Dr. D
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The Facebook story is a media scam, but I haven’t figured out why. Possibly if they can be “regulated”, they will be gov’t enshrined and protected like all our other monopolies and the data rigging can go on, while the leaps FB’s competition have made (including Steem and former FB exec WhatsApp) disappear as the people are mollified and it’s all “fixed”. It’s all fixed alright.
I say that because the present scandal is the essence and purpose of Facebook. We knew they were a big 1984 data-harvesting machine for the Deep State, both in and out of government for the sole purpose of waping people’s personal reality for power and profit. Who doesn’t know that? The details of the C.A. case are a basic rundown of the 2012 Obama campaign. Using apps to look at not the Obama volunteers, but all their friends, where the campaign expert proudly said they collected “all of social media”. That is, they harvested the profiles of all relevant, online people in the U.S. In 2012. And used it to bend and win the election. Colluded to rig it? Or is that just advertising and running a campaign?
So now when C.A. does the same thing years later, it’s new and wrong. How? They didn’t steal the data from FB. FB sold it to them because that is Facebook’s business model and purpose for existing. Additionally, since a foreign company colluded with a campaign to do election tampering and favor a candidate — as how elections are legally run — and not a peep. Because British election tampering isn’t tampering, but 13 Russians creating Rainbow Bernie memes are. Got it?
“The Coloring is something that suits for all people.” Wow, Russia nailed it!This is all known, was known, is known, and is used by every campaign since it began, because it’s legal. Maybe it would bring up the uncomfortable question that if it worked so well and everybody knew it, why didn’t HRC hire C.A. and the 13 Russians and just win the election herself? Was she too clueless and incompetent or was it because she did the equivalent on her side as is legal to do?
This leads to the conclusion that anything that elected DJT — like honest voter registration and auditable paper ballots — is de facto wrong and illegal, and anything that would have elected Democrats is by definition good and right, but I think that’s just an incidental side effect of general dishonesty. There’s something else puffing up this well-known nothing into the news. When other guys like James Damore want to talk, they’re relegated to A. Jones and RT, while this “whistleblower”, who told us what we all knew since Facebook was started, is getting immediate A-List treatment on CNN, although it cost FB $54B and savages the NYSE index. When was the last time THAT happened without a fight?
They’re up to something and I want to know what it is. Also IF they’re up to something they’re keeping us busy chasing our tails with old news, what’s going on we’re NOT looking at?
Because the data is “private” (as if there are any truly independent companies anymore), then it’s simple for the NSA to get one back door into Facebook, one into Google, etc, like they did back with AT&T going back past “Day of the Condor” and then plead FISA “National Security” or plausible deniability, which may in fact be LESS secure and protected than government data. All collected. All wide open. By design.
Of course Facebook and Amazon are not actually independent, capitalist companies. Facebook for example makes no money, and Amazon took $1B in one contract for unsecured cloud storage via the CIA (a deal that allowed them to buy WaPo). So if a school is non-religious and must support freedom of speech, i.e. Federal rules if they accept one dollar from the government, shouldn’t Facebook and Google be held to the same standard? Pretty clearly they wouldn’t exist without the direct support and cooperation from the government.
Hey, what’s it called when the state and corporations cooperate together, especially regarding the establishment of universal surveillance and policing? I forget.
Facebook and the Deep State are the same people. Track the money if you don’t believe me. And UK, US, is all one to them, they don’t believe in national boundaries.
“The data source appears to have leveraged the NSA’s ability to harvest and analyze raw, global internet traffic while also exploiting an unnamed software program that purported to offer anonymity to users, according to other documents.”
Just what I said about Bitcoin. While as an open ledger, it’s not that anonymous; if you’re in the routers, it’s even less so. …But that still requires a lot of work and money. If they stay in the routers with increasing computer power, however, perhaps one day they’ll have them all mapped and every transaction will be easy and transparent. Buyer beware. And as TOR is a honey-pot, I bet Monero with its supernodes is not much more private.
I’ve not been that impressed with Medium and not with this Claire, although at least she’s open and not dogmatic. Memo to all these smart-guys: You cannot print wealth. Printing, borrowing, inflation (identical today), is a wealth transfer FROM somebody (existing holders) TO somebody (new holders). That is, from the monetary outsiders, the poor, to the rich. That’s the OPPOSITE of what she means to advocate, so genius indeed as she promotes cutting her own throat. But she might notice that the more transfers and progressive taxes we have for 100 years, the poorer the people have gotten and the more our former support structures — family, society, church, voluntary clubs — have vanished. We didn’t even HAVE an unemployment problem until they screwed up the gold standard and real bills structure in 1910. …To cover the fraud and collapse of the former mostly-real gold standard. So naturally after cheating and stealing the collateral do they take punishment for their crimes? Not on your life! They cheat and bailout and cover it with Progressive Party P.R. using the only guy large enough and with enough guns to get money from the people to back-fill them: the Government. And so, since WWI, we’ve seen unemployment appear and it has never stopped. Ever. And every year, more people get more desperate.
What’s sad is we’re mostly on the same page for the goals, but because of differing paradigms, all sides allow criminals to get away with one aspect of crime. …Except for Capitalism and Libertarianism: we haven’t tried that since 1850 and we ain’t starting now.
I’d like to say, “Because The Guardian”, but really it’s “because Robert Shiller”, the way to indemnify countries against trouble is to encumber their assets before a crisis. ALL of them. Into the infinite future.
Stop and think about that. So the best way to be most fiscally solvent and mobile, with the most money and options is to take your fully-paid house and add a mortgage? Or your pension and sell an income stream on its future revenue? This really puts the black in claiming black is white.
Obviously no, and double no. A main fallback for nations that are troubled, or attacked and forced into trouble, like Greece, is to have unencumbered assets to privatize and sell. (which I wouldn’t anyway, but that’s another story). The double-no is that since governments inevitably spend every dollar they raise, they will also spend any ADDITIONAL dollars they raise by encumbering their future production, and since he’s drooling over the yummy GDP-bond stream he definitely means ADDITIONAL debt. Then they’ll be bankrupt AND have no sovereign assets. Those will be owned by private companies and private men. But hey, looking at Greece, that’s the point of this, isn’t it? To erase the sovereignty, the very existence of countries, as they are the only counterweight, at least grudgingly on the side of the people against the private billionaires? Yeah, that. If you want to add a third no: they’ll just lie about the GDP numbers like the U.S., China, and every other country does.
But hey, what can you expect, he’s got three strikes: he’s an Economist, he’s a Nobel winner, and he’s from Yale. Translation: dumber than a box of hammers and complicit in hammering the people out of their money, and eventually their very voice. Destroying them, for their own good of course, as neoliberalism has been doing for 50 years. You might have noticed.
Bonus: in the sidebar they have the requisite article, ‘You Do Not Know Anyone as Stupid as Donald Trump’ Wait: I think we found someone.
