“What we can do, we must do: we must use what we are given, and we must use it the best we can, however much or little help we have for the task. What you have been given is a hard thing - a very hard thing... But my darling, what if there were no one who could do the difficult things?”
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger and are noticing a lot of price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI)is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding,safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
"As the nation sinks inexplicably into self-created crisis after crisis, debate rages whether Joe Biden is incompetent, mean-spirited, or an ideologue who feels the country’s mess is his success. A second national discussion revolves around who actually is overseeing the current national catastrophe, given Joe Biden’s frequent bewilderment and cognitive challenges. But one area of agreement is the sheer craziness of Biden’s cabinet appointments, who have translated his incoherent ideology into catastrophic governance.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has essentially nullified federal immigration law. Over 2 million foreign nationals have illegally crossed the southern border without audit - and without COVID vaccinations and tests during a pandemic.
Mayorkas either cannot or will not follow federal law. But he did create a new Disinformation Governance Board. To head his new Orwellian Ministry of Truth, he appointed Nina Jankowicz - an arch disinformationist who helped peddle the Russian collusion, Steele dossier, and Alfa Bank hoaxes. While Jankowicz’s adolescent videos and past tweets finally forced her resignation, Mayorkas promises that his board will carry on.
In the days before the recent Virginia election, grassroots parent groups challenged critical race theory taught in the schools. In reaction and under prompts from teachers’ unions, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed both the FBI and the Justice Department to establish a special task force apparently to “investigate threats” from parents against school board members.
The FBI recently has been knee-deep in political controversies. It illegally doctored a FISA application to entrap an American citizen. Its former directors, under oath before Congress, either claimed faulty memory or admitted lying to federal investigators. The last thing a scandal-plagued FBI needed was to go undercover at school board meetings to investigate parents worried over their childrens’ education.
We are in a fuel price spiral that is destroying the middle class. Yet when Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was asked about plans to lower gas prices, she laughed off the idea as “hilarious.” Later Granholm preposterously claimed, “It is not the administration policies that have affected supply and demand.” Apparently haranguing those who finance fossil fuel production, canceling the Keystone Pipeline, suspending new federal oil and gas leases, and stopping production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge all had nothing to do with high fuel prices.
Currently, supply chain disruptions are paralyzing the U.S. economy. The huge Port of Los Angeles has been a mess for over a year. Since last fall dozens of cargo ships have been backed up to the horizon. Thousands of trucks are bottlenecked at the port. During the mess, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was not at work. Instead at the height of the crisis, he took a two-month paternity leave to help out his husband and two newborn babies. Such paternal concern is a noble thing.
But Buttigieg is supposed to ensure that life-or-death supplies reach millions of strapped Americans. This winter, trains entering and leaving Los Angeles were routinely looted in the Old-West style of train robbing - without much of a response from Buttigieg’s transpiration bureau.
In Senate testimony Secretary of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland refused to explain why her department is slow walking federal oil and gas leases at a time Americans are paying between $5 and $6 a gallon for gas. Haaland was unable to provide simple answers about when new leases will result in more supplies of oil and gas. Her panicked aides slid talking points to her - given that in deer-in-the-headlights fashion, she seemed incapable of providing senators with basic information about U.S. energy production on federal lands.
The United States is sending many billions of dollars worth of sophisticated weapons to Ukraine to combat Russian aggression. We rightly claim it is not a proxy war against Russia but instead an effort to help stop a brutal Russian invasion.
Why then did Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tell the world the very opposite in a fashion that could only convince Russians that our real aim in Ukraine is to destroy Russia as a superpower? As Austin put it publicly, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” Even if that description of the agenda is true, why broadcast it - given Russia has over 6,000 nuclear weapons and its President Vladimir Putin is increasingly erratic and paranoid?
The common denominator to these Biden appointees is ideological rigidity, nonchalance, and sheer incompetence. They seem indifferent to the current border, inflation, energy, and crime disasters. When confronted, they are unable to answer simple questions from Congress, or they mock anyone asking for answers on behalf of the strapped American people. We don’t know why or how such an unimpressive cadre ended up running the government, only that they are here and the American people are suffering from their presence."
suicide as the current class of idiots who rule us.
by Adam Mill
"High inflation, overregulation, and a general sense that things are going in the wrong direction remind us of the late 1970s and early ’80s. But today the underlying problems that were responsible for our woes in that time are vastly worse. The coming reckoning for Washington’s insanely irresponsible monetary policy may dwarf the troubles from all recent recessions and periods of inflation.
