So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, February 17, 2022
"Prices Are Getting Ridiculous At Kroger! What Next ?!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, AM 2/17/22:
"Prices Are Getting Ridiculous At Kroger! What Next ?!"
"In today's vlog we visit Kroger and are noticing ridiculously high prices. Prices on groceries continue to rise, as we are also witnessing more empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores are struggling to get in products."
Gregory Mannarino, "The Economic Freefall Worsens- Be Ready For Anything"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/17/22:
"The Economic Freefall Worsens- Be Ready For Anything"
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
"The Cost Of Living In The United States Is Rising To Absolutely Absurd Levels"
"The Cost Of Living In The United States
Is Rising To Absolutely Absurd Levels"
by Michael Snyder
"Most of the time, the vast majority of Americans simply do not care about economics. And it pains me to say that, because I have been running a website about economics for more than a decade. But it is true. Under normal circumstances, most hard working Americans don’t have the time or the energy to debate the finer points of economic policy. But now things have changed. Here in 2022, our leaders have messed things up so badly that suddenly just about everyone is feeling the pain. Most people just want economic conditions to “return to normal”, but that isn’t going to be so easy.
Over the past couple of years, the Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system. You just can’t “undo” that.
And our politicians in Washington have been on the biggest borrowing spree in all of human history. I think that many of them truly believed that there would never be any serious consequences, but as Forbes has aptly noted, we “are now paying a heavy price for this magical thinking”…
Unfortunately, Americans are now paying a heavy price for this magical thinking. Inflation—spurred at least in part by record government spending and inaction on other issues—is running at its highest rate since 1982. The prices for meat and eggs are up 12.2% since last year. Furniture and bedding is up 17% and used cars and trucks are up 40.5%. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department recently reported America’s total national debt is now over $30 trillion—the highest ever. To put this in context: If you stacked $30 trillion of $100 bills you could almost reach the weather satellites orbiting the earth at over 20,000 miles above us.
Today, we have absolutely gigantic mountains of money chasing a smaller pool of goods and services because of the pandemic. As a result, the cost of living has been soaring into the stratosphere. For example, one new study found that 82.2 percent of new vehicle buyers actually paid above sticker price during the month of January…"A study from the online marketplace found that 82.2% of new car buyers paid over the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) in January, up from .3% in January 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic started affecting the industry The average price paid above sticker was $728, while savvy shoppers were getting a discount of $2,648 just two years ago. Cadillac’s customers led the way by paying a $4,048 premium, followed by Land Rover’s ($2,565) and Kia ‘s ($2,289)."
In my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like this. Years ago, I remember spending hours hammering a salesman until I was totally satisfied that the dealership would not knock off a single penny more from the price of a used vehicle that I wanted. But now things have completely changed. Today, just about everyone is paying above MSRP.
Of course it is becoming more expensive to fuel our vehicles as well. On Wednesday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in California hit a brand new record high… "Gas in California hit a record high of $4.72 a gallon on average on Wednesday — and experts say a whopping $5 a gallon will likely be the norm there in a matter of months, if not sooner."
Sadly, five dollar gas is only just the beginning. In fact, one expert that was interviewed by Yahoo Finance has actually raised the specter of seven dollar gas… "Drivers best start bracing for another surge in gas prices amid the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and years of under-investment by the oil industry, warns one veteran energy strategist. “My guess is that you are going to see $5 a gallon at any triple-digit [oil prices] … as soon as you get to $100. And you might get to $6.50 or $7. Forget about $150 a gallon, I don’t know where we will be by then,” Energy Word founder Dan Dicker said on Yahoo Finance Live."
Can you imagine paying seven dollars for a gallon of gasoline? That definitely seems crazy to me. But soon it will happen.
Housing prices continue to surge as well. In fact, we are being told that a recent spike in lumber prices has increased the average price of a new home by nearly $19,000… “If people aren’t listening now, the dire predictions that we’ve been making appear to be coming true,” National Association of Home Builders CEO Jerry Howard said on “Varney & Co.” Wednesday." Volatile lumber prices have caused the average price of a new single-family home to increase by $18,600, according to a new statistic from the NAHB.
Heating our homes is becoming a lot more painful too. According to the Heartland Institute, the average American family saw their heating and cooling costs jump “by as much as $1,000” last year… "A new analysis by the Heartland Institute reports the typical American family’s home heating and cooling costs increased by as much as $1,000 in 2021 as a result of President Joe Biden’s energy and environmental policies."
Needless to say, most Americans were not prepared for a dramatic shift in the cost of living such as this. At this point, 70 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
So how are people making ends meet? Well, we just found out that credit card debt rose at the fastest pace ever seen during the fourth quarter of 2021… "Americans have been swiping their credit cards at record speed in the last few months, as rising inflation eats into the savings people accumulated during the pandemic.