Why do I need claims that fake videos are made incriminating fake people when Reuters is writing fake history as fact before the story is cold? We jumped that shark so long ago, it was discussed in journalism schools in the 90s. Whether you like it or agree with it, Russia held a referendum on self-determination, as supported by U.N. Article I, P2 and the ICCPR International Covenant on Rights. This is fairly well established to be a fair election, which had international access and review, +90% success rate, and no surprise, since Russia was on the upswing and Ukraine is into ethnic cleansing (perhaps eventually of the Crimean Tatars) and is one of the most corrupt, dysfunctional states on planet earth…really saying something there. That being the case, yes, Russia HAS treated territory they annexed by U.N. method in open elections as a part of Russia, that’s what “Annexing” means.
Not to worry, the handful of Russians in Ukraine that haven’t already been ethnically cleansed won’t tip an election the Western media is feverishly covering as is there is any hope for the NATO candidates who last time ’round got 1%. So cute. I wish they’d cover Jill Stein with half the hope and fervor. The saving grace is the article is too short to have thrown in a gratuitous slight to Donald Trump, although I didn’t click on it, so I expect there is one. Or two. Or at least on the sidebar. Which is what “objective”, #notfakenews means these days, right?
Oh Reuters, ’twas but a child when last you were honest, and now whole nations have grown up having never known.
Because, The Guardian, promoting bullsh*t while debunking bullsh*t. (apologies, I’m an American. We literally can no longer talk without using expletives)
So they are generating fake news, but note the second paragraph ONLY for Trump and Brexit. Hillary and the “Remain” crowd are pure as the driven snow. Oh, and while we’re being objective, toss in 2-3 gratuitous jabs at Trump. Yes he’s a boor, but don’t they ever get tired of saying the same thing and have it not matter? It’s bringing virtue signaling to cult Olympic status. “5 minutes of hate” is supposed to be fiction; as a writer and smart guy you should know that. You might have noticed the things they shot Kennedy for are the same things they complain in Trump: mafia put downs, law and order, going up against the MIC, making peace with the Russians, disclosure of secret projects. Half the country was appalled by that with Kennedy too, but it’s just re-writing history, the very subject he speaks of.
Take MLK. They hated, hated, HATED him. So, so much. Our now-vaunted, lilywhite FBI harassed and surveilled him constantly and sent him letters telling him to kill himself. Documented fact. The nation was offended by the ruckus he was making, how it was dividing the nation and families. But the last straw was when he connected civil rights and the far-outsized death of poor black Americans in Vietnam, going full peacenik, as you might remember from Mohamed Ali. Doing the rights, flipping the vote, fine. Stopping buses, having useless marches, fine. Shut down the flow of blood and treasure to the military? Dead in a year. Anyway, the point was, they, we, the American people, hated, hated hated MLK, just as so many hated Kennedy. …Until he died. Then suddenly everybody loved him and always had loved him, like something out of an Orwell novel. “Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.” This was true of Eugenics too. In 1910-1940, everybody was for eugenics, teachers, politicians, businessmen, and ESPECIALLY Professors. After 1945, nobody had ever been for Eugenics, sterilizing deviants, purging races, because it was evil. Same with Continental Drift. Before, it was crazy tinfoil hat nonsense to suggest “continents” could “move”, then one day, EVERYBODY in science and larnin’ had ALWAYS believed they moved. Galileo probably had the same experience.
Shariatmadari is the same, totally blind to how what he says has ALWAYS been true, and HE is the one who’s blind and has faults now, but all these faults are somehow in the future, maybe later. Same with how maybe someday we’ll be in danger of losing our privacy to corporations, you know, later, if we don’t click right on Facebook, or we’ll lose our 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and 10th Amendments in the future, but we haven’t lost them now, although I can read articles all day every day about how those are trampled. But they’re not, because we would have noticed by reading in the paper, the things we ARE reading, which tell us they are trampled, except they aren’t. Got it?
Same with the present Depression. This is not unique. First, they call it the greatest recession since 1929, which it probably is. But that doesn’t make it equal, (although it probably is, but more akin to the 1870 Long Depression). Again, since they lie, cheat, spin, and redefine history, they never told you that the Dow in 1979 had fallen 90% in purchasing-power terms. That is, it was a Stock crash equal to or exceeding 1929. But WE, us smart and modern people, aren’t as dumb as our Neanderthal grandparents, who were clearly all naive idiots. That couldn’t have happened, or we would have noticed, it would be in the papers, the textbooks somewhere. So this is the SECOND Great Depression since then.
So with today. In 1930, if you had a job, you kept your head down and survived, floating from debt to debt, bill to bill, while the less fortunate stood in soup lines and lived in tent cities. So did you see the article on the hundred thousands in tent cities nationwide? The ones that have been increasing since Bush II? Do you see the increase in debt, the record-high 100M not in workforce, 25M on food stamps, our modern soup kitchen? You see the record people fleeing California, Illinois, Greece, and elsewhere? It happened slow last time too. And people didn’t see it then, either. In 1939, the newspapers, the NY Times were STILL publishing stories about how the Depression had ended, was ending, tomorrow, next month, same as they had written in 1930, a decade before. “Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow.”™ STILL what FDR did STILL had never worked, although the NY Times and the history books said it had.
That is EXACTLY like today, and like 1929, it is fake news in the service of the powerful. Otherwise, why own a newspaper? To lie, silly! To make the people think what’s true isn’t true! “Buy now and save!” It sure ain’t for the money. No, with 100M out of workforce and +20M on food stamps, and everyone else in debt and sleeping on basement couches, it’s the very DEFINITION of a Depression. Same article as above, and that’s being generous, if you add the real 6% inflation over 10 years vs an anemic GDP of ~1%, you get a 5% decline in the economy compounded by 10 years, or 63% contraction. That matches nicely the debt, tax receipts, retail, bankruptcies, and unemployment numbers.
We’re not smarter than our parents. We are fooled by the same things they were fooled by. Time, false promises, and lies upon lies.
The slightest research will support any/all of what they’re suggesting, at least on this site.
Conspiracy theories: because we know criminals NEVER commit crimes together. They are ALWAYS solo and don’t tell or include anyone. You know, like the MBS scandal, LIBOR, aluminum rigging, gold rigging, creating false bank accounts, Tyson chicken, Barclays’ copper, Singapore electronics, BNP Forex, Connecticut generic drugs, Loblow’s bakery, Mylan drugs, Canada’s CDOR, Germany’s RMC concrete, Enron, Norwegian shipping, car dealerships, car parts BMW, Daimler, VW, French yogurts, Bridgestone tires, police in Seattle, Puerto Rico, Chicago, Atlanta and elsewhere, Defense and Construction projects, and a few others in 5 minutes of Google search.
But other than that, there are no conspiracies. Nobody ever coordinates with anyone else to get rich, powerful, or to hide evidence to protect their careers.
The Mafia doesn’t exist and they they’re just honest businessmen working alone.
And I’M the crazy one here…
So the U.K. goes broke and immediately thereafter takes the wealth of the richest but least connected people? I think we’ve seen that before.