The Federal Reserve has created a doom loop between the housing market and inflation. For years it has printed tens of billions of dollars each month to buy sketchy securities meant to subsidize the housing market and favor bond traders. This continues even now, in spite of inflation and a red-hot housing market. But the housing market has become dependent on unearned, newly printed money, and stopping the flow might cause a catastrophic correction. If it doesn’t stop, however, inflation will explode. Let me walk you through some of the math.
Inflation closes the gap between money earned and money spent. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve expanded M2 money supply from just under $8 trillion to around $22 trillion today. During that time GDP has increased from around $14.6 trillion to around $24.5 trillion today. We’ve gone from a ratio of one dollar chasing $2.20 in goods in services to an almost 1 to 1 ratio today. Inflation during the same period, according to the government, has eroded the dollar by a mere 33 percent. You think 8 percent inflation is high? Prices need to double to restore any semblance of balance between currency and the things you can buy with currency. We have a long way to go.
To understand how dire the situation has become, we need to review a curious practice the Fed began shortly after the 2008 crash. In November 2008, the Federal Reserve began an extraordinary program of purchasing mortgage-backed securities (MBS) Using newly created money (not tax dollars or private investments), the Fed dumped billions of dollars per month with the stated goal of helping the government stimulate the economy.
A mortgage-backed security is simply a pool of mortgages. As homeowners pay their mortgages, the money then flows to bondholders. The 2008 financial crisis resulted from problems valuing these securities. In order to sell a MBS, the buyer had to gain some confidence in the likelihood of repayment. Because this involved so many complex and unknowable factors relating to each of the individual mortgages, the debt could sometimes turn “toxic” or drop in value quickly when buyers lost faith in the future performance of homeowners.
Years passed and a recovery seemed to abate the emergency. Yet the Fed just kept buying more and more. Traditionally, the Fed stimulated the economy by purchasing U.S. treasuries. This avoided the sticky problem of establishing a fair price for the security because the treasury’s value is relatively easy to establish. An MBS, however, cannot be easily valued because reasonable minds can make different predictions about the likelihood of individual homeowners repaying their loans. Thus, unlike purchases of treasuries, bulk purchases of mortgage-backed securities are ripe for waste, fraud, and abuse. There’s no easy way to audit whether the Fed is overpaying for the securities.
The sheer scale of the Fed’s involvement in the mortgage market caused an unstable bubble. As the president of the Kansas City Fed recently said, “by owning roughly one-quarter of the MBS market along with a significant portfolio of longer-term Treasuries, our presence in financial markets muddies price signals, encourages excessive risk-taking, and can foster financial instability. Asset prices remain historically high and remain vulnerable to economic and policy uncertainty.” In other words, lenders don’t need to worry about lending to risky borrowers because the Fed is buying all the crap nobody else will touch.
Although the Fed promised it would stop buying mortgage-backed securities by March of this year, the promise came with a giant asterisk. As old bonds mature and disappear from its balance sheet, “monthly purchase schedules will continue to be issued to reflect reinvestment of principal payments . . .” In other words, when the Fed receives a dollar from an MBS payout, it just uses it to buy another bond.
Thus, in the face of red-hot inflation, the Fed bought another $38 billion in mortgage-backed securities in March. In April, it bought another $40.1 billion. This month, the Fed is in the process of buying another $34.5 billion.
Until recently, the Fed has been on an unprecedented buying spree. It increased its total MBS holdings from $1.7 trillion in 2020 to $2.7 trillion today. Indeed, the Fed made roughly $400 billion of those purchases after its chairman’s June 2021 testimony in which he famously labeled 5 percent inflation “temporary.” It was obvious then that inflation was just getting started.
So all of this might seem like terrible news. But it’s nothing compared to the doom loop that has begun to turn. The coming reckoning could be savage and apocalyptic. Let’s walk through what might happen next.
The problem with inflation is not just how high it is, it’s how quickly it is increasing. Again, the money supply has increased so much that prices would have to almost triple to restore balance between goods and the dollars chasing them. So the Fed’s mandate requires it to intervene to stop inflation. It typically does that by raising interest rates and selling back its bonds. When the Fed sells a bond, the cash flows out of the economy relieving the inflation pressure.
To fight inflation, interest rates need to exceed the inflation rate. That means a dollar saved loses purchasing power unless savings interest rates climb from less than 1 percent to something over current inflation (now around 8 percent). One rule of thumb provides that savings interest rates should reach 150 percent of inflation in order to reverse the trend. The theory holds that high interest rates encourage saving cash thus slowing down the speed at which money chases assets. If interest rates are less than inflation, it makes holding cash a losing proposition.
