SPONSOR

Vaulted Invest in Gold

Visit this blog’s sponsor. Vaulted is an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold: Kunstler.com/vaulted


 

Support JHK on Patreon

 

If you’re interested in supporting this blog, check out the Patreon page or Substack.
 
Get This blog by email:

Attention Movie Producers!
JHK’s screenplay in hard-copy edition

Click to order!

A Too-Big-To-Fail Bankster…
Three Teenagers who bring him down…
Gothic doings on a Connecticut Estate.
High velocity drama!


Now Live on Amazon

“Simply the best novel of the 1960s”


Now in Paperback !
Only Seven Bucks!
JHK’s Three-Act Play
A log mansion in the Adirondack Mountains…
A big family on the run…
A nation in peril…


Long Emergency Cafe Press ad 2

Get your Official JHK swag on Cafe Press


The fourth and final book of the World Made By Hand series.

Harrow_cover_final

Battenkill Books (autographed by the Author) |  Northshire Books Amazon


emb of Riches Thumbnail

JHK’s lost classic now reprinted as an e-book
Kindle edition only


 

Clusterfuck Nation
Now appearing Mondays and Fridays

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page!

And suddenly the storms of early Trumptopia subside, or seem to. The surface of things turns eerily placid as the sweets of May sweep away the toils of an elongated mud season. Somebody stuffed Kim Jong Un back in his bunker with a carton of Kools and the Vin Diesel video library. France appears resigned to Hollandaise Lite in the refreshing form of boy wonder Macron. It’s been weeks since The New York Times complained about the Russians stealing Hillary’s turn as leader of the free world. We’re given to understand that Congress managed overnight to cook up a spending bill that will avert a Government shut-down until September. Rest easy America… oh, and buy every dip.

A calm surface is exactly what Black Swans like to land on, though by definition we will not know they’re out there until our reveries are broken by the sound of wings flapping. Some kind of dirty bird showed up on Canada’s thawing pond last week when that country’s biggest home loan lender suffered a 60 percent pukage of shareholder equity and had to be bailed out — not by the Canadian government directly, but by the Ontario Province’s Health Care Workers Pension Fund, a neat bit of hocus pocus that amounts to a one-year emergency loan at ten percent interest.

If that’s a way for insolvent public employee pension plans to find enough “yield” to meet their obligations, then maybe that could be the magic bullet for the USA’s foundering pension funds. The next time Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and friends get a case of the Vapors, let them be bailed out by the Detroit School Bus Drivers’ Pension Fund at ten percent interest. That ought to work. And let Calpers take care of Wells Fargo.

The situation across Western Civilization is as follows: virtually every major financial institution has become a check-kiting operation or a Ponzi scheme, and we’ve reached the point where they can only pretend to be rescued. Bailout or not, the Toronto-based Home Capital Group is still stuck with shit-loads of non-performing sub-prime mortgage loans — its specialty — and Canada’s spectacular real estate bubble has hardly begun to pop. The collateral is starting to turn, like dead meat in the May sunshine, and the odium will waft across the border.

It doesn’t take much to blow things up, as the world discovered in several other historically recent episodes. The 1998 banking contagion started with the collapse of Thailand’s currency, called the baht. I doubt you could count on one hand the number of people in Wall Street or the Federal Reserve (with its 300-plus PhD economists) who gave a flying fuck about the Thai baht. Before you knew it, South Korea and Indonesia started whirling around the drain. And then Russia felt the suck. And then the Nobel Prize winning economists at a Connecticut hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management found out the hard way that their “secret sauce” investment formula which “could not fail in the life of this universe or several like it,” fatally poisoned its balance sheet on a repast of Russian sovereign bonds after only about eighteen months. And it took all the poobahs of American banking to paper over the firm’s death about five minutes before the global banking system would shut down via the greatest daisy chain of cross-collateralized financial booby-traps ever assembled.

And ten years later, there was the fiasco of 2008, starring Lehman Brothers and a demonic host of grifters trafficking in worthless bonded debt around the sub-prime mortgage racket tied into a toxic web of “derivative financial products” — i.e. bad bets between insolvent counter-parties masquerading as “insurance” against unsound investment. Trillions of bailout monies conjured out of thin air fixed that, oh yes it did!

So enjoy the festivities around the Maypole today, and the suddenly calm waters of global affairs, and keep your ears pricked for the sound of wings flapping.


Who is Pooh Bollinger? And what’s got her so worked up?
Find out soon in this space….


Books by JHK

The World Made By Hand Series:
Book 1:
World Made by Hand
Book 2:
The Witch of Hebron
Buy World Made By Hand Signed and local from Battenkill BooksBuy World Made By Hand on AmazonBuy World Made By Hand at Northshire Books Buy The Witch of Hebron signed and local from Battenkill BooksBuy The Witch of Hebron on AmazonBuy The Witch of Hebron at Northshire Books
Book 3:
A History of the Future
Book 4:
Harrows of Spring
Signed and local from Battenkill BooksAvailable on AmazonAvailable at Northshire Books Signed and local from Battenkill BooksAvailable on AmazonAvailable at Northshire Books
Geography of Nowhere The Long Emergency
Available on Kindle Buy The Long Emergency signed and local from Battenkill BooksBuy The Long Emergency on Amazon Buy The Long Emergency at Northshire Books

Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page


This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted


Order now! Jim’s new book
About the tribulations of growing up

Click here for signed author copies from Battenkill Books

Order from Amazon

Order from Barnes and Noble

Order now! Jim’s other new book
A selection of best blogs 2017 to now!

Click here for signed author copies from Battenkill Books

Order from Amazon

Order from Troy Bookmakers


Paintings from the 2023 Season
New Gallery 15


GET THIS BLOG VIA EMAIL PROVIDED BY SUBSTACK

You can receive Clusterfuck Nation posts in your email when you subscribe to this blog via Substack. Financial support is voluntary.

Sign up for emails via https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com


About James Howard Kunstler

View all posts by James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

282 Responses to “The Sound of One Wing Flapping”

  1. venuspluto67 May 1, 2017 at 9:36 am #

    The whole Matrix of Rackets (TM) has been going on much longer than any of us would have predicted it would eight years ago. Never underestimate the inertia of large, complex systems combined with the power of frantic, red-hot money-printing!

    • Beryl of Oyl May 1, 2017 at 11:34 am #

      I like that Matrix of Rackets (TM).

      • K-Dog May 1, 2017 at 11:44 am #

        Matrix of Rackets, fabric of folly.

        This is America not Canada. Our institutions would rather be bailed out with free taxpayer money they don’t have to pay back at all. Ten percent interest for them, no way. The moneyed in America would rather see ten percent death in the rest of us than experience any change in their spending habits.

        Life is about consuming as much as you can without regard for others. It does not matter if you agree with this statement. The ones doing the consuming do, and that’s what matters.

        • Beryl of Oyl May 1, 2017 at 12:28 pm #

          There’s a character in Nelson DeMille’s The Gold Coast, who states that if you are poor in America, you’re worse than a criminal.
          An awful lot of Americans have absorbed that mentality, whether they know it or not.

        • routersurfer May 1, 2017 at 6:16 pm #

          Well said Dog! All Hail Master Card. Got Pension?

