of the period, see "The Golden Pinnacle", Robert Gore, 2013.)

Nineteenth-century fecundity set the table for twentieth-century insanity, giving psychopathic rulers the resources for two world wars and innumerable smaller ones, history’s most totalitarian governments, genocides, and the perpetration of myriad other miseries and horrors. The twentieth century is easily history’s most tyrannical and bloody... so far. Emblematic of the century is its “greatest” invention, nuclear weaponry, which can destroy all life on earth.

In the United States, establishment of the central bank and imposition of income taxes in 1913 allowed the government to expropriate a far higher share of the nation’s incomes and wealth than it had. Shortly thereafter, ignoring George Washington’s sage advice to avoid foreign entanglements, the U.S. entered World War I. The Industrial Revolution and its comparative freedom were over, the accretion of state power that continues to this day was underway.

Government resurfaced as the dominant institution, as it has been for most of history, not just in the U.S. but around the globe. Intellectual fashion followed the political trend. Money and power—heady prospects for many intellectuals—were to be had promoting the growth of the state and toadying to its functionaries. A few brave souls spoke out against the trend and championed freedom, but they were ignored and shunned. Today, champions of freedom are consigned to obscure corners of the Internet.

You would think that living off the Industrial Revolution’s productive legacy, with first call on incomes and accumulated wealth, rulers would command more than ample resources to do whatever they desired. Such is not the case. Their schemes and rapacity are unlimited while even in the most productive and wealthy societies, resources are not. Governments and their central banks have created a debt explosion that leaves the world in the deepest financial hole it’s ever been.

The explosion has accelerated the past few years, leaving rulers at the outer limits of what they can expropriate or borrow. Whatever growth in GDPs they now hail, the unmentioned growth in debt is greater—the hole gets deeper. This state of affairs illustrates history’s central truism: governments can’t produce. Their stock in trade, coercion and violence, only destroys. Making producers tax and debt slaves to those who produce nothing destroys both production and integrity.

The death knell sounded in 1971 when the United States government repudiated the last vestige of its promise to redeem its dollars for gold. Debt would be the coin of the realm. The bland term “financialization” hides the moral obscenity. Each year the nation’s debt has grown. Production, when netted against that debt, has shrunk, and an increasingly large portion of what remains is diverted to those who don’t produce. Washington decides who gets what, but it can’t command the what. That shrinks as productive virtue is penalized and theft, fraud, and violence are rewarded.

This increasingly precarious state of affairs has lasted for fifty years. It won’t last much longer. Only moral and intellectual bankruptcy greater than current financial bankruptcy could call this abject failure a failure of capitalism.

Capitalism is the economics of political freedom. The strangulation of both in the U.S. officially commenced in 1913. They are the antithesis of what we now have, state-directed collectivism. Capitalism and freedom didn’t fail the people, the people failed capitalism and freedom. If people can’t handle individual freedom—as collectivists like to argue—they certainly can’t handle collectivist power, as the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have amply demonstrated. It’s like the one brat in a room full of self-directed, happily interacting children seizing control of the room."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

- https://straightlinelogic.com/

Part Two will be posted 1/21.

"Stock Market And Housing Will Be Crippled; End Of The Bubble; Americans Go Broke"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/20/22:

"Stock Market And Housing Will Be Crippled; 

End Of The Bubble; Americans Go Broke"

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Related:

"Investing Legend Turns Apocalyptic, Expects Stocks

To Crater 50% In Largest Wealth Destruction In US History"

Musical Interlude: Hilary Stagg, "Pleasant Dreams"

Hilary Stagg, "Pleasant Dreams"

Full screen highly recommended.

The Poet: Carl Sandburg, "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

"Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

“The past is a bucket of ashes.”

1

"The woman named Tomorrow 

sits with a hairpin in her teeth 

and takes her time 

and does her hair the way she wants it 

and fastens at last the last braid and coil 

and puts the hairpin where it belongs 

and turns and drawls: Well, what of it? 

My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone. 

What of it? Let the dead be dead. 

2

The doors were cedar

and the panels strips of gold 

and the girls were golden girls 

and the panels read and the girls chanted: 

We are the greatest city, 

the greatest nation: 

nothing like us ever was. 

The doors are twisted on broken hinges. 