Thus, the doom loop. The more the Fed props up the mortgage industry, the more it encourages inflation. The more inflation increases, the more urgent it becomes to stop printing money. When the printing press stops and interest rates rise, those MBSs likely will turn toxic again, freezing the market at the exact moment the Fed needs buyers for its bonds.
Alternatively, the Fed could just let inflation rip as it continues to pour gasoline on the fire. At this point, the latter scenario appears more likely as the Fed engages in half-hearted symbolic inflation-fighting measures. Not surprisingly, the inflation numbers get scarier and scarier. At some point, runaway inflation will force the Fed to take real action. One thing is certain: the longer it waits, the more it will hurt.
Closing the gap between money earned and money spent means cutting government spending, raising interest rates, reducing regulation, and lowering taxes. Government can and should facilitate increases in productivity by reducing its interference in every private transaction. More Americans get a check from the government than pay taxes. The labor participation rate is dangerously low. There just aren’t enough people pulling their weight to make the things needed to sop up all of this excess money.
Even communist countries have resorted to my suggested reforms when markets smash their utopian plans. But no communist was ever as dedicated to economic suicide as the current class of idiots who rule us."
"Here Are 11 Statistics That Show How U.S. Consumers
Are Faring In This Rapidly Deteriorating Economy"
by Michael Snyder
"Prices are soaring, there are widespread shortages of certain items such as baby formula all over the nation, and at the same time U.S. economic activity appears to be really slowing down. Considering all of that, it makes perfect sense why the American people are feeling so negative about the economy right now. In fact, a whopping 85 percent of all Americans believe that there will be a recession within the next year. These days, it is virtually impossible to get Americans to overwhelmingly agree about anything, and so the fact that 85 percent of us are anticipating a recession is a really big deal. Just about everyone realizes that economic conditions are going to get worse, but for those of you that still doubt where we are headed here are 11 statistics that show how U.S. consumers are faring in this rapidly deteriorating economy…
#1 According to a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll that was recently conducted, 56 percent of Americans say that their financial situations are getting worse, and only 20 percent of Americans say that their financial situations are improving.
#2 Another new survey has just discovered that 66 percent of Americans “have avoided social events because they’ve felt embarrassed or uncomfortable” about their financial situations.
#3 The housing bubble appears to be bursting. At this point, sales of new single family homes are falling at a very frightening pace…"Sales of new single-family houses in April plunged by 16.6% from March and by 26.9% from a year ago, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000 houses, the lowest since lockdown April 2020, according to the Census Bureau today. Sales of new houses are registered when contracts are signed, not when deals close, and can serve as an early indicator of the overall housing market."
#4 After breaking the all-time national record in March, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has gone 42 cents above the old record and is now sitting at $4.59.
#5 The average age of a car on U.S. roads has reached an all-time record high of 12.2 years. Many Americans continue to delay replacing their current vehicles because new vehicles have become so unaffordable.
#6 Millions of American families are struggling with rapidly rising food prices…"The index for food away from home increased 7.2% over the last year, the Labor Department reported earlier this month. Food prices were up 9.4% in April from the same time last year - the biggest jump since April 1981, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported. And grocery store prices increased 10.8% for the year ended in April."
#7 U.S. natural gas futures just crossed the nine dollar threshold – the highest level that we have seen since the financial crisis of 2008. That means that much higher energy costs are on the way for U.S. consumers.
#8 Multiple Fed surveys are showing that manufacturing activity in the U.S. is really slowing down…"The slowdown in manufacturing activity on display in reports from the Federal Reserve banks of New York and Philadelphia was confirmed by a survey from the Richmond Fed indicating that factory activity contracted in the mid-Atlantic region in May. The Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity index dropped 23 points from a positive reading of 14 in April to a minus nine, the lowest reading since May 2020, when much of the economy was still reeling from the onset of the pandemic and lockdowns."
#9 Zero Hedge is reporting extremely depressing news about U.S. macro data: “Other than April 2020 – when the entire economy was closed – May’s serial disappointment in US Macro data is the worst since Lehman”
#10 Thanks to plunging stock prices, approximately 20 trillion dollars in household net worth has been “wiped out” so far this year.
#11 A new CBS News/YouGov survey has found that 74 percent of Americans believe that things are going badly in this country and that 51 percent of Americans actually believe that Joe Biden is “incompetent”.
