So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, December 6, 2023
"The Need For Roots"
"The Need For Roots"
by Addison Wiggin
“Wow, baby, you got problems,” Jeffrey Tucker quipped to the young waitress in Miami who was serving him chocolate pancakes. He tells the story with a coy smile and a glint in his eye in this week’s Wiggin Session. “A whole generation was raised with this idea that it’s all just gibberish,” Tucker explains. “That there’s powerful people. They give you money if they want. They take it away when they want, and it has nothing to do with me. And a whole generation believes this…”
Tucker, further: "I was talking to the waitress and I said, “Well, how’s business?” and that sort of thing. And she said, “Well, it’s pretty good. Some people tip a lot. Some people tip a little bit. But I’ve realized something. It’s all nonsense! There’s infinite amounts of money. It’s just a matter of playing your cards right. Then you can grab it.” I said, “What do you mean, infinite amounts of money?” “Oh, yeah. They just print. They just print what they need. All this, it’s fake. Everything is fake. The whole world’s fake!”
We see this anecdote as part of a generational “sea change” - one that scares the proverbial crap out of us. It scared us 15, nay 20 years ago when we started our campaign to understand what “the mother’s milk” of artificial money printing was doing to the purchasing power of the American dollar. Putting all the pieces together and how that leads to the national debt and all that.
It seems that our current conception of money is as if there’s some magic prosperity machine that’s just running all the time. Nobody believes anymore that there is a connection between what you do and the money you make. Our labor doesn’t translate into the economic position we find ourselves in anymore.
During the interview, we were reminded of an essay our friend and mentor Bill Bonner wrote in the early aughts - all those years ago - on the concept of “deracination.” Parsing the Latin, the word means you lose your roots. You lose your connection to the land, more specifically. You lose connection to what is real. Bill expounds: "We are all deracinated, cut off from direct knowledge of the things that really matter to us. We don’t know what’s in the food we eat…nor how it is prepared. We don’t know who writes our software programs, nor do we have any idea how they actually do it. Mass investors don’t know what the companies they buy actually do, and have way of measuring the value of the stocks, except for recent price trends.
We are intrigued by this metaphor because it articulates a difficult to understand critique of Wall Street. They are just flipping paper contracts back and forth. $117 trillion out there in options on any given trading day? And those are just paper contracts that are traded back and forth. There’s no production value behind that."
That’s a whole rabbit hole in and of itself, but that’s what we see in Tucker’s anecdote about the Miami waitress who says, “Yeah, whatever. Give me a tip or don’t, it doesn’t matter to me. This is just the way life is anymore.” Bill continues: "And now wealth exists purely in digital form - nothing but long strands of 1’s and 0’s that convey the necessary information and have no tangible or individual embodiment of any sort. You cannot see it, touch it, feel it, eat it, weigh it or even use it to light a cigar. But it seems to do the job."
Is this deracinated wealth any less real, or less reliable, than analog wealth? Everything’s fake and it doesn’t matter. What a scary, nihilistic idea. We can trace a lot of this sentiment to the Great Financial Crisis of ’08-’09. Bernanke’s zero interest rate policies massively distorted the production structure, causing an explosion of investment in media and Big Tech.
Large corporations had unlimited access to capital at very cheap rates, and there was no limit to the amount of people they could hire. If you show up with the right credentials, you got a quarter million dollars even though you did absolutely nothing. And there was no check on the growth of these companies because money was so cheap.
Powell was left trying to unravel this mess. Then lockdowns happened, interest rates were slammed back to zero, and these same people making a quarter million dollars are suddenly sitting at home for 12 months doing absolutely nothing. Tack on stimulus payments to their already bloated salaries… and you’ve got one helluva inflationary bubble. You can’t do that to a whole generation and have them think logically anymore. So it goes..."
Bill Bonner, "New Money, Old Habits"
"New Money, Old Habits"
Buffett goes to cash, Friedman shirks
gold and the economy goes to hell...
by Bill Bonner
"Out of the crooked timber of humanity,
no straight thing was ever built."
~ Immanuel Kant
Baltimore, Maryland - "Today, we write about a straight thing…that got a kink. Financially+ says: "Warren Buffett's Advice To Nervous Investors: 'Incredible Period' For U.S. Economy Growth Is Coming To An End." "Buffett’s recent cautionary remarks mark a significant departure from his usual optimistic view of the U.S. economy. So, what has led to this change in perspective? It’s a combination of several factors, including persistent high inflation, escalating interest rates, and an ongoing banking crisis. These challenges have collectively contributed to Warren Buffett and his longstanding business partner, Charlie Munger, adopting a more prudent stance regarding the prospects for investment returns in the upcoming year. Munger succinctly summed it up by saying, “Get used to making less.”
The duo’s cautious outlook for the economy is also mirrored in Berkshire Hathaway’s investment portfolio. The company was a net seller of equities in the first quarter of 2023, generating $10.4 billion in proceeds after accounting for purchases. Consequently, Berkshire’s cash reserves swelled from $128.6 billion at the end of the previous year to approximately $130.6 billion."
