Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/7/22:
"This Needs To Be Said"
Comments here:
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Video in question:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
"Brace For Blackouts As 75,000 Left Without Power In California Due To Record 'Demand Response Event'"
Full screen recommended.
"Brace For Blackouts As 75,000 Left Without Power
In California Due To Record 'Demand Response Event'"
by Epic Economist
"Record-breaking temperatures sparked historic power demands in California yesterday, pushing the electrical grid to a breaking point and making rolling blackouts increasingly likely. Thousands of Californians already faced power outages and many more could go powerless this week as authorities warn about an ongoing power grid emergency. At least half a million households were given notice to prepare for the worst-case scenario and remain at risk of experiencing energy supply shortages. The state’s grid operator is urging consumers to turn off lights, curb air conditioners and shut off power-hungry appliances after almost a week of extraordinary stress on electricity infrastructure. Meanwhile, prices are reaching insane levels, compounding pain for families and businesses.
CAISO predicts demand could reach another all-time high this week as homes and businesses turn their thermostats down to escape triple-digit temperatures. On Tuesday, CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer reiterated the need for power rationing: "We need a reduction in energy use that is two or three times greater than what we've seen so far as this historic heat wave continues to intensify,” he said, adding that more "blackouts are imminent". With blistering temperatures hitting 93% of the state, things are only likely to get worse.
Since Monday, at least 75,000 Californians were left without power, and many more remain at risk of energy supply shortages. The current heat wave began in the last week of August, and it is considered a remarkable event due to its ferocity and duration. The prospect of rolling outages underscores how grids all across the nation have become vulnerable in the face of extreme weather as they transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. California has aggressively shut down power plants in recent years, which made the state increasingly dependent on solar farms that go powerless late in the day just as electricity demand peaks.
What’s happening in California right now is just a hint of what is going to happen all across the country in the next few months. Across the U.S., energy prices have spiked to the highest level in nearly 15 years, which led roughly 20 million American households to fall behind on paying their utility bills, meaning millions of Americans are potentially facing power shut-offs in the hottest stretch of the summer.
For low-income families – those whose income falls below 200% of the supplemental poverty measure,– nearly 77% of those who can’t pay the bills are working full time, and yet, they cannot keep pace with the rising costs of everything. For businesses, the outlook has been nightmarish, too. The increase in energy prices is driving operational costs to soar and profit margins to shrink. Insolvency experts at Red Flag Alert consultancy estimate that more than 50,000 businesses in the U.S. are at risk of closing down because of the massive increase in energy costs.
“Companies that were previously profitable are now sustaining heavy losses and among those that can survive the rise in energy bills many will have to make job cuts”, the firm, which monitors businesses’ financial health, noted. In some places, they went up seven to eight times higher than the historical norm. For James Green, who runs Flamingos Coffee House and has seen his company's energy bill going from $1,500 to around $10,000, “this is a mass extinction event for many businesses like mine”. "That's more expensive than our wage bill. That's just catastrophic," he said.
In other words, businesses, consumers, and the U.S. economy are reaching a breaking point due to the accelerating energy crisis. It’s safe to say that global events will continue to escalate, making the situation even more difficult in the months ahead. We’re about to confront the stark reality of a collapsing energy system, and it won’t be easy, so enjoy the rest of the summer while you still can, because things are only going to go downhill from here."
"Sell My Car Now; Home ATM Has Been Shut Down; Global Food Crisis Hits Home, Prepare Now. Buy Food Now"
Jeremiah Babe, 9/7/22:
"Sell My Car Now; Home ATM Has Been Shut Down;
Global Food Crisis Hits Home, Prepare Now. Buy Food Now"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Peter Gabriel (Feat. Kate Bush), "Don't Give Up"
Full screen recommended.
Peter Gabriel (Feat. Kate Bush), "Don't Give Up"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. Centered on NGC 7814, the pretty field of view would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy.
Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive central bulges cut by a thinner disk with dust lanes in silhouette. In fact, NGC 7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000 light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing to be smaller and fainter only because it is farther away. A very faint dwarf galaxy, potentially a satellite of NGC 7814, is revealed in the deep exposure just below the Little Sombrero.”
"Three Months Until Impact"; "Headed Into a Hurricane"
"Three Months Until Impact"
by Brian Maher
"Here in the mid-Atlantic summer’s fever is broken - at least for the moment. The temperature is fair, the sky is slate and a refrigerating breeze rustles the leaves. Thus our thoughts turn to pending autumn. What does this autumn hold in store, economically? We do not know of course. Yet we observe some straws swaying in the breeze…
The Federal Reserve’s Atlanta outpost presently forecasts 1.4% third-quarter economic growth. Merely one week ago it had forecast 2.6% economic growth. We anticipate further revisions - negative revisions - before quarter’s end next month.
Consider: Inflation has consumers by the snout. Real wages are in steady decline as inflation outpaces nominal wages - and by lots. Consumers are tucking into savings to merely stand still. Savings levels, incidentally, hover at five-year depths… as credit card usage runs to 20-year heights. That is, consumers are plunging ever deeper into debt.