Right now, conditions are so similar to what we witnessed just before the financial crisis of 2008. If we had addressed our long-term problems back then, perhaps we would be in a much different place at the moment. But instead, we appear to be poised to repeat history in a lot of ways.
In fact, many experts believe that the crisis that is staring us in the face will be even worse than what we went through more than a decade ago. For example, just check out what Peter Schiff is saying…"This one is going to be even bigger because the economy has a lot more debt now than it did in 2008. And Americans are less able to pay it when interest rates rise because the balances are much greater. So, we’re in much worse shape as a result of all the bailouts and all the stimulus that papered over the last crisis. So, now the one we’re dealing with is going to be much worse because we kicked the can down the road instead of solving the problem when we had a chance.”
He makes some really great points. Every time there has been some sort of a crisis in our society, our leaders responded by showering the system with even more money. In 2008, the U.S. national debt crossed the 10 trillion dollar threshold. In 2022, the U.S. national debt has crossed the 30 trillion dollar threshold.
Our politicians have been systematically destroying our future, and most Americans didn’t seem to care. Now a day of reckoning has arrived, and it is going to be immensely painful. There is no silver bullet that is going to cure inflation.
The Federal Reserve is going to try to tame inflation by hiking interest rates, but that will just destroy the housing bubble and dramatically slow down the economy. And there is no silver bullet that is going to end the shortages that we are currently facing. We are now experiencing some of the consequences of decades of mismanagement, and a lot more pain is on the way."
Supply Chain Collapse And Push Prices To Skyrocket"
by Epic Economist
"We’re in the middle of the worst energy supply shortage the world has ever seen in over five decades. Everything you can imagine - from oil to diesel to jet fuel to natural gas – is in short supply right now. In fact, we’re being told that U.S. fuel reserves have hit dangerously low levels, and this is threatening to bring our already stressed supply chains to a halt as truck drivers struggle to bear the brunt of soaring fuel costs. On top of all that, even the nation’s electricity generation capacity is declining sharply, and power grid regulators are warning that extreme weather is likely to trigger rolling blackouts this summer which could result in widespread business shutdowns and potential water shortages.
In the United States, perilously low inventories of oil products and a shortage of refining capacity have laid the foundations for an oil shortage crisis in the country this summer. At this point, there isn't anything authorities can do to reverse this situation, as highlighted by Paul Sankey, Lead Analyst at Sankey Research, referring to the fact that a refinery cannot be built in time to ease the gasoline and diesel crunch. Since the onset of the health crisis, over 1 million barrels per day of refinery capacity in America has been shut permanently.The surge in consumer demand since economies reopened and people returned to travel, in addition to lower refining capacity and extremely tight distillate markets have pushed down U.S. fuel inventories to below seasonal averages and at multi-year lows, with record-low inventories reported on the East Coast.
The situation is worrying everyone in the industry – from executives to truckers – everybody is now fearing the devastating effects a fuel shortage can have on the economy in the months ahead. “I’ve seen fuel prices when I started out, a dollar something a gallon and we were squalling even back then. Now 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 dollars a gallon, it’s ludicrous, it’s out of hand, it’s going to drive the trucking industry out,” lamented Bart Costi, who has been a truck driver for decades. This massive shortage of fuels can cripple our already fragile supply chain. "If we don't have diesel, then we can't run," outlines Louis Campion, president and CEO of the Maryland Motor Truck Association. Even the U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart is alarmed about the situation. During an interview, Stewart said the U.S. is in the most challenging energy crisis in the last 50 years and the federal government has "no strategy" whatsoever to help the country get out of record-high gasoline and diesel prices.
At the same time, millions of Americans will be facing electricity shortages in the coming months as extreme weather overwhelms our aging power grid. The regulating authority that oversees the health of the nation’s electrical infrastructure released an alarming report about the dire state of the US power grid going into the summer. In its 2022 Summer Reliability Assessment, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, pointed out that ongoing drought in several parts of the nation and heatwaves “could require system operators to use emergency procedures, up to and including temporary manual load shedding,” - also known as rolling blackouts.
The problem is that energy supplies are so fragile that there just won't be enough to go around, and power cuts will put lives at risk when heatwaves hits and there are no fans or air conditioners to provide relief from searing temperatures. Without power, the well-being of our population is going to be disrupted. Prolonged outages could also mean that tens of thousands of Americans are at risk of losing access to clean water, the economist added.
