"The World Is Criminally Corrupt & Broken" - A Surprising Dinner Conversation With The Younger Generation

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Dressed in red velvet, she trampled under her reckless feet the stray flowers fallen from other heads, and held out a salver to the two friends, with careless hands. The white arms stood out in bold relief against the velvet. Proud of her beauty; proud (who knows?) of her corruption, she stood like a queen of pleasure, like an incarnation of enjoyment; the enjoyment that comes of squandering the accumulations of three generations; that scoffs at its progenitors, and makes merry over a corpse; that will dissolve pearls and wreck thrones, turn old men into boys, and make young men prematurely old; enjoyment only possible to giants weary of their power, tormented by reflection, or for whom strife has become a plaything.

 

– Honore De Balzac, The Magic Skin

I don’t get out all that much these days, but last evening I had a really engaging and illuminating dinner conversation. In attendance was a 47-year old commercial real estate investor and fellow Boulder resident who I’ve become friends with, a 32-year old professional poker player looking to move here, and 28-year old tech startup founder. Although I hadn’t met the younger attendees before, it became immediately apparent that everyone in attendance was highly intelligent and very engaged with the world around them.

We discussed religion, philosophy, crypto assets, the importance of nature to humans, travel and more. That said, the reason I’m writing this post is due to some of the generational observations I came upon. It confirmed the overall thesis I discussed in detail within last month’s post, The Generational Wheels Are Turning.

Here are a couple of passages from that piece to refresh your memory:

The Baby Boomer generation, which has dominated so many aspects of our country for so many decades — including the overall narrative of everything — is finally heading off into the sunset.

 

It’s not so much that they’re physically expiring, but their influence is beginning to wane significantly. It’s not completely obvious just yet since our world continues to be defined by the institutions and ideals they championed, but in the hearts and minds of so many, particularly the younger generations, the world they left us is hopelessly corrupt, archaic and can’t be displaced quickly enough.

While at dinner last night, I tried to listen as closely as possible to how the younger guys saw the world and where it was headed.

I wouldn’t say their views of the future were wildly optimistic, but there wasn’t a sense of dread or pessimism either. There was a vibe of, yeah our generation was screwed, the government sucks and so do all these corrupt institutions, but we’re gonna get out there and do our best. I’ve noticed this worldview consistently over the years from people roughly tens years younger than me, i.e., the heart of millennial generation. Not only is my wife in that age group, but so are many of my close friends at this point, and this ethos has been pretty consistent from my experience.

They don’t trust government, corporations or anyone with power to do the right thing. This is why they didn’t enthusiastically buy the Hillary Clinton kool-aid, despite not liking Donald Trump either.

It seems being thrust into adulthood with terrible employment and wage prospects resulted in a very healthy dose of cynicism about how things work. There’s a very clear appreciation that the world as is functions today is criminally corrupt and broken.

When I go out and chat with people my age and older, I notice a completely different tone compared to when I engage with younger generations. One thing is crystal clear. Older friends of mine not only think the status quo will strike back against extremely disruptive forces like Bitcoin and crypto assets, they also think the status quo will win. They expect a return to the gold standard, or some IMF-globalist one world digital currency to provide a framework for the post-dollar reserve currency system. Generally speaking, the biggest difference between the two groups is that one expects the current power structure to cunningly survive this current period, while younger people think the world can, and will, be fundamentally changed for the better. You know which camp I’m in.

Generally speaking, older people tend to be strongly anchored to the world paradigm as it exists, while those who are younger are naturally more open to massive disruption and upheaval. I’d argue that the current younger generation is even more willing to flip the table over and build entirely new structures than most people realize. The popularity of crypto assets amongst this generation is just one manifestation of this desire. That’s not to say us optimists are naive and expect this to be a smooth transition without a fight, but it’s to say we believe paradigm level, positive change is not only possible, but likely. Which is precisely the attitude you must have if you want to win. If you go into a battle expecting to lose, the result is obvious.

Most interesting to me was how the youngest member at the table responded when the subject of gold came up. He said something like, “I get the investment thesis, I get the concept of it, but it’s just not something I’m interested in.” He went on to describe why.

He likened it to buying an asset, holding it tight, and then waiting for the world to burn around him to profit. This blew my mind because I’ve heard this exact same sentiment, virtually word for word, from other people his age previously. They get gold and they understand the investment thesis, but they simply aren’t interested in it for very specific and interesting reasons. Many older people think millennials are just acting stupid and naive with their interest in crypto assets. They think these kids don’t know anything about gold or monetary history, which is why they’re attracted to these new digital forms of value, but if you actually talk to them, you’ll see that’s not the case. I’ve had too many experiences like the one described above with intelligent and aware millennials to be increasingly confident of this conclusion.

It reminded me of what I wrote last month:

This is where many older people who understand how fraudulent and terminal the current system is seem to get sidetracked. To them, the next logical step as we enter a new financial system has to be to go through gold. Far more ridiculously, some people even push the spectacularly idiotic idea that an SDR will become the accepted global currency of the future. While I don’t profess to know exactly how things will play out, I try to keep an open mind as others arrogantly dismiss Bitcoin completely.

 

It’s no coincidence that many of those who are particularly condescending toward Bitcoin are from older generations. They’re doing what humans tend to do, which is take their own understanding of the world and life experiences and extrapolate them into the future. Someone who lived 30 years or more before the internet came to dominate everything will naturally possess a radically different perspective of the world and where it’s headed than someone who never knew life without it. This is precisely why a younger person will inherently understand the value and utility proposition of something like Bitcoin far more easily than someone much older.

