So, we rise from the rubble...
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Gregory Mannarino, "IMF Warns Again On Global Economy"
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
Gregory Mannarino, 1/31/23:
"IMF Warns Again On Global Economy"
Comments here:
"Strange Prices At Meijer! This Is Crazy!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/31/23:
"Strange Prices At Meijer! This Is Crazy!"
"In today's vlog we are at Meijer and noticing some strange 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:
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"Strange prices?" Yes indeed...
"We Just Witnessed An Economic Sign That Hasn’t Happened Since The Peak Of The Great Depression In 1932"
"We Just Witnessed An Economic Sign That Hasn’t
Happened Since The Peak Of The Great Depression In 1932"
by Michael Snyder
"Economic conditions are much worse than you are being told. Throughout the past year, prices have been rising much faster than most of our incomes have. As a result, our standard of living has been rapidly declining. It has become increasingly difficult for U.S. households to make it from month to month, and as you will see below, more than a third of all U.S. adults are actually relying on their parents to pay at least some of their bills at this point. But even more alarming is what has been happening to real disposable income. According to Fox Business, the most recent GDP report revealed that the decline in real disposable income that we witnessed in 2022 was the largest that has been measured since 1932…
The most troubling information in the GDP report is the precipitous drop in real disposable income, which fell over $1 trillion in 2022. For context, this is the second-largest percentage drop in real disposable income ever, behind only 1932, the worst year of the Great Depression.
Just think about that for a moment. The last time real disposable income declined this quickly was literally during the peak of the Great Depression. And as our incomes get squeezed tighter and tighter, more Americans are starting to fall behind on their bills. For example, the proportion of subprime auto borrowers that are at least 60 days behind on their payments has just surged to the highest level that we have seen since 2008…
In December, the percentage of subprime auto borrowers who were at least 60 days late on their bills climbed to 5.67% - a major increase from a seven-year low of 2.58% in April 2021, according to Fitch Ratings. It marks the steepest rate of Americans struggling to make their car payments since the 2008 financial crisis."
We are already beginning to witness the largest tsunami of repossessions that we have seen since the “Great Recession”, and it is only going to get worse in the months ahead. One woman in San Antonio that knows that her vehicle could be repossessed at any time has decided that hiding it is the best strategy for now…"For some, however, the only lesson is to try and outsmart the repo man: hardly the best long-term strategy. Take San Antonio native Zhea Zarecor who is currently trying to negotiate with her lender so her 2013 Honda Fit won’t get repossessed. In the meantime, she’s hiding it.
The 53-year-old, who is currently in school for her bachelor’s in information technology (and raking up massive student loans for an education she should have had some 35 years ago) splits the monthly bill for the car - about $178 - with her roommate. But then the roommate lost his job, and with prices for groceries and everyday items increasing, there just wasn’t enough for the car payments.
Zarecor is trying to make extra money with odd jobs like contract secretarial work and participation in medical studies, but it often feels hopeless, she said. “Our money doesn’t go as far as it used to,” she said. “I don’t see prices going down, so the only relief I see is when I get my degree.”
Sadly, most of the country is just barely scraping by at this juncture. As I discussed in a previous article, one recent survey discovered that 57 percent of Americans cannot even afford to pay a $1,000 emergency expense right now. And a different survey has found that a whopping 35 percent of all U.S. adults are still relying on Mom and Dad to pay at least some of the bills…
"More than one third of adults (35%) admit they still have at least one bill on their parents’ tab. According to a new poll of 2,000 Americans, the top three expenses their parents still pay for are rent (19%), groceries (19%), and utilities (16%). In fact, almost one-quarter (24%) of millennials say their parents cover their rent."
Are things really this bad? Unfortunately, economic conditions are only going to get even worse in the months ahead as countless more Americans lose their jobs. On Monday, I was quite saddened to learn that electronics giant Philips will be giving the axe to another 6,000 workers…"Philips announced Monday that it’s cutting another 6,000 jobs worldwide as it works to boost profitability.
The workforce reduction will occur over the next two years with the first 3,000 cuts taking place this year, the Dutch consumer electronics and medical equipment maker said on Monday. In its earnings report, the company revealed it suffered a net loss of 1.6 billion euros in 2022, which is down from a net profit of 3.3 billion euros last year." And it is also being reported that one of my favorite toymakers has decided to eliminate approximately “15% of its global full-time workforce”.