          • Neon Vincent May 1, 2017 at 9:11 pm #

            Speaking of “got pension,” our host referenced the fictional “Detroit School Bus Drivers’ Pension Fund.” To the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing. When the bus drivers for the Detroit Public Schools actually were employees of the Board, they would have paid into the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System (MPSERS), which all the rest of the public school and community college employees in Michigan belong to unless they’ve opted out for TIAA-CREF or a defined contribution plan like a 401k. Detroit’s school buses have been privatized and are run by a consortium of three companies, ABC Student Transportation, Trinity Transportation, and DHT Transportation. I doubt they share a common retirement system unless the still unionized employees are still paying into MPSERS. Too bad the “Detroit School Bus Drivers’ Pension Fund” likely doesn’t exist; it should, as the image it evokes is perfect for our author’s purpose.

            He also told us readers to “enjoy the festivities around the Maypole today.” I have some of that on my blog in the form of drum corps maypoles, although the second doubles as a circus tent. Somehow, that’s appropriate for the times we live in.

          • K-Dog May 2, 2017 at 12:53 am #

            There is May day and there is May day. Everyone who would have you forget about the peoples struggle is hot to remind you that by the Middle Ages every English village had a Maypole today. They want to keep you ignorant. Maypole and greeneries. Ritual festival is all for them. These types tend to be those who reap great benefit from ravishing the planet. Which is what unbridled capitalism, their god, does.

    • Walter B May 1, 2017 at 10:07 pm #

      Talk about rackets, even the very concept of money printing boggles the mind for those of us who realize the true value of money, which is ZERO. Printing up huge quantities of ZERO and handing the ZERO’s out to your wealthy buddies in other ZERO related rackets while beating down the working slob (you know, the ones that actually produce the value) simply takes any control out of hands of the slobs and gives total control to those who laugh as they create a class of subservient slaves. It is not about wealth, it is about CONTROL, the Prime Directive of every government ever conceived – Control the Masses! Lest they realize they are being screwed. Hand them out enough deviant sex and entertainment however, and they will even allow themselves to be screwed because they can still screw others! Wake up or perish America. The clock is ticking….

    • Ishabaka May 2, 2017 at 9:10 pm #

      Tulipomania in Holland lasted 36 years. If you’d realized tulip bulbs were a bubble 25 years in, and shorted tulip bulbs, you’d have lost money the next 11 years.

  2. Pucker May 1, 2017 at 9:37 am #

    Obama just returned from his 1 month vacation in Tahiti at an exclusive Euro 2,000 per night island resort (without Michelle) to do some “community organizing” and play some basketball with poor black kids in South Chicago before giving a $400,000 speech to a Wall Street bank.

    “President Obama’s a friend of mine,” Sanders said. “I think he, as president, represented our country with integrity and intelligence, but I think at a time when people are so frustrated with the power of Wall Street and the big-money interests, I think it is unfortunate that President Obama is doing this.”
    Sanders told Bloomberg the same when asked about the matter on Thursday. Obama is taking the equivalent of one year’s presidential salary to give a speech at Cantor Fitzgerald’s health care conference in September.

    • shotho May 1, 2017 at 9:52 am #

      And, then, we have Sander’s own grifting!

      • janet May 1, 2017 at 10:07 am #

        No. Sanders has a long grift-free history in congress.

        • hmuller May 1, 2017 at 10:59 am #

          Sanders may not be personally “on the take”, but his tolerance for such behavior in Obama and Hillary does him no credit. Can that old, long-winded Bolshevik be so out of touch that he does not smell the stench of corruption and utter hypocrisy on his friends?
          Maybe you should enlighten him, Janet.

          • Beryl of Oyl May 1, 2017 at 11:24 am #

            I think Bernie was that out of touch. I think he started to wake up and smell the coffee, but don’t forget, there is “leverage” in play here.
            He is limited in what he may say.
            Bernie being a secular Jew from a white state, was predisposed to not see anything ill in Barack Obama, because that would make him a racist.
            I think I know what that leverage was/is, btw.
            It has to do with Jane Sanders, and two of the Rackets. A real estate deal, and a college. No, make that three. Finance. That’s a Racket. A Racket that can be used selectively, to prosecute/persecute anyone who steps over the line, as the Sanderses did when they went up against Hillary.
            I heard the FBI was involved. There’s a Racket unto itself.

        • routersurfer May 1, 2017 at 6:19 pm #

          Janet as a Bernie fan I have never understood his take on President Obama. Guess he needs to suck up to the party BOSS.

    • malthuss May 1, 2017 at 10:24 am #

      He was on geffens yacht.

    • theboosh May 1, 2017 at 10:32 am #

      Hey Pucker: You got to rest your pathetic little head each night w/ 8 years of Obama. Regardless how you differ from his policies – the serious 24/7 responsibility of that job (all the while hearing from many of the citizens he was serving calling his wife an ugly n….r gorilla, etc.) and NOT doing the worst things imaginable against democracy – done by current Prez. Yeah, he can make money now and I won’t blink an eye. Is he trading Gov secrets; insider trading; power for profit, etc for his 400K? You bitch about $2500/day vacation – yet silent re 10 times that amount WE pay for Trump family to travel and conduct personal business lining their pockets. Yes, we were all distracted and gliding – and now we have worse than you could ever imagine. Love to see your rants 18 months from now re how terrible Obama was.

      • elysianfield May 1, 2017 at 11:16 am #

        Boosh,
        Sooo, Charles Manson is a saint because Charles Whitman killed more people than he did?

        • lsjogren May 1, 2017 at 11:34 am #

          touche

          • Q. Shtik May 1, 2017 at 3:15 pm #

            touche – Isjogren

            ============

            Trust me, I am NOT trying to sandbag the conversation….. I just want to know and understand:

            If touche is pronounced too-shay

            why is douche not pronounced doo-shay?

        • Janos Skorenzy May 1, 2017 at 1:40 pm #

          He was programmed during the Bush years. Probably had his first orgasm during his first term. Now he keeps a poster of George Jr in his room to hate/love.

          Same with the Boomers: Watergate and Democratic moral supremacy is what formed them. That will always be the high point of goodness and decency. The crimes of Obama simply don’t exist because they don’t interest them. NIXON is the criminal, got it? NIXON. It’s not different than all those old guys talking about WW2 in VFW Halls. Or Korea. Or Vietnam. Or BRH worshiping the gallery of rogue/heroes. He doesn’t care which. They’re Fucking Americans who killed the Enemy!

        • stelmosfire May 1, 2017 at 2:04 pm #

          AH, grasshopper! Your memory is long. The Texas Tower was a heck of a good shot!. Better than Oswald.

          • routersurfer May 1, 2017 at 6:21 pm #

            Adjusted well for drop and angle from that tower.

        • theboosh May 1, 2017 at 3:35 pm #

          why do you distill down to complete/simplified opposites: saint/sinner; good/evil. Such false equivalents, I suppose, allow you to ignore/condone present wrongdoing because there may always be someone else worse?