The only person at the table who owned no crypto assets was the oldest one in attendance (although he’s totally supportive of the space). This pattern is repeated over and over again in my experience. When I go out with friends my age or older they’re almost never involved, but when I go out with younger generations they almost always are. Some people will write the whole thing off as a fad, but my observations point me in an entirely different direction. The evolution and success of Bitcoin and crypto assets is not just a function of revolutionary technology being introduced into the world. Its blistering adoption rate is a reflection of a global consciousness developing amongst younger generations. It’s reflection of a burning desire for a more dynamic, trustless and decentralized world, and it will be up to them to ensure that it happens.

None of us know exactly how the future will unfold, but I’m going to take my cues from younger generations. Their values and desires will be what shapes the world as older generations retire and die off. If you aren’t talking to them and studying the way they see things, you’re going to be completely blindsided by the next 10-20 years.

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David Stockman Offers "More Proof Of Janet Yellen's Idiocy"

Authored by David Stockman via The Daily Reckoning,

During the last 129 months, the Fed has held 86 meetings. On 83 of those occasions it either cut rates or left them unchanged.

So you can perhaps understand why Wednesday’s completely expected (for the last three weeks!) 25 bips left the day traders nonplussed. The Dow rallied over 100 points that day.

Traders understandably believe that this monetary farce can continue indefinitely, and that our Keynesian school marm’s post-meeting presser was evidence that the Fed is still their friend.

No it isn’t!

Janet Yellen’s sing-song gibberish was the equivalent of a monetary DEFCON 1, alerting all except the most addicted Kool-Aid drinkers to get out of the casino.

Our monetary politburo has expanded its balance sheet by a lunatic 22X during the last three decades and in the process has systematically falsified financial asset prices and birthed a mutant debt-fueled of simulacrum of prosperity.

But once it begins to withdraw substantial amounts of cash from the canyons of Wall Street as per its newly reaffirmed “normalization” policy, the whole house of cards is destined to collapse.

There will be a stock market implosion soon, and that will in turn generate panic in the C-suites as the value of stock options vanish. Like in the fall of 2008 — except on an even more sweeping and long-lasting scale — corporate America will desperately unload inventories, workers and assets to appease the robo-machines of Wall Street.

But there is nothing left to brake the casino’s fall.

If the money market rate conforms to the Fed’s latest command and settles at 88 basis points, it is still effectively at the zero bound. Our monetary politburo is thus still out of dry powder — except for the nuclear option of QE4, which Yellen herself made quite clear would never happen until after the next recession is already underway.

Yet by then it will be too late — way too late. That’s because the market is priced as if the business cycle has been outlawed and as if the feckless band of Keynesian pretenders who have seized control of financial markets have ushered in the Nirvana of permanent full-employment. World without end.

Needless to say, they haven’t because they haven’t repealed the law of supply and demand. That is, if the Fed plans to keep raising until rates until they reach 3.0% by 2019, it will have to suck massive amounts of cash out of the financial markets.

So doing, it will drive long-term yields substantially higher and thereby obliterate the ultra-low cap rate delusion on which the entire regime of Bubble Finance is based.

In fact, in a blathering response at her presser about the pace by which the Fed intends to shrink its bloated $4.4 trillion balance sheet, Yellen proved she is clueless about the financial firestorm our rogue central bank is about to unleash.

She claimed that the Fed could implement 3-4 money market rate increases a year, while deferring the shrinkage of its balance sheet into the indefinite future.

But that it most assuredly cannot do.

With a staggering overhang of $2.1 trillion of excess reserves in the financial system, even our vaunted monetary politburo cannot command the tides to recede. If it wants the money rate to rise on its appointed path through 2019, it must drain loads of cash from Wall Street.

At the same time, the other event from Wednesday — the freezing in of the Federal debt ceiling at $19.9 trillion — will means that the cash drain will soon intensify.

That’s because the U.S. Treasury has blown a massive wad of cash in order to pay its bills during the last few months, but will soon be back into the market borrowing hand-over-fist. That is, draining cash from the dealer market as it floods Wall Street with new bills, notes and bonds.

At the peak level of its cash hoard on October 24, the U.S. Treasury was sitting on $482 billion of cash.

But as of Wednesday, the Treasury’s cash balance stood at just $77 billion, meaning it burned through $305 billion of cash in just 51 calendar days since the inauguration, and nearly $360 billion since the October 24 peak.

But now that the debt ceiling is again frozen into place, an explosive political crisis is coming soon.

There is simply no pathway to a Congressional majority to raise it until Washington reaches the brink of political crisis and has gone beyond.

The prolonged and turbulent debt ceiling crisis that is coming down the pike is surely not “priced-in.” As I have said, the robo-machines can read headlines, but they can’t read the Washington tea leaves.

The fact is, what is impending is nothing like the 2011 crisis when Obama’s Keynesian advisors scared the wits out of him about a debt rating downgrade, and the GOP backbenches were set-up for a patented betrayal by House Speaker “Lawnchair Johnny” Boehner.

This time there will be no timely compromise.

That’s because the Deep State and its Democratic shills are attempting to re-litigate the election, while the Donald has declared war on them in turn — compounded by his aggressive actions on the immigrant ban, deportation of illegals and the erection of provocative controls and walls at the Mexican border.

The fact is, as a political matter, Hispania is the 51st state, and the channel through which the Democrats hang on to power. They will not support a debt-ceiling increase unless Trump throws in the towel on Obamacare and his anti-immigrant dragnet.

Yet if he folds on those core issues, he will incite a massive revolt in the GOP rank and file, which would make a majority for a debt ceiling increase even more problematic.

Besides, the temporary expedients and accounting gimmicks which the Treasury will now began to roll-out to temporarily defer the day of reckoning actually make no difference where it counts.

Last year during the March through May period, in fact, net debt rose by $96 billion, and there is every reason to believe that this year the shortfall will be even higher.

Accordingly, the current meager cash balance at the Treasury will not even last to Memorial Day.