The total US household debt hit $15.8 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2021, the New York Fed reported this week, seeing an increase of $333 billion from the previous quarter. Credit card balances alone hit $860 billion, up $52 billion in that same timeframe. That’s the largest quarterly increase the Fed has seen in the 22 years it’s been collecting data, the researchers say, adding that the surge in debt overall was driven by home and car purchases."
The middle class is being systematically destroyed, and it is happening right in front of our eyes. And the truth is that we can see evidence of this all around us. For example, just check out this footage that one man recently took of his neighborhood in Los Angeles.
My neighborhood in Los Angeles 2/14/22
People have just given up. pic.twitter.com/C0LA0jd2tn
— Colin Keating (@keating89_colin) February 14, 2022
Our major cities are becoming exactly what I warned they would become. Once upon a time, the U.S. had the largest and most prosperous middle class that the world had ever seen. But now that middle class is being absolutely eviscerated, and it is our own leaders that have done this to us.
With each passing day, more Americans are waking up and understanding what has happened, and anger is growing all over the nation. Most Americans had assumed that there would be endless prosperity for many decades to come, but now it is becoming clear that the years ahead are going to be very, very ugly."
"McDonalds Food Shrinks, Prices Skyrocket; Living Credit Card To Credit Card; Homebuilders In Danger"
Jeremiah Babe, 2/16/22:
"McDonalds Food Shrinks, Prices Skyrocket;
Living Credit Card To Credit Card; Homebuilders In Danger"
"5 New Numbers That Prove That America’s Horrifying Inflation Crisis Is Getting Even Worse"
Full screen recommended.
"5 New Numbers That Prove That America’s
Horrifying Inflation Crisis Is Getting Even Worse"
by Epic Economist
"Inflation is SOARING in the US! The inflation rate is now at 7.5% and many signs point that inflation is getting worse! That’s what we’re going to expose in today’s video. We’re sharing 5 numbers that show that why the horrifying inflation crisis is getting even worse!
The vast majority of the U.S. population has never seen inflation running this hot in their entire lives. Explosive consumer prices are bringing a lot of pain to everyday Americans, whose buying power has been on a steady decline. The producer price index just hit a new record high.
In essence, “PPI offers a window to the price pressures that businesses are facing, and which will likely be passed on to consumers in the way of consumer price inflation in the months to come,” PNC economist Kurt Rankin has explained. “Strong gains across the board for businesses reinforce the inflationary concerns that the Federal Reserve is set to battle this year with monetary policy, and which the economy, in general, has recently begun expressing caution and concern over”.
Meanwhile, the transportation crisis continues to aggravate! There’s a massive shortage of trailers adding much more pressure to our already-stressed supply chains. Since the final quarter of 2021, trailer manufacturing has contracted. Of course, the effects of this shortfall are already rippling through the economy and leading to much more expensive rates to move goods across the country. The Department of Labor’s index of the price of transportation of freight by truck rose 18.3 percent last month compared to a year ago. Rail freight prices have also jumped nine percent and air freight prices went up 10.8 percent
On a consumer level, the rise in transportation costs has been even more acute. Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data showing that the price of used vehicles shoot up! The agency pointed out that the market is extremely bleak for buyers right now, and blamed the aggressive increase in prices on the ongoing global semiconductor shortage.
You may have noticed that prices at the pump have been shooting up recently. Between January 2021 and January 2022 gas prices rose from an average of $2.50 to $3.50 per gallon last Sunday, up nearly a dollar from last year's levels, according to AAA. Recent data also shows that transportation services - including buses, trains, airlines, and taxisare expected to continue rising throughout 2022 as gasoline prices soar all across the country.
Furthermore, if you’re thinking about remodeling or buying a newly-built home, you may have to think twice. The price of lumber has started to go up once again. The latest numbers released by the National Association of Home Builders suggest that the most recent price jump has added “more than $18,600 to the price of a newly built home.”
“With a historically low level of overall housing inventory and solid demand due to low mortgage interest rates and favorable demographics, new construction has been unable to add additional needed supply to the market, resulting in unsustainable gains for home prices,” stressed David Logan, director of tax and trade analysis at NAHB.
We are headed to national ruin, and those that are running our country are even more blind than those that they are supposed to be leading."
"Geoeconomics: The New Geopolitics"
by Jim Rickards
"Geopolitics play a major role in the outlook for global economies. But more importantly, today, we must look at the world through the prism of geoeconomics. What is “geoeconomics”? Obviously, it’s a portmanteau from the words geopolitics and economics. There’s nothing new about considering those disciplines in the same context.
Wars are geopolitical and are often won through industrial capacity, which is primarily economic. Economics and global strategy have always been entwined. What is new is the idea that economics are not just an adjunct of geopolitics, but are now the main event. This does not mean that warfare is over or that military prowess no longer matters... It means that the major powers in a globalized age will base their calculations on economic gain and loss, and will use economic weapons not as ancillaries, but as primary weapons.