I could go on and on if you would like. In fact, every day I could fill up my articles with nothing but job loss announcements. We have entered a very painful economic downturn, and one prominent Wall Street economist is warning that the full impact of this crisis will not be felt until the second half of 2023…"According to one Wall Street economist, a looming recession this year will feel more like the 1970s than a 2008-07 slump. “People are too focused on ‘08 and 2020. This is more like 1973, 74 and 2021,” Piper Sandler chief global economist Nancy Lazar said on “Mornings with Maria” Monday. Lazar predicted feeling the full impact of a recession in the second half of 2023 as lag effects from the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes take hold."
Actually, it would be quite wonderful if her seemingly gloomy forecast is accurate. Because I don’t believe that we are heading into a slowdown like we experienced during the early 1970s. Rather, I see all sorts of evidence that indicates that we are in the very early stages of the economic equivalent of “the Big One”. I believe that things will be very rough this year, and I believe that the long-term outlook is even worse.
Our leaders assured us that everything would be okay even as they were flooding the system with money and engaging in the greatest debt binge in all of human history. Now a day of reckoning has arrived, and we will get to suffer the consequences of their very foolish decisions."
"Ukraine, The War That Went Wrong" (Excerpt)
"Ukraine, The War That Went Wrong"
By Chris Hedges
Excerpt: "NATO support for the war in Ukraine, designed to degrade the Russian military and drive Vladimir Putin from power, is not going according to plan. The new sophisticated military hardware won't help...Empires in terminal decline leap from one military fiasco to the next. The war in Ukraine, another bungled attempt to reassert U.S. global hegemony, fits this pattern. The danger is that the more dire things look, the more the U.S. will escalate the conflict, potentially provoking open confrontation with Russia. If Russia carries out retaliatory attacks on supply and training bases in neighboring NATO countries, or uses tactical nuclear weapons, NATO will almost certainly respond by attacking Russian forces. We will have ignited World War III, which could result in a nuclear holocaust."
Full, most highly recommended article is here:
"Warning! The Harsh Reality of SHTF No One Is Ready For"
Canadian Prepper, 1/30/23:
"Warning! The Harsh Reality of SHTF No One Is Ready For"
Comments here:
Monday, January 30, 2023
"Judgement Day Is Coming, Are You Ready? Consumers Freak Out; Banks Brace For Impact"
Jeremiah Babe, 1/30/23:
"Judgement Day Is Coming, Are You Ready?
Consumers Freak Out; Banks Brace For Impact"
Comments here:
"15 Things That Today's Middle Class Can No Longer Afford"
Full screen recommended.
"15 Things That Today's Middle Class
Can No Longer Afford"
by Epic Economist
"In the harsh economic environment that we're living in today, middle-class families are getting increasingly more cash-strapped and debt-burdened. In fact, if we compare the patterns of consumption from middle-class households of the 2000s and right now, we can rapidly realize that many of the hallmarks that symbolized that someone has made it to the American dream, - such as the ability to take vacations, or having more than one vehicle per household, or dedicating a share of their incomes to leisure and entertainment, - are actually things today's middle class can no longer afford.
Until 1990, the standard middle-class lifestyle included homeownership, sending children to college, affording health care costs, owning two or more vehicles, traveling at least once a year, and middle-class Americans were also known worldwide for their purchasing power and for boosting the U.S. economy through their spending. Right now, the reality of middle-income earners is definitely not the same. In fact, a whopping 81% of households in the income bracket are facing a consumer recession this year, Primerica revealed. Notably, nearly three-fourths, or 72%, of middle-class workers believe that their income isn’t keeping up with the rising cost of living.
Given that the cost of everyday necessities is squeezing the monthly budgets of middle-class households all over the nation, almost half, or 49% of middle-income earners are relying on credit cards to make ends meet. In the past quarter alone, about 29% of workers in that income bracket have said that their credit card debt has increased. With interest rates at the highest levels in decades, those balances can bulk up pretty fast. However, a new LendingTree survey found that 43% of middle-income Americans expect to add to their debt in the next six months. The share was highest for parents with children under 18, with 58% expecting to take on debt in the first half of 2023. The most common reason for adding debt: Paying for necessities, followed by emergencies and health care costs, LendingTree said.
