Regular Fare:
What's Going On
With Bond: "Prices Have Changed More Than The Facts"
Much has been said about the current leg of the selloff being driven by
growth as opposed to inflation expectations (i.e. real yields increased while
breakevens have been steady). This leaves higher rates more vulnerable insofar
as historically elevated inflation expectations can persists regardless of the
realized data for longer than growth ambitions can diverge from real time
economic performance. Alas, the nature and magnitude of stimulus during this
particular cycle set the stage for an ‘it’s different this time’ argument –
particularly as it relates to the elevated savings rate.
…
Treasuries are very much in a consolidative mode and as such the incoming
data holds the potential to sway the balance in either direction. Prices have
changed more than the facts, thereby creating a scenario in which the selloff
will (eventually) need confirmation from the real economy that elevated
optimism is warranted. The first leg of the increase in rates was a function of
building inflation expectations that saw 10-year breakevens top out at 226 bp.
While still at 221 bp, the second stage of the weakness was a function of
improving growth expectations as evidenced by the increase in real yields. This
shift not only acts as a modest tightening, but a rosier economic disposition
during the age of corona is intrinsically more fragile than prior to 2020.
A Drunk Man in
the Snow: The Random Walk of Interest Rates
Investors’ reach for yield puts downward pressure on 10-year Treasury
rates, likely rendering the current yield unsustainable.
The sine regression of 10-year Treasury rates since the mid-1980s has
helped guide Guggenheim Investments with its portfolio positioning. This
seemingly simplistic analysis is derived from the insightful work .. that
securities prices were guided by random walks.
The easiest way to explain the random walk is the drunk man in the snow. As the drunkard drifts left and drifts right, each next observed step is random but he always heads in the right general direction towards home. The work of Fama and others has shown that securities prices follow a similar path where the next observable price may be higher or lower, but the mean drift of the trend line will generally be followed.
In our model of 10-year Treasury yields, the sine regression of 10-year
rates since the mid-1980s, actual yields have generally stayed within a two
standard deviation range of the model estimates. Currently our model suggests
that while yields may drift up from here, there is still more downside. The
model estimate for a trough of -0.5 percent in early 2022 is bounded by a
two-standard deviation range of a high of 1 percent and a low of -2.0 percent.
The good news is that fixed-income investors can properly position their
portfolios by not being underweight duration. The bad news is that this would
set the table for negative rates in the event of any unexpected bad news about
the economy or financial system. The foregone conclusion today is that
long-term rates are on an uninterrupted trajectory higher. History tells us
something different.
In recent weeks the primary driver of the bond market selloff has shifted from rising inflation expectations, as seen in rising TIPS breakevens, to rising real yields. The sharp increase in real yields is inconsistent with the Fed’s dovish reaction function, and we expect policymakers will forcefully push back against the market repricing.
A technical indicator with a reliable history is signaling that 30-year
Treasury yields will soon decline.
So, (this might) sound(s) a bit lame, but I think the analogy works well:
Is Plinko The
Best The Fed Can Do?
The Fed’s version of monetary policy is more akin to Plinko than you
might believe. Instead of dropping a coin into a slot, the Fed drops dollars on
Wall Street via bond purchases (QE). Once they purchase the bonds, the path of
the coin, so to speak, is determined by the will of the banks that sold them
the bonds. Unlike fiscal stimulus, the Fed cannot direct money to the economic
sectors and/or people in need. The Fed
relies on the so-called “trickledown effect” to help the broad population and
economy.
We can think of the Fed’s Plinko board as having four “reward” scenarios
at the bottom. Once the Fed buys bonds the banks essentially have four options.
Their choices determine the winners and losers.
1.
The banks can sit on the new reserves and earn
interest from the Fed, with no effect to the economy. In this instance, they
are the only winners.
2.
They can lend reserves out for productive
purposes, which benefits future economic growth. Everyone wins in this
scenario.
3.
The banks can also lend reserves for consumption
purposes. Such debt provides a short-term spurt of economic activity. However,
it creates future economic headwinds as the debt must be paid back and
consumption was pulled forward.
4.
