The world’s number one problem today is that the world’s population is too large for its resource base. Some people have called this situation overshoot. The world economy is ripe for a major change, such as the current pandemic, to bring the situation into balance. The change doesn’t necessarily come from the coronavirus itself. Instead, it is likely to come from the whole chain reaction that has been started by the coronavirus and the response of governments around the world to the coronavirus.
Let me explain more about what is happening.
[1] The world economy is reaching Limits to Growth, as described in the book with a similar title.
One way of seeing the predicament we are in is the modeling of resource consumption and population growth described in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, by Donella Meadows et al. Its base scenario seems to suggest that the world will reach limits about now. Chart 1 shows the base forecast from that book, together with a line I added giving my impression of where the economy really was in 2019, relative to resource availability.
Figure 1. Base scenario from 1972 Limits to Growth, printed using today’s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in “Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil,” with dotted line added corresponding to where the world economy seems to be in 2019.
In 2019, the world economy seemed to be very close to starting a downhill trajectory. Now, it appears to me that we have reached the turning point and are on our way down. The pandemic is the catalyst for this change to a downward trend. It certainly is not the whole cause of the change. If the underlying dynamics had not been in place, the impact of the virus would likely have been much less.
The 1972 model leaves out two important parts of the economy that probably make the downhill trajectory steeper than shown in Figure 1. First, the model leaves out debt and, in fact, the whole financial system. After the 2008 crisis, many people strongly suspected that the financial system would play an important role as we reach the limits of a finite world because debt defaults are likely to disturb the worldwide financial system.
The model also leaves out humans’ continual battle with pathogens. The problem with pathogens becomes greater as world population becomes denser, facilitating transmission. The problem also becomes greater as a larger share of the population becomes more susceptible, either because they are elderly or because they have underlying health conditions that have been hidden by an increasingly complex and expensive medical system.
As a result, we cannot really believe the part of Figure 1 that is after 2020. The future downslopes of population, industrial production per capita, and food per capita all seem likely to be steeper than shown on the chart because both the debt and pathogen problems are likely to increase the speed at which the economy declines.
[2] It is far more than the population that has overshot limits.
The issue isn’t simply that there are too many people relative to resources. The world seems to have
- Too many shopping malls and stores
- Too many businesses of all kinds, with many not very profitable for their owners
- Governments with too extensive programs, which taxpayers cannot really afford
- Too much debt
- An unaffordable amount of pension promises
- Too low interest rates
- Too many people with low wages or no wages at all
- Too expensive a healthcare system
- Too expensive an educational system
The world economy needs to shrink back in many ways at once, simultaneously, to manage within its resource limits. It is not clear how much of an economy (or multiple smaller economies) will be left after this shrinkage occurs.
[3] The economy is in many ways like the human body. In physics terms, both are dissipative structures. They are both self-organizing systems powered by energy (food for humans; a mixture of energy products including oil, coal, natural gas, burned biomass and electricity for the economy).
The human body will try to fix minor problems. For example, if someone’s hand is cut, blood will tend to clot to prevent too much blood loss, and skin will tend to grow to substitute for the missing skin. Similarly, if businesses in an area disappear because of a tornado, the prior owners will either tend to rebuild them or new businesses will tend to come in to replace them, as long as adequate resources are available.
In both systems, there is a point beyond which problems cannot be fixed, however. We know that many people die in car accidents if injuries are too serious, for example. Similarly, the world economy may “collapse” if conditions deviate too far from what is necessary for economic growth to continue. In fact, at this point, the world economy may be so close to the edge with respect to resources, particularly energy resources, that even a minor pandemic could push the world economy into a permanent cycle of contraction.
[4] World governments are in a poor position to fix the current resource and pandemic crisis.
In our networked economy, too low a resource base relative to population manifests itself in a strange way: It appears as an affordability crisis that leads to very low prices for oil. It also appears as terribly low prices for many other commodities, including copper, lithium, coal and even wholesale electricity. These low prices occur because too large a share of the population cannot afford finished goods, such as cars and homes, made with these commodities. Recent shutdowns have suddenly increased the number of people with low income or no income, pushing commodity prices even lower.
If resources were more plentiful and very inexpensive to produce, as they were 50 or 70 years ago, wages of workers could be much higher, relative to the cost of resources. Factory workers would be able to afford to buy vehicles, for example, and thus help keep the demand for automobiles up. If we look more deeply into this, we find that energy resources of many kinds (fossil fuel energy, nuclear energy, burned biomass and other renewable energy) must be extraordinarily cheap and abundant to keep the system growing. Without “surplus energy” from many sources, which grows with population, the whole system tends to collapse.
World governments cannot print resources. What they can print is debt. Debt can be viewed as a promise of future goods and services, whether or not it is reasonable to believe that these future goods and services will actually materialize, given resource constraints.
We are finding that using shutdowns to solve COVID-19 problems causes a huge amount of economic damage. The cost of mitigating this damage seems to be unreasonably high. For example, in the United States, antibody studies suggest that roughly 5% of the population has been infected with COVID-19. The total number of deaths associated with this 5% infection level is perhaps 100,000, assuming that reported deaths to date (about 80,000) need to be increased somewhat, to match the approximately 5% of the population that has, knowingly or unknowingly, already experienced the infection.
If we estimate that the mean number of years of life lost is 13 years per person, then the total years of life lost would be about 1,300,000. If we estimate that the US treasury needed to borrow $3 trillion dollars to mitigate this damage, the cost per year of life lost is $3 trillion divided by 1.3 million, or $2.3 million per year of life lost. This amount is utterly absurd.
This approach is clearly not something the United States can scale up, as the share of the population affected by COVID-19 relentlessly rises from 5% to something like 70% or 80%, in the absence of a vaccine. We have no choice but to use a different approach.
[5] COVID-19 would have the least impact on the world economy if people could pay little attention to the pandemic and just “let it run.” Of course, even without mitigation attempts, COVID-19 might bring the world economy down, given the distressed level of today’s economy and the shutdowns experienced to date.
Shutting down an economy has a huge adverse impact on that economy because quite a few workers who are in good health are no longer able to make goods and services. As a result, they have no wages, so their “demand” goes way down. If the economy was already having an affordability crisis for goods made with commodities, shutting down the economy tends to greatly add to the affordability crisis. Prices of commodities tend to fall even lower than they were before the crisis.
Back in 1957-1958, the Asian pandemic, which also started in China, hit the world. The number of deaths was up in the range of the current pandemic, relative to population. The estimated worldwide death rate was 0.67%. This is not too dissimilar from a death rate of 0.61% for COVID-19, which can be calculated using my estimate above (100,000 deaths relative to 5% of the US population of 33o million).
Virtually nothing was shut down in the US for the 1957-58 pandemic. When doctors or nurses became sick themselves, wards were simply closed. Would-be patients were told to stay at home and take aspirin, unless a severe case developed. With this approach, the US still faced a short recession, but the economy was soon growing again. Populations seemed to reach herd immunity quite quickly.
If the world could somehow have adopted a similar approach this time, there still would have been some adverse impact on the economy. A small percentage of the population would have died. Some businesses might have needed to be closed for a short time when too many workers were out sick. But the huge burden of job loss by a substantial share of the economy could have been avoided. The economy would have had at least a small chance of rebounding quickly.
[6] The virus that causes COVID-19 looks a great deal like a laboratory cross between SARS and HIV, making the likelihood of a quick vaccine low.
In fact, Professor Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and winner of a Nobel Prize in Medicine, claims that the new coronavirus is the result of an attempt to manufacture a vaccine against the AIDS virus. He believes that the accidental release of this virus is what is causing today’s pandemic.
If COVID-19 were simply another influenza virus, similar to many we have seen, then getting a vaccine that would work passably well would be a relatively easy exercise. At least one of the vaccine trials that have been started could be reasonably expected to work, and a solution would not be far away.
Unfortunately, SARS and HIV are fairly different from influenza viruses. We have never found a vaccine for either one. If a person has had SARS once, and is later exposed to a slightly mutated version of SARS, the symptoms of the second infection seem to be worse than the first. This characteristic interferes with finding a suitable vaccine. We don’t know whether the virus causing COVID-19 will have a similar characteristic.
We know that scientists from a number of countries have been working on so-called “gain of function” experiments with viruses. These very risky experiments are aimed at making viruses either more virulent, or more transmissible, or both. In fact, experiments were going on in Wuhan, in two different laboratories, with viruses that seem to be not too different from the virus causing COVID-19.
We don’t know for certain whether there was an accident that caused the release of one of these gain of function viruses in Wuhan. We do know, however, that China has been doing a lot of cover-up activity to deter others from finding out what actually happened in Wuhan.
We also know that Dr. Fauci, a well-known COVID-19 advisor, had his hand in this Chinese research activity. Fauci’s organization, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, provided partial funding for the gain of function experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan. While the intent of the experiments seems to have been for the good of mankind, it would seem that Dr. Fauci’s judgment erred in the direction of allowing too much risk for the world’s population.
[7] We are probably kidding ourselves about ever being able to contain the virus that causes COVID-19.
We are gradually learning that the virus causing COVID-19 is easily spread, even by people who do not show any symptoms of the disease. The virus can spread long distances through the air. Tests to see if people are ill tend to produce a lot of false negatives; because of this, it is close to impossible to know whether a particular person has the illness or not.
China is finding that it cannot really contain the virus that causes COVID-19. A recent South China Morning Post article indicates that roughly 14 million people are to be tested in the Wuhan area in the next ten days to try to control a new outbreak of the virus.
It is becoming clear, as well, that even within China, the lockdowns have had a very negative impact on the economy. The Wall Street Journal reports, China Economic Data Indicate V-Shaped Recovery Is Unlikely. Supply chains were broken; wholesale commodity prices (excluding food) have tended to fall. Joblessness is increasingly a problem.
[8] If we look at deaths per million by country, it is difficult to see that lockdowns are very helpful in reducing the spread of disease. Masks seem to be more beneficial.
If we compare death rates for mask-wearing East Asian countries to death rates elsewhere, we see that death rates in mask-wearing East Asian countries are dramatically lower.
Figure 2. Death rates per million population of selected countries with long-term exposure to the virus causing COVID-19, based on Johns Hopkins death data as of May 11, 2020.
Looking at the chart, a person almost wonders whether lockdowns are a response to requests from citizens to “do something” in response to an already evident surge in cases. The countries known for their severe lockdowns are at the top of the chart, not the bottom.
In fact, a preprint academic paper by Thomas Meunier is titled, “Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic.” The abstract says, “Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, or reproduction number trends. . . We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.”
It appears to me that lockdowns have been popular with governments around the world for a whole host of reasons that have little to do with the spread of COVID-19:
- Lockdowns give an excuse for closing borders to visitors and goods from outside. This was a direction in which many countries were already headed, in an attempt to raise the wages of local workers.
- Lockdowns can be used to hide the fact that factories need to be closed because of breaks in supply lines elsewhere in the world.
- Many countries have been faced with governmental protests because of low wages compared to the prices of basic services. Lockdowns tend to keep protesters inside.
- Lockdowns give the appearance of protecting the elderly. Since there are many elderly voters, politicians need to court these voters.
[9] A person wonders whether Dr. Fauci and members of the World Health Organization are influenced by the wishes of vaccine and big pharmaceutical companies.
The recommendation to try to “flatten the curve” is, in part, an attempt to give vaccine and pharmaceutical makers more time to work on their products. Is this really the best recommendation? Perhaps I am being overly suspicious, but we recently have been dealing with an opioid epidemic which was encouraged by manufacturers of Oxycontin and other opioids. We don’t need another similar experience, this time sponsored by vaccine and other pharmaceutical makers.
The temptation of researchers is to choose solutions that would be best from the point of their own business interests. If a researcher gets much of his funding from vaccine and big pharmaceutical interests, the temptation will be to “push” solutions that are beneficial to these interests. In some cases, researchers are able to patent approaches, even when the research is paid for by governmental grants. In this case they can directly benefit from a new vaccine or drug.
When potential solutions are discussed by Dr. Fauci and the World Health Organization, no one brings up improving people’s immunity so that they can better fight off the novel coronavirus. Few bring up masks. Instead, we keep being warned about “opening up too soon.” In a way, this sounds like, “Please leave us lots of customers who might be willing to pay a high price for our vaccine.”
[10] One way the combination of (a) the activity of the virus and (b) our responses to the virus may play out is as a slow-motion, controlled demolition of the world economy.
I think of what we are experiencing as being somewhat similar to a toggle bolt going around and around, moving down a screw. As the toggle bolt moves around, I picture it as being similar to the virus and our responses to the viruses hitting different parts of the world economy.
Figure 3. Image of how the author sees COVID-19 as being able to hit the economy multiple times, in multiple ways, as its impact keeps impacting different parts of the world.
If we look back, the virus and reactions to the virus first hit China. China’s recovery is moving slowly, in part because of reduced demand from outside of China now that the virus is hitting other parts of the world. In fact, additional layoffs occurred after Chinese shutdowns ended, because it then became clear that some employers needed to permanently scale back operations to meet the new lower demand for their product.
Commodity prices, including oil prices, are now depressed because of low demand around the world. These low prices can be expected to gradually lead to closures of wells and mines extracting these commodities. Processing centers will also close, making these commodities less available even if demand temporarily rises.
As one country is hit by illnesses and/or shutdowns, we can expect supply lines for manufacturing around the world to be disrupted. This will lead to yet more business closures, some of them permanent. Debt defaults tend to happen as businesses close and layoffs occur.
With all of the layoffs, governments will find that their tax collections are lower. The resulting governmental funding issues can be expected to lead to new rounds of layoffs.
Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and forest fires can be expected to continue to happen. Social distancing requirements, inadequate tax revenue and broken supply lines will make mitigation of all of these disasters more difficult. Electrical lines that fall down may stay down permanently; bridges that are damaged may never be repaired.
Initially, rich countries can be expected to try to help as many laid-off workers as possible with loans and temporary stipends. But, after a few months, even with this approach, many individual citizens and businesses will likely not be able to pay their rent. Default rates on home mortgages and auto loans can be expected to rise for a similar reason.
We can expect to see round after round of business failures and layoffs of employees. Financial systems will become more and more stressed. Pensions are likely to default. Death rates will rise, in part from epidemics of various kinds and in part from growing problems with starvation. In fact, in some poor countries, lower-income citizens are already having difficulty being able to afford adequate food. Eventually we can expect collapsing governments (similar to the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union) and overthrown governments.
Longer-term, after this demolition ends, there may be some surviving pieces of economies. These new economies will be much smaller and less dependent upon each other, however. Currencies are likely to be less interchangeable. The remaining people will need to learn to make do with many fewer goods than are available today. It will be a very different world.
Pentagons secret space program is partly about testing to collecting solar energy in space and beaming it down to earth as microwaves.
Didn’t someone posting on OFW work on this crazy idea?
Anyway… Pentagon is aware of the energy crisis.
https://www.wired.com/story/a-secret-space-plane-is-carrying-a-solar-experiment-to-orbit/
That someone is Keith Henson—no, not the creator of the muppets, but the well-known writer on all things outer spacy and transhuman.
He’s got his own Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson
Yes! Keith and his Power Satellites!
The idea seems to have made it to the Whitehouse and Pentagon.
He’s a Scientology member. See…we are in good company…no loonies here.
From the wikipedia entry I doubt very much he’s a scientologist Yoshua.
You are right. I didn’t read that section. I just assumed that he was a member since the section was there.
He’s just a normal loonie.
Member?! Wasn’t his life ruined because he published their internal documents without permission, using his real name? Then they stalked him for years and sued him?
Obviously he should have studied law instead of electrical engineering.
It’s possibly loony and at any rate probably not advisable for an individual to get into direct conflict with a powerful cult that has Tom Cruise on the team.
But I count Keith a brave man for trying to stand up to the Scientology organization.
I’m trying to get the world interested in launching a fleet of space satellites, but I might as well be banging my head against a brick wall!
Elon Musk is building a network of communication satellites in low Earth orbit. If that pans out, I wouldn’t be surprised if Space Based Solar Power is the next step, since Tesla bought SolarCity to have their own panels.
A major issue is space junk. In low earth orbit, there is an awfully lot of debris floating around.
https://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/shaking_head_breaking_bad.gif
This would be a lot easier to deploy if we built a space elevator first.
Well, as soon as we get well–
https://i0.wp.com/digbysblog.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ahmad-before-and-after.jpg?w=640&ssl=1
Unfortunately a space elevator won’t work. Any attempt to move a heavy load up it would create Coriolis forces that would tear it apart.
Could you elaborate on the issues with the Coriolis forces? Wikipedia has a nice section on this idea, the math should be checked, it is fairly straight forward, the constants are correct at first glance, the devil is always in the details.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
Dennis L.
Dennis, thank you. I read the article, and found it correct, but a little incomplete. The elevator, as many have pointed out, is a cantilever structure: the downward forces below geosynchronous orbit are exactly balanced by the upward forces above the orbit. And if you use geosynchronous coordinates, in which the Earth is at rest, nothing moves, the structure is stable, and all forces are collinear with the cable.
All sound reasoning. The problems arise when you try to climb up the cable. This alters the downward forces, but that can easily be solved with a counterweight. The problem is the sideways forces, ie the Coriolis forces, which are huge. Now the cable relies on its tensile strength, which perhaps we can eventually build, But the sideways forces are perpendicular to the cable, and so are bending forces. Structures under extreme tension are not well equipped to cope with bending forces. Think Tacoma Narrows Bridge if you need to visualise what might happen.
The math is simple: the force is proportional to the mass of the load times its upward velocity, so a very small weight (Captain Kirk perhaps) can move quickly, but a larger weight (the Enterprise) would have to move very, very slowly. In my view, this makes the project infeasible. We don’t build ocean going liners on the top of a mountain; neither should we build spaceships at the bottom of a gravity well.
Thank you for the conversation.
A few questions:
What would the bending radius be assuming it is proportional to the load and velocity?
According to my knowledge, stressed slim structures can handle bending loads very well, i.e. fishing lines/rods and cables/pulleys. However, impacts and shearing forces is detrimental, I.e. scissors and hammers.
It is also why mass dampened slim skyscrapers can handle earthquakes (and winds) very well. The upper floors stand virtually still while the foot of the building moves with the tremors. It is actually one of the safest places to be in during an earthquake.
https://youtu.be/ohKqE_mwMmo
I was totally being sarcastic, by the way. It’s hard to decide whether space elevators or solar energy from satellites is the more far-fetched sci-fi.
Does it matter at this point of time?
A few comments:
1. COVID-19 has an aggregate death rate of 1%. In other words, if everyone on the planet got this disease (an absurd and limiting worst case) we expect 99% of the population to be left.