Meantime, the Federal Reserve has taken to the warpath. It has been elevating interest rates since March - frantically - and working down its balance sheet since June. Markets presently give 90% odds of a 75-basis-point rate increase this month, incidentally. As the thunder lags the lightning and the cannon’s boom lags the cannonball… the economic slump lags the rate hike. By how much time? By nine months - on average. Thus you can expect the March increase to announce its presence in December.
The subsequent increases will roll in with the same nine-month delay. Mr. Lance Roberts of Real Investment Advice: "As the Fed continues to hike rates, each hike takes roughly nine months to work its way through the economic system. Therefore, the rate hikes from March 2022 won’t show up in the economic data until December. Likewise, the Fed’s subsequent and more aggressive rate hikes won’t be fully reflected in the economic data until early to mid-2023. As the Fed hikes at subsequent meetings, those hikes will continue to compound their effect on a highly leveraged consumer with little savings through higher living costs… the consumer is exceptionally unprepared for such an outcome."
We must agree. The consumer is exceptionally unprepared for such an outcome. “Permabear” Peter Schiff likewise agrees. Here he nods his head, violently, in agreement: "Because of the Fed, everybody is leveraged to the hilt. The economy has never been this leveraged and never been this dependent on the cheap money that the Federal Reserve is now taking away. So we’re going to go through the mother of all economic withdrawals as the Fed is weaning us from this monetary heroin…
Because [the Fed] left monetary policy so loose for so long and allowed the economy to get so leveraged, allowed inflation to get this out of control… fighting inflation is [not just] going to cause a recession. It’s going to cause a financial crisis. There is no way around that."
Just so. Yet we are not half so convinced Mr. Schiff is correct. It is true that the Federal Reserve is tightening at a gallop. It is also true that the Federal Reserve is a gang of Wrong Way Charlies that cannot tell A from B at the price of their souls. Yet we believe the Federal Reserve lacks the resolve to see things through. It will throw up the sponge long before it has inflation licked. Wall Street will demand it. And Wall Street will get it.
Here is our forecast: Sometime next year the Federal Reserve will turn 180 degrees around with rate cuts and - in all likelihood - renewed quantitative easing. The Federal Reserve has a tiger by the tail - a tiger of its own creation. And it cannot afford to let go. That time has long passed. The evil cycle will resume… easing… tightening… easing… tightening… world without end…Madness without end.
Below, Jeffrey Tucker addresses Jamie Dimon’s recent claim that the U.S. economy is headed into “a hurricane.” Is it? Read on."
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"Headed Into a Hurricane"
By Jeffrey Tucker
"The recent jobs report was the usual unimpressive combination of low unemployment and low labor participation. But the spin doctors got to work right away to tell the world that things are finally getting back to normal. Oh sure. That’s an improvement over last month and the depth of lockdowns. What they don’t tell you is that you have to go back to September 1977 to find the most recent rate that low. Isn’t it amazing how journalists are so quick to adapt to the new weirdness and stop calling it out?
Wall Street wasn’t buying it, and the markets very quickly hit the skids. It’s not even clear why. Some days it just seems like financial markets are looking for any excuse to issue sell orders. Or maybe it had something to do with Jamie Dimon’s recent incredible prediction, that the U.S. economy is headed into a hurricane. Yikes.
Many things are fundamentally broken and are not being fixed. I’m increasingly convinced that this labor shortage is really about more than early retirement, moms leaving the workforce and temporary dislocations. It’s more serious than that. It is a reflection of population demoralization, the draining of ambition, the diminished confidence in the future and the growing unwillingness on the part of all classes of people to make the necessary sacrifices to build a good life.
Back to basics for a moment. The natural state of humanity is one of grueling poverty and short life. Digging out of that more requires intelligence, sacrifice, long-term thinking and a vision of progress. Once that catches hold, growth and wealth make an appearance as if by magic, followed by capital investment, expanded division of labor and more complex production structures.
All that requires the cultivation of the bourgeois ethos, backed by sound money and a reliable rule of law. You can’t have a gang of thugs wandering around pillaging people’s wealth and expect people to keep investing and working to build a prosperous society. When all of that is in place, beautiful things can happen. If it doesn’t come together, societies never really get off the ground. There are thousands of examples around the world of societies large and small that never got it together to generate that thing we call progress.
We’ve taken it all for granted for a very long time, operating under the assumption that nothing could break the glorious things we’ve built together. Then arrogance took hold. Elites started hammering at the system in multiple ways at once. They dismantled trade relationships. They mucked with the money. They spent like crazy, running up debts that are impossible to pay. Then finally they locked down economic life in the name of virus control.
We are living through the effects of that, the dominant one of which is the decline of the culture of the bourgeoisie. Instead of work, we get sloth. Instead of saving we get into debt. Instead of investment and the future, we are just getting by. The energy and confidence in the future we’ve long taken for granted are all being fundamentally challenged.
My own view: This accounts for the labor problem, more than any other factor. There is some kind of symbolic poetry to the Biden administration’s massive attack on fossil fuels and coal because it shows that energy itself is being undermined in fundamental ways.