Many of the things that make life livable are becoming out of reach of our population, and we're having to let go of the things we enjoy as the cost of basic necessities eats a larger share of our pay every month. Being a part of the middle class is more than having access to education and homeownership. In fact, those are essential aspects that should be guaranteed for all income groups. The American middle class is the epitome of a lifestyle that the whole world has embraced. And yet, Americans are being excluded from the culture they created themselves. Our standard of living is declining at a breathtaking speed, and that's a process that gets even worse with each passing year. With a recession at our door, conditions are expected to get even tougher in the foreseeable future.
It's sad but it's true: the American middle class is getting poorer over the years, and in today's video, we compiled several services, products, assets, goods, or lifestyle choices the current generation of middle-income earners can't really spend their money on."
Musical Interlude: Justin Hayward, "The Way of the World"
Full screen recommended.
Justin Hayward, "The Way of the World"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110712.html
Chet Raymo, “Silk Dawn”
“Silk Dawn”
by Chet Raymo
“A magical morning. Warm and still. The hillside is cloaked in a fine, soft mist that will burn away by ten. I walk down the drive to open the gate. The field is carpeted with silk. Silk made visible by dew.
The spiders were there all along, of course. Their webs too. Everyday as I walked through the grass, they were there, unseen. Unknowingly, I crushed them with my footfalls. A field full of snares, each silken net flung across the grass, each net with its tunnel lair where the predator waits, patiently, for dinner. And now they are made visible in all their arachnoid glory, each grass tuft slung with Chinese silk, each furze bush as finely draped in silk as a pasha’s palace.”
"Sometimes I Wonder..."
"Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people
who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it ."
- Laurence Peter
Judge Napolitano, "Sanctions, Tanks & the Ukraine-Russia War"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 1/30/23:
"Sanctions, Tanks & the Ukraine-Russia War"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "W.H.O. Warns: Governments Prepare For Nuclear War"
Gregory Mannarino, 1/30/23:
"W.H.O. Warns: Governments Prepare For Nuclear War"
Comments here:
The Poet: Mark Jarman, "Coyotes"
"Coyotes"
"Is this world truly fallen? They say no.
For there's the new moon, there's the Milky Way,
There's the rattler with a wren's egg in its mouth,
And there's the panting rabbit they will eat.
They sing their wild hymn on the dark slope,
Reading the stars like notes of hilarious music.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?
And yet we're crying over the stars again,
And over the uncertainty of death,
Which we suspect will divide us all forever.
I'm tired of those who broadcast their certainties,
Constantly on their cell phones to their redeemer.
Is this a fallen world? For them it is.
But there's that starlit burst of animal laughter.
The day has sent its fires scattering.
The night has risen from its burning bed.
Our tears are proof that love is meant for life
And for the living. And this chorus of praise,
Which the pet dogs of the neighborhood are answering
Nostalgically, invites our answer, too.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?"
~ Mark Jarman
"Leaning Into The Light..."
“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”
- Barry Lopez
"Children Of Hope..."
"Children of Hope, to life we fondly cling,
Though woe on woe bitter hour may bring;
the spirit shrinks, and Nature dreads to brave,
The doubt, the gloom, the stillness of the grave.
But what is death? – a wing from earth to fee –
a bridge o’er time into eternity."
- Michelle, in “The Fear of Death Considered”
Musical Interlude: Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"
Full screen recommended.
Gnomusy (David Caballero),
"Footprints On The Sea"
"This Is A Brutal Wake Up Call"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 1/30/23:
"This Is A Brutal Wake Up Call"
"We are getting more and more financial experts stepping forward and warning all of us. The warning is simple. Cut back on your debt and try to save as much money as you can. Big problems are coming."
Comments here:
"A Brief Disagreement"
Full screen recommended.
Steve Cutts, "A Brief Disagreement"
"A visual journey into mankind's
favorite pastime throughout the ages."