Okay, so…great start, the Russians DO have a lot of wealth there, probably the most of any location in the world. So tasty. One thing: Ms. May, so, if London gets a reputation of stealing foreigners’ wealth at the slightest pretext, without even the initiation of rule of law (as most U.K. and Russia are signatories to), and starting from the legal basis of proving a negative, then perhaps you might be sparking off overwhelming and unstoppable capital outflows? In a nation that has marginal wealth and creates most GNP being financial trustees? Good plan, bad plan, what do you think?
And so we finally have something, anything, on the poisoning: it was apparently created by a Soviet Lab, and released 8 minutes from Britain’s main bioweapons lab. Let the second part drop for the moment, Christ on a popsicle, does anyone remember that there hasn’t been a Soviet Union in 29 years? You’re over 50 if even the NAME of this makes sense to you. Okay, details: where has this vial of whatsit been hiding for 30 years, the mini fridge down at the pub? These are reactive compounds and unstable. Or maybe under lock and key in one of the world’s very few biolabs? And, what? Putin got it out of the freezer in Moscow and sent a guy on British Air to kill him, you know, 10 years after he defected, days before an election?
Speaking of, if you start killing ex-agents you’ve prisoner-traded fair and square, you’ve going to have a little trouble getting anything done, spy-wise. So then the FSB decided to destroy their personal long-term credibility by killing an ex-spy who was long retired, uncontroversial, living openly, and knew nothing relevant? I mean, the only thing he’s done recently was coordinate with Steele on the discredited Trump dossier, how dangerous could that be? I mean, it relates to multiple charges of Treason and election tampering in the U.S. via MI6, not Moscow, surely he had nothing to worry about.
So…despite all original reservations, having to put guys in he didn’t like, no Goldman Sachs guys left. Despite opposition, no Exxon guys in the Cabinet. Progress. Can I get an amen brother?
…And you’re going to put in Pompeo, Haspel and possibly John Bolton? These are literally the worst guys on planet earth. We might as well exhume and reinstate Dick Cheney. But now with the division, “my guy right or wrong”, they can’t (won’t) back out of supporting a candidate that is (re)instating the very guys and policies they rebelled against. Who’s left to be the opposition, the counterweight?
Why not look at the DNC, whose single enemy appears to be Progressives of any color or type, willing — as now legally admitted — to break any law, accept any loss to the GOP as long as it will shut out Progressives and therefore support corporate donors. And at the exclusive expense of the people, otherwise there would be synergy with citizens and companies, not conflct. Wonder why they want to make such divisions that it may break up the country? Look no further than what is happening while we’re all made busy chasing our tails and each other: corporations are running and purging the DNC while generals, neocons, and the police state are running the GOP, while retaining the at least passive compliance of the Right/Libertarians who are the most effective resistance.
Politicians lie, cheat, coordinate, and misdirect to concentrate their power at your expense? Did I just say that water is wet and the sky is blue here, or what? Beam me up indeed. Beam me up because people still don’t catch on, and defend it. This isn’t a nation of men, of personalities, it’s a nation of Ideals, of Laws. I’d like to see some of those laws come back.
I mean yes, yes, and yes?
We buy steel for a military we don’t need to decommission later. Commodities are widely stockpiled, and I think China just filled every available lot with copper stores they don’t need.
We can’t afford anything we buy, as measured by our personal and government debt. So little is bought from cash and profits, it’s considered bizarre non-economics. When everyone’s in debt, what do you mean by “afford?” Do we need more tanks and cars? No.
All nations on earth are subsidizing all their industries in some level of corporate and state merger. Boeing and Airbus. Lockheed and Halliburton. Sachs and RBS. GM and Port Talbot and ArcelorMittal. All get billions and billions (as Carl Sagan would say) from Joe’s Towing to bail out Carnegie and Morgan.
But to get this irrational mischief you need that there “flexible” money supply. You know one flexible enough to sneak into the nooks and crannies of the pockets of my friends. Good thing we don’t have one of those, amirite?
Following yesterday and the wisdom of emigrating:
“Acting CDC chief: Drug overdose deaths are the highest ever in the US.”
Sorry for the source. A 70% rise? So….anybody going to do anything? You know, like find out why with the exact same laws, exact same access, deaths are wildly increasing?
Oh and PS, America now has 5 of the world’s most violent cities. Ahead of CapeTown. (Irony alert: these are the cities where guns are illegal) Hamilton would be so proud. https://www.theorganicprepper.com/5-violent-cities-world-america/
Trump Is Going For A Clean Reset in The West Wing (Vanity Fair)
Yes, a “risky sit-down with Kim Jong Un”, because nothing has more risk than sitting down for peace talks. Take a page from Lindsay Graham and Give War a Chance! But alas! No peace talk can be started without “rolling the nuclear dice.” Thanks to the outbreak of peace, we’ll probably be toast by morning. Or so says the reckless, bloodthirsty, war-mongering Vanity Fair.
Should I go back and look for their articles joyfully lamenting how now that Trump is there, we’ll just have to go in for a ground attack, but all us good people only hope for an earnest resolution? Aaaaaaand here’s the beginning of your resolution, most promising one in my lifetime and…we can’t. It’s just too risky. For a reckless, unhinged President, raging with the new fury of opening his SECOND major peace, the first arguably being in Syria. Somehow, coincidentally, cutting off the funding in Syria coincided with you know, a lack of funding, bullets, soldiers, violence, and war, with the official government mopping up control of their whole country shortly after. To endless laments that the army re-establishing control of their own capital (outside Damascus) hurts people. War does that, you might have noticed. That’s why you shouldn’t start them and fund them. But as with the cross-media black-draped dirgefest that the world had ended when ISIS was driven from Raqqa, so it is with the last enclave of ISIS using civilian shields. When the Army comes in and the citizens are free to move, work, rebuild their lives, it’s a BAD thing, you see. So it goes here in Looking-Glass Land.
Next bad thing is the tariffs, where having 2:1 tariff ratios are “fair” and “free trade” while moving them to 1:1, or 0:0 are “reckless”, “unfair” and a “bad thing” that will hurt American workers. You know the workers nobody cared about since that Giant Sucking Sound started in 1992? You know, the one that lost the election in 3 critical states? It might have made the news. Well, lo!, NOW they care. So, SO much. Deeply, passionately, about how that will hurt Trump voters. You know, the ones they wanted dead in every other article this year. Funny about that.
Anyway, once again shows that, omg almost 36 months since the candidacy, and STILL no one has read his book. And that’s 31 years after it was written. I swear it’s like a goldfish bowl around here. Art of the Deal 1: Make sudden, reckless demands that can never be met and will break the deal, starting the game on the 30 yard line. 2: Actually deal, using the extra yardage to push the final deal far in your favor. 3: Close the deal with big, empty, glad-handing congratulations. 4: Repeat until someone catches on, which is apparently longer than 31 years around here. So what did Canada and Mexico cede to get this? Because the 3 countries are so intertwined, especially cross-Canada exchange, that it would be counterproductively disruptive. So he didn’t do it. But I bet still got something for NOT doing what he wasn’t going to do anyway, and keeping things the same as they were. And no one gets this? Ay caramba. And jeezus, stop me if this guy has only ONE play in the playbook, just one! and STILL the Ubermensch don’t catch on, and they call HIM stupid?
