09.25.20- The Silent Exodus Nobody Sees: Leaving Work Forever
The exodus out of cities is getting a lot of attention, but the exodus that will unravel our economic and social orders is getting zero attention: the exodus from work. Like the exodus from troubled urban cores, the exodus from work has long-term, complex causes that the pandemic has accelerated. These are the core drivers of the exodus from work. 1. labor’s share of the economy has been in multi-decade decline. It’s easy to blame globalization and/or automation–and it’s true that the decline in labor’s share accelerated from 2000 on. But this trend began around 1970, long before China joined the World Trade Organization and the advent of “software eating the world.” (see chart below) Read More |
09.24.20- The Culture War
Culture is what ties groups and countries together. When a cultural split develops—such as the one we now have in the US—a country cannot, and, more importantly, should not stay together. It’s poisonous to keep different cultures together in the same political unit. Politics is all about deciding who decides who gets what, how, and at whose expense. It can be fairly cordial if everybody shares the same culture. If they don’t, it’s a formula for disaster. Read More |
09.23.20- The Stage Has Been Set For The Most Chaotic Election
The big reason why this election is going to be so different from previous elections is because so many Americans are going to be voting by mail. According to one recent survey, a whopping 37 percent of all voters plan to cast their votes by mail this time around… Read More |
09.22.20- Swamp Thang
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09.19.20- Collapse Is A Process, Not An Event
Look, I’m a systems guy. I think in systems terms. You should as well. Why? Because we’re entering a period of time when the major systems that have supported humanity are going to fail. Or, put more accurately: they are already failing. As just one example, our monetary system delivers outsized gains to the already stupendously-wealthy while piling up massive debts on the backs of we citizens, both born and yet-to-be-born. The US Federal Reserve is the unelected and unaccountable body that is most responsible for have made America’s billionaires nearly $1 trillion ‘richer’ since the pandemic hit. Read More |
09.18.20- Believe It Or Not, 2021 Is Looking Worse Than 2020
First came a pandemic so baffling that virtually no one other than Sweden made it through without a near-depression. (Reminiscent of the previous decade’s financial crisis, when only Iceland got it right.) Then came civil unrest on a scale not seen since the 1960s, about which more than enough has already been written. Then came fires that are burning even parts of the Northwest previously thought to be non-flammable, blanketing the region with toxic smoke. That’s a lot. But it might be just the warm-up act for a couple of potentially bigger crises. Read More |
09.17.20- Yes, 2021 Could Be Worse
Coronavirus restrictions could get worse. But how? Covid-19 came close to causing a legitimate crisis only in the New York City area and there only with “help” from Governor Cuomo’s kill people in nursing homes policy. Not that they needed much help as the virus has killed mostly the frail and elderly and according to one study people who normally would have died of the flu a year or two ago had not the last two flu seasons been relatively light. Moreover, death counts have been confusing, with documented instances of people dying in motorcycle accidents and from terminal cancer being counted as Covid-19 fatalities. Death rates in the United States are running at 109% of expectations but parsing everything out is difficult because the lockdowns caused additional deaths from suicide and abuse while decreasing deaths from motor-vehicle and other accidents. Definitive stats on the number killed by lockdowns, as opposed to the virus, as opposed to old age and other comorbidities, may never be available. Read More |
09.16.20- America’s Wealth Gap Grows in the Post-COVID-19, K-Shaped Economic Recovery
SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – “It feels like the world has changed so much. Just in the last six months. We’ll get home; but it won’t feel like home anymore.” Thus spake the distaff half of the household, looking ahead to November. We’ve been holed up here in the Calchaquí Valley in Argentina for the last six months. We’re now hoping to get home to Baltimore for Thanksgiving. “I wonder what it’s going to be like. We’ve been away from civilization for so long, we’ll probably feel out-of-joint… or out of time. People will all be wearing face masks. Do they still shake hands? Do they still kiss each other on the cheek? “And the election will be just over. It could be a madhouse… Or a whole new world.” Read More |
09.15.20- America Lives or Dies on the Moral Character
America abandoned a pretty good system rather quickly with the onset of our first Civil,War, that led to a gradual dismantling of our federal system, under the idea of “liberal democracy”. But, the abandonment went to light-speed after 1913. and the rise of economic fascism, something that will be written about for years to come, assuming America doesn’t descend into those “thousand years of darkness” Reagan once spoke of regarding if America should ever lose Her way. America is far and away from the Founders’ original vision for the country, and I fear that we may never return, not without a hard fought war and thousands more left dead and dying. So, the only question one need ask must be “What price are you willing to pay to live free?” Or, do we allow ourselves to be subjugated and so let the tyrants live? What life is it under any totalitarian or authoritarian government? It is no life worth living, least ways not as a broken subject; it is a life that any liberty-loving individual lives as a rebel, and “outlaw”. Read More |
09.14.20- The US & Its Constitution Have 2 Months Left
This is the same thing that the Generals and the CIA said about President John F. Kennedy. When Generals and the CIA say that a president is unfit and dangerous, they mean he is dangerous to their budget. By “unfit” they mean he is not a reliable cold warrior who will keep hyping America’s enemies so that money keeps pouring into the military/security budget. By serving defense contractors instead of their country, generals end up very wealthy.Read More |
09.12.20- The Plot Against Libya: An Obama-Biden-Clinton Criminal Conspiracy
But here, in this cell in a dank old warehouse in Bani Walid, there are no smugglers, no rapists, no thieves or murderers. There are simply Africans captured by traffickers as they made their way from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, or other disparate parts of the continent seeking a life free of war and poverty, the rotten fruit of Anglo-American and European colonialism. The cattle brands on their faces tell a story more tragic than anything produced by Hollywood. Read More |
09.11.20- If You Feel Like Something Really, Really Bad Is About To Happen, You Are Definitely Not Alone
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09.10.20- Economic War with China is the Final Step Before the “Great Reset”
Right now, the only word spoken on the economy is “recovery”. Of course, if you’ve been reading my recent articles, you know that the recovery narrative is nonsense. With the small business sector on the verge of collapse, the U.S. economy has no means to recover unless we see a sudden resurgence in industrial production and domestic factories built, and with corporate debt at historic highs, there’s simply no money for that right now. Good luck trying to bankroll a manufacturing renaissance in the middle of a stagflationary environment. Read More |
09.09.20- This US Stock Bubble Could Rank Among
In 1988, as a young and inexperienced investor, I met a transportation analyst from Nomura. He explained how a midsized and heavily indebted railroad company owned land in Tokyo Bay. It had the potential to build a giant condominium complex on this land, thereby diversifying into the highly profitable real estate market. Never mind that the land was desolate and inaccessible. Nor that acquiring the necessary permit would take years. He produced elaborate financial models showing how the stock was actually worth five to 10 times its current value. My head spun. Even Japan’s railroad stocks had been tagged as asset plays and swept up in one of the most powerful stock and real estate manias in modern times. Back then, anything with a whiff of exposure to real estate was at the centre of speculation. Now, the hottest sectors in America are nearly all disruptive technologies. Stocks with real, or perceived, exposure to the cloud, digital payments, electric vehicles, plant-based food, or anything at all to do with the stay-at-home economy have shot up meteorically. Read More |
09.08.20- In the Footsteps of Rome: Maybe It No Longer Matters Who's Emperor
Quick history quiz: who was the second-to-the-last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire? How about the third-to-the-last? Answers: Glycerius, 473-74 A.D. and Julius Nepos, 474-475 A.D. The last emperor was the grandly titled Romulus Augustus, who reigned less than a year until the whole shebang disintegrated in 476 A.D. You get the point: when the momentum of collapse crosses the Event Horizon, it no longer matters who claims the title of Head Snake; the collapse is beyond the control of any individual or agency. Read More |
09.07.20- Do Any Lives Actually Matter?
When people scream Black Lives Matter what do they really mean and why this particular wording has dominated recent political discourse? Image: Just what exactly would lives “mattering” look like? A Utopian Statement and the Dangers of Utopian Thinking Read More |
09.05.20- Why We Are Facing The Biggest Election Nightmare In Modern American History No Matter Who Ends Up Winning
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09.04.20- Big Government Is the Problem
It was dragging the body of one of the dead cows. Behind it, their heads low, followed a group of about 20 bovine mourners. “If we had a bell, we should ring it,” said Elizabeth. “This shouldn’t happen.” No One’s Fault We could scarcely believe the news delivered by the foreman early in the morning. We went out to look for ourselves. Six more cows died during the night. Read More |
09.03.20- Trump Orders Feds To Begin Process Of Defunding New York, Portland And Other "Lawless" Cities
In a five-page memo sent to federal agencies on Wednesday whose subject is "Reviewing Funding to State and Local Government Recipients of Federal Funds That Are Permitting Anarchy, Violence, and Destruction in American Cities" and signed by Trump, the president orders them to report to the White House Office of Management and Budget on any funding that could be redirected. New York City, Portland, Seattle and even Washington, DC are among the initial targets of the measure. Read More |
09.02.20- Why Economics Cannot Be Understood through Experimentation
In the natural sciences, a laboratory experiment can isolate various elements and their movements. There is no equivalent in the discipline of economics. The employment of econometrics and econometric model building is an attempt to create a laboratory where controlled experiments can be conducted. Building an Economic Model The idea of having such a laboratory is very appealing to economists and politicians. Once the model is built and endorsed as a good replica of the economy, politicians can evaluate the outcomes of various policies. Read More |
09.01.19- Deflation of the Citizenry's Hard Assets Will Be a Huge Buying Opportunity for Insider Power Elites
I believe there will be a massive contraction/deflation in the near term in certain sectors of the U.S. and world economy as demand flees from commercial real estate, as jobs do not come back full force, small businesses close down, and/or people migrate to home offices. Demand for residential real estate will also likely contract in the short term as people are forced to go into living with family or shared housing. Even with the money-pump operating at full speed, flooding the market with cash (which should cause inflation), there will be an opposite effect for the ordinary person. Why? There are tons of people with no actual money to buy up, lease, or rent real estate assets. Cash and borrowing collateral is tilted so much to super-wealthy, that the vast majority of people will not have access to cash to invest in real estate and other durable goods. Far fewer ACTUAL PEOPLE can pursue certain goods even if the SYSTEM is flooded with cash. It’s not in their pockets! Read More |
08.31.20- Why Affirmative Action Must Go
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08.29.20-A Surprising Segment of Retirement Savers
But that idea could soon get tossed out the window. We've already covered how retirement for some savers may not last longer than five years. We've also covered how the Fed's response may eat away at the retirement savings of many Americans. But now, thanks to the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns, it appears that even affluent retirement savers may be taking a hit. A recent survey of Americans with at least $100,000 in assets reveals that, thanks to COVID-19, a staggering 70% are pessimistic about their retirement outlook. Additionally, the survey found, "An estimated 3.2 million people have now decided to retire later than originally planned, represented by the one in five pre-retirees (20%) in the Alliance study who indicated they had made this decision." If people with the financial resources to do pretty much anything they want in retirement are developing a "sour" outlook and changing their plans, that isn't good. Read More |
08.28.20- Face masks make you stupid
In Joost Meerloo’s analysis of false confessions and totalitarian regimes, The Rape of the Mind, he coins a phrase for the ‘dumbing down’ of critical resistance – menticide. “In the totalitarian regime,” he wrote, “the doubting, inquisitive, and imaginative mind has to be suppressed. The totalitarian slave is only allowed to memorise, to salivate when the bell rings.”
Neolithic man had a similar problem dealing with his livestock. Homo sapiens’ success has relied not insignificantly on cattle – their dairy, meat, leather and manure. Yet the cow’s ancestor, the auroch, was quite a different beast. It was fast, aggressive and dangerous – hardly conducive to be corralled into predictable channels of behaviour. So, about 10,500 years ago, man started to deliberately breed the most docile aurochs for domestication. Read More |
08.27.20- The Futility of Politics
Still, I remained keenly interested in the political world. During Watergate, as a high school student, I’m sure I exasperated most of my classmates with my nonstop anti- Nixon, burgeoning radical leftism. I also converted a few of them. In this regard, I guess I’m still doing the same thing; offending or persuading others. Donald Trump has made politics infinitely more interesting. But he has also made it divisive to the point of physical confrontation, merely for wearing his MAGA hat, or placing a pro-Trump sign on one’s property. The hatred a substantial portion of Americans feel for him is unprecedented. It is indeed a form of derangement. Read More |
08.26.20- A Silver Mystery in Full View
In essence, I’ll lay out a series of documented facts which at their core present a silver mystery that cries out for explanation. Remarkably, the facts are beyond dispute and freely available to all, yet for some reason the data have been virtually ignored by everyone in the analytical community. While I’ll provide my explanation for the mystery, my main point is to solicit any reasonable alternative explanations. This is very much a debate open to all to help solve a mystery that deserves an answer. Read More |
08.25.20- Older Americans Should Be Anti-Lockdown Activists
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08.24.20- One Step Removed
Millions of people are about to enter a financial purgatory, becoming little more than modern-day slaves. While they’ll be reported by the media as those “evicted” or “foreclosed on”, if we define a slave as someone forced to work for another by existing legal circumstances or approved cultural norms, then that’s exactly what these people should actually be called: slaves. Too harsh? Allow me to make my case. Read More |
08.22.20- The Economic Insanity of This Coronavirus Pandemic Plot and the Coming Global Reset
Anita Roddick (2001). “Take It Personally: How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World”, Harper Thorsons The most dynamic aspect of the economic paradigm of the United States over the past century has been the mass transfer of wealth to the few, and the new ruling society created due to this shift. It was not pure capitalism that caused this phenomenon; it was the lack of real capitalism and free markets, which could be characterized as a fascist, protectionist oligarchy created by blending the banking, corporate, and political classes on one side, and the rest of society on the other. This tremendous transfer of wealth brought with it excessive corruption and tyranny, and allowed for chaos due to the new and more pronounced class distinctions. Read More |
08.21.20- Our Systemic Drift to Collapse
The boat ride down to the waterfall of systemic collapse is not dramatic, it's lazy drifting: a lazy complacency that doing more of what worked in the past will work again, and an equally lazy disregard for how far the system has drifted from the point when things actually worked. In my analysis, decoherencerefers to the loss of systemic coherence between narratives, values, processes and systems.Simply put, stuff no longer works and it no longer makes sense, but we've lost sight of this disconnect because the systemic drift has been so gradual that the memory of a time when things worked has been eroded to the point of total loss. Read More |
08.20.20- 2021 Could Establish this “New Normal”
To add fuel to the fire, some potential changes coming to SSA in 2021 might create a somewhat “new normal”. Here’s what we mean… First, the potential for a cost of living adjustment (COLA) still exists, although thanks to energy inflation being down 11.2%, any increase for 2021 could be negligible. You can see from the chart below that a COLA each year isn’t guaranteed, and has been pretty low or nonexistent in recent years: Read More |
08.19.20- A Week of Wonders and Marvels
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08.18.20- Why the Death of Original Thought is Ushering in the New World Order
Even in nations that have had great success in keeping their societies relatively free and open in response to the virus, like Sweden, people that are worried about the virtually non-existent mask wearing behavior of their societies have expressed an absurd inability to make their own decisions. Read More |
08.17.20- Is Covid Coming For Your Job?