If blackouts persist, businesses can face mass shutdowns again, which will consequently bring a huge economic shock. But energy is not just a part of the economy. In a real, physical sense it is the economy. Energy is essential for everything we do. This means that an energy crisis can quickly become an everything crisis. And now, another disaster is looming. But unfortunately, very few Americans have any idea of just how profound the current energy crisis already is, and is about to become."
"Galaxies don't normally look like this. NGC 6745 actually shows the results of two galaxies that have been colliding for only hundreds of millions of years. Just off the below digitally sharpened photograph to the lower right is the smaller galaxy, moving away. The larger galaxy, pictured above, used to be a spiral galaxy but now is damaged and appears peculiar. Gravity has distorted the shapes of the galaxies.
Although it is likely that no stars in the two galaxies directly collided, the gas, dust, and ambient magnetic fields do interact directly. In fact, a knot of gas pulled off the larger galaxy on the lower right has now begun to form stars. NGC 6745 spans about 80 thousand light-years across and is located about 200 million light-years away."
"International Man: It’s that time of the year when a bunch of out-of-touch, self-anointed elites gather at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It’s where they discuss the big issues of the day. The most influential world leaders attend, as do the CEOs of the largest companies, leaders in the mainstream media, and top academics. Central bankers attend too, along with a wide assortment of celebrities. What do you make of Davos and the people who attend it?
Doug Casey: Davos is an "invitation only" event for the "elite." The usual suspects, and almost uniformly horrible people. These people form a subculture. They’re all members, or hangers-on, of various Deep States. They prefer to associate with other people they consider to be peers. If it turns out you don’t share their worldview, you won’t get invited back.
It’s basically a love fest for the international ruling class. They like to get together, hang out, and schmooze, because they all know about each other, even if they don’t know each other personally. Talking about "important" issues with other "important" people gives meaning to their lives. That’s the essence of what goes on at Davos and similar conclaves.
Now, I know the conspiracy types say, "These people have gotten together to conspire against all of us little people." And some of that undoubtedly happens. That’s nothing new. In "The Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith pointed out that whenever people in the same business get together, they always conspire against the public. Of course. That’s human nature. It’s normal. What do you expect? But it’s not a conspiracy. The fact is that people with the same education, worldview, and economic status tend to think alike. And tend to help one another. It’s not some kind of conspiracy, any more than is a meeting of a local Lion’s Club.
A couple of years ago, I was mistakenly invited to attend a similar very elitist and globalist conference event in New York. It was made up of exactly the same people who show up at Davos and conferences like it. I found that I didn’t like them. And I strongly suspect they didn’t like me, even though I was on my best behavior. But that’s nothing new. I occasionally get invited to dinner parties in Aspen, with the same kind of people. But usually not more than once. Why might that be? Well, as you know, I say what I think. And that’s usually at odds with what the Masters of the Universe think.
International Man: In previous years, we’ve seen the people at Davos promote various themes that later became policy. For example, negative interest rates, the abolition of cash, and promoting mass migration were all hot topics at Davos before governments around the world started implementing them. What is going on here?
Doug Casey: These people are the self-righteous epitome of the Establishment. They’re absolutely opposed to free minds and free markets. They are, however, in a position to influence the policies of the governments that control much of the world’s economy. And they do. It doesn’t matter how much money and power they have; humans are genetically wired to want more. Now that, in itself, is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing. It’s responsible for taking humanity from beating on earth with sticks to sending rockets to the other planets.
The problem is that these people are not just willing, but anxious, to use coercion - the State - to get what they want. They camouflage their intentions with massive virtue signaling. For some time, they’ve directed their attention to fixing the planet.
In fact, the bigshots at Davos aren’t going to fix anything, except maybe a few elections. They don’t even understand the problems. But it’s not hard to understand their motives. Everybody, including the African goatherder with flies buzzing around his face, wants to be a bigshot. That’s true even if you only hang out at the local bar or the local Rotary Club. If you’re running with the big dogs, however, you probably want to be a bigshot at Davos.
In years past, mass migration was a major subject for them. Not the migration of Europeans to the Americas in the 19th century, however. Those were mobile, aggressive, opportunity-seeking people who wanted to leave stagnant and repressive cultures for personal freedom. They had zero in the way of state support.
Very unlike the migrants coming to Europe today, who aren’t being attracted by opportunity so much as welfare benefits and the soft life. They know Western Europe is a massive welfare state that provides free food, housing, medical care, schooling, and living expenses to all comers.