Lastly, the banks can lend the money to
speculators allowing them to increase leverage on their assets. Speculative
borrowers are the winners when this occurs.
In reality, money lands in all four slots. However, slots 1, 3, and 4 are
where the bulk of the Fed’s purchases are ending up.
this addresses the issue that those focused on the headline size of Biden’s
stimulus are missing … the stimulus is a big band-aid, but just a band-aid
Housing
insecurity and the COVID-19 pandemic
11 Million At
Risk Of Losing Their Homes Once COVID Protections Expire
transcript of interview – lots of good stuff, but my favorite section was
on the Long Economic Outlook, from the 30-40min mark
Jeremy Grantham
- A Historic Market Bubble
Blain’s Morning
Porridge – March 5 2021: The Chernobyl Quandary
This has been a fascinating week in markets – bond yields and equity
prices circling each other, locked in a macabre danse infernal
… There are analysts, market strategists and hedge fund managers all
certain that we’re at some kind of inflection point.
We’ve got a number of themes they variously point to:
·
Reflation – the global markets are about to
soar on the back of repressed spending, and higher interest rates will be
positive for economic growth by generating incentives to invest. The market
will cope on the basis of the positive outlook for stocks. Sell Bonds. Buy
Stocks. Get set for longer term inflation.
·
Inflation – all the money printing by central
banks to finance government stimulus and fund QE is going to impact the real
economy driving up prices sooner than expected and will slowing growth. Sell
Bonds. Flat Equity. Hold Gold. (Not bitcoin.. that’s just stupid.)
·
Double Whammy – If the prices of financial
assets go into mean reversion (ie a sustained crash), then the outcome will be
massive inflation as the money currently in financial assets is cycled into the
real economy and real assets, with massive post-covid recession: classic
Stagflation (combined recession and inflation). Sell Everything except
fundamental stocks. Buy Gold.
There are as many scenarios and outlooks as there are market
participants.
cases in point:
The First
"Global Inflationary Depression" Is Very Possible
as opposed to:
Almost A Full
Year of Tomorrows
and:
A Big Fiscal
Push is Urgent, The Risk of Overheating Is Small
That water is changing today. It’s changing a lot. Increasingly, the
common knowledge of our investment world – what everyone knows that everyone
knows – is that inflation is a problem and you should be focused on it.
… Now, you might personally
believe that inflation is NOT a big deal or a big concern. That’s fair.
Reasonable people can disagree on this. You might also look at the consensus
about inflation in this metric or that metric and similarly conclude that
inflation is NOT a big deal or a big concern. Also fair.
Fair. But it doesn’t matter. At least not for making money. Neither what
you personally believe (what Keynes called 1st-level decision making in the
famous game theory example he called the Newspaper Beauty Contest) nor what
everyone apparently believes (the consensus, or what Keynes called 2nd-level
decision making) will make your investment decisions work out successfully for
you.
The thing that moves markets – the thing that will make your investment
decisions work out successfully for you – is what everybody believes that
everybody believes.
It’s 3rd-level decision making. It’s common knowledge.
… [so we need] to
understand what’s really happening with inflation in both real-world and narrative-world, and then figure out
effective investment strategies to deal with it.
"Full
Throttle Correction" - Tumbling Nickel Prices Lead Sudden Industrial
Metals Slump
MMT Fare:
From the St. Louis Fed: Servicing the
National Debt
·
Involuntary default is essentially impossible.
·
it seems more accurate to view the national
debt less as form of debt and more as a form of money in circulation
·
The amount of the national debt held
domestically can be viewed as private sector wealth.
US ‘Excess
Savings’ Are Not Excessive
Excess savings are the accounting counterpart of ‘extra’ government debt.
According to national accounting, the flow of private (i.e. household +
business) saving must be channelled to one of three uses: it can finance
investment, be lent abroad, or to the government. Over the past year, the US
government spent roughly $2 trillion to fight the COVID-19 recession, most of
it financed with debt. The $1.6 trillion in ‘excess savings’ is the accounting
counterpart of this increase in government borrowing. As it is often the case
with accounting, this observation has limited economic implications. It does
not reveal why households accumulated the ‘excess savings’, nor whether they
will spend them once the economy fully reopens. But it helps us to consider them
under a different light – not as ‘extra’ resources ready to be spent, but as
the flip side of the extraordinary fiscal effort to fight the COVID-19
pandemic. Excess savings are mostly held by… savers.