I was digging through price data this morning and found an incredible thing. The category called transportation is now moving up at 22% year over year. That’s just an incredible figure in a country that has prided itself on stable energy prices for decades. Who is the culprit? It’s almost everything really. It includes gas, plane tickets, shipping costs, natural resource costs, new and used car prices and more. But the margin of increase right now is being driven by a surprising source: coal. Stockpiles are getting low and inflation is eating it all away.
Here is the coal price chart.
That’s pretty ugly, but look at the percentage increase year over year.
That hockey stick you see at the end there is a 43.5% increase. In coal! It just so happens that the Biden administration is a hater of coal. I’m increasingly of the view that all of this is deliberate. These crazy people actually believe that they can harm traditional energy sources enough to the point that they can somehow goad civilization into adopting their preferred “renewable” sources of energy like wind and solar but the whole thing is ridiculous. They are going to drive us all back to the Stone Age if they keep this up.
Let’s revisit Jamie Dimon’s forecast. He says that the combination of inflation, war with Russia and Fed tightening is going to create a hurricane. We’ve talked that much about the war. The critical issue here is not the war but the response to the war (just as with the virus).
The financial and trade sanctions against Putin have proven that he can weather just fine. The main parties hurt are in Europe and North America. We are paying a heavy price, not just now, but for years to come.
This much is for certain: The smart money is preparing for a storm. That involves a completely different strategy from the index-fund magic of the last 30 years. The performers are going to be the particular companies that specialize in particular sectors under deep distress now, including and especially commodities, housing and infrastructure technology necessary to keep the appearance of civilization alive.
Meanwhile, the Fed has no idea what it’s doing. The interest rate increases are cooling off money expansion but that might be entirely because the economy is slowing through lending restrictions, particularly as they affect housing.
Beyond that, they have no real means to sop up the $6 trillion-plus in new liquidity that they dumped on the markets between March 2020 and March 2022. They know that this new money has to make its way through the system through larger prices. They further know that prices in general are NOT going to go down. At best, they will in general settle down to a more reasonable rate of increase. All told, 15% of the purchasing power of the dollar has been stolen in a mere 2½ years. That’s something we’ve not seen in 40 years but probably not really since the latter days of the American Revolution.
This much everyone knows for certain. The Biden administration will do nothing helpful to stave off the coming disaster. Their only plan, so far as I can see, is to take your guns and inject your kids with a serum. Is it any wonder that the job approval of that Biden has reached new lows? It’s not even clear that he cares that much."
Ed. note: "In Jim Rickards’ 2011 book "Currency Wars" he warned that the U.S. was engaged in a special type of economic war. And that these wars: "Degenerate into sequential bouts of inflation, recession, retaliation and actual violence as the scramble for resources leads to invasion and war. The historical precedents are sobering… Some version of the worst-case scenario is almost inevitable."
Now with Putin invading Ukraine… Rising tensions with China…Inflation, recession, supply chain issues and the potential for greater violence breaking out all over the world… It seems as if Jim’s worst fears are coming true."
Gregory Mannarino, "Meltdown: Fed Admits That The Economy Is In Free-Fall And Will Get Far Worse!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/7/22:
"Meltdown: Fed Admits That The Economy
Is In Free-Fall And Will Get Far Worse!"
Comments here:
"Doug Casey on the Controlled Demolition of Food and Energy Supplies"
"Doug Casey on the Controlled Demolition
of Food and Energy Supplies"
by International Man
"International Man: Russia is one of the largest producers of fertilizer in the world, and tensions with the US and EU are disrupting supplies. In addition, it seems there is a deliberate effort to sabotage the global agriculture industry. For example, in the Netherlands, the government is restricting the use of nitrogen fertilizer under the ridiculous pretext that it's needed to combat so-called "climate change." Dutch farmers have protested the measures because they believe they will destroy their livelihoods and cause food shortages. In Canada, the Trudeau government has announced a similar policy. Other governments will likely follow. What's your take on this? Is this a deliberate plan to disrupt food supplies?
Doug Casey: This meme has been circulating, along with three related ones, for a couple of years. It's as if the world's governments decided to unleash the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Pestilence, War, Famine, and Conquest). The Covid hysteria and subsequent Vax mania can stand in for Pestilence. The US proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine has every chance of getting much worse. Vastly higher commodity prices caused by central bank inflation and State dictates will cause famine in poor countries. As for the Fourth Horseman, Conquest? That's best translated as State Power. Kings and rulers, of course, but it evidences itself as socialism and authoritarianism today. We're in for tough times. The Four Horsemen are saddling up.
But let's look at Famine. Few people realize that before the Industrial Revolution, which only started in the 19th C, the world was perennially on the edge of mass starvation. Privation and hunger were normal. Hobbes was accurate when he said that life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The Industrial Revolution, powered by coal and then oil, changed the nature of life itself. Food has become abundant and is now, by far, at the cheapest levels in history. That may be changing. Basic commodities like wheat, soybeans, and corn have doubled in the last couple of years - incomes haven't. I doubt this is just a cyclical self-adjusting fluctuation. It's much more serious.