2. In addition, the disease affects primarily old and sick, most of which would have died in the next months or years anyway. We don’t want to hear this but we are mortal. We get old, then we we get cancer, or heart problems – or a virus – and we die.
3. Based on 1 and 2 above we can clearly see that COVID-19 has nil impact on the global population as far as any Limits to Growth type argument goes.
4. The impact is due to the draconian measures to “protect” the population. Hard to see how locking down perfectly healthy companies with perfectly healthy workers will “protect” us. The 100 million plus jobs lost globally will cause millions of deaths due to increased stress, cardiovascular disease, smoking, drug abuse, suicide, etc. Clear case of “the cure is worse than the disease”.
5. Limits to growth type arguments ignore the role of innovation, both on demand side and supply side. This is a fatal flaw to this line of argument. It reminds me of a doomsday story from the 1700’s-1800’s era, where someone calculated that, based on current trends of horse travel, by the year 2000 we would be drowining in several meters of horse manure!
I agree with you on points 1 through 4.
Regarding point 5, the role of innovation (unfortunately) is to increase wage and wealth disparity. This is precisely the problem we are suffering from. Our problem is too much innovation; too much wage and wealth disparity. Also, too little resources per capita so that we need to resort to more and more technology to solve our problems. Examples include electric cars and electricity produced by wind and solar. Recycling was an innovation that we tried and decided was too expensive. This is part of China’s problem. It quit most of the recycling business January 1, 2018.
I find the damage being done by the lock-down policy to smaller, good, well-run, companies hard to contemplate.
So many will emerge from lock-down to find that their employer simply can’t survive in the new conditions of reduced demand and supply difficulties, and has been to damaged by being closed for so long.
Utterly criminal, and not exactly ‘Saving Lives’!
Saving lives is not the intention … extending BAU a little longer and preventing the worst of the certain violence and cannibalism that will come with the ultimate end of BAU is….
Anyone mention cannibalism?
I wouldn’t mind a nibble.
https://climatism.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/peta-canada.jpg
Except for signs that young children 2 or 3 months after the infection start developing condition similar to Kawasaki Disease, and have inflation throughout their body and rashes all over.
There was early research into male fertility that have been censored. No research into female fertility. The virus may destroy all T-cells from your body, so you are vulnerable to any other infection for a few weeks after. Uncertain whether reduced lung capacity is fully recoverable or whether there is permanent scarring.
Lots of unknowns; if it becomes endemic, will it kill 1% of the population every year?
Lots of things we can speculate on. We can also look at the continuing damage lockdowns do to the economy.
Kawasaki disease? Is that the rare form of Tourettes where the afflicted person randomly and inappropriately starts making RRRrrrrr RRRRrrrrrr noises
It’s the “innovation” part that goes us into this mess in the first place. Our system grew too big and complex for its own good. It will be simplified and the population reduced, one way (voluntarily), or the other (willy-nilly).
https://www.paypervids.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Population-limits-consequences-of-exceding-carrying-capaicty-300×192.jpg
Paths red or blue, are very painful. The green path was one that closed on us probably after that great “innovation”, the Green Revolution, which doubled our numbers.
A clearer image, hopefully…
https://www.paypervids.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Population-limits-consequences-of-exceding-carrying-capaicty.jpg
Hey, hey, hey. It’s fat Albert
If the West manufactured the virus, it’s spread woudn’t had happened without Hubei authorities inaction. Surely the Russians are not to blame
But it doesn’t make much difference whether it is engeneered or natural, it’s already here
If the virus is engineered, it might make a difference in how hard the virus is to fight, and how realistic it is to get a vaccine in a short time.
There have been allegations that SARS, which was active in 2003-2004, was engineered. It was far less contagious than COVID-19. It was contained in 8 months, without finding a vaccine.
I would not be surprised if the virus was engineered to remain very contagious year round (as the normal flu is more of a winter problem)
The virus would rather have been created by the West. It’s the West that was mainly tanking, and only Germany was growing somewhat genuinely; the US was in the REPO ventilator. But China and Russia were doing somewhat fine. So the West was about to lose and it dropped the bomb in China. Wuhan lab is just a scapegoat, covid was produced elsewhere
I have a hard time trying to imagine the West and CPC colluding (and being so stupid or so lazy to free the virus near the lab), while I don’t discard it. But it wasn’t the Russians, that’s for sure
There certainly may be elements (in fact it is terrifying clear that there are within the US) who are not working in their home country’s best interest.
US funding to the Wuhan lab has been evidenced. Yes, unless we can blame “Novochok” it’s unlikely to be “the Russians”.
Australians suffering financial difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic were granted six-month deferrals on repayments covering A$153.5 billion ($98.4 billion) of mortgages.
A total of 429,000 home loans are covered by such assistance, the Australian Banking Association said on its website. In all, 703,000 borrowers have been granted deferrals, covering A$211 billion of loans.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-15/australian-banks-defer-repayments-on-98-billion-of-home-loans?srnd=premium-asia
Does New Zealand have a similar program?
Not yet…. I will be all over that if they do….
“…the main driver of disflationary pressure will remain high levels of unemployment and unused productive capacity.
“”The COVID crisis and the policy response to it are deflationary, and in the next couple of years outright deflation is a bigger risk than serious inflation,” Bank of America concluded.
“BofA isn’t alone in expecting deflationary pressures to pick up in the future.”
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/economic-outlook-deflation-bigger-risk-inflation-fed-prints-money-bofa-2020-5-1029207184
“There are several good reasons why a prolonged period of price deflation would be unwelcome. Among these is the risk that falling prices might induce both households and corporations to defer expenditures in the expectation of lower prices in the future…
“Another reason why price deflation would be unwelcome is that it would make it all the more difficult for households and companies to service their debt. By reducing household and corporate income in dollar terms, deflation would increase the real debt burden. That in turn might induce both households and companies to cut back on their expenditures in a manner that could lead to a 1930s-style debt-deflation spiral.
“Yet another reason to fear price deflation is that it would reduce the efficacy of monetary policy. In trying to jumpstart the economy, the Federal Reserve tries to reduce interest rates to below the inflation rate in order to encourage both consumption and investment. But with interest rates already at or close to their zero-bound, deflation makes that very difficult to achieve.”
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/497905-on-the-road-to-deflation
So Harry, we now have international economic chaos.
I have never heard of a chaotic system that will remain in a given steady state
“There are several good reasons why a prolonged period of price deflation would be unwelcome. Among these is the risk that falling prices might induce both households and corporations to defer expenditures in the expectation of lower prices in the future…”
You mean, people might delay gratification and actually save something for tomorrow instead of running out and spending it? You mean, they might actually rediscover THRIFT!
For centuries, thrift was considered a virtue. Save for a rainy day. Practice self denial. Work hard. Sacrifice today so as to have a better tomorrow.
“Every man is bound to do what he can to elevate his social state, and to secure his independence. For this purpose he must spare from his means in order to be independent in his condition. Industry enables men to earn their living; it should also enable them to learn to live. Independence can only be established by the exercise of forethought, prudence, frugality, and self-denial. To be just as well as generous, men must deny themselves. The essence of generosity is self-sacrifice.” Samuel Smiles, “Thrift”, published in 1875.
How far we have fallen from the ways of our ancestors.
Good stuff, and I’m sure Mr Smiles set many on a decent and thoughtful path in life.
But, alas for his theory of virtue, if you somehow get into something lucrative enough, no moral virtues are required at all, only the capacity to do the job diligently and act when and where necessary.
As a banker once said to me:
‘Get into the right position, and it all just comes streaming in.’
And for him, it certainly did!
I know of another banker who is the lowest scum on the earth, a man who delights in destroying people; but every now and then he does something honest or kind.
We suspect it is to be able to take people in all the better when he wants to screw them, making sure his reputation isn’t completely black -quite clever.
When this second banker called to account for all his transactions, rest assured he will be repaid with interest. And lot of people will be extremely interested in seeing that happen.
As for Samuel Smiles, he has the distinction of having the longest surname I’ve ever heard of. There’s a mile between the first and last letters.
Right! We are headed into deflation!
I totally agree with that. We will see deflationary pressure throughout the eCONomy. How can one expect the eCONomy to get moving again when millions upon millions around the world are out of work? And their jobs are probably gone forever because most of the retail businesses are redundant within the local economy.
Spoke to an NZ Ski management guy yesterday — they will open all their hills… even though they are not expecting the Magic Aus/NZ Bubble to happen in time for the season …. he said 50% of their business is NZ – roughly 30% south island – 20% auckland/north island.
They are projecting they will lose all international business + the domestic business will drop 40% due to the covid situation.
That translates into a best case scenario of 30% of their normal business. Asked him how close that would put them to break even —- he said they would take a massive loss at that … and that even if they could get the Aussies in and hit 50% of normal that would still be a substantial loss…
One has to wonder why they would even bother to open … surely the losses would be far lower if they were to mothball the operations?
I suspect the 30% projection is wishful thinking.
People need jobs. If they can give them jobs, that is in some ways helpful.
If the banks will extend loans to NZSki … or Ardern gives them some of my tax money …. then no doubt they’ll open… better than just paying people do nothing I suppose…. and if the ski hills don’t open then the greenies won’t be able to go up and down and round and round on the electricity powered machines….
Bernays got it right with his opinion of humans
“An increase in banks’ exposure to the oil and gas sector as companies raise billions of dollars of additional liquidity loans is sitting uncomfortably with lenders’ ESG strategies, highlighting the competing pressures on banks.”
https://www.ifre.com/story/2362340/banks-see-surge-in-oil-and-gas-exposure-l8n2cx1rj
“Middle East and African banks face mounting pressure from the gathering macroeconomic storm and oil price pressure, Fitch Ratings has said.”
https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/africa/240790/mea-banks-under-oil-price-pressure/
The slump in oil prices this year has prompted some investors to rekindle bets against Gulf nations’ currencies, putting longstanding pegs to the dollar under pressure…
““The precipitous decline in oil prices has reignited apprehensions surrounding the sustainability of FX pegs in the GCC region,” said Ehsan Khoman, head of Middle East and North Africa research and strategy at MUFG Bank in Dubai.
“If a peg were to break, that would add a “very unwelcome” layer of uncertainty to the world’s capital markets, which are already reeling from the coronavirus crisis, said Kamakshya Trivedi, co-head of global FX, rates and emerging markets strategy at Goldman Sachs.”
https://www.ft.com/content/1c7263d6-9547-4776-b0df-7f0ab442124f
We can be thankful that nothing major has broken yet!
“The coronavirus pandemic has created a fragile U.S. financial system that could last “some time,” the Federal Reserve said Friday.
““The strains on households and business balance sheets from the economic and financial shocks since March will likely create fragilities that last for some time,” the central bank said in its latest semi-annual report on the financial sector.
“As a result, banks and other financial institutions “may experience strains as a result.””
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-says-pandemic-has-created-us-financial-sector-fragility-that-will-last-for-some-time-2020-05-15
“Japan’s top banks forecast the biggest bad-loan costs since the aftermath of the global financial crisis, joining other global lenders in bracing for the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/15/business/economy-business/japans-banks-expect-highest-bad-loan-costs-since-2008-financial-crisis/#.Xr-jq2hKjIU
“Debt-plagued Indian banks have petitioned the government to set up a bank that would buy bad loans to help lighten their load of stressed assets.”
https://www.verdict.co.uk/retail-banker-international/news/indian-banks-ask-government-to-fund-bad-bank/
“New government measures are driving Argentine banks to dramatically expand lending to small businesses, potentially raising their risk to a segment seen as especially vulnerable in the COVID-19 crisis.”
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/argentine-banks-pushed-into-riskier-sme-lending-58592403
Small businesses were having trouble making money before the COVID-19 crisis. Who believes that they will do better after the crisis?
Governments can make unrepayable debts disappear!
For some time = forever
Can anyone help me find Sweden on this …. also why the hel l is Brazil so low!!! And Iran should be number one no????
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/21170.jpeg
The simple answer is because people have bought into the lies by the politicians who have turned this into the “Black Plague II”. It’s not and the numbers are low but they have to justify this CON game by pointing to the highest numbers to keep the masses in check with fear, panic and hysteria.
The dog really likes its kennel thats why i put him there. He feels safe.
I don’t know why Sweden is not shown because, according to worldometers, at the time of writing Sweden ought to be in 6th place between France and Netherlands with 36.4 deaths per 100,000.
Perhaps 6th is not high enough given the lack of a lockdown in Sweden, so best to not mention it.
Maybe the Worldometer is b u ll s h it… and Johns Hopkins is as a fairly respectable institution — reporting as close to the real numbers as is possible?
Bali hospitals are devoid of Covid patients. That is reality. I can confirm that by calling them and I can confirm that few people in Bali have covid because I know a lot of people who live there.
And Bali welcomed Chinese tourists well into March.
Anyone who is unable to connect those dots is thicker than
https://images.santanselmo.com/tumbled-brick/big/ddmwa.jpg
Belgium, with all of the people flying in and out of Brussels to the EU, is at the top of the list.
Huge immigrant communities, too, of the kind who do not get enough sunlight or exercise. An ethnic breakdown for Belgium’s COVID deaths would be interesting.
If you believe China and Iran official numbers, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Anyone who dismisses anything off the bat without blinking an eye is a normie or a very dumb person. No matter what outlandish or conspiracies that are being presented, one has to think through properly before making one’s conclusion. It is most unfortunate in the world (probably by design) that most people are in this category. Many of those who are in the know are probably frustrated about this. Take this post , it is likely to be under moderation on the ridiculouslness of auto-censorship. I must rephrase, do radical spelling changes, and try to avoid words and phrases that is being auto detected and put into moderation, just to protect “the people”.
Whatever happened in the past like planes flying into man-made structures, humans landing on a distant planet, etc, when there is smoke there is fire. It is that simple. What is not simple is, it is filled with half truths. Half truths are the worst of all because you just don’t know which are truths and which are false narratives. People either take it wholesale “yes” or “no”, all the truths and lies and it is not possible to differentiate what is real and what is fake anymore. The masters of half truth are China and the rest of the developed nations. Do I believe in those conspiracy theories? Yes I do. In fact, many of them are now facts instead of theories.
On paper, initially, when FE presented his CDT, I believe in it because it does make sense but I am more inclined to incompetency rather than “benign” intention of the elders.
You don’t need to read the details in the link below : https://www.zerohedge.com/political/another-week-another-governor-god-complex . You will know what it is all about.
All along, humans are tribal. We belong to certain group. We identify with certain groups. We felt protected. That is why we cannot even agree on which side of the road we drive, what plugs/socket we use, the frequency and voltages of the electricity. In India, there are thousands of local languages and dialects that English has to be used as the official language for many transactions. Our earth is designed for local diversity and not global diversity. Dark skinned people are more suited at tropicals and not cold climate. We humans want to act like God, disrupting what God has intended and there will always be consequences for that action (getting dark skinned people to the north as an example). We can ignore reality but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. Due to cultural, language, political, economical differences, it is just not possible for homo sapiens to have a unified world leader. One thing struck me when I was a kid watching TV. When aliens visit another planet, there is always a world leader that they can meet. Since childhood, I have been wondering why we don’t have that on Earth? UN is not world leader. They are mere puppets. You will never get Russia to agree fully with what EU, China are doing. US will never get China to toe its line and India and Brazil will never work out something that is good for EU or Japan. Tribal instincts. No doubt about that, on a global scale.
All politicians care about are two things and it is universal – how to stay in power, possibly until death and how to make himself very rich in the process. Nothing else matter. With that in mind, what are the likelihood they will act on the interest of their own country and citizens rather than their own interest? It is always about their own interest. That I will have your agreement. So, why would they listen to anyone (especially some far flunk elders)? If you read the link above about God Complex, you will know that it is an individual leader for its own purpose and it is always masked by “I am so concerned about the safety of our citizens that we have to do this for the good of the people”. Guess what? It will all be swallowed by the people, lock, stock and barrel without any questions asked.
The exceptions of lockdown on Sweden, Brazil, Belarus and some other countries point to inconsistency of a powerful entity that instructs CDT. Everyone has its own agenda. If the elders are Caucasian, why would China, India, Brazil, Africa or other countries listen this person? If this is a non-white person, why would the white people listen to him? Every country is doing the actions (like lockdown) differently. It points to “chaos”, “make up as you go”, “Me over you”, “don’t give a damn about others” and “I am God”.
The virus started possibly in October, that is way before the Chinese New Year (CNY), close to 5-6 months and that is very far from CNY. If this virus starts in January, then it will probably surface sometime in spring/summer and we will say that it “coincides” with the massive travel of summer holidays, which the Chinese do too. If it appears in Autumn, then people will say that it coincides with the start of flu season and this will overwhelm the hospitals. It is also the Golden Week in China. So, it does not matter when it starts, there is always a convenient excuse for that. It is the tail that wags the dog.
This is what I believe in. I stand corrected in any of these hypothesis. Not everything can be empirically proven. Circumstantial evidence is just as important or just as good. It is almost similar to CDT but it is not done by elders. I must admit that CDT is a rather benign way of putting most of us to sleep. Hats off to FE (or Paul).
Here is my take on the whole thing:
It is a known fact that in China, people tend to cover up. Even today, my friend whose spouse is a Chinese told me that it is not really that good in China. On paper, it sure is good. It is this kind of “cover my ass” culture that brings down civilizations (remember Potemkim village?). It gave the virus the opportunity to spread. As people fell dead in the street (they are in poor health, smoking, severe air pollution, etc), and party officials start to panic when videos spreads all across the world. I am sure you have seen hundreds of these videos flying around the internet ether.
As word gets out to the top level of the Chinese leadership, they panicked. I am in the camp of “accidental release from the lab”. Someone told the top people that it is an accidental release and people are dropping dead. As CNY is closing in, they were shocked about the mass migration and immediately, even with a “few reported cases”, they shutdown the whole country. They don’t know much about the virus and seeing what happened on the street, it looks lethal. That was the first red flag, shutting down the whole country. It is a coincidence that it happened in China where poor health caused many to drop dead. If this lab is in Singapore, Russia or any healthy part of EU, the number of people dropping dead will be much less and people tend not to spread these video around (unlike in China where they like to spread videos around social media-privacy is not a concern there). As the information on this virus is unknown and people start to drop dead, the top leaders panicked and started to pander to WHO, saying things that are not coherent, illogical and if one can think properly, it is purely made up at that point of time because there are many refuting claims and counterclaims. News releases that conflict with each other. Numbers that do not make sense. All point to the chaos in the leadership. They don’t know who is in charged or what to do/say. At the same time, social media and messaging is doing their part to flame the fire.
Due to instant communication, within hours, the world knows about this. The world knows that suddenly, China shuts down. No other information released. This must be serious. So serious that they shut down everything. The first thing a leader, when facing an unknown virus (perhaps lethal?) is to shutdown and forces everyone to stay at home. With the videos of HAZMAT suits spraying disinfectant everywhere, the minds of people in the world are fixed (or brainwashed). This is a deadly virus and all steps must be taken to ensure that it does not kill my parents or grandparents.