The real reason to worry about MMT is not the theory but the practice
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
‘Net Zero’? More
Like Not Zero
Scientists
describe 'hidden biodiversity crisis' as variation within species is lost.
check it out if only for the very cool graphics:
In the Atlantic
Ocean, Subtle Shifts Hint at Dramatic Dangers
U.S. dams,
levees get D grades, need $115 billion in upgrades
Heavier precipitation caused by climate change is straining the nation's
aging flood-control systems.
COVID Fare:
Coronavirus
crisis unlikely to be over by the end of the year, WHO warns
Dr Michael Ryan says Covid-19 is ‘very much in control’ as global
infections rise for first time in almost two months
World on brink
of fourth wave of coronavirus
The COVID-19
vaccine race – weekly update
Other Fare:
Tweets of the Week:
Two things can be true (and have been true for a long time):
1. Inflation is a risk.
2. There are bad inflation arguments being made.
One example of how complex these things can be. Take this chart. I've
seen it everywhere. Textbook hockey stick:
Looks very, very bad. And yes, the Fed increased the money supply a lot last year. But most of this chart has nothing to do with that ...
M1 is mostly checking accounts -- money you can access right away.
Savings accounts are counted in M2.
But last April the Fed changed the regulations to allow banks to let
customers have unlimited withdrawals from savings accounts (typical limit is 6
per month). They did this to let people pay bills during the Covid meltdown.
That rule change took savings accounts that used to be counted in M2 and made them look like checking accounts, which go in M1.
It was not new money being created; just literally shifted from savings to checking.
Thats why M2's yoy
rise is waaaaay less than M1.
Back to the hockey stick chart: The headline is: "Money supply increases by $14 trillion." BAD!
The nuance is: "$10 trillion of that already existed and most of what you're seeing is an accounting change that has no impact on money supply."
Can't sell newsletters with that!
This show how much the rule change affected things. The blue line is M1 under old rules; the black dashed line is what's been reported as a cause of the new rules.
Happy to be on the other side of the Larry Summers / Niall Ferguson
school of inflation.
Their economic models fundamentally misunderstand deflationary forces of
today's economy.
It is not the 1990s anymore; it sure ain't the 1970s.
Experts' expertise is about the past.
EXTRA [controversial or non-market-related] FARE:
ESG Fare:
Chris Hedges: The Age of
Social Murder
The two million deaths that
have resulted from the ruling elite’s mishandling of the global pandemic will
be dwarfed by what is to follow. The global catastrophe that awaits us, already baked into the ecosystem
from the failure to curb the use of fossil fuels and animal agriculture,
presage new, deadlier pandemics, mass migrations of billions of desperate
people, plummeting crop yields, mass starvation, and systems collapse. The science that elucidates this social
death is known to the ruling elites. The science that warned us of this
pandemic, and others that will follow, is known to the ruling elites. The
science that shows that a failure to halt carbon emissions will lead to a
climate crisis and ultimately the extinction of the human species and most other
species is known to the ruling elites. They cannot claim ignorance. Only
indifference.
The facts are
incontrovertible.
…
As the climate crisis
worsens, the political constrictions will tighten, making public resistance
difficult. We do not live, yet, in the brutal Orwellian state that appears on
the horizon, one where all dissidents will suffer the fate of Julian Assange.
But this Orwellian state is not far away.
…
The elites thrive in this
system, as long as they serve the dictates of what Lewis Mumford called the
“megamachine,” the convergence of science, economy, technics and political
power unified into an integrated, bureaucratic structure whose sole goal is to
perpetuate itself. This structure, Mumford noted, is antithetical to
“life-enhancing values.”
…
the most glaring example of
our suicidal folly, symptomatic of all decaying civilizations that squander
diminishing resources in institutions and projects that accelerate their
decline.