This change was described at the beginning of the new age of globalization by strategic thinker Edward N. Luttwak in a 1990 article titled "From Geopolitics to Geo-Economics: Logic of Conflict, Grammar of Commerce." Luttwak wrote that the end of the Cold War and the start of globalization meant that armed conflict was too costly and uncertain for great powers. Economic interests would now be the arena for great power conflict.
Luttwak wrote, “Everyone, it appears, now agrees that the methods of commerce are displacing military methods – with disposable capital in lieu of firepower, civilian innovation in lieu of military-technical advance and market penetration in lieu of garrisons and bases.” Luttwak concluded, “While the methods of mercantilism could always be dominated by the methods of war, in the new ‘geoeconomic’ era not only the causes but also the instruments of conflict must be economic.”
To be clear, Luttwak’s analysis principally applied to great powers including the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, members of the EU and Commonwealth nations including Canada and Australia. Luttwak recognized that middle powers such as Israel, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, North Korea and some others might still find warfare beneficial. He did not rule out the fact that great powers might intervene in wars involving these middle powers, such as the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Russia’s involvement in Ukraine. His point was not that war was obsolete, but only that it would not involve direct confrontation between great powers. Interventions and wars involving lesser states would still be on the table.
Geoeconomics – great power competition using economics as a goal and a weapon – is an excellent tool for analyzing the two critical hotspots in the world today. These are Russia’s role in Ukraine, and China’s threat to Taiwan.
While Americans are preoccupied with Capitol Hill games on the filibuster, voting rights, Build Back Better and other stories that are mostly for show, more serious thinkers are applying themselves to oil, natural gas, gold, the dollar, technology and other geoeconomic benchmarks. Let’s leave the Washington circus to others and focus on what really matters to investors. Let’s focus on geoeconomics. Read on."
○
"The Geoeconomics of Modern Conflict"
By Jim Rickards
"The Western narrative that Putin is the bad guy bent on conquering Ukraine is false. Putin had warned the West about not pushing its advantage in Ukraine for over 20 years. While Putin was amenable to NATO expansion, he always drew the line at Lithuania, Ukraine and Georgia. In 2004, NATO crossed Russia’s red line by admitting Lithuania to membership, but there was little Putin could do to stop it.
The 2008 nomination of Ukraine to NATO was an unforced error. Putin had been content to leave Ukraine as a neutral buffer state. The West was not and pushed Putin too hard. Now Putin has pushed back. Why is Ukraine so important to Russia? A quick glance at a map shows that Ukraine in NATO or even a pro-Western Ukraine is an existential threat to Moscow. The line from Estonia in the north to Ukraine in the south forms the letter “C” that encircles Moscow from the north, west and south.
Parts of Ukraine actually lie east of Moscow, opening that region to attack from the west, something that has not happened since the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan in the 13th century. If Ukraine will not become neutral, then Putin must control it, at least the eastern half, by force if necessary.
In the past six months, Russia has moved over 100,000 troops to its border with Ukraine. Additional troops are standing by to join this force. This is equivalent to more than 10 divisions, equal to a corps in the order of battle. These troops are not limited to infantry and include armor, artillery, special forces and air support. It is extremely costly to move and support that number of troops especially in winter. Putin is not doing this for show.
But conquering Ukraine is not Putin’s main goal. What he wants is a promise that Ukraine will not join NATO, no NATO troops will be stationed in the post-1995 NATO member states, neutrality in the Ukrainian government and full operation of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
If Putin can get all or most of that through negotiations, there is no reason to invade Ukraine. The threat to do so will have served its purpose. This outcome would be a perfect illustration of Luttwak’s geoeconomics definition. The goals are commercial (dependence of Western Europe on Russian natural gas), and the tools are commercial (pipelines) even though the players are sovereign states (Russia and the U.S.).
The U.S. has announced that it will impose severe economic sanctions on Russia if it does invade. But these sanctions will have little impact on Russia. Sanctions have been imposed on Russia since the 2014 annexation of Crimea and have had no material impact on Russian behavior.
Russia has already moved over 20% of its reserves into physical gold bullion stored in Moscow. This gold is worth about $140 billion at current market prices. Because the gold is physical, not digital, it cannot be hacked, frozen or seized. Importantly, U.S. sanctions will not affect exports of Russian oil or natural gas. Russia provides about 10% of all the oil produced in the world. It’s simply impossible to sanction Russian oil sales.
That means it’s impossible to cut off Russia’s dollar supply because oil is sold for dollars on world markets. Any interference in Russian oil sales would cause global hyperinflation and global economic collapse at the same time. It won’t happen.
Meanwhile, the U.S. will not prevent Russian bank transactions on SWIFT, the international financial communications network based in Belgium. That would be regarded as an act of war by Russia, and would not be supported by European members of SWIFT.