Sheets of rain swish through on the wind 

where the golden girls ran and the panels read: 

We are the greatest city, 

the greatest nation, 

nothing like us ever was. 

3

It has happened before. 

Strong men put up a city and got 

a nation together,

And paid singers to sing and women 

to warble: We are the greatest city, 

the greatest nation, 

nothing like us ever was. 

And while the singers sang

and the strong men listened 

and paid the singers well 

and felt good about it all, 

there were rats and lizards who listened... 

and the only listeners left now... 

are…the rats…and the lizards. 

And there are black crows 

crying, “Caw, caw,” 

bringing mud and sticks 

building a nest 

over the words carved 

on the doors where the panels were cedar 

and the strips on the panels were gold 

and the golden girls came singing: 

We are the greatest city, 

the greatest nation: 

nothing like us ever was. 

The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,” 

And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways. 

And the only listeners now are…the rats…and the lizards. 

4

The feet of the rats 

scribble on the door sills; 

the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints 

chatter the pedigrees of the rats 

and babble of the blood 

and gabble of the breed 

of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers 

of the rats. 

And the wind shifts 

and the dust on a door sill shifts 

and even the writing of the rat footprints 

tells us nothing, nothing at all 

about the greatest city, the greatest nation 

where the strong men listened 

and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was."

- Carl Sandburg

"A Market Veteran Is Warning About A January Stock Market Crash"

Full screen recommended.

"A Market Veteran Is Warning 

About A January Stock Market Crash"

by Epic Economist

"The U.S. stock market is down this month, with investors bracing for a lot of volatility as the Federal Reserve starts tightening its monetary policy to fight against rampant inflation. The tech sector has immensely benefited from the liquidity injections issued over the past two years, which helped to leverage stock prices to record highs. But as policies are rolled back, several high-flying tech stocks have been sent straight to correction territory. As Deutsche Bank’s head of thematic research, Jim Reid, highlighted in a note published yesterday, this year has been “a perfect negative storm for tech,” with higher nominal and real yields as well as “a Fed that seems strongly committed to starting quantitative tightening”. Tech stocks are extremely sensitive to lower liquidity and rising rates, for that reason, many investor favorites have sharply declined over the past two weeks. On Wednesday, the Nasdaq fell almost 2%, with the FANG Index, which includes Big Tech names such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Nvidia, and Tesla, dropping roughly 5% in the afternoon trading. During the same time last year, the FANG Index jumped about 20%.

As the burst of the tech bubble becomes evident, more and more investors are acknowledging the growing risks and admitting that there is a broader stock market bubble. In a global market poll conducted by Deutsche Bank, 49% of the respondents affirmed that U.S. stocks are in a bubble. As investors move away from risky tech stocks, the Nasdaq officially entered correction territory, defined as a minimum 10% decline from its high. The latest peak in the index was recorded on November 19. After that point, things started to go downhill and never fully recovered. And yesterday, the tech-heavy index recorded a crash of nearly 11% below the record. But experts are saying that the downturn is about to get worse in the coming weeks as companies release their quarterly earnings data and investors are forced to confront the current economic reality. Even Nasdaq strategists are warning that a broad stock market crash is fast approaching. On Nasdaq’s official website, financial analyst Sean Williams cited several reasons why a stock market crash is likely to occur in January.

Everywhere we look, all signs point to an imminent financial disaster. Now, it seems that investors’ top priority is to get out of the tech bubble before they suffer from more painful losses. According to RBAdvisors' Dan Suzuki, the risks of investing in tech stocks today are the highest they have ever been. Suzuki compared the frothiness in the sector to the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, saying: "It's never too early to sell." He believes that “any protracted sell-off in tech will reverberate across the broader equity market, given the weight tech stocks have in the major indices now compared to a decade ago”. "There's massive downside risk. I'm talking about a bubble that reaches out at least 50% of the market," he emphasized. "The only way to protect from a bubble is to get away from it," Suzuki cautioned. "We've seen this movie before. These things don't move in straight lines. I wouldn't be surprised to see a major reversal here."