Yes, Buffett and the late Charlie Munger were both geniuses. But they also had the good fortune to be alive and investing at a time when America’s central bank was pumping trillions in new ‘liquidity’ into the markets. That period is over. And Buffett is doing what we recommended: going to cash. This new phase began in July 2020. Its actual shape and distinction? We don’t quite know yet. But it is different in every dimension from the period that made Buffett and Munger rich. Let’s look back.
Financialization and politicization: The period, 1950-1980, was arguably the high water mark for America. It was then that Buffett learned, from Ben Graham, to buy good companies cheap…and hold them for a long time. Later, he learned from Munger to buy them at fair prices; getting them cheap was nice but not necessary.
But in 1971, the US straightened out its money system…and by 1980, the new system was already bending and twisting the entire economy. Before 1980, almost all the comparisons and all the measures were favorable to the US. Trade, exports, jobs, incomes, art, culture…you name it; America was number 1. After 1980, almost all the indicators slipped and slid… Among them were these not-much-noticed but revealing details.
Real wages for ordinary people rose about 2.3% per year in the first period. In the second – since 1980 – they’ve been flat. The October 2023 report on inflation-adjusted wages in the goods-producing sector shows no gain since October 1978.
Second, government transfers as a percent of GDP were less than 10% before 1980. After, they rose to almost 20% by 2020 and have now settled back down to 15%.
There was a twist. After 1980, the percentage of the total output that was spent by someone who didn’t earn it went up. The post-1971 money system favored ‘financialization” and politicization – not new products and services. If there was an increase in overall wealth, it did not go to the wage-slaves who earned it. It went to those who got the ‘transfers’…and to Wall Street.
Crooked Timber: The real economy is composed of people who offer goods or services to others…in exchange for money…which they use to buy goods or services from others. That was how the pre-1980 economy did so well. Providing better goods or services increased real wealth. So wages rose.
Post-1980 was a different story. The new paper was more flexible...and more easily persuaded to go into the pockets of those who controlled it. This new money system was largely Milton Friedman’s creation. He thought he could eliminate inflation and deflation by taking gold out of the picture. Henceforth, people would have no option but to stick with the government’s paper…and no reason not to.
Friedman was a brilliant economist, but not a very good judge of crooked timber. In his theoretical world, economists at the Fed would allow an increase in Fed holdings (which replaced gold as the system’s ballast) of 3% per year. No one would have any reason to fear inflation – because the geniuses at the Fed wouldn’t overdo it. And no one would have reason to fear a Great Depression-style meltdown either…because the Fed could feed an infinite amount of ‘liquidity’ to the banking system, making a system-wide deflation almost impossible.
New Money, Old Habits: But in the real world, people are neither always good, nor always bad, but always subject to influence. And the influence of being about to ‘print’ money has always triumphed over prudence and propriety.
As we saw yesterday, the Fed consistently increased the money supply above and beyond the rate of GDP growth…reaching 9 times Friedman’s 3% target during the worst of the Trump years. This new money wasn’t earned; it was borrowed. Mostly by Wall Street and the federales themselves. And here we see the result: Total debt to GDP was about 150% in the first period, 1950-1980…and went to 350% in the second period, 1980-2020.
The new ‘money’ directly increased our collective debt, indirectly increased prices for stocks and bonds….and made Buffett and Munger a lot of money for themselves and their shareholders. That chapter has now come to an end. Today’s story – economic, financial, political – is different in almost every way. In particular, the new liquidity has been borrowed and spent, but the burden of debt remains…along with the inflation/deflation debt crisis that Milton Friedman thought he had avoided.
Tomorrow…we’ll let Former Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, explain how the US has changed politically."
Dan, I Allegedly, "They Want You Out of Business"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 12/6/23
"They Want You Out of Business"
Comments here:
"World War III Prelude, 12/6/23"
Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 12/6/23
"Israel Has Lost This War Because
The Entire World Is Rallied Behind Palestine Hamas"
o
Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 12/6/23
"Ballistic Missiles Hit Israeli
Nuclear Missile Base In Tiberias!"
"Forces aligned with the Palestinian resistance launched a surprise missile attack on an Israeli military base housing the country’s secretive nuclear arsenal. Despite the site's protection by the much-touted Iron Dome missile defense system, the missiles breached the defenses and struck the base. This covert attack, previously undisclosed by Israel, showcases the Palestinian resistance's ability to inflict significant damage amid Israel's ongoing forceful approach to the Palestinian cause. Reports suggest enhancements in Palestinian rockets, granting them extended range and the capability to target Israel’s concealed military facilities."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 12/6/23
"'Surprise Waiting For...' Al Quds Threatens
IDF As Israel Bombards South Gaza"
"Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, has issued a deadly warning to Israel. The group, which is fighting alongside Hamas in Gaza, has threatened the IDF. Islamic Jihad said that the IDF has only seen a small part of what is waiting for them. The group claimed that the Palestinian resistance is in "very good condition." Al Quds Brigade also claimed that the resilience of their fighters has taken Israeli forces by surprise, and they have suffered heavy losses on the Gaza battlefield."