…
A decade from now we will
look back at the current global ruling class as the most criminal in human
history, willfully dooming millions upon millions of people to die, including
those from this pandemic, which dwarf the murderous excesses of the killers of
the past including the Europeans that carried out the genocide of the
indigenous peoples in the Americas, the Nazis that exterminated some 12 million
people, the Stalinists or Mao’s Cultural Revolution. This is the largest crime
against humanity ever committed. It is being committed in front of us. And, with
few exceptions, we are willfully being herded like sheep to the slaughter.
It is not that most people
have faith in the ruling elites. They know they are being betrayed. They feel
vulnerable and afraid. They understand that their misery is unacknowledged and
unimportant to the global elites, who have concentrated staggering amounts of
wealth and power into the hands of a tiny cabal of rapacious oligarchs.
…
The Biden administration
will not carry out the economic, political, social or environmental reforms
that will save us. The fossil fuel industry will continue to extract oil. The
wars will not end. Social inequality will grow. Government control, with its
militarized police forces of internal occupation, wholesale surveillance and loss
of civil liberties, will expand. New pandemics, along with droughts, wildfires,
monster hurricanes, crippling heat waves and flooding, will lay waste to the
country as well as a population burdened by a for-profit health care system
that is not designed or equipped to deal with a national health crisis.
The evil that makes this
social murder possible is collective. It is perpetrated by the colorless
bureaucrats and technocrats churned out of business schools, law schools,
management programs and elite universities. These systems managers carry out
the incremental tasks that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and
death work.
…
We cannot emotionally absorb
the magnitude of the looming catastrophe and therefore do not act.
COVID Fare:
What's More
Likely-- A 4th Wave Or A Quick End? Ask Conservatives Why They're Behind A 4th
Wave
I have friends making travel
plans and friends ready to go back to eating in restaurants. I don't only think
they are out of their minds. I think they are going to be severely
disappointed.
Number of
Injuries Reported to CDC After COVID Vaccines Climbs by Nearly 4,000 in One
Week
Between Dec. 14, 2020, and
Feb. 18, 2021, 19,907 reports of adverse events were submitted to VAERS,
including 1,095 deaths and 3,767 serious injuries.
The latest data made public
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event
Reporting System (VAERS) on deaths and injuries reported after COVID vaccines
are in line with trends that have been emerging since the first data were
released in December.
Between Dec. 14, 2020 and
Feb. 18, 2021, 19,907 reports of adverse events have been reported to VAERS,
including 1,095 deaths and 3,767 serious injuries.
About a third of the deaths
reported occurred within 48 hours of vaccination, and 48% of the people who
died became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated..
Mask mandates were
associated with a 0.5 percentage point decrease (p = 0.02) in daily COVID-19
case growth rates 1–20 days after implementation and decreases of 1.1, 1.5,
1.7, and 1.8 percentage points 21–40, 41–60, 61–80, and 81–100 days,
respectively, after implementation (p<0.01 for all) (Table 1) (Figure). Mask
mandates were associated with a 0.7 percentage point decrease (p = 0.03) in daily
COVID-19 death growth rates 1–20 days after implementation and decreases of
1.0, 1.4, 1.6, and 1.9 percentage points 21–40, 41–60, 61–80, and 81–100 days,
respectively, after implementation (p<0.01 for all). Daily case and death
growth rates before implementation of mask mandates were not statistically
different from the reference period.
Stay-at-home policy is a case of exception fallacy: an internet-based ecological study
A recent mathematical model
has suggested that staying at home did not play a dominant role in reducing
COVID-19 transmission. …
With our results, we were
not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in ~ 98%
of the comparisons after epidemiological weeks 9 to 34.