"We haven't really scratched the surface of what they're really going to do to people's portfolios," he continued. Keeping in mind that millions of household portfolios are extremely exposed to these risky stocks, we’re about to witness some acute financial losses. And with soaring inflation and a looming stock market crash, it seems that Americans are already preparing for years of financial uncertainty. A recent Quicken survey shows that roughly 71% of the population inflation is among the top three issues they're most worried about at the moment, followed by the new virus variant, supply chain disruptions, and a stock market crash.

"Americans are feeling the impact of inflation across their daily expenses, which is why it's on everyone's mind," outlined Quicken CEO, Eric Dunn. "It's important to understand exactly how economic changes, such as inflation and an unsteady stock market, impact our daily lives, and to have a handle on your personal finances so that you are prepared for the uncertainties ahead," he alerted. Nearly 52% of Americans agree that a stock market crash seems near, amongst them, 58% think it will impact their finances negatively. In short, people can tell when dark times are approaching. And when the stock market finally implodes, we will find ourselves in the middle of the most devastating financial and economic crisis in modern history."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Gregory Mannarino, "What A Full-On Debt Market Implosion Will Look Like"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/20/22:

"What A Full-On Debt Market Implosion Will Look Like"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Gerald Celente, "Trends in The News"

Full screen recommended.

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, "Trends in The News"

"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."

- https://trendsresearch.com/

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417, while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the right is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula.

About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young, open star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10 light-years across.”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180129.html

"A Strange Honey..."

"Bad things will happen and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So taste your grief to the fullest. Don't try and press it down. Don't hide from it. Don't escape. It is life too. It is truth. But it will pass and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That's the way life goes."

- Ben Okri

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "What I Have Learned So Far"

"What I Have Learned So Far"

"Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of- indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone."

~ Mary Oliver

The Daily "Near You?"

Oakes, N. Dakota, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Above All..."

"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. "

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The Brothers Karamazov"

"Doug Casey on the Rise of China... And What it Means for the World"

"Doug Casey on the Rise of China... 

And What it Means for the World"

by International Man

"International Man: Lee Kuan Yew, the former leader of Singapore, once said: "The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world." What is your take?

Doug Casey: China has united 1.4 billion people into a single political entity, so of course they have a lot of weight. But simply having masses of people under your political control doesn't mean as much as it used to. China would still be a poverty-stricken non-entity if it hadn't been for the reforms that Deng Xiaoping made starting in 1980. Masses of uneducated, desperately poor peasants are more of a liability than an asset in the modern world. Deng transformed China’s economy into something that functions pretty much like those in the West. But now, Xi Jinping seems to be returning to the philosophy of Chairman Mao, with much more centralized control. That’s very negative for the country.

Secondly, China’s demographics are horrible. The average woman today only has 1.4 children. Low reproduction rates are to be expected when a society urbanizes. But China also had a draconian one-child policy starting in 1980 that only ended in 2015. That, and the fact the Chinese prefer males for cultural reasons, compounded the phenomenon.

Few people in the West realize that as a result of these things, the Chinese population is in steep decline. UN projections - which aren’t worth much but are still interesting - find that by the end of this century, their population could collapse to 600 or 700 million. And they’ll mostly be old people, so it’s not going to bounce back quickly.

I have real questions about whether China’s economic miracle of the last 40 years will continue. Perhaps it will even go into reverse. That’s because China’s huge transformation is the result of its adoption of some aspects of Western Civilization, which made the United States and Western Europe different from, and better than, any other countries in world history.

I think there are at least 12 characteristics that are underpinned the West. They are free thought, free speech, free markets, property rights, limited government, individualism, rationality, personal liberty, the concept of progress, privacy, the rule of law, and entrepreneurialism. Humans everywhere understand their value and adhere to them sporadically, of course; without them civilization is impossible. But only the West made them integral to itself, as principles. They’re what made us unique.

There’s a great deal more I’d like to say about this. I’ve given several speeches on it, and how Western Civilization itself is being washed away, but I have never written an article about it. I’ll do so soon.

International Man: Since 2013, China has been working on its Belt and Road Initiative, which stretches from East Asia to Europe. It’s primarily a trade network of seaports and railroads controlled by Beijing, reminiscent of the ancient Silk Road. So far, over 100 countries have signed on to the massive trade and infrastructure initiative. What are its geopolitical and economic implications?

Doug Casey: In the short run, it's resulted in a lot of profits for Chinese corporations and employment for the Chinese workers who are building these things. Locals are hired mostly for coolie labor - which I find amusing and ironic.