The bottom line is Russia is trying to get what it wants by threatening an invasion, and therefore it will not be necessary to invade Ukraine. This includes pledges that Ukraine will not join NATO, and permission for a smooth opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Other issues will be the subject of ongoing negotiations, but none of them is as important as NATO and Nord Stream 2.
This means Russia’s stranglehold on Western European energy supplies will be tightened. Russia will be able to open or close the valves as she sees fit, and thereby ensure high energy prices for the foreseeable future. High prices will be compounded by the misguided and mindless climate alarm policies of the German government.
Russia and the U.S. will likely avoid direct armed conflict. But energy prices will go higher, which helps Russia. The losers will be Ukraine and global energy users. The biggest loser could be the United States, which may suffer higher inflation and a recession (stagflation), due to higher energy prices. This is all consistent with Luttwak’s definition of geoeconomics as the displacement of armed conflict by economic goals using economic weapons.
The second critical hotspot today is the potential for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Will it happen? The case against such a war is basically in the scenarios described above. Events would likely escalate and spin out of control, resulting in a large-scale conflict. Gains are possible for China, especially if the U.S. does not come to the aid of Taiwan. Still, the risks are too high, and the costs are too great. Instead of an invasion, China could continue its rhetoric and its military readiness, but otherwise bide its time.
This is where Luttwak’s definition of geoeconomics casts a new light. In a pre-globalized world, China might well attack. In the post-globalized world, China might refrain militarily while continuing its progress in technology, natural resources and value-added manufacturing. This path requires cooperation, not confrontation, with the U.S. and Western Europe.
My estimate is that China will refrain from an invasion consistent with the geoeconomic thesis. At the same time, Xi Jinping will continue threats and economic confrontation with the West. Investors should expect the following from this unstable confrontation: The U.S. and China will continue to decouple economically. Supply chain disruptions will grow worse before they get better. A new supply chain configuration will emerge involving more onshoring and shorter transportation lanes.
China’s growth will lag and it will be unable to make the technological leaps it needs to escape the middle-income trap and become a high-income developed economy. Over time, excessive debt and adverse demographics will overtake China’s ambitions and leave it an aging and low-productivity shell.
China’s economic problems will sustain its demand for energy and put a floor under energy prices. Manufacturing costs will rise as China’s labor pool evaporates. Investors should not rule out a financial crisis in China that would spread to a global collapse in capital markets, probably worse than those of 2008 and 2020. But geopolitical tensions will disrupt global supply chains, which will result in higher input prices and transportation costs. That’s a receipt for inflation, and higher interest rates. And any form of uncertainty is a plus for the one safe haven investment that never fails – gold."
Celente and the Judge, "The Government Is Spying On You, How Can We Stop This?"
Full screen recommended.
Celente and the Judge, 2/16/22:
"The Government Is Spying On You, How Can We Stop This?"
"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."
Gregory Mannarino, "Meltdowns, Superspikes, Geopolitical Events, Media, WAR, Elections- All Controlled By Central Banks"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 2/16/22:
"Meltdowns, Superspikes, Geopolitical Events,
Media, WAR, Elections- All Controlled By Central Banks"
○
Related:
Musical Interlude: 2002, "The End Is a Beginning"
Full screen recommended.
2002, "The End Is a Beginning"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.
Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”
○
"Our planet is a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea.
Can we learn what lies beyond our own horizons of perception?"
Oriah Mountain Dreamer, "The Invitation"
"The Invitation"
"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have
become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful,
to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul;
if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty,
every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like
the company you keep in the empty moments."
- Oriah Mountain Dreamer
“‘Sometimes’: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte’s Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming”
“‘Sometimes’: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte’s
Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming”
by Maria Popova
“The role of the artist, James Baldwin believed, is “to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.” This, too, is the role of the forest, it occurs to me as I walk the ferned, mossed woods daily to lose my self and find myself between the trees; to “live the questions,” in Rilke’s lovely phrase – to let the rustling of the leaves beckon forth the stirrings and murmurings on the edge of the psyche, which we so often brush away in order to go on being the smaller version of ourselves we have grown accustomed to being out of the unfaced fear that the grandeur of life, the grandeur of our own untrammeled nature, might require of us more than we are ready to give.
Those disquieting, transformative stirrings are what the poet and philosopher David Whyte explores with surefooted subtlety in his poem “Sometimes,” found in his altogether life-enlarging collection “Everything Is Waiting for You” (public library) and read here by the poet himself as part of a wonderful short course of poem-driven practices for neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” meditation toolkit (which I can’t recommend enough and which operates under an inspired, honorable model of granting free subscriptions to those who need this invaluable mental health aid but don’t have the means).
Full screen recommended.
“Sometimes”
“Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.”
- David Whyte
"Nothing Happens..."
"Nothing happens to anyone that he is not fitted by nature to bear."