So what's going on? What's the deeper cause behind it? The great Covid hysteria was the catalyst that put WEF's "Great Reset" in motion. Even though the flu itself turned out to be a big nothing, it brought on a collapse in economic activity. The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, a place few think about, seemed to lead the way. Its rulers decided to make it the most ESG-compliant country in the world at the very time tourism collapsed because of the pandemic hysteria. The government banned imported fertilizers in 2021, and production of tea and rice collapsed 50%. Sri Lanka made the news because of the depths of its self-caused disaster. I wonder, since Sri Lanka is an island with a very authoritarian government, whether this was an experiment to see what happens if you cut off all fertilizers and create an agricultural crisis in a country. Does it sound crazy? I think it's a real question. It's crazy—but it's exactly what happened.
Is it possible that the world's elite have decided, among themselves, that the world has too many people and that too many of them are what the WEF's court intellectual, Yuval Noah Harari, has called "useless mouths"? With few exceptions, all the world's leaders are members of the World Economic Forum. They all have common interests, share the same elitist/collectivist philosophy, promote each other, and have a common party line.
The elite are to blame for the problems that we have now, the release of the Four Horsemen. This isn't a conspiracy theory. This is just a recognition of the fact that birds of a feather flock together. And once members of the elite become internationally influential or control a government, they become a "class."
I hate to sound Marxist talking about class interests, but it's true. The people who run most governments are much more loyal to their class - the international elite - than they are to their constituents or their countrymen. They think alike. They went to the same schools, they go to the same clubs, read the same books, go to the same conferences, have the same worldview, and become friends with each other. They're influenced by the same influencers. So what's going on right now is not just an accident.
International Man: The Biden regime recently passed the Inflation Reduction Act. It aims to reduce inflation by creating more inflation. A large part of this Orwellian spending bill includes an astronomical $369 billion for boondoggles related to "climate change." What do you think about this?
Doug Casey: The names of legislation in today's Orwellian world will do just the opposite of what it says it will do. The trillions of government spending we've seen in the last few years is the practical application of what is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). It came out from under a rock as a meme a couple of years ago. But it never really caught on, perhaps because the theory itself is so outrageous and radical.
The "Inflation Reduction Act" is the practical application of MMT. What does it mean? It means that the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Biden regime has authorized itself to spend will go in through the top of the funnel. It will all go to people that they favor, the projects they favor, and the ideas they favor. A giant amount of money is being given to the elite and people who toe the line.
But how is this immense giveaway supposed to reduce inflation, theoretically? MMT says that the government can counter the effects of the money supply increase by taking it back out of the economy through taxes. But who's going to pay those taxes? Elements of the society that are not in favor. People that they consider to be unnecessary, politically unreliable, or deplorable.
In today's world, taxes are paid mainly by members of the middle class. People in the lower classes don't pay income taxes. Taxes are somewhat irrelevant to people in the upper classes - apart from the fact that they're the ones who'll get most of the new MMT money. It's the middle class who will be taxed to withdraw the money that comes in the top of the funnel.
The theory is that the $400 billion the bill authorizes will go into society where the elite say. Then $400 billion will be withdrawn through taxes from the middle classes, aided by 87,000 new IRS agents. That's exactly what they're going to do, and that's exactly what MMT intends.
The State puts money in at the top, in "smart" places, and they extract money from the economy from places, and people that they don't think are worthy. It's a catastrophically dangerous way for the government to totally capture and manipulate the economy. That's what the perversely named Inflation Reduction Act is really about. And they'll do it without making it seem that way. It's diabolically clever.
International Man: The US government has been draining its strategic petroleum reserves in a big way recently. At the same time, the Biden Administration has made it difficult for oil and gas producers in the US. What is going on here?
Doug Casey: In the first place, I'm opposed to any strategic petroleum reserve run by the US government. Apart from the fact it amounts to the government speculating in commodities, it gives lots of extra power to the State and the bureaucrats who control it. Adequate petroleum reserves are something the market could, should, and would do - if we had an unrestrained free market. Which we don't.
Entrepreneurs, oil companies, and private speculators are immeasurably better at figuring out if oil will be in shortage or if it will be in glut. The government's debasement of the dollar is hurting the average guy, but the average guy votes. And he idiotically blames inflation on the oil producers - the very companies that are fighting the effects of inflation.
Of course, the Bidenistas want oil as low as possible before the election. They'll paint themselves as the good guys and oil producers as the bad guys. They're trying to reduce the effects of inflation by making oil more available. But once the reserve is gone, what's going to happen?
The elite absolutely hate fossil fuels. They hate coal, oil, gas, and uranium because they've empowered the common man since the start of the Industrial Revolution. They don't want to see more energy produced, they want to see energy conserved, then allocated ideologically, not economically. But the free market, not them, should decide if it makes sense to conserve energy or not. They hate the fossil fuel industry and want to direct capital towards so-called green technologies, basically solar and windmills.
As I've said many times before, there is nothing wrong with these so-called alternative forms of energy production in select places and at certain times. But as a source of mass power generation, they make no sense at all. They're a disaster in the making and totally inappropriate for a prosperous industrial economy. These idiots are playing with fire on a global scale.