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08.15.20- Tony Fauci and the Swine Flu disaster; betrayal of trust
They were, of course, also urging people to take the new Swine Flu vaccine. On that subject, here is an excerpt from Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense (3/27/20):
Thank you. Dr. Fauci. Explain to us why you haven’t been downgraded to pumping gas in Death Valley or sent to prison? Read More |
08.14.20- Democide: Understanding the State’s Monopoly on Violence and the Second Amendment
There is, however, a major problem with this: States are statistically far more violent than individuals. After all, in the 20th century alone, 262 MILLION people died at the hands of their own governments. The term for this sort of atrocity is “democide.” It is one of the reasons the Founding Fathers included the Second Amendment in the U.S. Constitution – to allow citizens some form of protection against agents of a tyrannical government meaning to do them harm, as the Founders were forcibly disarmed as colonists by the British prior to the American Revolution. Read More |
08.13.20- Don’t Live Your Life In a Bubble
I am writing to the younger generation. When you become an old-timer like me, anyone younger is of the younger generation. My focus is on the slightly more than half of the population of the U.S. who are younger than the age of 40, but this message is for those older as well. I write this because I, as a scientist, am very worried about what has become of the human species. In just a few short months, we have seen the species devolve into a panic-driven, irrational, hysterical species. Much of this hysteria has been forced upon us by people who were elected to represent us, not dictate. Not all have gone this route but most have. They now seem to be only serving themselves. Theaters may be closed but we certainly get to see much grandstanding from these people on a constant basis. Their main message is that THEY will decide all risks for society. Read More |
08.12.20- Jim Rickards’ Blockbuster Election Prediction
I’m not doing it to attract attention or to be controversial. I’m doing it because I believe the data point in that direction. I’ll reveal my prediction in a moment. First let’s step back and look at the bigger picture. First of all, when you want to know what’s really going on, pay no attention to the media, the elites or any conventional wisdom. Read More |
08.11.20- The State of the American Debt-Slaves Q2 2020:
OK, as I mentioned on Friday, things are a little crazy in the consumer-debt arena at the moment: No Payment, No Problem: Bizarre New World of Consumer Debt. But there is another aspect to it – that of the American debt-slaves themselves. And there are all kinds of things happening. Consumer debt – student loans, auto loans, credit cards, other revolving debt and personal loans but excluding mortgages and HELOCs – declined to $4.1 trillion (not seasonally adjusted) in the second quarter, according to Federal Reserve data. It declined because credit card debt plunged – we’ll get to that phenomenon in a moment. But as the economy took a broadside in the second quarter, with 32 million people claiming unemployment insurance, consumer debt as a percent of “nominal GDP” spiked from the already record high 19.2% at the end of the Good Times in Q4 2019 and Q1 2020 to 21% at the end of the second quarter: Read More |
08.10.20- EXPOSED: The Great Money Fiction
Eve and Adam munched the apple, Zeus kinged Earth, Washington axed the cherry tree. To these fantastic fictions we must add another: Money and wealth are synonyms. Money is wealth and wealth is money. This myth — this deathless myth — commands our attention today. Murdered and buried 1,000 times, 1,001 times it has stormed from its tomb. The very gods envy its immortality. Man chased these gods down from Olympus aeons ago. Yet the money myth lives, breathes, prospers in A.D. 2020. Read More |
08.08.20- Things Going By
I miss baseball horribly, and its sad, half-assed attempt to present a rump season with no live bodies in the seats only amplifies the loss. But then, I haven’t gone to a stadium in twenty years, and I certainly won’t pay a hundred bucks or more sit in Fenway Park. I used to go to night games there all the time when I was a starving bohemian writing for the Boston hippie newspapers back in 1972. You could get a decent field-level seat behind first base for five bucks. When I was a kid in Manhattan in 1960, a bleacher seat in the old Yankee Stadium was a quarter (plus 30 cents round-trip on the IRT subway). Read More |
08.07.20- The American History You’re Not Supposed to Know
That “war” began with the New England Puritans, whose philosophical descendants became the universally despised “Yankees.” These are people mostly from New England and the upper Mid-West originally who believed that they were superior to all others and therefore had a “right” to govern over them, by force if necessary. They have a mindset of what Judge Napolitano calls “libido dominandi,” or the lust to dominate. Today, Hillary Clinton would be what Clyde Wilson has called “a museum-quality specimen” of a Yankee. Yankees are a component of both political parties, but today’s Democratic party is the home of the most extreme ones, who seem to be part Yankee and part Stalinist totalitarian with their university speech codes, their “cancel culture,” their utopian plans to centrally plan all aspects of everyone’s life with their “Green New Deal,” to confiscate private wealth, communist style, with “wealth taxes,” and so on. Read More |
08.06.20- Food Prices Rise To Dangerous Levels As “A Second Wave Of Layoffs” Hits The U.S. Economy
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08.05.20-The Voluntary End of America Due to a Coronavirus Hoax
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08.04.20- Are You Loving Your Servitude? (Part 2)
All the “solutions” being imposed by those in power don’t solve anything, because they aren’t designed to solve anything. These are nothing but short-term emergency sustaining maneuvers to keep the dying patient alive, while the criminals ransack his house, extracting whatever wealth he has saved. Throwing $1,200 bones and $600 a week bribes to what they consider the Main Street riff raff, while funneling trillions into the pockets of Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks, billionaire oligarchs, connected mega-corporations, and pliable corrupt politicians, is just what the doctor ordered for the ruling class. Their weak-kneed toadies at the Federal Reserve have dutifully fulfilled their mandate of no banker or hedge fund left behind. While Main Street is beset with potholes, boarded up small business storefronts (if they haven’t been looted and burned), homeless drug addicts, and the unemployed lining up at local food banks, Wall Street is being paved in gold, with its inhabitants eating caviar, drinking champagne, and celebrating their brilliance in owning a central bank, guaranteed to enrich them. Read More |
08.03.20- A Vaccine May Not Be The "Magical Cure" Everyone Anticipates
Let's attempt the impossible and set aside all preconceptions we might have about a vaccine for Covid-19, and think it through somewhat dispassionately. Let's start by stipulating that dispassionate analysis is as rare as anti-matter, as everyone's barely-cloaked self-interest and ideological biases demand an indignant, rabid response to any challenges to the one true faith, i.e. whatever they believe. Speaking of self-interest, we would blind not to notice the rapacious interest of Big Pharma in reaping billions of dollars in profits from a vaccine or vaccines. What could be better for obscene profits than a vaccine everyone must have to participate in the conventional economy, a vaccine the federal government will let the "owner" price at "market"? Read More |
08.03.20- Are You Loving Your Servitude?
Huxley and Orwell were contemporaries. Huxley’s dystopian masterpiece was published in 1932 at the outset of the rise of totalitarianism, while Orwell’s was published in 1949 after 65 million people perished in a World War and Stalin had already murdered tens of millions of his own citizens. Those were dark times. They also coincided with Edward Bernays 1928 publication of Propaganda, in which he revealed the existence of an invisible government who used propaganda to manipulate the minds of the public to insure those controlling the levers of power were able to engineer their desired outcomes. Read More |
08.01.20- Make America Constitutional Again?
America could soon see a hundred-times worse replay of the Florida presidential balloting 20 years ago in the Bush-Gore showdown. Some Florida counties had antiquated voting equipment while others had harebrained ballot designs that confounded voters. The Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual recount of disputed votes but the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, stopped the recount because it could result in “a cloud upon what [George W. Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. Two days, the same Supreme Court majority blocked any subsequent recounting because it was “not well calculated to sustain the confidence that all citizens must have in the outcome of elections.” Unfortunately, “legitimacy via blocked recounts” may also be the epithet for the 2020 presidential election. Read More |
07.31.20- Keep Those Federal Troops out of American Cities
On the other hand, sometimes even the relatively less bad guys (for now) come to some very dangerous conclusions. Specifically, some authors at conservative publications are now demanding that the president send in federal agents and troops to make arrests and intervene in local law enforcement to pacify rioters in Portland and other American cities. These pundits are claiming that since local officials allegedly aren't responding with alacrity to rioters, it's time to send in federal troops. Read More |
07.30.20- Culturally Appropriating the Word “Liberal”
Most importantly, I became a civil libertarian. Patrick Henry’s words, “I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to my dying day your right to say it” resonated with me almost as much as Huey Long’s great “Share the Wealth” speeches. I was also influenced by Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Philosophy, which talked about “victimless crimes” and ignited my libertarian streak. Read More |
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They’ve blacklisted a powerful video of doctors presenting the solution to covid-19 that can save lives, end the pandemic and get America back to work right now. This malicious censorship by Big Tech has reached the level of criminal treason against the United States of America. The CEOs of Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter must be arrested and charged with treason, and their corporations must be seized and shut down to prevent further acts of treason against the United States of America. Read More |
07.28.20- Four Months of Unprecedented Government Malfeasance
Over the last four months, Americans have lived through what is arguably the most consequential period of government malfeasance in U.S. history. Public officials’ overreaction to the novel coronavirus put American cities into a coma; those same officials’ passivity in the face of widespread rioting threatens to deliver the coup de grâce. Together, these back-to-back governmental failures will transform the American polity and cripple urban life for decades. Before store windows started shattering in the name of racial justice, urban existence was already on life support, thanks to the coronavirus lockdowns. Small businesses—the restaurants and shops that are the lifeblood of cities—were shuttered, many for good, leaving desolate rows of “For Rent” signs on street after street in New York City and elsewhere. Americans huddled in their homes for months on end, believing that if they went outside, death awaited them. Read More |
07.27.20- When It Comes To Economic Suffering, Some Parts Of The U.S. Are Feeling It Far More Than Others
But many people that live in rural communities are feeling pretty good about things right now. Even though more than 52 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the last 18 weeks, the official unemployment rate in many rural counties is still in the single digits. I know that may be difficult to believe, but that is what the numbers tell us. Read More |
07.25.20- Eviction Moratorium Expires Today, Putting Millions Of Renters At Risk
Washington D.C.-based think tank Urban Institute estimates the eviction moratorium, expiring today, could put more than 12.3 million renters at risk of losing their home.
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07.24.20- What if a Riot Comes Down My Street?
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07.23.20- The Evils of Government Statistics
The unemployment rate is but a statistic. And statistics are the damndest of all damnable lies. Thus we wonder… What is the truthful unemployment rate? Today we peer within official numbers, behind official numbers, beneath official numbers… in pursuit of a square answer. But first to another extravagant fiction — the stock market. Closing in on Dow 27,000 Again The Dow Jones advanced another 159 points today on its march towards 27,000. The S&P squeezed out a mere five-point gain. The Nasdaq — meantime — went 86 points backward today. Read More |
07.22.20- Hydroxychloroquine Should Be Available Over the Counter
President Trump should order immediate public access to hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) by making the medication available over-the-counter (OTC). Liberals have interfered with public access to this medication for COVID-19 through the old-fashioned route of requiring a prescription and then having a pharmacist fill or reject the prescription. Millions of Americans do not visit physicians, and cannot obtain a prescription for HCQ if they did. Even if you have been exposed to COVID-19, you cannot obtain a prescription for HCQ in most states because regulators prohibit dispensing it without a positive test result, which typically cannot be obtained until late in the progression of the disease. Read More |
07.21.20- Now We Have Proof Dr. Fauci Is Full of Crap
Well, if you think you can trust Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, you now have every reason to question his judgment. In an interview with PBS NewsHour, Dr. Fauci, the trusted expert, actually lauded New York’s response to the coronavirus. We know that, when you do it properly, you bring down those cases. We have done it. We have done it in New York,” he told PBS’s Judy Woodruff. “New York got hit worse than any place in the world. And they did it correctly.” I used to have faith in Dr. Fauci’s judgement, but that faith has waned over the past few months, and is now completely gone. How exactly does anyone look at what happened in New York and say that’s a model example for fighting the coronavirus? Let’s look at the evidence. Read More |
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Let’s get domestic. I promise you, Mr. President, if you send a hundred FBI agents into the CDC and remove millions of their files as evidence, you’ll discover this federal agency is entirely corrupt, and has been for decades. While the Department of Justice prepares indictments, make a public declaration that your administration will ignore all their COVID case numbers and recommendations. They’re criminal liars. That’s their whole game. Let me help you out with four examples. Face it, you’re not good with details, so you may want a team to summarize the following revelations for you. Read More |
07.18.20- In America 2020, Truth is Being “Canceled”
This is made easier by the fact that at all levels, education in the U.S. has collapsed. Completely and totally. It exists institutionally. It does not exist intellectually. The only people presently getting real educations are those being homeschooled. Consider what’s happened since May 25, the day George Floyd died. His death was filmed with police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck. In a social media saturated society, what is filmed and uploaded to the Internet is real. Protests turned to riots, which tore through major cities destroying businesses that survived the Covid-19 lockdowns. While civic authorities did little or nothing, a clearly planned and orchestrated movement of “cancelling” history arose, its “woke” foot soldiers pulling down statues and vandalizing historical monuments. It is now possible that neither the Confederate carving on Stone Mountain, Ga., nor even Mount Rushmore, will survive the apostles of “woke.” Read More |
07.17.20- The Social Justice Cult Really Hates Parler - Here's Why...