After that, Uncle Sam will be back on Wall Street borrowing cash hand-over-fist — even as the Fed continues destocking its hoard of government debt through the back door of the repo market.

So what commenced this week and what will remain into the indefinite future is that Washington will be draining massive amounts of cash out of financial markets that have been suckling on the teat of government “stimulus” for most of the past three decades.

Does the school marm running the Wall Street casinos banking window see any of this double whammy coming?

Au contraire.

Again Wednesday she professed to see no bubbles anywhere, while floundering incoherently when asked about the timing of the Fed’s belated normalization campaign. A questioner wondered why the Fed is now raising rates just as the U.S. economy shows signs of gathering weakness and the global economy — centered in China and its supply chain — lurches forward in a slow-motion train wreck.

Anyone buying stock based on confidence that the Fed has their back notwithstanding Wednesday’s action surely deserves the pounding just ahead. What Yellen had to say doesn’t even reach the status of babbling; it was flaming incoherence:

Well, look, our policy is not set in stone. It is data-dependent and we’re — we’re not locked into any particular policy path. Our — you know, as you said, the data have not notably strengthened. I — there’s noise always in the data from quarter to quarter. But we haven’t changed our view of the outlook. We think we’re on the same path, not — we haven’t boosted the outlook, projected faster growth. We think we’re moving along the same course we’ve been on, but it is one that involves gradual tightening in the labor market.

So when faced with actual facts about declining real wages, collapsing Q1 GDP estimates, disappointing retail sales and a wild and woolly fiscal process ahead, the Fed chairman defended the third rate hike in 11 years by saying that the “data is noisy.”

What isn’t noisy is the data on the stock market’s bubble of a lifetime.

When it finally pops Yellen and her posse of Keynesian money printers will be incoherent, speechless and finished.

And that pop could come awfully soon.

What The Hell Is Going On?

Via Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform blog,

“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” –  H.L. Mencken

 

“The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do.”– Andrew Carnegie

I’m 53 years old. The older I get the less sure I am about things I was sure about when I was 25 years old. I believed stocks for the long run was an unquestioned truth. I believed our economy was based on free market capitalism. I believed stock prices were based upon profits and cash flows. I believed a home was a place to live – not an investment. I believed the Catholic Church was run by good men doing good things. I believed journalists and the media were watchdogs working on behalf of the public. I believed our military was protecting our interests. I believed politicians legislated on behalf of the people. I believed the main purpose of bankers was to loan money to businesses and consumers in order to support economic growth. Boy, was I dumbass.

My skeptical nature, reliance on data I’ve personally vetted, and judging our leaders based on what they have done versus what they say, has allowed me to escape the Matrix. I wasn’t truly awakened until I watched Bush, Cheney, Powell, the rest of the neo-con prevaricators and fake news mainstream media utilize propaganda to railroad Americans into a $6 trillion unnecessary war, resulting in 36,000 American casualties, the destruction of a country and the creation of thousands of new Muslim terrorists.

I’ve spent the last fourteen years pushing back against the establishment narrative, documenting the fake data published by government apparatchiks, and trying to open the eyes of as many people as possible to the propaganda utilized by the Deep State to keep the ignorant masses dazed, confused and distracted. The country is in deep trouble because what the majority believe regarding the economy, politics, religion, and culture just ain’t so.

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

Since the start of this year I’ve found myself in a mental funk. I’m tired of the lies. I’m tired of incessant media propaganda. I’m tired of politicians. I’m tired of economic experts. I’m tired of hucksters touting their “the end is near” tale to sell me something. I’m tired of faux mainstream media journalists and their whining about Trump being mean and threatening the First Amendment.

They don’t know jack about the First Amendment, as they work for one of the six media conglomerates whose job it is to produce fake news supporting whatever narrative keeps their Deep State benefactors in power. Regurgitating lines written for them by corporate propagandists is not journalism and has absolutely no relationship to the First Amendment. Over the last decade the only place to find some truth has been the alternative media thriving on the uncensored internet. That’s why the establishment wants to regulate the internet.

The fake news blitz by a Deep State, flailing about trying to retain their power and wealth, has reached frantic proportions. The left wingers, egged on by Obama and funded by Soros, hold increasingly inane protests with themes like: wear a vagina hat to support feminazis; hug an illegal immigrant; everyone I hate is a Nazi; and women take another day off and no one notices. The traitorous neo-con warmongers like McCain, Graham, and Kristol see their enormously profitable never ending global conflict agenda at risk. The military industrial complex needs enemies. The left wingers and neo-cons have joined forces to utilize the fake Russian election intervention propaganda in a last ditch desperate attempt to derail the Trump presidency before it starts.

The relentlessness, bitterness, and blatant disregard for the truth exhibited by Trump’s vast array of opponents have made TV virtually unwatchable. I’ve found myself mentally checking out. Why waste mental energy debating hacks, mental midgets and paid trolls for the establishment? After spending years obliterating fake government statistics on a daily basis, I find continuing to do so is just mental masturbation with no ultimate satisfaction. Confronting left wingers and neo-cons is like wresting with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

I’ve always been an observer. I’ve been observing how certain both sides are regarding their positions on illegal immigration, Muslims, Russia, Obamacare, Supreme Court nominees, executive orders, jobs, taxes, climate change, school choice, oil pipelines the First Amendment, Second Amendment, the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights. I find it exhausting. We’re lost in a blizzard of lies. I’m not certain about anything. I will remain skeptical of everything uttered by all politicians, all government bureaucrats, all corporate executives, all central bankers, all media pundits, all religious leaders, all corporate paid journalists and especially Wall Street shysters.