Comments here:
Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Emergency Meetings; DEFCON 2 For 48 Hours; Russia's Baltic Crisis; Yemen"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/6/23
"Alert! Emergency Meetings; DEFCON 2 For 48 Hours;
Russia's Baltic Crisis; Yemen"
Comments here:
Tuesday, December 5, 2023
Jeremiah Babe, "Alert! US Water System Under Attack"
Jeremiah Babe, 12/5/23
"Alert! US Water System Under Attack, Put Food
And Water Away; This Is Not A Civilized Society"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Alpha”
Vangelis, “Alpha”
This tune always made me think, despite ourselves, of the relentless
March of Mankind across the ages towards our unknown destiny...
“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."
- Scott Morse
"A Look to the Heavens"
"In silhouette against a crowded star field along the tail of the arachnalogical constellation Scorpius, this dusty cosmic cloud evokes for some the image of an ominous dark tower.
In fact, clumps of dust and molecular gas collapsing to form stars may well lurk within the dark nebula, a structure that spans almost 40 light-years across this gorgeous telescopic portrait. Known as a cometary globule, the swept-back cloud, is shaped by intense ultraviolet radiation from the OB association of very hot stars in NGC 6231, off the upper edge of the scene. That energetic ultraviolet light also powers the globule's bordering reddish glow of hydrogen gas. Hot stars embedded in the dust can be seen as bluish reflection nebulae. This dark tower, NGC 6231, and associated nebulae are about 5,000 light-years away."
"Too Often..."
"The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It’s overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt."
- Leo Buscaglia
Adventures With Danno, "Food Shortage Report December 2023: Prepare For The Worst!"
Adventures With Danno, 12/5/23
"Food Shortage Report December 2023:
Prepare For The Worst!"
"We are preparing for the worst as we continue to get in reports of different food items, becoming harder and harder to find. As prices continue to rise in the grocery stores due to inflation and other factors, we see many products disappear off the shelves."
Comments here:
Gerald Celente, "As The Dollar Dies The Future Is Paved With Gold"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 12/5/23
"As The Dollar Dies The Future Is Paved With Gold"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
"Cipolla’s 5 Laws of Human Stupidity"
Full screen recommended.
"Cipolla’s 5 Laws of Human Stupidity"
"Carlo Cipolla's Law of Stupidity states that 'always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.' Even though Cipolla originally wrote about the principle and its consequences for society in the form of an amusing letter to his friends, it gained wide attention. Today Cipolla's law is often used to highlight the importance of critical thinking and careful decision making in order to counteract the potential effects of endemic ignorance."
Comments here:
"By The Numbers: The Destruction of the American Middle Class"
"Note from Addison: “The real problem is that the US economy has done such a poor job of generating middle-class employment opportunities,” writes David Stockman in an article published by the Brownstone Institute.
Mr Stockman self-publishes the Contra Corner. The Brownstone Institute, founded by Jeffrey Tucker and the topic of this week’s Wiggin Session, republishes some of his analysis. They made him an honorary “scholar” - most of the people they publish couldn’t get their stuff published elsewhere. We were David’s publisher for several years…
“It took 1,400X more workers at the bottom of the labor market to generate the same amount of wage income as the top-tier earners,” Stockman continues. And then, with more floral language: “So ensnared, it will continue to flood the financial markets with the cheap debt and artificial liquidity which is the mother’s milk of speculative excess.”
You’ll find that today’s piece by Mr Stockman is more data-heavy. Perhaps that is why it hasn’t been shared except on alternative media sources. We think it deserves a read. Enjoy, Addison."
"By The Numbers:
The Destruction of the American Middle Class"
by David Stockman
“Information is the oil of the 21st century,
and analytics is the combustion engine.”
- Peter Sondergaard
"Since money-printing went into permanent high gear after the dotcom crash in 2000, the top 1% of households have gained $20 million each in inflation-adjusted net worth. Likewise, the top 0.1% or 131,000 households at the tippy top of the economic ladder have gained $88 million each in inflation-adjusted net worth. Needless to say, the net worth gains available to the wage-earning classes are almost exclusively from what they manage to save after absorbing the relentlessly rising cost of living. And we do mean relentless.
Accordingly, during the last 22 years the median real annual wage, as tracked by Social Security payroll tax records, has risen by only 14.5% or just $235 per annum. And, no, we didn’t omit any zeros from that figure. These piddling gains amount to just $4.50 per week on average. These annual inflation-adjusted gains in the median wage compare to real net worth gains of nearly $1 million and $4 million per annum for the top 1% and top 0.1%, respectively. In relative terms, these annual wealth gains for the top 1% were 4,250X larger than the median real wage gain and 17,000X larger for the top 0.1%.
Needless to say, outsized gains at the top of the economic ladder are not owing to a superior growth of national income, which, in turn, might have been reflected in higher capitalized values for financial assets. Instead, the bulk of these gains are attributable to valuation multiple expansion. Thus, the net worth of the top 1% computed to 135% of GDP in 2000, but now stands at 207%. Likewise, the net worth of the top 0.1% rose from 50% to 85% of GDP during this 22-year period.
Stated differently: the values of stocks, bonds, real estate and other financial assets have soared because the Fed’s massive emissions of cheap credit and excess liquidity have caused their prices to be bid skyward by leveraged speculators. And that part of the problem can only be effectively addressed by banning the Fed from conducting open market operations on Wall Street and owning or collateralizing government debt, as we amplify below.