Just ask any of the numerous conservative personalities that have been banned from Twitter over the past couple of years because of their political positions. Or ask the people who were banned from YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, etc. as part of a massive purge of accounts this past month, the vast majority of them considered conservative or moderates. Of course, these companies usually don't admit outright that they are biased against conservative and moderate viewpoints; instead, they accuse accounts of spreading “hate speech”, violating community guidelines or violating “copyright rules”. Read More |
07.16.20- Why The Civil War Wasn’t About Slavery
Around 1960, the Democratic Party—led by Lyndon B. Johnson— advanced the modern incarnation of identity politics. It worked very well for them. In the election of 1956, 75% of African-Americans voted Republican. By 1964, more than 90% of them voted Democrat, and they have been doing so until 2020. As part of their effort to control and manipulate the black vote, the Leftists and their myrmidons advanced the myth that the Civil War was all about slavery. It wasn’t. It was, in my opinion, about money, more than anything else. Now, at this point, I know some of my liberal friends will bristle up and say: “It was too all about slavery!” Well, you are entitled to your opinion, but let me ask you this: What was slavery about? Read More |
07.15.20- What is the real purpose of the Lockdowns?
If given the choice between maintaining a toxic world of fear, pollution and violence controlled by the State or a society of prosperity and compassion based on freedom and individual rights, there is little doubt that the majority of Americans would want the old paradigm of synthetic events to take a hike; except that choice has been distorted under the guise of what the World Health Organization (WHO) has mislabeled the most deadly virus in history. The coronavirus crisis arrived in a flash with little time to analyze exactly WTF was going on. Americans struggled to process what is real, trustworthy and authentic as the unraveling of deep political decay revealed a behind-the-scenes subterranean power struggle that has surfaced with the intent on disintegration of American Society. Read More |
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The brick-and-mortar retailer bankruptcy plot continues to progress relentlessly. Today, it’s Brooks Brothers, the oldest men’s clothier in the US that also diversified over the decades into women’s attire, sportswear for college kids, and the like. Owned and run by Claudio Del Vecchio – often labeled “billionaire” whose dad founded Italian eyeglass maker Luxottica – Brooks Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware on Wednesday. Read More |
07.13.20- How You Can Prepare for America’s Decline
As Bill pointed out recently in his Diary, the good times in America probably peaked in the middle of the 20th century. How fast will the decline be? (More on how to prepare for that shortly.) News came out last week from the Labor Department that 4.8 million Americans found work in June. That brought the official unemployment rate down to 11.1% from 13.3%. With parts of the American economy reopening, some people are getting back to work. Read More |
07.11.20- Economic Cannibalism:
When I’ve asked my friends and family why they want socialism, generally the response is terse: “To help people.” When I’ve asked why they reject the existence of nation states and hope for a socialist one-world order, none could provide a clear answer. Mostly they retreated to the sound bite: “It would be nicer.” “We have to share the planet.” Only one older family member had a clear position, “Because of all the atrocities perpetrated by nationalism.” I countered by asking: “And would socialism eradicate toxic nationalism?” Read More |
07.10.20- Armed Militias: Severe Madness - Markets Aren't Ready!
If this climber — who has clearly proven his potential in the past by already reaching this peak — is getting the proper care, then it’s worth betting that he’ll recover and ascend to the pinnacle of his sport once more. BETWEEN NOW AND THEN, though, is it worth risking it all on his recovery, as if no delays and no challenges stand in the way? America is internally DIVIDED on issues that, at least in my lifetime, haven’t surfaced since they’re so fundamental that they weren’t ever up for debate. Today, even the country’s founding fathers are cause for strife. America isFIGHTING DOMESTIC DEMONS, and though it has prevailed each and every time in the past, it has not been a SMOOTH RIDE. Read More |
07.09.20- My Investigation of COVID-19
And of course, the phenomenon is not real. Most people wouldn’t be able to grasp that. They’re stuck at the gate, saying, PEOPLE ARE DYING, IT MUST BE THE VIRUS. Well, people are always dying. It’s very easy to repackage their deaths under a new label. And those that are dying for new reasons…you can track down those reasons, too. In a few places, it’s pollution, in another place it could well be a previous vaccine campaign, and so on. In New York, a lot of people are dying premature deaths because they’re put on breathing ventilators and heavily sedated. As I laid out in several key articles, proper procedures of viral discovery were never carried out in China or anywhere else. There is no convincing proof researchers ever found a new virus. Read More |
07.08.20- "Pragmatism Is Out The Window, The Days Of Madness Are Upon Us"
I used to think the “believe 6 impossible things before breakfast” line from Alice Through the Looking Glass was one of the funniest things ever written. Until this year.. I’ve come to understand it’s a statement of simple fact for this corona-addled age. I really can’t believe just how confused, conflicted, unfocused and distracted the various threads of society are becoming. Read More |
07.07.20- Bye Bye American Pie
And so, in the paroxysms of early summer, 2020, with Covid-19 raging world-wide and the floor dropping from underneath our shuck-and-jive economy, and the climate doing… whatever it’s doing… Chuck and Nancy led their privileged minions in a ceremony of penance, taking their knees with shoulders draped in kente shawls of atonement, signifying… wait a minute… signifying what, exactly? Read More |
07.06.20- Hyperinflation: Absolutely EVERYTHING
Hyperinflation: A Definition
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07.04.20- Trading and Investing America’s second Civil War
First, examine the facts. Learn how to be an analyst. Any war throughout history including modern war is primarily an information war and secondly a kinetic war. Traders favorite book "The Art of War" needs to be read again. It is perhaps why there has been so much censorship on social media recently. Here we are going to look at what to buy, what to sell, and what markets are interesting. Read More |
07.03.20- Investors Feel Bulletproof Again
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07.02.20- Storm Warning
Makes sense, right? The market came down a bit towards the end of the week, but don’t worry. The Fed will make another announcement that it’s going to do something or other and presto, the market will be off to the races again. In the background of these weeks of protests, riots, looting, and arson is the disintegrating economy, which signifies that pretty much everybody in this land will not be able to keep on keeping on in the ways we’re used to. Read More |
07.01.20- Trump's Next Move Could Mean EVERYTHING!
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06.30.20- Surrounded by Government Failure,
Astonishing. Take the June 26th edition of the Wall Street Journal. There you’ll find a piece on how the Small Business Aid program has a significant fraud risk, according to the Government Accountability Office. That’s unfortunate for a program riddled with implementation problems that leave many small businesses unable to apply, while many large ones had no problems getting one of the available small-business loans. Read More |
06.29.20- The Four Steps to an Unstable and Corrupt America
SALTA, ARGENTINA – We drove up to the capital city to take care of business. Argentina has the toughest lockdown in the world. Regular airline travel to Europe or America, for example, is not expected to resume until September. But there are no cases of the virus in Salta. So it has been allowed to return to normal… almost. It is not a pretty city. The sidewalks are broken and disorderly; we stumble down the streets as if we have a drinking problem. Read More |
06.27.20- How Surging Bank Deposits May Collapse US Dollar
According to CNBC, “A record $2 trillion surge in cash has hit the deposit accounts of U.S. banks since the coronavirus first struck the U.S. in January.” In one month, deposits grew by $865 billion, which beat the record for an entire year. You can see the incredible jump in deposits in the official chart, starting as the pandemic hit earlier this year. Read More |
06.26.20- 2020 Economic Predictions: This Series of Unfortunate Events Guarantees the Epocalypse
Here are my economic predictions for the remainder of 2020This list of economic predictions is not hard to come up with. It is, however, the fact that it is so easy to predict these things this year that makes this year’s list so important. Read More |
06.25.20- Five places that should boom from
Across the Land of the Free, and much of the world, local governments are finally starting to allow businesses to re-open and employees to come back to the office. Offices in New York City opened this morning for the first time in months, after Comrade Mayor Bill de Blasio’s politburo finally approved the policy. The Republic of CHAZ, formerly known as Seattle, was approved for ‘Phase II reopening’ on Friday, both by state health authorities as well as local warlords. Other major cities and anarcho-communist enclaves around the world have been slowly re-opening over the past few weeks. And so far one key trend is obvious: Read More |
06.24.20- Life is getting harder for debt collectors, and that is bad news for borrowers
The collectors would be required to furnish the debtors with their options, ability to dispute claims made against them, provide more information to them, etc. The last set of rules governing this relationship was set by the CFPB in 1977, over forty years ago. What has changed, requiring an alteration in the rules, in the view of this government agency? Read More |
06.23.20- I, Who Hates Shorting, Just Shorted
I hate shorting. The risk-reward relationship is out of whack. It feels crappy. I lost a ton of money shorting the worst highfliers a little too early in late 1999. It’s just nuts to short this market that is even crazier than in late 1999. But this morning, I shared in a comment in our illustrious comment section that I’d just shorted the SPDR S&P 500 ETF [SPY]. My time frame is several months. Read More |
06.22.20- Crimes Against Common Sense
Or is it that the media only highlights those who scream the loudest, leaving the impression that what they demand must be implemented? The most vocal citizens today are the self-righteous members of the so-called woke pack. You know, those who see themselves as the arbiters of all social and racial justice, and if you don’t believe as they do, you are the enemy. Read More |
06.20.20- Fake News Is Manipulating the Markets
As a young stockbroker, I read how the great speculators of the early 1900s would float negative stories. They’d crash shares so they could cash in on short positions. Others would whisper bullish stories into the ears of clueless newsmen so they could dump overpriced shares onto the public. From Jay Gould to Jesse Livermore, Wall Street’s history is littered with moneymen playing the media for personal profit. Given there were no rules governing stock trading back then, it was easy for them to move stock prices. Read More |
06.19.20- Black Lives Matter is a Modern Totalitarian Revolution
Classic totalitarian regimes share a number of common characteristics. The rise of these regimes began with a cultural revolution, aimed at angering the citizens against the current system. During that period domestic enemies are designated, and the people in the radical movement aiming at overthrowing the old system rally together against those common enemies, calling it a common struggle, as they adopt a new official ideology that stands significantly apart from the old one. They seek to control every aspect of the lives of their people, enlisting everyone they can to participate in the struggle. Even persons who may belong to enemy classes or groups join up, hoping to receive mercy when the new regime gains control. In Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China the enemies were anyone who reminded them of the old system, and anyone who could challenge them if left with enough power. Read More |
06.18.20- Meanwhile, Back In The Real World...
Yet, the bottom line is the virus will pass. The global economy, led by the US, has bounced off the bottom of the COVID shock, and is now posting gains off the lows. The numbers will probably confirm the economic nadir was sometime in April. Is it now Recovery? Not yet. Normalisation? No. Recovery is the wrong word. After 3 months of lockdown, consumers are out in force, industrial production is rising, activity is increasing. It feels like the first glimmers of spring have arrived. Problem is… we’re nearly half-way through the year! A lot has been missed and lost forever. Consumption and production are rising – but are nowhere near where they would be if things were normal. Growth remains fettered by the ongoing virus hurdles. Read More |
06.17.20- Wall Street Greed Will Make This Asset Skyrocket
This story is still being written… and it won’t be finished overnight. But it’s unfolding in front of your very eyes. Back in January 2019, I said it would be the year of Wall Street greed. This was right on the heels of the brutal 2018 Crypto Winter. Here’s what I wrote back then… 2017 was the year of individual greed. That year, we saw a massive bull market driven almost entirely by individuals. It wasn’t possible for most institutions to get into the crypto market then. Then, 2018 was the year of individual fear… We saw the markets pull back in a big way. And that leads me to my crypto theme of 2019… It will be the year of institutional greed. Read More |
06.16.20- NPR: “Mounting Evidence” Suggests COVID Not As Deadly as Thought. Did the Experts Fail Again?
In April 2005, Charles Duelfer, the CIA’s top weapons inspector in Iraq, admitted in the CIA’s final report that after an extensive search, no weapons of mass destruction could be found. “After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted,” wrote Duelfer, the leader of the Iraq Survey Group. “As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible.” Today it’s accepted that the presence of WMD was the primary basis for the Iraq War. Naturally, the absence of such weapons shook the world. The media blamed the politicians, the politicians blamed US intel, and the intelligence actors involved mostly defended their work. Read More |
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The rise of Black Lives Matter terrorism and their seizing of downtown Seattle through the use of violence, demands a law-and-order response. But the feckless Mayor of Seattle kowtows to the terrorists, and the Governor of Washington is a Soros-controlled left-wing puppet who relishes in the idea of America being destroyed. The police have surrendered the territory, and the National Guard has been literally disarmed and ordered to stand down, even as left-wing rioters set fire to buildings and hurl chunks of concrete as deadly weapons, now injuring hundreds of law enforcement officers nationwide. When the mayors and governors won’t do their jobs, and the police are ordered to stand down, and the National Guard is disarmed in order to appease a group of Black Lives Matter / Antifa terrorists who are burning America’s cities, the U.S. Constitution allows for one final defense against tyranny, violence and terrorism: The Second Amendment. Read More |
06.13.20- We Don't Need No Stinking Vaccine For COVID-19
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06.12.20- Unstoppable: The Greatest Depression and
I'll try to summarize all this as simply as possible:
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06.11.20- Rent Strikes, the Erosion of Property Rights,
What is your take on this? Doug Casey: Property rights are basic to human rights. In fact, it doesn’t make any sense to talk about human rights unless you talk about property rights. Your primary form of property is your own body. But things outside of your body are equally as important. You can’t survive without possessions, things that belong to you alone, and that you are responsible for. “Rent strikers”—who are philosophically aligned with socialists, communists, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and similar groups— don’t see it that way, however. They believe their problems are your problems. They’re completely irresponsible. Read More |
06.10.20- May 2020 Jobs Report Highlights Disconnect Between Wall Street, Main Street
SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – It was like waking up from a bad dream. As if the last 90 days had never happened… …No COVID-19… no lockdown… no 20 million job losses… no market crash… no $3 trillion in new money-printing… no $4 trillion budget deficit… …and no president retreating to an underground bunker… and then fortifying the White House like the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad… Whew! For a while there, we thought the Indians had us surrounded here at the Little Bighorn. But on Friday, we opened our eyes… and thank God, the nightmare had come to an end…Read More |
06.09.20- Just Like That, Gun Control Support and COVID-19 1. The Purported Trigger: The Death of George Floyd George Floyd was arrested in Minneapolis for passing a counterfeit bill. He was a big man with a record of assaults and drug use. A video of his arrest shows he was handcuffed and seems to have resisted being placed in the squad car. We see him being pinned down on the ground by Officer Chauvin’s knee. He seems to be wrestling about on the ground and talking. Soon after he stops moving an emergency medical van appears and he is removed from the scene. He was reportedly dead by the time they arrived. At least one report says the officers called for medical assistance early in the arrest when Floyd said he couldn’t breathe. Is the video the best evidence of what occurred? No. The best evidence is the footage taken from the body cams worn by the four officers on the scene; evidence Minneapolis authorities have failed to disclose. If your impression from the video or Dr. Baden’s interview (the examiner hired by the Floyd family) is that Floyd was asphyxiated, the only forensic evidence shows that he was not. The medical examiner, who was the only person to have conducted an autopsy, indicates Floyd was not asphyxiated. Here are the key findings in his report. Read More |
06.08.20- The Systemic Collapse Of The US Society Has Begun
And to explain my point, I would like to begin by saying what I believe the riots we are seeing taking place in hundreds of US cities are not about. They are not about:
They are not about any of these. They encompass all of these issues, and more. Read More |
06.06.20- Crime Is Crime
The reigning chaos reflects perfectly what passes for thought in millions of minds. Minds that have been taught that reality is whatever one believes it to be. That reason is a superstition and is inferior to random feelings and emotions. That observation, hypotheses, experimentation, discovery, and science itself are akin to voodoo rituals. That consumption precedes production and is morally superior to it. That anyone’s work, income and wealth are subject to anyone else’s proclaimed need. That actions have no consequences. Rioters and looters are faithfully adhering to the distilled essence of what our rulers and intellectual have been telling them for decades: If you need it, or just want it, it’s yours to have or destroy. They are simply eliminating the government middleman. The only surprise is that it didn’t happen long ago. Read More |
06.05.20- My Stream of Consciousness Thoughts
Re: Racial Prejudice, Protests, Riots, and Attempts to Maintain Law and Order As for the issues of racial prejudices, protests, riots, and attempts to maintain law and order, while I can empathize, I haven’t walked in the shoes of those who are most deeply affected by what’s going on—e.g., I can’t know and feel what it’s like to be Black in America today, to be a policeman on the front lines, to be a leader determining what should be done to deal with this situation, etc., so I encourage you to seek out those who have those perspectives. All I can tell you is what I think from the perspective I have. Read More |
06.04.20- Fiddling While America Burns
But within the last week, the COVID-19 production has been replaced by nationwide riots, ignited by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin grinding his knee into the neck of an alleged forger, George Floyd, long enough to kill him. Lloyd was Black, so the state-controlled media jumped on the story like a rabid animal. The media and sycophantic politicians were quick to drum home the point that “institutional racism” was at fault. In conjunction with Donald Trump, of course, who does nothing much more than Tweet continuously, but is blamed for everything by these Social Justice Warriors. While videos have shown a fairly diverse group of protesters, Blacks are clearly the predominant group, and the prolific graffiti desecrating the likes of the Lincoln Memorial all share the “Black Lives Matter” and/or “Evil White Racists” theme. Read More |
06.03.20- That Change You Requested…?