Covid-19 Pandemic: Daily World Report
The virus V2 causes covid-19
… V2 continually adapts, primarily to
facilitate infection and contagion. New V2 varieties keep being discovered. … Vaccines are proving ineffective against the
newly evolved variants of V2 – what is termed “viral escape.” Jabs will never
stop V2: the virus is just too wily. V2 is an endemic virus. … The current
global trend in new covid cases is tentative, especially considering that known
instances are statistically dwarfed by viral spread of more contagious
variants. … Not reporting from lack of testing or government incompetence is
the benign cause of under-counts. Such is the case in the USA and much of
Africa. Some countries fudge their numbers to make their epidemics politically
less damaging. China reports covid cases, not asymptomatic V2 carriers. … Because
of its surreptitious infectiousness (asymptomatic transmission), V2 has proven
unstoppable. No country contained their epidemic. Lockdowns at best barely slow
viral spread. A study of 149 countries found lockdowns and social distancing
restrictions correlated with only an average 13% reduction in reported cases. …
There is a strong correlation between covid severity and vitamin D level in the
body. Restrictions which decrease sunlight exposure are counterproductive to
countering covid. Covid death rates are 10 times higher in countries where most
adults are overweight, such as the US and Britain. … Reluctance to be
vaccinated is high among health care workers throughout Europe, who are
understandably suspicious of side effects for vaccines which were hastily
tested. … While those in the know are understandably squeamish about getting
hastily tested jabs, the average fool is getting over it, thanks to all the
publicity. … For healthy young people especially, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine
is likely to cause worse symptoms than infection by the V2 virus itself. This
is because viral loading in the body is gradual (if the virus is not defeated
early on), whereas a vaccine is a viral shock treatment. Side effects are more
common in those who have already been infected with V2. Adverse reactions to
the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine abetted the deaths of the elderly in Norway and
France. The official report is that the people dying were frail, which in no
way denies that vaccination did them in, and still suggests that jab side
effects are a significant hazard. It also raises the question of why vaccines
are being given to people in such a parlous state.
In essence the Pfizer and
Moderna mRNA substances are a giant experiment, nothing else. If you can tell
me what the logic is behind injecting -soon- hundreds of millions of people
with something about which the WHO itself says: “we haven’t seen any evidence
yet indicating whether or not they stop transmission,” try me. And how you get
from there to issuing “vaccine passports” is as puzzling as the entire
propaganda campaign. Who’s engaging in “science denial” here? In its core
essence, an Emergency Use Authorization is unscientific.
A vaccine used to mean
something that relied on -mostly- dead virus material to get your body to
produce immunity “material”. What mRNA does -in this case – is force your body
to produce an S1 spike protein, which is toxic to your body. Someone compared
it to sticking a USB stick in your body, but one you can never take out
anymore. Actually, it’s more like sticking such a USB stick into -almost- every
single cell of your body. Forever.
Can it be successful? Maybe,
but we have no idea. No research. No clue what mRNA does in the long term.
There’s a lot of concern about what it might do to our immune systems. So lots
of questions.
… And the press help shape
this new world, and Big Tech becomes Big Brother.
… frankly, I’m more afraid
of sticking a genetic USB stick that generates untested genetic material in my
body for the rest of my life, than I am of a virus that is unlikely to kill me.
Whistleblower:
25% of Residents in German Nursing Home Died After Pfizer Vaccine
Russia’s 3rd
vaccine: CoviVac developer tells RT new jab uses classic ‘dead virus’
technology
“Globally, almost 100% of
vaccines contain either deactivated or live pathogens,” he said, adding that
the one developed by his center contains an ‘inactivated’ (dead) coronavirus.
This type of vaccine simulates a natural infection process, introducing the
immune system to the virus and “teaching” the body to fight the pathogen without
the risk of it spreading through the body and causing disease, he explained.
The official Covid-19
response is the apotheosis of inversion and probably the one that runs it off
the rails.
There’s a model that has
repeatedly erred predicting infection and death rates by orders of magnitude. Use
it!
Politicians and bureaucrats,
the two most power-hungry groups on the planet, are clamoring for unlimited
powers to destroy jobs, businesses, economies, lives, and liberty. Give it
to ’em, no questions asked!
Sunshine, Vitamin D, fresh
air, and exercise prevent diseases and lessen their symptoms’ severity. Lock
’em up!
Lockdowns aren’t working. Lock
’em up harder!
Masks don’t prevent or
hinder viral transmission, their packaging says so. Double, triple, or
better yet, quadruple mask!
At high cycle thresholds,
the PCR test throws off many false positives, inflating case counts. Crank
up the cycle thresholds until Biden gets in office!
Cheap medicines
hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin both prevent and cure the disease, provided
it’s not too far advanced. Discourage their use!