- Marcus Aurelius
"Juggling Sticks of Dynamite: Our Fatally Distorted Sense of Risk"
"Juggling Sticks of Dynamite:
Our Fatally Distorted Sense of Risk"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"The problem with constantly being saved from the consequences of our actions is this fatally distorts our sense of risk. The foundation of the ability to accurately assess risk is the experience of real-world consequences: hardship and losses.
If you are sloppy about positioning the ladder securely, the ladder falls and so do you. If you survive the fall, you've learned that risk is real and that precautions must be taken to minimize risk. Precaution requires thinking through all the components of risk and taking steps to remediate or avoid each specific source of risk.
If you've never really been pushed to your limit of endurance, you lack the experience needed to realize you're dehydrated and in danger of succumbing to heat stroke. So when you run out of water on a shadeless climb exposed to the blazing sun, you fall into magical thinking: if we just push on, push harder, power through this, then we'll be fine. But powering on is the worst possible choice, and so the inexperienced hiker passes out and expires.
The Federal Reserve and the rest of the Savior State has saved us from the financial consequences of rampant speculation for decades. As a result, few of those in the casino have the necessary experience of hardship and losses to accurately assess risk. The vast majority have only experienced being saved: the most profitable response to a losing bet is to double-down on the next bet because the house (the Fed) will amply reward every "buy the dip."
After decades of being rewarded for "buying the dip," all the gamblers in the casino believe they are "investors": magical thinking at its most dangerous. Gambling is not investing, and every dollar, yuan, yen and euro being plunked down on a table in the casino is a gamble, because the entire casino is on unstable quicksand.
The gambler who's constantly been saved naturally reckons they're an "investing" genius. Having only experienced winning, the delusional punter attributes this grand success to their own brilliance and trading moxie. They feel invulnerable because they have the winning strategy: but the dip, double-down and ride the next wave of gains.
This feeling of invulnerability is exquisitely dangerous because the punter believes the experience of winning is the consequence of his brilliance. Having never experienced any real losses or hardships, the punter doesn't understand that the winning was the result of the Fed saving all punters from the consequences of speculation.
Having been saved at every turn, the gambler has no real-world experience of risk. Lacking the ability to accurately assess risk, the gamble keeps upping the size of his bets because this has been rewarded.
So when the gambler ends up juggling lit sticks of dynamite, he's confident nothing bad can happen because nothing bad has ever happened, no matter how much risk he takes on. This is the plight of all the gamblers who see themselves as "investors" in the Everything Bubble. Their experience has been artificially limited by the suppression of risk, but they are unaware of this and so their invulnerability exposes them to catastrophic losses they don't even recognize as possible, much less inevitable.
As I often point out here, risk cannot be extinguished, it can only be transferred. Risk has been offloaded from speculators to the entire financial system itself, and so rather than a few speculators going down in flames, the entire casino will collapse.
Although we pride ourselves on being so smart, we only learn from hardship, loss and failure. The Fed and the Savior State have deprived the speculators of the means to learn how to accurately assess risk. Making matters even worse, they've encouraged the delusion that rampant, disconnected-from-reality speculation is actually "investing."
As I also point out here, systems have their own dynamics. The Fed and the Savior State are not omnipotent gods. They have constructed a flimsy facade of marketing, magical thinking and artifice, and this system of falsehoods is manifesting dynamics that have escaped their control.
Every gambler prays for every bet to be a winner. As Oscar Wilde observed: "When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers."
"Economy And The Market Are At A Breaking Point"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 2/16/22:
"Economy And The Market Are At A Breaking Point"
"Enough is enough. We are seeing worldwide markets and the global economy at a breaking point. Prices are way up in value is way down. The fed is giving conflicting information on what they will do."
"Butterflies..."
“I think humans might be like butterflies; people die every day without many other people knowing about them, seeing their colors, hearing their stories… and when humans are broken, they’re like broken butterfly wings; suddenly there are so many beauties that are seen in different ways, so many thoughts and visions and possibilities that form, which couldn’t form when the person wasn’t broken! So it is not a very sad thing to be broken, after all! It’s during the times of being broken, that you have all the opportunities to become things unforgettable! Just like the broken butterfly wing that I found, which has given me so many thoughts, in so many ways, has shown me so many words, and imaginations! But butterflies need to know that it doesn’t matter at all if the whole world saw their colors or not! What matters is that they flew, they glided, they hovered, they saw, they felt, and they knew! And they loved the ones whom they flew with! And that is an existence worthwhile!”
- C. JoyBell C.
"The Equality Myth"
"The Equality Myth"
by Bill Bonner
Youghal, Ireland - "The American Elite Establishment has launched three major initiatives so far this century. All were based on lies, mistakes, and corruption. All were failures. “Weapons of mass destruction” led off. There were none. But the US squandered $8 trillion and thousands of lives looking for them.
Then came Ben Bernanke’s whopper: “If we don’t do this [pass a $700 billion boondoggle bill] we may not even have an economy on Monday.” As reported yesterday, it led to $44 trillion in additional debt since 2008.