The George Floyd killing had none of those weaknesses. Plus, the video presented a pretty much universal image of oppression: a man with his knee on another man’s neck. Didn’t that say it all? You didn’t need a Bob Dylan song to explain it. The Minneapolis police dithered for four days before charging policeman Derek Chauvin with Murder 3 (unpremeditated, but with reckless disregard for human life). The three other cops on the scene who stupidly stood by doing nothing have yet to be charged. Cut it, print it, and cue the mobs. Read More |
06.02.20- Do Conservatives Really Believe that
But do conservatives really believe that an unconstitutional law is no law? Do they really believe that district attorneys, sheriffs, and local police should not enforce unconstitutional laws? Of course they don’t. Read More |
06.01.20- Ecuadorian President: World Leaders Asvised to Take Hydroxychloroquine
It seems that in addition to President Trump, Ecuador’s President Nayib Bukele has also been taking hydroxychloroquine. It’s why he’s been taking it that has my suspicion meter into the red zone: Read More |
05.30.20- Who’ll Stop the Rain?
The Rain that’s coming down… not gonna stop… We’re not talking about liquid water that condenses from clouds and nourishes plants. Read More |
05.29.20- 70% Depopulation Of The U.S. Predicted By 2025
I don’t have access as an insider to any more information than others. I’m piecing together information as you are, like parts of a puzzle. We may be misled by fear mongers who want us all to come to the wrong conclusions that are emotional unsettling in order to spread fear amongst the human family. This is what I have come to understand is going on. Some is fact, some is guesswork based on facts. Read More |
05.28.20- Where Did My World Go?
I remember when there was no tamper-proof and child-proof packaging. That was before multiculturalism and Identity Politics when we could still trust one another and parents accepted responsibility for their children without fobbing it off on a company with a liability claim. I remember also when there were no state income and sales taxes. States were able to meet their responsibilities without them. A postage stamp cost one cent. A middle class house was $11,000 and an upper middle class house went fot $20,000. One million dollars was a large fortune. There were no billionaires. The air museum on the naval base in Pensacola, Florida, has a street reconstructed from the 1940s. The restaurant’s memu offers a complete evening meal for 69 cents. Read More |
05.27.20- COVID Vaccine: What Else Could They Put in the Shot?
I have already covered the devastating effects of experimental RNA/DNA vaccine technologies—both of which could be launched with a COVID vaccine. Putting that aside for the moment, could the vaccine serve another purpose? In this article, I raise questions. Questions about the potential covert use of nanotechnology in the COVID vaccine. From lexico.com: nanotechnology: “The branch of technology that deals with dimensions and tolerances of less than 100 nanometers, especially the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules.” Read More |
05.26.20- Study: Social Isolation Increases Risk Of Death From All Causes
Researchers warn that socially isolated people are over 40% more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke, or other major cardiovascular event. Moreover, the socially isolated are nearly 50% more likely to die from any cause. There was also an observed relationship between lack of financial support and increased cardiovascular risk. Read More |
05.25.20- Moderna and the COVID Vaccine: What Kind of Lunacy?
Would you buy a used car from the company called Moderna? The US government has shelled out $500 million to this Massachusetts-based biotech firm for a COVID vaccine. Based on what? Read More |
05.23.20- The Path To Monetary Collapse
The fact that a liquidity crisis developed in US money markets five months before the virus hit America has been forgotten. Only a rising gold price stands testament to a deeper crisis, comprised of contracting bank credit while central banks are trying to rescue the economy, fund government deficits and keep the market bubble inflated. The next problem is a crisis in the banks, wholly unexpected by investors and depositors. At a time when lending risk is soaring off the charts, their financial condition is more fragile than before the Lehman crisis. Failures in European G-SIBs in the next month or two are almost impossible to avoid, leading to a full-blown monetary and credit crisis which promises to undermine asset values, government financing and fiat currencies themselves. We can now discern the path leading to the destruction of fiat currencies and take reasonably guesses as to timing. Read More |
05.22.20- Social Security Has a Big COLA Problem (Oh, And It May Be Insolvent in 9 Years)
We suggested the COLA would not be enough to cover increased prices. And it appears that’s been accurate so far this year, as food inflation almost doubled from March to April, increasing from 1.9% to 3.5%. That level of inflation hits the pocketbook hard, especially since millions of Americans are still homebound, thanks to government-imposed “stay at home” regulations. But the “new” potential problem for the 2021 COLA is this: It appears there might not be one at all. This is thanks in part to a 17% drop in energy inflation, which might seem good, but the devil is in the details. According to Motley Fool: Read More |
05.21.20- Did the Lockdown Save Lives?
The manner in which governments dealt with foundational principles of modernity has been shocking. They put half the country under house arrest and managed every movement in disregard for the Bill of Rights and all legal precedent, to say nothing of the Constitution. It felt like a coercive unraveling of civilization itself. It’s like we are all waking up from a bad dream only to look around and see the wreckage that proves it was all real. So how can we deal with this terror that befell us? One way is to figure out some aspect in which our sacrifice has been worth it, maybe not on net given the consequences, but surely some good has come out of this. If my email and feeds are correct, this is how many people have been justifying this. The psychology here is rooted in the sunk-cost fallacy: when you commit resources to something, even when it is a proven error, you tend to find justifications by doubling down rather than just admitting the mistake. Read More |
05.20.20- “Free Money”: Most Americans Want The Government To Issue More Stimulus Checks
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05.19.20- Beware The CoronaNazis
Business and markets are arbitraging government support packages and central bank QE Infinity to stay “insanely high” despite the massive economic hit of the virus. If the proverbial Martian visited the stock market today, he’d struggle to understand just why markets are so high when prospects look so low. At which point we come back to earth with a bump. The papers this morning are full of doom and gloom – particularly re the UK. My email is full of analyst gibberish about why I should be buying Bitcoin, Tesla and other crap. I shall ignore them all, and focus on the real picture Even if the global economy was to magically reopen tomorrow, we’d still see earnings for 2020 massively impacted, reduced credit worthiness as companies leveraged themselves with more debt to see them through the crisis, and an increasingly protectionist trade uncurrent. Read More |
05.18.20- Police State Dry Run a Huge Success
We have become part of a mass scale human experiment in government control and it turned out that stripping away our freedom wasn’t all that difficult. Under the guise of concern for our health and well-being, tyrants came out of the woodwork. Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our lives are being destroyed as the left solidifies and expands their oppressive powers. We’ve been herded around like cattle, threatened, isolated, confined, silenced, and arrested. You name it, it’s happening. You tell me if what follows sounds like the United States, or China. We’ve been told who can work and who can’t, with language that separates us according to who is and who isn’t “essential” as the almighty State supersedes individual rights and the family unit. Read More |
05.16.20- Tasting the Forbidden Fruit of Free Money
Numerous stimulus proposals are currently being cooked up in Congress. In an election year, with unemployment going vertical, now’s the time to cash in on populist sentiments. The three leading bills, for example, are the Automatic Boost to Communities (ABC) Act, the Emergency Money for the People Act, and the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act. With names like that, what’s not to like? The main ingredient for each proposal is a $2,000 monthly stimulus check. The variance between the three is in duration and eligibility. Read More |
05.15.20- The U.S. Is Caught In An Economic Death Spiral, And One Group Is Being Hit Particularly Hard…
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05.14.20- Fourth Turning Accelerating Towards Climax
I’ve been writing articles about the Fourth Turning for over a decade and nothing has happened since its tumultuous onset in 2008, with the global financial collapse, created by the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street co-conspirator owners, that has not followed along the path described by Strauss and Howe in their 1997 book – The Fourth Turning. Read More |
05.13.20- 'Social Distancing' Is Snake Oil, Not Science
It’s your fault, he says to the hospitalized New Yorkers who loyally complied with his government directive. But here’s an interesting alternative theory as to why, mostly, old people who are staying at home are being hospitalized. Read More |
05.12.20- Market Insights From May 2021: Remembering The End Of The Beginning Of The End
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05.11.20- Former JPMorgan Economist:
Readers will have anticipated the bursting of the bubble that has been re-inflating ever since 2009. Ultra-loose monetary policy, coupled with deflationary pressures from increased aggregate supply and investors chasing yield at ever higher risk, meant that almost all asset classes had reached all time highs just before entering the current bear market. That there is a bubble, a massive one, is unquestionable. Readers will further have anticipated that it didn't have to be a global pandemic to burst this bubble. This bubble was practically looking for a prick - any prick - to burst it. Whether it was a credit event, liquidity shortages that led to bankruptcies, a terrorist attack, a natural disaster or a bat: markets had reached a level of fragility where they could not cope with the materialising of such a tail risk event. Read More |
05.09.20- Time To Learn About Money
The question arises as to what will replace fiat currencies. In the past the answer has always been gold but today there are cryptocurrencies as well, whose enthusiasts are more aware than most of fiat money’s failings. This article describes the basics about money, what it is and the role it plays in order to understand what will be required by the eventual replacement for fiat. It concludes that gold will return as the world’s medium of exchange, and secure cryptocurrencies, unable to provide the scalability and stability of value required of a medium of exchange will be priced in gold after the demise of fiat. But then the rationale for them will be gone, and with it their function as a store of value. Read More |
05.08.20- Beware of the Bear. He is Soon Back.
We are not just talking about the US and Europe but the whole world, including China, Japan, and emerging markets. This will clearly involve a very unpleasant and disorderly reset leading to great suffering. But there is no other way of solving a gigantic debt problem caused by central banks. What these central banks are now doing is obviously a travesty. A debt problem of the proportions the world is facing can never be solved by issuing more debt which is the fallacious solution central banks around the world are again embarking on. Read More |
05.07.20- The Great Myth of “Small Government”
We have no doubt they do. But how can an era end… if it never began? No Republican in current practice has lived one day in an era of small government. To visit one he must first climb into a time contraption… He must then dial the knobs past the Great Recession, past the Patriot Act and the war on terrorism, past the ballooning deficits of the 1980s, past the guns and butter of the 1960s, past the New Deal, past WWI… to perhaps 1900. Read More |
05.06.20- Bubble-Wrapped Americans: How the U.S. Became Obsessed with Physical and Emotional Safety
It’s a common refrain: We have bubble-wrapped the world. Americans in particular are obsessed with “safety.” The simplest way to get any law passed in America, be it a zoning law or a sweeping reform of the intelligence community, is to invoke a simple sentence: “A kid might get hurt.” Almost no one is opposed to reasonable efforts at making the world a safer place. But the operating word here is “reasonable.” Banning lawn darts, for example, rather than just telling people that they can be dangerous when used by unsupervised children, is a perfect example of a craving for safety gone too far. Read More |
05.05.20- Millennials Are Creating Massive Demand for Crypto
A week later, COVID-19 claimed its first reported death. Today, there are more than 3.5 million global cases and over 248,000 deaths. In the United States alone, more than 1 million have been infected and over 67,000 have died during the pandemic. The global economic collapse caused by the coronavirus is the biggest since the Great Depression. And it’s been nearly impossible to talk about anything – markets, business, politics – without the coronavirus as a backdrop. But there’s one area the pandemic isn’t directly affecting: crypto. Read More |
05.04.20- Why Sweden Has Already Won The Debate On COVID-19 "Lockdown" Policy
Unlike much of the rest of the world who saw fit to unquestioningly follow China’s lead on everything from quarantining, to economic shutdowns, to contact tracing, and PCR mass testing, nonlockdown countries have instead opted for a somewhat lighter touch – preserving their economies and societies, and in doing so avoiding an endless daisy chain of new problems and obstacles deriving directly from the imposition of brutal lockdown policy. Read More |
05.02.20- War on Cash Kicking Into Overdrive
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05.01.20- About One-Fifth Of All The Jobs In The U.S. Are Already Gone, And This Economic Depression Is Just 6 Weeks Old
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04.30.20- What happens when you
First they mortgaged their land, and delivered the majority of their crops to the lender. But after a bad harvest, the farmers needed to borrow more in order to afford another planting. With nothing left they used their freedom, and the freedom of their family as collateral. Many were sold into debt slavery after defaulting on this second loan. Read More |
04.29.20- We Are Fighting a Public Health Crisis, Not a War
The U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires notified us yesterday that it had organized a flight to Miami. It is scheduled to leave tomorrow. But why the “last flight?” we wondered. Then we got the news. Reuters:
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04.28.20- Are You Ready For The Great Depression Of The 2020s?