But that’s just half the problem. On the other end of the economic ladder, the real median wage has lagged badly because the Fed’s inflationary policies have drastically reduced the purchasing power of domestic wages. At the same time, it has also fostered a massive offshoring of high-productivity, high-pay goods and services output and employment, thereby causing the mix of wages in the US economy to skew steadily lower.
In this context, the Social Security Administration’s recent release of annual wage statistics for 2022 is an eye-opener, and also puts the lie to Joe Biden’s preposterous bragging about the Administration’s economic accomplishments. It turns out that the above cited median annual wage for 2022 was just slightly above $40,000, and that by definition half of the nation’s 172 million workers with wage records earned less than that amount. To be exact, 84.5 million workers posted annual earnings of $40,000 per year or less in 2022, with an average annual earnings level of just $17,900.
That’s right. The average worker in the bottom half of the wage distribution generated earnings that do not even remotely support a middle-class living standard. In fact, this figure amounts to only 65% of the Federal poverty line for a household of 4 persons ($27,750) and is barely above the $14,580 poverty level for a single person household. In other words, the overwhelming bulk of the 84.5 million workers in the bottom half of the wage distribution pulled in paychecks over the course of 2022 which were below or just above the Federal poverty line!
That is to say, the US economy is badly broken, yet you do not hear a peep from either wing of the Uniparty. The above cited figures have been the same in relative terms for many years, yet the Donald claimed to have produced the Greatest Economy Ever and Sleepy Joe has the nerve to endlessly tout the virtues of Bidenomics.
As it happens, a good part of the problem is that the overwhelming bulk of these 84.5 million workers not only receive low hourly rates, but also experience gainful employment only on a part-time or intermittent basis. For instance, there were nearly 29 million payroll records in 2022 where total earnings were less than $10,000 with an average of $4,250. Even at the minimum wage, the latter would amount to only 566 hours of paid employment or about 28% of a standard 2,000-hour work year. There were nearly another 10 million workers who posted earnings of between $10,000 and $15,000, with an average of $12,477. Again, that amounts to just 1,650 hours of paid work, even at the Federal minimum wage.
In all, these 39 million bottom-of-the-ladder jobs generated about $244 billion of aggregate wage income in 2022. That was roughly equal to the $236 billion earned by the 28,500 workers with wages of $3.5 million or higher.
Again, the problem is not that 28,500 workers made a lot of money last year, averaging more than $8 million each. Presumably their talents and value-added in the marketplace warranted such wage and salary compensation. The real problem is that the US economy has done such a poor job of generating middle-class employment opportunities that it took 1,400X more workers at the bottom of the labor market to generate the same amount of wage income as the top-tier earners.
In all, the 84.5 million workers below the median annual wage ($40,000) generated $1.51 trillion of aggregate wage income in 2022. That is to say, 50% of the employed labor force generated just 15% of the $10.53 trillion of aggregate wage income reported by the Social Security Administration.
Moreover, given the skew to the low wage end, the average income of the bottom 50% of workers computed to only the aforementioned $17,900. And to repeat, that’s not a typo, either. It’s the actual average wage income of 84.5 million US employees, who represent a larger work force than the total population of either England, France, Italy, or even Germany. In short, a huge share of the workforce is no longer even remotely middle-income. That’s underscored by the fact that the other half of the US workforce - the 84.5 million workers with 2022 wages above the median level - generated an average income that was nearly six times higher at $102,000.
So the question recurs. Why isn’t the US economy generating middle-income jobs at the scale needed to provide better opportunities to the 84.5 million workers below the median wage level? The short answer, of course, is that the US economy desperately needs far less speculation on Wall Street and far more productive investment on Main Street - when, in fact, the opposite has been happening during the past two decades.
To wit, net real private investment (i.e. after inflation and D&A) declined from 6.7% of real GDP in the year 2000 to just 4.8% as of 2022. Yet given the fearsome competitive pressures of the global labor and product markets, the US economy actually needs net investment at rates well above historical levels. More to come..."
o
"How many times do you have to get hit over
the head until you figure out who's hitting you?"
- Harry S. Truman
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Bah Humbug: The Police State Wants Us To Be a Nation of Snowflakes
"Bah Humbug: The Police State Wants
Us To Be a Nation of Snowflakes"
By John & Nisha Whitehead
“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.” - Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"
"What a year. It feels as if government Grinches and corporate Scrooges have been working overtime to drain every last drop of joy, kindness and liberty from the world. After endless months of being mired in political gloom and doom, we could all use a little Christmas cheer right now.
Unfortunately, Christmas has become embattled in recent years, co-opted by rampant commercialism, straight-jacketed by political correctness, and denuded of so much of its loveliness, holiness and mystery. Indeed, the season for giving has turned into the season for getting…and for getting offended. To a nation of snowflakes, Christmas has become yet another trigger word.
When I was a child in the 1950s, the magic of Christmas was promoted in the schools. We sang Christmas carols in the classroom. There were cutouts of the Nativity scene on the bulletin board, along with the smiling, chubby face of Santa and Rudolph. We were all acutely aware that Christmas was magic.