I am pretty sure that many people actually wrote to their politicians telling them that they must “do all it takes” to stop the virus from coming in, Leaders all over the world came out and say that the health of its citizens is most important and they are the saviour and will protect the citizens “no matter what it takes”. The next issue – the leaders have painted themselves in the corner when they say that. There are hundreds of them saying that and I will point out later in the sections below that this has immense ramification on recovery and the next steps forward. At this point, people clapped their hands and the support for the leaders grew tremendously. See all the polling figures. The leaders basked in this glory and talked a lot more about protecting their citizens and what he can do. The leaders have an adrenaline rush in their blood when he was given extraordinary powers that no one will give him in normal times. With this new found powers, the leaders (including certain philanthropic software mogul) become intoxicated and thus display God-like ambition and complex.
Over the next few weeks, it turns out the virus was not as bad as it was feared but the leaders have themselves boxed in. Thus, they need to work with MSM to paint a dire picture. Partly to vindicate themselves and partly to continue the charade. All those who dissent were quelled. The leaders basked in high ratings for the handling of the shutdown and lockdown so that people will not die. They also basked in the police state and the authoritarian rule which many dreamt of. I am pretty sure someone inside will ask “Boss… when you shutdown, we will have a dead economy and our tax revenue will crash”…. The reply “Have faith in Feds and we will be bailed out. We will be rich as some of the money will be funnelled to us anyway”. All the countries are printing money and if all print, then we are all equal. So, no worries. Let us continue cracking down and showing our love for the people by arresting those who bought waffles and went for a hair cut. We don’t have to worry, we will have our private party and haircut (some were caught actually doing that).
Do you think the cities in USA or even on a private level the administrators or politicians talk among theselves? Yes of course they do. They consult each other on what they want to do next and the collaborate. They will band together and ask for bailouts and they will implement stuff that will enhance their ratings and powers. Look at how the wordings of the pollster are doing. It is so convoluted and confusing. Only the pollster will do that and when they announce the poll (did they really carry out the polls? I am not even sure about that).
Wall Street got what they want – more free money and more power to control the economy, etc. Everyone on the top is happy. They can work from home anyway.
So, the politicians are boxed in and they will continue to see what others are doing and they follow suit. I read in the news that Singapore government said COVID19 is a great health issue and they will treat everyone in Singapore seriously. In February, there was a Bangladeshi (if I recall correctly) foreign worker who was serious and in ICU for some time. He was treated very well, getting the best of what Singapore can give (he will never get that back in his country). It is probably an expensive thing for the country. Singapore was proud to say that they treat everyone the same. So, now when thousands and thousands of foreign workers are infected, they have to spend a ton of money to treat them very well. They were boxed in and they are still boxed in. One of the issues that I read about foreign workers or those who are lowly educated, they are extremely scared of the virus and they may act irrationally to ensure they don’t get infected. So, it is a pain to handle them especially so if they are not handled correctly. Many of the politicians, in saying that they are so concerned about the health, they are boxed in on releasing the economy or even allowing international flights. “Sir, since you are so concerned about the health of your people, why do you allow international flights to come in? Can you comment on that?”
As stated, many politicians know that they will be bailed out and if they don’t act in a manner that pleases the public, they will not get elected or further their dreams politically. So, like a herd, they did what others did best – lockdown and see what turns out. They will be fine, socially, politically and economically but those at the bottom, the last quintile of the society, suffers very badly.
Second wave – it will come. No doubt. What will they do? The same as before. Some of the politicians will have a tough time answering : “Why did you even open up in the first place? I am going to sue if you if my grandpops died.”
No doubt the data released will all be fake or massage for all intent and purposes. Nothing can be trusted. What I have given above is what I think it happened. It is CDT but like a dissipative economy, it is self-aligning and self-correcting. It has no one leader giving directions but a herd of them. Like a school of fish doing what it does best. What do you think ?
I am afraid this is the way self-organizing systems work. Each person looks at a problem from his or her own particular perspective. A political leader wants to be rich and to stay in office. A citizen is concerned about maintaining his/her own health. Maintaining a job becomes an issue as well, but this becomes an issue for primary the lower wage workers.
The way the economy works is invisible to practically everyone, because economist have never bothered to figure it out (and physicists, some of whom figured it out, don’t really understand how the economy works, so they cannot translate their findings in physics terms into practical applications). I know one physicist with whom I corresponded was convinced that there could not be any possible practical implication for the economy, because solar energy is so abundant. People on earth should be able to easily capture solar energy in huge quantities and solve all of our problems.
With our academic world divided into silos and protected by the peer review system, it is virtually impossible for findings of one area to filter over to other areas. Economists are hired by politicians; they could never present any finding other than, “Expect the future to be a lot like patterns from the past.” They are completely stymied when the virus comes along. It becomes a perfect way to hide the problems that the economy has had all along.
Yup. In a nutshell, you are sending the same message in a different way….. sorry for the long post…. have a good weekend
Mans has ruled mans against themdelf. Bible said
Ecclesiaste 8.9
Ecclesiastes 8:9 NIV
All this I saw, as I applied my mind to everything done under the sun. There is a time when a man lords it over others to his own hurt.
Good News Translation:
I saw all this when I thought about the things that are done in this world, a world where some people have power and others have to suffer under them.
There are many ‘plans’ or options that a self-organized system can follow.
The system will reject the illogical or the inefficient.
I have referenced communist China and Russia – those plans failed because the system favours capitalism — a more efficient system.
This is not different that the systems of hunter gatherer vs farmer. The latter was more efficient than the former — therefore the hunter gatherers were displaced, often violently, by the more efficient system.
The same has happened in Russia and China – there systems resulted in catastrophe – and they adapted to the more efficient system – capitalism.
Darwin referred to this as survival of the fittest.
Nothing is predetermined with respect to the systems or plans. Just as nothing is predetermined with respect to survival of the fittest.
There can and will be many plans with respect to political and economic systems – and many proponents of each of them.
Yet there are plans. There are systems. There are people who create and direct the systems.
The only thing that is predetermined is that the most efficient system/plan will in the end dominate.
The capitalist system has many derivatives… as we know there are huge elements of socialism even in the US (which claims to be a hard core capitalist nation)…. so even with a specific system, there are many paths that can be followed.
The only thing that is predetermined is that the most efficient system/ plan will in the end dominate.
Unlike other animals, humans have created what is effectively a false world. If we had remained living like animals rather than paving over the planet, we would have followed exactly the same system as the animals do (our numbers would be controlled by disease and available food).
But we are not like animals — we create our own paradigms — the range of systems are limited only by our imagination.
At the end of the day what has happened was not pre-ordained.
The capitalist system that dominates the the world was planned and it survived because it has been the best plan.
If the most intelligent people through the years were on the level of the people in Idi ocracy… we would absolutely not have the same system dominating. Absolutely not.
So yes, the best system out of many options will end up dominating … but there are an unlimited number of systems … the best planned one will win out.
And what we see is the mother of all sophisticated plans playing out. We have PHD level experts across all fields thinking — plotting — planning — and executing the plans.
They leave no stone untouched. No scenario has not been ‘war-gamed’ to death.
The operate off of logic — at the very highest levels. And the most logical system is the most efficient system — and that is why they dominate.
None of this is happenstance….
But ultimately we live on a finite planet — the most logical and efficient system will inevitably run up against the limits of a finite planet…. all the logic and all the planning cannot overcome that problem.
It makes complete sense for the final plan to involve locking us down and starving us.
Those who run the world understand that our time is over – they have done everything possible to try to delay that moment.
But it’s very close now … and the most logical reaction is to mitigate the suffering.
Excellent summary.
In short, most are prisoners of circumstance, even those who seem to be in charge -and others who are well-placed are taking advantage, once more, to line their pockets
I am less and less tolerant of the complacency of those who are well-off and working from home who cannot see that the lives of millions of lower-wage workers, and of their families, are being destroyed by these policies.
And, in the end, the economic losses will mean that the vulnerable and elderly will also die, just a little later than if the lock-downs had not been put in place.
The debate might be a bit more rational if the media would not report individual deaths as world tragedies, with that nauseating ‘voice of concern and empathy’. It just scares people witless, and stifles a proper perspective on this disease.
>>I am less and less tolerant of the complacency of those who are well-off and working from home who cannot see that the lives of millions of lower-wage workers, and of their families, are being destroyed by these policies.
That is just about everyone I know, family, friends, colleagues. They have not a clue what is happening, or coming, and don’t want to know. Their highlight of the week is the happy-clappy every Thursday evening, which freaks me out. The best I can say (get away with without causing alarm or offence) to others is: I feel very lucky to still have a job, but not sure for how much longer.
Is that a cat on the left?
Thanks CTG. Very insightful comment, helped my normie brain to connect some dots he he
In politics we never know what’s truth and what’s false, since we are not in the board of Deep State Council. And i believe that fogness is intentional. So we have to stick to conjectures and probabilities.
For me, CDP is just a conjecture, based on a series of reasonably well-founded suspicions. It is THE truth? Probably not. Maybe it’s only another half truth. But for now it seems to me more plausible than the theory “the politics are a bunch of panicky incompetents, who did not know (as we here in OFW know) that the global economic lockdown would have far more lethal and catastrophic consequences than any virus.” I have a hard time buying that ideia.
If the virus outbreak had happened in a democratic country, where politicians are subject to electoral scrutiny and citizens are able to protest on the street, your panicked politico theory would make more sense. But hardly in China, where dictator Xi has hands free to do whatever he wants. So, I think if in january the Chinese government wanted to downplay the effects of the virus, it could have done it easily, since it has means to control all the communications and direct the public discourse. Therefore, imposing an economic quarantine was certainly not the only alternative that the chinese government had. But then again who knows?
Anyway, we were already doomed in december. And at a deep level, it is not really anyone’s fault, or maybe we can say the fault is in the maximum power principle that every system must follow.
To all those who believe the people who control the world are buffoons…. (it just boggles my mind that any thinking person could believe that…. but anyway)
Very obviously there is a globally coordinated message aimed at propagating what is clearly a LIE re Covid (anyone who is unable to see that should go back to practicing their Blue Steel look and starting petrol fights and smoking cigarettes).
When was the last time we saw a globally coordinated LIE on this scale?
WMD.
The same people who are telling me I have lost the plot on Covid are the SAME people who said that to me pre WMD when I was railing about how ridiculous that was.
That said, inventing WMD was a GOOD thing. A NECESSARY thing. It was most obviously planned by some very powerful people. How else do you get the military and MSM to support it?
Why was it good and necessary — Saddam had to go as he was upsetting the global power structure trying to price oil without involving the USD. Also Iraq oil needed to get on the market because conventional had peaked.
That entire LIE was meticulously planned. It did NOT just happen.
Inventing Covid is a GOOD thing. A NECESSARY thing. For the reasons I have laid out multiple times.
Anyone who doubts this is planned really needs to watch Century of Self in its entirety. It explains the genesis of all of this as well of the mechanisms.
It also delves deeply into why those who run the show fear the madness of crowds. They fear out of control riots because if you are unable to control them they WILL destroy the system.
I saw this first hand in Hong Kong. The protester’s goal was to achieve their goals by threatening to destroy the economy. The authorities were handcuffed — if they were to open fire on the crowds and declare martial law — say goodbye to the HK and Chinese economies (and the global economy) — you CANNOT unplug a major financial centre without blowing the whole lot to pieces.
You simply cannot.
THAT is why the CCP let that fester month after month…. they had no choice.
This was not just happening in HK.
The PTB across the world were looking at this – and had anticipated this. They had PLANNED for this — they were not going to let the riots tip over the economy leading to total chaos.
The plan is hiding in plain site. You can see it day after day — headline after frightening headline.
Lock Down. Be Afraid. (do not riot….).
And it has worked as expected. The riots have stopped or are very feeble. In HK the minute they try to start up the riot police have new tactics – they immediately arrest hundreds of them – even though they are not violent – they are singing in malls or chanting anti CCP slogans….
What excuse do they use to arrest them??? THEY ARE VIOLATING COVID SPACING LAWS AS WELL AS LAWS AGAINST GATHERINGS OF MORE THAN A FEW PEOPLE.
Anyone who refuses to watch Century of Self is not worthy of discussing this any further with.
In a way, it’s very simple: 1) you believe that the planners managed to run the 9.1.1 Event and get away with it, which means no plan would be truly out of reach for them. And here we are talking of real power, The finantial owners. The bosses of Gil Bates (“the wealthiest man in the world”).
Or you believe 2) that it’s possible 2planes knock 3towers, in which case it would be useless to try to convince you that the planners (publicly represented by politicians and other) are mostly if not always guided by the purest machiavelism. (In fact, we could argue that politics is essentially Machiavelliism. If we want to understand fundamental politics, the shortest way is maybe studying italian history., who is one of the the best compendium of politics 101, from the intriguing and manipulating murdering princes of the Renaissance to stateterrorism in the 1970s.)
To put it short, I don’t believe Gil Bates is the wealthiest man in the world, and i don’t believe the 2×3 trick in 2001. Therefore, as a matter of principle we can never exclude the CDT hypothesis. For me, it has a very high degree of plausibility. But I’m not 100% sure about anything.
I am also not 100% sure…and am open to other suggestions….
But what I am 100% sure of is that there is a higher power that runs the world… and I am 100% sure that they are not buffoons….
They very serious – very ruthless — extremely powerful men — and they control the world’s financial system.
To find the power .. follow the money … all the way.
Obama defends also the theory that politicians only navigate by sight and are just clueless as everybody else. Or at least that’s what he want us to believe:
“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-addresses-to-college-and-high-school-graduates-wade-into-politics-but-dont-mention-successor-trump-by-name-2020-05-17
hadn’t heard that about Obama, the clueless thing
him and me both then
Notice how the most chaotic responses are in the UK and US?
This chaotic response is rather odd considering the US government has a comprehensive pandemic responses PLAN (just like they have plans for just about everything)… the main plan is 233 pages (there are other sub plans for work, schools etc…) https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/national-strategy/index.html
Why is the response chaotic then?
Covid is a cover — yes it is real just as any flu is real — and if the proper pandemic protocols were used, it would not create the fear and panic that the PTB desire.
The fear and panic – and chaotic response…. create helplessness. Helpless people are docile people…. they don’t riot… they do what they are told. Stay 2 metres apart? Yes sir. Right away sir!
Remember all the tough guys on the Zero Hedge forums ranting about the gubbimint … threatening to use their guns and ammo if the gubbimint pushed them too far? Where are they now? Cowering in fear (like everyone else) of The Death Virus — confused – uncertain — ‘staying safe’ — cowering (cower… coward)….
No plan here… this is all just happening… by chance….
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/05/11/lockdown-learned-helplessness/
My biggest criticism of this theory, is if everything is according to a plan, why would this plan include irradiating the planet?
https://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/shaking_head_breaking_bad.gif
Global irradiation was baked into the cake from Day One.. the day they broke ground on the first reactor. Determined as the trajectory of a bullet shot from a gun. There never have been any serious plans for containment.. Just too costly! Well, and also impossible.
So these genius all powerful masters who knew the limits and collapse were inevitable, were too incompetent to understand the risks of nuclear power?
No quite … they understood that cheap energy would run out and that by deploying nuclear energy they would buy some more years for civilization … they are smart (and arrogant) enough to not be concerned about leaving 4000 spent fuel ponds behind….
Ever heard of IBG YBG? I’ll be gone – you’ll be gone … so who gives a sh it what the consequences are so long as we get to live large at this moment in time.
In this case everyone will be gone… so what does it matter if radiation pours out for a thousand years? Mother will either deal with it … or it will upset the balance so drastically that Earth turns into a dead hunk or rock.
Who gives a sh.it. Not me. Not them.
Oh the poor innocent animals — well ya — but since when did humans give a sh it about the poor innocent animals?
http://img.cdn2.vietnamnet.vn/Images/english/2011/09/15/13/20110915133521_1.jpg
Thinking about this further, 2001 was back when world oil prices were far too low for producers to make money from. It was sort of the same problem we have now. It was these low prices, as much as anything else that was hampering Iraq. China was added to the World Trade Organization in late 2001, greatly aiding the demand part of the equation, and helping to get oil prices up. This was only a few months after September 11, 2001.
Hong Kong is an essential connection to China, because of the Hong Kong dollar, which is much more stable, relative to the US$ than the Chinese Yuan. Except the Hong Kong dollar does move up and down, relative the US$. Right now, it is high relative to the US$. I notice that the comment on tradingview.com is:
“Hello traders! It is important to monitor this pair as there is a strong resistance. It will more than likely start moving up in the next few days so don’t miss out!”
The movements of this currency may be important to world trade as well.
Thank you, CTG, for your excellent comment and JMS, for your view on Chinese politicians’ reactions. I agree with you, JMS — the Chinese response doesn’t make sense to me. In recent years, Chinese Communist Party has either crushed dissent or controlled media coverage on countless threats to stability — environmental pollution, man-made disasters (such as chemical factory after chemical factory exploding near residential areas), countless protests against corrupt local official and government stealing citizens’ land, ethnic minority uprisings (such as Uighurs), and so on. Surely they could have done the same with Covid-19.
CTG, I agree with your account of events AFTER China locked down. But the mystery for me still is why the Chinese government reacted the way it did.
The Chinese government knew that this was an engineered virus. Once they figured out that this virus was out, they needed to keep the virus away from the rest of their population, as well as they could. The folks in Wuhan figured out that the virus was out, long before they let the people in Beijing know. By the time Beijing started taking action (January 23), the virus had spread all over the world. There is a case in France who was infected on December 27. I personally know two people in Georgia (USA) who are pretty certain that they had COVID-19 in January; one of these was toward the beginning of January. So the virus likely started spreading back in November, or even October.
The people in Beijing suspected that the virus could be terribly harmful. Perhaps, as early as January 23, they realized that they really couldn’t tell who was infected. Taking temperatures was basically useless; asking people if they felt sick wouldn’t work either. They basically had to try to lock up everyone to try to prevent the virus’ spread. So they took the extreme actions that they did, plus greatly understated the numbers of the people affected. We don’t really know how much COVID-19 spread about the countryside as the result of the January 23 announcement, either.
‘I personally know two people in Georgia (USA) who are pretty certain that they had COVID-19 in January’
The symptoms are the same as the symptoms for a common cold right through to a life-threatening flu.
How do they know they had covid?
Some of the symptoms they described sounded more like COVID-19. Bad cough; very, very tired. One of the women definitely had a lung infection. If the medical team took X-rays, it might be possible at the late date to see whether the lung condition looked more like COVID-19 or regular flu. Neither of these women has had the antibody test.