Today’s migrants are mostly unskilled, poorly educated, and many have a bad attitude. They - justifiably - hold their new host countries in contempt. The question arises why - since they’re almost all Muslims - they aren’t being welcomed by places like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, or Brunei, which are wealthy Muslim countries.
There was a massive surge of migrants to Europe in 2015. But that was, I believe, just an overture to what’s coming. What we’re talking about here is the migration of millions of people of different languages, different races, different religions, different cultures, and different modes of living. If you’re an alien and you’re 1 out of 100, or 1,000, or even 10,000, you’re a curiosity, an interesting outsider. And you’d have to integrate into the new society. But an influx of millions of migrants can only destroy the old culture. And guarantee antagonism - especially when the locals are forced to pay for it.
It’s comparable to what happened 1,600 years ago with the migration of the Germanic barbarians into the Roman Empire. But potentially much more serious. The migration policies popular with the Davos crowd are creating minor chaos now, but world-class chaos is in the wings over the next decade. The population of Africa is growing by tens of millions per year while the population of Europe is collapsing. It will be interesting to watch London transform into Lagos North, as Paris starts looking like Kinshasa.
Another item that’s always on their agenda is central bank monetary policies. I’ll make a bet that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is very much in the cards. MMT amounts to the basically unlimited creation of currency units to finance whatever governments want. It’s essentially Keynesianism on steroids. It seems inevitable because all the major governments are actually bankrupt. And the Deep State - Davos types - would far prefer to see things financed with inflation than taxes, because that could take stock markets much higher. And make corporate bailouts much easier."
"An invasive species - a globally invasive species - is loose. It is a fierce predator, an apex predator of vast appetites. Its limitless ambitions span the very globe. This fi-fo-fum presently besieges a small burgh high in the Alps of Switzerland. Private jets drop him in and haul him out. Rolex watches encircle his wrists, Armani clothing adorns his back. He rolls around in expensive automobiles pushed by electricity. What is this creature, precisely? Anthropologists label this being Homo Davos – Davos Man.
Where the Elite Meet: Each year he descends upon the high Swiss resort of Davos. There he lives a grand and gorgeous week in the company of like fellows. These are the kingpins, the chieftains, the great and the good…These are the one-worlders, the wowsers, the central planners, the pettifoggers, the pecksniffs, the humanitarians with guillotines…
These are the propaganda-drummers, the think-tankers, the deep staters…And these are the rent-seekers, the crony-capitalists, the idiots useful and non-useful. In Davos they huddle in astounding profusion, like locusts in a Dust Bowl farm. Why do they choose Davos?
Highly Symbolic: After all, Davos lacks the dining, drinking and entertainment venues of a Paris, of a London, of a New York. Our men inform us the resorts of St. Moritz and Gstaad - to name two alone - boast superior skiing. Yet Davos is the very penthouse of Europe. That is, Davos is the highest city on the continent, a sort of Olympus. Is it coincidence they select the highest city on the continent? We hazard it is far from coincidence. Its symbolism is vast.
As Davos Man is above you… you are beneath him… as the lord is above the serf… bigwig above little wig. From this high perch he sets the world to rights and bosses it about. And let it be known: Davos Man is a very vain and self-regarding fellow.
"The future is not just happening,” uber-Davos Man Klaus Schwab gloated this week, adding: The future is built by us, by a powerful community as you here in this room. We have the means to improve the state of the world…"
The Fatal Conceit: Thus Davos Man believes he is an unrivaled engineer - an unrivaled engineer of men. Yet here he falls into fatal error…Man’s toolmaking skills have made him the master of his physical surroundings… propelling him even into space beyond. Alas, man’s undeniable engineering skills have instilled in him a massive self-overestimation. He mistakes his ability to engineer his physical world for his ability to engineer his social world.
Mr. Hayek famously labeled it the “fatal conceit.” He mistakes the inner human universe for the external clockwork universe. In theory they are one - engineering is engineering. In reality they are two. The hormone-governed, capricious and willful human being has no existence along the engineer’s x and y axes. As well plot a love affair along the x and y axes… or a riot.
A Master Opportunist: He may be a poor social engineer, yet Davos Man is a masterful opportunist. He senses his chance and seizes it. Herr Schwab, from 2018’s convocation: "A new framework for global public-private cooperation has been taking shape. Public-private cooperation is about harnessing the private sector and open markets to drive economic growth for the public good, with environmental sustainability and social inclusiveness always in mind."