"We Are Not The First Civilization To Collapse, But We Will Probably Be The Last"
"We Are Not The First Civilization To Collapse,
But We Will Probably Be The Last"
by Chris Hedges
"I am standing atop a 100-foot-high temple mound, the largest known earthwork in the Americas built by prehistoric peoples. The temperatures, in the high 80s, along with the oppressive humidity, have emptied the park of all but a handful of visitors. My shirt is matted with sweat.
I look out from the structure - known as Monks Mound - at the flatlands below, with smaller mounds dotting the distance. These earthen mounds, built at a confluence of the Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, are all that remain of one of the largest pre-Columbian settlements north of Mexico, occupied from around 800 to 1,400 AD by perhaps as many as 20,000 people.
This great city, perhaps the greatest in North America, rose, flourished, fell into decline and was ultimately abandoned. Civilizations die in familiar patterns. They exhaust natural resources. They spawn parasitic elites who plunder and loot the institutions and systems that make a complex society possible. They engage in futile and self-defeating wars. And then the rot sets in. The great urban centers die first, falling into irreversible decay. Central authority unravels. Artistic expression and intellectual inquiry are replaced by a new dark age, the triumph of tawdry spectacle and the celebration of crowd-pleasing imbecility.
“Collapse occurs, and can only occur, in a power vacuum,” anthropologist Joseph Tainter writes in "The Collapse of Complex Societies." “Collapse is possible only where there is no competitor strong enough to fill the political vacuum of disintegration.”
Several centuries ago, the rulers of this vast city complex, which covered some 4,000 acres, including a 40-acre central plaza, stood where I stood. They no doubt saw below in the teeming settlements an unassailable power, with at least 120 temple mounds used as residences, sacred ceremonial sites, tombs, meeting centers and ball courts. Cahokia warriors dominated a vast territory from which they exacted tribute to enrich the ruling class of this highly stratified society. Reading the heavens, these mound builders constructed several circular astronomical observatories - wooden versions of Stonehenge.
The city’s hereditary rulers were venerated in life and death. A half mile from Monks Mound is the seven-foot-high Mound 72, in which archeologists found the remains of a man on a platform covered with 20,000 conch-shell disc beads from the Gulf of Mexico. The beads were arranged in the shape of a falcon, with the falcon’s head beneath and beside the man's head. Its wings and tail were placed underneath the man’s arms and legs. Below this layer of shells was the body of another man, buried face downward. Around these two men were six more human remains, possibly retainers, who may have been put to death to accompany the entombed man in the afterlife. Nearby were buried the remains of 53 girls and women ranging in age from 15 to 30, laid out in rows in two layers separated by matting. They appeared to have been strangled to death.
The poet Paul Valéry noted, “a civilization has the same fragility as a life.”
Across the Mississippi River from Monks Mound, the city skyline of St. Louis is visible. It is hard not to see our own collapse in that of Cahokia. In 1950, St. Louis was the eighth-largest city in the United States, with a population of 856,796. Today, that number has fallen to below 300,000, a drop of some 65 percent. Major employers - Anheuser-Busch, McDonnell-Douglas, TWA, Southwestern Bell and Ralston Purina - have dramatically reduced their presence or left altogether. St. Louis is consistently ranked one of the most dangerous cities in the country. One in five people live in poverty. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has the highest rate of police killings per capita, of the 100 largest police departments in the nation, according to a 2021 report. Prisoners in the city’s squalid jails, where 47 people died in custody between 2009 and 2019, complain of water being shut off from their cells for hours and guards routinely pepper spraying inmates, including those on suicide watch. The city’s crumbling infrastructure, hundreds of gutted and abandoned buildings, empty factories, vacant warehouses and impoverished neighborhoods replicate the ruins of other post-industrial American cities, the classic signposts of a civilization in terminal decline.
“Just as in the past, countries that are environmentally stressed, overpopulated, or both, become at risk of getting politically stressed, and of their governments collapsing,” Jared Diamond argues in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." “When people are desperate, undernourished and without hope, they blame their governments, which they see as responsible for or unable to solve their problems. They try to emigrate at any cost. They fight each other over land. They kill each other. They start civil wars. They figure that they have nothing to lose, so they become terrorists, or they support or tolerate terrorism.”