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04.27.20- Moving Out and Not Coming Back
The Coming De-Urbanization of America Yesterday on my work Facebook page, a reader asked, “Why is it that the places Covid-19 show up the most are in Democrat controlled areas?” As much as I’d like to believe that all the troubles in the world can eventually be traced back to Bill de Blasio, I responded, “Probably because ‘the places it shows up the most’ are large densely-packed cities with a lot of international and domestic air travel and high use of mass transit, where Democrats have been winning elections more than Republicans for at least a generation and in many cases several generations.” Read More |
04.25.20- On Quarantines and Trees, Pencils, Technology,
Although I am sad to lose the tree I find myself grateful for technology, and capitalism, when undertaking such tasks. These gratitudes cross my mind when disassembling the saw and using an air compressor or vacuum to clean the components. Or as I’m sharpening the chain and oiling things up for storage, I’ll think of those who designed and built the machines; creations that are, truly, three-dimensional manifestations of intelligence, logic, and love. I’ll wonder how many people have benefited from such inspirations. I’ll think of Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” and the “rising tide of capitalism”lifting all “boats”; and the “I Pencil” essay… those beautiful words written by Leonard Read. He was a libertarian peer of Austrian School of Economicsluminaries like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. He was an author who founded the Foundation for Economic Education; and he had the surname of Read. The irony. Read More |
04.24.20- Narrative Insanity
You needed a study to go through the NY daily Covid death report and figure out that if you didn't have one of the underlying conditions they specifically listed your risk of being killed by this bug was roughly equal to your all-cause mortality -- that is, of no particular concern at all? Or do you need a study to know that anywhere from a quarter to a half or more of the mortality from this bug came from nursing home patients, when in fact the first big "oh oh" was in a nursing home in Washington State? Or are you going to continue to tell me that this virus is racist because if you're FAT as a consequence of your personal choices and thus wind up diabetic and hypertensive, and rather than deal with the underlying issue -- what you put in the piehole and how much -- you instead whine to a doctor and pop a pill in a puerile attempt to deny the truth while screaming "discrimination" and shame anyone who points out that you're killing yourself that when a virus, which doesn't give one wet crap about your SJW screamfest comes along and kills you that it was "someone else's" fault? Read More |
04.23.20- How Could This Possibly Happen?
A microbe shutters the global economy for the first occasion in history… the stock market careens from bull market to bear market in record time… never have so many millions filed for unemployment in so short a stretch… And now a barrel of oil fetches less than zero. That is, oil producers must pay a fellow to lift this barrel off his hands. This was the sudden reality we confronted yesterday. Can you conceive it? The lubricating grease of the world’s economy — oil — you must hand away at a loss. Read More |
04.22.20- Human Lab Rats: The U.S. Government’s Secret History of Grisly Experiments
I have never known any government to put the best interests of its people first, and this COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. Now this isn’t intended to be a debate over whether COVID-19 is a legitimate health crisis or a manufactured threat. Such crises can—and are—manipulated by governments in order to expand their powers. As such, it is possible for the virus to be both a genuine menace to public health and a menace to freedom. Yet we can’t afford to overlook the fact that governments the world over, including the U.S. government, have unleashed untold horrors upon the world in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good. Read More |
04.21.20- End Occupational Licensure
The same sort of thing took place in bad old India under British rule. There was that scene in the movie “Gandhi” in which numerous of his followers were brutalized as they approached the sea. What was that all about? The colonial powers had reserved salt-making for the crown. Gandhi did not quite buy into this prohibition. His supporters were attempting to violate this stricture and were subjected to ruthless beatings to quell their protest. In the good old (well, new, modern) US of A we do not engage in such uncivilized practices? Surely not, you say? You are in grave error. Such feudalism is alive and well under present institutional arrangements. You may not have noticed this, you Rip Van Winkles, but many African – Americans arrange their hair in intricate patterns. (Some white people are now copying them, in a blatant act of cultural appropriation; the horror). Many hair braiders are young black girls. Read More |
04.20.20- The Locked Down World
But within the period of a just a few weeks last month, virtually the entire world went on lock down. No police were needed. No troops were needed. Not a single shot was fired. When the dust had settled, healthy people everywhere were being quarantined within their homes. Voluntarily. Businesses were forced to close. All events and activities- including professional sports- were cancelled. Untold numbers of businesses will never reopen. Millions will be thrown out of work. Read More |
04.18.20- Investing Is Now Simple
It has made obvious — to all with open eyes — that the stock market is a crook’s game, a vast swindle. How else could the stock market regain so many of its initial pandemic losses… while 16 million Americans file unemployment claims… and second-quarter GDP may contract 40%? The Federal Reserve has expanded its balance sheet some $1.6 trillion these past four weeks. There is your answer. All vestiges of fair and honest markets have gone whooshing down the chute. Read More |
04.27.20- Is Nassim Taleb "The Only Man That Has A Clue"?
It took me a while to get this together. But in the end I wound up with the only COVID19 analysis that makes sense. It doesn’t leave much room for discussion, at least not in the steps needed to be taken in order to tame the virus (I despise the war analogies everyone uses, taming sounds much better). How to fill in those steps once they have -kind of- been taken is another matter. Read More |
04.16.20- Worst Recession in 150 Years
But you really shouldn’t be terribly surprised by the rally. Even the worst bear markets see substantial bouncebacks. And you can expect the market to give back all of its recent gains in the months ahead as the economic fallout of the lockdowns becomes apparent. This bear market has a long way to run. And we could actually be looking at the worst recession in 150 years if one economist is correct. Let’s unpack this… My regular readers know I have a low opinion of most academic economists, the ones you find at the Fed, the IMF and in mainstream financial media. Read More |
04.15.20- Epidemiologist: Coronavirus Could Be “Exterminated” If Lockdowns Are Lifted (Video)
Knut Wittkowski, previously the longtime head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University in New York City, said in an interview with the Press and the Public Project that the coronavirus could be “exterminated” people were allowed to lead normal lives, free from the shackles of house arrest politicians have placed on them. We need to shelter only the most vulnerable parts of society until the danger had passed, not lockdown everyone. Read More |
04.14.20- The Epocalypse is Different This Time,
The following article is verbatim from my original lead-in to the Epocalypse series I wrote with just a few comments or updated words added in brackets so you can tell exactly what’s been changed — and an additional quote [also noted as additional in brackets]. The following is the second half of the original article — written in August of 2015 — that I quoted from as the basis for yesterday’s article, “The Return of the Epocalypse.”) Why do I do it this way? So you can see how accurate the predictions of the original article about the Epocalypse were as we now enter recession again and you observe how that recession is actually playing out. Now, a flash from the past that’s nearly perfect for the present: Read More |
04.13.20- Welcome to your new Freedoms: “Shoot them dead”
Emanuel first said this during the 2008/2009 financial crisis… meaning that politicians can use a crisis as an opportunity to push through radical ideas that would otherwise never be accepted. Late last month, Emanuel uttered the same words on ABC News This Week, admonishing politicians to not let this crisis go to waste either… and use it as a springboard to pass sweeping policy changes while people are too terrified to care. And at this point in the pandemic it’s pretty clear that plenty of governments are absolutely not letting this crisis go to waste. Here’s a roundup of what’s happening around the world: Read More |
04.11.20- Soaring Food Prices May Signal U.S. Return to
In the near term, it appears some food prices are rising dramatically. Robert Wenzel explains why he thinks the first signs are happening:
The Fed “moon shot”, plus the economic shutdown, sure seem like a one-two punch that could send prices soaring. Read More |
04.10.20- 14 Ways to Be Civilly Disobedient in the Face of the Corona Ban
Case in point, even the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, more than two weeks ago, acknowledged that the hasty and heavy-handed corona ban may have backfired, saying “If you re-thought that or had time to analyze that public health strategy, I don’t know that you would say ‘Quarantine everyone.’” Yet the corona ban remains firmly in place in New York. Sometimes fell swoops work to enact change, other times a general change in attitude might get the job done. With the corona bans needing to be killed, here are a few ways to exert pressure. Read More |
04.09.20- Know Your Rights Under Martial Law:
While Martial Law is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, the suspension of habeas corpus is mentioned, which basically explains the idea behind one of the main consequences of martial law: the suspension of your right not to be held against your will without just cause. In the normal function of everyday law and order, it is unconstitutional to be held against your will without good cause. In the normal context of law and order to legally arrest you and put you in jail, the courts must issue what is called a “writ of habeas\corpus” – which requires those who are holding you to provide the court with a necessary reason for doing so. If Martial Law is implemented, habeas corpus is suspended and you’re basically left at the mercy of Military Justice. Read More |
04.08.20- A New World Is Being Born: What Will It Be?
Elites are working to make it better for them, and worse for the rest of us. About that the evidence is clear. The Big Boys are being bailed out and their debts covered. Everyone else, except those already marginalized and without a recent work record and fixed address, got a month’s rent and extended unemployment benefits.
But the disparity in economic benefits is only a part of it. Powerful vested interests, such as Bill Gates and Big Pharma, are determined to vaccinate us all, and to control our movements with an internal passport called “vaccinated, health cleared” or other words to that effect. New tracking procedures and technologies are to be put in operation reminiscent of the “mark of the beast” to police the access of varous categories of people to various areas and benefits. Read More |
04.07.20- Blame the Baby Boomers
We came along at the end of history’s earlier biggest trauma, the Second World War, following the hard stumble of the Great Depression — which, by the way, for those of you unsure of chronology, followed the First World War, an epic, purposeless slaughter that utterly demoralized Western civilization. What a set-up for my parents’ generation. My stepfather, the man who raised me, was an interesting, specimen of that gen. Fresh out of college in Boston, he joined the army, became a lieutenant, and by-and-by found himself trapped in the German offensive through the Ardennes Forest, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Read More |
04.06.20- Food Banks Warn They Will Soon Run Out Of Food As Economic Suffering Explodes All Over America
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04.04.20- Testing for DNA...Er... I Mean Corona Virus
https://nocamels.com/2020/03/israel-china-coronavirus-testing-myheritage/ This intrigues me because it prompts an obvious question: what the heck is a DNA-heritage testing company doing involved in helping China create a corona virus test? Well, for one thing, recall those stories early on as the corona virus story stated to go Viral (pardon the pun), spreading faster than the virus itself. Those early stories indicated that oriental peoples, and particularly Chinese, were more susceptible to the virus due to much higher numbers of receptors in their lungs for the virus to latch onto. In other words, there appeared – initially at least – to be a genetic component to the story, one which has all but dropped off the radar altogether in the past few weeks. Hence, it makes eminent sense for such a company, experienced in genetic sequencing, to be involved in a quick start-up for corona virus testing. Read More |
04.03.20- Who’s Next to Fail in the Post-COVID World?
Money velocity has been falling for years. It is now cratering as we hide in our homes from a bug that eventually we will all have to reconcile with. Credit is the engine of the world of today. It is the gas which fuels the engine of the world. COVID-19 has cratered the global economy exposing the internal rot within our hyper-financialized global economy as nothing more than a pyramid of Ponzi schemes… Read More |
04.02.20- A light in the Darkness
This book is so extraordinary in its truthfulness and conciseness that it is difficult for a less gifted writer to do it justice. It is a book without a superfluous sentence. Herein I will provide some of the books message. In future columns I hope to present some of the history in the book. Read More |
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Novartis Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan has announced that there is preliminary evidence showing that “hydroxychloroquine kills the coronavirus.” Narasimhan made the announcement to Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung on Sunday, as he was touting the ability of his pharmaceutical corporation to develop medicines to stop the pandemic. They have pledged to donate 130 million doses of hydroxychloroquine as soon as the medicine is approved for widespread use. “Pre-clinical studies in animals as well as the first data from clinical studies show that hydroxychloroquine kills the coronavirus,” Narasimhan said to the newspaper. Read More |
03.31.20- "Don't Be Fooled... April Is Going To Hurt"
According to the press, China is experiencing normal traffic jams, while the major threat is reinfection from the West, so borders are locked shut. They are anticipating business as usual. They are in for a shock. JP Morgan are on the wires saying markets have made their lows, and although it will be volatile, its time to “average into oversold markets.” In my opinion… they are fools. Read More |
03.30.20- Boot Strapping the World Economy
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03.28.20- The Grasshoppers Are Swarming Mad That You Are Prepared For The Crash
Eventually, winter does arrive and it is as brutal as the Ant had predicted. Not surprisingly, the carefree Grasshopper finds himself cold and starving with no supplies, begging the Ant to share the bounty he had worked so hard to procure over the summer. The Ant refuses, telling the Grasshopper he can “dance the winter away, now….” What many people do not know is that there is also a decidedly more socialist version of The Ant And The Grasshopper written by a French poet named Jean de La Fontaine in which the Ant is portrayed as the bad guy, and his industry as “mean spirited”. And here in this little fable we have represented one of the greatest conflicts of our modern era: Read More |
03.27.20- FDIC asks Americans to keep their money in the banks
Accompanied by soft piano music playing in the background, the official said: “Your money is safe at the banks. The last thing you should be doing is pulling your money out of the banks thinking it’s going to be safer somewhere else.” As I’ve written before, there’s $250 TRILLION worth of debt in the world right now: student debt, housing debt, credit card debt, government debt, corporate debt, etc. And let’s be honest, some of that debt is simply not going to be paid. Millions of people have already lost their jobs. Millions more (like the 10 million waiters and bartenders across America) are barely earning anything right now because their businesses are closed. Read More |
03.26.20- The Pandemic Is Accelerating the Breakdown
The feedback loop has reversed: by saving more, people will spend, borrow and speculate less, draining the fuel from any broadbased expansion. In eras of confidence and certainty, people save less and spend more freely. When we’re confident that good times are not only here but will continue, we not only spend more freely, we’re more inclined to borrow money and speculate on the shimmering promises of more good times ahead. In eras of uncertainty, people save more and spend, borrow and speculate less. There is an obvious feedback loop here: if people feel confident about their future prospects and have a measure of certainty about the general economic trend, they spend more, borrow more and speculate more, all of which feed the expansive mood that then encourages further spending, borrowing and speculating. Read More |
03.25.20- It Could Last 18 Months — “or Longer”
That is how long the coronavirus scourge may endure. This we learn by way of The New York Times. It has done us all a capital service by executing a rare feat of journalism. For its spies have captured a government document “not for public distribution or release.” From which:
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03.24.20- Good night, John Boy…
It may not come as a surprise to many that the recent Covid-19 Crisis will bring about some very difficult times for many people in our community and around the world. How we all conduct ourselves will make the world of difference to the level of suffering to many around us and even the quality of our own lives. Whenever a crisis hits suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, panic is usually the first reaction. Fear is primal and we simply can’t avoid it at first. Our instincts scream at us to take care of number one and family first. Having said that, there is another way of looking at things. Consider the ancient Hellenistic, Stoicism philosophy. Read More |
03.23.20- The End of Civilization?