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.” – H.L. Mencken

The dissonance between what I have been observing and what is being flogged by the establishment mouthpieces in the corporate mainstream media has never been greater. Some of my observations are anecdotal, others are based on real unadulterated truthful data, a few are based on simple common sense and the rest are based on my understanding of what happens during Fourth Turnings.

When you understand the cyclical nature of history you are not surprised when events lead to reactions among the masses which take the linear thinking status quo by complete surprise. The 2008 global financial implosion and the subsequent election of Donald J. Trump by the deplorable white silent majority completely blindsided the oblivious establishment, but were entirely predictable if you had studied previous Fourth Turnings throughout history.

I’ve been making a horrific sixty mile round trip commute into Philly for the last ten years. The average daily commute has been about two hours, as the entire route has been under some sort of construction for the entire decade. A fantastic one way commute is forty five minutes. I regularly have ninety minute commutes, and I’ve experienced a few which breached the two hour mark. It became immediately evident to me something changed as this new year got under way. My morning and evening commute has been consistently in the forty-five minute range for the last two months. There are less cars and trucks on the road. The question is why?

This only happened once before over the last decade – during the 2008/2009 recession. In a shocking correlation (especially for brain dead tax and spend liberals), when there are less jobs, there are less drivers on the roads going to work. I tried to think of other reasonable explanations for why traffic appeared to be contracting so dramatically. But lo and behold, certain data can’t be easily manipulated by the government. Gasoline demand is plunging, with the year over year trend crashing to levels last experienced during the 2001 recession. Gasoline demand was higher during the 2008/2009 crisis. Demand was higher when oil was over $100 per barrel. Based on this crash in gasoline demand, Goldman Sachs issued a report saying we should be in a recession.

Total miles driven are dramatically slowing down. It’s not because of electric cars or fuel efficiency, as the vast majority of the 17.5 million vehicles being hawked to the math challenged driving public (using low payment leases and six year 0% loans) are pickups, SUVs, or luxury sedans. The Fed induced and subprime debt fueled frenzy of vehicle sales (aka long – term rentals) has seen vehicle sales skyrocket from 10 million in 2010 to an all-time high above 17.5 million in 2016, while auto loan debt has soared from $700 billion to over $1.1 trillion during this same time frame. The truthfulness of the 17.5 million sales number may be in question, as dealer lots are stuffed with record levels of inventory. With a record number of cars in the hands of consumers, how could gasoline usage and miles driven crash?

More questions emerge to those with critical thinking skills. If the unemployment rate is really 4.8%, how could 40% of the employable population (102 million) not be working? This explains the lack of cars on the road during my commute. Obama and his minions jabber about the tremendous jobs recovery during his reign of error. In 2007 there were 122 million full-time workers among a working age population of 233 million, or 52.3%. After Obama’s eight year economic “recovery”, there are 125 million full-time workers among a working age population of 254 million, or 49.2%.

We’ve added 3 million full-time jobs in the last 9 years, and the captured mainstream media touts this as a success story. The deceitfulness – it burns. When 125 million full-time workers, of which 22 million are non-producing government drones, have to support 102 million non-working Americans, most living on the dole, you have a financially unsustainable paradigm. Trump’s slogan should be Make Americans Get Off Their Fat Asses and Work Again.

The explanation for the plunge in gasoline demand and miles driven is quite simple if you haven’t drunk the mainstream media kool-aid about the fantastic economy, low unemployment, and soaring consumer confidence. Americans drive their vehicles to work, to shop, and to eat out. Truckers are the backbone of our just in time big box retail society. If Americans are driving less, there are less people with jobs, less spending at bricks and mortar retailers, and fewer people eating out.

If truckers are logging less miles, retailers are ordering less inventory, manufacturers are selling less widgets, and the economy is contracting. The entire economic improvement narrative is based on soft data about feelings from consumer confidence surveys and dozens of other easily manipulated surveys. Propagandists are experts at convincing clueless dolts it’s raining when their government is actually pissing down their backs.

Despite government reports about expanding retail sales and strong holiday sales, real info from real retailers tells the true story. Major retailers have announced 1,500 store closings in the first two months of 2017, including:

• JC Penney – 140 stores


• Sears – 150 stores


• Macy’s – 68 stores


• HHGregg – 88 stores


• The Limited – 250 stores


• Abercrombie & Fitch – 60 stores


• Wet Seal – 171 stores


• CVS – 70 stores

Kohl’s, Target, Macy’s, Sears, and dozens of other retailers reported awful holiday sales. Wal-Mart was lauded for generating a 1% comparable store sales increase. There is virtually no store expansion by large retail chains. During the 2000 to 2007 period these chains were each opening hundreds of new stores per year. We are in the midst of a long term retail contraction which is just picking up steam.

The closure of these stores combined with rising interest rates are a toxic concoction for real estate mall developers. The Fed allowed them to extend and pretend for the last eight years. The jig is up. A wave of retail and mall bankruptcies is baked in the cake. The government reported retail sales growth is driven by Fed induced auto sales (leases and loans), home furnishing sales financed at 0% over five years, building materials stores offering 0% financing, Amazon and until recently restaurant and bar sales.

Since I don’t go into malls or many retail establishments, and rarely eat at chain restaurants, my observations of retail and restaurant traffic are based on how full their parking lots are at peak hours. When the economy was in bubble mode prior to 2008, mall parking lots were jammed and you had a ninety minute  wait to get a seat at Outback or Olive Garden. Today, you can get a parking spot at a big box retailer near the front door on a Saturday afternoon.

Malls are ghost towns, with Space Available as the hot new location. Except for peak dinner time on a Friday or Saturday (if then) there are no longer long waits to get a table at one of the struggling chain restaurants. We reached peak retail and peak overpriced restaurants a few years ago. The downward spiral, due to demographics, declining real income, and over-saturation, is irreversible.