Pre-industrial civilizations were dependent on the limits of solar energy and constrained by roads and waterways, impediments that were obliterated when fossil fuel became an energy source. As industrial empires became global, their increase in size meant an increase in complexity. Ironically, this complexity makes us more vulnerable to catastrophic collapse, not less. Soaring temperatures (Iraq is enduring 120 degree heat that has fried the country’s electrical grid), the depletion of natural resources, flooding, droughts, (the worst drought in 500 years is devastating Western, Central and Southern Europe and is expected to see a decline in crop yields of 8 or 9 percent), power outages, wars, pandemics, a rise in zoonotic diseases and breakdowns in supply chains combine to shake the foundations of industrial society. The Arctic has been heating up four times faster than the global average, resulting in an accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet and freakish weather patterns. The Barents Sea north of Norway and Russia are warming up to seven times faster. Climate scientists did not expect this extreme weather until 2050.
“Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up,” the anthropologist Ronald Wright warns, calling industrial society “a suicide machine.” In "A Short History of Progress", he writes: "Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress traps. A small village on good land beside a river is a good idea; but when the village grows into a city and paves over the good land, it becomes a bad idea. While prevention might have been easy, a cure may be impossible: a city isn't easily moved. This human inability to foresee - or to watch out for - long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer."
Wright also reflects upon what will be left behind: "The archaeologists who dig us up will need to wear hazmat suits. Humankind will leave a telltale layer in the fossil record composed of everything we produce, from mounds of chicken bones, wet-wipes, tires, mattresses and other household waste to metals, concrete, plastics, industrial chemicals, and the nuclear residue of power plants and weaponry. We are cheating our children, handing them tawdry luxuries and addictive gadgets while we take away what’s left of the wealth, wonder and possibility of the pristine Earth."
Calculations of humanity’s footprint suggest we have been in ‘ecological deficit,’ taking more than Earth’s biological systems can withstand, for at least 30 years. Topsoil is being lost far faster than nature can replenish it; 30 percent of arable land has been exhausted since the mid-20th century. We have financed this monstrous debt by colonizing both past and future, drawing energy, chemical fertilizer and pesticides from the planet’s fossil carbon, and throwing the consequences onto coming generations of our species and all others. Some of those species have already been bankrupted: they are extinct. Others will follow.
As Cahokia declined, violence dramatically increased. Surrounding towns were burned to the ground. Groups, numbering in the hundreds, were slaughtered and buried in mass graves. At the end, “the enemy killed all people indiscriminately. The intent was not merely prestige, but an early form of ethnic cleansing” writes anthropologist Timothy R. Pauketat, in "Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians." He notes that, in one fifteenth-century cemetery in central Illinois, one-third of all adults had been killed by blows to the head, arrow wounds or scalping. Many showed evidence of fractures on their arms from vain attempts to fight off their attackers.
Such descent into internecine violence is compounded by a weakened and discredited central authority. In the later stages of Cahokia, the ruling class surrounded themselves with fortified wooden stockades, including a two-mile long wall that enclosed Monks Mound. Similar fortifications dotted the vast territory the Cahokia controlled, segregating gated communities where the wealthy and powerful, protected by armed guards, sought safety from the increasing lawlessness and hoarded dwindling food supplies and resources.
Overcrowding inside these stockades saw the spread of tuberculosis and blastomycosis, caused by a soil-borne fungus, along with iron deficiency anemia. Infant mortality rates rose, and life spans declined, a result of social disintegration, poor diet and disease.
By the 1400s Cahokia had been abandoned. In 1541, when Hernando de Soto’s invading army descended on what is today Missouri, looking for gold, nothing but the great mounds remained, relics of a forgotten past.
This time the collapse will be global. It will not be possible, as in ancient societies, to migrate to new ecosystems rich in natural resources. The steady rise in heat will devastate crop yields and make much of the planet uninhabitable. Climate scientists warn that once temperatures rise by 4℃, the earth, at best, will be able to sustain a billion people. The more insurmountable the crisis becomes, the more we, like our prehistoric ancestors, will retreat into self-defeating responses, violence, magical thinking and denial.