      • hmuller May 1, 2017 at 4:03 pm #

        Mr.Boosh,
        Trump may yet prove to be the worst President ever. But it won’t be for reversing course, but rather for carrying forward the Bush-Obama (Neo-Con) agenda. To point out only a few points:

        More foreign wars, regime change, nation building, and pre-emptive strikes;
        More antagonizing Russia and China rather than working together;
        More surveillance on Americans and curtailment of free speech by calling it “hate speech”
        More suppression of the non-corporate, non-globalist alt media;
        More trampling on every Constitutional right by invoking the war on terrorism;
        More militarizing the police, brutalizing society, and permitting an Orwellian deep state of unaccountable Black Ops Agencies;
        More financial skulduggery to hide an economically declining system of scams, frauds, and rackets using phony, Potemkin statistics;
        More blind eyes for Globalist criminal activity on Wall Street.

        We elected Trump to drain the swamp, but he appears to be morphing into a swamp creature. You Trump haters may prove to be ultimately justified in reviling the man, but ironically because he turned into one of you.

    • K-Dog May 1, 2017 at 11:51 am #

      In the next couple of months I’ll be giving three talks myself. I’ll be paid the same for all three. Someone will say thank you after I’m done, it has been a real pleasure. Something like that. A thank you and $00000.00. But I’ll be happy to do them.

      • Q. Shtik May 1, 2017 at 12:16 pm #

        In the next couple of months I’ll be giving three talks myself. – K-Dog

        ==============

        Where and concerning what?

      • DA May 1, 2017 at 12:30 pm #

        No kibble at least? A scratch behind the ears? A freaking chew toy for crying out loud!!!

      • Janos Skorenzy May 1, 2017 at 1:41 pm #

        A Ted talk?

    • Matt Holbert May 1, 2017 at 3:54 pm #

      The Washington State Investment Board owns a majority interest in Obama’s temporary residence (The Brando) in the South Pacific. It was a deal done by my successor at WSIB. Gotta give him credit… he recognized that the 1% are where it’s at with respect to Real Estate. Obama instantly became a member of the 1% after leaving the White House. Also, you can bet that he didn’t pay the advertised rate at The Brando.

      Does anyone know how many Cantor Fitzgerald employees — broken down by ethnicity — died in the collapse of the towers on 9/11?

      • hmuller May 1, 2017 at 4:11 pm #

        I read the only one missing from work that day was the CEO, who took his son to school for the first and only time ever. Very convenient little coincidence?!

  3. Elrond Hubbard May 1, 2017 at 9:48 am #

    OSC accuses Home Capital of misleading disclosure after uncovering fraud in mortgage broker channel

    http://www.financialpost.com/m/wp/news/fp-street/blog.html?b=business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/osc-accuses-home-capital-of-misleading-disclosure-after-uncovering-fraud-in-mortgage-broker-channel

    Regulators have accused mortgage lender Home Capital Group Inc. of misleading disclosure after the company uncovered falsified income information on some loan applications and cut ties with dozens of brokers in 2014.

    The allegations, filed by the Ontario Securities Commission on Wednesday, come less than a month after the surprise departure of Home Capital’s chief executive Martin K. Reid, who had replaced veteran CEO Gerald Soloway last year.

    An 11-page statement of allegations also names Home Capital’s former CEOs, Reid and Soloway, as well as Robert Morton, who was chief financial officer at the time of the alleged breaches of securities law.

    The accusations stem from Home Capital’s disclosure after the company was tipped off about the falsification of documents in 2014. The company conducted an internal investigation and subsequently cut ties with 45 brokers.

    The OSC alleges Home Capital “misled” shareholders because it knew there was fraud in its broker channel months before a public announcement in July of 2015.

    • Paulo May 1, 2017 at 10:13 am #

      Sorry JHK, Home Capital is not Canada’s largest mortgage lender. It is a large alternative lender for people who otherwise do not qualify for mortgages.

      I would make a guess our Vancouver Island Credit Union issues more mortgage paper, it just isn’t an investment vehicle.

  4. robert magill May 1, 2017 at 9:49 am #

    {So enjoy the festivities around the Maypole today, and the suddenly calm waters of global affairs, and keep your ears pricked for the sound of wings flapping.}

    “All civilization is centralization. All centralization is economy. Under economical centralization, Asia is cheaper than Europe. The world tends toward economic centralization. Therefore Asia tends to survive and Europe to fail.” Brooks Adams
    (Read: the US and the West here for Europe)

    “Ultimately, that is why we were in Vietnam”
    Gore Vidal

    https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/dollar-store-is-not-for-you/

  5. seawolf77 May 1, 2017 at 9:52 am #

    I believe Peak Oil is now. Why? I spoke with an Oil & Gas someone once who told me that America’s strategy was to use everyone else’s resources first and use ours’ as a last resort. Well we did that with Fracking. I happen to believe there is a lot of fracked wells drilled but untapped. There is also a huge glut, an overhang of about 2 billion barrels that needs to be worked off. That said, we’re probably looking at late 2019 or early 2020 before the next oil price rise. But that will be the time of catastrophe. And it will involve a Middle East war between the west and the east which America and Europe will lose and hegemony will pass to China. Their currency will become the reserve currency of the world. America will become the new England.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • DA May 1, 2017 at 10:38 am #

      I would agree if it weren’t for the nukes. That said, if the globalists decree that the nukes stay in the silos and bunkers, then that’s where they’ll stay, and America will pass the torch to whomever’s next. But the globalists have a pretty damn cozy arrangement over here, which they’ve spent over a century investing in, so I’m guessing that 1.3B Chinese and however many others as may be required will get transmogrified to ash first to prevent that from happening.

      • seawolf77 May 1, 2017 at 10:48 am #

        I don’t believe nukes exist. I think this war will reveal that to the world, because we’ll have to fight for that oil, and it will be a conventional war. That and the Apollo moon landings will be revealed to be fake. London is the only city to have been attacked by ICBM’s. I have never even seen a successful test of a nuclear device on an ICBM. The finger on the button is a myth created by bankers. How else could Bernard Baruch lead the Atomic Energy Commission?

        • snarkmatic9000 May 1, 2017 at 11:13 am #

          You are an idiot. I’ve seen them personally, in a lab/assaembly then deep in-ground, inside a Titan II.

          • seawolf77 May 1, 2017 at 11:52 am #

            You’re just a parrot, and upset with me because I’ve noticed your gnarled beak. Parrot on.

        • RocketDoc May 1, 2017 at 12:22 pm #

          We all have a lot of convenient beliefs that “work” for us. I am scientifically sure we and a number of other states have nukes. We did land on the moon. The guy that put the ICBMs on London built the rockets that put us there. You often make lucid comments but are wrong on this. I have not been to the moon but talked to people who have. Illusions are better than the truth and die hard…

          • beantownbill. May 1, 2017 at 3:56 pm #

            Thanks for responding to the ridiculous post. There’s a big difference between stating an opinion as a truth, and labeling it just as an opinion. That’s what irritates me.

          • messianicdruid May 2, 2017 at 9:52 am #

            The Van Allen Belts are no illusion.

            https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NlXG0REiVzE

        • elysianfield May 1, 2017 at 12:37 pm #

          Wolfie,
          You know, regarding the existence of Nuclear Weapons, you are unusual in your beliefs…I do not think you can find another in the readership that believes that Nuclear Weapons do not exist….a case study you might be…an idiot you are not.

          • thwack May 1, 2017 at 1:24 pm #

            It sounds like “conspiracy candy” they sprinkle around to discredit the real conspiracies like the fake moon landing.