The preceding can be reduced to two words: crony capitalism. Davos Man will profit wildly from the government subsidies underwriting this “new framework for global public-private cooperation.” Unfortunately for the rest of us, it sounds much like the old framework. Yet the question remains: How precisely would Davos Man improve the state of the world? Through “global governance."
The Nation-State Is Obsolete: They argue the nation-state cannot scotch the world’s bugaboos - climate change, pandemics, economic inequality and a hundred other transnational evils. The sovereign and independent nation therefore represents something of an appendix. It may have once performed a useful service. Yet no longer. It is obsolete in today’s globalized world. Only global solutions can equal the herculean challenges. And so global institutions must rise above the nation, argues Davos Man… as the United States government must rise above Kansas and Oregon and Texas and Rhode Island.
Davos Man’s objective is to blackjack national governments into embracing enlightened "global" perspectives. These of course often war with national interests, at times vital national interests - hence the blackjacking. Above we mentioned climate change. Climate change is Davos Man’s greatest hobbyhorse. It is his central fixation.
The Globalist Lever to Move the World: Climate change is, after all, a menace truly global. Only a concerted global effort can rout it. And the weaponry required is readily on offer: Centralized economic planning, taxation, wealth redistribution… all on a global scale. Imagine it - placing a taxable claim on the very respiration of civilization - carbon dioxide.
Old Archimedes claimed he could move the world with a lever of adequate length: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Carbon dioxide is the globalists’ lever. The alpine city of Davos is his fulcrum. From there he intends to move the world. Is it coincidence - then - that one-third of panel discussions this week in Davos address climate change?
How to Solve “Eco-Anxiety”: Peter Prengaman is the Associated Press' global climate and environmental news director. He claims these panels “range from combating “eco-anxiety" to helping debt-ridden countries finance a renewable transition.” How they intend to ease eco-anxiety, we do not pretend to know. Yet we would soothe their fears by reminding them of Davos Man’s botched forecasts…In 1988, the United Nations fretted the Maldives would be under the water by 2018. Yet in 2022 the Maldives jut high above the water. They drive a flourishing tourist trade.
Mr. Albert Gore soothsaid in 2009 that the polar ice cap may vanish by 2014.Eight years on, the ice still caps Earth’s poles. It shows little sign of liquefying. In certain locations it is in fact thickening.
In 2009 climatologist of climatologists - Prince Charles - shrieked that humanity had but eight years to save Earth. In 2022, five years past the midnight deadline… Earth pegs along yet.
Examples as these multiply and multiply. Only the wayward economic crystal-gazings of the Federal Reserve possibly rival them.
Do as I Say, Not as I Say! Davos Man likes to moan about the flying public. He argues they should limit their air travel to reduce carbon emissions. There is irony here - irony twinned with the common human vice of hypocrisy.
Davos Man may sob about aviation emissions all he pleases. He nonetheless rockets around in private jets… expanding his “carbon footprint” to proportions truly obscene. Here is a certain Matthew Finch. He is with an outfit labeled the Transport & Environment campaign group: "The average private jet, and we are not talking Air Force One, emits two tons of CO2 for every hour in flight. It can’t be stressed enough how bad private jets are for the environment. It is the worst way to travel…"
To put it in context, the total carbon footprint of an ordinary citizen - including everywhere they travel and everything they consume - is around eight tons a year. So an executive or politician taking one long-haul private flight will burn more CO2 than several normal people do in a year.
To Serve Man: Davos Man is nonetheless out to save the climate - and the world. Yet we trust Davos Man with our future no more than we trust a dog with our dinner. And so we conclude with the irreplaceable Mencken: “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve.”
We are reminded of the old Twilight Zone series. In one episode an apparently benevolent alien race descends upon Earth. They bear a book with them: "To Serve Man." Only too late did the humans realize it was a cookbook…"
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"The Level Of Evil In Our Society Is Off The Charts"
by Michael Snyder
"What in the world has happened to our society? Every day I scour dozens of news websites as I do research for my articles and upcoming books, and every day I am horrified by all of the evil that I encounter. We are a deeply, deeply sick society, and more symptoms emerge with each passing day. For example, what would cause an 18-year-old to walk into an elementary school and start gunning down young children? When I was growing up, I never once imagined something like that could possibly ever happen in any of the public schools that I attended. But now this sort of thing is becoming a regular occurrence in America, and the great tragedy that we witnessed on Tuesday quickly made headlines all over the nation…
A gunman opened fire at an elementary school in Uvalde on Tuesday, killing 19 students and one teacher, Gov. Greg Abbott said. The gunman, identified by law enforcement as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was also killed, Abbott said. Ramos was reportedly a student at Uvalde High School or was a former student, Abbott said. Uvalde Police Chief Pete Arredondo said it appears that Ramos acted alone. It was not immediately clear how many people, in addition to the dead, were wounded, but Arredondo said there were “several injuries.” It is also being reported that Ramos actually shot his own grandmother before going over to the school…"The suspect also allegedly shot his grandmother before entering the school and again opening fire, Abbott said. He did not say anything further about her condition."
