Isabel Steva Hernandez (Colita)/Corbis Gabriel García Márquez 1975 There are times when time needs to stand still for a seemingly fleeting moment that lasts until the end of time. Yesterday was such a time. But it didn’t happen. Nothing stood still. News was slow coming in, and trickled on as the hours passed, to reach a minor crescendo later, that the world’s greatest living writer had died. And I know it’s because I’m an incurable romantic (I know because incurable
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Christopher Helin Fisk Service garage, San Francisco 1934 Last week we saw that China exports were down 18% in February and 6.6% in March, and that US mortgage originations are at their lowest level in 14 years. This week, the scary numbers just keep rolling in. Still, markets are up because Beijing has claimed a 7.4% GDP growth rate for 2014, and initial jobless claims in the US are falling somewhat, and most of all because everyone wants to believe
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Arthur Rothstein Subsistence homestead project, Dalworthington Gardens, Texas Summer 1936 I did an interview last Saturday with KMO at C-Realm, who serves up a great free podcast every week on a wide variety of topics. Here’s his description of this one: KMO welcomes Ilargi of The Automatic Earth to the C-Realm to talk about the sorry state of watchdog journalism, the unhelpful rhetoric of American politicians and pundits around Vladimir Putin’s actions with regard to Ukraine, the media’s failure to
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Esther Bubley Room at war duration residence halls, Arlington Farms June 1943 On a day like this, when Bloomberg runs the hilarious and preposterous headline “Euro Periphery Emerges as Haven as Bonds Rise”, and markets are up because the Chinese government announces a 7.4% GDP growth number, which might as well be 4.7% for all we know given the opaqueness and rosy bubbly with which Beijing is known to “calculate” these numbers, let’s talk about something entirely different. And what
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National Photo Co. The House Without Children, Poli’s theater, Washington DC 1920 Update: Michael Ruppert Has Committed Suicide RIP Let’s start the day with the best – or should I say the funniest – graph I’ve seen in a while, picked up from Tyler Durden. It speaks for itself. If this means things are going according to plan, we might want to wonder what the plan is. American markets went up yesterday, and it was suggested that this had something
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Harris & Ewing Pennsylvania Avenue becomes “Road to Mecca” for Shriners Parade June 1923 It’s hard enough to be optimistic about the future of mankind, and his habitat, on any given day of the week. And then there are days when it’s impossible not to lean towards utter despair. There was a meeting in Washington this weekend, organized by the IMF, during which all kinds of economists discussed how to squeeze more and faster growth out of the world, and
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Dorothea Lange Migrant camp farm worker figuring year’s earnings, Marysville, CA October 1935 Well, stocks are down substantially over the past few days, with internet and biotech taking big hits, and we see people like Marc Faber and Dennis Gartman urging people to get out of stocks. Something’s definitely going on. Time for a bunch of charts. And let’s start with a few of the comparison ones that everybody loves to hate, where you overlay when time period on another,
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Fenno Jacobs Children pledging allegiance to the flag, Southington, CT May 1942 The headlines are great, but then so is the headfake. “Greece makes ‘triumphant’ return to the markets in €3 billion bond sale”, says the Guardian. CNBC speaks of a “voracious appetite” for Greek bonds, but does question whether it’s justified. Still, at first glance it certainly looks like the Greeks have been welcomed back into the fold of civilized people: Greece, the country once held responsible for sparking
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Ben Shahn Farmer’s daughter near Mechanicsburg, Ohio Summer 1938 The eurocrisis is over, the US Navy makes fuel from seawater, and America will be energy independent by 2037, according to the EIA. Boy, where do we begin? We’re getting flooded with an increasing amount of sheer nonsense wrapped in sheep’s clothing, and it’s hard to keep up. We not only live in a pretend economy, by now most of what we think we see isn’t really there at all. Indeed,
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MGM Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy in the film Riffraff 1936 Well, that’s great news, isn’t it? Blackwater is back. After a first wave of negative publicity over its involvement in Iraq, a major PR hush-hush campaign led to a series of mergers, takeovers and name changes; first, in 2009, it became Xe Services, only to turn into Academi in 2011. What a brilliant moniker for a bunch of modern day mercenaries that is. Who would expect a ruthless killing
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