Further, he points out, governments can’t solve the problems they have created through massive spending programs and bigger deficits. These policies make things worse: “Governments will implement large demand-side policies that are the wrong answer to a shutdown of the economy. Most businesses will suffer from the collapse in sales and subsequent working capital build, and none of that will be solved with deficit spending. You cannot mitigate a supply shock with demand policies, which increase debt and overcapacity in the already indebted and bloated sectors and do not help the sectors that are suffering an abrupt collapse in activity.” And government printing of money, i.e., outright inflationism, is even more dangerous. Read More |
03.21.20- “Hell Is Coming”
It is as if some hinge, deep within the national psychology, has suddenly given way. The daily rites of life are suspended. Businesses, schools and arenas the nation over have gone dark. Travel is hopeless…. and borders are sealed shut. Unemployment claims are piling up. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has suggested they may ultimately scale a depression-level 20%. San Francisco residents are under house arrest, confined to barracks 24 hours of the day. Emergencies and food shopping provide the only officially sanctioned furloughs. (Our spies report large numbers of lawless who are flouting the ban.) Read More |
03.20.20- Will This Be “Just A Recession” Or Will It Be “The Next Great Depression”?
At this point, many of our top minds are fearing the worst. On Thursday, former White House economist Kevin Hassett warned CNN that we could actually see a repeat of the Great Depression… Read More |
03.19.20- How Dead is the Fed?
It’s happened via face-plant failures over past month that I’m going to lay out to show how savagely the Fed is dying a perpetual-motion death. Let me pause to assure you, I’m not saying Feddy Krueger is down for the count and will not rise again. He always revives by inventing powers over market death never seen before. Feddy will return with extraordinary and permanent powers beyond those he once used to bring counterfeit salvation from the Great Recession. Feddy gets more empowered by scared government politicians each time the economy crashes. You can’t get rid of Feddy. At least, it seems. Read More |
03.18.20- Economic Effect of Coronavirus Could Be Revolutionary
Coronavirus will teach us that a country without free national health care is severely handicapped. Millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They cannot afford health care premiums, deductions, and copays. Millions have no insurance. This means millions of people infected with coronavirus who cannot get medical help. The morbidity from this is intolerable in any society. Shutdowns associated with efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus will deny income to millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. What do they do for food, shelter, transportation? You don’t have to think very long along these lines to see a very frightening scenario. Read More |
03.17.20- Federal Government To Control And Oversee Grocery Distribution Within Days
(Natural News) Breaking news alert – NaturalNews.com – The US federal government is in the planning stage of implementing a plan to protect and control grocery distribution across the United States via public / private partnerships with top grocery chains such as Wal-Mart, Kroger, HEB (Texas), Target, Costco, etc., high-level sources now tell Natural News. The effort is being made to ensure the smooth delivery of food supplies to the public as a coronavirus lockdown is about to commence on a regional basis, and food supplies are necessary to prevent social unrest, lawlessness and looting. Read More |
03.16.20- The "Greater Depression" Is Coming
What is a depression? We’re now at the tail end of a very long, but in many ways a very weak and artificial, economic expansion. At the same time, we’ve had one of the strongest securities bull markets in history. Both are the result of trillions of new dollars created over the last decade. Right now, very few people are willing to consider the possibility of tough times – let alone The Greater Depression. But, perverse though it may seem, this is the very best time to think about it. The U.S. economy is a house of cards, built on quicksand, with a tsunami on the way. I urge everyone to read up on the topic. For now, I’ll only briefly touch on the nature of depressions. There are at least three good definitions of the term: Read More |
03.14.20- Treatments for coronavirus that have worked in China
Treatments for coronavirus that have worked in China Hydroxychloroquine These research papers show great antiviral promise for both Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine. The Chinese have started using them. So should we. The antiviral effects were originally discovered in Europe during SARS, but then forgotten about as SARS was so aggressive it killed the host too quickly and died out. French Prof Raoult and others have helped the Chinese advising them to procede in this way and tgey had the good sense to trial it. Read More |
03.13.20- Your Pension May Quickly Be 'Infected'
One of the ripple effects that will likely impact some retirement savers is panic stemming from the virus' potential impact on public and corporate pensions. Of course, both types of pension programs have been running on fumes for years now. The coronavirus may just be the straw that breaks the camel's back. In a recent example from England, an article from The Guardian notes, "Savers are nursing losses approaching 10% in their pension schemes since the start of the coronavirus market panic." Read More |
03.12.20- Fear Of The Coronavirus Is Causing
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03.11.20- Even The Best-Case Scenario Is Pretty Grim
Almost certainly not, because the psychological damage has already been done. Over the past couple of weeks the modern globalized economy with its multi-nation supply chains and just-in-time inventory systems has been forced to recognize that such a system only works in a nearly-perfect environment. Take the iPhone: It is designed in the US, its constituent raw materials are mined and processed in numerous other countries and the resulting components are then shipped for assembly to vast Chinese factories. Break any link in this chain and the whole thing grinds to a halt. One unavailable commodity or component, one out-of-service assembly plant, one country with closed borders or out-of-control civil unrest, and a multi-billion dollar revenue stream evaporates. Read More |
03.10.20- No, the world is not coming to an end…
I’ve been saying for years that, at some point, there will be a severe financial reckoning. We wouldn’t know how, and most likely, we would have very little advance warning. As an example, in June 2018 I wrote “whatever causes the next major downturn can be something completely obscure and unpredictable. And no one realizes it until it’s too late.” Read More |
03.09.20- Pandemic Pandemania Causes Global Economic Crisis
Since Seattle is the first area where the coronavirus made landfall in the US, I’ll present Seattle’s viral transformation in the last forty-eight hours (about two weeks since the first cases were reported) as an anecdote for the extremely rapid changes already sweeping many cities in the US as outbreaks begin to show elsewhere. You may recall I recently wrote that the COVID-19 virus, whether it grew to become one of the world’s great killers or just the cause of one of the world’s great panics, would certainly bring rapid economic damage. It would also help take down the stock market by accelerating us into recession, which is how I’ve been predicting this bull run will finally die. Read More |
03.07.20- Corona baloney: it’s the money, honey
Enter THE VIRUS. The medical version of Satan. To new readers: to fully understand the next paragraph, you’ll need to read my previous articles on the “China epidemic” con job. —A virus whose very existence is in doubt; the diagnostic tests for the virus are entirely inadequate and useless and misleading; therefore, the case numbers are meaningless; the virus’ supposed origin (Wuhan) is a place where highly dangerous and unprecedented air pollution can account for the all the effects of the so-called virus—and now one prediction on steroids is pegging the eventual global case numbers at 15 million, and the cost of containing the virus at $2 trillion. The elite players are visiting their tailors and having their deep pockets deepened further to absorb this (planned) windfall. Read More |
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Top FBI and federal law enforcement insiders were investigating what amounted to a Clinton-backed crime spree but were told to stand down by Attorney General William Barr. These agents may have stopped the official probe but that is not stopping high-ranking personnel from spilling the beans to Thomas Paine, detailing how the Clinton Foundation ripped off taxpayers amd many many other entities worldwide. The Clinton’s should be in prison, federal law enforcement insiders attest. There is no doubt. How big is this criminal enterprise? Thomas Paine breaks down the dirt insiders are dishing on the new episode of the Thomas Paine Podcast and on the Moore Paine Show on Patreon. This is a massive scheme and the cover up is even bigger than the cartel. Read More |
03.05.20- How The Pandemic Crisis Will Probably Develop
Until recently the mainstream media was also been pumping out article after article on why Covid 19 is “no more dangerous than the flu”. With the official death rate at 2.3% to 3% (changing by the week), the virus already has higher mortality than the average flu. If we take into account the fact that multiple medical professionals within China have revealed (despite threats of punishment) that the Chinese government is hiding the true (and much higher) death and infection statistics, then the official data goes out the window. We can't even trust the infection numbers from the CDC in the US, because they been refusing to test most people unless they have recently traveled to China. Because of government lies we have to assume that the crisis is more pervasive than we know. And so far the average American is oblivious to it. Read More |
03.04.20- Have we brewed a whirlwind?
We can see the public’s distrust of public authorities in the negligent response to the coronavirus. The refusal of public authorities to stop incoming flights from infected countries has brought the dangerous virus into the Western World where inaction has so far prevailed. Many virologists and other experts have criticized the inaction for seriously endangering the public. I recently posted some of the expert statements made to public health authorities. Read More |
03.03.20- What Is The Deep State
Last year, fuel was added to this fire when internal memos were leaked from the British-run Integrity Initiative featuring a startling account of the techniques deployed by the anti-Russian British operation to infiltrate American intelligence institutions, think tanks and media. Read More |
03.02.20- All Of A Sudden, People All Over America
Over the past several days, this coronavirus outbreak has escalated significantly. From Saturday to Sunday, the number of confirmed cases in Italy jumped by 50 percent… Read More |
02.29.20- What happens to your bitcoin after you die?
This is more than just a philosophical question: It could involve a substantial amount of currency. The question of crypto and the Great Beyond is what prompted about 20 or so developers to get together in London recently to experiment with repurposing the current lightning protocol to send private messages as a “dead man's button,” a system that can't be censored and would keep your crypto safe for your heirs. Read More |
02.28.20- Doug Casey on the Truth About Millennials and the Next Crisis
Whether or not this is true, Millennials as a group will soon surpass the number of baby boomers as the largest generational group. How equipped is this soon-to-be dominant generation for handling a financial crisis, a major war, or civil unrest? Doug Casey: According to William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book, The Fourth Turning, the Millennials should be a “Hero” Generation, set to face a huge threat to the country. For previous Hero Generations, the threats were the Great Depression and then World War II. The time from 1929 to 1946 was full of societally threatening events. Much like today. Read More |
02.27.20- The Unsustainable Trajectory of America’s Economy
From where I’m sitting, the news isn’t good, but then again, I’m not in the government and privy to all the hidden factors that may eventually enter the equation. If one goes off known quantities that have been verified and documented and recorded, it’s really hard not to conclude that every nation worldwide is in a bit of a financial struggle at the moment. We just happen to be struggling at the top of the heap, so to speak. But, when the proverbial “Stuff hits the fan” it ain’t going to be pretty, not when it will take a bushel barrel full of this queer fiat money to buy a single loaf of bread, and everybody and his brother are fighting in the streets wondering just what in the hell happened. Read More |
02.26.20- No One on Food Stamps Should Be Allowed to Vote
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02.25.20- Your Doctor and Your Guns
You are at the pediatrician’s office for a routine well child visit. Maybe you just moved to a new town. The nurse hands you the standard paperwork with the questionnaire pertaining to your child’s health. You start filling out the form and right there . . . question number 14 . . . “Do you have a gun in the home?” It’s right after the question about swimming pools and right before the one about household cleaner storage. What do you answer? First, the presence of this question is no accident. In the 1980s and 1990s professional medical organizations declared a culture war on gun ownership. This includes the American Medical Association, American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatricians. Read More |
02.24.20- US Biowarfare Act Author: Studies Confirm Coronavirus Weaponized!
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02.22.20- Is There Any Place Safe Left To Live?
Has the entire country gone mad? Is there any place left where liberty, privacy, self-reliance, and the ability to garden, fish, hunt, build, and protect one’s hearth and home is still possible? Renowned editor of the World Affairs Brief, and author of Strategic Relocation, and The Secure Home, Joel Skousen, returns to Finance and Liberty / Reluctant Preppers to give us a critical update on the changing socio-political landscape of our nation, and the focus areas on new concern to those seeking a private, secure location for a safe homestead. Read More |
02.21.20- Omens, Portents, Karma and the Mandate of Heaven
What makes humans unique among social mammals? Some say humor, I would nominate superstition: regardless of how hard we promote our rationality and logic, humanity continues to sense portents and omens in events and feel the intangible tug of karma: the consequences of past actions that we arrogantly thought we’d escaped forever. Michael Snyder recently compiled a list of peculiarities that are raising eyebrows around the globe: One, sure, two, not that unusual, three, well things happen in threes, but ten disturbances and we’re only six weeks into 2020? 10 ‘Plagues’ That Are Hitting Our Planet Simultaneously (Zero Hedge) As the saying has it, Nature Bats Last, and maybe arrogant, destructive humanity’s war on Nature is about to get its comeuppance. Maybe overdosing hundreds of millions of chickens and pigs to knock down bacteria in overcrowded conditions has finally generated a karmic blowback via bird and swine viruses. Read More |
02.20.20- The Lessons We Have Learned From The Coronavirus
Refusing to examine the dark side of life and its dangers has become a staple of our society, to the point that it has given birth to a kind of religious cult. Naive optimism has become a virtue, a misplaced form of faith that encourages people to remain oblivious in the face of adversity. And the more precarious our system becomes, the more these people see unicorns and rainbows. It is truly bizarre. Read More |
02.19.20- The Betrayal Of The Elites
We need institutions, including families, associations, churches, corporations, trade unions, political parties, professions such as law and medicine, as well as the formal institutions of government such as Congress, the presidency, and the courts. They are, as Levin puts it, “the durable forms of our common life.” They serve purposes or missions, like educating the young, resolving disputes, or defending the country. They give life meaning by assigning roles, teaching self-control, and enforcing standards. In the process, they form the character of those who participate in them. But we no longer trust them. What went wrong? Read More |
02.18.20- Why Covid-19 Demands Our Full Attention
There’s a reason we’ve re-directed so much of our attention towards reporting on and trying to understand the novel coronavirus (covid-19) that originated in Wuhan, China in December. The heart of our approach is to be “systems thinkers.”