Decades ago, this sort of incident would have been talked about for years. But most Americans will forget all about this shooting a few days from now, and that is because school shootings have become incredibly common in our day and time. In fact, this was the 27th school shooting in the United States so far this year. How many of them can you name?
Our schools are not safe anymore, and this is one of the big reasons why so many parents are turning to homeschooling. Of course it isn’t just our schools that have become danger zones. At this point, major urban areas all over the country are rapidly being transformed into war zones. According to the CDC, the number of firearm homicides jumped almost 35 percent just from 2019 to 2020…"The United States suffered 19,350 firearm homicides in 2020, up nearly 35 percent compared to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest data."
Sadly, getting shot and killed is not the only thing our kids have to be concerned about these days. There is also the possibility that they could be abducted and forced into sex slavery. This actually happened to one extremely unfortunate 15-year-old girl that attended a Dallas Mavericks game a few weeks ago…"A 15-year-old Texas girl was rescued by police 10 days after she was kidnapped at a basketball game while using the bathroom, then trafficked by pedophiles. The unidentified teenager’s father raised the alarm shortly after she left to use the restroom and didn’t return to her seat at a Dallas Maverick game in the American Airline Center on April 8." She was one of the lucky ones. There are countless others that are never rescued.
But at least our kids should be safe in church, right? Wrong. There are sexual predators there too, and sometimes they are even in the pulpit. On Sunday, a woman named Bobi Gephart that had her virginity taken by a pastor when she was just 16 years old confronted him in front of the entire congregation…"Turning to Lowe, she continued: ‘I was just 16 when you took my virginity on your office floor. Do you remember that? I know you do. You did things to to my teenage body that should have never been done. If you can’t admit the truth, you have to answer to God. You are not the victim here.’
I can’t even begin to describe how evil this is. And her husband stated that this abuse lasted for a total of nine years…"Bobi’s husband Nate then added: ‘This is a lie. This is not just adultery. It’s another level. It happened for nine years. When she was 15, 16, the grooming started.’
I wish that this was an isolated incident, but it isn’t. In fact, a new report has revealed widespread sexual misconduct in one of the largest Christian denominations in the entire nation…"Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention publicly apologized to victims of sexual abuse within the denomination and vowed to make public a private database of offenders in response to an explosive report detailing allegations of sexual misconduct and cover-up.
On Tuesday, SBC leaders gathered to discuss a historic investigation report from Guidepost Solutions that found that the denomination’s leadership mishandled widespread sexual abuse allegations, ignored and silenced victims and engaged in an abusive pattern of intimidation largely to avoid liability." This shouldn’t be happening. People go to church to find God, but in way too many instances they are encountering predators instead.
We have become a deeply, deeply wicked country, and it is getting worse with each passing year. It is in this sort of environment that exceedingly wicked leaders can emerge. In fact, the guy currently in the White House has been telling mammoth lie after mammoth lie for decades…
Stumbled across this montage from the doomed Biden ‘88 campaign and I’m crying at the McLaughlin Group reactions at the end. pic.twitter.com/A9etqn8J4H
If we lived in a just society filled with decent people, such a man could never have a career in politics. Of course the entire world is headed in the same direction, and that has enabled someone like Klaus Schwab to become one of the most important leaders on the entire planet…
Not concerning at all the guy who wants to take over the world has a bust of Lenin on his bookshelf. pic.twitter.com/krmtSrfKiW
Sadly, to a very large degree he is correct. They are trying to construct their version of “utopia”, but their plans are starting to crumble as a “perfect storm” of war, economic troubles, food shortages, energy problems and major pestilences hammers their efforts from all sides.
As I have tried to explain for many years, ultimately they will fail. They have destroyed everything that our forefathers worked so hard to build, and in the end their efforts will be destroyed as well. But right now just about every form of evil that you can possibly imagine is flourishing in our society, and that should deeply sicken all of us."
“I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein' on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin' no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin' from or goin' to or why. I'm tired of people bein' ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein' in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can't.”
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