As usual, with propaganda distributed by the government or industry organizations, they present a positive restaurant performance index based on false hope and delusional expectations. Restaurant chains like Applebees, Outback, Ruby Tuesday, Chilis, Buffalo Wild Wings and many other major chains have been reporting declining same restaurant sales. Industry comparable restaurant sales are lower than two years ago.

Outback’s parent company announced it will close more than four dozen locations of Outback Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill, Carrabba’s Italian Grill and Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse. Ruby Tuesday is closing 100 locations. Despite government reports showing strong restaurant sales over the last eight years, annual traffic to U.S. restaurants has been flat or up just 1% since 2009, when there was a 2% drop in the wake of the Fed created financial crisis.

The “increase” in sales was generated by price increases of 2% to 3% per year. Now these chains are paying the price for high prices, shitty food, and poor service from their college graduate millennial staff. With higher taxes, soaring Obamacare costs, student loan and auto loan debt up to their eyeballs, and low paying service jobs as their career, even clueless millennials have gotten a clue – they don’t have the money to eat out four times per week.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows the majority of Americans have fallen further behind since 2009, with only the establishment and those leaching off the establishment profiting from the suffering of senior citizens and the former middle class. When real personal spending plummets at the highest rate since 2009, you just might be in the midst of a recession.

As consumer confidence surveys, ISM surveys and Fed surveys provide fake news about consumer and corporate feelings about a glorious future, the hard data tells the truth. How could households feel confident when real median household income fell by $558 in December and is down by $529 year over year? How could Obama and his lapdogs in the mainstream media pontificate about the record economic recovery when real median income is 2% lower than it was nine years ago?

How can anyone deny the average American household has been experiencing a depression since 2000, when real median household income is lower today than it was at the turn of the century? Do you think the lack of income growth over the last 17 years may have played a part in the deplorables electing Trump in November?

The corporate fake news media will continue to produce the false narrative as directed by their Deep State employers. The credibility of journalists can be summed up in two pithy sentences by Hunter S. Thompson.

“The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.” – Hunter S. Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

In Part Two of this article I’ll show how the Deep State/establishment/ruling class/status quo have utilized their mastery of propaganda techniques to convince the masses inflation and debt are beneficial to their interests and why Trump’s election is the pushback by a citizenry who are beginning to awake and are mad as hell.

Has The American Dream Become The American Nightmare?

Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Most Germans, so far as I could see, did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their splendid culture was being destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work were being regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation … On the whole, people did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous tyranny. On the contrary, they appeared to support it with genuine enthusiasm.”

-William L. Shirer, The Nightmare Years 1930-40

For too long now, the American people have allowed themselves to be persuaded that the government’s job is to take care of us: to feed us, clothe us, house us, educate us, raise our children, heal our infirmities, manage our finances, protect us from our enemies, guard us against all dangers (real and imaginary), and provide for our every need.

Where Americans go wrong is in failing to recognize that there’s always a catch to such devil’s bargains purportedly carried out for the good of all society.

You want free education for your children? The government can take care of it. In exchange for free public schools, however, your children will be molded and indoctrinated into compliant, obedient citizens who reflect the government’s values rather than your own.

You want free health care? The government can take care of that, too. In exchange, your medical decisions—how you live and die—will ultimately be determined by corporations to whom you are little more than a line item impacting their profit and loss margins.

You want to be insulated from all things that might cause offense? That’s not a problem for the government. Its thought police will use hate crime laws to criminalize speech, thought and actions that may be politically incorrect.

You want a guarantee of safety? Sure, but your local police will also have to be militarized and trained in battlefield tactics, your communities and communications will be subjected to round-the-clock surveillance, and you—the citizenry—will be treated as suspects and enemy combatants.

You want to root out domestic extremism and terrorism? That’s just fine. But in the process of identifying and targeting terrorists, the government will have the power to label anyone who disagrees with its policies as an extremist/terrorist and subject them to indefinite detentions.

Are you starting to get the picture?

This is the terrible price—the loss of our freedoms and the enslavement of future generations—that must eventually be paid for the goods and services rendered by a government whose priorities are the acquisition of ever-more power, control and money.

As the old adage warns: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”

Unfortunately, we’ve been on the receiving end of the government’s taxpayer-funded handouts—and its deceptively well-intended dictates—for so long that many Americans have forgotten what it is to think for themselves, provide for themselves, and govern themselves.

Indeed, this age of entitlement is a far cry from the kind of constitutional republic America’s founders envisioned.

Gone is the proud, independent-minded, pioneering spirit of early Americans like my parents who rejected what they called “hand-outs,” worked hard for whatever they had, protected their homes and families, and believed the government’s job was to govern based on the consent of the governed and not dictate.

Contrast those fiercely-independent, early Americans who took to heart James Madison’s admonition to distrust all those in power with today’s citizens who not only expect the government to care for their needs but have blindly entrusted the government with vast, growing powers.

By giving the government the green light to act in loco parentis and treat the citizenry as children in need of caretakers, “we the people” have allowed ourselves to be demoted and infantilized, reduced from knowledgeable, independent-minded, capable masters of a republic to wayward, undisciplined, dependent, vulnerable children incapable of caring for ourselves.

It’s time to grow up.

Incredibly, despite the fact that we allowed the government to become all-knowing, all-powerful and all-mighty in the mistaken belief that it would make our lives safer, easier and more affluent, we’re still shocked when that power and might is used against us.

It’s time to stop being so gullible and so trusting.

Even when the headlines blare out the news about SWAT team raids gone awry, police shootings of unarmed citizens, roadside cavity searches of young women, children being shackled and tasered, and Americans jailed for profit in private prisons, we still somehow maintain our state of denial until suddenly we’re the ones in the firing line being treated like suspects and criminals, having our skulls cracked, our doors smashed, our pets shot, our children terrorized, and our loved ones jailed for non-offenses.