Everyone in the West seems to think the Chinese are going to take over the world. While I acknowledge China’s hyperbolic rise over the last 40 years, I question whether the Belt and Road won’t be a huge overreach. It could backfire for several reasons.

Number one, the benefits of the Belt and Road initiative are primarily political. It’s planned and run on the basis of politics, much more than economics. It’s basically a government boondoggle - about the biggest in history. Building infrastructure in unstable third-world countries is generally a sucker bet for lots of reasons; it’s likely to be shockingly unprofitable. It may lead to the bankruptcy of a lot of Chinese banks and corporations that are involved with it.

Number two, a lot of countries are starting to see it as Chinese neocolonialism. I think the natives are going to find the Chinese much more unpleasant colonial masters than the Europeans. Among other things, massive numbers of Chinese people are immigrating to Africa. It’s a guaranteed formula for conflict.

I suspect it's going to end badly for the Chinese politically and economically, especially in Africa, which produces nothing but raw materials and poor people. When Europeans and Americans stop shipping billions in capital, technology, and food to the Dark Continent, the progress it’s made will go into reverse because its political and cultural mores are hopeless. That’s why the infrastructure in most places south of the Sahara - railroads, roads, waterways, utilities, you name it - have collapsed in the years since the Europeans left despite trillions in aid and investment. You can see it happening now in South Africa, which is by far the most advanced country on the continent. The Chinese will be even less successful than the Europeans.

The local political nomenklatura profited mightily from bribes and corruption in the early stages of Belt and Road projects. Once they’re thrown out of office one way or another, retiring to mansions in France or Switzerland, the new governments will be unhappy with table scraps and one-sided Chinese ownership. They’ll try to teach the Chinese a lesson, and the Chinese will have to teach them a counter-lesson.

The Chinese could end up getting involved in lots of brushfire wars as a result. I expect you’ll see the Red Army acting the way the US Marines did in Central America and the Caribbean. Of course, the US will pointlessly stick its nose into the mix, increasing the odds of a global conflagration.

International Man: Since the end of World War II, the US has been the dominant power in the world. Will the US hegemony in the world continue?

Doug Casey: The answer is no. Perhaps the biggest reason is that there’s been a radical change, a degradation, of American culture. The US is not the country it once was. It’s become a multicultural domestic empire, which is intrinsically unstable and dysfunctional. The US has been transformed from a beacon of freedom into a highly taxed and regulated political dumpster fire. I hesitate to say it’s a police state - yet. But it’s moving in that direction.

In other words, the things that made the US different and great are vanishing. The twelve things I listed earlier are vanishing. At this point, it's little better than any of the 200 other nation-states that cover the face of the globe like a skin disease.

About the only thing that the US government has that still more or less works is its military. But the US military is in steep decline. And nobody likes or even respects a country that bases much of its power on the military.

We're generating hate all over the world. It used to be that everybody loved America. With troops and active "intelligence" operations in perhaps 100 countries around the world, that’s changed. The world has come to dislike and disrespect the US government. Americans seem to think it’s still Paris after D-Day. Far from it.

Meanwhile, the US government itself is facing bankruptcy, as are many of its citizens. The situation has been papered over, so to speak, by printing trillions of dollars - especially in the last couple of decades. The international acceptance of the US dollar has been critically important for US economic domination. Exporting over a trillion of them a year in exchange for real wealth has artificially raised the national standard of living a huge amount.

But the dollar has become just another irredeemable fiat currency. When it collapses, it’s going to create a whirlwind of hate and chaos everywhere. So, all the dominoes are aligned in the wrong way.

I'm afraid the US is going to continue on its present path - certainly for the next three years, while actual Jacobins are in power in Washington DC, trying to accelerate these trends, not turn them around.

International Man: What is the US going to do about China’s rise?

Doug Casey: Let’s also ask: What should the US do about the fact the sun is going to rise tomorrow morning? A couple of years ago, a concept called the Thucydides trap became a meme based on a book written by Graham Allison. His basic historical premise was that declining powers usually attack rising powers while they still can, while they're still strong, and can still win.