            AKA “agree and amplify”

          • seawolf77 May 1, 2017 at 1:38 pm #

            When I was a kid I read stories in the Reader’s Digest at the doctor’s office. The 3 subjects that stuck out were the lunar/space vacations we’d be going on by now, how nuclear weapons kept getting a 100 times more powerful every year, and how Meyer Lansky ran the mob and was worth 300 million dollars. When Meyer Lansky died his assets didn’t come to 1 million dollars, let alone 300. We’ve stopped getting 100 times more powerful annually and we’ve never even gone back to the moon. Once that Saturn V left the pad, everything you saw was on faith. I have never known anyone that saw a nuclear detonation. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” That’s all it is. A leap of faith. And it’s all ego. You can destroy an entire city with a handful of plutonium. Are you freakin kiddin me? And man can destroy this planet. Does anyone actually believe that? Man destroy the planet. That’s the realm of the Gods. It’s a control device, just like taxes and religion.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 1, 2017 at 1:49 pm #

            You’ve never been to Antarctica or known anyone who has. But you believe. You believe!

            You are freaked out by how much of our life is faith – and as a secular person you are rebelling against it. The Hindus call such basic faith Shraddha – a basic belief in the goodness and thus the lawfulness of life. You’ll have trouble even walking out the door if you lack it.

          • seawolf77 May 1, 2017 at 3:39 pm #

            I’ve never seen you sit on the toilet, but I’m pretty sure that you defecate feces and not Tiffany cuff links. That’s not faith. I’ve never seen the earth from space, but based on the best available knowledge, we are a spinning globe hurtling through space. That’s not faith. But a government telling us they have a super weapon capable of destroying the world, that is faith. It is far more likely they do not. If Saddam Hussein had WMD, he would have used them. He was executed. But he didn’t have them did he? Do you really believe when we go into North Korea that little midget won’t use them. I’ll make a prediction. North Korea will wind up not having WMD either.

          • Janos Skorenzy May 2, 2017 at 4:08 am #

            Well duh, if no one has them (according to you), North Korea won’t either.

        • chuckyzfr1 May 1, 2017 at 8:44 pm #

          Not to be too nit-picky here, but what the Germans used against London during the blitz were not ICBM’s.

    • lsjogren May 1, 2017 at 11:39 am #

      I do think China will eventually be the world’s superpower.

      They don’t appear to suffer from the stupidity of Progressive Idiocracy- obsessing over hallucinated racism and focusing government on such weighty public policy matters such as transgender rest room protocol.

      • Elrond Hubbard May 1, 2017 at 12:07 pm #

        Racism is hardly imaginary. It festers badly in this forum, for example, alongside its cousin-wife anti-Semitism.

        But the Dems spent decades using identity politics as a tool to distract and mislead their voters while they handed off the country to plutocrats, much as the Republicans did with hot-button issues like abortion. That’s now an exhausted electoral strategy (not that the Dems especially show any sign of recognizing this).

        • Janos Skorenzy May 1, 2017 at 1:51 pm #

          Yes, they used race to hide class. And you think therefore race doesn’t exist – because it was used? That doesn’t follow.

          They’re also using electricity against us via the media. Does electricity also not exist?

      • DA May 1, 2017 at 12:28 pm #

        Their economics don’t add up either. If they aim to replace the US then they’ll need to recruit the same phantom carrying capacity that the US has already recruited, and which is no longer available for even the ~350M Americans, never mind the ~1.3B Chinese. Global capitalism is nothing more than a global ponzi scheme, and to the first movers – the Brits, the Americans, and to a somewhat lesser extent the Europeans, the Japanese, and the Koreans – went the spoils. Emphasis on went, because the global bounty is now almost depleted, and there likely will be no global superpower to replace the US. In the coming age of return to low energy, all power will be local.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 1, 2017 at 1:44 pm #

      And that’s why Jared and Ivanka’s kids are learning Chinese. The Tribe is planning to migrate en masse.

      • beantownbill. May 1, 2017 at 4:01 pm #

        I ain’t going nowhere!!

        • elysianfield May 1, 2017 at 7:15 pm #

          Bill,
          Perhaps your invitation was lost in the mail…mine came addressed to me or “occupant”.

  6. LLPete May 1, 2017 at 9:57 am #

    Those are butterfly wings flapping.

  7. pequiste May 1, 2017 at 10:02 am #

    Crashed or not, the Thai Baht get person more fun and frolic than one human can handle.

    You haven’t lived till you have had a C.B.F. and Nuru massage followed by “Chaloeysak” Thai massage.

    Let’s not even mention that mak-mak sexy food either.

  8. janet May 1, 2017 at 10:03 am #

    “France appears resigned to Hollandaise Lite in the refreshing form of boy wonder Macron.” –JHK

    Yes, both Holland and France reject intolerant anti-immigrant fascism. They embrace multiculturalism. London has a Muslim mayor and the USA has Muslim members of congress… and yet no black swan.

    • lsjogren May 1, 2017 at 11:47 am #

      Nice Orwellian touch there Janet to identify a prudent wariness about welcoming people with fascist religious beliefs into western society as “anti-immigrant fascism”.

      Multiculturalism: Embracing cultures that do not share our decadent western notions that gay people should have a right to live and that girls should have a right not to be butchered by surgeons imposing barbaric cultural values.

      Celebrate diversity. You lefties have no idea how close you come to Nazis.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 1, 2017 at 1:54 pm #

        A man dressed as a woman has the RIGHT to use the same bathroom and shower as your daughter. Anything less is madness and criminality and the perps need to be crushed.

  9. thwack May 1, 2017 at 10:06 am #

    Somebody stuffed Kim Jong Un back in his bunker with a carton of Kools and the Vin Diesel video library.

    *********************

    Noboddee boddah me

    Noboddee boddah me eedah

    At Joon Rhee, you can say

    Noboddee boddah meeeeeeee!

  10. Cavepainter May 1, 2017 at 10:07 am #

    JHK is best at calling strikes and fouls but the game is rigged with the announcers up in the press box broadcasting totally fictitious innings. Oh,….all basses were stolen at the beginning.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • Beryl of Oyl May 1, 2017 at 11:27 am #

      That’s poetic.

  11. pequiste May 1, 2017 at 10:12 am #

    Good timing for the Black Swan will be after a summer of R & R for everyone, including the de rigeur riots that will span from Brazil to Baltimore,

    Nothing like the completely “unexpected” event to coincide with the late September through early December time-frame season of diminishing returns and receding light.

    Just perfect for that 40 meter Feadship ( that other boat) to be heading from a Great Neck or Southampton anchorage to the azure waters of St Vincent and the Grenadines or closer somewhere around Beef Island, B.V.I.

  12. Peter VE May 1, 2017 at 10:18 am #

    Russian bonds drove LTC over the edge? I have a collection of Imperial Russian railroad bonds which belonged to my great grandfather. The coupons from mid 1917 on were never clipped and cashed. I’m sure he bought them as a gilt edged investment.
    Those who know the past are doomed to watch those who don’t know the past make the same mistakes….

  13. JimInFlorida May 1, 2017 at 10:19 am #

    I’ve said it before. The fiat currency of the U.S. is backed by the barrel of a gun and all the lies that can be loaded into the breech. Gold and silver have no such power!