The climate change agenda is another form of psychological mass control. The more fear and hysteria the elite create, the more control they have. The brainwashed hoi polloi will beg for a strongman with promises to set everything right.
The fact is that there are many, many decades of oil, gas, coal, and nuclear power available. New technologies will eventually replace most of them, much as the internal combustion engine replaced the horse and electricity replaced wood 100 years ago. The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones, and the fossil fuel age won't end because we run our fossil fuels. But trying to force these things for political and ideological reasons runs a genuine chance of collapsing the economy completely.
International Man: The European Union is similarly instituting self-destructive policies threatening to destroy its food and energy security. It seems Western governments are deliberately sabotaging their economies. What is really going on here?
Doug Casey: It's like watching the controlled demolition of a building right before your very eyes. These people have declared war on Western Civilization. Releasing the Four Horsemen could bring on what amounts to a new Dark Age.
The global elite really do think they're different, better, and wiser than the plebs. They've become so bold that they're actually explaining what they're doing. They believe in authoritarianism because they believe they're the ones that should be on top. They don't understand economics, history, science, or technology—but they like being on top.
They're trying to justify what they're doing. They want to look smart by saying, "Well, we're going to be in for some unavoidably tough times. We're going to have some cold winters. We're going to have some food shortages." I suppose they can spin it, so they look wise for having seen these things in advance and predicting them—but it's fairly easy to predict something that you cause.
This is about the continuing collapse of Western Civilization, which these people see as an evil thing. At this point, the US is the last real bastion of Western Civilization. But Jacobins now control the apparatus of the State in the US, and they're not going to let go of power easily.
Western Europe has totally rolled over. It's totally controlled by socialist ideology. So we can expect more controls, more laws, more regulations as we move into the gigantic financial and economic crisis that's right around the corner. It's no longer in some theoretical future. It could be in a matter of weeks or months.
International Man: What can the average person do to protect themselves - and their money- from the consequences of these destructive measures?
Doug Casey: As the Greater Depression deepens, the average guy is going to clamor for somebody to solve his problems. The public will demand more controls. About half the country voted for the Bidenistas, and in Biden's recent speech, he practically declared war on the other half of the country. It's as if Biden has decided he, too, wants to be a War President, like the criminally stupid Baby Bush. Except Biden may wind up being a Civil War President.
What can you do about it? One possibility is that you can simply not play the game. As Timothy Leary said in a different context, "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Perhaps you can imitate the Amish, but I don't think they'll leave anyone alone; at best, you'll be left behind. Or perhaps you can be like Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind" and get out of the way of stupid people.
One thing seems certain: we're facing a major turning point in world history. It's really serious. What's going to happen in particular? What are the elite going to do, and what is the public going to do in response? It's a complex guessing game, like predicting the next turn of a kaleidoscope.
My bets at the moment are on commodities, in general. They're very cheap relative to all other financial assets. There will be shortages because of what the elites are doing with things like ESG and DEI and their general attitudes towards business, private capital, and entrepreneurship. Pay heed to the French expression sauve qui peut - let he who can save himself. That's the situation as we move into increasing economic, financial, political, and social chaos."
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Related:
"Each Must Decide For Himself..."
“Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country – hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
- Mark Twain
"12 Things Suggest That the Economy is About to Crash"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 9/7/22:
"12 Things Suggest That the Economy is About to Crash"
"The warning signs are all around us. No matter what you believe you have to take a look at these 12 reasons that the economy is in much worse shape than we’ve been told."
Comments here:
George Carlin, "The Big Club"
Full screen recommended.
Very strong language alert!
George Carlin, "The Big Club"
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
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Rude, crude and absolutely, undeniably true...
Full screen recommended.
Very strong language alert!
George Carlin,
"Life Is Worth Losing - Dumb Americans"
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Gregory Mannarino, "Morgan Stanley Warns Of Potential Stock Market Free-Fall"
Gregory Mannarino, 9/7/22:
"Morgan Stanley Warns Of Potential Stock Market Free-Fall"
Bill Bonner, "Here Comes the Snow"
"Here Comes the Snow"
Stolen weapons, squandered billions
and the looming winter catastrophe...
by Bill Bonner
Poitou, France - "Since we’re ‘checking in’ on various disasters this week, let’s turn to Russia. ABCNews: "Russia has choked off the supplies of cheap natural gas that the continent depended on for years to run factories, generate electricity and heat homes. That has pushed European governments into a desperate scramble for new supplies and for ways to blunt the impact as economic growth slows and household utility bills rise. The crisis deepened when Russia's state-owned exporter Gazprom said the main pipeline carrying gas to Germany would stay closed, blaming an oil leak and claiming the problems could not be fixed because of sanctions barring many dealings with Russia."
It's been 7 months since the first wad was shot in the Russo-Ukrainian war. And the news from the front still comes almost directly from the Ukrainian press releases. Here’s International Business Times, with ‘news’ that could have been written 6 months ago:
• Russian soldiers are losing morale after realizing they may not win the war, says a Ukrainian official.
• Russians are also reportedly struggling with resupplying troops with missiles.