Fast forward to the present day, and Christmas has become fodder for the politically correct culture wars. Over the years, Christmas casualties in the campaign to create one large national safe space have ranged from the beloved animated classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (denounced for promoting bullying and homophobia) to the Oscar-winning tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (accused of being a date rape anthem) crooned by everyone from Dean Martin to Will Ferrell and Zooey Deschanel in the movie "Elf."
Also on the endangered species Christmas list are such songs as “Deck the Halls,” “Santa Baby,” and “White Christmas.” One publishing company even re-issued their own redacted version of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem “Twas the night before Christmas” in order to be more health conscious: the company edited out Moore’s mention of Santa smoking a pipe (“The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, / And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath.”)
In the politically correct quest to avoid causing offense, Christmas keeps getting axed. Examples abound.
Schools across the country now avoid anything that alludes to the true meaning of Christmas such as angels, the baby Jesus, stables and shepherds.
In many of the nation's schools, Christmas carols, Christmas trees, wreaths and candy canes have also been banned as part of the effort to avoid any reference to Christmas, Christ or God. One school even outlawed the colors red and green, saying they were Christmas colors and, thus, illegal.
Students asked to send seasonal cards to military troops have been told to make them “holiday cards” and instructed not to use the words “Merry Christmas” on their cards.
Many schools have redubbed their Christmas concerts as “winter holiday programs” and refer to Christmas as a “winter festival.” Some schools have cancelled holiday celebrations altogether to avoid offending those who do not celebrate the various holidays.
In Minnesota, a charter school banned the display of a poster prepared to promote the school’s yearbook as a holiday gift because the poster included Jack Skellington from Tim Burton’s "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and other secular Christmas icons, not to mention the word “Christmas.”
In New Jersey, one school district banned traditional Christmas songs such as “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night” from its holiday concerts. A New Jersey middle school cancelled a field trip to attend a performance of a play based on Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" because some might have found it "offensive."
In Texas, a teacher in Texas who decorated her door with a scene from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” including a scrawny tree and Linus, was forced to take it down lest students be offended or feel uncomfortable.
In Connecticut, teachers were instructed to change the wording of the classic poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to “Twas the Night Before a Holiday.”
In Virginia, a high school principal debated about whether he could mention Santa or distribute candy canes given that they were symbols of Christmas.
In Massachusetts, a fourth-grade class was asked to list 25 things that reminded them of Christmas. When one young student asked if she could include “Jesus,” her teacher replied that she could get fired if Christmas’ namesake appeared on the list.
Things have not been much better outside the schools, muddled by those who subscribe to the misguided notion that the Constitution requires that anything religious in nature be banned from public places. In one West Virginia town, although the manger scene (one of 350 light exhibits in the town's annual Festival of Lights) included shepherds, camels and a guiding star, the main attractions - Jesus, Mary and Joseph - were nowhere to be found due to concerns about the separation of church and state.
In Chicago, organizers of a German Christkindlmarket were informed that the public Christmas festival was no place for the Christmas story. Officials were concerned that clips of the film “The Nativity Story,” which were to be played at the festival, might cause offense.
In Delaware, a Girl Scout troop was prohibited from carrying signs reading “Merry Christmas” in their town’s annual holiday parade.
Clearly, Christmas has become one of many casualties in the misguided dispute over the so-called “separation of church and state,” a controversy that has given rise to a disconcerting and unconstitutional attempt to sanitize public places of any reference to God or religion.
Yet there’s a really simple solution to this annual angst of whether students and teachers can display Christmas-related posters, wear Christmas colors of red and green or sing Christmas songs, and that is for government officials to stop being such Humbugs and create a vibrant, open environment where all expression can flourish.
While the First Amendment prohibits the government from forcing religion on people or endorsing one particular religion over another, there is no legitimate legal reason why people should not be able to celebrate the season freely or wish each other a Merry Christmas or even mention the word Christmas. After all, the First Amendment affirms the right to freedom for religion, not freedom from religion.
Hoping to clear up the legal misunderstanding over the do’s and don’ts of celebrating Christmas, The Rutherford Institute’s Constitutional Q&A on “Twelve Rules of Christmas” provides basic guidelines for lawfully celebrating Christmas in schools, workplaces and elsewhere.
Yet while Christmas may be the “trigger” for purging Christmas from public places, government forums and speech - except when it profits Corporate America - it is part and parcel of the greater trend in recent years to whittle away at free speech and trample the First Amendment underfoot.
Anything that might raise the specter of controversy is avoided at all costs. We are witnessing the emergence of an unstated yet court-sanctioned right, one that makes no appearance in the Constitution and yet seems to trump the First Amendment at every turn: the right to not be offended.
In this way, emboldened by phrases such as “hate crimes,” “bullying,” “extremism” and “microaggressions,” free speech has been confined to carefully constructed “free speech zones,” criminalized when it skates too close to challenging the status quo, shamed when it butts up against politically correct ideals, and muzzled when it appears dangerous. At the slightest hint of trouble, government officials (and corporations) are inclined to chuck anything that might be objectionable.