So it goes in these great United States. Sorry if I sound hepped up, I honestly feel like everybody around here must be on drugs. Oh wait: they are! So very, very high. Statistically approaching 100%. High enough to kill by the thousands. But we have a solution: more drugs! I kid you not. You can find the articles in the news, but this is what happens when people plan a nation, or their own health care, while drugged out of their collective minds. It may not end well, but who could tell?
Nuclear’s not great but, as with guns, they turn a measurable bad into a hysterical hyperbole.
I’m not even sure a 6 gram exposure could kill one person, much less 30 Million. We’re not even sure how exposure works, since MOST of the time, it seems to happen the way you read in books: radiation poisoning, sickness, death. But then we have people like McClusky and others have had abnomally high doses and yet die of other causes. No one knows why, but I for one am truly interested. Is the dose theraputic up to a point like they used to believe, then harmful above a threshold? Does it strike some people differently? Do they heal better? Can they flush the toxin? Clearly, the purging procedures are fairly effective. https://gizmodo.com/the-tragic-tale-of-atomic-man-the-most-radioactive-hum-1601443536 (I was looking for a similar case from the Manhattan project, but this is similar)
Nevertheless, we can tell broadly from Chernobyl that it has the expected effects. And not. Chernobyl is a weird haven of flourishing wildlife, but also mutations.
Anyway, what would happen? Widely distributed, England would get an airport X-Ray and not even notice. Radiation is ALREADY in the background atmosphere and is more increased by TVs and cell phones than by Russia. But as with alcohol we LIKE those things and don’t care. Most things we do every day: driving, high-altitude flights, basement radon, trans-fats, deskside sitting, chicken salad, are more dangerous than things we consider dangerous: sharks, terrorists, guns. I think you’re like 1,000 times more likely to be hit by lightning than shot, and 5,000 times more like than that to meet a terrorist. It’s all about emotion, not statistics. We’ve probably killed more kids in Syria than Hiroshima, and no one cares. Just research the real dangers, the real statistics, and find out for yourself.
Before the U.S. stopped nuclear preparedness, official science was you only had to be in shelter for like 3 weeks after a nuclear strike before radiation levels became incidental. 3 weeks is very, very preparable, and places like Russia and China are prepared. In pop science (read: not science) and shows like “Jericho” no one on earth can or would survive even a limited nuclear strike.
According to TV, even a loss of iPhones would be fatal, as humans have never survived without them before.This has a number of parameters, however, distance, yield, number of bombs, elevation at detonation, etc. Some, like neutron bombs would kill everyone and leave everything standing, EMPs would leave everything standing with the people but stop some unknowable fraction of infrastructure, others like cobalt bombs would make everything uninhabitable forever. But a modern nuclear strike on London is more than survivable for most of England. They wouldn’t even bother, but drop a heavy rod from space, kinetic-style. At the same time, a single SARMAT missile could take out every city center in Britain or France. Since everyone is lying, the only thing to do is research it and understand. Since it’s complicated, I can’t do that for you, but I can advise being rigorous, practical, and unemotional. Nuclear is just a thing, like thousands of others.
I have, but yes, exactly. How do you prepare for an Argentina-like collapse and/or up to civil war we are so close to? People who have lived through it say, “you can’t.” If the whole country is mad, which it is, there is nowhere to turn for sense or even allies, to say nothing of dry goods. Co-Americans are now so immoral, so self-serving, so rapacious, so badly thinking, so ill-positioned and ill-prepared that they themselves are the largest single liability, to me, but mostly to themselves. Without basic morality — you know, like do your job, don’t lie about everyone around you, don’t sleep with other people and/or kids at the local high school — there is no “community” as Raul discusses. My place may be here, but I can only say: “stay exiled.”
Think the 30% uptick in opioid overdoses is bad? In my small county there are now 3 support groups of 30 each for pedophiles. These are mostly court-directed, meaning these are only the ones we know about. That’s in ADDITION to the self-help groups for alcohol and drug addition. Hey, where did we get those volunteers for Oxfam, UNICEF, and Haiti? And are the police, judges, Congressmen and FBI not also from this same population? Or are they going to arrest themselves and stop it? Maybe I should go arrest the police and see how that goes. It ain’t good.
Only Morality can fix it, where the nation cries out to God and says, “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the return of justice and order, even if it means paying for my own crimes.” You see that happening yet? My biggest fear is the present turn will patch it over enough to limp on a little further with no reform, and yet that seems the most likely. Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Benjamin Franklin said, “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” This is just Tytler’s cycle of history:
We’ve done it all but bondage. When China cuts off the imports and calls the loans, the cycle of bondage will be complete. Until we find faith, we’ll be peasants in our own land, as planned.
The schizophrenia surrounding the tariff plan is really startling. But then I could just say, “the level of insanity everywhere is startling.”
Self-avowed schmartz-guys are all “doesn’t the U.S. know their empire is failing and everybody is cutting them off? What are they thinking starting trade wars with allies and raising prices???” Stop. So your argument is the U.S. is losing its influence, other nations are about to cut it off and end the trade deficit, and thereby basically halt imports? While the U.S. has no internal manufacturing? And your argument here is that, not if but when the world cuts us off we a) would like to have some steel and aluminum to build factories, washing machines and tanks or b) do NOT want to have access to the basic raw materials of society? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
I’m sorry that this generation burned down the factory, then retreated to the mansion, sold off and burned all the furniture there too, then ran up the credit card with cocaine and heroin parties while yelling “I’m a rock star! I’m a Contender!”, but they did. Now there are only bad decisions, like the ones real adults have. And there’s nothing but work to put that factory back up, and that’s going to cost something, in this case, money and higher prices, using the thousand-year method of protective tariffs. Why not? Europe has 25% tariffs. China has a virtual lockout. If the U.S. machine then also has higher real wages for U.S. workers they can afford the tariffs. I mean, what’s their counterargument? If it’s better to not have steel and aluminum, perhaps we should shut down the few remaining foundries and have NO materials? I mean, if a little is bad, surely none is way better.
Mish for example thinks this way: if China is willing to give us cheap, under-market steel we should take it. No, not if you want to have a country, you don’t. Isn’t it a matter of national security to be able to make tanks, ships, railroads, and artillery? There’s more to the world than money.
Nor is this arcane. You know that brewing Japanese scandal about approving sub-standard steel worldwide for going on 40 years? Well that sub-standard Chinese and Japanese steel was turned into, say, sub-standard U.S. Abrams Tanks, which may explain why they’ve been breaking and unexpectedly going up like roman candles. So how’s your low-cost steel discount look now that the U.S. doesn’t have an effective military? Come on, guys. Again, the world is not only money, to be measured in money. It’s strategy, it’s community, it’s values. I’m surprised we’re so lost I need to bring this up.