It’s time to remove those rose-colored, partisan-tinted glasses and wake up to the fact that our nation of sheep has given rise to a government of wolves.

Even though, deep down, we have suspected that the system is run by an elite who views the citizenry as little more than cattle destined for the slaughterhouse, we’re still shocked to find ourselves treated like slaves and economic units.

How could we not have seen it coming?

How long has the writing been on the wall?

How could we have been so blind, deaf and dumb to the warnings all around us?

Unfortunately, it happens this way in every age, in every place where freedom falls and tyranny flourishes.

As Aldous Huxley recognized in his foreword to Brave New World: “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.”

This is how the seeds of authoritarianism are planted and watered and cultivated into aggressive, invasive growths that can quickly dominate an environment.

Remember, tyrants don’t always come to power in a show of force. Often, they sweet-talk their way to absolute power, buoyed along by a wave of populist demand for someone to save the country from economic, military and political crises.

As historian Jim Powell writes for Forbes:

Hitler didn’t take over a small government with an effective separation of enumerated, delegated and limited powers.  He took over a large welfare state… He dealt with unemployment by introducing forced labor for both men and women.  Government  control of the economy made it virtually impossible for anyone to seriously threaten his regime. Hitler added secret police, death camps and another war machine. The German educational system, which had inspired so many American progressives, played a major role in all this… the government gained complete control of schools and universities, and their top priority was teaching obedience. The professorial elite promoted collectivism.  The highest calling was working for the government.

It can easily happen here.

In fact, the early signs of this downshift are all around us if you only know where to look.

You can smell it in the air: there’s danger coming. A recent New Yorker article reveals the lengths some of the wealthiest in America are going to in order to survive an apocalyptic breakdown of society: isolated refuges, bunkers, gas masks, generators, solar panels, ammunition, etc.

You can see it in the changes taking place all around you: the government is preparing for something ominous. For example, the Pentagon is using a dystopian training video to prepare special forces to deal with the urban challenges of megacities: criminal networks, illicit economies, decentralized syndicates of crime, substandard infrastructure, religious and ethnic tensions, impoverishment, economic inequality, protesters, slums, open landfills, over-burdened sewers, and a “growing mass of unemployed.”

You can hear it in the news coming out of the independent media: the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches have already weakened our long-established bulwarks against tyranny by their constant undermining of the Constitution and the president’s amassing of imperial power.

We are no longer a constitutional republic.

The American dream is turning into a living nightmare.

We are fast moving towards full-blown fascism.

So what’s the answer?

The powers that be can—and will—continue to distract us with electronic gadgets and entertainment news, they can seduce us with promises they have no intention of keeping, they can drug us with politics packaged to resemble religion, and they can use the schools to breed a populace of compliant slaves.

In the end, however, the choice of whether to keep drinking the Kool-Aid or reject the false prophets and promises of the police state—a.k.a. fascism or totalitarianism or tyranny—rests with “we the people.”

After all, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it was “we the people” who struck this devil’s bargain in the first place, trading our liberties for dubious promises of prosperity, security and advancement.

Through our inaction, our apathy and our unwillingness to do the hard work of holding the government accountable, perhaps “we the people” have been the greatest menace to freedom.

Perhaps all of this is our fault.

My parents’ advice was that if you made a mess, you had to clean it up.

No one else is going to clean this mess up for us, certainly not anyone on the government’s payroll.

As Jim Powell rightly concludes: “Ultimately, liberty can be protected only if people care enough to fight for it, because everywhere governments push for more power, and they never give it up willingly.”

So let’s stop buying into the fairytale that politicians are saviors, capable of fixing what’s wrong with our communities and our lives.

Let’s stop expecting the government to solve all our problems.

Stop playing the partisan game that paints anyone not of your political persuasion as evil.

Stop defending the insanity of an immoral system of government that sees nothing wrong with bombing innocent civilians, jailing innocent citizens, and treating human beings as little more than cattle.

Stop validating a system of laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.

While you’re at it, start taking responsibility for your lives—and your freedoms—again. And maybe, just maybe, there will be some hope for tomorrow.

Improving the (Mole) Economy One Broken Window at a Time

Improving the (Mole) Economy One Broken Window at a Time

By

Cognitive Dissonance

We have a mole. Correction…we have moles.

And judging by the extensive tunnel network spread across the nearly two acres of grass area I cut (I use the term ‘grass’ loosely because they’re actually closely cut weed fields) I would estimate we have at least two moles and possibly 6 million.

Give or take a few.

I noticed the mole infestation was getting worse just as the late fall days turned cold and I was in the process of winterizing all our power equipment. In addition to changing the oil, cleaning off the dirt and crud, touching up the rusty areas with paint and running stabilized gasoline through the fuel systems, I like to move the most used pieces of equipment into a central area where they can huddle together during the winter months and swap stupid human stories amongst themselves.

You’ve just got to hear the one about Mrs. Cog and the Husky tiller.

It was during equipment moving day when I first noticed the significantly increased mole activity. It became particularly obvious when the right rear wheel of one of my tractors dropped into the abyss and up to its axle, nearly throwing me out of the saddle in the process. Have you ever tried climbing off a tractor poised at a sharp angle while on the side of a steep hill? There is no graceful way to exit, particularly when you are 6’ 4’ and on the wrong side of 250 pounds.

I must have hit a den of thieves because the activity just under the surface was frantic and just a little bit frightening. I may be north of 60 years of age and just as north of senile, but as far as I remember the ground is not supposed to move like that. And yet here it was doing exactly that. Fumbling for the glasses in my coat pocket (why wear glasses for a crystal clear view of reality when slightly…err...very blurred is so much more comforting) I quickly surveyed the scene.