    Reagan and the neocons made the Ultimate Faustian Deal to the Council of 13 and pledged American Imperial Forces into their service. In return, the Council will enable Washington to steal, kill, and destroy as needed to keep the Federal Reserve Note afloat.

    That Faustian Deal is still in effect and not one jot or tittle shall pass away in our lifetimes.

    • malthuss May 1, 2017 at 10:26 am #

      Id like to post something but it looks like JHK removed my comment.
      Either that or it didnt post.

    • DA May 1, 2017 at 10:41 am #

      I’d just like to say that I admire the way you worked “jot or tittle” into your comment. 🙂 But the rest of the comment is sound as well.

  14. DA May 1, 2017 at 10:24 am #

    It’s been weeks since The New York Times complained about the Russians stealing Hillary’s turn as leader of the free world. We’re given to understand that Congress managed overnight to cook up a spending bill that will avert a Government shut-down until September. Rest easy America… oh, and buy every dip.

    Hmm… wonder why that is? Trump’s now the beneficiary of agreeing to accede to the wishes of the permanent war party. No “conspiracy” per se, just a “gentlemen’s agreement” between the people who actually run things and the clown buffoon we’ve elected to pretend> he runs things, that the rest of us simply don’t need to know the details of.

    Question: are “black swans” really black swans if they’re planned events? Spotted swans maybe?

    • FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 12:06 pm #

      Hmm… wonder why that is? Trump’s now the beneficiary of agreeing to accede to the wishes of the permanent war party.

      Nope.

      It’s just been proven to the “world progressive community” during a Syrian Tomahawk operation that Russian means of Radio-Electronic warfare “Rubella” could shoot down up to 65% of incoming missiles and the rest could be taken down by the S-400 systems.

      So, the “world progressive community” pissed their panties and decided to keep Trump for further negotiations with Russia.

      • DA May 1, 2017 at 12:18 pm #

        You are an obtuse varmint, aren’t you? I thought we skedaddled you back up into the mountains last week? Your “reading” of world geo-political events from those towering heights, although always interesting, is unfortunately equally misguided. Your focus is in bad need of adjustment Finca.

        • FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 12:21 pm #

          My sincere apologies (and condolences) to the “world progressive community”!

  15. FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 10:26 am #

    1998: Byzantine intrigue, evaporated IMF loan for $10 billion, falling ruble
    … or how a talented thief could steal money faster than an equally talented counterfeiter could print

    It’s fucking Putin!!! I kn?w it, it’s him! He stole our money! But we are going to catch every dollar he stole from us and he is going to pay dearly!

    In 1998 United States allocated $10 billion to support the ruble, which was for some reason beneficial to the US. But they pricked up when Chernomyrdin did not get this money and resigned, instead the money were received by temporary appointed Premiere Kirienko.

    Cash money, which were brought on a special Boeing.

    And then, whether the next day, or a few days after the arrival of this Boeing, the ruble exchange rate began to crumble and the Kirienko government, in full compliance with IMF instructions, began to buy rubles for the imported dollars.

    But people came to the currency exchange with a large dump truck packed with rubles in original bank package, from which it followed that this money was received from the sale of Russian T-bills, and bought up all the IMF dollars in 5 minutes.

    On NPR, this combination was for some reason called Byzantine Intrigue, and if in the beginning (in the morning) they just thrashed in hysteria, then in the evening they realized that the more they thrash, the clearer it will become that the IMF was simply taken for a ride on a large dump truck and on a perfectly legal basis.

    Very shady story, indeed. I still have not been able to find reliable information about whether the IMF loan was issued to Kirienko, or not, and if it was issued, when and in what form. And yet, it is completely unclear what happened earlier, and what later – the government declared a technical default, and then the ruble rate began to crumble or vice versa.

    So far, logically, it turns out that first there was an IMF loan, then default, then the collapse of the ruble, then buying up the IMF loan and its disappearance in unknown direction.

    Accordingly, the pyramid of Russian T-Bills was not a pyramid, but a special operation, which allowed concentrating in the hands of the State the funds that were not in the hands of the oligarchs.

    And default greatly strengthened the effect of this special operation, so that after default, the state could simply buy up all the best Russian companies on quite legitimate grounds, and to carry out the re-nationalization of the economy.

    Actually, with this special operation, the Russian economy began to recover. And the welfare of the new Russian bourgeoisie, lost in the course of the default, was like a drug in the hands of a drug addict.

    First of all, the markets obviously immediately calculated that Russia was finally managed by a strong hand and oil prices began to grow. After a year and a half, they increased 3-fold and exceeded the prices that were before the Asian economic crisis by 1.5 times.

    Accordingly, budget revenues, taking into account the cost of oil production, increased 6-fold, and the economic strength of the IMF loan increased five-fold due to the depreciation of the ruble.

    So if the IMF wanted to really normalize the economic situation in Russia, then it certainly succeeded.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L49VXZwfup8&t=67s

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  16. teddyboy46 May 1, 2017 at 10:55 am #

    it is great that JHK is posting 2x a week now. It is a great way to start the day.

  17. FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 11:11 am #

    The IMF has insisted on the preparation and publication of investigations by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), into allegations of mishandling of the July 1998 Fund disbursement, into relations between the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) and one of its offshore subsidiaries (FIMACO), and into statistical reporting to the IMF by the CBR.

    The investigations found no evidence to support the allegations concerning misappropriation of funds.

    https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2015/09/28/04/54/vc091399

    So long, suckers!

    • DA May 1, 2017 at 12:43 pm #

      Well now! Who could possibly doubt what PricewaterhouseCoopers has to say? The public debasement of everything means that absolutely nothing can be depended on to be credible anymore. Let the thefts continue!

      • FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 1:32 pm #

        DA, you bore me.

        • DA May 1, 2017 at 2:46 pm #

          Jeez, and to think, I wasn’t even trying to entertain you in the first place!

  18. Beryl of Oyl May 1, 2017 at 11:33 am #

    I was wondering when the chickens were coming home to roost, as far as that odd Canadian real estate bubble was concerned.
    That’s why so many American celebrities were threatening, if that can be called a threat, to move to Canada because Trump was elected. They wanted to get in on all the cool while it was still cool.

    • malthuss May 1, 2017 at 2:39 pm #

      None of them moved, when their hero, Hussein left the black house.