The historian Arnold Toynbee, who singled out unchecked militarism as the fatal blow to past empires, argued that civilizations are not murdered, but commit suicide. They fail to adapt to a crisis, ensuring their own obliteration. Our civilization’s collapse will be unique in size, magnified by the destructive force of our fossil fuel-driven industrial society. But it will replicate the familiar patterns of collapse that toppled civilizations of the past. The difference will be in scale, and this time there will be no exit."
"Essential Readings"
○
"The 5 Stages of Economic Collapse”
by Dmitry Orlov
Excerpt: “Elizabeth Kübler-Ross defined the five stages of coming to terms with grief and tragedy as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, and applied it quite successfully to various forms of catastrophic personal loss, such as death of a loved one, sudden end to one’s career, and so forth. Several thinkers, notably James Howard Kunstler and, more recently John Michael Greer, have pointed out that the Kübler-Ross model is also quite terrifyingly accurate in reflecting the process by which society as a whole (or at least the informed and thinking parts of it) is reconciling itself to the inevitability of a discontinuous future, with our institutions and life support systems undermined by a combination of resource depletion, catastrophic climate change, and political impotence.
But so far, little has been said specifically about the finer structure of these discontinuities. Instead, there is to be found continuum of subjective judgments, ranging from “a severe and prolonged recession” (the prediction we most often read in the financial press), to Kunstler’s evocative but unscientific-sounding “clusterf**k,” to the ever-popular “Collapse of Western Civilization,” painted with an ever-wider brush-stroke.
For those of us who have already gone through all of the emotional stages of reconciling ourselves to the prospect of social and economic upheaval, it might be helpful to have a more precise terminology that goes beyond such emotionally charged phrases. Defining a taxonomy of collapses might prove to be more than just an intellectual exercise: based on our abilities and circumstances, some of us may be able to specifically plan for a certain stage of collapse as a temporary, or even permanent, stopping point."
Please view this complete article here:
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“The 12 Rules of Survival”
by Laurence Gonzales
Excerpt: “As a journalist, I’ve been writing about accidents for more than thirty years. In the last 15 or so years, I’ve concentrated on accidents in outdoor recreation, in an effort to understand who lives, who dies, and why. To my surprise, I found an eerie uniformity in the way people survive seemingly impossible circumstances. Decades and sometimes centuries apart, separated by culture, geography, race, language, and tradition, the most successful survivors–those who practice what I call “deep survival”– go through the same patterns of thought and behavior, the same transformation and spiritual discovery, in the course of keeping themselves alive.
Not only that but it doesn’t seem to matter whether they are surviving being lost in the wilderness or battling cancer, whether they’re struggling through divorce or facing a business catastrophe – the strategies remain the same. Survival should be thought of as a journey, a vision quest of the sort that Native Americans have had as a rite of passage for thousands of years. Once you’re past the precipitating event– you’re cast away at sea or told you have cancer– you have been enrolled in one of the oldest schools in history. Here are a few things I’ve learned that can help you pass the final exam."
Please view this complete article here:
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"The Collapse Of Complex Societies"
"Political disintegration is a persistent feature of world history. The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses."
Freely download “The Collapse of Complex Societies” here;
Bill Bonner, "Decline and Fall"
"Decline and Fall"
The Seven Stages of Empire,
plus fraud at home and war abroad...
by Bill Bonner
Normandy, France - "Last week ended on a grim note. Americans’ disposable income dropped by more than $1 trillion. This was the second largest drop – since the Great Depression. And the ‘inflation tax’ paid so far by America’s families during the Biden years, totes to $7,400 per household. That is bad news. But who cares? You destroy a nation, first with inflation…then with war. The US elite is working both angles. Last week, it pledged to send 100 US tanks to the Ukraine… prolonging the war… and getting itself in deeper.
This was heralded as a ‘game changer’ for Ukrainian forces. We know nothing about military matters. Still, we can’t help but notice a familiar pattern. Just as a summer leaf dries up in the autumn…and the old duffer forgets where he left his car keys…so does a great power become a not-so-great power.
Fraud and Force: Our beat here is money. But money woes often come in a ‘cluster’ of other troubles. In our opinion, the introduction of the fake US dollar – in 1971 – was really the beginning of America’s great decline (probably between #5 and #6 below). Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…and great empires gotta decline somehow. Typically, they do it with a combination of fraud (inflation) and force (war). As for war…the elite is doing its best to keep the war in the Ukraine going as long as possible…and to prepare the public for war with China.