Yet when all is said and done, what the police state really wants is a nation of snowflakes, snitches and book burners: a legalistic, intolerant, elitist, squealing bystander nation willing to turn on each other and turn each other in for the slightest offense, while being incapable of presenting a united front against the threats posed by the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.
You want to know why this country is in the state it’s in? The answer is the same no matter what the problem might be, whether it’s the economy, government corruption, police brutality, endless wars, censorship, falling literacy rates, etc.: every one of these problems can be sourced back to the fact that “we the people” have stopped thinking for ourselves and relinquished responsibility for our lives and well-being to a government entity that sees us only as useful idiots.
The Greek philosopher Socrates believed in teaching people to think for themselves and in the free exchange of ideas. For his efforts, he was accused of corrupting the youth and was put to death. However, his legacy lived on in the Socratic method of teaching: posing questions that help young and old discover the answers by learning to think for themselves.
Now even the ability to think for oneself is in danger of extinction. As Rod Serling, creator of the classic sci-fi series Twilight Zone and one of the most insightful commentators on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”
We face an immense threat in our society from this drive to obliterate our history and traditions in order to erect a saccharine view of reality. In the process, we are creating a schizophrenic world for our children to grow up in, and it is neither healthy nor will it produce the kind of people who will be able to face the challenges of a future ruled by a totalitarian regime.
As I make clear in my book "Battlefield America: The War on the American People" and in its fictional counterpart "The Erik Blair Diaries," you can’t sanitize reality. You can’t scrub out of existence every unpleasant thought or idea. You can’t legislate tolerance. You can’t create enough safe spaces to avoid the ugliness that lurks in the hearts of men and women. You can’t fight ignorance with the weapons of a police state.
What you can do, however, is step up your game. Opt for kindness over curtness, and civility over censorship. Choose peace over politics, and freedom over fascism. Find common ground with those whose politics or opinions or lifestyles may not jive with your own. Do your part to make the world a little brighter and a little lighter, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have a chance of digging our way out of this hole."
Bill Bonner, "A Case of Shrinking Money"
"A Case of Shrinking Money"
Wall Street greed, old work boots, gypsy wagons...
and a disappearing money supply.
by Bill Bonner
“We are living in a world that doesn’t have enough money.”
~ Ray Dalio
Baltimore, Maryland - "We’re pausing today; we picked up a bad cold somewhere along the way. And we’re troubled. We’ve been away from the old farm in Maryland for most of the last 30 years. But it’s always a pleasure to come home. Like old friends, we find our boots…and our tools, right where we left them.
A Piece of the Boom: But the neighborhood has changed. How? Immigration. The immigrants come from New York and Florida…California and Wyoming. They are eager to get a piece of the boom in the Washington area, with some of the highest salaries in the country. And now, the character of Southern Maryland has completely changed. It is now a distant suburb of Washington, with probably fewer than one resident out of 100 who has ever caught a crab or even seen a tobacco plant. The new immigrants don’t seem to know where they are….and don’t care.
Wherever we go, we have a project waiting. Stone walls in Ireland. Fallen down adobe shacks in Argentina. A loft apartment in one of the barns in France. Here in Maryland, the project is a gypsy wagon that we began last Christmas, largely to occupy the grandchildren. It’s a simple construction. Mounted on an old hay wagon, the walls rise at an angle, up to a curved roof. We’ve been told that you can get normal corrugated tin roofing and bend it over the hump. We’ll find out soon!
Back to finance…in our view, the key difference between now…and the 40 years, 1980-2020, is money-printing. In our fake money system, new wealth is not earned…it’s created by lending. The Fed lends to member banks. The banks lend to hedge funds, smaller banks, corporations, whoever wants the money. The money supply gets bigger, but so does the debt.
The big borrowers are on Wall Street…financial players who use the cheap money to gamble and speculate. As long as the volume of money – the liquidity – was increasing, it was reasonable to expect asset prices to go up. And they did. The Dow, for example, rose from under 1,000 in 1980 to over 36,000 today.
Shrinking Dollars: Consumers borrowed too – for houses, cars, and credit card purchases. And the federal government was the biggest borrower of all – adding more than $27 trillion to its debt so far this century. All of this borrowing and spending increased the ‘money in circulation’ that was chasing, chiefly, assets. It meant higher asset prices. And higher asset prices made the elite much richer.
Then, in July 2020, the borrowing binge came to a screeching halt. Interest rates and inflation went up. Borrowing went down. And with it, the money supply shrank. Charlie Bilello: "The US Money Supply fell 3.3% over the last year, a record 11th consecutive month with a YoY decline. The US Money Supply has fallen 2% over the last 2 years, the largest 2-year decline on record."
Money is what makes the financial world go ‘round. Note that the money supply was supposed to grow about the same rate as GDP, in order to keep prices more or less stable. GDP grew around 3% per year since 1971. But M2 grew about 5%. And then, in the Trump madness it rose to 27% as the Fed ‘printed’ trillions to keep up with Washington’s deficits. This was the proximate cause of the wave of inflation that struck the US in 2022.