Don’t get me started on how we don’t own (and therefore don’t really secure) our toll roads, ports, bridges, and utilities. They are also widely owned by foreigners now. Really? We (or they) sold every living thing out of the United States, and we’re looking for Russians and Terrorists under the bed? For the love of Pete…
As “Bowling for Columbine” pointed out, doesn’t seem to be much to explain the difference in gun violence between the U.S. and Canada.
Except this.
“These kinds of accounting tricks will land you in jail in the U.S.,”
Rickards is kidding, right? Who is he trying to fool? And China will “collapse” in bad debt? What? No, like the U.S. and Europe if anyone important fails, the government will print cash and spray it everywhere like fire foam for the rich. And wouldn’t that make China not capitalist? Which they never said they were? And wouldn’t that make the WEST not capitalist either? But you can’t have Capitalism with no rules and no failures. You have, like China, some form of Socialism/Fascism, but I repeat myself.
Remedy is it will crash itself naturally. All natural processes do, and we are no different.
See this chart? Some would characterize it as a “wolf wave”, that is, they keep interfering in the market, adding energy and distortions for profit that slosh back and forth ever-harder until the boat (society) capsizes. Next wave in theory is down to 6,000-4,000.
Problem is, charts have two variables. It’s not to say when stocks are universe-long highs they won’t fall, but that doesn’t mean they’ll fall in US$ terms: the best stock markets in the world are Venezuela and Zimbabwe. So in gold, oil, or wheat terms it may reach 4,000 and probably will. But this actual chart Dow/US$ could show Dow 40,000. Anyway, God is not mocked. Nature comes last at bat.
Certainly is a challenge. Maybe you can talk to the internet boards about how everyone is going to go farm, throw some seeds down, then sit on the porch and watch the llamas all summer. As Zimbabwe knows and South Africa is about to find out, farming is very hard, and has extreme deep knowledge skills that can only be transmitted with time. Basically, you can’t import people in to be farmer, or train them in any reasonable amount of time. Britain can’t even stop the existing farmers from getting more stupid, as they pulled out the hedgerows any 12th century peasant would know are needed, to make way for larger machinery that makes the island more dependent on imported fossil fuels. #Winning
I don’t know your predators, but we put a simple ring of 6′ wire around the tree. Problem is, grown trees need two rings of a small tree. There is a very good solar-electrified chicken mesh, a type of portable sheep fence, but gridded smaller. This has been effective against ground animals in garden and coop, but not flyers. Strangely, a single electric wire, stretched thin with few poles will stop deer, as apparently they cannot see the wire (at night) and run into it, spooking them.
For large costs, but possibly large solutions, you could try an English walled garden. More than a predator deterrent (unlike 8′ chain-link, deer will not jump where they can’t see) it creates a real microclimate of all sorts, harboring warmth, water, and focus, where over time you create the soil inside wholesale. Downside: very permanent and walls cost $6 lin ft in materials alone. Still, they last 200 years, maybe that’s good. The one thing you don’t want to hear when market food is at a 100-year low: more money.
There are still smart people in the U.S. The trouble is, they’ve long been purged and none of them are in power. Much as you wouldn’t want to invade Russia summer or winter, you wouldn’t want to invade the United States either. The much (purposefully) misunderstood 2nd Amendment “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” is because, like Switzerland, the U.S. is not supposed to have a standing army. Ever. Only with an enemy and declaration of war by Congress. And for exactly the creeping reasons we see today, Eisenhower’s Pentagon pork profit warning. National and personal self-defense was so self-evident that they didn’t bother elaborating as to why, say, minority groups should be permitted to have weapons to stop a tyrannical leader. WHEN that declaration of war should ever happen, the U.S., like Switzerland, will call its citizens to muster and become that Army. From where? The existing private militias. And if they don’t come, wouldn’t that mean it’s not really a just, defensive war? And it’s not like we don’t have them now: what do you think Blackwater is? But it’s okay if Exxon has a militia as long as Joe Smith doesn’t have one.
Since there is no standing army, there are no standing army warehouses, etc, so the people will be bringing their own weapons and hardware, and in the case of John Hancock, their own warships. Obsolete? Quite possibly, but that is in fact, the law. Like Switzerland, the people are SUPPOSED to have the keys to the mortars and anti-aircraft guns hidden in mountainside bunkers. Ex-wives don’t seem to be blown up at any excessive rate in Geneva.
Other than entertaining myself by alarming the activists and non-Americans, the point is, what do you think would happen if Russia or China invaded the United States? Exactly what happened when *anyone* invaded Russia. Horrible death tolls, grinding, unending horror, and eventual failure worse than the utter failures in Iraq and Vietnam. And they claim small-arms are useless in a modern war. Pffft! That’s the ONLY thing that won. That being so, why does the U.S. need that army again? Who are they “defending”? Or does this tell you that virtually 100% of the U.S. military is OFFENSIVE in nature, created to attack and invade others without a declaration of war. Qui bono?
P.S. the Navy IS to be standing and perpetual. As the Marines and naval, we would need to add the status of the Air Force. But we could rebuild the entire country in a fortnight by falling back to a defensive posture as Russia has. And eventually we will. But not without bankrupting ourselves first.
Nah, personal opinion the BTC Core team are a bunch of greedy bums, and “positioned” themselves to be self-serving billionaires, like everybody else.
It went like this: Satoshi set the white paper on digital replacement money and disappeared. The team continued on, but as BTC ran into scaling problems, the team got conservative, not wanting to misstep. That’s fine, but as the $ went to millions, then billions, the Core team stopped developing, abandoned Satoshi’s vision and I dunno, bought Lambos or something. After a 2-year struggle that declined from adolescent to infantile, the Segwit happened and BCC broke off — you know, a currency that at least COULD do some transactions at a less-terrible price, and still be very secure. They’re still shouting at each other and you can hear it from here.
So Bitcoin Cash is probably the real Bitcoin, a digital currency in the vision of Satoshi. Quite possibly LTC is more appropriate for that (a Bitcoin spinoff that is built far faster and better priced). There is no “Bitcoin”, it’s only software; they can code updates and solutions if they want. But they don’t want. So they “positioned” by being greedy, lazy bastards that refused to do any work. Just this week they refused to code the Lightning Network that could bail their slow, unworkable butts out of antique status. With a year of lead time and 6 months of press releases, they suddenly say, “Whoa! This is written in C; that’s not secure enough!” Really? You’re decade-old top programmers and you just noticed Lightning uses ‘C’? No, they knew, they just won’t do it. They want Lambos and salt on their margaritas. And given Crypto, that’s fine. Because BTC is small and obsolete, it IS in fact more secure. And cripplingly slower. So the rest of the world will leave them behind.
I mean, we didn’t crush all the Model T’s when the Ford Coupe came out, did we? It will have a place in the market, and probably that place will be akin to vaulted gold: very expensive and seldom moved.