      Barack Hussein Obama is certainly a President of firsts. Here’s a fairly comprehensive list: (Read them and weep for our nation)

      1st African-American President (actually 1/2 African-American) in history.
      1st President to come out in open support of gay/lesbian marriage, even though 31 US States have amended their State Constitutions defining marriage as only between one man and one woman.
      1st President to claim that under his presidentcy the, “rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
      1st President to rack up over 5 trillion dollars in debt in less than four years.
      1st President to literally bow to foreign heads of state.
      1st President to have the national debt exceed 10, 11 , 12 , 13 ,14 and 15 trillion dollars.
      1st President to preside over a cut in the credit rating of the United States.
      1st president whose Attorney General (or any active member of his cabinet) was citred for contempt of Congress, and in a bi-partisan vote.
      1st president to utilize Executive Privelege to cover for his Attorney General about an activity the President claims to have not been involved in, and know nothing about.
      1st president whose Attorney General actively lied to Congress and then later had to rescind his testimony regarding his knowledge of a gun running plan to Mexican drug cartels.
      1st president whose Attorney General presided over an illegal sale of thousands of illegal weapons to the Mexican drug cartels.
      1st President whose Attorney Genral dismissed charges against New Black Panthers who were filmed wearing camo fatigues, wielding billy clubs at voters during the 2008 elections. He dropped the charges.
      1st President to have his signature legislation ruled unconstitutional on the grounds it was written on, only to have it ruled constitutional on a tax authority for which it was not written.
      1st President to spend a trillion dollars on shovel ready jobs that he later admitted never existed.
      1st President to loan hundreds of billions to solar firms going bankrupt, then re-write the loans so the taxpayers were in last place when they went bankrupt and his supporters then walked away rich.
      1st President to have coninuous 8% or higher unemployment for over a continuous three year period.
      1st President to have millions of Americans give up and leave the searching work force, which made a 10-12% unemployment rate look like it was only 8%.
      1st President to preside over a period where over 45% of the American public paid no taxes.
      1st President to proclaim at a conference with a foreign leader that the United States is not a Chrsitian Nation.
      1st President to appoint a Secretary of Treasury (and five other top posts), an individual who is a tax evader owing the US government tens of thosuands of dollars.
      1st President to have over 45% of the American people on Government assistance.
      1st President to publically threaten the Supreme Court while it was deciding a case…particular a case regarding his own initiative.
      1st President to preside over passing legislation to take over the entire health industry, which proposal and legislation is what the Supreme Court is deciding on.
      1st President to deliver a eulogy for a communist activist (Saul Mendelson)
      1st President to openly refuse to uphold Federal Law (the Defene of Marriage Act), openly violating his oath of Office to protect and defend the constitution and bear true faith and allegiance to it.
      1st President to have 17 vacations in his first four years.
      1st President to issue an unlawful recess appointment when the Senate was not in recess (against the advise of his own Justice Department).
      1st President to repeatedly and purposely fail to issue Presidential statements at Christmas and Easter.
      1st President to call for our ally, Israel to retreat back to the pre-war 1967 borders.
      1st President to actively support the overthrow of an allied leader, at peace with Israel, in Egypt and support his replacement by militant Islamics, the Muslim bortherhood.
      1st President to cancel the celebration of the National Day of Prayer at the White House but hold a day of Islamic Prayer there during Ramadan.
      1st President to sue a State for requiring valid IDs to vote.
      1st President to halt deportation of illegal aliens in order to issue them temporary work permits, using his executive powers inappropriately to givve them amnesty.
      1st President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing Oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
      1st President to sign a bill permitting the government to hold anyone suspected of association with terrorism indefinitely, without due process, no indictment, no judge or jury, no evidence or trial.
      1st President to appoint 45 czars to issue directives in lieu of legislation
      1st President to bypass Congress and implement the DREAM ACT by executive fiat.
      1st President to threaten a private Auto Company (Ford) after it publically made light of bailouts to GM and Chrysler.
      1st President to threaten insurance companies after they publically complained that the President’s health care legislation was why the had to increase rates.
      1st President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.
      1st President to require private companies to disclose their political contribution records before being able to bid on government contracts
      1st President to golf over 90 times in his first four years.
      1st President to have 22 personal assistants/servants for the 1st lady.
      1st Presidnet to have a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000/year at taxpayer expense.
      1st president to defy a Federal Court order to cease implementing his “Health Care Reform” law.
      1st President to tell a private manufacturing company which state it could or could not locate a factory in.
      1st President to refuse to comply with a Congressional Oversight Committee supoena.
      1st President to withdraw an existing coal permit to a private company that had been properly applied for and granted years earlier.
      1st President to take over a US Auto Company and determine who its executives would be.
      1st President to aborgate US Bankruptcy law so he could turn the company over to his Union supporters.
      1st President to issue an Executive Order making his educational, travel, and health history a national security secret.
      1st President to fire an inspector General of Ameri-corps for catching a friend of the president in a corruption case.

      Yep…this is the list of “1st”s this President, Barack Hussein Obama, has accomplished in his first four years.

      • toktomi May 2, 2017 at 3:38 am #

        The way I view it Obama made a darn good showing during his time in the majors, eight years of continuously being gang raped and he never lost the smile. However, I expect that he’ll be soon sent back to a farm team. I find it hard to imagine that the career players in the major league are happy to have his battered bucket in their camp any longer than necessary.

      • onehunglo May 4, 2017 at 10:51 pm #

        ah, malthuss, you perceptive indeed.

        not much escape you.

        “The more you know, the more it hurts.”
        -Solomon

        let not you heart be troubled.

        may God be with you.

        -onehunglo

    • Elrond Hubbard May 4, 2017 at 12:51 pm #

      The Trump Dodgers
      A growing number of left-leaning Americans, outraged by ?the politics? at home?, have decamped for Canada. Meet eight new Toronto arrivals

      http://torontolife.com/city/life/meet-people-moved-toronto-escape-donald-trump/

      “Democrats always threaten to move to Canada when a Republican wins the presidency. This time they seem to mean it. The night Trump won, traffic to Canada’s immigration website quintupled, crashing the site. Applications to U of T from American students nearly doubled. And in the months since the election, a cottage industry of real estate agents with expertise in cross-border transactions, immigration lawyers and talent-hungry recruiters quickly cropped up. Many of the early-bird defectors have already arrived. Others, who were here but planning to head back to the States, have opted to stick around instead. And there are plenty more on the way. Toronto has long been tortured by news of our best and brightest leaving for the U.S. Soon, the reverse might be true.”

  19. patrickd May 1, 2017 at 11:45 am #

    Economics as we know it is racketeering, as our host points out twice a week. None of what goes on in that criminal syndicate makes any logical sense because it is basically theft, fraud, and illusion. Somehow the criminals have got all of us using their terminology to explain “economic” events: bubbles, crashes, etc. To me, bubbles are the gathering of suckers into the illusion of making money from investment, and crashes are paydays for the rich, when they orchestrate the quick removal of money from the suckers. The rich get their paydays every ten years or whenever there are these crashes. In the meantime, they do their stealing on daily basis, continuing their grooming of the new crop of suckers, destroying countries and stealing their gold and resources. Their theft is getting to be more in the open, stealing pensions, passing legislation so that banks can seize depositors’ funds for their next payday, calling it a bail-in rather than bail-out. Whatever it’s called, it’s the rich simply fucking taking the money that belongs to the suckers. The suckers let them do all this, because, well, they are suckers, stupid beyond belief. It’s not economics, it’s crime.

    • DA May 1, 2017 at 12:11 pm #

      You’ve got it exactly right! That’s why such a big deal was made over the exposure of Bernie Madoff. He was doing what all of them are doing, albeit a little more transparently. Had there been no 2008 crash to expose him he’d likely still be going today. But the big boys couldn’t have someone like that exposing their back room operations by publicly flouting the rules so transparently, not to mention stealing their profits. The history of boom, bubble, bust cycles is glaringly obvious now to anyone who actually pays attention, yet each generation that comes along must apparently learn it anew all over again for themselves. Such is the nature of our greed and stupidity.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 1, 2017 at 12:22 pm #

      I think the mass Muslim migration, under the guise of ‘diversity’ (it’s evidently working, if you speak against it you are a RACIST!) is a tool for getting problem people out of an area, to make it easier to steal their gold and resources.
      It’s human trafficking, and it’s a Racket on many levels.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 1, 2017 at 2:00 pm #

        And the Muslims are being exploited? Hardly. They’re coming to take everything we have. Google “the Hijrah” or migration – a fundamental part of Islam. And most of the Syrian refugees aren’t Syrian.