The Way it Works: Then, too late, the Fed changed course. No more EZ money. No more negative rates. The Fed’s key rate rose 500 basis points (five percent) – the biggest, fastest turnaround in Fed history. The money supply collapsed. From 27% annual growth under Trump, it is now bouncing off a low of MINUS 4.5% – an unprecedented decline. House mortgage payments roughly doubled. Interest on credit card accounts rose to 21%. And the feds now pay more than $1 trillion per year in INTEREST on the federal budget – the largest single item of federal spending apart from Social Security/Medicare.
What is troubling about this is that the money supply is no longer increasing. So what makes the world go ‘round, now? How can the economy go from strength to strength, even as liquidity drives up? Stocks sold off in 2022. But now they are rising again. Bonds suffered the biggest sell-off ever…interest rates are generally falling again. And here’s the Intelligencer:
"Wall Street Has Decided It’s Time to Get Greedy Again: The past five weeks were great ones on Wall Street. Since the end of October, the Dow Jones Industrial Average went on a furious rally, climbing more than 11 percent. The bond markets - which, for much of the year, had been reflecting a darker image of the economy - gave up much of their pessimism about inflation and went on a frolic of their own. The thinking behind all this was that, finally, the Federal Reserve would start cutting interest rates soon, and it was better to buy, buy, buy just about everything that could be gotten before it was too late... On Wall Street, it looks as though it’s finally - finally! - time to get greedy again."
Gregory Mannarino, "War With China? Expect It!"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/5/23
"War With China? Expect It!"
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Monday, December 4, 2023
Jeremiah Babe, "Banking System Meltdown Is The Biggest Threat In The World"
Jeremiah Babe, 12/4/23
"Banking System Meltdown
Is The Biggest Threat In The World"
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Musical Interlude: 2002, "Wings II, Return To Freedom"
2002, "Wings II, Return To Freedom"
Over 1 hour of soothing, relaxing music for studying, meditation,
yoga, and sleep. These are peaceful, soothing, instrumental compositions.
"A Look to the Heavens"
“While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the below gorgeously detailed image was taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.
The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.”
"It Was Ironic..."
"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."
- Philip José Farmer
The Poet: Carl Sandburg, "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"
"Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"
“The past is a bucket of ashes.”
1
"The woman named Tomorrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.
2
The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.
The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
where the golden girls ran and the panels read:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.
3
It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
to warble: We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.
And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
there were rats and lizards who listened...
and the only listeners left now...
are…the rats…and the lizards.
And there are black crows
crying, “Caw, caw,”
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold
and the golden girls came singing:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.
The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,”
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.
And the only listeners now are…the rats…and the lizards.
4
The feet of the rats
scribble on the door sills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of the blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
of the rats.
And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was."
- Carl Sandburg
Canadian Prepper, "WW3 Has Begun: CIA/Nuclear Expert Andrew Bustamante"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 12/4/23
"WW3 Has Begun:
CIA/Nuclear Expert Andrew Bustamante"
"Today we talk with former CIA spy Andrew Bustamante about WW3 and the nuclear threats, a mindblowing conversation you wont want to miss."
Comments here:
"The Questions..."
“I don't pretend we have all the answers.
But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.”
- Arthur C. Clarke
"What Everyone Needs to Know About the Financial and Political Turmoil Right Now"
"What Everyone Needs to Know About
the Financial and Political Turmoil Right Now"
by Jeff Thomas
"International Man: What types of risks - financial or otherwise - should people be aware of today?
Jeff Thomas: Well, much of the former free world, as we once knew it, is on the verge of collapse economically. You have the U.S. after World War II suddenly taking over the world in production, and they were the future. A lot of countries got onboard: Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan. All those countries got on that particular train and did very well. But the U.S. went from being the greatest nation in the world in terms of manufacturing to losing almost all of that and became the foremost debtor nation in the world. Now the US may well be in a worse financial place than any country in the world.
It’s just that whatever collapse is going to occur, it hasn’t happened yet. So, that shoe hasn’t dropped, but when it does, it won’t only be the U.S. that goes down, it will be all the other countries that are on that particular train.
So, what that means is that if you want to come out of this well, then you try to diversify yourself into those countries that are not going to be as directly affected. For example, if you wanted to leave the U.S., you wouldn’t go to Japan because it’s going to give you just as much trouble. You might choose to go to Thailand, or you might choose to go to Uruguay. There are a number of places that you could choose where you’re still going to have quite a good life and, going forward, possibly an even better life than exists in those places now.
Historically, this is always true. If you look at history over thousands of years, there’s always some country going down and another country coming up. It’s just a question of timing; when something is about to collapse, you want to get out. In 1938, for instance, many people left Germany. It’s the same thing now. It’s hard to accept that this is about to happen to the great US of A since it’s been number one for so long, but it’s reached its sell-by date.
Jeff Thomas: Well, there’s going to be a major debt collapse. It’s inescapable at this point. You get to a tipping point where, even if it hasn’t occurred yet, it’s too late to fix it. When you get countries at the point where they’re borrowing so much money that they can’t even pay the interest any longer yet are moving headlong to borrow more and offering their people increased entitlements, the money isn’t going to be there. It simply doesn’t exist. In that regard, it’s really a question of simple arithmetic. Do the numbers add up, or do they not?