They work better than
expensive vaccines. Make vaccinations mandatory!
Scores of reputable and
eminent doctors and scientists are questioning and criticizing the protocols. Censor
them and follow our shapeshifting science!
Death counts are inflated
because hospitals have a financial incentive to attribute deaths to Covid-19
and anybody who has tested positive and subsequently dies of whatever cause is
labeled a Covid-19 death. If they scare people into saving just one life….
The cure is far worse than
the disease. Shut up or we’ll shut you up!
There’s always germs out
there and they constantly mutate, this horseshit could last forever. New
Normal, Great Reset.
It will last forever, and it
will get worse, won’t it? We’ll circle back on that…
… The danger to all this is
individuals who think and act for themselves, those who are woke to the woke,
so to speak.
GloboCap is now making the
transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2 of the “New Normal” roll-out.
Phase 1 was pretty much
classic “shock and awe.” An “apocalyptic virus” was “discovered.” A global
“state of emergency” was declared. Constitutional rights were cancelled.
…
But the “shock and awe”
phase can’t go on forever, nor is it ever intended to. Its purpose is (a) to
terrorize the targeted masses into a state of submission, (b) to irreversibly
destabilize their society, so that it can be radically “restructured,” and (c)
to convincingly demonstrate an overwhelming superiority of force, so that
resistance is rendered inconceivable. This shock and awe (or “rapid dominance”)
tactic has been deployed by empires, and aspiring empires, throughout the
course of military history. It has just been deployed by GloboCap against …
well, against the entire world. And now, that phase is coming to an end.
The shape of Phase 2 is not
entirely clear yet, but one can make a few logical assumptions
the changing definition of
herd immunity; pretty blatant:
Socio-Political Fare:
The Hidden
Secrets of Neoliberalism
Scientific communication in a post-truth society
Abstract
Within the scientific
community, much attention has focused on improving communications between
scientists, policy makers, and the public. To date, efforts have centered on
improving the content, accessibility, and delivery of scientific communications.
Here we argue that in the current political and media environment faulty
communication is no longer the core of the problem. Distrust in the scientific
enterprise and misperceptions of scientific knowledge increasingly stem less from problems of communication
and more from the
widespread dissemination of misleading and biased information. We describe the profound structural shifts in the media environment that have occurred in recent decades and
their connection to public policy decisions and technological changes. We
explain how these shifts have enabled unscrupulous actors with ulterior motives increasingly to
circulate fake news, misinformation, and disinformation with the help of trolls, bots, and
respondent-driven algorithms. We document the high degree of partisan
animosity, implicit ideological bias, political polarization, and politically
motivated reasoning that now prevail in the
public sphere and offer an actual example of how clearly stated scientific conclusions can be
systematically perverted in the media through an internet-based campaign of disinformation and misinformation.
We suggest that, in addition to attending to the clarity of their
communications, scientists must also develop online strategies to counteract
campaigns of misinformation and disinformation that will inevitably follow the
release of findings threatening to partisans on either end of the political
spectrum.
A new video montage of
recent interviews with former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden
exposes how the global COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns – which have been
particularly severe and far-reaching in Western countries like the UK, Canada,
and in a number of major US cities – coupled with the already immense power of
Silicon Valley and its allies in the national security state, has served to
keep individuals and entire populations ‘gated off’ from one another. “This is
just the beginning,” Snowden warns of these unprecedented times. “All of these
things today have consequences which we are not informed about.” “I would say
this is sort of unusual… we’re all spread all over the world in different
rooms, everybody’s locked up… but for me this is how I’ve always lived.”
He narrates that so much of
our life is “intermediated by the screens.” Increasingly our lives are
“intermediated by these screens. We spend less time outside and more and more
time staring into glass or through glass to connect with that larger world –
something beyond ourselves.”Ultimately he poses the following questions as a
warning in the video entitled, “Edward Snowden 2021: The Most VICIOUS HONEST 10
Minutes of your LIFE!”… “Increasingly it feels something distinct from us,
something apart from us – something that we are witnessing rather than
participating in. Ask yourself: Is this your will? Is this what you want? Did
you agree to this? Is this consistent with the vision of the future you want to
see?