I agree. i think the only reason that lockdowns occurred in China was because they were aware that it was an escaped coronavirus from the lab and when told what they were working on they feared the worst. That makes most sense to me to explain China’s reaction.
Thank you, Gail and NikoB. I think your interpretation is plausible, but it still has problems. By now it should be clear that this virus itself isn’t a huge problem (only the reactions to it are). The worst the government might have feared has not happened, so it seems. So why is the Chinese government still using its extreme lockdowns in response to the apparent second wave of infections? Maybe the virus has a much more negative effect on people in China because of air pollution, smoking, and the like. But even still, China has routinely sacrificed large fractions of its population for other problems, so why not continue that now? If they changed their approach to the virus (reversing course more or less), it might go a long way to lead other countries to do the same. They can see the economic effects like everyone else. And the Chinese government has a long history of successful reversals of policy, even if such reversals are more difficult in other countries.
Except the time from China locking down until the time the rest of the world reacted was about 2 months. I was absolutely shocked throughout February at how complacent the rest of the world was, as the virus began breaking out in Iran and Italy, and we had little clusters popping up all over the world.
Somehow, this is 100% the fault of the CCP and WHO that everyone who had active cases and deaths in their own country failed to react. No actions were taken to protect nursing homes, shut down or even clean public transit – NYC started cleaning subway cars once per day as of May 5! No testing, tracing, or quarantining.
For some reason, declaring a Global Health Emergency had no effect. It was not until it was declared a Pandemic that suddenly everyone panicked, the news did a total reversal from “just a flu” to “we’re all going to die!” in less than 48 hours. The psychology of chosen words is quite interesting, that an official using one word or another can completely change people’s reaction.
I think that part of the problem is it isn’t really possible to solve the issue of low-income people cramming together, often more than two to a room, in their living quarters. These apartments where this happens are often in high-rent areas, like the US Northeast. If some of these people in these households have jobs, they are likely in jobs with a lot of contact with others–working in nursing homes, driving taxis, or working in stores. If one of the group gets sick, pretty much the whole group will get sick, one after another. Telling people to stay six feet apart is pretty much wishful thinking, when households are very crowded with people to begin with.
One of the big ways COVID-19 is spread is through people breathing air from someone with COVID-19 in an area without a lot of outside ventilation. I am not sure that cleaning public transit can fix the breathing problem. If a ride is half an hour, and you are on a train with someone with COVID-19 (especially someone not wearing a mask), you are likely to catch COVID-19. https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
The amount we can do to prevent the spread is fairly limited without disrupting businesses of all kinds and putting people out of work. Telling people to “stay at home” doesn’t really do much to fix the problem, especially for poor families.
Great analysis. My guess is that there will be a gradual shift towards “let it rip” as more and more people lose their livelihood.
CTG – have you watched this? There are 4 parts. The first one is the most important.
As it points out, men like Freud, Bernays, and Walter Lippmann opposed democracy. As did corporations. They don’t mention the owners of the Fed (because the Fed will never acknowledge it’s the real power behind the scenes…). But you can be certain they also opposed democracy.
The people cannot be trusted to do what is in the interests of the country and themselves.
As Bernay’s daughter says .. her father thought everyone was st u pid…
I take that further … they are no smarter than a donkey…. they are easily controlled… and if pushed in the wrong direction that can be very destructive.
Communism can be very appealing to the masses…. China and Russia demonstrate what happens when the herd is pushed in the wrong direction. The most brutal regimes in history started off with good intentions … and they ended up delivering their people into starvation and dire poverty.
Bernays would be a huge fan of Fast Eddy. He would invite FE to drink whisky and we’d chuckle over SDR… I 100% agree with him – the herd is no smarter than a herd of cows… they MUST be controlled.
What Bernays did was provide the means to undermine democracy and control the herd – while allowing for the United States to remain a ‘democracy’.
America is no such thing. No country is. And that is a good thing. Democracy is a fast track to ending up like communist Russia and China. Or how about Kampuchea….
The documentary goes into great detail as to how they did that. It explains the strategies.
Do you have any comment on this? It does appear that there was and is a plan. That there are unacknowledged forced running the show.
Sorry what’s SDR?
(Knowing your persona, i would venture Stoopid Deluded Ret.ards.)
Du mb/deluded… I like both … SDDR?
I am inclined to believe that nearly all politicians at the top consider the Powers That Be to be much more important to their decision making than the general public. The most notable exception is Putin. In Russia, he is the head of the PTB.
Politicians in general are clueless of the bigger picture, the PTB not so much. If we make it to the end of this year, through the riots, joblessness, economic chaos and famine, it will be as our governments become increasingly fascist states.
And websites with an ‘alternative’ viewpoint may find themselves unable to operate. I hope not of course. Such viewpoints are increasingly not tolerated in the privately-owned social networking websites such as Twitter, and YT.
Germany has made public burning of the EU flag or that of another country punishable by up to three years in jail, classing it as a hate crime.
The vote in the Bundestag (parliament) on Thursday makes defiling foreign flags equal to the crime of defiling the German flag.
The same applies for the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy theme.
The move followed Social Democrat (SPD) complaints about protesters’ burning of the Israeli flag in Berlin in 2017.
Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht, a member of the centre-left SPD, said “burning flags publicly has nothing to do with peaceful protests”. She said it stoked up “hatred, anger and aggression”, and hurt many people’s feelings.
The new law also applies to acts of defilement besides burning, such as publicly ripping a flag up. Public display of the Nazi swastika and other Nazi symbols is already banned in Germany.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52674809
How is “country” defined? Does it have to be recognized by the BRD? Would the flag of ISIS receive protection? How about Abkhazia, or Taiwan?
For that matter, would “flag” cover pieces of cloth that resemble national flags, but differ from them in some minor way? Say, an EU flag with less (or more) than 12 stars, or an Armenian flag that didn’t match the official length-to-width ratio?
These Americans are always flying other people’s flags upside down at sporting events.
https://toronto.citynews.ca/wp-content/blogs.dir/sites/10/2017/10/19/900099-e1508447682513.jpg
They can’t do it to the Japanese flag, though, because it doesn’t have an up or a down side.
I believe the precise shade of red is officially specified. So if the “Japanese flag” you burn is a different shade of red, it wouldn’t really be the Japanese flag.
Also, flying a flag upside-down is a sign of distress. At least for the US flag–not sure how many other countries have this tradition.
Oh, dear!
How about ripping up and burning a Nazi swastika flag?
Or burning that EU star-circled banner thingy?
Like this bold Irishman in Cork, whose Euroflag accidentally caught fire while he was trying to light up a Woodbine.
https://moilajournaliste.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/dsc_1027xx.jpg?w=1108&h=739
People who make hurting other people’s feelings illegal make violent revolution inevitable.
Legislating that something is a “hate crime” is a far worse hate crime, because it expresses hate not for a small group, but for an entire people. Legislators who do that should be sent back to their Dark Master, and I don’t mean Sauron.
By establishing the legal fiction that a crime committed with hate in one’s heart for a class of people deserves extra punishment, the way is opened up for criminals to plead for lighter sentences on the grounds that they committed their crimes without any such malice born of hatred,
“Your Honour, it is true that I willfully murdered fifty-five innocent old ladies in order to steal the pension money out of their purses, but in my defense I would like to stress that I didn’t do it out of hatred. I have absolutely nothing against old ladies in principle. Indeed I am very fond of them.”
LOL!
Thanks for the laugh, Tim. However, the truth is that “hate speech” is code speech for “speech the politicians hate”, which in most cases is shorthand for “the truth”.
I just wanted to drop this here.
https://imgur.com/nYCsrzO
Collapsed right into their own joint footprint at close to freefall speed.
where are the planes?
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/wuhan-lab-coronavirus-trump more info on the virus
And now, your moment of Zen: https://babylonbee.com/news/masterclass-replaces-all-instructors-with-greta-thunberg
Hey FE, whatever happened to your plot to humiliate her with those screenshots you took?
All good satire has a base of plausibility. And Greta may not be a better teacher than the pompous idiots on Masterclass, but she is a whole lot cuter.
For context, CNN was decrying that Rand Paul, physician, was ill qualified to question Fauci. At the same time, they had brought on Greta to speak at a town hall meeting on COVID-19. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/14/greta-thunberg-cnn-coronavirus-town-hall-climate-change
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/05/1064032 good summary from the United Nations of how world economic growth in 2020 will pan out
3.4% rebound in 2021. Ok…lol. The world economy was set to go down the gurgler just as CV-19 turned up, by hook or by crook, as the catalyst for pricking the bubble.
I think these months of lockdown will be remembered with some fondness, as they allowed us to stave off the reality of collapse for a little bit longer, in relative peace and calm.
Smoke ’em, if you’ve got ’em.
unless these months of lockdown are to be repeated over the coming years to give us the staircase collapse best to stock up on more toilet paper just in case
And ammo, to protect that stash of toilet paper.
but then…
“Although a modest rebound of around 3.4 per cent, mostly recovering lost output, is expected for 2021, the report spelled out that “the possibility of a slow recovery and prolonged economic slump, with rising poverty and inequality, looms large”…”
this could be about right…
though 2020 definitely will be far worse than they are projecting…
“prolonged economic slump” sounds correct….
“rising poverty and inequality” sounds about right…
then, after 2020 ends with a much bigger contraction than they think… perhaps down 30 or 40 or 50 %…
booom… 2021 goes “up” 3.4%…
time will tell…
I think you are underestimating things. The stock analysts and central bankers certainly are. We are down 40% in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. If oil = GDP, that means we are already down 40% and the longer things are locked down or people shut down out of fear of being infected, the lower it goes. We could easily get a -75% GDP for this year. This will have to be papered over to maintain order, so we should get a 300% increase in money supply, although lack of demand will prevent that from showing up as CPI inflation.
It seems some people are determined to end up swinging. Rather than use CV-19 as the godsend that it was, allowing governments to disguise inevitable collapse – the world economy being poised by January to kick the bucket, they are now tripling down on their bets!
CV-19 gave “leaders” a chance to impose a level of austerity and restriction that would have not been tolerated by the public, had they been brought about due to some other needle bursting the faux growth party that was nearing its end after 11 solid years of bubble blowing.
Oh hubris, thy name is bankster!
That is the real story.
“Rather than use CV-19 as the godsend that it was, allowing governments to disguise inevitable collapse – the world economy being poised by January to kick the bucket, they are now tripling down on their bets!”
yes, entering 2020, it was looking like a severe global recession was in the cards, and then the world economy was going to have many such recessions throughout the 2020s… and perhaps would kick the bucket in the 2030s… who knows… (decreasing net surplus energy makes it inevitable that economic contraction is the real future of the world)…
but “they are now tripling down on their bets!”
yes, that is all in plain sight…
(“they”) leaders are going to extreme measures to keep their economies from falling apart… in fact, “they” are trying to keep their economic contraction to a minimum, and then onward to a V shaped recovery…
this is the real picture…
“they” are fightting like crazzzy, perhaps even irrrationally, to keep bAU moving along with no more than a tiny bump in the road…
they are trying this, though failure is probably the only option…
it’s all in plain sight…
Right. And if anything the extreme financial measures introduced by governments and central banks to mitigate the economic harm caused by the coronavirus have proven that the financial system, wobbly though it was, had considerably more elasticity available at the close of 2019 than one might have supposed.
Certainly this was the burning question for me. I could see how trade, manufacturing etc. were stagnating last year but could also see that some nations, like Germany, for example, still appeared to have a lot of wiggle room on borrowing. How much could governments and central banks do to keep us afloat?
As it turns out – quite a lot. So, ironically, coronavirus has illustrated that the financial system could well have continued for several more years had it not been for …coronavirus! In other words, an intentional CDP was ill-timed.
Also if we take Maurice Strong’s comment as evidence of a plot, it begs the question – how can these Machiavellian elites be aware of our predicament as outlined on OFW and yet fail to understand that if you attempt to orchestrate the de-growth of a self-organised, growth-dependent complex system, on which we and indeed they depend for not dying, you will bump up very hard and painfully against the law of unintended consequences?
It would be like trying to hacking pieces off a living organism with a blunt sword in the hope of making it more streamlined and able to survive on fewer calories.
Ah, at last, sound reasoning and common sense, without paranoia.
Bravo, gentlemen!
They are quite obviously trying to keep it all going, – while also throwing lots of cash at their chums the big corporations, as to be expected – but I’m afraid they haven’t much of a clue about complexity and it’s all so clumsy, with a host of unintended consequences rippling out from the decision-making centres.
Absurd regulations like the 20% re-opening of restaurants or 10% occupancy of trains, or the absurd plan to get all Londoners to bike miles and miles to work across nasty, black gang-filled, suburbs, when hardly anyone owns a bike in London, and so on…..
Their financial manipulations cannot possibly repair the damage done to the structures and flows of the economy, caused by the continuing lock-downs, but they will certainly try. It is not a controlled or planned demolition conceived in George Soros’s sauna.
But this time next year, if still alive and able to access any real news at all, we shall see just what is left standing.
We are seeing the real-time proof of the Tainter-Korowicz-Tverberg thesis.
The FE thesis is just toast. 🙂
CARPE DIEM!
Absurd regulations like the 20% re-opening of restaurants or 10% occupancy of trains, or the absurd plan to get all Londoners to bike miles and miles to work across nasty, black gang-filled, suburbs, when hardly anyone owns a bike in London, and so on…..
Maybe not so absurd….
In 1965 a group of psychologists studying conditioning in dogs stumbled across what they were to call “learned helplessness.” In their experiment, they took a puppy and put it in a cage. Once the puppy got used to his surroundings, the experimenters rang a bell. So the puppy thinks to himself, “Hey, I wonder what that is?” But the puppy doesn’t know what to do, so he stays where he is. Then the experimenters give him an electric shock and the puppy thinks, “Ouch, what did you do that for?”
This happens a couple of times until the puppy notices that there is a big green button at the end of the cage. So the puppy thinks, “Maybe if I press the button I won’t get an electric shock.” And so next time the bell rings, the puppy runs to the end of the cage and presses the button. Not only does he not get a shock, he gets rewarded with a food treat. So the puppy thinks, “Okay, I get the game now. If the bell rings and I don’t press the bell I get a shock, but if I press the green button in time I don’t get a shock and I get a reward.” And so the game goes on until, Pavlovian-style, the puppy internalises the game and it becomes unconscious habit.
Next the experimenters change the rules. One day the puppy hears the bell and quickly dashes to press the green button. Nothing happens. “Hey wait a minute,” the puppy thinks, “this isn’t how the game is supposed to work. Where’s my reward?”
When the bell goes off the next time, the puppy rushes over to press the button and the reward appears again. “Okay,” the puppy thinks, “maybe last time was a mistake.” But no; from this point on, what happens to the puppy is random. Sometimes he gets the reward, sometimes he gets nothing and sometimes he gets a shock anyway. The sometimes he gets a random shock even when the bell doesn’t ring.
What the psychologists found was that eventually the puppy just gave up and sat passively in the centre of the cage no longer responding at all to shocks or to rewards.
The puppy just gave up.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/05/11/lockdown-learned-helplessness/
Actually no…. the global economy was set to implode…
All that Covid has done is allowed the CBs to drop an atomic bomb into the global economy giving it one last gasp.
The CBs could not have done this without the Covid cover because rather than give the global economy one last gasp — it would have put a spike through BAU’s heart.
Up until Covid the cattle were grazing … unaware of what was playing out…. crashing global auto sales did not disturb them… not did GFC level German industrial output.
If the CBs dropped an atomic bomb onto their pasture they would have panicked….
The cattle definitely are aware of Covid — they have been bombarded with scare stories — they are most certainly lifting their heads from the grass….
They have been told to keep grazing … to ignore the atomic bomb …. it’s necessary to help get us past Covid… then everything will return to normal.
The cattle are happy with that explanation — they are not panicking
OMG! Trump is colluding with the Klingons!
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/space-force-flag-unveiled-in-oval-office-presented-to-trump
https://www.amazon.com/Flag-Klingon-90×150-Lasting-Banner/dp/B01DW1Z8V4
Reality is so much funnier than fiction.
It looks like black KKK silhouetted against the moon on a field of blood. Are they trying to tell us something?
My first thought was of eugene terreblanche and those Afrikaner hotheads.
They did as much as anybody else to scuttle the idea of a Volkstaat. I mean,before their little adventure in Bop, there was at least a discussion. There was some possibility of join pressure from both the Zulus and the Afrikaners to make SA more federal.
But everybody knows the real emblem of the space force: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Spaceship_and_Sun_emblem.svg/220px-Spaceship_and_Sun_emblem.svg.png
(I hope. Too bad this site has no “preview” feature)
Wow how about all the extra bureaucracy associated with doing any work/shopping. Visited 3 shops, had to hand sanitise each time, and sign in and out; this at level 2 in NZ.
We recently had the ‘NZ does more virtue signalling’ event of ridding ourselves of single use plastic shopping bags. Now, the plan-demic has blown the budget on single-use plastic all the way to outer space; we will be able to walk to Mars on the pile of plastic generated by the sheople as they fuss around out-doing each other in the in-sanitation Olympics.
Hopefully ‘Our Great Leader’ here in NZ will wave her magic wand and sort this out as well. Our lockdown certainly flattened the curve, mostly visibly of the hopes, dreams and career paths of the young and indebted. For us more established types, it may take a while for the fa.ecal matter to hit the whirly thing, but hit it will.
‘We Are All In This Together’ was heard being sung as we all went down the plug-hole!!
NZ is well placed to be self sufficient. Good that you have closed the borders. But stop messing around with mask and such and get going with a national self sufficiency in food and energy. I wrote to the NZ minister of energy (or whatever it was exactly) suggesting nuclear and was rebuffed. I bet he is regretting his choice now. 😉
Oh ho ho ho …. you haven’t seen all the chemicals that get dumped onto everything they grow here? Nor the massive irrigation pipes and pumps…. Every farm has a Hazchem warning sign on the entry gate… farms are only slightly less toxic than a Fukushima tour
NZ pretends its pristine — it is a massive agricultural chemical dump…. nothing will grow here without inputs that are shipped in from around the world…
We will have to see how this all turns out. New Zealand is dependent on imports for oil, automobiles and spare parts for autos, pharmaceuticals, mechanical equipment, textiles, and plastics. It seems to export food and aluminum. This may not be up to date. At least, if production can keep running, people should have food.
I am sure the sickening twang from We are the World could be adapted to We are all in this Together….
Come now, why complain?
Levels 1.2,3,4,5…..It’s all planned and it’s all so safe!
And you can have some time in the sand pit, too,someday……if you are very good.