• Ukrainian authorities say soldiers with Russia's 127th Regiment refused to participate in the war.
• Morale is steadily decreasing among Russian soldiers as Ukraine continues to pound occupied regions in the south in its counteroffensive operations, a Ukrainian official said Monday.
Maybe the reporter should have asked a Russian official? But they never do. The reporting is entirely one-sided, always flattering the Ukrainian cause. And what the Ukrainians failed to mention is that their latest counteroffensive is almost certain to fail… and that the Russians are winning the war.
“Imaginary Wealth”: Here at Bonner Private Research, we have no dog in that fight. But we try to connect the dots. And almost everything is connected. Arch villain, Vladimir Putin gave us a hint: “The economy of imaginary wealth is being replaced by the economy of real and hard assets.” Replaced? We doubt it. But repriced? Almost certainly.
Ukraine’s serious generals counseled against the Kherson campaign. They saw it as a trap. Russian planes control the air. It would be very hard for Ukrainian forces to sustain a drive into Russian-held territory against attack from Russia’s air-force and long-range artillery.
But word on the street is that the Zelensky government needed to show its European and American enablers that it was still capable of delivering victory. So, the attack went forward. “Never interrupt when the enemy is making a mistake,” Napoleon had said. The Russians appear to be letting the enemy advance… so it can be cut off, and destroyed at their leisure.
Of course, we get our news from the media – just like everyone else. But we’ve learned that if you really want to know what is going on, you have to look a little deeper. Like panning for gold, you have to swirl the news around, separating out the implausible gravel… and hoping to spot a few nuggets. We only bother because the war bears heavily on the price of energy… which leans on other prices… and ultimately plays a major role in what is likely to be the biggest, most costly mistake ever made by an educated elite… which we will come to later.
Elite Propaganda: Reviewing the record of the last 7 months, the first thing that washes out is the western media’s creation myth: ‘The war is solely the result of Moscow’s brutal invasion; the Ukraine is as innocent as Heidi.’
Not for nothing are the southwestern steppes, bordering Russia, known as ‘The Ukraine;’ it means “border area” in Russian. Its present borders are of recent vintage, dictated by 3 Soviet Union leaders – Lenin, Stalin and Khruschev. And its most easterly provinces are inhabited in the majority by Russian speakers who apparently would prefer to be a part of the Russian Federation rather than a government dominated by Ukrainians. The Kiev government, after an ethnic and political cleansing led by the US in 2014, has been trying to bring them to heel ever since.
Once ‘The Ukraine’ feds were firmly in thrall to NATO and US, they built up the largest army in Europe, with 500,000 soldiers, more than France and England put together. This was a direct challenge to Russia’s version of the Monroe Doctrine and made Mr. Putin very uncomfortable. A huge, hostile army, armed with NATO missiles, grew like a cancer on his southern flank. He must have felt that it was time to get out the knife.
And then, the cannons opened up and the western press closed ranks to protect the Ukraine. Zelensky is an actor. (Among his most notable performances, he once pretended to play the piano with his penis.) He is far more media-savvy than Putin. And the western media – little more than the propaganda arm of the elite – went to work misinforming the public. Every report told us how the Russians were losing the war.
It was all so familiar. As in Afghanistan, Vietnam, and even WWI, reports to the public – and to the US president – were always the same. “We,” whoever we were, were winning… and more money and weapons would bring a final and complete victory. In almost every case, the updates were lies. And whatever help America provided to the Ukraine was mostly stolen or wasted. The Grayzone: “The weapons are stolen, the humanitarian aid is stolen, and we have no idea where the billions sent to this country have gone,” a Ukrainian complained."
As in all of America’s post-WWII military adventures, the deeper the US went, the more disastrous the results. And already, the war on the steppes is looking more and more like a Sicilian feud, with caskets needed for all the participants.
While the military and financial aid mostly went into corrupt pockets, the sanctions proved either ineffective… or they backfired. The Economist: "The trouble is that the knockout blow has not materialized. Russia’s GDP will shrink by 6% in 2022, reckons the IMF, much less than the 15% drop many expected in March, or the slump in Venezuela. Energy sales will generate a current-account surplus of $265bn this year, the world’s second-largest after China. After a crunch, Russia’s financial system has stabilized and the country is finding new suppliers for some imports, including China."
Weaponized Money: More and more countries are realizing that if they want to be safe from US mischief, they need to get out from under the dollar-based international money system. They are looking for alternatives, and finding them. Almayadeen.net: "Russia moves from SWIFT to more secure mechanisms: Official." "The unreasonable blocking of all Russian customers by the largest international card payment systems has increased the priority of expanding the geography of using Mir cards. We are actively working on it," he said. "Negotiations with Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, India, China, Cuba, Myanmar, Nigeria, Thailand, and other countries are at different stages," the top Russian diplomat said. He recalled that the Russian payment system is now available in Abkhazia, Armenia, Belarus, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, South Korea, and South Ossetia."
Where does this lead? The Financial Times takes a guess: "Since the 15th century, the last five global empires have issued the world’s reserve currency - the one most often used by other countries - for 94 years on average. The dollar has held reserve status for more than 100 years, so its reign is already older than most.