Meanwhile back on the inflation front, as we saw last week, the Fed is in a rare phase of returning to ‘normal.’ Higher rates are squeezing the extravagance out of the financial markets…forcing the middle class to pay more for mortgages…and generally making the rich less rich.
If this correction is allowed to continue, we can expect asset prices to fall further and interest rates to rise. This is what we call the “Primary Trend.” After 4 decades of boom; we expect at least a couple decades of bust. This would be a good thing for the middle class, because it would stop inflation from stealing its wealth. Ordinary people benefit from ordinary, honest money, not from the Fed’s tricked-up currency.
But…don’t hold your breath. In the first place, ‘The People’ do not control the Fed. The elite do. And while the economy of the last 4 decades was not very pleasant for the middle class, it was a charm for the elite. And the more the Fed helps Mr. Market to ‘correct’ the excesses of the past – that is, cause the rich to lose money – the more the elite are going to want a ‘pivot.’
This inevitably sets up a showdown. Between the feds and Mr. Market…and between what is good for The People (the middle class) and what is going for the elite. It’s going to get confusing…muddled…contradictory. Prices will go up….but what will they mean? Will inflation erase the gains? Will we be making money or losing it? For today, let us stick with the ‘Decline and Fall’…
Seven Stages of Decline: The process is well documented by the connoisseurs of decline – such as Gibbon, Tainter, Spengler and Sir John Glubb. It was Glubb who calculated the average lifespan of an empire; from ashes to ashes, he figured, it was about 250 years. Glubb, known as Glubb Pasha, outlined the stages of empire as follows:
1. The age of outburst (or pioneers).
2. The age of conquests.
3. The age of commerce.
4. The age of affluence.
5. The age of intellect.
6. The age of decadence.
7. The age of decline and collapse.
Which, of course, raises the question: where are we? Typically, an empire aids in its own destruction…with excess expenses, complications, and corruptions…weakening its economy internally as other countries rise up.
Since 1945, for example, the US has spent trillions of dollars on ‘defense.’ But its safety was never in danger. Instead, it involved itself in ‘wars of choice’…standard practice for empires that are peaking out. There is nothing really at stake. So, the idea is to spend money, not to win wars.
On Abrams tanks, for example. The Abrams is a huge, sophisticated machine. It was built to protect the profits of Chrysler Defense, not to defend the USA. It would only make sense as a defensive weapon if we believed a foreign army could attack us on land…as in, Chinese hoards bursting across the 49th parallel…or the Iranian Guards suddenly crossing the Rio Grande and advancing on Dallas. Neither of those things are plausible.
Iron and Brass: Instead, the tank is sent far away, into one foreign quagmire after another. There, it serves its real purpose well. It inevitably breaks down, and needs careful maintenance and high-tech repair…involving huge additional expense. Weighing 68 tons, it is a monster headache for road repairs.
Money is often a hindrance in warfare, not a help. It tends to buy weapons systems that are too complex…and command structures with too many overpaid consultants and too much top brass. Here’s a smallish illustration from the National Defense University Press: "There are approximately 900 Active-duty general/flag officers (GO/FOs) today of 1.3 million troops. This is a ratio of 1 GO/FO for every 1,400 troops. During World War II, an admittedly different era, there were more than 2,000 GO/FOs for a little more than 12 million Active troops (1:6,000). This development represents “rank creep” that does not enhance mission success but clutters the chain of command, adds bureaucratic layers to decisions, and costs taxpayers additional money from funding higher paygrades to fill positions." Yes, the leaf turns brown…and the empire prepares for its defeat!"
Douglas Macgregor, "Massive Russian Offensives Are Crushing Ukraine"
Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 1/30/23:
"Massive Russian Offensives Are Crushing Ukraine"
"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics. No ego descriptions. No small talk. Straight to the point. Calls with the relevant analysis only."