        Guess what? They would have come fifty years ago if we were stupid enough to let them in. Or Five hundred years ago. Without borders, one gets infected.

        • malthuss May 1, 2017 at 5:09 pm #

          Church groups and NGOs do make money from their misery.

      • malthuss May 1, 2017 at 2:40 pm #

        check Youtube, George Webb, to hear what he has to say.
        Start on day 178 or so.

    • messianicdruid May 2, 2017 at 10:12 am #

      God Bless Nakamoto!

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto

  20. pequiste May 1, 2017 at 12:55 pm #

    I do not know what the sound of one wing flapping is…..

    I do not know what the sound of one hand clapping is either……

    But I do know that when “shit happens” there exists some unique membrane that it passes through first:

    http://www.friesian.com/no-shit.htm

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • malthuss May 1, 2017 at 2:44 pm #

      the sound of one hand clapping is silence. very Zen.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 1, 2017 at 3:52 pm #

        I just tried it – there’s a small sound. And Small is Beautiful like Schumacher said. Small breast don’t sag. But Q likes big. Now he pays! Isn’t it like that with all big things?

  21. AHtheHumanity May 1, 2017 at 12:57 pm #

    Meh…not a very interesting post this morning other than Kunstler draws attention to something the mainstream US media doesn’t cover…then again…does the mainstream media ever thoroughly cover.

  22. FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 1:28 pm #

    I have already written about the crisis of the scientific method, which apparently began with a flight to the moon. The locomotive of scientific and technical progress at about this time seemed to hit the wall, and since then there has not been a single serious discovery in any branch of science comparable to the creation of the general theory of relativity, the beginning of the use of nuclear energy or the discovery of DNA as a material carrier of the genome.

    But in fact since as much time has passed as the flight of the first airplane separates from the man’s first exit into space!

    And although Sabina Hossenfelder is a very talented author, but she delves into details and the general pattern eludes her attention. She simply does not understand that the loss of the scientific method is a consequence of the victory of the Black Project, and not only in science.

    And the flow of articles about the glitch described by her is a consequence not only of “social prejudices and taste preferences,” but of social regress in the scientific community on a worldwide scale, of which Alexander Grothendieck was the first to write.

    And scientists who created a semblance of a slave system in science under the assumption that there is no possibility of uprising from scientific slaves and the position of scientific slave owners is unshakable, just condemned science to death from the loss of interest to it from society, just as a cancer cell thinks to survive by killing the body, on which it parasitizes.

    The saddest thing is that the Russian Academy of Science (RAS), despite all its shortcomings, was the healthiest part of the world’s scientific community, and the reforms initiated by Fortov could’ve well improved it, but the Western Black Project in Russia, presented by the High School of Economics and Co., managed to kill it before the Trump Revolution.

    And now Russia goes into the 21st century without the Academy, while Trump seems to understand that without science his reforms are doomed to failure and already launched protective mechanisms in applied science at least in those industries that were going to leave the US but were stopped by his executive decision.

  23. volodya May 1, 2017 at 1:51 pm #

    Hillary got beat. What else can go wrong?

    Maybe that’s the wrong question because if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, well, the people that declined to vote for Hillary in November – especially in those hundreds of counties that twice voted for Obama – sure stopped digging in a hurry. So not voting for Hillary wasn’t “wrong”.

    Having said that, it was likely all for naught. Not that they should’ve voted for Hillary, heaven forfend, but knowing what you know now isn’t the same as knowing what you knew back then.

    Did candidate Trump seem anything like the various vanilla flavors of Principled Conservatism? There wasn’t much difference, if you wanted some nuts there was Huckabee and Cruz, but it was still all vanilla.

    And, I mean, did Trump’s resume in any way square with requirements for the presidency? Game show star, gambling mogul, three marriages, Trump University, six bankruptcies … a mess like this? My own CV is better. Much, much better.

    Maybe the whole thing was a set-up. Maybe the Oligarchs saw great unrest brewing among the unwashed and they said they need a safety valve. And Trump would be that valve.

    So maybe it was a well choreographed performance. Trump “spontaneously” unleashes his blowhole and, on cue and roll the cameras, Hollywood and and all the usual suspects in politics cringe and deplore. And, pan right, Red State ignoramuses, as expected, cheer and wave Old Glory.

    Or maybe the campaign and the first 100 days was all made up as they went along. Maybe Trump had no idea what he would say from one minute to the next.

    See, judging by the deer-in-the-headlights expressions of everyone from Christie and Ryan and McConnell and McCain to Obama and Pelosi and everybody in the White House Press Corp, nobody had any idea what was coming. If all these people were just ACTING flummoxed then they’re all greatly skilled and classically trained performers and Meryl Streep should be taking lessons from them.

    Other people saw what I saw. So, for many people, especially those who’d been so royally fucked over by the country’s billionaire donor class and their lackeys in politics, the prospect of a President Trump held out a smidgen of hope.

    But, in the end, the Oligarchy and the Deep State won. Maybe Trump DOES read memos, you know, the one that sez that if he wants to stay upright and expire of natural causes then this is the program. So Trump duly hired Deep State nominees to perpetuate the same-old-shit. No point regurging it, it’s the same old shit we’ve seen for decades.

    It’s old, old, old. It’s the same old shit on the financial front. Frauds, bubbles and zombie banks lurching from quarter to quarter full of booby traps and time bombs. JHK sez the sound of one wing flapping. One wing flapping? Only one?

    What else can go wrong? Maybe that’s the right question after all. And maybe one answer is a real estate crash. Again. Watch your bank and your savings go bye-bye. So long sucker.

    • FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 2:27 pm #

      But, in the end, the Oligarchy and the Deep State won.

      Nope, they didn’t.

      • capt spaulding May 1, 2017 at 2:52 pm #

        Like hell they didn’t.

        • cbeard May 1, 2017 at 7:28 pm #

          They are winning so far. But the fat lady ain’t singing yet.

          • messianicdruid May 2, 2017 at 10:23 am #

            She is wearing Block Chain.

      • DA May 1, 2017 at 3:53 pm #

        You’re just enjoying being obstinate today, ain’t ya? Hillbilly girlfriend get off her chain again?

    • Q. Shtik May 1, 2017 at 2:54 pm #

      And, I mean, did Trump’s resume in any way square with requirements for the presidency? Game show star, gambling mogul, three marriages, Trump University, six bankruptcies … a mess like this? My own CV is better. Much, much better. – Volodya

      ==============

      Yeah, when I think of how Trump pulled off an MBA from the Wharton School I recall this scene from the Sopranos [I think it was episode 1 of season 2]. The camera is panning a classroom from behind a group of individuals who are about to take a Brokerage License test. The proctor is calling roll: Christopher Multisanti? A guy turns his head toward the rear and says “here.” He is obviously Asian.