Iraq will be hit harder by the oil price drop than by coronavirus or Isis
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-oil-price-fall-economy-iraq-protests-isis-a9505421.html
…The problem for Iraq (population 38 M) is simple but insoluble: it is running out of money as its oil revenues fall off a cliff, following the collapse in the oil price brought about by the cataclysmic economic impact of coronavirus. It derives 90 per cent of government revenues from the export of crude oil, but in April it earnt just $1.4bn when it needed $5bn to cover salaries, pensions and other state expenditure.
It cannot pay the 4.5 million people on the government payroll and another four million receiving a pension.
…“The government has not paid pensions so far this month, though it keeps promising it will do so in a couple of days,” says Kamran Karadaghi, an Iraqi commentator and former presidential chief of staff. “They don’t have the cash.” Rumours are spreading in Baghdad that state salaries will be cut by 20 or 30 per cent. Immediate disaster can be fended of by borrowing and drawing down reserves, but there is a limit to how long these can replace lost oil revenues.
…Protests started in Baghdad in October last year when demonstrators demanded jobs, an end to corruption and better public services, such as electricity and water. At least 700 protesters were killed and 15,000 wounded. People did not believe they were getting a fair share of the economic cake then, and the cake is about to get considerably smaller…
OPEC incidentally produce about one third of world oil production, about how much was being produced in excess of requirements prior to the cutbacks (by Saudi Arabia and Russia) that began beginning of May.
It should be clear by now that economic chaos and famine lie ahead starting over the next few months.
I can easily believe that low oil prices will be a huge problem for all of the oil-exporting countries.
Fast Eddy i have been keeping a close eye on OFW comment section for a while now but more recently since the virus. I realised something is that there is very few people on this planet that is aware of whats really going on. I noticed that your the only few that has an idea on whats really going on. So i have a message for you.
In 2019 i noticed when the US fed was taking action something was coming. Bear in mind I’m peak oil aware and I know the governments don’t run the show, it’s those other men that you are referring too and i for damn sure those other men did whatever they could to kick the can down the road until shale oil and world oil peaked in 2018.
https://mobile.twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1254156286301818880/photo/1
And i know this virus wasn’t a accident, remember all those riots in 2019? These men are fully aware of how people will react in a uncontrolled collapse. Looting, rioting, killing, rape, etc. Gotta give it to these men they really planned really well.
Fast Eddy I’m from the UK and the government is using helicopter money furloughing around 7million people and many other measures from mass unemployment and bankruptcies, around £300 billion has been injected so far. You mentioned this is calm before the storm, how long or when do you see the storm will arrive here in the UK? Right now everything is calm and things are kind of going back to normal as the lockdown restriction eases here. How long will the UK economy can stagger until the storm arrives? I thought right now the UK was in that storm but things seems to be going back to normal.
If you think about how people would react if they really understood that we are in a predicament with no solution, they’d go nuts. It took me years of angst to finally get to a state of acceptance.
The ‘pandemic’ is one of the best of only bad options for managing the descent. Keep the populace calm-ish and believing there’s a good reason for the loss of normal. Otherwise carnage everywhere.
It’s amazing how well they’ve sucked Joe and Sue Normal into believing the narrative.
You could postulate that post 9/11 Homeland Security, militarisation of police, erosion of freedoms, the surveillance state, the recent clampdowns on YouTube, FB, Twitter etc have all been part of the preparations.
There are a fair number of people who understand that the picture is hung crookedly….
And they are fed explanations … the most popular one is that Bill Gates and Big Pharma set this up to a) make money b) cull the population c) control us with a vaccine d) all of the above.
I even had an epidemiologist who knows none of this makes sense bite on the above and tell me that was what the real story was.
Obviously it’s none of the above — Bill has plenty of money + all those governments and companies losing trillions would not obviously allow this – nor would the MSM (also losing money) play ball…. culling the population would collapse the planet (+ the virus is killing relatively few)…. and we are already completely controlled.. and have been for a century (see Century of Self)…
If you point this out – which I did to the good doctor — he doubled down on his assertion…
Why? As Freud suggests in Century of Self — humans do not generally act on facts or logic… there is something deep inside them that is triggered particularly during stressful situations… the inner BEAST….
Conrad mentioned this in Heart of Darkness… civility is but a thin veneer… holding back a wicked beast…
That beast acts on instinct — there is no logic … facts do not matter… and that beast’s Prime Directive is to survive — how does the BEAST survive? It procreates — stuffing it’s genetic material into a replicant of itself…. essentially the BEAST is immortal… so long as it gets a little ‘action’ … and it’s replicant survives and does the same…
When faced with the facts and logic of the current situation — the BEAST does not like what it sees… it is the BEAST that pulls back the curtain because it feels threatened…
The BEAST is what urges its host to rush to Walmart and fill 10 cards with TP and food… that is about the limit to the BEAST’s logic and intelligence…
It will not accept the futility of those actions because it cannot go there… it cannot pull the curtain back… if it were to accept the situation for what it is (extinction) the BEAST would enter into conflict and crash into deep despair…
That is why most people will never understand what is happening… they will grasp at any straw of hope…. or explanation — no matter how ridiculous… anything but extinction is ok because at least they have a chance…
It is why so many people on OFW have resisted the radiation thesis… FE can pile up a mountain of facts about how when these 4000 ponds are abandoned they will release enormous amounts of radiation for thousands of years….
The BEAST inside is recoiling from that… the BEAST is taking comfort in either this is not happening and we will reset BAU — or it grasps at survival options such as prepping … and the BEAST will not listen if FE says ok – you think you can survive — take the Challenge – unplug for a week… see how you cope with zero BAU for just a short period … try chopping and splitting a single tree with an axe… and hauling it by hand back to the wood pile… try washing your clothes by hand…
That will never happen — because the BEAST would realized it is doomed… that there is no way in hell the host can survive without BAU….
The BEAST has always been there — the problem is that the host has change from being the most cunning and dangerous predator on the planet … into a lap dog…. 100% reliant on BAU
The commanders understand all of this – they saw what was about to be unleashed
Watch the BEAST in action:
Why is everybody suspicious of Bill Gates all of a sudden? Is George Soros too old to play the villain anymore?
George Soros is indeed a villain. And certainly not too old as he continues to fund the African invasion of Europe and the destruction of the United States. It has been Soros, you might remember, who has also funded across the United States the election of pro-crime State Attorneys General who are committed to overthrowing the rule of law.
As for Gates, the suspicion is hardly recent (not, as you say, “all of a sudden”) and I doubt in any cast that you are being sincere because there are many easily-available sources that you might like to follow up that discuss his deep roots – via his parents – in the (so-called) eugenics movement and his dedication to the creation of an elite-controlled surveillance state. His long-time involvement in mass vaccination programs, combined with his eugenic interests, combined with many very creepy comments on his part, and his deep involvement in processes and technologies for mass social surveillance make him an entirely legitimate target of suspicion.
Gates and Soros are fabulously weathy (tax avoiders through their foundations) and have enormous social and political pull. Yet everything they do is designed to destroy social cohesion – but exclusively in the West – and encourage centralized tyranny.
because Bill Gates wants to produce a mandatory worldwide vaccine program…
then…
wait for it…
he would become rich!
Never mind Bill–it’s Melinda you gotta watch out for.
Or:
1) He could selectively sterilize populations
2) He could insert tracking chips in everyone so they can be tracked
3) some other nefarious thing that could be injected along with the vaccine.
because computer users are still upset with Bill for all those WIndows upgrades they never wanted and had to pay through the nose for because he’s got a hold on their balls tighter than the one they have on their mouse?
Tim, that’s a great answer. Folks are resentful of him and consider most of his billions as ill-gotten gains, from them.
First, sure the beast is a thing and i don’t see why it would be bad?
Second, if there is a group in control, why would they want the spent fuel ponds to burn and irradiate the Earth?
Third, radiation probably isn’t that bad and people will likely mitigate it. Just keep them cool for a few centuries then fill them with sand.
Such kind of blind follower of the system is an enemy for those who love freedom.
It is quite obvious what’s going on to some of us isn’t it…
But first a cooking tip…
Take a one litre jar — add 6 tablespoons of chia seed… cinnamon powder.. some vanilla… then fill the jar with any non-dairy milk (almond, soy – ideally organic)…. if you want a nice kick you can also grind up 3 Ec—stasy tabs and mix that in….
Leave it sit overnight to congeal… it’s enough for half a dozen or so servings… add chopped fruit and some nuts….
When will the SHTF…. really hard to say….
One would have thought it would be impossible to keep this ship afloat with all these holes in it… yet here it is … dead in the water with the engines shot through with fires smouldering … but still afloat….
https://a57.foxnews.com/images.foxnews.com/content/fox-news/world/2013/03/13/abandoned-russian-cruise-ship-remains-adrift-in-north-atlantic/_jcr_content/par/featured-media/media-1.img.jpg/0/0/1422517118466.jpg
Here in NZ they just extended the do no work deal yet get paid 80% of your salary up to a limit … until September…. most OECD governments are doing similar…
They are also willing to do whatever it takes to keep BAU’s heart beating at a level that allows it to stay alive… monetize debt… no problem… fine anyone who rocks the lockdown boat … and no doubt shoot them if necessary… secretly subsidize oil companies so they keep pumping? who knows what is really going on …
The third world looks to be suffering more because governments are unable to pay the people to do nothing… maybe they just give them enough food so they don’t starve? Or maybe they just shove them out of the life boat and let them drown? Easily done – a few stories about people busting quarantine and the world and the cattle will blame them for being selfish and causing a failed (and starving) state….
I have no idea how long this phase can last…. I doubt those on the bridge of the ship know either…
BTW – M Fast mentioned seeing quite a number of rocket ship level Porsche cars in QT yesterday — no doubt the Silicon Valley doomers (Thiel etc…) are about… they are going to be profoundly disappointed to find their security systems don’t function when the power goes off and the diesel for the generators runs out…. it’s a frost morning….
New Zealand does seem to be in better shape than a lot of other countries, in terms of resources and food production. It even seems to have some industry, although it requires imports of most machines and vehicles. I am sure that if there are broken parts on anything major, they will likely have to come from outside.
Queenstown seems to be a very touristy area, in the south end of the South Island. I am sure that Queenstown would be hit by a cutback in tourism more than most other places in New Zealand. At one point, Queenstown was rated as the most expensive town in New Zealand. I expect that will change, if the number of tourists plummets.
I know someone who is placing offers on two investment properties buying the dip and not wanting to miss out…
Another person expects the market to recovery by the summer and is planning to flip a property.
http://weneedfun.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ayn-rand-quotes-3.jpg
I talked to a fellow helping remodel two houses that someone in our neighborhood is getting ready to resell at a higher price. I am sure that they are expecting price appreciation, if they fix up the homes, built in the 1970s.
I always abhorred the ways of the imperial governments (robbing, lying, gagging, murdering, etc), in short, the machiavelic arts of governing the masses.
But I surmise that If degrowth is not possible and even degrowth would be violently rejected by the masses, the only option for the PTB is to lie. If telling the truth means stampede and sudden violence everywhere, then any way to postpone the inevitabile is very welcome.
The big question now of course is how long can the plague boat be kept afloat? How long before the crew realizes the captain doesn’t have a focking ideas where he is, and that the water barrels are empty, the ship biscuits are poisoned by the plague, and a perfect storm is approaching. How long before danger everywhere? this is the ultimate question.
Nobody can know what the nexts months wil bring. The only thing we know is that the wheel of history began to spin like crazy last February: uncontrolled acceleration, revolution speed. I suspect the wheel of history will not support all that strain and it will explode in thousand pieces. I believe small animals and most plants will be fine. Not everything is lost.
Gaia rules (and i know this because i happened to be born in a town called Gaia)
That is a good chart that Art put together.
We have been past peak crude and condensate since late 2018. The EIA data I look at says November 2018 was the peak month, with October, November, and December all being close to each other. This was right before OPEC’s cut in production. OPEC members were trying to get their base (from which they cut) up as high as possible.
There’s a podcast with Art recorded May 14 on Jim Kunstler’s website: https://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-329-chatting-with-art-berman-about-trouble-in-the-oil-patch/
No good news. Art says drop in US oil production is probably irreversible.
>>Art says drop in US oil production is probably irreversible.
That is good news, for the rest of life on the planet.
I don’t know about that minority of one!?
When I lived in North Carolina, all the local guys had firearms and said when the grocery stores go empty they would just pick up their rifle, head to the woods and shoot dinner,
Anything that moved….Deed, rabbit, squirrel, groundhog, duck, ECT, ECT.
Doubt anything will be alive after the oil runs out
That’s a good point Herbie. Although I should imagine local wild food sources will not last long and then they will start shooting one another.
There are considerably fewer firearms in the UK than in the USA, but it has occurred to me in the past, when people go hungry here they will catch what they can – ducks, rabbits, cats, dogs. I should imagine the hungry will have no qualms about killing local sheep. But in the longer term, we will eventually die off, and nature will return. At least, that is what I like to think.
Better to be locked down and starve… since that’s everyone’s ultimate fate anyway…. that and/or radiation poisoning.
Who needs the hassle of chasing down and fighting over birds and animals (and people) and eating them knowing that once they are gone you starve anyway.
http://overpopulation.org/img/impacts/terrestrial_vertebrate_biomass.jpg
Once the domesticated animals are dead the wild are a rounding error.
Sweden have the worlds densest elk population, and low population density. Killing of all elks could feed the population two days, all boars something similar, the rest of land living wild animals another day or two. Then the fish. And the seals.
On the continent they can go directly to …
DJ, don’t forget the plants, the bacteria, the fungi, nematodes, insects, etc.
The planet wll remain full alive until the Biggest Meteor Ever arrives, or something of similar magnitude.In fact, i’m ready to bet 3 quadrillion dollars on how there will still be life on planet earth in, say, 12 678 921 years.
Thanks!
John, you ask how long until the storm arrives!????
John, we’ve already past one section of the storm, the last ten years we were in the eye of the storm and now we are headed BACK into the storm!!!!
Here this best shows it..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W9Tdw5nG4dQ
And this side of the storm has winds twice the speed…
For those who do not believe there is an entity controlling this — and that they do not plan ahead…
FROM 2013:
The Denver Post, on February 15th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice. It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition.
As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers.
[T]he Department of Homeland Security is apparently taking delivery (apparently through the Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico VA, via the manufacturer – Navistar Defense LLC) of an undetermined number of the recently retrofitted 2,717 ‘Mine Resistant Protected’ MaxxPro MRAP vehicles for service on the streets of the United States.”
These MRAP’s ARE BEING SEEN ON U.S. STREETS all across America by verified observers with photos, videos, and descriptions.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billion-rounds-of-ammo-for-homeland-security-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/#123a7133624b
I noticed that too. To me is most obvious, by some events in the last two decades (psyo.ps, surveillance, anti-“terrorist” legislation etc) that the big leaders have their own preparedness plans, since they know the crash is inavoidable and the masses must be containd somehow.
But what exactly that plan could be, I have difficulty understanding. Would cov-19 be aimed as a depopulation-bomb via starvation? Or the plan is a phased degrowth via permanent austerity and martial law? But in this case, even if they managed to secure the supplly chains for basic food (grains mostly), for how long could that be enforced? How long till the police/army would have to start shooting blindly over the mobs? 100 today in this town, 200 tomorrow next town. Apparently, the US deep state bought enough bullets to take care of every problem. But I doubt other governments (the portuguese, for example) have been so cautious. How will it be in this situations? Nobody knows for now. I believe this will play different in any region/country of the world.
starting, say, 50 years ago, it was becoming obvious the logical progression of world over-consumption and over population was bound to lead to collapse of civil order (too many demanding too much of too little)
as time rolled on, that conclusion was becoming more clear cut to anyone with half a brain in working order
widespread civil disorder will require violent means to suppress it—that too is blindingly obvious, especially in a country that is fully armed and obsessed with god and guns
That means a lot of ammunition will be needed by those doing the suppressing. I recall reading that report about buying a lot of ammo too. I was never able to verify it,, though it wasn’t something I followed up to any extent.
Might be true–or not.
The real nonsense kicks in when imagination is hindsighted to 2013, and it becomes a deliberate part of ‘the conspiracy’ that brought us to the situation we are in now.
Soon after I was in Cairo things spiralled completely out of control — that was when Morsi was ditched and a new dictator was installed… how did he put an end to this? He had his forces open fire with live ammo on the rioters — there are reports that up to 600 people were killed.
To this day Cairo is peaceful.
1.6B rounds is overkill… however the US is unique in that there millions of guns – including hand guns – in circulation. So no doubt quelling a rebellion there would require more effort – and more bullets – than in Portugal or any other country.
Controlled Demolition Plan (CDP)
– CBs pushing on strings – collapse imminent (“The global economy was facing the worst collapse since the second world war as coronavirus began to strike in March, well before the height of the crisis, according to the latest Brookings-FT tracking index” https://www.ft.com/content/9ac5eb8e-4167-4a54-9b39-dab48c29ac6c)
– Civil unrest spreading – no way to appease people who cannot afford to live
– Unrest eventually leads to total chaos and extreme violence – that would set off a massive uncontrolled global collapse
– Unload a flu virus centre of China pre CNYr (biggest migration of the year about to start)
– Nobel Prize Winner insists Wuhan made in lab https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/french-prof-sparks-furor-with-lab-leak-theory/ (he is now being slammed as a conspiracy theorist)
– Exaggerate the dangers of the Wuhan (45M people got the flu in 2017 winter in US – 800k in hospital – 61k dead) including lumping non Wuhan deaths into Wuhan
– Sow Fear – lock people down – massive fines if you break lockdown – in some places they shoot you – riots stop.
– Always behind the curve on response — stop flights but only after the virus is established — no force quarantines for arrivals (even though we know many are violating)
– Claim that face coverings are useless (blatant lie)
– Lockdowns futile – many virologists are saying you cannot lockdown a virus — it will immediately resurge if you stop the lockdown — so you can never unlock (goal is to get people to stay in their homes no matter what happens)
– Massive stimulus is released delaying the imminent collapse – need the virus as the reason otherwise the sheeple panic —also can point to virus and say ‘this is temporary’ we will be back to BAU in a few months (keep sheep hopeful)
– Global economy can only hold together for so long in spite of the trillions being unleashed…. so in the near future something just snaps
– Sheeple are told – you must remain in lockdown – we will ensure food will get to you — anyone who breaks quarantine dealt with harshly (shoot a few of them?) and the masses will blow kisses to the soldiers who are ‘keeping them safe’ as these assholes refuse to follow the rules and ‘flatten the curve’
– The food does not arrive – but it will come ‘tomorrow’ guaranteed – the sheeple believe….
– The food does not arrive – the sheeple weaken — but they still believe so they do not revolt
– The food does not arrive — the sheeple give up – lie down — die .. civilization ends
– How do you get so many leaders to buy into this? You tell them we are fokkked so there are two options: a ) economic collapse certain along with total chaos – violence, cannibalism, etc… or b) total collapse certain but in a controlled manner where we lock people down and we dramatically reduce the suffering.