There were mole tunnels EVERYWHERE, all intricately interconnected into a mass of humps and bumps that would put a capital city planner, so proud of his/her geometric street grid pattern, to shame. There is no such thing as straight lines in Moleville.

Lacking the time, nor the inclination, to do anything about the moles at that precise moment, I levered the tractor out of the sinkhole and carried on with my winterizing business. There were tractors to keep before I sleep. And tillers, lawn mowers, chain saws, generators, pumps, log splitters, carts and wagons.

Within a week it turned cold. Very cold in fact, at least for these parts. As in low teens and single digits cold, with a few visits below zero just to remind this mere mortal who’s really in charge of the outdoor thermostat.

Hint: it ain’t me.

During my thrice a day trips to feed the bottomless pit called our outdoor wood furnace, I surveyed the land to assess the mole activity and was smug in the knowledge the resident mole population had beat a hasty retreat from the cold. Out of sight, out of mind is how I like my mole problems. Heck, if the United States of America can kick the can down the road with regard to every socioeconomic problem on the books, and several dozen well off the books, who am I to think it might not work for me?

Of course the infestation had not disappeared, but had simply dug itself even deeper.

Alas the cold spell receded, the snow turned to rain and my attention turned to things other than moles. Over the holidays Mrs. Cog and I got really really sick and became house bound for nearly two weeks. Essentially we took turns doctoring each other while continuing to feed the Heatmaster.

At first we diagnosed our malady as the return of the black plague and posted notices on all the doors and windows to turn away those not yet infected. But towards the end I managed to drive myself down to the local store to purchase medical supplies and discovered the locals talking about the entire one horse town being sick with some god awful yuck that lasted two or three weeks.

It was then we christened our illness the Bubba Bug. Who says you can’t laugh while you’re dying?

Today was the first day in nearly three weeks I managed to summon the strength to actually walk the outbuildings and nearby weed fields. Guess what I found?

Moles. Lots of moles. Gazillions of moles.

Actually, to be precise I saw no moles, just mole ‘sign’ in the form of surface tunnels crisscrossing the land as far as the eye could see. They’re back and with a vengeance. Naturally my mind immediately turned to mole murder and the various methods I could employ to accomplish the molicide. But then another thought crossed my mind.

With Trump just a few days from being crowned King, I have been thinking about his economic stimulus plans, particularly his stated interest in rapidly increasing investment in public infrastructure projects. It suddenly occurred to me the moles had already heavily invested in their own infrastructure projects and the local mole economy was certain to enter a recession, if not an outright depression, when the inevitable molenomic slowdown kicked in.

Instantly my mind turned to that economic genius (sarc) Paul Krugman, and his brilliant (double sarc) ‘alien invasion’ and ‘broken windows’ theories. In a flash I realized I could introduce Paul Krugman to the moles by raining a ‘natural’ disaster upon Moleville by the resident ‘alien’, little ole me. I was certain I would soon be awarded the Moleville Medal of Freedom for my heroic efforts.

Krugman"s own personal broken window. He refuses to fix it because his insurance deductible is too high, thereby making Krugman personally responsible for preventing the US economy from fully recovering from the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. The man simply refuses to drink his own toxic Kool-Aid.

Just before the first snow ‘we’ (meaning ‘I’ while dragging Mrs. Cog by her pigtails) had purchased a new garden tractor. You know, to stimulate the economy. It was our patriotic duty. But ‘we’ (meaning ‘I’) have not had much of a chance to break her in (the tractor, not Mrs. Cog) before the cold and snow arrived. In an attempt to smash thousands of windows with one measly stone, or tractor as the case may be, I fired up the brand new Husky tractor and proceeded to flatten every mole hill and tunnel I could find within a 200 yard radius.

With supreme confidence and a touch of shear madness, I knew without a shadow of a doubt I was increasing Moleville’s GDP by a minimum of 10% per day for at least the next three to four weeks. Paul Krugman, eat my exhaust. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics would soon be awarded to my fat ass, just as soon as I can get it off this tractor and into the house to polish up my thesis.

After finishing the dirty deed, then picking the mole collateral damage out from between the tire treads, I proceeded to establish the National Bank of Moleville and fire up the electronic fractional reserve fiat faker so the moles could burrow…umm…borrow themselves to health, wealth and prosperity as they repel the alien invasion and repair all those broken windows and crushed tunnels. Of course, in return for my minor contribution to Moleville’s economic miracle, I will become filthy rich and honorary King of the Mole Hill.

Someone contact Trump and inform him I am available for consultation if the price is right or the presidential medal is big enough.

Since it is blatantly obvious even to a deaf, dumb and blind man (paging Paul Krugman) that my molenomic plan will be a smashing success (pun intended) there is no need to follow up with Moleville economic studies and careful mole observation to confirm my theories. Even if initial indicators show little economic growth, there remain several gallons of stabilized gasoline in the tractor, allowing me to launch several more alien invasions.

What doesn’t kill the proles moles will most certainly make them stronger. So says the Federal Reserve, so says Cognitive Dissonance.

You may now kiss my ring.

01-22-2017

Cognitive Dissonance

The Alien Star Cruiser towing the automatic window breaker. The Husky tiller can be seen way in the back of the shed. Mrs. Cog made me promise never to tell you that story.  You"ll have to hear it from the machines.

Liberal Logic - We are the Frog

Phase 1: The Data doesn"t Fit a Central Banker, Liberal Diplomat, or IMF Official"s Theory

Old joke describing when a person is married to their ideas

Phase 2: Cure the Frog"s Deafness

Via Marketslant.com Our scientist immediately starts studying ways to help the frog hear better. Because clearly, if the frog was not deaf, it would jump. Otherwise the scientist has an outlier on his data. And his theory cant be wrong. It has been working for years.