The US is definitely declining. The Chinese are still rising. Although, as I said before, I think it’s very questionable how long that trend will persist. In addition to Belt and Road problems, their banking system is on the ragged edge of collapse, along with their bubble economy built on exports and real estate speculation. It could all come unglued, even as Xi becomes the world hegemon. Twenty years from now, we could see China devolve into a half-dozen satrapies run by warlords, the way it was only 100 years ago.

My guess is that the big danger is US/Chinese confrontation in the South China Sea. It doesn’t matter that it’s none of our business; Washington feels it has to show Beijing who’s boss. A second danger is China trying to capture Taiwan, although I discount that since they have a lot to lose and relatively little to gain. Again, it’s none of our business. In the long run, Africa will be a battleground.

Even if there’s not a hot war, the US will likely use trade barriers to punish the Chinese. If the Chinese are unable to export to the US and countries it controls, they're going to have a real economic crisis on their hands. They'll feel forced to react.

Trade wars are very dangerous. Look at World War II. The Japanese didn’t attack Pearl Harbor because they wanted a war with the US, but because the US, which was its major supplier of petroleum and other raw materials, cut them off. They felt they had no alternative but to attack while they still could. A version of that could happen with the Chinese.

Add the fact that when things get tough within a country, governments always like to find a foreigner to blame in order to unite the people and distract from internal problems. Either or both countries could do that.

It looks grim for both countries. But probably worse for the US. A hot war would be fought near China, and they’d have a huge home-field advantage - read a bunch of sunken US aircraft carriers. All the while, China is winning overwhelmingly in cyberspace, with both surreptitious cyber attacks and the use of social media for psychological war. Platforms like TikTok are directed via artificial intelligence to subtlety inculcate destructive values in the US but constructive values in the Chinese at home. The Chinese are famous for playing the long game. They understand that good times make for soft men, and hard times make for hard men.

International Man: China has made huge advances in technology, trade, and more. Much of this has happened on the back of easy money and sky-high debt. How much better off is China than the declining US empire?

Doug Casey: A lot of the answer may come down to timing. As I said before, China under Xi is moving away from the policies that gave it so much prosperity over the last 40 years. I hasten to point out that "Communist" China is not, in fact, communist. And it hasn’t been for 40 years. Its economic system is state corporatism, or fascism, very much on Mussolini’s model. It’s surprisingly similar to our own system, although with much more authoritarian, top-down control. Unfortunately, we’re moving in their direction, further from real capitalism - even as Xi is trying to make himself into a new Mao.

To sum up, financing the Belt and Road initiative, building cities in the middle of nowhere could destroy the Chinese banking system. The Chinese banking system has been built by a billion Mr. and Mrs. Wus, saving 50% of their incomes. If China gets massive unemployment, which it certainly will if there’s a trade war, Mrs. Wu is not going to save, she's going to withdraw. And she’ll be most unhappy if she either doesn’t get her yuan or if they’re worthless due to inflation.

I’m betting the medium-term future for China is grim. In fact, maybe even more grim than that of the US, which is saying something. We just don't realize it yet, partly because reporting out of China is sketchy and very politically controlled and partly because we’re so preoccupied with our own very serious problems."

- internationalman.com

"Choose One, But Only One: Defend the Billionaire's Bubble or the U.S. Dollar and Empire"

"Choose One, But Only One: Defend the 

Billionaire's Bubble or the U.S. Dollar and Empire"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"One of the most enduring conceits of the modern era is that the Federal Reserve acts to goose growth and therefore employment while keeping inflation moderate (whatever that means - the definition is adjustable). This conceit is extremely handy as PR cover: the Fed really, really cares about little old us and expanding our ballooning wealth. Nice, except it doesn't. The Fed's one real job is defending the U.S. dollar, which is the foundation of America's global hegemony a.k.a. The Empire.

One thing and one thing alone enables global dominance: being able to create "money" out of thin air and use that "money" to buy real stuff in the real world. The nations that can create "money" out of thin air and trade it for magnesium, oil, semiconductors, etc. have an unbeatable advantage over nations that must actually mine gold or make something of equal value to trade for essentials. The trick is to maintain global confidence in one's currency. There is no one way to manage this, as confidence in a herd animal such as human beings is always contingent. Once the herd gets skittish, all bets are off.