Right, but we can’t really take Egypt as an example, since peolpe there never experienced famine. How would the Egyptians react if, in addition to the 600 dead, food was lacking in the market? Much greater force would have to be used. for sure. Pol-Pot size even. I don’t see a tenacious beast like man dying peacefully without some fight. But i agree that in most countries the people is not a match to the government. I see dead people.
The people of Cairo were not starving although the threat was there due to inflation …. but nor were they pounded 24/7 with Covid ‘stay safe stay home messages’….
They were not provided with hotlines to report their neighbours who were busting curfew and ‘endangering the children by spreading a lethal virus’
Most people support the lockdowns – even though it is driving them towards starvation.
When the ‘second waves’ hit … those who dare to question the lockdowns will embrace them … those that don’t will be pariahs… and dealt with should they make trouble endangering ‘the children’
People trust the government. They do not believe the government would let them starve. See the headlines ‘there is plenty of food – do not worry about that’
The way I see this going down is the lockdowns continue … the economy eventually falls to pieces — the death virus propaganda will screech at ear-splitting levels… the fear will increase…
People will demand to be locked down … they will kill anyone who dares to violate the rules (don’t even need the military!)…. in fact those guys with the guns and ammo will be more likely to shoot their neighbour who is out for a walk than a cop….
The government will organize the delivery of basic food stuff (because that’s all there is) … the PR will be – this is temporary — we are all in this together — be grateful — we have plenty of food — just not a wide variety….
Then the basic foodstuff will taper and stop… the PR will be ‘the food trucks are coming – hold tight’…
The frightened masses will huddle in their homes …. waiting … trusting … believing… they will slowly weaken… the few that try to bust out and fight will be dealt with using the 1.6 hollow points (the MSM will brand them as misfits… heretics… murderers… selfish Covidiots… etc)
Then will just fade away.
Note that in Kampuchea nobody fought back against the Khmer Rouge…. they accepted forced labour and starvation.
In Ireland during the famine the starving people did not fight.
In Holodomor likewise…
Since the plan for this has been in place for years… you can be certain the psychologists have worked out how to convince people not to riot (and eat each other).
They are right now conditioning the masses to follow orders — the spacing is the most obvious example of this … they are driving up the fear and confusion … fearful confused people look to authority for direction … (they would know all of this and more)…
The military will not side with anyone who rocks this boat because they also are conditioned to fear the virus …. they are the easiest to convince because their psychological profiles and their training make them susceptible to commands….
They will see anyone busting out as they would a terrorist — and they will shoot them dead.
I really do not see mass chaos and violence happening. Months of conditioning will have beaten that impulse out of just about everyone.
“People trust the government”
Now you said it all. Most people, at least in Europe, DO trust the government. To me it’s s mindblowing how gullible and naive people are. My stoopid leftist friends, they really trust the institutions! It’s amazing. They gobbled all that trashy propaganda about “democracy” and “human rights” and the “power of the people” and the silly polling booth. There’s no use in trying to explain them how the world really works.
Hope is a blinfold for dum.mies.
Bernays – Century of Self – daughter said ‘he thought everyone was st up id’
https://exactly.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/16_1762_EXACTLY-LOGO_REVERSE-ON-NAVY.png
Today, I have found an interesting article in Slovak that was written by a person working in the area of water management. He says that the role of carbon dioxide in clmt chng is exaggerated. In fact, the main role is played by water that functions as a gigantic air conditioning. We have removed water from the countryside and tried to put it back in artificial ways, which does not work.
It seems to be a very reasonable view.
https://www.postoj.sk/54753/vplyv-oxidu-uhliciteho-sa-precenuje-v-hlavnej-ulohe-je-voda-podcast
A documentary about the water escaping from the countriside in Slovakia, causing landslides, droughts etc.
The extremely compacted soil is a bigger problem than we realize and plays a crucial role in the clmt chng.
MG, I think this is correct: “the main role is played by water that functions as a gigantic air conditioning.”
Water through its phase changes has acted as the working fluid in the global air conditioner to help maintain the surface temperature of this planet within a range capable of supporting oceanic life for over three billion years and complex terrestrial plants and animals for several hundred million years and counting, despite the Sun’s energy output increasing significantly over that time.
Another factor seems to have have been a long term decline in atmospheric pressure over the aeons that has helped offset the increase in insolation. But water’s ability to transport large amounts of heat rapidly from the lower to the upper atmosphere through the evaporation/condensation cycle and its propensity to form clouds that scatter sunlight give it an enormously major role in keeping things comfortable.
While pondering if the current crisis is a controlled demolition I was reminded of a Maurice Strong quote I read a few years back. If he was not a elder he certainly was able to converse with them being a billionaire and UN bigshot.
“What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group’s conclusion is ‘no’. The rich countries won’t do it. They won’t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
http://canadianpatriot.org/why-has-the-west-destroyed-its-own-industrial-base-the-case-of-maurice-strong-revisited/
That link lost me at one of the first data points, despite the fact that I am Canadian!?
They link to a NASA study regarding the agricultural programs in China, really worldwide. They seem to conflate the leaves and foliage of monocrop agriculture with biodiversity.
I admit that I stopped reading this immediately thereafter.
The quote of M. Strong cannot fail to be revaling, awesome ineed, being the guy the big fish he is. But the blog post seems to be bona fide mentalcrap. Example; nuclear as “one of the greatest beacons of hope mankind has ever had to break out of the current “fixed” boundaries.” LOL
Agreed on the blog post. I think Maurice Strong was right unfortunately.
Transition out of IC. We knew it wouldn’t be a rose garden. Shouldn’t we be incentivizing people to have a garden and get by with less? Why does it have to be via iron collar?
“Why does it have to be via iron collar?”
Because degrowth on the required scale is impossible without mass death. The only question to be considered is the (mix of) means by which mass death can best be achieved.
Maybe people in some parts of the world will be incentivized to add a garden. In most of the world, people do not have the space to add a garden.
http://greyenlightenment.com/pandemic-not-a-threat-to-fire-movement/
TL, Dr, the pandemic will not stop the domination of everything under the FInancial, Insurance and Real Estate indusries.
>For FIRE adherents, living expenses are paid out of dividends, as well as from the principle itself (how much of each varies depending one’s preferences and capital), so if your dividend income is unchanged, then the market crashing should not be a problem as far as covering living expenses is concerned. But if you sell your stocks, you miss out on this yield.
> Joblessness due to the pandemic overwhelmingly affects low-income workers. A recent survey showed “40 percent of households earning less than $40K lost jobs in March,” but most people who adhere to FIRE are in tech, medical, and other high-paying fields, so their pay has not been disrupted, and are able to work at home instead of being laid off.
That’s the point and the only issues. The rentiers will raise rents to compensate for lost income, and the pressed renters will be .. squeezed. Sorry.
I think it will work great, to a point.
Eventually, the financial system will likely have a crash as well, and a big layoff of workers. It is in a later “round,” however.
Gail your point about the villainization of certain big pharma companies as compared to the nominating the vaccine maker for saint hood by the media is worth commenting on. On one hand its pretty clear that the maker of oxycontin was negligent when they marketed it as non addictive and continued to do so long after they knew otherwise. On the other pain management is a difficult problem with no great solutions. Is big pharma responsible for every fool that ever condemed themselves to hell by sticking a needle in their arm? Obviously not but the lawsuits and media would have us believe so while ignoring the principle producer of heroin in Afghanistan and the Fentanyl labs in China.
So we have a media presentation of big pharma as 100% evil consisting as nothing but profit motivation and people getting all worked up in self righteous condemnation. Then we have a media presentation as Fauci as sexiest man in the world, played by Brad Pitt on saturday night live and even the questioning of whether big pharma motives might be any other than in the best interest for all humanity is ridiculed as conspiracy theory. Here the self righteous condemnation of those who would question big pharma seems ripe for civil liberty abuses.
That media presentations can be so 100% contrary and that people will adopt the presentation without any cognitive dissonance is very concerning. It speaks to a media out of control in there power where they dictate what is correct thinking and people adopt it without question.
“On one hand its pretty clear that the maker of oxycontin was negligent when they marketed it as non addictive and continued to do so long after they knew otherwise. ”
They weren’t negligent. (Oops. Did I do a boo boo?) They were criminal. The Sackler family knew precisely what they were doing. Do you think they didn’t know where their billions were coming from? What actions did they take to stop it?
The Sacklers are world-record mass murderers. In a just world they should already be dead by lethal injection. Then buried, dug up, and executed again.
Negligent is a weasel word describing the extermination of 400,000 Americans. This scamdemic may in fact be a response to distract people from their larceny and murder.
Nargh, lethal injection is far too good for ’em. They should be tied down on their gurneys and forced to listen to Vogon poetry.
The bigger point is that Big Pharma is a “for profit” enterprise. “Our first responsibility is to look out for the interests of our shareholders,” and what not. That alone is bound to lead to the creation of all kinds of victims.
And behind the “for profit” structure is the fact that Big Pharma’s products and services are being used for social engineering purposes.
And then there is the Medical Holy Trinity of Vaccination against an increasingly lengthy list of ailments from acne to zika, Medication of chronic conditions from hypertension and high cholesterol to depression and anxiety, and Hospitalization so that student doctors and nurses can practice medicine on Medicare/Medicaid/NHS patients in order to sharpen their skills before they are allowed to put their gloved fingers on private patients.
Ain’t that right Norman? Old Uncle Aldous saw this coming from over half a century ago.
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/2d/07/28/2d07283e01ed2c4bd2110f28dee44d50–brave-new-world-quotes-mind-unleashed.jpg
I suspect the Sacklers are followers of Sabbatai Zevi. That would explain much of their activities.
Uh, he converted to Bektashi Sufism (under duress, of course). Anyway, what nefarious activities do you associate with the Sabbateans?
I see the issue as not enough goods and services to go around. Big Pharma would very much like to see that they are one of the winners with respect to who gets a good sized piece of the pot available. They certainly don’t want to talk about inexpensive drugs that are already available that might be used, for example. They want to be seen as heroes, collecting a large reward.
Just speaking hypothetically – suppose you realized that humans could not survive without a massive depopulation event. How would you do it? You can’t blow everyone up – too much radiation. Even an economic collapse won’t necessarily work. But a virus might. However, if it is too deadly it won’t spread. So you create one that is kind of deadly but very contagious. If people don’t get it, you give them a vaccine just to make sure they have been exposed. Then, you release the second virus. Those exposed to the first virus find the second one lethal. Those not exposed to the first virus are just fine. Put a nice long 3 week lag on symptoms on the second virus so that it spreads all over the world. That’s possible. Our first virus had a nice 5-10 day lag on it.
All hypothetical of course.
So many amateur Thanoses, so little ecological awareness! Since the population of any animal (and we’re an animal) tends to expand to match its food supply, in the long run you need to go after the food supply. What do you do if you have mice or cockroaches in your house? You can set traps, but in the long run you need to lock up whatever they’ve been eating.
If Thanos snaps half the human race, but for some reason the same amount of resources are available (the movies were stupid), then the population would expand again. Okay, it might take awhile (Russia is still experiencing demographic echoes from WW2), any kind of system collapse would tend to have the same effect as a loss of food supply, and you could also reduce the effective food supply by boosting per capita consumption, but now I have to ask you what your goals are (self-preservation, ecological, or what?).
If it’s any comfort, nature will eventually find its equilibrium, one way or another. Sure, it might not be great for you or me, but we would have died eventually anyway!
Fatalism is soothing for the nihilist. It is as important as suffering for the Buddhist.
I don’t think you should consider the actions and processes of an advanced networked organism, simmering with the astounding complexity of life, floating around in the void of space as something which yields to trivial analysis.
A grand entity has grand plans, and whatever those might be is perhaps beyond our comprehension. The best a species can hope to achieve is to copy its ideas and processes and put them into action.
The interconnections and computation IS the system. The flora, fauna, humans, computers, sensors, satellites, cellular and fibre optic networks is its fast, new and fancy central nervous system.
The AI isn’t something manufactured. The AI is emergent. Humanoid manufactured AI will set it off into exponential growth of intelligence.
Gaia “needs“ us as much as we need her, but not at the expense of her and our own prevailing. It is about time to cut out the idiotic ‘monkey do’ escapades and grow up as a species.
A virus it is. If not this, another more lethal one. If not viruses, comets. Nuclear war, total and utter annihilation until a better sentient being emerges and spread her wings.
Not such a bad idea. But how would you persuade the people you need alive to get out of the vaccine, having made so much noise about the disease? Perhaps you could use different vaccines, but it wouldn’t be so easy I guess
No second virus needed. This one confers no immunity, so eventually everyone will have it multiple times. There will be no vaccine because there is no immunity. It just will go around and around. Maybe you wont notice it the first time, but the second? The third?
The Wuhan bat lady was paid by the US (Fauci and others), and by her own government to increase the viruses lethality and communicability in a bizarre misguided effort to do something good. She got it out of nature, added elements from several natural viruses, added a few completely synthetic strings, and then made sure it would move between species – people, bats, cats, dogs, etc. Then it got away.
If there is no immunity to this virus, why can a person become infected, then become clear of it, and not have any symptoms the whole time? Why doesn’t everyone who is infected die horribly? Why is the virus so bloody capricious about whether it causes disease or not?
Just because you have no symptoms, does not mean you don’t have pneumonia. Many people have no outward signs, until suddenly their blood oxygen levels fall too low.
The standard way to test for infection is a throat swab. This tests specifically if there is any virus in your throat. If it has been removed from your throat by your immune system or gargling with Listerine, but is inside your testicles and your spine, it will come up negative.
Your immune system tries to create antibodies to specifically destroy a particular virus. However, before that or if it is unable to do so, it uses weapons of mass destruction that destroy everything in an area, so the virus can be removed by destroying lots of healthy cells. There is evidence this virus infects T-cells.
Even if you do become immune, it may only last 3 months, like for most common colds, so you can keep getting infected. The protein spikes on the virus seem to have great variability, so the virus can be extremely mild, or up to 300 times more infectious, just by a slight change in the shape and number of spikes. This affects both how sick you get by how many cells get infected in a period, and also how easily you infect others.
What is your timeframe? What is the goal for those who survive and the resultant society?
Globally, there is no need to do a lot in every country because the failure of the West should automantically drastically reduce numbers elsewhere. For example, the population of Africa is about 1.5 billion but without the West that would fall steeply. It’s the same for many other countries dependent on modernity, as long as they don’t control any part of the oil production chain and the money chain.
So a detailed global plan is not really needed. Rather, as in any war, it is only necessary to attack strategically important nodes. Taking down the USA will do a big part of the job. And if you have a timetable that runs over decades (what year were the Georgia Guidestones installed?) then you can apply a wide range of types of weapons, and the role of social and psychological weapons – the destruction of social cohesion and individual resilience – would by no means be negligible.
Could such a plan of action be in place? Could it have been set in motion? What kinds of people could be behind such a plan?
Well, there are plenty of candidates. The curious might like to start by reading up on Maurice Strong and seeing where that leads.
We could start with this quote, which I think lays out the main thrust of Maurice’s agenda quite succinctly.
https://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-what-if-a-small-group-of-world-leaders-were-to-conclude-that-the-principal-risk-to-the-maurice-strong-71-38-79.jpg
Disgusting elitism.
I find ignorance and lack of critical thinking more of a problem than anything else. We’re not supposed to recommend rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but I’m always wanting to try. The alternative is unimaginable.
For the Norwegian who said they can go boating, here is my clip. I think I posted it a long time ago but will do it again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XSCRPCrttc
Bjornsterne Bjornson is now forgotten, but when he was alive in the 19th century he was considered the greatest author in the Scandinavian world. (At that time works of Ibsen, Strindberg et al were considered to be too dark.) His first masterpiece was Synnove Solbakken.
Despite of the title which is named after the heroine, she plays a minor role in the story; it is about a poor peasant boy, Torbjorn, who toils in the large land owned by the heroine’s family.
This movie was made in 1919 in Stockholm, since at that time Norway lacked the resources to create a film. I am afraid people in Norway back then didn’t have too many boats to ride out famine.
Thank you, another snippet of history to meditate on. But why did people consider “Per Gynt” or “Till Damaskus” dark? They are surely full of hope. And why would the descendants of Vikings object to “Et Dukkehjem”? Isn’t its thesis exactly what their ancestors believed and practiced?
Per Gynt is just a rehash of an old Norse legent, updated to the conditions of 19th century. By the time of Et Dukkehjem, the Scandinavians wanted to follow romanticism and it made them uncomfortable.
Thank you for the followup. My knowledge of Scandinavian culture and history is sadly lacking. To my regret, since several of my kinsmen helped run the Norman Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily.
“For the Norwegian who said they can go boating, here is my clip. I think I posted it a long time ago but will do it again”
I said that the vikings had the surplus to build ships and sail the oceans, the emigration in semi modern times is a whole different story.
“Bjornsterne Bjornson is now forgotten, but when he was alive in the 19th century he was considered the greatest author in the Scandinavian world. (At that time works of Ibsen, Strindberg et al were considered to be too dark.) His first masterpiece was Synnove Solbakken.”
Every nation select some to be worshipped, Bjornson wrote stuff but so did others only they didn’t get pointed at …
… and it’s Bjørn with a ø.
This comment field was a lot nicer when it wasn’t covered in noise from certain personalities. To whom It may concern, please get your straitjacket on and give us a break!
Here here! Agree.
Yes I can imagine it was wonderful when the DelusiSTANIS had the run of the place…. well sorry boys — that epoch is OVER.
Your illogical garbage no longer gets a free pass.
http://cdn.roaring.earth/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Wild-Dogs-Attack-Impala-1-794×447.jpg
“Yes I can imagine it was wonderful when the DelusiSTANIS had the run of the place…. well sorry boys — that epoch is OVER.
Your illogical garbage no longer gets a free pass.”
I think your brain needs a restart …
As long as I continue to feed it uranium-235 and plutonium-239…. it never stops … so it does not require a restart.
You will like the old Swedish movie I posted.
Gas! Gas! Gas! I’m going to step on the gas tonight!
Gail,
Love the post but I have one criticism. Your calculation of cost per life-year lost to COVID ($2.3 million) doesn’t make sense to me. You’re comparing a cost (human life lost cost) to another cost (financial cost of the economic shutdown). Shouldn’t this be a cost-benefit analysis? Cost of economic shutdowns vs. benefit of human life-years saved? Then we can determine how much we paid for the purported benefit.
I don’t know what the latter number would be…but maybe can compare the mortality results of shutdown countries versus countries that didn’t shut down or had light shutdowns (Sweden, Japan, Taiwan) and see what the marginal gain, if any, was.