Snowden continues, “The
institutional powers of our day… which have assumed for themselves some mandate
– whether to conduct business, whether its to govern the lives of others,
whether it’s to make war, .. these institutional powers don’t seem to
particularly care about your answer to that question: is this what you wanted?
Is this OK? Did you agree to it?” The answer is frequently “you don’t have a
choice” as to whether you agree or not… “because they have the gun, they have
the baton. And Facebook would say ‘Click OK to continue’ – and if you don’t you
can’t do anything…”.
All Of
Humanity’s Problems Are Caused By A Lack Of Awareness
A lack of awareness is the
source of all our major problems, whether we’re talking about war, poverty,
ecocide, corruption, exploitation, authoritarianism, prejudice, or even much
smaller-scale problems like abusive family dynamics or the psychological
suffering of the individual.
…
Yes, from a certain point of
view it is true and accurate to say that many of our large-scale problems are
due to the fact that humans whose brains lack functioning empathy centers are
most well-equipped to manipulate their way into positions of power and
influence, and that the amoral nature of capitalism ensures that it will be
dominated by those willing to do whatever it takes to climb to the top. From a
certain point of view it is true and accurate to say that our problems are
caused by the fact that things like war, oppression, ecocide and exploitation
will necessarily continue as long as our world is dominated by a system where
those things are profitable and human behavior is driven by profit.
But it is also true that
underlying every single part of the dynamics I just listed is a fundamental
lack of human awareness.
Why are psychopaths allowed
to manipulate their way into power and influence? Because people aren’t
sufficiently aware that it is happening.
…
If people were sufficiently
aware of what their government is doing, what oligarchs are doing, what banks
are doing, what the military is doing, those power structures would be unable
to operate in the way that they do, because a sufficient number of people would
rise up collectively to stop them. This is why so much energy goes into
protecting government secrecy, circulating mass media propaganda, promoting
internet censorship and jailing journalists who reveal too much: they are
preventing awareness of the truth from spreading so that they can continue
operating in the darkness.
Big Thoughts:
Financialization is no longer purely institutional. It has seeped into
our culture.
I agree with the first five.. which makes it harder to disagree with the
rest of the list, with which I am less familiar; scary, if true:
If you were to climb around
in my brain and make yourself at home for a bit, when you
climbed back out these are fifteen concepts I’d want you to take away with you:
1. Power and wealth are becoming ever more concentrated.
2. The masses have been fractured by identity politics to take the
pressure off a global billionaire class intent on continuing to run our world
on war, debt, toxins, and extraction.
3. Information needed to make informed individual and collective choices
is being suppressed.
4. Technological advancements have outstripped our ethical frameworks,
though admittedly those frameworks were never all that robust.
5. Strategic investments have hijacked civic, academic, and faith-based
institutions. These entities are busy repackaging surveillance capitalism as
data-driven stakeholder capitalism. We’re to be good digital-citizen subjects
of e-government solutionism run through public-private partnerships (or
fascism).
6. The elite aim to remake the earth as a planetary computer under their
total control.
7. That virtualization will be coded into existence with coerced, unfree
labor: children, prisoners, refugees, people with disabilities, and the global
poor.
…
More on Alison’s views on the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Great
Reset here:
How Engineered
Pandemics And Poverty Profit The Elite – Truthiverse Interview, October 2020
Quotes of the Week:
Caitlin Johnstone: There is only ever one
news story on any given day, and it is always the same news story: wealthy and
powerful people seek more wealth and power, and narratives are spun to advance
these agendas.
Charles Hugh Smith: Those looking up from
their "free fish!" frolicking will see the tsunami too late to save
themselves.
… You know the Great Reflation Trade: the world has saved up trillions,
governments are spending trillions, it's going to be the greatest boom since
the stone masons partied at the Great Pyramid in Giza. It's so obvious that
everyone has jumped in the water to scoop up all the free fish (i.e. stock
market gains). Only an idiot would hesitate to frontrun the Great Reflation's
guaranteed inflation.
Unless, of course, what we really have is a tale of reflation, told by an
idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Pic of the Week:
Satire of the Week:
Pics of the Week:
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