Purchases will probably move to Litecoin, not exclusively because of its parameters either, but because it’s proven and widespread on platforms. Microsoft is deep into Ethereum, although it is not meant for transactions but contracts. And I wouldn’t consider BTC a candidate for actual central bank currency — they’d use their own and save the trouble. Just central bank-LIKE transactions. Say Iran and Somalia don’t trust each other. Or Sumitomo and Mugabe’s hidden account. The daily stuff would go on Swift and CIPS. Even so, it’s likely BTC will continue on in this fashion. It’s already been worth $20,000. Although a Satoshi-decimal is still small, that suggests it will be used for large scales, not small.
And as we can see now, it’s not going away.
Maybe a million people who now have higher taxes should send Monbiot a quick note and ask, “What’s up?”
I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.
So much dumb seeping in I wouldn’t know where to start. If you’re swimming the mental (or totally mental) cesspool as we all are now, it’s hard not to get dirty.
Kennedy markets R Us? Yeah, both charts go up a little. Other than that, no proven similarity.
S&P takes much-needed test of a trendline, as telegraphed by a Fed head rigger who knows banks make money on volatility, not stability. So call it his 2nd bailout transfer to them.
Trump calling out GOP voters for the critical midterms with a clarion call to go right for Congress if necessary to stop Trump? Hey, why not?
Yeah, caught that. Everyone, even ZH is now “Russia’s new offensive weapons” for “Expansionism”. You know why Russia can kick us up and down across the town, with a budget 1/10th or less of ours? Strictly BECAUSE their weapons are DEFENSIVE only. So could ours be. Projecting power is expensive. Compared to projecting power to Argentina with a parameter of fighting 2+ simultanious wars, having an branch office in Novgorod is a discount. As Ron Paul said, “maybe the budget isn’t too small but the mission (of 300 military bases and 15 wars) is too large???” Ya think? In any case, this propaganda wildly successful to leak through and pollute even the opposition. Gobbels would be proud.
So if men and women are really identical and equal, then who cares which one is CEO? If they’re not identical, doesn’t the Feminists have some ‘splaning to do? And if the women (who are the same, but not the same, but the same, but really not) act as psychotically as the men, as we’ve seen everywhere from Thatcher to Clinton, then what’s the point? Kinder and gentler genocides? Killing you with love bombs and hug drones? Madness. Pick one reality, either one. But not two.
Bitcoin HAS dropped in transactions, if anyone read anything before writing their articles. With delays of 48 hours and fees of $100, Bitcoin has positioned itself to be digital gold, seldom moved only for large movers, not your Litecoin/Lightning for ice cream. Everyone knows that, but hey, nice job spooking your audience with ignorance. Bloomberg: expect no less. Gold doesn’t move from the vault either, does that make it worthless? Or worth more?
The seed vault is whining about setting their entrance AT SEA LEVEL, where the tunnel SLOPES DOWN. Hey, sorry, I’m not a mining engineer, but for the specifications, that sounds retarded to me, something only a shmartz-guy would do. But then to blame it on global warming, WHICH THESE GUYS TOTALLY BELIEVE IN, beyond the pale. Maybe a good proof of how they totally DON’T believe in global warming and sea level rise? Or that they’re such mouth-breathing morons they shouldn’t be entrusted with the world’s genetic lifeline? Either way. But don’t blame Norway for snowing or England for raining. Stupid is as stupid does.
…Sorry, I’m just exhausted with 24/7 stories of the like for a year(s) and no consequences. Every day is Groundhog Day and like goldfish, we step on the same rake over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. D’oh!
Let’s not only break the law and undercut the only base, but eliminate due process as well. What could go wrong?
For the first three, yeah, 30 years ago. You’d have to be over 50 to even remember those things. They don’t have the military power of 30 years ago, and neither does the U.S.
So Greek wants to keep to upright, stalwart friends like the U.S. and E.U.? You’d be better off with the Turks, and that’s really saying something.
Why on earth hasn’t Greece flipped to Russia? I assumed before that if they did, NATO would have Turkey invade, but now?
What are they thinking?
Mises, solved it for you: the U.S isn’t growing, it’s now collapsing at a slightly lower rate.
If every single thing weren’t falsely reported, animal, vegetable, and mineral, you might have noticed.
Powell has his 10% correction, and has hammered one-way volatility, as he said. There may be more, but after the uber-dove signals impossible, world-ending rate hikes, lo! he’s already signaling “fewer” (none?) and Q-eternity. Inflation, stuff the world with the US$ loss, Dow goes up on inflation after sucking the muppets in.
And rigged VIX? I would not take a bet it wasn’t rigged before, “moderated” by Yellen with all their back-end rigging power as part of some former plan they abandon. Rigged markets??? Yes, what do you think setting interest rates is? Or rigging LIBOR? Or paying fines for gold rigging? Or mis-marking MBS’s with no consequences? Or aluminum by shuttling inventory on trucks until Sachs makes 5c a can? Or same with oil inventories appearing or disappearing. Or the PPT which officially is real or fake depending on the media day. And with that, you would take any bet the VIX is real? If it were, it would be the only real market out there.
Get out there boys, that money isn’t going to steal itself.
Nailed it. The system doesn’t, cannot care; that is not its nature. Nothing personal. Therefore, care for your own.
And scaling, this oddity shouldn’t be important but is pivotal, daily. A love, a family is the essence of pure communism. We give freely and perhaps receive nothing. But that does not scale well to the family reunion of 20, to the church group, the school, of 200. Then not a little to the town of 2,000. By the time you’re at 20,000, nothing works. We are now on scales of 200,000,000 or 2,000,000,000, 1×10^8th larger. Yet no matter how many times it fails, and people die openly by the thousands in plain sight, they never adjust.
In fact they do the exact opposite. Seeing the family is the only communism, the only functional structure, great tireless effort is spent in destroying it. By the Right? Heavens no, the main attack on actual, working communism comes from the LEFT. They demand the care and charity needed be delivered a) not in love but at the end of a gun and b) at a scale already proven to fail for 150 years. And so it is now as the DNC attacks DJT from the RIGHT, saying he’s not warlike enough, he loves Russians (sadly, this is still code for “pinko commie”), and his co-puppets-of-Putin, Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders along with BLM. …Because, you know, clearly they’re all the same and working together. Why? To purge the DNC of any actual Democratic Socialism, anyone that might attempt to do good for the citizens, and divert money from the corporate and war machines.
I wish I were kidding about the best journalists saying with a straight face that Sanders and Trump are working together, but I’m not, and later they will marvel at the vicious, partisan illogic, just as we marvel today at McCarthyism and Nazi Germany. The smartest people in this appear to be the dumbest, the most easily lead, the most irrational, and the most certain, as always. Dumb guys don’t know much, but they know which way is up, and which way the wind blows, and if you don’t know that much, aren’t you even DUMBER than middle America? Geniuses like Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman don’t even know that much, but then they’re paid to with our money.
“… innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.” W.B.YeatsI usually make ruthless fun of clueless authors from obsolete media, but Mr. French is accurate and straightforward. Those are indeed the lines and challenges, and moreso. However, there are equal opportunities to come together no one is recognizing yet.