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Douglas Macgregor, 1/30/23:
"300,000 Combat Troops"
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Jim Kunstler, "The War Against Us"
"The War Against Us"
by Jim Kunstler
“We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy our economy.” - Chris Hedges
"The question you might ask these days: how did we weaponize everything in American life against ourselves? Can you name an institution that is not at war with the people of this land? The exact mechanisms for all that bad faith stand in plain sight these days, and persons responsible can be easily identified. What’s missing are discernable motives. For now, it just looks like the greatest collective act of ass-covering in history.
It’s pretty clear, for instance, that all the criminal misconduct in the FBI/DOJ - continuing to this moment - emanates from the years-long effort to cover up the seditious campaign to nullify Donald Trump starting well before Nov. 8, 2016. All the players in the agencies, and their news media accomplices, stand to lose at least their reputations, if the public cared about how dishonestly they acted. Many of those still working would lose their jobs and their livelihoods too, and quite a few would lose their freedom in prison. So, their motive to keep up the skullduggery is simple self-preservation.
The Covid-19 pandemic looks like a pretty large-scale racketeering operation gone awry with plenty to hide. You have the reckless, symbiotic relations between the US public health bureaucracy and the pharmaceutical companies, and tons of money at stake, plus the colossal ego of hapless Dr. Anthony Fauci wishing to pose as an historic world-saver, another Louis Pasteur or Alexander Fleming. And then you have the amazingly foolish act of imposing an untested, dangerous “vaccine” on the world, and years of lying and covering-up the repercussions of injury and death from it. And then the opaque and nefarious roles of other actors in the story ranging from the CCP to the WEF to the Bill Gates and George Soros empires of money in what looks a genocide.
It’s harder to unpack the enigma of the obviously unfit “Joe Biden” getting installed in the White House. My guess: the Obama claque behind him knew that “JB” was easily manipulable, and that his lame rivals, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Liz Warren, and especially the proud socialist Bernie Sanders, could not be counted on to do exactly what they were told. The Obama claque especially needed a president to appoint agency heads who would cover-up its creation of an Intel Community Frankenstein, and all that monster has inflicted on the American public.
Of course, the main device the claque had for pulling “Joe Biden’s” strings was the flagrant record of his many years of bribery and treason. The major effort to cover-up all that was the DOJ and FBI’s suppression since 2019 of the Hunter Biden laptop, and the most stunning upshot was that the incendiary evidence of bribery and treason came out anyway, because so many copies of the laptop’s hard-drive got distributed. And absolutely nothing was ever done about it, nor about the actual persons - Christopher Wray, William Barr, and Merrick Garland - who worked to squash it, making themselves accomplices to ongoing bribery and treason.
All this criminal misconduct is connected in a foul matrix of lawbreaking. The fact-patterns are well-established. Dozens of excellent books have catalogued the misdeed of RussiaGate and scores of websites daily dissect the shady intrigues around the “vaccine” crusade. The infamies of gross election interference have been systematically laid-out in the Twitter Files of the past two months. Many books, published essays, and videos substantiate the reality of massive ballot fraud in 2020 and 2022, including the felonious role of Mark Zuckerberg’s front org, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, and the election law manipulations or Lawfare goblin Marc Elias.
There’s an understandable wish that upcoming hearings in Congress will lead to a reckoning for all of this. To banish consequence from public life, as we have done, is a pretty grave insult to nature, but who can tell whether accountability might restore our institutions at this point. We may be too far gone. The US is visibly collapsing now: our economy, our financial arrangements, our culture, our influence in world affairs, and our basic consensus about reality. We’re entering a phase of disorder and hardship that is likely to moot the further depredations of a government at war with its people. For one thing, it’s becoming impossible to pretend that this vicious leviathan has the money to carry on because the money is only pretending to be money.
It’s no wonder that the collective ability for sense-making has failed. It will be quickly restored by each of us in the scramble to survive these disorders and hardships. The bewildering hypotheticals of recent years begin to dissolve like mist on the mountain and things come back into focus: your health, your daily bread, your shelter, your associations with other people close to you, your values, and most of all the power of your own choices. Nature, much insulted and maligned, will sort out the rest."
"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Crazy! What's Next!?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/30/23:
"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Crazy! What's Next!?"
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi 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!"
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"Economic Market Snapshot 1/30/23"
"Economic Market Snapshot 1/30/23"
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Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
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Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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Job cuts and much more.
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
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And now... The End Game...
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