Compare GDP contraction for all countries as well, once next quarter reports come in. Also, there is the less tangible “rights, freedoms and privacy” cost. If you force quarantine everyone entering the country, and track every persons movement and share that information with everyone, and you CT chest scan every person that ever came in contact with an infected person, whether they consent or not, you don’t need to lock everyone down.
Is it bad that South Korea effectively identifies and tracks all homosexuals and posts their location and everywhere they have been for everyone to see? If New Jersey started identifying and tracking all Hesidic Jews and publishing that information to prevent the virus from spreading, would people accept that?
“Is it bad that South Korea effectively identifies and tracks all homosexuals and posts their location and everywhere they have been for everyone to see?”
Homosexuals indulge in a large number of practices that are notoriously dangerous to public health. Should they be tracked and monitored? Well, if anyone should, they should be.
Don’t they already have an app for that… Grindr I think it’s called? So what’s the big deal?
Sheesh, why not just have done with it and make them wear pink stars, Lagerkommandant Kim?!
Or are those strong sentiments perhaps just born out of some Freudian reaction formation? 😉
What we are really doing is pushing COVID-19 cases out a little later, so that our medical system has some time to figure out what it shouldn’t do, before it gets too far into this. This gives the system a little time to figure out really stupid things it is doing and tell others not to do them (like sending recuperating patients to nursing homes, without being very, very certain that they cannot still transmit the illness to everyone else in the nursing home). It also gives the medical system a little time to find more masks, and to figure out what treatments might work, such as putting patients on their stomachs, so that they can breathe better.
So the savings of lives comes from the better treatment available for later cases relative to early cases, whether or not any new medicines materialize. There is some savings in lives if the number of cases is not growing too rapidly. I suppose I could go back and make an estimate of how fast as cases might have risen without closing as many things as were closed. I would also need to estimate how much benefit the learning curve would have provided.
A lot of people thought that we could get the disease to die out completely, but it is now very clear that this cannot happen. There are too many essential processes, such as the need for food, that keep the case count rising. Even cargo flights into a country expose the country to new cases. It is impossible to stamp out because there are too many cases without symptoms that are nearly impossible to identify. COVID-19 will be with us, with a likely growing in number of cases, for a long, long time. As someone has said, “This is a marathon, not a sprint.”
In theory, it might be possible to spread some cases out past the time a vaccine becomes widely available. I think it is becoming more and more obvious that to make a vaccine that actually works and can be distributed worldwide will take far more than 12 to 18 months. A better guess might be 5 to 10 years. Vaccine makers would like the world to stay closed indefinitely, to wait for them. But it can’t happen. The world is on the edge of bankruptcy after two months of shutdowns.
The shutdowns have changed exponential growth in the world number of COVID-19 cases to more or less linear growth, as can be seen in the chart below..
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/covid-19-cases-worldwide-to-may-12_statista.png
The worldwide number of reported cases will likely start rising more steeply, as countries end lockdowns.
Yo, I think I’ll beat me it Fast Eddy and his run to 2000 posts…so much material out there.
This one I couldn’t resist …..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5ghUedyrf0c
Yep, Feds Powell got it all figured out and can explain it all away…. unprecedented….a fine word that means We Do Whatever It Takes to keep the wheels on BAU….even if it wipes you and the rest of the Middle Class out of existence….After all the Ruling Elite MUST live as they are accustomed to maintain their site and best manage in these difficult unprecedented times.
PS like Powell’s awkward, nervous delivery…..
“The virus is the cause, not the usual suspects” says Mr. Powell. Interesting. In short: blame the virus, not the FED or the poiiticians. IOW “don’t ever think about guillotines or revolt, think only about safety and masks”. I suspect that was the main point Mr. Powell wanted to convey. And I support his message. Go Powell!
Also “This time …there was no economy threatening bubble to pop and no unsustainable boom to bust”. Of course not, Mr. Powell. The global economy was in an awesome perfect condition last December.
Go Powell! Tell us more lies!
My exact response JMS, I couldn’t watch it all, absolute nonsense.
Well;
Everybody is jumping on the virus to blame bus so…
My diet was going good until the virus. 🙂
Its like every single human on the planet has been given a free pass on everything.
The kids are partying hard on their $1200 stimulus checks!
Its like the condemned prisoners last supper.
“This time, there was no unsustainable bubble to pop.”
Not, really. We will get to see what a debt bubble popping looks like.
Female reproduction organs have ACE2 receptors. But no study on female infertility due to Sars-Cov-2.
“Based on the previous researches, we speculated the possible ways of SARS-COV2 affecting female fertility: (i) SARS-COV2 might attack ovarian tissue and granulosa cells, and decrease ovarian function and oocyte quality, leading to female infertility or miscarriage; (ii) SARS-COV2 might damage endometrial epithelial cells and affect early embryo implantation.”
Nature is killing off our species.
I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Female infertility that would fix the over population issue. Just finished a book The Immune by David Kazzie. The group of evil plotters made and distributed a highly deadly virus to the world. They had a vaccine for themselves but ooops it made all the female members infertile. Bill Gates software features the blue screen of death will his vaccine also have a blue screen of death feature?
In the movie version of “Moonraker” (featuring 007), terrorists plot to dump some sort of infertility drug into earth’s atmosphere from space, the idea being that they would repopulate the earth with their own members (who are in space). In “Inferno” (the Dan Brown book / Tom Hanks movie), terrorists succeed in releasing a virus which renders two-thirds of the human race infertile.
Channel 4s Utopia is pretty fantastic. Hard core environmentalists try to sterilize everybody:
It’s not like there’s a shortage.
It is a little early for a study on female infertility, I am afraid.
It is hard to run a profitable business in the imploding world, so bribery and corruption are on the rise. The distribution of the EU money, which keeps its economies operating, provides numerous opportunities, as the current example from Slovakia shows:
https://www.tasr.sk/tasr-clanok/TASR:20200423TBB00067
https://www.symsite.sk/single-post/2020/04/23/Martin-Kvietik-co-owner-of-Slavia-Capital-behind-bars
Poorer countries seem to always be know for more use of bribery. In fact, if the government suddenly puts in place what are perceived as unreasonable rules, there is a temptation to work around them in whatever way “works.”
Go BIG or Go HOME
Breaking all kinds of barriers……
Fed Buys $305 Million of ETFs at Launch of Historic Program
Matthew Boesler
BloombergMay 14, 2020, 6:45 PM EDT
(Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve bought $305 million of exchange-traded funds on the first day of its historic intervention into U.S. corporate debt markets, according to data published Thursday.
The figures were revealed in the central bank’s weekly balance sheet update, which also showed that total assets rose to a new record of $6.93 trillion in the week through May 13. The ETF purchases, which began on Tuesday, are part of the latest emergency lending program the Fed has rolled out to help cushion the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the U.S. economy and financial markets.
The weekly update reports trades with a one-day lag, which means any ETF purchases made on Wednesday were not incorporated into the numbers.
First announced on March 23, the so-called Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility has been credited by investors and policy makers alike with having a major calming influence on markets, even well before it officially launched on Tuesday. Under the program, the Fed plans to make both outright purchases of corporate bonds as well as ETFs invested in the asset class, including potentially some sub-investment grade debt.
While the weekly balance sheet data did not disclose which ETFs the Fed bought, the central bank has said it will disclose the names of borrowers participating in the program at least once a month.
I’m glad the Fed is making History again and of course this is just a temporary measure until things get back to normal😜.
Suppose it’s was done to help me better to sleep at night.
Isn’t buying ETFs getting into the business of supporting derivatives, at least to some extent?
The Fed is helping out corporations and their banking buddies by buying corporate bond ETFs, both investment grade and junk bonds. Next up, common stock ETFs, as the Swiss national bank and Bank of Japan are already doing. In the end, the bankers and financial elite own a big chunk, if not most of the productive assets of the world (corporations). Hey, if you can create money from nothing and buy a “real” asset, why not?
From Monday’s Wall Street Journal. You can read the archived article at:
http://archive.is/1iClk
“”The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Monday that starting Tuesday one of its emergency market support facilities will begin buying corporate-bond exchange-traded funds, in a notable expansion of the central bank’s efforts to support the economy and financial system in the coronavirus crisis.
The central bank’s Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility will be the tool used to buy the ETFs, which the Fed said will be mainly investment grade corporate bonds, though some will be high-yield. BlackRock Inc. was hired to manage the program for the Fed.
The move will be a historic milestone for the Fed, which hasn’t bought ETFs previously. The central bank, recognizing it would take longer to buy bonds, saw ETFs as a fast way to direct money rapidly into credit markets, said people familiar with the matter.””
The Fed is also helping their pensioner buddies by making sure pension funds don’t collapse….
Thanks!
A controlled demolition is safer than an uncontrolled.
Everybody missed that a pandemic would be the trigger of the collapse, except for the governments.
Governments are experts in crowd control. They saw were things were heading last year, with the economic down turns, protests and riots.
The governments will of course use the pandemic to control the beast.
I am not sure. There were clearly bioweapon programs in place, but governments have tried to keep the details away from us. I am not certain how much governments were really aware of what was happening and what the potential for disaster was.
See Fast Eddy, it ALL makes sense now….does it not Mister 700 I.Q.?
What Climate Change and COVID-19 Have in Common, According to Environmentalist Christiana Figueres
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/climate-change-covid-19-common-130000693.html
Too funny…the Paris Agreement that allowed China and India to burn more COAL…is this Lady for real!???
There, she was responsible for overseeing the 2015 Paris Agreement, which united 195 countries in a global fight to lower emissions and stabilize the planet. A lot of work remains to be done, but there is still time, as Figueres points out in The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, which she wrote with Global Optimism co-founder Tom Rivett-Carnac. “This decade will determine the rest of human life on this planet,” she says. “This is our last chance, and it’s actually a fantastic opportunity to choose a much better future for this generation.”
Right, hope you and Obamie enjoy this last decade if we make it through this year 2020!
Lessons Learned: In the wake of the coronavirus, Figueres says, community is more crucial than ever. “It’s always better to prevent rather than to have to cure. That is true of the virus and of climate change,” she says. “It is much better to reduce our emissions and prevent the worst impact than to try to run behind it and figure out how to survive.” While protective measures to combat the pandemic, like sheltering in place, have resulted in lower emissions, Figueres does not want it to be an either-or proposition. “We can’t look at clear rivers with big smiles on our faces because they have come at a huge human cost,” she says. “But one thing I hope will stick with us is this newfound sense of solidarity with one another
Definitely CLUELESS!😂. Yes, the China Virus and Gerbal Warming are on the same page!
is this Lady for real!???
You mean Christiana could be trans!!!????
https://stmedia.stimg.co/M21815557.JPG?fit=crop&crop=faces
And then we have other prominent TGs (is that not an alien outfit as well?)
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Bi9K19kFgnk/maxresdefault.jpg
https://media.salon.com/2010/03/christiane_amanpour_hangs_up_her_flak_jacket.jpg
And I now understand that men who dress like women and take a few hormone tabs are allowed to compete against women — and of course win….
Is it just me or does it feel like we are being set up for a Planet of the Transgenders scenario???? Where we are ruled by men women and women men?????
Are we missing the bigger picture with the Wuhan? Is it connected??????
I wish FE could get together with Chris-Chan, now a MTF transgender autist:
Naomi is another globalist that those Chinese surveillance camera AI systems frequently misgender.
https://erg.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ORESKES-head-and-shoulders-credit-WEF.png
Despite both of them being frequent stage performers, notice how you never saw Naomi and Lou together in the same picture?
https://www.nj.com/resizer/bHcy0VinT54CK4lUwZUMN-K2J_A=/450×0/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/image.nj.com/home/njo-media/width2048/img/entertainment_impact_music/photo/lou-reed-1965bw-315-313-90auto-s-c1jpg-4cddea5a3b17dfd5.jpg
I would say that all of the emphasis on each country’s carbon emissions (such as through the Kyoto protocol of 1997) enabled the growth of coal-based industry in China and India. It was as if the developed world said, “Go ahead, build up your industry using coal and your inexpensive labor. We won’t compete with you. We won’t tax you. We will let your inexpensive products compete with our expensive ones.”
World CO2 emissions exploded, thanks to the new approach.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/china-energy-production-by-fuel-to-2018-bp.png
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-e1347845831893.png
And there are some who think there are not plans…
Here’s another thing that just happened…
To realize Maurice Strong’s vision of a sustainable one-world system with UN leadership, UN-style human rights and African-level wages for all, China and India needed to be pumped up before it was safe to let the air out of America and Europe.
Why am I thinking Maurice is a DelusiSTANI?
M Fast and I are losing our minds over this Covid thing … wherever we go it’s all anyone talks about — and if either of goes a little off the government playbook we are crazy…. so you just have to sit there and nod once and awhile….
We are both hoping for lockdown to return so we can avoid the Covid iots. (who think we are Co vi idiots of course)
A one-world system requires a lot of energy, for all of the flying around and international programs required. Presumably, unemployment insurance is required for all, for example. It can never happen. The direction of economies has to be the opposite one: fewer and fewer aggregations. Many of the international aggregations, such as the EU, WHO, WTO and UN will likely disappear, as will central governments of many countries.
“I have patients …. that were cured of this disease. I have patients that recovered within 48 hours. In fact, the illness that they had was more caused by the stress and the fear of the propaganda that’s being spewed on the news media than by the actual virus.”
Another proper doctor speaks out about the Covid ho-ax.
Lots of excellent information from this 29-year practicing physician.
I was genuinely interested, until she started on about extolling the medical expertise of a POTUS who advocated shining a UV light into your body (don’t ask) and drinking Clorox
really?? Warning lights flashing here. Anyone seeing the don as some kind of universal saviour raises serious questions
“I wasn’t an activist until Obamacare came along”. Sounds to me rather like a ‘never obama’ type. For what reasons we can only guess at. I have a suspicion about anyone giving out ‘science based’ advice and partisan politics at the same time and on the same theme.
We have a pandemic in just about every country in the world now. If hyrdoquinine (whatever) worked, are we still required to blindly accept that virtually every country in the world would refuse to use it, just to perpetuate the ‘hoax’ and in some convoluted way enrich big pharma?
Because big pharma is to be trusted? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/
Trump delusion syndrome. Dont worry Norm your vaccine will have a picture of Merkel smiling on it and it will be “OK”.
would you trust your doc if his prescription pad had a politicians face on it as an advert to vote for him?
You can try not taking CNN and the Washington Post quite so seriously Norm- their modus operandi is interpreting Trumpian off-the-cuff comments in the most extreme terms possible and as rock-solid policy suggestions. It’s pedantic and the headline claims don’t hold up.
We all have our filters of perception whether we admit them or not. If i was to judge my doctor solely by their political belief IMO i would be rather bigoted. Its quite concerning to me that people are making decisions about their precious body based on political propaganda. I certainly dont have the luxury of rejecting medical treatment because of a doctors political affiliation. What I do consider mandatory is any doctor that treats me looks past my gender race and any preconceived notions they have and sees me as a human with a heart who still has absolute choice about what treatment I will accept. I’ve been through this wringer a few times including being kicked off insurance for “refusing treatment” because I refused to be addicted to opioids. Doctors are like cops some have a feel for their humbleness and their role in the universe and some are arrogant asses. You dont have a choice when you get pulled over but we still have the right to decide what will be put in our bodies even if it means being excluded from the western style medical system. Thats a pretty harsh price to pay but at least we still have a choice.
There is a company, Healight, that is actually researching putting fiber optic cables inside ventilator tubes to pump UVA directly into the lungs to kill viruses. They have been censored off YouTube and other platforms, but it is a real procedure that has been studied for years. Not that I would sign up to be a test subject.
Norm, Trump was talking about real research already ongoing into these things. He didn’t just make it up on his own in order to give late-night hosts something to jeer about. When you inject an anti-biotic, it is a “disinfectant”. People already inject hydrogen peroxide (a common and extremely cheap household *disinfectant”.
I have a suspicion about anyone giving out ‘science based’ advice and partisan politics at the same time and on the same theme.
And you would never do this sort of thing yourself, of course. 🙂
What part of the sentence “this pandemic is political” don’t you get.
Norman, I’m sending you an official “I’d Rather Die of Coronavirus than Take Hydroxychloroquine Because Trump Touted It!” t-shirt.
After all, now that this drug is starting to be given to COVID-19 patients all over the world, including in the UK, you wouldn’t want to be forced to imbibe any treatment recommended by the don, would you?
Says Norman: We have a pandemic in just about every country in the world now. If hyrdoquinine (whatever) worked, are we still required to blindly accept that virtually every country in the world would refuse to use it, just to perpetuate the ‘hoax’ and in some convoluted way enrich big pharma?
You are probably unaware of this because you are not really interested in finding out stuff that might conflict with your current worldview. But the drug in question is being used widely in countries all over the world against coronavirus and to good effect.
In case you are interested, there was a poll by Sermo back in early April about what actual doctors—not politicians but doctors working on the frontlines—that was reported in the NY Post:
“Hydroxychloroquine rated ‘most effective’ coronavirus treatment, poll of doctors finds”
By Natalie O’Neill April 2, 2020
https://nypost.com/2020/04/02/hydroxychloroquine-most-effective-coronavirus-treatment-poll/
Excerpt: Of the 6,227 physicians surveyed in 30 countries, 37 percent rated hydroxychloroquine the “most effective therapy” for combating the potentially deadly illness, according to the results released Thursday.
The survey, conducted by the global health care polling company Sermo, also found that 23 percent of medical professionals had prescribed the drug in the US — far less than other countries.
“Outside the US, hydroxychloroquine was equally used for diagnosed patients with mild to severe symptoms whereas in the US it was most commonly used for high risk diagnosed patients,” the survey found.
Norman, goodness knows how many thousands of people’s lives are in the balance and all you can do is sneer at Trump and cast aspersions on people who express support for his efforts to promote effective treatment for this horrible disease. Your TDS is causing you to loose all sense of proportion.
Norm – Pandemic? Where? Why is the third world not drowning in covid snot? They have terrible medical infrastructure and most have haphazard quarantines.
What about the slums in India – they live on top of each other — you cannot quarantine — where the millions of dead bodies?
Of course there is the US… where CBS News could not find any queues so they made one up….
Ecuador has a few thousand confirmed deaths, but somewhere around 10 to 30 thousand excess deaths over average for this time of year. India is tearing up the charts, at 11th most confirmed and 16th most confirmed deaths. Give them a couple months, they have a real shot at #1.
too late
they already shot the messenger
Went into Queenstown for a haircut today … took a walk around … all tourist booking shops were closed… perhaps 20% of all retail and restaurants were closed… the retail shops that were open were almost all completely devoid of customers… the most popular fast food restaurant Ferg Burger … which usually has a crowed of people out from all day long… was completely empty… restaurants were empty….