Then came the campaign to stop COVID. Pfizer made a fortune from its experimental new drug. The Guardian: "Pfizer made nearly $37bn (£27bn) in sales from its Covid-19 vaccine last year – making it one of the most lucrative products in history – and has forecast another bumper year."
But it didn’t stop the virus. And ‘the science’ now tells us what we suspected all along – that natural immunity is better than a vaccine and we would have been better off letting the young and the healthy get the virus and get over it, rather than shooting everybody up with drugs and turning vaccines into a political issue. Meanwhile, shutdowns and mandates cost trillions of dollars more, along with stunted lives, drug overdoses, depression, suicides, and broken marriages.
Where did the feds get the money to throw down these ratholes? First, it was real money from taxing citizens and borrowing their savings. Then, when that wasn’t enough, the Fed filled the gap with fake money, ‘printing’ $8 trillion of new money since 1999.
Wholesale Lunacy: And now… rising prices! Who could have seen that coming? Even as to inflation, they were wrong. First, they thought the problem was “too little inflation.” Then, they said they wouldn’t have to ‘normalize’ until 2024. Then, they said inflation was ‘transitory.’ And now they say they are going to raise rates – as much as one full percentage point! – next month.
Here’s the latest from US News & World Report: "Wholesale inflation rose 1% in January, twice as much as forecast as producers saw the prices they pay showing no sign of a slowdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Tuesday. Economists had expected an increase of 0.5% for the month. On a yearly basis, prices rose 9.7%, the same as in December.
And now… onto the next losing proposition! Yes, the feds might have been wrong about almost everything so far this century… but there are still a lot more things they can be wrong about. The nation’s chief executive signaled one of them in his SuperBowl comments. "The whole idea that a league that is made up of so many athletes of color as well as so diverse, that there's not enough African American qualified coaches to manage these NFL teams, it just seems to me that it's a standard that they'd want to live up to. It's not a requirement of law, but it's a requirement I think of just some generic decency."
We have no idea what ‘generic decency’ is. Old fashioned decency is good enough for us. But why would it be more decent to have a Black head coach than a White one? Equality? Even a casual observer can see that NFL coaches tend to be White, whereas the players tend to be Black. In the name of equality, Biden chose to focus on the apparent disproportion of White coaches, suggesting that it was somehow indecent. But if it was indecent to have too many White coaches, why was it not indecent to have too many Black players?
Depending on Inequality: ‘Equality’ doesn’t exist in nature. No two snowflakes are exactly alike. Nor are two people. And Thank God. Imagine if we were all tipped into a gray porridge of perpetual mediocrity! Distinctions are what we want… not equality. One is smart, another dull. One is fast, another slow. One comes from a good family; another is a gutter rat.
Progress and civilization depend on inequality. We choose one baker over another because we judge his cakes superior... unequal to those of his competitor. We put our money with a money manager whom we believe will give us returns above those of the others on offer. And we don’t want an NFL team that is just as good as the others. We want one that wins.
One of the propositions, adjacent to ‘equality,’ is ‘racism.’ It purports to explain unequal results in American society. If Blacks are generally poorer than Whites it is because the latter hold the former back. It must be a comfort to some people to think so; it excuses them from responsibility for their own lifestyle choices. And it must be a source of pleasant indignation to others; it gives the White elite another big stick to beat the ‘deplorables’ over the head with. But is it true?
Capitalism is (theoretically) color blind. Investors want more money; they don’t care who brings it to them. Businesses, too, want sales and profits above all else. But now, in this Enlightened Age, businesses are supposed to care about other things – about the planet, for example… and having a ‘diverse,’ racially balanced workforce.
But Biden’s “equality” and (sotto voce) “anti-racist” suggestion would require us to believe something extraordinary. Apparently, NFL owners are able to put aside their inherent racism when they hire players. And pay them huge amounts of money. The highest paid player, for example, is Patrick Mahomes, who gets $45 million per year as quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs. And there are 19 other players in the NFL who earn more than $20 million per season.
But then, when they go to hire their coaches, for some inexplicable reason, the ‘white privilege’ kicks in… and they hire a White man! It could be a very strange and sophisticated form of racism. And team owners who want to heed Biden’s call, and follow ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) guidelines, may do perfectly well. (Maybe coaches don’t really matter very much.) But if we were betting on the SuperBowl… we’d put our money on the old fashioned, decent capitalists. We’d bet on the team that hires the coaches and players who are most likely to move the ball across the goal line."
"Social Insecurity"
"Social Insecurity"
by Tom Purcell
"A quarter of a million dollars. That’s the amount that I’ve paid in FICA payroll taxes during my working career, according to my recent Social Security statement. FICA, which stands for “Federal Insurance Contributions Act,” “is a payroll tax that helps fund both Social Security and Medicare programs, which provide benefits for retirees, the disabled and children,” says the Social Security Administration (SSA). The FICA tax also will partially fund - at least I hope it will - my retirement years.