We don’t see the economy as a closed ecosystem to be analyzed and understood all on its own. It’s connected to energy flows, especially oil. So we investigate those, too, with an eye towards working out how fossil fuels’ eventual dwindling will impact an economic system that is utterly dependent on perpetual growth. Read More |
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Consider the following:
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02.15.20- White People Are Being Erased
Those Americans empowered by “white privilege” who are still a demographic majority are too scared and too intimidated to open their mouths or use their pocketbooks to protest their demonization and marginalization. Facebook and Twitter will drop them, denying them their virtual existence. Indoctrinated and mindless white friends will shun them as racist, anti-semitic white supremacists. Twenty-eight US states will fire them if state employed and deny them contracts if their protests have anything to do with Israel. Deserted and isolated on social media, their life will be over. This is what “white privilege” means. Throughout the Western world truth is out of favor. Indeed, truth is objectionable. It offends Identity Politics, feminism, the Israel Lobby, the military/security complex, Monsanto/Bayer, the extractive industries, the pharmaceutical industry, the “woke people,” the transgendered and every other interest that desires to be unaccountable and free of criticism. Read More |
02.14.20- The Necessity of Questioning Mass Media Journalism
A couple of weeks ago, I started blogging, having traveled to two different Asian nations and having observed the precautions people were taking in crowded areas, and having spoken to friends that live in China, my suspicions that the coronavirus was much more serious than being implied by official State reported data. Initially, when I conveyed these suspicions, I received quite a bit of pushback from people and heard accusations that I was just contributing to the hysteria, even though I additionally conveyed my belief that there was a good deal of real hysteria being reported on pure speculation from other nations’ reporters outside of the Asian continent, and that this hysteria should be largely ignored as click-bait rubbish. Read More |
02.13.20- Hackers Attacking Retirement Savings
Unfortunately, this nightmare scenario is happening more and more often as hackers become more creative and use more sophisticated methods. According to an article on MarketWatch, "Hackers are targeting new types of financial accounts — such as customer rewards programs and retirement plans, according to the 2019 Identity Fraud Study from Javelin Strategy & Research." Read More |
02.12.20- If Only Economics Was as Easy as Rocket Science
Economics Is Difficult After all, we have successfully sent rockets to many places in our planetary neighborhood, demonstrating a tolerable ability to solve enough of the relevant problems, yet many economic policies impose more harm than help. And the more one tries to control, the more the information and implementation issues undermine the possibility—much less the probability—of effectiveness. Read More |
02.11.20- A Most Convenient Virus
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02.10.20- In The Bubble: Trump's Presidency Reveals
The awakening for many Americans could be compared to that of actor Jim Carrey’s character in the 1998 film “The Truman Show”. In that narrative, the unsuspecting star of a global reality television program came to the realization his entire worldview was formed within a bubble; a literal bubble that generated bubblevision in Carrey’s character as all of those around (and above) him performed right on cue. Truly, it feels like that now in America. The times have become surreal. And there is a great percentage of Americans who still live within the bubble. They are everywhere: In the workplace, in schools and colleges and at restaurants and in bars. They vigorously debate each other on who would make a better president between Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, or Joe Biden. They LOVE the fact that Trump was impeached and consider Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and the Devil’s butler (Chuck Schumer) to be American heroes. Read More |
02.08.20- Welcome to the Bullshit Economy The story of Shadow, makers of the app that utterly failed to deliver in Iowa, is a perfect example of the bullshit economy. In one sense, the Iowa caucus debacle will last just a couple of news cycles. We have the data on paper, tabulated in front of tens of thousands of witnesses, and it merely needs to be collated. Eventually it will, and though the damage to the news cycle is irreparable—Joe Biden’s disappointing outcome has been diluted in particular—the process will go on with an accurate count. Caucuses are horrible and probably a dead letter, but for different reasons than the delayed count; the real problems arise from the electoral college–style distortions between the initial percentages and the final delegates, and the tacit vote suppression from forcing people to attend a two-hour meeting on a weeknight when they might be working. Read More |
02.07.20- The Height Of Idiocy
I’m not a fortune teller. In fact, the only things anybody knows about predicting – even if you gussy the concept up by calling it “forecasting” – are 1.) Predict often and 2.) Never give both the time and the event. The worst offenders are those who pretend they know where the economy’s headed. Statistics – so often the basis of conjecture with regard to the economy – are so subject to interpretation, and so easy to take out of context, that most of the time they’re best used as fodder for cocktail party conversations. Still, as potentially wrong-headed and tendentious as the subject is, “the economy” is occasionally worth talking about simply to establish a clear point of view. Read More |
02.06.20- Pandemic, Lies and Videos
When we look back on this moment from the vantage of history, what will we think? Will we think how obvious it was that the coronavirus deaths in China were in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds claimed by authorities? Will we think how obvious it was that the virus would spread around the globe, wreaking havoc on the global economy and social order, even as the authorities claimed only a handful of cases had arisen outside China? Read More |
02.05.20- Are you prepared for the contagion?
I have to admit, a “pandemic” was low on my list of possible sparks, but after thinking it through, a pandemic is a financial disaster. Yes it is a human disaster and many will die, but the odds of dying from the virus are and will remain quite low. The real problem is what the human response will be. I say this because we live in a world of just in time inventory AND production. We also live in a financial world with more debt and financial leverage (and thus monthly debt service) than ever before. So much so that even a small hiccup (which this does not appear to be) where business slows and contracts will be enough to quickly default some credits. The problem is not the initial defaults, rather, it is the “contagion” throughout the system because our world is so inter connected (globalism). Read More |
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Human consciousness begins in the womb. Unborn babies have memories, emotions and experiences that some people even remember. Consciousness exists in human babies long before the day of birth, at which point the child is nearly ten months old, not nine as is typically misstated by most people. This is why in Eastern cultures, a child is considered to be one year old at the moment of birth. Read More |
02.03.20- Our Kardashian Culture
Bryant was a great basketball player, one of the best in NBA history. He was also accused of raping a nineteen year old hotel worker in 2003. Like all celebrities and wealthy people, Bryant escaped punishment and later settled out of court. The mainstream media broke a time-honored tradition at the time, by disclosing the name of the victim, and questioned her character and motivations in several biased, inflammatory reports. At the last minute, she abruptly decided not to testify, and Bryant avoided a trial. In the eyes of a reasonable person, Kobe Bryant’s eventual admission of sexual contact with his accuser, without acknowledging any guilt, defined him as being significantly less than heroic. Following the helicopter crash on January 26, 2020, which also tragically took the lives of his thirteen year old daughter and eight others, accolades and tributes fit for royalty came forth, mostly via Twitter, which is the national Town Crier for America 2.0. Read More |
02.01.20- More on the Coronavirus... a Real Simulation
But now, there's an even more uncanny resemblance between "simulation" and "reality", and a big thanks to all who found and shared this: Read More |
01.31.20- Savings vs. Money: Which Is More Important?
Following this logic, one could also establish that increases in money supply are beneficial to the entire process of capital formation and economic growth. (Note: increases in money supply result in increases in monetary income and this, for a given consumer outlay, implies an increase in savings). Read More |
01.30.20- A Date and Time for “Financial Armageddon?”
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01.29.20- Some Thoughts on Democracy and China
Today, Democracy has become the only accepted political system. All others are considered outrageous. This circumstance did not come about by itself, that is to say, in the course of a normal change in the flow of opinion among the nations of the world. The United States was founded as a “Republic” not a “Democracy”. (Hardly anyone remembers that this was the theme of Bob Welch, founder of the “John Birch Society” back in the 1950’s.) Among those responsible for confusing the population of the USA into the acceptance of “Democracy”, we must point a finger at Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the USA from 1933 to 1945. Read More |
01.28.20- How screwed up is the pension system
“If you sacrifice your retirement savings to send your child to college, you’re making a huge mistake.” Read More |
01.27.20- The Things We Believe That are Untrue
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01.25.20- Coronavirus Is Worse Than You've Been Told: Scientist Explains
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Literally, anyone can claim the new refugee status. This will essentially open US borders for good. Now the left has combined open borders with junk science to create climate refugees. Read More |
01.23.20- IMF warns of new ‘Great Depression’, Russia ahead of the curve due to increased cash & gold reserves
Kristalina Georgieva isn’t any sort of conspiracy theorist; she’s the head of the International Monetary Fund. And when she warns that the global economy risks another “Great Depression,” you would think everyone would listen. Read More |
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01.21.20- This IS Tomorrow: Gun Control Is A Tool Of Socialism
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01.20.20- Remarks on the US/China “Trade Deal”
The purpose of tariffs is to protect domestic producers from foreign competition by raising the price of imported goods. What Trump, his administration, and the financial press did not understand is that at least half of the US trade deficit with China is the offshored goods produced in China by such corporations as Apple, Nike, and Levi. The offshored production of US global corporations counts as imports when they are brought into the US to be sold to Americans. Thus, the cost of the tariffs were falling on US corporations and US consumers. Read More |
01.18.20- What Will It Take to Get the Public
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01.17.20- The two best gifts to give your newborn child
They made the poor woman sign a form indicating her body type was observed by staff to appear pregnant. The test proved she wasn’t. The woman was traveling to Saipan, the largest island among the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory. Having a baby on the island gives the child automatic US citizenship. And in 2018, more tourists than residents gave birth on the Northern Mariana Islands. Read More |
01.16.20- Debt and Inflation Are Bringing the Economy Down
This “repo madness” has been going on for four months. It’s time to ask some questions… From Theoretical to Desperate Who is the biggest debtor in the world? Who is already scheduled to borrow another $20 trillion in the next 20 years? Read More |
01.15.20- 7 Major Earth Changes That Are Happening Right Now
Sadly, most people don’t even realize what is happening, and that is because the mainstream media only emphasizes stories that fit with the particular narratives that they are currently pushing. But it has gotten to the point where nobody can deny that really weird things are happening. The following are 7 major earth changes that are happening right now that everyone needs to know about… Read More |
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The first recorded use of gunpowder appeared in Europe in 1247, although China had used gunpowder for centuries before that, mostly for fireworks. The cannon appeared nearly 100 years later in 1327, with a hand-sized version making its debut in 1364. The first ordnances were made of stone, and while it might have been theoretically possible for anyone to own one, this would have been outside the financial reach of anyone but the nobility. Read More |
01.13.20- This Is What 'Diversity' Has Gotten You
The number of murders has gone up and down. Note that the population of the United States has continually risen, so the number of murders, assuming that the rate per person remains the same, should be a continually-upsloping line growing at about 1% a year. It isn't. In fact the number of murder peaked around 1990. It is materially lower now than then, despite all the screaming of the various scolds, and we're 20 years further down with more people in the nation. However, what has changed is the clearance (that is, the number of people who murder and get caught) rate. Why? Read More |
01.11.20- Sanctuary Cities: A Battle Over the Second Amendment is Unfolding Across America
As Virginia’s new Democratic legislature promises gun control measures, the wives of National Guardsman are warning that impending gun legislation threatens to turn neighbor against neighbor. As the 2020 Virginia legislative session began, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam and fellow Democrats continued their push for new gun control bills. In the months since a May 2019 shooting left 12 people dead and four others injured at a Virginia Beach municipal building, Democratic politicians have repeatedly expressed their desire to implement new restrictions such as universal background checks, a ban on certain weapons, and controversial red flag laws. Read More |
01.10.20- Doug Casey on the Difference Between
Webster’s defines a whistleblower as “one who reveals something covert or who informs against another.” Doug, you’re a fan of using words correctly. What is your view on what a whistleblower is? Doug Casey: The connotations surrounding the term “whistleblower” depend largely on who’s using it and the reason they’re using it. Let’s figure out the distinctions between a bunch of words that all mean the same thing—but have very different connotations. In most contexts, a whistleblower is what school kids call a tattletale. Adults call them stoolpigeons, rats, finks, squealers, snitches, narcs, weasels, or the like. A whistleblower is not a good thing in normal society. Nobody likes an informer, even if they’re well-intentioned. Read More |
01.09.20- Facts and Speculations – Next Decade
WHAT HAPPENS TO PRICES NEXT DECADE—IN FIVE TO TEN YEARS? What we know, think we know and speculation: WHAT WE KNOW THAT HAS BEEN TRUE FOR MANY DECADES: Read More |
01.08.20- Another Stupid War
First off, we need to understand the U.S. is now at war with Iran. It’s an undeclared, insane and unconstitutional war, but it is war nonetheless. There is no world in which one government intentionally assassinates the top general of another government and that not be warfare. You can argue the U.S. and Iran were already engaged in low-level proxy wars, and that’s a fair assessment, but you can’t say we aren’t currently in a far more serious a state of war. We are. Read More |
01.07.20- No, Jesus Wasn't a Socialist
The claim that Jesus Christ was a socialist has become a popular refrain among liberals, even from some whose Christianity is lukewarm at best. But is there any truth in it? That question cannot be answered without a reliable definition of socialism. A century ago, it was widely regarded as government ownership of the means of production. Jesus never once even hinted at that concept, let alone endorsed it. Yet the definition has changed over time. When the critiques of economists such as Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman demolished any intellectual case for the original form of socialism, and reality proved them to be devastatingly right, socialists shifted to another version: central planning of the economy. Read More |
01.06.20- Our Real Existential Crisis - Extinction
Thus did Time magazine pass over every world leader to name a Swedish teenage climate activist, Greta Thunberg, its person of the year.
On it went, echoing the endless reports on the perils of climate change to the planet we all inhabit. Read More |
01.04.20- 3 Key Economic Trends to Keep Your Eye On in 2020
Since the economy generally operates in cycles, and the yield curve has already inverted, the next recession could be right around the corner. With that in mind, here are three "big picture" economic trends that you should keep an eye on in 2020: Read More |
01.03.20- Iran, It’s Your Move – Trump’s Takedown Of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani Is Likely To Start A Global War
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01.02.20- Understanding The Keys To Power Will be a Survival Requirement for the Coming Decade
It’s becoming increasingly clear who benefitted most from this: the ultra-rich As $trillions flowed into financial assets pushing them higher every year throughout the twenty-teens, those who owned those assets — disproportionately the very rich — saw their wealth soar. Read More |
01.01.20- I, Who Vowed to Never-Ever Short Stocks Again, Just Shorted the Entire Market
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“Culture” is composed of the customs, traditions, and beliefs of a group of people. It’s a way of seeing the world and interpreting reality. It determines what’s right and wrong and good and evil. Culture is what ties people together or divides them. It’s a composite of religion, politics, economics, philosophy, and language—but the composite is more important than any one component.