May is always a quiet month for tourism … Business operators who are hoping for at least a partial recovery … will hold out till sky season 5 weeks away… but if that does not materialize… or NZ gets locked back down… this is going to break them… financially and mentally.
I cannot imagine anyone coming to QT for a holiday is going to be feeling cheery … sitting in empty restaurants and walking around in a near ghost town…. does not make for a great holiday.
DEBT is your FRIEND…especially if you never intend to pay it back….EVER
China Seen Draining Funds From Bank System in Surprise Move
Bloomberg News
BloombergMay 13, 2020, 11:42 PM
China was seen to drain liquidity from the banking system even as lenders come under pressure to handle higher demand for funds.
The People’s Bank of China probably allowed 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) of its one-year lending facility to mature on Thursday, with no statement on the operation as of 11:38 a.m. local time. Analysts had expected the central bank to roll over at least some of the funds and cut the cost of the loans from the current rate of 2.95%. The PBOC typically releases a statement on MLF operations by 9:45 a.m.
The central bank also refrained from injecting liquidity with short-term reverse repurchase agreements for a 30th straight day, according to a statement earlier Thursday.
The PBOC may conduct an MLF operation on Friday so that the operations would take place on the 15th of each month, said Becky Liu, head of China macro strategy at Standard Chartered Bank Ltd. This would “further cement the role of the MLF rate as China’s future official policy rate” and would improve monetary policy transparency, Liu wrote in a note.
China’s 10-year government bond futures extended losses Thursday, dropping 0.42% to the lowest since March 19. The yield on sovereign notes of the same tenor climbed 4 basis points to 2.72%.
With the economy struggling from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on demand at home and abroad, China’s government is increasing bond sales to pay for fiscal stimulus. Lenders, who buy most of that debt, may need to find as much as 1.77 trillion yuan this month for the purchases, as well as other needs like adding to their reserves and handling withdrawals when companies pay taxes, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
The PBOC, which has reduced multiple policy rates in the past four months, recently vowed to deploy “more powerful” policies, without giving further details on what measures it will use. Key government meetings starting next week may approve even more debt sales, among other stimulus policies. The reserve ratio cut scheduled to take effect May 15 will add just 200 billion yuan in liquidity.
Continued weakness in the economy calls for more stimulus, with early indicators for April showing deepening factory deflation. Top leaders have said China will increase its fiscal deficit as a share of gross domestic product and sell more infrastructure bonds in part of efforts to stabilize the economy. That would make a more accommodative monetary policy necessary to create a favorable environment for the bond issuance.
Additional liquidity would also be key to bolstering sentiment in the onshore government bond market, which is bracing for the flood of supply. A sell-off in China’s sovereign notes worsened this week, with the benchmark 10-year yield surging to its highest level since March, amid concerns that banks will switch to local-government bonds for better returns..
Me LEARN all Tricks from my Uncle Sammie…he teach me well…
Now for a nice rib down with a happy ending from Lucy Lu at the Asian Spa!
‘I had no income’: Michigan barber, 77, refuses to close, has licenses suspended
Minyvonne Burke
May 14, 2020, 1:30 PM EDT NBC NEWS
A Michigan barber who opened his shop in defiance of the governor’s coronavirus shutdown orders has had his licenses suspended by the state.
But the barber, Karl Manke, told NBC News on Thursday that he has received no notice from officials about the suspension and has no plans to close his shop in Owosso, about 37 miles northeast of Lansing, the capital.
“If we wait until we’re absolutely perfectly safe, we’ll never have the freedoms that we had,” he said
BINGO…give the man his stuff Teddy Bear…he won the obvious explanation award!
Was the Guy EVER WRONG!?😜
Politico
‘Trump was right’: President claims pandemic has proved his economic theories
Quint Forgey
May 14, 2020, 8:58 AM EDT
President Donald Trump claimed the coronavirus pandemic has proven his America-first economic philosophy correct, slamming the competing financial theories espoused by those he dismissed as “globalists.”
“Look, there’s nothing good about what happened with the plague, OK? Especially the death. But the one thing is, it said, ‘Trump was right,’” the president, referring to himself in the third person, told host Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business in an interview that aired Thursday.
“Because I was getting a lot of fightback, even from people that I like a lot in Congress, et cetera, and now they’re not fighting,” Trump continued — going on to criticize “these stupid supply chains that are all over the world” which he contended imperil the flow of goods to the United States during episodes of foreign turmoil.
“One little piece of the world goes bad, and the whole thing is messed up,” he added. “I said we shouldn’t have supply chains, we should have them all in the United States. We have the companies to do it. And if we don’t, we can do that.”
The Trump administration has struggled at times to meet surging demand among health care workers and the general public for coronavirus testing and personal protective gear such as face masks and gowns
See Fuerher is ALWAYS RIGHT! Now cut those interest rates to NEGATIVE!
Oh please.. It’s clearly been ridiculous to have had (for example) the US military reliant on Chinese hardware or other essential items from a National Security angle, but Biden got $1.5 billion to make that all ok. Feinstein and McConnell are in on that gravy train, too, along with the Clintons and others. Trump can only try to salvage the wreckage of a supposed sovereign state while -yes- puffing himself up as all normal male creatures do.
Maybe you’d rather have that Swedish guy who felt guilty his anal-rapist was deported as leader instead?
From a Fast-Eddy Controlled-Demolition stance, who better than The Donald? Really? He knows bankruptcy! He knows Media Theater! It’s like they knew they were going to hold a collapse and sent out a casting call.
“From a Fast-Eddy Controlled-Demolition stance, who better than The Donald? Really? He knows bankruptcy! He knows Media Theater! It’s like they knew they were going to hold a collapse and sent out a casting call.”
Hadnt thought of it that way. Very insightful.
Trump is right. China has been going downhill, at least since the beginning of 2018 and even before that. Its biggest issue has been it coal supply, which stopped rising about 2012-2013. Trump had the good sense to start adding tariffs, because other countries were too dependent on China. The outages of the coronavirus show how correct he was.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/china-energy-production-by-fuel-to-2018-bp.png
The haircuts are just starting, and not because the hair salons are reopening since the lockdowns!
Faced With $54B Coronavirus Deficit, California Gov. Proposes 10% Pay Cut For State Workers—Including Himself
Rachel SandlerForbes
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday proposed steep cuts to the state’s budget, including a 10% pay cut for all state workers, reflecting challenges California and other state governments are facing as they contend with depleted state budgets and uncertain federal aid
KEY FACTS
Newsom proposed canceling $6.1 billion in program expansions and previously approved spending increases, including canceling a plan to give healthcare benefits to undocumented immigrants 65.
The budget proposal includes an across the board 10% pay cut for all state employees—including Newsom and his staff—which would save $2.8 billion overall.
Additional cuts include $30 million for state parks starting in 2021, $700 million in promised state funding for homelessness services and a 10% cut to both the University of California and California State University systems.
To reduce the severity of proposed cuts, the proposal uses 50% of the money from the state’s rainy day fund, and it depends on future federal aid that hasn’t yet been approved by Congress and caps tax credits for some individuals and businesses.
I feel better already, fiscally responsibility is what we need now😘 sarcasm.
Sure, the Politicians will pass this in an Election year!
Reducing wages is not a good way to increase demand!
This is the first good idea I’ve heard from this guy, although the cuts should be more like 20-30%, in line with job losses in the private sector. At some point it will dawn on them that the people who make and move and build and grow the stuff are the ones who pay their often-exorbitant salaries.
“Oil supply is expected to fall to a nine-year low this month, the International Energy Agency said, as global producers make big cuts to offset a record collapse in demand.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ea63c5da-7b6d-4de9-bba1-0342a20c230b
“Global natural gas demand is on track to drop by a record 5% in 2020 due to the economic impacts of Covid-19, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Wednesday…
“The report’s authors noted that natural gas consumption already was falling in the first months of 2020 due to mild temperatures in the northern hemisphere, which partly helped create a glut of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and pushed global prices lower.”
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/121993-oil-not-alone-as-natural-gas-demand-set-for-largest-decline-on-record-in-2020-iea-says
“The spot price for thermal coal has fallen 25 per cent per cent in the past month…”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-05-15/spot-price-for-coal-drops-by-25pc/12241502
What does China do, if the coal price is too low? Or Australia, for that matter?
“Better and better” — Greta.
“Good, good!” — Greta.
So how long till the oil price rockets?
FE – Agree with you that this is a controlled demolition not by an alien or some super smart people but by “collective stupidity of homo sapiens” + “cra.zy, naive and power hungry politicians” + “instant information” and the most important “Sheer luck+coincidence”. Without any of these, we will not be here.
Probably there is a “higher power” that makes sure that all these ingredient are in place.
Slowly…. then all of a sudden. All the big retails in USA – we know they are going bankrupt, just don’t know how long they will drag. Then all of a sudden, all of them declared bankruptcy.
There certainly have been a lot of coincidences that have worked together to make the world economy to grow all of these years. And now, we are seeing coincidences on the way down as well. It does indeed look like a higher power is somewhere behind the pattern coming together.
Higher power thermodynamics? When you burn a lot of fuel in the Bunsen burner, the molecules in the flask run around like crazy. Turn down the application of heat, and they slow down considerably. I’m not sure I see anything deeper in it than that.
Ilya Prigogine, “La Fin des certitudes” may help in your quest.
There’s a lot of magic in the world, and I wouldn’t be surprised if comprised some degree of that “higher power.” If you can think something in a reasonably coherent fashion, it might be a step toward its coming to life.
“After weeks of relative optimism in financial markets about a re-opening of frozen economies, effectively shut for months to contain the pandemic, a dark cloud has descended once again over the investment outlook…
“”We have become increasingly gloomier on the global economy,” Deutsche Bank’s chief economist David Folkerts-Landau told clients…
“”A highly uncertain and worrying outlook lies ahead, and it is likely that any short-term stability will come at a huge long-term cost,” he added. “This crisis is also going to permanently scar government balance sheets, with war-time level deficits likely across the board.””
https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/increasingly-gloomier-dark-clouds-return-as-world-braces-for-longer-and-deeper-economic-hit-20200515-p54t7b.html
“Central banks in about a dozen emerging economies have started their own quantitative easing programmes. Yet without big domestic savings pools, most rely on foreign investors to cover balance of payment deficits and underpin currencies.
“That, along with inflation risks, constrain how much money they can print to support growth. Bond buying programmes in Brazil or South Africa could see real interest rates at the back end of the yield curve push up sharply, said Manik Narain, head of EM strategy at UBS.
““How can South Africa service debt at 10%? This debt becomes unsustainable and creates a crisis – at best it will pull GDP growth down,” he said [NB South Africa was already in recession *pre-pandemic*].
The dynamics could put some developing economies on track for another devaluation and inflation cycle, said analysts.
“Worryingly some large developing economies – Turkey, Brazil, South Africa – are heading in this direction,” said Andres Sanchez Balcazar, Head of Global Bonds at Pictet Asset Management.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-world-debt-analysi/coronavirus-to-leave-a-legacy-of-unprecedented-global-debt-idUKKBN22Q2J8
“One of the main policy responses to COVID-19 has been for central banks to flood markets with even more liquidity (that is, over and above the phenomenal cash injections post-GFC)…
“…this has compounded the debt overhang problem – sovereign (eg, Italy, many emerging nations and now bloated budget financing tasks), increasingly “junk” corporate debt and household debt.
“There will be a day of reckoning, and it won’t be pretty.”
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6756398/there-will-certainly-be-no-return-to-usual/?cs=14264
People are starting to see what a problem the financial side of this really is!
“The pandemic caused severe disruptions in global supply chains. Cargo containers full of consumer goods are piling up at ports and warehouses…
“First, China shut down all of its manufacturing, then retail shops in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere closed. And that has left a lot of consumer goods out there with no place to go.”
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/14/856347538/the-pandemic-disrupts-global-supply-chains-leaving-ports-worldwide-overstuffed
“The coronavirus pandemic hit the world at a time of plentiful harvests and ample food reserves. Yet a cascade of protectionist restrictions, transport disruptions and processing breakdowns has dislocated the global food supply and put the planet’s most vulnerable regions in particular peril.
““You can have a food crisis with lots of food. That’s the situation we’re in,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.”
“Prices for staples such as rice and wheat have jumped in many cities, in part because of panic buying set off by export restrictions imposed by countries eager to ensure sufficient supplies at home. Trade disruptions and lockdowns are making it harder to move produce from farms to markets, processing plants and ports, leaving some food to rot in the fields.
“At the same time, more people around the world are running short of money as economies contract and incomes shrivel or disappear. Currency devaluations in developing nations that depend on tourism or depreciating commodities like oil have compounded those problems, making imported food even less affordable.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-global-food-crisis-shortages-11589385615
“… export restrictions imposed by countries eager to ensure sufficient supplies at home.” O those evil protectionists, first making sure they can feed their own people. Globalism is showing its cloven hoof at every opportunity.
I have a silly dream where children are exposed once again to all of those wonderful old copybook headings. They encapsulate so much valuable historical wisdom – traditional mental and spiritual tools – that will be much needed in the fast-coming future. For example, how many young people have ever heard that “charity begins at home”?
I remember at school when we studied Hamlet that much was made of the foolish (they did not mean “fond”) speech of Polonius. “Never a borrower or lender be”. Our teachers invited us to mock that idea but I couldn’t see what was wrong with it. I thought it a prettty sound notion. And just the same for the other ideas in that speech.
Of course, that was the same curriculum that pushed the idea that Hamlet was somehow a tale of Freud’s Oedipus Complex. That too, seemed to me to and to my friends to be the most complete rubbish. But they pushed and pushed it.
That was the 1970s. I can’t imagine what a wreck they must have made of education and teh minds of young people by now.
Kim, although your version of that line of Polonius’s is often quoted these days, the correct quote is “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”
As I’m sure Robert will agree, we must do all we can to preserve the language of the Bard even while society crashes into oblivion and even at the risk of being marked out as grammarnazis.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5c/3f/5e/5c3f5e60e90fe1a15eca58a38cff0f12.jpg
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Quite right. Thanks.
The all-time best version (begins at 3:30):
Kim, I went to school in the 1950s, when things were much as you imagine. And yes, they went downhill from there. Happily, when my children were of school age, I had a library of “improving” books. To combat the school bullies, I gave my son “Lord of the Flies”; instead of the “don’t do drugs” rubbish, I let my daughter watch “The Naked Lunch”. And yes, we had the local church every Sunday, and Sunday School for all. But, again, that was before the errors of Vatican II had reached our small community. Today, the small rituals I invented as a substitute for the copybooks are being taught to my four grandchildren (number five is on the way). A family is the smallest civilisation, but by far the most important. And with one granddaughter top of her class in mathematics, and another reading the Aeneid in the original, I think we are doing well.
I can see how proud you are. And rightly so. Congrats!
You are most wise, why did things change?
Dennis L.
I remember Vatican II chiefly because as small boy brought up a Catholic and going to mass every week I remember the words changing from Latin to English. At the age of seven, bits of the procedure suddenly began to make a certain amount of sense to me. Kyrie eleison and Christe eleison became Lord have mercy and Christ have mercy, respectively.
Looking back now, I can see clearly that the change from Latin stripped away a good deal of mystique and made the mass more accessible and accordingly easier to nitpick. Vatican II looks to me like a major detonation in the controlled demolition of the Catholic Church.
For Tim Groves:
I also remember Vatican II. My opinion of it then has remained unchanged ever since: “Hodie infusum est venenum in ecclesia Dei”
Ogay innay eace-pay.
“The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic will be “far, far worse” than the banking crisis in 2008, a former chancellor has warned.
“Alistair Darling said the UK was already in a “very deep recession”.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-52660820
Here’s one for all you Guardian enthusiasts😉 :
“[UK] Police have said they will break up anti-lockdown protests advertised on social media for this weekend if necessary, amid warnings that the events could be exploited by the far right.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/14/police-vow-to-break-up-planned-anti-lockdown-protests-in-uk-cities
“Calle Núñez de Balboa, in the Salamanca district [Madrid], has seen some of the worst riots in its history tonight, After four days of street protests against Pedro Sánchez, the National Police has been deployed…”
https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2020/05/14/breaking-news-riots-erupt-in-spains-capital-madrid/
“For years, the Ronda della Solidarieta (Solidarity Patrol) charity has served up free dinners twice a week for Rome’s needy, passed out at twilight in the shadow of the city’s ancient ruins.
“But as Italy begins to feel the effects of its most punishing economic crisis since World War II, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, the number of those in need has shot up…”
https://www.thelocal.it/20200514/italys-new-poor-the-people-left-in-poverty-by-the-coronavirus-crisis
“The fear of multiple bankruptcies and mass unemployment because of measures imposed to contain the covid-19 pandemic is the main reason European governments are subsidising businesses on a vast scale…
“Yet rescue measures probably just postpone a surge in bankruptcies…”
https://www.economist.com/business/2020/05/16/a-wave-of-bankruptcies-is-coming-in-europe
Calle Núñez de Balboa, a street named after the Spanish adventurer who discovered the Pacific Ocean, “silent upon a peak in Darien”. Oh the irony.
The US seems to be mostly trying to open up, regardless of there the COVID-19 numbers are going. People are tired of lockdowns. We will see where all of this goes.
G3T has her ‘look’ working for her today
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/pm-travel-australia-wont-happen-within-weeks
Asked about today’s new confirmed Covid-19 case, linked to the Marist cluster, she said officials were still learning about the virus: “That tells us once again how tricky this virus is.”
Ya tricky isn’t it … as in you cannot eliminate a virus by locking it down…. it keeps on popping back up….
Ardern said she could not put a timeframe on when travel to Australia might resume – but warned “it won’t be weeks” – it would be longer.
As the NZ tourism industry groans…..
How long can airlines go without riders?
As long as governments agree to bail them out?
“The pandemic has also revived all the worst-case scenarios about U.S.-China ties, edging them closer to confrontation than at any point since the two sides established relations four decades ago.
“From supply chains and visas to cyberspace and Taiwan, the world’s two largest economies are escalating disputes across several fronts that never really fell silent.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/15/world/worst-case-u-s-china-scenarios/#.Xr5H52hKjIU
“The World Trade Organization chief announced Thursday he will step down on August 31, a year before his term ends, despite the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the global economy.
“Roberto Azevedo said it had been a “personal decision” reached with his family…”
https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/05/15/wto-chief-to-step-down-early-as-global-economic-crisis-rages.html
Makes sense – spend a bit of family time before you starve….
The expensive Chinese restaurants around where I live, populated by wealthier Chinese nationals, are still doing great businesses so nothing to worry
It was already clear that we couldn’t depend on China. Now this happens. It looks like this was an engineered virus that was (accidentally?) released, but no one wants to discuss this.