My statement says I am eligible to begin receiving Social Security payments of $1,851 a month when I hit age 62. If I wait until I am 70, I’ll receive $3,370 a month. However, if I had invested the $250,000 FICA deducted from my earnings on my own, I’d have, according to my money manager, more than $1.5 million socked away. If I drew a conservative 4 percent of that $1.5 million every year, I’d be collecting a $5,000 retirement check every month right away.
Of course, that is assuming I would have saved and invested all the money that FICA took from my weekly paychecks. More likely, me knowing me, I would have blown most of it on nicer cars and more vacations. Saving money for your future is hard, even for more-disciplined people.
My parents raised six kids on one income and had a lot of big bills along the way, so saving money for the future was not always possible. They now rely on the Social Security payments they receive every month to help them cover their basic expenses. Millions of elderly Americans are in the same precarious financial boat. The Social Security Administration reports that about 40 percent of Americans 65 and older receive half of their retirement income from Social Security - and about 13 percent rely on it for 90 percent or more of their income.
It takes some of the sting out of the 15.3 percent FICA tax that is imposed on my self-employed earnings to know that my contributions are helping others get by in their old age. But will Social Security be around to help me in my old age?
Social Security is now paying out more than it is taking in and the funds working taxpayers contribute now go directly to Social Security recipients. But what about the Social Security “trust fund,” which saved trillions of the surplus tax contributions that had rolled in for years? The partially good news is that it will not run out of money until 2034 - at which time Social Security payments will have to be reduced, taxes will have to be raised or more money will have to be borrowed. The bad news is that its funds were “invested” in government bonds, which the federal government happily spent on day-to-day budget expenses, such as foreign wars, food stamps and the national debt.
As the great columnist Charles Krauthammer explained in 2011, the Social Security trust fund is filled not with money but with special-issue government IOUs that can only be repaid by raising taxes or borrowing even more money. In any event, it’s anybody’s guess how much my monthly Social Security checks will be, so let me make the guys at the Social Security Administration an offer. How about you give me back my 250 large in return for removing me from your rolls? What do you say, SSA?
Hello?"
"5 New Numbers That Prove That America’s Horrifying Inflation Crisis Is Getting Even Worse"
"5 New Numbers That Prove That America’s
Horrifying Inflation Crisis Is Getting Even Worse"
by Michael Snyder
"If you are less than 40 years old, you have never seen inflation like this in the United States. Despite all the warnings, our politicians in Washington just kept borrowing and spending trillions upon trillions of dollars that we did not have. And despite all the warnings, the Federal Reserve just kept pumping trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system. Now we have a giant mess on our hands, and anyone that believes that this is going to be easily fixed is simply being delusional.
Of course most Americans weren’t going to start paying attention to all of this until it started to affect them personally. Now it is affecting all of us personally, and there are millions of people out there that are becoming increasingly frustrated about the current state of affairs. Unfortunately, this crisis appears to be just in the early stages. The following are 5 numbers that indicate that the inflation crisis in the United States continues to get even worse…
#1 The producer price index has risen at a rate of 9.7 percent over the previous 12 months. According to CNBC, that is close to a brand new record…The producer price index, which measures final demand goods and services, increased 1% for the month, against the Dow Jones estimate for 0.5%. Over the past 12 months the gauge rose an unadjusted 9.7%, close to a record in data going back to 2010.
Last week we learned that the consumer price index has risen by 7.5 percent over the previous 12 months. Of course if the consumer price index was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the real number would actually be more than double the official number that we were just given.
#2 Truck trailer prices in January 2022 were 29.6 percent higher than they were in January 2021… A shortage of parts and labor has sent the prices of truck trailers through the roof. Truck trailer prices jumped 3.1 percent in January, data from the Department of Labor showed Tuesday. That followed a 3.8 percent increase in December. Compared with 12-months ago, trailer prices are up 29.6 percent, by far the biggest one-year jump in records going back to 1980.
#3 The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is telling us that the price of used vehicles rose by an astounding 40.5 percent from January 2021 to January 2022… According to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday, the consumer price index for used cars and trucks jumped up by 40.5% from January 2021 to January 2022. That means within a year, the average price of used cars and trucks for urban consumers has gone up by 40.5%.
#4 You may have noticed that you are paying a lot more at the pump these days. If you can believe it, the price of gasoline has actually shot up 40.8 percent since Joe Biden first entered the White House… Between January 2021 and January 2022 – President Joe Biden’s first year in office – the price of unleaded gasoline increased 40.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
#5 The price of lumber has really been surging once again. According to the National Association of Home Builders, this most recent surge has “added more than $18,600 to the price of a newly built home”… That is adding to the cost of both building a new home and remodeling an older one. The National Association of Home Builders estimated the recent price jump added more than $18,600 to the price of a newly built home. It also added nearly $7,300 to the cost of the average new multifamily home, which translates into households paying $67 a month more to rent a new apartment.