As DJT becomes President and the left fears for their life (SMH) they have turned away from a hostile government, started pantries, and bought and trained with guns. You know, like Republicans. Once they are doing this, it’s an easy step to then not want this cost and effort to be taken away, leaving you naked at the mercy of the Other.
At the same time, the Right has come out of their bunkers and engaged, needed desperately to solve social issues of isolation, opiods, poverty, and engaging with functional government to effect change. You know, like Democrats.
It’s still a rough uncertain road, however. “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” –Winston Churchill, attr.
A brilliant article. Too bad it’s about such a terrible subject.
Note, these are the soft agencies. Can you imagine what the hard industries do, who have no fear of their reputation?
And we wonder, how, how did they chain men to slave ships? How did they wipe out all the Indians? How did they firebomb the women and children in Dresden? How did the Soviet system kill and oppress millions? Seems like a dream compared to us, doesn’t it? So, when is it going to matter? Fire these people? When will they be swiftly tried and punished, abuser and enabler alike? You mean by the same politicians, judges, and investigators who are committing the crimes?
Thought I might try to be more positive in what the Ice Age cycles actually are, or could be.
We do have CO2 evidence and a whole lot of other data over the multi-million year time span, and as you go further back, it gets ever less certain. For example, they measure ice cores by location, but over such timescales there is continental drift, so it’s not fair to compare ice core build on the latitude of Greenland if it used to be the latitude of Scotland. They geolocate continental drift by magnetic stamping in the rock (mostly). However, the poles, and therefore the magnetic map are moving at the same time the continents are moving, and going back ever-further into ever-more speculative time. It’s very complicated, and they try to get a map of these many, many moving parts best they can, but it’s easy to see if the poles moved differently over a period, or a tree ring grew differently, or we mistake one volcano ash-layer for another, it can throw off the science quite a bit, and they’re correcting themselves constantly.
But let’s follow a theory: suppose, just suppose it is the sun, because the sun is the one constant for the planet and suppose that this is its EKG:
(wiki chart)
Or small-scale:
Which matches the small-scale temps:
Look! 1700! A match!And very regular, going WAAAY back. What’s more, long-term the temperatures gets stuck low, then for no apparent reason, spikes wildly right on schedule. If the earth is homeostatic, unchanged for 10,000 years, why one day does it wake up and warm? And what does that have to do with CO2 which follows the warming (mostly)?
Well if the Ice Age closes in with great stability, then it’s likely ice builds up on the poles endlessly. Over the 10,000 years it’s one mile, two, five, ten, until it crushes the earth, making it bulge at the equator, leaving artifacts like the hole of Hudson Bay where the pole (probably) used to be.
It does this for 10,000 years in a row, then the sun cycles, warming the earth. But more than just warming, the ice begins to melt, causing a spiral effect: less ice, less cold, less white, more absorption, more heat. The glaciers melt, sometimes suddenly, then the poles. The earth then becomes round, but far more quickly than it was oblong. As this last drive of heat finishes, the earth is cracking on all the fault lines, creating more earthquakes and eventually volcanoes, particularly undersea ones. The oceans warm from volcanoes like we see in Antarctica, mass CO2 is released, as was measured, thousands of years before man.
The sun finishes the cycle, the warming seas increase evaporation and precipitation, turning places to rainforests, as recorded. The volcanoes throw enough ash to darken the sun DESPITE the CO2 they also release, which accelerates vegetation. The weaker sun, now darkened, with increasing warm rain, then turns to snow, more white, more cold, more glaciers, then ice caps, and the whole thing repeats another 10,000 years.It’s a theory, one we can test now, and confirms ancient data we have that a warmer earth with multiples higher CO2 did NOT cause a runaway loop, nor did the cooling cause a runaway cooling into Ragnorok, the icy end the world. I think before the AGW tax-grab, this was just conventional schoolbook science.
Just to think about since we’re in exactly the same earth cycle we always were, and humans are not all that powerful and likely to plummet further in influence with the slightest setback in food, electric, inventories, communication, or nuclear war. Ask Rome how well it is to field armies in a mini ice age, dropping ever into 500AD. There’s one out there waiting for us, somewhere, or so 2.4 billion years of science suggests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
Come the Recession, Don’t Count on That Safety Net (NYT)
We have a safety net? Maybe someone should tell the guys in Baltimore and Detroit. They don’t look too good…for the last 30 years. I remember how health care got suddenly better after ACA…oh wait, that was the OPPOSITE.
Wasn’t going to add, but that CO2 thing is just…bleh.
Here’s the temp history (and remember, even this is not as solid as it appears)
CO2 levels have been both higher and lower in the past. Without SUVs. More importantly, without ANY runaway greenhouse effect, EVEN when the ice caps were (may?) have been completely melted. In fact the very first thing reported about Global Warming was the Ice Core vs CO2 numbers. Guess what? The CO2 FOLLOWED the warming. Therefore it was not, could not be, the cause. We all assumed this was an anomaly, remedied by more research. Nope. Not only did CO2 FOLLOW warming, but CO2 and warming are not related all that well at all. Which, if you’ve followed the terrible attempts at modelling is not that surprising, as they discovered water vapor — highly influenced by warming — has the largest effect and is impossible to model. At the same time, they seem to minimize the effects of the sun and mass volcanoes, which clearly DO affect climate, and would be the #1 suspect considering the 100,000 year timescales and sharp regularity of ice ages vs warming a million years before humans. Heartbeat of the sun. Maybe that’s why all the planets are experiencing global warming, not just earth.
But anyway, talking to the corner, no one is convinced with facts anymore. Not even when they get caught fabricating evidence twice a year for a decade and have a trillion-dollar profit/control motive at stake. The good news? Relax! It’s all good, mate. The world is not going to end. NYC is not underwater. At All. If anything, the terrible Depression and/or war will stop oil use long before these dumdums do anything except steal from us and power grab. Better use of time to stop actual environmental destruction with plastics, nuclear, and pesticides. …Oh wait, that would reduce profits. Nevermind.
”People rolling in and out
Those circles and tides confound me
And there’s just one thing
Yes there’s just one thing
Who can stand in the way
When there’s a dollar to be made?”https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/midnightoil/whocanstandintheway.html
Since you’re covering Sodom and Gomorrah, here’s the official reason for it:
“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, fat and full of bread, unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things…”Ezekiel 16:49-50
Sound familiar?
And for kicks, what is the grave sin of the Whore of Babylon?
10″Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
11 And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:”
17 For in one hour such great riches is come to nought…
23 and the light of a lamp will not shine in you any longer; … for your merchants were the great men of the earth, because all the nations (ethnos) were deceived by your sorcery (pharmakeia).”
24 And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.”Revelation 10-24:23So what have we here? International trade, to the point of unfeeling greed and decadence, along with killing the whistleblowers, those who would warn you, tell you what you are doing is wrong, there are rules and limits, while they are killing the Godly and good people who help others, killing immigrants and foreigners. And “Sorcery,” “pharmakeia,” which means huge lies and public illusions? Or does it mean “pharmacy”, the international drug running with volumes so large, as reported by the U.N., that they have supported the entire western banking system for over a decade killing millions in Leeds, Sonora, and Ohio? And with that hundred-billion drug running supporting international arms trafficking and the subsequent multi-million death toll, the “death of all”? Maybe supporting that, in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Sudan and Libya was the crime of New Babylon?