The herd is exquisitely sensitive to movements on the edge of the herd, where threats arise. There are various tricks one can deploy to maintain confidence: pay a higher rate of interest on bonds denominated in one's currency, so global capital flows into your currency; treat this capital well with a transparent set of tax laws and judiciary / regulatory oversight, maintain a deep pool of liquidity so capital can enter and exit without stampeding the herd, and having at least a semi-productive, diverse economy that generates goods, services and income streams to support the currency.

There is a mechanism for calming the herd, and it's called the market. Narrative control (i.e. propaganda) may work on the weak-minded in the herd, who are subsequently picked off by hungry predators, but natural selection favors those who look for cues from what cannot be manipulated or glossed over - an unfettered market.

Markets are only trustworthy to the degree they are unfettered. Currency pegs and other contraptions can be changed overnight, so they are intrinsically untrustworthy. What makes markets trustworthy are: transparency, liquidity (i.e. being able to buy and sell instruments in virtually unlimited quantities without stampeding the herd) and the price discovery of risk, as risk is the key determinant of the herd's movement.

Turning to global dominance - let's ask one question and one only: which nation pegs its currency to another's currency, and who owns that currency? Does the U.S. peg its dollar to the mighty RMB? No, it's the other way around: China pegs its RMB to the the USD. China's ability to create "money" out of thin air is based on its peg to the U.S. dollar, not because the value of its bonds and currency have been discovered by unfettered global markets.

To unpeg its currency, China would have to relinquish control of its sovereign bonds and currency and let the market discover its price and risk structure. This is the tradeoff: if you want to earn the confidence of the herd, you must relinquish control to the unfettered global market. Otherwise, the herd will always be skittish because risk is opaque and therefore safety is elusive.

The consensus seems to be that the Fed's only real job is maintaining the Billionaire's Bubble in stocks. But from the point of view of maintaining global hegemony, the Billionaire's Bubble was a sideshow of hucksters and carnies. The real policy goal was funding the empire's vast spending and not allowing the USD to rise too much or too quickly, as this tends to demolish weaker currencies, stampeding the herd.

But now it's time to suck in global capital by raising rates, and let nature cull the herd. The number of pundits announcing that the Fed will never raise rates, that the Fed can't raise rates because the precious Billionaire's Bubble would burst and the Fed would never, ever, ever let its precious Billionaire's Bubble burst, is legion. But they're wrong, alas, for the Fed's job isn't to enrich billionaires, it's to maintain the confidence of the herd in the USD.

The precious Billionaire's Bubble is already bursting, and all those profiting from the bubble expanding are pawing the ground nervously, afraid of being picked off by lurking predators.

Choose one, but only one: you can't defend the Billionaire Bubble and the USD / Empire. Come on, it's not that difficult a decision, is it? What matters more, maintaining global hegemony or phantom wealth? The Empire is striking back, protecting what really counts, and the Billionaire Bubble sideshow is folding its tents. Best to take your prizes home before it rains."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"In Praise of Plan B"

"In Praise of Plan B"

by Bill Bonner

Normandy, France - "We were on our way back to Ireland. But we have been delayed. It’s wintertime in the North Atlantic. The sea is rough and the crossing – 18 hours on the ferry – would probably make us very sick. A change of plan was necessary; we’ll wait until tomorrow, when the waves are expected to calm down. For now, we are comfortably lodged in an old farmhouse. Built in the 18th century, it has been renovated, but it retains much of its charm. Here, for example, is the fireplace.

Note also that the mantle on our fireplace here is oak beam. It is far enough above the flames that it doesn’t catch fire itself. But this construction probably wouldn’t be allowed in most places in the US.

The open fire is delightful. We are sitting in front of it now… working on our laptop computer. But it is not very practical. If you sit close enough, you can warm yourself; most of the heat goes up the chimney.

Your editor is a connoisseur of fireplaces. Wherever he goes, he takes note of how they are constructed… whether they are handsome or ugly… and how much heat they provide. Most fireplaces in America are too small… and typically, too deep. The fire is tucked away… and then masked by screens to keep the occasional ember from landing on the carpet. For heating purposes, a wood stove is much better. It’s more efficient. The stove can be brought out into the room, and if it has a large glass door in front, you can still get much of the feeling of an open fire.