If you are deeply concerned about what is going to happen in November, you are definitely not alone. Experts on both sides of the political spectrum have been warning that it is very likely that we will not know the winner of the presidential election until well after November 3rd, and everyone pretty much agrees that the period of uncertainly that we will be forced to endure will not be good for our nation. Those of us that are old enough clearly remember the pain that the election of 2000 caused. The outcome hinged on the results from the state of Florida, and the endless recounts were finally brought to a conclusion after 36 very stressful days with George W. Bush up by just 537 votes. Unfortunately, some are saying that we are potentially facing “the 2000 election on steroids” because vote counting will be going on in multiple swing states long after election night is over.
There’s the Swamp teeming with scaley, slithery, sharp-toothed, many-footed predators, but then there’s the miasma hanging over the Swamp, a toxic mist of lies, misdirection, dis-info, propaganda, bad faith, and sedition, illuminated by pulsing blue gaslight that affords a toxic blanket of protection to the denizens of the Swamp. Now a storm is brewing. The critters are evacuating their mud-holes and moiling about desperately among the cypress knobs as a mighty wind rises — the election hurricane — threatening to sweep it (and them) all away!
Late last week, 
If this is “the recovery”, what are things going to look like once economicconditions start to deteriorate again? As you will see below, more than half of all households in some of our largest cities “are facing serious financial problems”, and Americans continue to file for unemployment benefits at a rate that the United States had never seen before prior to 2020. When 695,000 workers filed for unemployment benefits during a single week in 1982, it established a record which stood for nearly 38 years. But now we have been way above that old record for 25 weeks in a row. On Thursday, we learned that 
I am experiencing déjà vu. 
A rather small number of black organizers and activists used the death of a black man, George Floyd, to accuse the country of systemic racism. Understood, there are always factions forming that promote their causes, but they do not win goodies for themselves unless certain factors are operating on their side. In this case, a whole bunch of American institutions rapidly knuckled under. Even if there is only feigned acceptance of what the BLM activists are selling, nonetheless, all sorts of people and organizations have been kissing ass. Suddenly, businesses and universities are promoting workshops and diversity training. All sorts of ridiculous social behavior are being promoted, and if you do not accept it as an employee or a student, you are asking for trouble. 
When you've worked all your life to save for retirement, the idea is you get to enjoy that retirement stress-free.
Avoid the trap the system is setting to imprison you
Thus do the lazy complacent passengers drift inexorably toward the cataracts of collapse just ahead.
If there is a true pandemic afflicting the world today, it certainly is not the coronavirus. The true pandemic afflicting the world is the death of critical thought. In discussing the pandemic lockdown measures with friends, I’ve had one friend state an opinion that differs from the medical narrative being propelled by nearly every nation in the world to rationalize extreme economic lockdowns. Not one in a hundred, or one in several hundred, but one total. And with the exception of a few State leaders in Europe that ironically have had the greatest success in achieving extremely low mortality rates regarding the coronavirus, most State leaders have completely ignored adopting the most successful strategies in dealing with the coronavirus to adopt much more totalitarian measures that have no scientific basis. 
In 
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was able to stop evictions of renters during the coronavirus pandemic. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) also made it unlawful for landlords to evict tenants in federally subsidized or federally backed housing. However, those protections are set to expire today (Friday, July 24). 
We believe that most market participants have just not realized HOW PROBLEMATIC the 
Investors are ignoring the worst economic and earnings data since 2008. They’ve piled into risky assets in the hope that conditions will soon be back to normal.
In another episode of “Strange 2020,” banks have become flush with deposits. But not in the way you might expect.
After watching hundreds (including Michigan Governor Whitmer and other political figures who placed the rest of us in lockdowns) marching, screaming shouting -- without social distancing and often without masks -- it’s going to be hard to persuade us that even normal social contact will infect us and those around us with COVID-19. After watching the police hamstrung by these same politicians as their cities were looted and burned and they and civilians were severely injured and killed, gun sales are soaring. Without law and order it’s each man for himself. With our biggest cities boarded up and devastated, flight out to red states, where people understand that without respect for law life is too brutal to endure, will snowball.
In all of U.S. history we have never seen anything like this. I have been sitting at my desk for quite a while searching for the proper words to convey the gravity of what we are facing, and to be honest it has been quite a struggle. On Thursday, we learned that another 3.8 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits last week. That was much higher than many experts were anticipating, because by now the initial surge of unemployment caused by the coronavirus lockdowns should have started to fade quite a bit. But instead, the job loss tsunami continues to roll on, and at this point a total of 30.3 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the past six weeks. The following comes from 
We are hearing from many that the world after Covid-19 will be different. The question is: Different in what way? Will it be better or worse?
History will probably record that America’s Baby Boom generation threw one helluva party; Gen X was left with the sorry task of cleanup crew; and the Millennials ended up squatting in the repossessed haunted party-house when it was all over. On behalf of the Boomers, let me try to explain and apologize.
What are hungry Americans going to do when the food banks don’t have any more food for them? Over the past couple of weeks, we have witnessed the largest spike in unemployment 
Someone who wishes to remain so Anonymous that they don’t even want me to use their initials spotted this article and passed it along. It has me wondering, and doubtless, will have you wondering too:
As much as I hate to invoke The Ayn Rand lest I give off the impression I’m some kind of Objectivist, which I am most certainly not, the engine of the world is coming to a halt.
The CEO of Novartis is giving the public a reason to be hopeful during the pandemic.
“Boot strapping” is an electrical term used to perform a “black start” or a complete “cold start” of a complex electrical grid after a catastrophic failure. The East Coast blackout of 1965 was one such occurrence. Another was on the Gulf Coast after hurricane Rita. More recently the complete electrical failure in Venezuela illustrates the difficulty. It has been over a year and Venezuela’s power system is still struggling to provide power after their cold start. When the crash happens everything is still connected and tries to restart all at once. It can take up to six times the running power to start an electric motor. When everything is trying to start at the same time the system is overwhelmed and the breakers trip out again.
Most people are familiar with the tale of the Ant And The Grasshopper, an ancient fable about a grasshopper who spends the fruitful months of spring and summer in idle recreation, dancing and playing carelessly while the industrious ant works tirelessly to prepare for what he knows will be a harsh winter. In many versions the Grasshopper harasses the Ant, criticizing him for wasting so much time on work when he could be out enjoying himself in the sun. 
Yesterday the Chair of the FDIC released an astonishing video asking Americans to keep their money in the bank.
Trump will implement the plan with absolutely zero advanced warning to the public to protect the supply lines and prevent mass starvation & death…
Just because society experiences turmoil doesn’t mean your personal life has to. And a depression doesn’t have to be depressing. Most of the real wealth in the world will still exist – it will just change ownership. 
These are scientific papers showing effective treatments for coronavirus being used in China
Following the week that the coronavirus 
In all of U.S. history, we have never seen the Dow Jones Industrial Average go from an all-time high to a bear market as quickly as we just did. As I keep reminding my readers, the stock market is all about how investors view the future. Early this year, extremely irrational optimism about the future pushed stock prices to 
Let’s say President Trump is right about the coronavirus 
This is going to be a rough day for a lot of folks. But it’s one that I’ve been writing about for quite some time.
We all understand that governments can invent money out of thin air. However, inventing a reason out of thin air to invent the money sometimes takes a little more ingenuity.
Just how much money did the Clinton Foundation and its criminal cartel of bogus subsidiaries steal from U.S. taxpayers and unsuspecting dupes worldwide? And where did all the hordes of illicit cash go?
For a while now I have been hearing it said that Americans are “in a panic” over the coronavirus outbreak in the US, and that mainstream media outlets are “feeding the fear”. This is an odd conclusion to come to and something worth noting, because the truth is mostly the opposite. For the past couple of months the WHO, the CDC and even Donald Trump have been dismissing Covid 19 as nothing much to worry about. The WHO actually still refuses to call it a pandemic even though the virus meets all of their own criteria.
In the United States and throughout the Western World there is public distrust of public authorities and distrust among the public of one another. Public authorities who do not like “conspiracy theories” do a lot to generate them.
I can’t remember a time when we have seen such widespread “panic buying” all over the nation. Today I spoke with someone that just visited the closest Wal-Mart in this area, and I was told that there are empty shelves all over the store. There are very few canned goods left, some of the most essential medications have been cleaned out, and there was nothing left in the long-term storable food section at all. Of course similar things are being reported at major retail stores all across the United States. All of a sudden, fear of COVID-19 has motivated thousands upon thousands of Americans to start prepping like crazy. But most of the population is still not taking this crisis seriously enough. As the number of confirmed cases all over the world continues to rise at an exponential rate, what are the stores going to look like when most of the country finally realizes that they should be prepping for an extended pandemic?
If a "dead man's button" isn't pressed one week, it is assumed the user is dead and the service automatically dispenses a "secret," which heirs can use to retrieve the crypto.
International Man:
I have never claimed to be an economics “expert” or anything remotely close, but my university years did make me well familiar with certain aspects of higher math as course requirements and quantitative methods of social science research, especially as applied to the demographics of any particular culture and society. So, through this prism and the perspective of largely a layman on the topic, I have looked at all the numbers I could find on this topic, and I attempted to condense them to a core of those most pertinent, in order to present a fairly comprehensive overview of where America’s economic future currently stands. 
Barely into the New Year, 2020 vision has brought many revelations into better focus, making several ongoing observations perfectly clear. Although there are those who’ve been watching the dots of The Matrix assemble into the big picture for decades now, the election of Donald Trump has increasingly exposed what was hidden in plain sight for so long.
Earlier this week I blogged about the mysterious coronavirus outbreak in Communist China. I pointed out that in addition to the fact that the virus may have been stolen and weaponized by Chinese spies inside of Canada's National Micriobiology Laboratory, there is an additional "coincidence" in that the outbreak appears to have occurred during the height of the Chinese lunar new year, when many people in China travel.
Conventional wisdom holds that savings is the amount of money left after monetary income was used for consumer outlays. Hence, for a given outlay, an increase in money income implies more savings and thus more funding for investment. This in turn sets the platform for higher economic growth.
Pete H. — a reader — gives us a good, round piece of his mind: 
Wise Aristotle placed “Democracy” in the category of “Worst Possible Political System”, some 2,300 years ago.
Late last year, the investment management giant Morningstar published a report concluding that most people can either save money for retirement, or save money for their kids’ education… but NOT both. They make the economic realities very clear: parents have to choose between their own future, or their children’s future. And one of the report’s lead authors went on to say that the RIGHT choice– the ONLY choice– is to choose your retirement over your kids:
I’ve often spoken of, in this blog, in the many things we believe that are untrue. For example, many financial metrics in which we blindly believe, reported by the mainstream news, like inflation, GDP and unemployment statistics are patently false and not even close to being reflective of reality. This holds true not just in the financial world but also extends to many other beliefs that have been sold to us as facts in the academic setting, but simply are not facts. The things we believe that are untrue, depending on our critical thinking skills, may range from nearly all of, to the majority of, to the minority of our beliefs. Even societal constructs like institutional academics as the only viable choice for education can be a construct in which we believe that is patently not the best option for us. .jpg)
The United Nations ruled that “climate refugees” cannot be returned back to their home countries. This ruling forces the United States to allow all Central Americans into our country.
Last week, the IMF issued a stark warning about the global economy. While most large Western states are vulnerable to a new crisis, Russia has prepared its defenses.
The environmental extremists continue to chant their monotonous mantra about the “existential threat” of man-made global warming, or climate change. Indeed, the climate is changing, and it has been changing for nearly four billion years. They recently began using an (apparently autistic) teenager as their spokes-mouth. Like all leftists they talk a good line, assuring us that they care deeply for wildlife, nature, clean air and water, etc. But it has long been obvious that their pretended concern for the environment is merely a cover for their real agenda, which is the impoverishment, enslavement, and eventual extermination of the human race. They are the ultimate “againsters,” people who pretend to be in favor of some noble-sounding cause, but who are really not for anything, only against. 
The first thing to understand is that it is not a trade deal. It is Trump backing off his tariffs when he discovered that the tarrifs fall on US goods and American consumers, not on China. Trump is covering his retraction by calling it a trade deal. China’s part of the deal is to agree to purchase the US goods that it already intended to purchase.
In the last decade, the combination of virulent asset price inflation and low reported consumer price inflation crippled sound money as a political force in the US and globally. In the new decade, a different balance between monetary inflation’s “terrible twins” — asset inflation and goods inflation — will create an opportunity for that force to regain strength. Crucial, however, will be how sound money advocacy evolves in the world of ideas and its success in forming an alliance with other causes that could win elections.
A Japanese woman was surprised when Hong Kong Express Airways required her to take a pregnancy test before boarding her flight.
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – “Fed Adds $82 Billion to Financial Markets.” That’s the headline on page B12 of today’s Wall Street Journal, reporting on Tuesday’s Federal Reserve action. On Monday, the Fed added $60 billion.
There has never been a time in modern human history when our planet has been changing as rapidly as it is changing right now. The sun is behaving very strangely, freakishly cold weather is breaking out all over the world, ocean temperatures continue to rise, volcanoes all over the globe are shooting ash 
To understand how American citizens today can get their hands on ammo, which rolls off the same factory lines as those that supply the world’s largest militaries, it’s important to first understand how munitions technology developed. Starting in medieval Europe, on a battlefield where a mounted knight in armor could defeat almost any number of peasants, the development of more advanced and accurate ways to destroy enemy personnel and equipment by launching a projectile is one which combines trial and error, scientific ingenuity, and private enterprise. It’s a story of power and technology dating back to the 13th century, at the height of “the divine right of kings,” and tracks the subsequent diffusion of that power held by a chosen few as the individual became capable of breaking the state’s 
In my decades of looking at the stock market, there has never been a better setup. Exuberance is pandemic and sky-high. And even after today’s dip, the S&P 500 is up nearly 29% for the year, and the Nasdaq 35%, despite lackluster growth in the global economy, where many of the S&P 500 companies are getting the majority of their revenues.