And what happens to nations who behave like that? Well, similar to Sodom, “a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.” That is, they ultimately are nuked from space and destroyed in a single hour if that’s what it takes.
But hey, that’s all academic, just some old paintings and stories that has nothing to do with us, right?
Bonus question: is it an actual angel? Or like Nebuchadnezzar, can it be a person or nation simply doing the will of God to stop a madness that has gone too far?
I wasn’t suggesting your intent, just that the young have been screwed.
If they could see it clearly, and many do, they’re so overwhelmed by trying to survive the week, they’re viewed as stupid and complicit. Really, it’s more like being in a war: after this fire-fight over rent and the car and some medical bill there will be another fight tomorrow, and another, and another, through Normandy and the Black Forest all the way to Berlin. But right now you can’t think about that, only about today, enjoying clean socks and a cup of coffee when you’re not being pulled over and shot, sleeping on the basement couch which is at least not outside, and keeping your equipment (cell phone) in perfect order in the chaos so you can survive tomorrow’s firefight (zero-hour job hunting). And tomorrow’s, and tomorrow’s, forever and ever until death. It’s only by not looking at that bigger picture you won’t be scared sh-tless and can function. So what’s the point? The war will find you, go home, eat ramen, and hit Netflix until they shut it off for non-payment.
My addition is that this was chosen for them in 1969, 1979, long before they were born, by eliminating restraint and choosing the national debt instead of Carter’s sweaters. It was said in “Guns-n-butter”, in 1980 when Reagan talked about debt “enslaving our children”, and reported every year of my life since I was born. They put the debt on me, America’s children, every year, 100% of the time. And however it worked out, they got the party; a debt-boom economy until I was in the workforce, then a booming stock market until I was old enough to invest, then an expensive house until I was priced out, then health care in retirement that’s denied to the young-and-working. Meanwhile, I got all the bills, but I’m supposedly the slacker here. In America it couldn’t be clearer, on average the old are 10x richer than the young, and like London and Melbourne housing, it leaves not only no money, but no hope.
Notice the break here is about 60, back when there were young wages that could compound.I’m sorry it worked out this way, and those who have saved for years will naturally have more net worth, and certainly the process locked out a lot of pensioners as well, but the income disparity is off the charts. Normally, the young have jobs and income, but now having no jobs or income, cannot save normal amounts even if they wanted. How do you compound no money added when starting at the market top?
I don’t know what to say to that, but that’s what happened, and once you can rig markets, the largest demographic group will probably always demand that government make their assets rise. Wall St goes along for the ride. Then that demographic, being richer, has more political power too in a spiral upward. Ultimately that demographic owns everything and the others own nothing because wealth comes from somewhere. Then it reverses. That used to happen when farmers and miners were the voting bloc, then reversed to manufacturers, then 401k speculators, or in countries where one ethnic group is the voter. Advantages are always by insiders, but this time it was also by age. Raul posts daily on the desperation of the young over housing and jobs throughout the Anglosphere and Europe as well. And even though poor and plundered, people don’t choose much different today. But that’s what was chosen for them by their parents before they could vote, and applauded for 40 years as “winning.” And they certainly won. Trouble is, retirees are supposed to sell their assets TO the young-and-working. They cannot, and the whole economy has frozen, young and old alike. This is true of every extreme income disparity.
More productively, what do we DO about it? How do you make housing affordable in Melbourne again without collapsing the whole nation’s collateral, breaking the market, and destroying the pensions? Because we’re here now, and we’re supposed to be in this together. While it’s too late for me and I will no doubt die here, if the young are young enough, they can still catch up. How does it become fair again? By markets being allowed to find real and fair value? Wouldn’t that be by the Dow falling 11,000 points, wheat tripling, and housing going back to 3x income, or $75k? That may have winners, but it would have losers too. What would that do to a pensioner with a failed 401k, housing cut in half, and food tripling? You don’t equalize freezing by putting your head in the oven. You don’t make the young rich by making the old poor, although that’s what historically happens: historically, it collapses. So how do you fix it when even fair market value would destroy an economy built on lies?
“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita”“Midway along the journey of life I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered far from the straight path…” — Dante’s Inferno, A description of hell.Definitely pulling the plug on the old system and telegraphing it. Accident? No. Plans.
Hey, anyone remember last month when Powell said the market is effectively a paired trade, short volatility? And the day he gets in, they not only jam volatility, break the pair, but actually bankrupt two of the major VIX ETFs, leaving Hedge Funds naked? What a coincidence!
So, they’re just going to let this drop, and not respond. Riiiiight. No, they’re going to respond, and they have plans. I may not know the plans, but they have them. No doubt they have an entire plan/decision tree with 15, 150 end points in a model run by a supercomputer.
Problems? Rates have cracked, and could not be held forever anyway. Debt is extreme. US$ reserve system reached its 40-year expiration and Cheney-n-pals’ plan to take over the unipolar world failed in flames. And anyone remember the 1988 cover of the Economist?
Funny ol’ world. Weird how that turned out exactly like their white papers said they would make it. So how do they reset? Well if they’re going for a weaker dollar, as said in the election and to inevitably default on the debt then crack the bonds. If bonds rise, money will flood out of the mass glacier of UST’s and into…where? Normally stocks, but they’re quite high. Foreign currency, but they’re in the same condition we are. Gold. Cash Dollars, which at least won’t actively LOSE money like bonds will. And in this case cryptos, as a sort of foreign currency/gold-like asset.So as they pull the plug by watching the UST hit 3%, what do they do? By golly, gold is set back. Cryptos. And the Dow. You know, the exact three things that are in danger of running away. The US$ is put into uncertainty with a yes man/no man tag team. So they start the run from a lower level.
Since we already know from multiple paid fines worldwide that we no longer have markets, the market is whatever Powell et al says it is. And he needs to drive Yellen’s irrational one-sided speculation out of the market. What’s more, he needs to drive it out quickly before it causes political damage to his boss. Then the bonds, being easily 10x larger than stocks, will drive it back up again and Cap’n Crunch can take credit for awesomeness of what is essentially inflation + velocity finally unfrozen. Although it may rise at first, ultimately the US$ drops 50-75% and our debt is restructured by a bankruptcy/restructure expert. Tariffs + Currency lead to reindustrialization while we also discover we’re the world’s 1st or 2nd largest oil producer (see recent headlines and pipeline builds).
Do I like it? No. Nor do I like the endless lies about how great the economy is, how low unemployment, but once you had a party where you sold the furniture and let the roof cave in, every remaining decision is a least-bad one. They welded this debt collapse into the nation’s steel foundation by 1979, and we’ve only been playing it out since then. They got to live it up on credit and as V. says, give it to the young good and hard after retiring with the loot.
There’s no good story that ends that way, but maybe we can start a new story, once this is over, because you can’t stay drunk forever.