Don"t dare broach things like dynamic equilibrium, or marginal utility, conditional probabilities, or that economic ideas are possibly cyclical to this genius. No way! We must power through. And if we fail, clearly the subject is in denial or ignorant. This is what we are up against in our leaders today.

Past Performance Guarantees Future Results in La La Land

Such is the logic of a certain type of Supranational most commonly found in the: IMF, Central Banking, Academia, and relativist thinking. They can afford to think this way. They have no skin in the game. They live in La La land.

But the funnest group to observe is 2nd generation liberals (Gen X age) who dogmatically believe. That"s not to say conservatives aren"t immune. People are the problem, not politics.

But the fun starts when one asks a 2nd generation liberal why they are a Democrat and watch them squirm. Especially in light of the boomer generation abandoning its progressive ideals for their 401ks and elitist rationalizations. The boomer children, especially the Clinton acolytes, are lost liberals. At least the Sanders people are consistent.

Orphaned Liberals

It is fascinating that when some 2nd generation liberals are asked why they are Democrats can"t talk about ideas, but rather cite the people whose ideas they adhere to. Once, when Obama was running in 2008 I volunteered to defend a liberal Dem friend in a debate he was losing. Before engaging his enemy in what could have been a Good-Will Hunting moment, I asked him why he was a Democrat. His answer was "Because my mother is." I surrendered to the enemy. P.S.- His mother was now a multi-millionaire and a long way from being progressive. My progressive liberal friend was a political orphan drinking mommy"s stale kool-aid. Meanwhile mother had long since swapped out for Caymus Cabernet.

On Dogmatic Ritual

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.

Tao Te Ching, 44

Hating Intolerant People

It is especially ironic that when one challenges a dogmatic (multicultural, globalist, self-proclaimed progressive, etc) liberal, they cling to their ideas like a redneck clings to his bible. They wear their ideas like armor. Nothing can penetrate that armor. Consequently nothing new can get in either. They are more interested in conserving their position than progressing in their thought process. Tolerance is the mantra screamed at the top of their lungs. However, tolerance of an intolerant person"s opinion is non-existent. Even if that person is doing no harm except voicing their (ignorant) opinion.

Liberalism is 100% Right in its Ideals- So What?

Let"s say for debate that the ideals of liberalism are 100% correct. Does that mean those ideals should be forced upon people not ready to understand them? Ever try to convert someone from their religion against their will? Ever give your car keys to a 5 year old and try to teach him to drive? Ever scream at a frog that just wouldn"t listen? So much of these peoples" identity is wrapped up in their ideas it would be unbearable to accept they might be wrong. This "We know what"s best" mentality pervades the Fed, IMF, US Foreign Policy, and entertainment industry. There is no room for other people"s opinions. Most are adept at redirecting or obfuscating truth in service to their own denial. Thankfully, Rosie O"Donnell exists to give us a peek at the intolerance of the left.

Caps Lock: Removing Doubt of Insanity Since 1993

@ElennaV @therealjcarroll ANYONE BUT HIM - LITERALLY - PUT A GOP SENATOR AS INTERIM PRESIDENT - DECLARE STATE OF EMERGENCY

— ROSIE (@Rosie) January 16, 2017

Zombie Rosie O"Donnell- Honest, But in Denial

Hers is not unlike the behavior of a cult member. The symptoms of people like Rosie O"Donnell are similar to victims of brainwashing. Worse in Rosie, because she has a stake as leader of the brainwashed. These types know better than you. And that may be true. But do not try to tell Rosie that a person is just not ready for the holy spirit of liberalism to descend upon them. If all else fails scream at them. Or if you are in a position to do so, bomb the crap out of them.

Carpetbagger Ken Rogoff - Academic Lackey

See my WSJ weekend section article on THE CURSE OF CASH https://t.co/3PXamcaUrz

— Kenneth S Rogoff (@krogoff) August 25, 2016

Such foresight on Ken"s part to publish his article 3 days before a major work was presented to the Fed. One that was an answer key for abolishing cash. Pic below from Jackson Hole Fed meeting on Aug 28th, By Marvin Goodfriend. 

H/t @RudyHavenstein

1. charge more for ATM use than if you use their app for electronic wiring.- Goodfriend


2. Actually let cash trade at a discount to e-cash (which is what ATM fees are doing anyway)- Goodfriend


3. Remove that pesky "This note legal tender"  from our currency


4. Discontinue the $100 bill- Rogoff


5. Try it in India- You don"t think the Fed is taking notes?

Rogoff is interviewing for a job in the new administration. He represents to me the worst kind of Supranational. The carpetbagger who gets behind an idea for his own gain, and after others have done the real academic work. The man actually wormed his way on the front of the WGC to sell books. Rogoff pro Gold? Sure as long as its been cusiped and converted into e-Gold we bet.

pic title edited by author

Final Note- Did Rachel Maddow Actually Cry?

One of the keystones of liberalism is relativism. A concept that implies we cannot know what is absolute good or evil. Admittedly important in learning  to suspend judgment of others and fixing our own faults. I subscribe to that. Only Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Vishnu, the Tao and the Force can know absolute truth.  What I don"t subscribe to is perverting that concept as a tool to muddy the waters of truth. We can"t know the definition of IS in absolute terms, therefore Bill Clinton was not guilty. 

No, absolute truth exists. And just because we cannot know it does not mean we stop trying to. The world isn"t black and white as some conservatives would have you believe. But using the gray for rationalizing unethical behavior is worse. And that is what a lot of Supranationals do. 

On the other end we have Rachel Maddow who was so enamored with her candidate that she cried. Nothing relativistic there. This is a person who believes in her heart she has a monopoly on what is right for you. She has absolute knowledge apparently.

Good Luck

VBL

Twitter: Vince Lanci

 Vince contributes on commodities, market manipulation, and global markets