The Great Transition: “What’s your Plan B?” we asked a friend yesterday. He had permanently sealed off his fireplace to keep the cold air from coming down the chimney. “When the electricity fails, how are you going to heat?” we followed up.

In the Great Transition ahead, from traditional, market-based fossil fuels… to new, ‘green’ energy, heavily subsidized by the government… we take it for granted that the power is going to go out. Probably at the worst possible time, when people most need it. Plan B may be useful. A wood stove is a simple, inexpensive precaution… especially in the kitchen. There, you can keep at least one room warm. And don’t forget to keep on hand a good stack of dry firewood.

Enough gratuitous comment on fireplace design! Let’s return to connecting the dots… by looking more closely at where we are likely headed – Argentina. Yes, we study the pampas…and hope to learn something. And what we’ve learned so far: you need a Plan B.

Argentina may be the most ‘European’ country in the world – in the sense that it has gotten very few immigrants from Africa or Asia. But the European Family Tree has many branches. “If you want a high interest rate, lend to people who drink wine. If you want to get paid back, lend to the beer drinkers.” This was the advice of bankers in the Old World. Their experience told them that the beer drinkers – in Britain, Germany, Denmark, for example – were better credits than those in the wine regions. The Germans paid their bills. The Italians… well… sometimes. The Argentines drink wine. And in this, as in many other things, they resemble their Sicilian cousins.

Typically, Plan B, for foreign creditors means lending in dollars, not pesos. This makes it impossible for the wine drinkers to inflate away their foreign debt. They don’t control the dollar. They can’t print more of them. But the Argentines have a Plan B too. They just don’t pay. Nine times since independence from Spain, Argentina refused (or has been unable) to pay its government loans.

As for local transactions, Argentine households and businesses need a Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D, too. Welfare payments, salaries, unemployment benefits and pensions – even though they are ‘adjusted for inflation’ their real values go down. And consumer prices go up so fast clerks have a hard time keeping up with them.

Beyond Plan Z: During the 1980s, inflation averaged about 300% per year. It was clocked at a record of 5,000% in 1989. By then, the gauchos were running out of alphabet. ‘When the money goes, everything goes’ is a Diary Dictum. And when the money went in Argentina, it led to a military takeover, a domestic ‘dirty war’ that left some 30,000 ‘disappeared’ people, and a war with the UK over the Malvinas (aka the Falkland) islands. It was a war that neither country needed, but that served politicians on both shores well enough. Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina’s most famous writer, said it was like “two bald men fighting over a comb.”

It was then that a new president, Carlos Menem decided it was time to break the cycle of debt, deficit, chaos, money-printing and inflation. The nation was fed up. Exhausted. It was time for a new plan. That’s when the “peg” appeared. No more cheating. No more nonsense. Henceforth and for all eternity, an Argentine peso would be redeemable for a US dollar. One to one. No questions asked.

But when we met Mr. Menem, in the late ‘90s, we had a question. In the few years in which the ‘peg’ was in place, the Argentines had already done what they did best – borrow and spend. And now, it had spent too much. And with more and more money to pay back, Argentina needed more and more dollars. Lenders wanted higher and higher interest rates to protect themselves from the risk of default.

Argentina was caught in a very familiar “inflate or die” trap. Either it broke the peg, stiffed its creditors, and printed more currency to keep the party going. Or it kept the peso-dollar peg, reckoned with its debts in an honest way… and swallowed the resulting investment losses, defaults, and period of recession and austerity. Oh, and the ruling party would almost certainly lose the next election, too.

Inflate or die? Which way would it go? We asked the energetic man, with lifts in his shoes and dye in his hair, in front of us. “Sooo… Will you be able to maintain the ‘peg?” we wanted to know. “Of course,” came the ready answer. “We realize that the peg is critical… crucial… to our economic success. We will never abandon it.”

The next time we visited, in the early 2000s, the peso was trading at 3 to 1. The peg had been discarded. And today, the black market exchange rate is 210 pesos to one US dollar. But wait. Comes a message from a friend in Salta, Argentina: “Bill, our #1 Plan B was always to keep our money in dollars. But now that you Americans are acting like Argentines and inflating the dollar, how are we going to protect ourselves?”

Tomorrow… what do Americans drink? Beer or wine?"

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"How It Really Is"