South-east Asia’s largest economies are increasingly settling payments to one another directly, avoiding the dollar. Malaysia and Singapore are among the countries making similar arrangements with China, which is also extending offers of renminbi support to nations in financial distress. Central banks from Asia to the Middle East are setting up bilateral currency swap lines, also with the intention of reducing dependence on the dollar…So don’t be fooled by the strong dollar. The post-dollar world is coming."
A post-dollar world? Where does that leave the country whose wealth is based on issuing more and more dollars? ’ Darned if we know. But we’ll try to figure it out before tomorrow."
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Related:
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Greg Hunter, "The Anti-Dollar is Coming – Charles Nenner"
"The Anti-Dollar is Coming – Charles Nenner"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner says his analysis shows there is big trouble coming for the U.S. dollar. The dollar’s reserve currency status is on its way to being a thing of the past. Nenner explains, “The dollar is still up. We have a target on the dollar of 113 (on the USDX). It’s now around 110, but it’s not going to be surviving as the major currency. People don’t trust what is going on in the United States. We have seen this happen to other countries. We saw this happen to the British. They are going to go to another major currency. The BRIC countries and China are preparing to have an anti-dollar. I have told you for years that the dollar is not going to crash, but now it is time. In a year or so, they will really be getting into trouble with the dollar. If the dollar goes down, of course, the inflation goes even higher.
So, actually, there is no way out anymore. Every Federal Reserve President has said let’s keep it going. The dollar is going to collapse, but not in my lifetime, and now there is almost nothing left to do anymore. If you forgive the student loans, you will have a big problem. First of all, it’s impossible. They pretend nothing will come out of it, but it will destroy the economy. When they get out of college, students make 4 or 5 times what other people earn, and it is being paid by the simple people. You are going to have more social unrest than you have ever seen.”
Nenner says a big crash is inevitable. Nenner says, “Soon the pensions are going to be in trouble. The buying power is going to be in trouble. This is simply a situation that has been created for many years. There is simply no way out. We have to crash. We have to get a depression. The whole economy will have to start all over again.”
Nenner predicted in May that a “Third of the global population will be killed in next war cycle.” The only good news is that it has been pushed back a little and will not start at the beginning of 2023. Nenner says, “We are going to continue on this pace for war, and it is going to explode in the second half of 2023.”
Nenner says you have seen the lows in interest rates, and the long-term trend is up. Nenner has been out of the bond market for close to a year. Nenner has never been more bullish on gold and silver. He says because of the massive money printing, there will be massive inflation. Nenner says, “This happened to the Dutch economy. It happened to the British Empire. That’s how it goes. At the end they always print money, and they don’t deserve it. It’s hard to say, but this usually ends in a war. You have to buy gold and silver. Gold will be up strong up until 2027, but you have to have a strong stomach to take the ups and downs.” There is much more in the 42 min. interview.
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes
One-on-One with renowned cycle analyst and financial expert Charles Nenner:
"Massive Price Increases At Dollar General! This Is Crazy!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 9/7/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Dollar General! This Is Crazy!"
"In today's vlog we are at Dollar General, and are noticing massive 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!"
Comments here:
Canadian Prepper, "Walmart is Warning People to Stock Up Before SHTF!"
Canadian Prepper, 9/7/22:
"Walmart is Warning People to Stock Up Before SHTF!"
Comments here:
Tuesday, September 6, 2022
Gerald Celente, "Prepare For The New World Disorder"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 9/6/22:
"Prepare For The New World Disorder"
"Russia Has Weaponized Gas In Response To Their Weaponization Of Currencies"
Full screen recommended.
"Russia Has Weaponized Gas In Response
To Their Weaponization Of Currencies"
by Epic Economist
"Putin is done playing around. By now it is no secret that Russia is weaponizing gas supplies in retaliation for the West’s weaponization of currencies. The Kremlin is doing everything in its power to add pressure on western nations and make Europeans finally throw in the towel – and they have two main strategies to achieve this. First, they’re maintaining uncertainty over the delivery of energy supplies. The truth is that Russia doesn’t have to cut flows entirely to cause damage – the prospect of going through the winter without Russian gas is enough to spark chaos in many countries. Secondly and much more worryingly, it seems that Russian officials are busy stoking social turbulence in places where soaring natural gas prices are forcing households into energy poverty. And many indicators suggest that they are succeeding.
On Friday, Gazprom announced the delivery of gas supplies through Nord Stream 1 would be halted due to a technical fault, mentioning difficulties repairing German-made turbines in Canada. But that turned out to be a smokescreen. The EU was forced to roll back some of the sanctions against Russia to allow the turbines to be repaired. Government heads assured that there was nothing that could prevent Gazprom from supplying the continent with gas other than Russia’s weaponization of its energy exports.
But none of this should come as a surprise: Russian officials have made it perfectly clear that they hope the worsening energy crisis plaguing Europe, the UK, and the US would undermine the West’s support for Ukraine. “Obviously life is getting worse for people, businessmen, and companies in Europe,” Peskov said. “Of course, ordinary people in these countries will have more and more questions for their leaders.”