Ouch. I sure wouldn’t want to be trying to build a new home in this environment.
Pressure has been building on the Federal Reserve to take action, and it is being anticipated that the “geniuses” at the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates by 50 basis points next month… "The hot inflation readings led financial markets to price in a better-than-even chance of a 50 basis points interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve next month. Inflation is running well above the U.S. central bank’s 2 percent target. Economists are expecting as many as seven rate hikes this year."
Just recently, a reader sent me an email which pointed out that we shouldn’t have a system where an unelected group of bureaucrats gets together and determines what our interest rates are going to be. And he is exactly right. In a free market system, interest rates would be determined by the free market. But we don’t have a free market system anymore. In fact, we haven’t had one for a long time.
Of course when it comes to the economy, the guy in the White House is going to get more of the credit or more of the blame for what is going on than anyone else. And a brand new poll that was just released has Joe Biden’s approval rating sitting at just 34 percent… "The president’s approval rating nationally sits around 40 percent, according to several tracking averages, but a new CIVIQS poll showed it sitting at 34 percent from the 165,786 respondents surveyed."
That is a shockingly bad number, and what should alarm Democrats even more is how bad Biden’s numbers are in the most important swing states… "Swing states of Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin all voted narrowly blue in the 2020 election, but the new poll shows their approval of Biden sits in the low 30 percentages.
Arizona has the biggest split with 32 percent approval to 61 percent disapproval. Georgia sits in second with 31 percent approval to 59 percent disapproval; Pennsylvania’s split is 36 percent to 57 percent; Michigan is 33 percent to 59 percent; and Wisconsin has 36 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval of Biden."
Unfortunately, Biden isn’t going to resign no matter how low his numbers go. That means that we are going to have at least three more years of either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris running the country. So we shouldn’t expect any dramatic policy shifts from Washington.
And the “geniuses” at the Fed are undoubtedly going to find even more ways to really mess things up. They are the ones that are more responsible than anyone else for getting us into this mess, and now many Americans are desperately hoping that they can get us out of it. If you are waiting for them to fix the economy, you are going to be waiting a really, really long time.
I have been warning for years that the decisions that were being made would have severe consequences, and now those consequences have started to arrive. We are on a road to national ruin, and those that are running things are even more blind than those that they are supposed to be leading."
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Gregory Mannarino, "Inflation Scapegoat: Expect A Global Energy Crisis And A Crude Oil Superspike. Here's Why"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/16/22:
"Inflation Scapegoat: Expect A Global Energy Crisis
And A Crude Oil Superspike. Here's Why"
○
"A Rapidly Developing Super-Crisis - You’re In One"
by Gregory Mannarino, 2/16/22
"The global economy is in FREEFALL, inflation is surging, and debts/deficits are skyrocketing. Real wages, personal income weighed against inflation, is CRATERING. Meanwhile, the US stock market after its rebound off the recent low, is only single digit percentage points away from all time highs. Does this make sense to you? In short, it’s a freakshow.
Today here in the United States 20% of the population is unable to pay their energy bills - and this issue is much greater in parts of Europe. People are deliberately being pushed beyond their breaking points all over the world, BY DESIGN.
Expect widespread protests to develop and spread. Protests which will eventually turn violent! Which will give governments the “false flag event” which they need to implement MORE CONTROL. Global events may seem to be getting out of control, but nothing could possibly be farther from the truth. What we have is an environment moving from engineered crisis to engineered crisis, and all this is 100% deliberate.
The current rapidly developing energy crisis is going to get much worse, globally. I would be willing to believe that we are in the early stages of a SUPER-crisis regarding energy. Moreover, surging energy prices will be blamed for skyrocketing global inflation - they need a scapegoat.
Make no mistake about it. Everything which we are seeing develop on the global stage is being directly driven by central banks who are working in concert to fulfill their endgame - to be the ruling body of the world. All this is creating an entirely new demographic. Extreme haves, and extreme have-nots, with a global wipeout of the middle class. Wealth is being concentrated and re-distributed to a very small percentage of the population. The established powers have gone out of their way to create the illusion of wealth being distributed in a more socialistic way - this was a distraction. The truth is that the movement of cash ALWAYS moves higher, straight up to the 1 and 2 percenters.
Yes, you were “sold” yet another lie. It wasn’t EVER socialism where we are going, that was the cover story, but to a concentration of power and wealth right up to the top. I expect that the crisis-to-crisis phenomenon will not only continue but accelerate.
Never take your eye off the ball so to speak. What I mean by that is this - when your attention is being directed in whatever direction by the mainstream propaganda ministries and puppet politicians, ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE BEING MISLED… look in the opposite direction to find the truth."
From Gerald Celente's "Trends Journal"
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