We see that in the US, where it’s rapidly moving in the direction of far greater entitlements and more Americans who are demanding much more in the way of entitlements. Somebody’s got to pay for this. Historically, the same thing happens in every empire. Every empire ends in the same fashion because human nature remains the same in any generation, in any era. The same mistakes end up being made by those in charge. So, you can look at what’s happened elsewhere.
For example, just in recent history, we can look at 2001 in Argentina and examine that. Or, you can visit Zimbabwe and research what happened there in 2008 and watch those that collapsed, how that unfolded. Or, we could take a trip right now to Venezuela and watch that in its collapsing stage. I started warning about Venezuela a decade or so ago and, since that time, the collapse has occurred, and Venezuela has bottomed out. They’re right in the middle of their collapse and nearing the end of it, at this point.
So, you can kind of watch the movie as it’s played out in other nations and say, "This is the pattern." You can examine the pattern, and it’s almost always the same. So, you follow that, and you say, "Well, this is what potentially is going to be happening in the country that I live in." It’s not a question of trying to change the country because, historically, it doesn’t work. What you do, instead, is you step aside, you simply let it go past you by being in another jurisdiction.
International Man: You’ve written extensively about international diversification. What is the basic concept behind it?
Jeff Thomas: It’s a process of diversifying yourself amongst several jurisdictions so that no one jurisdiction can dictate to you. It’s a known fact that countries tend to treat their guests a lot better than they treat their own citizens. Once they feel that they own you, they can be a lot rougher on you and make greater demands.
What you would ideally hope to do would be to have your citizenship in one country, probably have your residency in a second country or even more than one country, have your income in a third country, and even have your banking or wealth storage in a fourth country.
Jeff Thomas: Well, it certainly does take some planning. But what it really takes is researching some places where you’d be happy being or where you feel that you’d be better treated and where the laws would treat you better.
For example, if you happen to be a U.S. citizen, which is one of the most difficult countries to be a citizen of right now—they tax their citizens worldwide, and other countries don’t do that—what you’d want to do is find the country that you could either be a citizen of or at least be a resident of or have investments in that has either little or no direct taxation. Then you would have an opportunity to keep the money that you’ve made rather than simply turning it over to others.
International Man: What are some of the practical things that people should be looking to do to start this process?
Jeff Thomas: First, I tend to focus much more on what’s coming than what exists right now. Most people try to face whatever is facing them right now and saying, "Can I live with this?" My approach is to be looking ahead 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, and for whatever reason, I’ve done that all my life. And so, based on what’s coming, I say to myself, "Can I live with that when it happens?" And if not, I want to get out of the way of it.
For example, the worst hasn’t happened in the U.S. by any means. Some people would be saying, "Well, if I see it get bad, then I’ll get out." But historically, what ends up happening is that you then start having capital controls. Your government places capital controls on you so that you can no longer move your money out. They will use a number of reasons why this is necessary, but they’re usually not true.
This time around, they’ll blame it on money laundering or terrorism so that you’re some sort of an evil person if you actually want to take your money out. That will be followed by migration controls where you are physically not allowed to leave. If you try to leave, you lose your passport.
A lot of these laws have already been written in the US over the last eight years. And there’s a whole pile of them that have been written but not yet implemented. So we know they’re coming. We know that they intend to implement these laws, but many of them will only be rolled out as needed, now that the crisis period has begun.
So, if somebody wanted to deal with this, the first thing that they’d do would be to liquidate all their assets in any country that’s at risk. They don’t want to leave anything there. Anything that you keep behind is sacrificial, and that would include a bank account. Even if you continue to live in that country, you’d keep only three months’ worth of spending money in a bank account and then regard that as being sacrificial. It could conceivably be lost.
In the US, you have a confiscation law, as of 2010, which allows the banks to confiscate all the money that you have on deposit in a bank. Very few Americans know that, but there it is. It’s there in black and white; it’s in the American law that banks can do that.
So you’d want to liquidate your assets, then you’d want to expatriate the proceeds. Then, if possible, if you can afford it, you would establish a residency somewhere else and then prepare an exit so that if it got to the point where you say, "Whoops, this is really beginning to fall apart now; I can’t take it any longer; I’m going to make an exit," you would be ready.
At that point, you may not even be able to sell your house; you may have to just turn the key in the door, wave goodbye, but at least… you have an exit plan. If you’ve done everything in advance, you’d just pack a carry-on, and out you’d go. Those people will be able to escape. A lot of people will not be able to.
International Man: It sounds like the underlying message here is to start preparing for this sooner rather than later and to have your solutions in place before people start to panic and before there’s a rush to the door, which is often the case.
And again - Nazi Germany, in 1938, there was a conference in 1938 - the Évian Conference - when the Jews attempted to begin to leave Germany, 32 governments got together and said, "There’s going to be millions of them, we can’t take them, but we don’t want to look like bad guys, so let’s all make an agreement that we won’t take them, then they’ll have nowhere to go, then they’ll just stay where they are." And that’s exactly what happened.
So that will happen again. The welcome mat will be pulled in a lot of countries, so whatever legal residency you want to have somewhere else, you need to get it in place now while the welcome mat is still out. The time to prepare is now."
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