Unsurprisingly, with neither side willing to step down, moments after Russia’s official statement EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, twitted that "Putin is using energy as a weapon by cutting supply and manipulating our energy markets", which of course is being done in response to the west's weaponization of currencies and capital flows. In other words, all western nations will continue to suffer. The global energy crisis is likely to reach catastrophic proportions, and higher energy prices will continue to fuel inflation and add more fuel to the cost of living crisis.
Several industry leaders have warned of devastating economic consequences should Russian gas be cut completely. At this point, all indicators are flashing red for the US, the UK, and Europe, where large swathes of the population are falling into energy poverty. Warnings about a global economic downturn this winter are growing louder. But still, governments are still running three steps behind — mostly because they spend too much time second-guessing Russia’s next moves. Instead, they should be paying closer attention to what Moscow is pushing for: social turbulence.
The numbers speak for themselves: In the U.S., 1 in 6 households are at risk of facing utility shutoffs because they can’t keep up with rising energy bills. In Germany, where natural gas prices climbed over 700%, average household bills could rise by between 500 to 1,000 euros this winter — and this could be a conservative estimate. In France, the government is urging consumers to ration energy. For millions of lower-income families in the West, expensive energy prices would force an impossible choice between buying food or fuel. The fact remains that if the West fails to find a comprehensive solution for its population facing financial stress, the impact on our social fabric will be absolutely disastrous."
"In A Nation Ruled By Swine..."
"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile - and the rest of us are f****d until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep. "
- Hunter S. Thompson, "The Great Shark Hunt"
Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
Be kind to yourself, relax, enjoy this...
Vangelis, "Albedo 0.39"
Full screen recommended.
Vangelis, "Albedo 0.39"
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"The Pale Blue Dot"
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
- Carl Sagan
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"The civilization now in jeopardy is all humanity. As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and sky. In our tenure on this planet, we have accumulated dangerous, evolutionary baggage propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders, all of which puts our survival in some doubt. We have also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience, and a great, soaring passionate intelligence, the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity.
Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet earth. But up and in the cosmos, an inescapable perspective awaits. National boundaries are not evidenced when we view the earth from space. Fanatic ethnic or religious or national identifications are a little difficult to support when we see our planet as a fragile, blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.
There are not yet obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours rush inevitably into self-destruction. I dream about it... and sometimes they are bad dreams."
- Carl Sagan
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78 is found within the boundaries of the head strong constellation Aries, some 100 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy. Also known as NGC 772, the island universe is over 100,000 light-years across and sports a single prominent outer spiral arm in this detailed cosmic portrait.
Its brightest companion galaxy, compact NGC 770, is toward the upper right of the larger spiral. NGC 770's fuzzy, elliptical appearance contrasts nicely with a spiky foreground Milky Way star in matching yellowish hues. Tracking along sweeping dust lanes and lined with young blue star clusters, Arp 78's large spiral arm is likely due to gravitational tidal interactions. Faint streams of material seem to connect Arp 78 with its nearby companion galaxies."
Chet Raymo, “Strange”
“Strange”
by Chet Raymo
“In a review in the “New York Times” Book Review, Daniel Handler wrote: “And strange? Well, let’s get this straight: All great books are strange. Every lasting work of literature since the very weird “Beowulf” has been strange, not only because it grapples with the strangeness around us, but also because the effect of originality is startling, making even the oldest books feel like brand new stories.”
Strange: Out-of-the-ordinary, unusual, curious. “The strangeness around us,” says Handler. There is a paradox here. What could be less strange than the world around us? It is the same world that was here yesterday, and the day before that. More to the point: It is a world ruled by law. Inviolable causal bonds. That’s what makes science possible.
And yet, and yet. I walk wary. Strangeness lurks on ever side. Strangeness leaps out of every pebble in the path, every wildflower, every spider web flung between weedy stalks. In the midst of the utterly ordinary the extraordinary abounds. Nothing is so commonplace as to be common. The strangeness of the world, as in literature, has its source in the head, in the convoluted interaction of mind with world. Strange, that we should be here, strangers in a strange land, pilgrims on our own yellow brick roads where nothing is ordinary because everything is perceived through the filter of a unique consciousness.
And strange? Well, let’s get this straight. I hope never to lose the capacity to see the strangeness in the familiar, the curious in the everyday, the exception in the unexceptional.
“I do not expect a miracle,
or an accident,
to set the sight on fire...”
wrote Silvia Plath. Just being here is enough. Just being here is surpassing strange.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
"Sometimes..."
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that has nothing to do with you, this storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.
You have to look! That’s another one of the rules. Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”
- Haruki Murakami
“Closing your eyes won’t make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head – doesn’t this feed the monster? You can’t close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.”
- Richelle E. Goodrich
The Poet: Joy Harjo, "Remember "
"Remember "
"Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the stars stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her
in a bar once in Iowa City.
Remember the suns birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe. I heard her singing Kiowa war
dance songs at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember that language comes from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember. "
- Joy Harjo
"Thought..."
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."
- Bertrand Russell
"Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."
- Thomas A. Edison.
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