    • MrTibbs May 1, 2017 at 11:56 pm #

      All well summarized V.

      And to add to that……the job of a well groomed corrupt political class member is to convince what remains of the middle class that they truly care about their health, safety, and well being.

      The well known rackets will continue far longer than anyone here could possibly imagine, but with increasing political class casualties.

      And that brings me to the poster child of the government-pharma-lobbyist racket, one Mr. Evan Morris.
      http://observer.com/2017/02/unnamed-beneficiary-of-suicide-lobbyist-was-bill-pascrell/

      Evan, age 38, enjoyed paying for his New Jersey home with 3.1 MILLION IN CASH, in what he proudly boasted, “The House that Tamiflu built.”, after ripping off taxpayers for $1 billion in sales of product that was eventually destroyed.

      Tragically, Evan did what any corrupt political class coward does when busted……runs up a lavish bar tab at an elite golf course then promptly shoots himself in head by the fire pit, leaving behind a wife and children and political class members lawyering up.

      And so it goes, and will continue, until the end.

      -T

  24. FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 2:48 pm #

    Here is the basic problem the way I see it: you want to make $100,000, you shoot at making $1,000,000. You want to make a million, you shoot a making a ten.

    If all you want to do is to fill your stomach, you’ll end up starving.

    Where’s the dream? Where is the image of success?

  25. capt spaulding May 1, 2017 at 2:57 pm #

    Obama’s making $400,000 an hour, and you don’t think the oligarchs won?

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 3:09 pm #

      After all shit he went through preventing the nuclear war, he should be making a million/hour at least.

      • DA May 1, 2017 at 3:51 pm #

        I see you’ve been partaking in some of that illicit corn liquor up in them mountains too, ain’t ya Finca?

      • FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 5:04 pm #

        Say, an average to small nuclear war could kill 100 million Americans, that would come just to one cent per hour per living soul.

        Pretty darn cheap!

    • volodya May 1, 2017 at 3:23 pm #

      Captain, sometimes things are exactly as they appear. Sometimes you can’t see all the granular detail but you do get the gist.

      Obama gets 400G’s? Who the fuck besides Bill Clinton and maybe Hillary gets this kind of loot for a lame speech? Nobody, and not for a speech, that’s for damn sure.

      See, Oligarchs got to be Oligarchs and STAY Oligarchs because they look after their money. They don’t throw it away. They want and demand VALUE for what they spend.

      So tell me, does this look to you like money for access? Wall Street Big Shot coughs up a load just for the honor of Obama’s presence? For his insights? Bullshit. This is money for “friendship”, money for access. Bill and Hillary and Obama have connections at the highest levels all over the planet. A whispered word or two from Bill or Hill or Barry in the right ear, be it someone in the US of A or some foreign shit-hole where Mr Wall St Big Shot does business or has investments, could be well worth the 400Gs.

      So for fucking sure the Oligarchs won. Somebody, maybe several guys, apparently explained the Facts of Life to Trump.

      But the Oligarchs set up a system that’s unworkable and unfixable. It isn’t doable for the long-term. Which you would be well aware of or otherwise you wouldn’t be reading JHK’s blog.

  26. mdm1mdm1 May 1, 2017 at 3:52 pm #

    Kunstler just cant help himself with his financial meltdown calamity speculation. Its in almost every blog post. His prior obsessions were the unsustainable suburban footprint we built, prior to that it was peak oil. Always an obsession and doomsday. One has to wonder if its his personality disorder or its his business plan

    • malthuss May 1, 2017 at 5:06 pm #

      Like attracts like?

    • RocketDoc May 1, 2017 at 5:26 pm #

      So true. Collapse! was broached as an idea in 2004 by J. Diamond. Since then we have had a plethora of acolytes including JHK pushing the meme. I happen to be a believer BUT we have been wrong a long time. Every Friday night when I eat out, the wait is more than an hour and every vacation at the beach costs me $2,000/wk and it’s packed. You should see Seaside in the summertime and that’s when us rednecks go, the snowbirds have already returned home. It convinces me that printing money covers a multitude of sins. NO ONE I talk to regularly is worried about collapse and and actually I enjoy my suburbia and neighbors. I simply never realized that money grew on trees which my sainted mother, may she rest in peace, told me wasn’t true, but was. Frankly, there is no going back to Rationality because we passed that point long ago. If we tried we’d be massively screwed. The monetary system does not work for my MY interests but if it fails,most of us will be worse off and that keeps the illusion alive…..

      • dolph9 May 1, 2017 at 7:15 pm #

        I want to say this is an interesting post.
        And it confirms what we know to be true…not until the last fuels are burnt does our system end.

        Money is energy monetized. As long as our system produces energy, it also produces money.

        All of us are wrong. There is such a thing as a perpetual motion machine, and that consists of the depletion of energy along with the growth in human population and consumption. It won’t continue forever, but it will continue decades into the future.

        • toktomi May 2, 2017 at 3:55 am #

          What is that, the fourth law of thermodynamics?

          It sounds more like Panglossian Disorder to me.

      • toktomi May 2, 2017 at 3:51 am #

        I would offer that among others, Jay Hanson and Richard Duncan were years ahead of Diamond in describing the fate of a growth-based, debt-based economy that at some point ceases to grow.

      • messianicdruid May 2, 2017 at 10:44 am #

        “I simply never realized that money grew on trees which my sainted mother, may she rest in peace, told me wasn’t true, but was.”

        Makes you wonder why they started making the currency (dollar) brown instead of green. A hint?

  27. mow May 1, 2017 at 4:10 pm #

    The sound of thunder

  28. FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 5:08 pm #

    See, Oligarchs got to be Oligarchs and STAY Oligarchs because they look after their money.

    I bet that they are Oligarchs exactly because they do not think in terms of “money”.

  29. FlavianPlot May 1, 2017 at 5:23 pm #

    “Captain, sometimes things are exactly as they appear. Sometimes you can’t see all the granular detail but you do get the gist.” — Vol-uminous Bullshitter

    And you believe yourself competent/credible to lecture anyone about seeing things exactly as they appear, let alone about how to synthesize granular detail? Ha! That phony baloney and laughably “balanced” left/right discursive political critique propaganda you’re constantly proffering here wore thin a long time ago, buddy. These fools just haven’t caught on to your game, and hazardously still figure you to be one of us. But you ain’t.

    How’s the Dillary Clumpton presidency going in your post 100-day analysis, huh? It’s not really a question. How’s that populist/nationalist come-up nonsense playing for the CFN regulars today? In other words, how motivated and effective is that 35+10% base of his in Turning the Titanic?

    Still selling that, “The People spoke in 2016, even if Donald unpredictably went on to betray them” self-deception only to yourself, or, is it carefully targeted to anyone gullible enough to buy into your thesis? Instead, we can see that it’s an intentional trope specifically designed to periodically appease/subdue traceable bloglodytes, still psycho-emotionally malleable to the idea that Hillary lost fair and square, that the Trump phenom was legitimate, that democracy, a Republic, still exists in the U.S., and that voting resonates more than the sound of hot ammunition popping.

    By now, the idea that the The Network slipped the Trump card into an always easily shufflable election deck, first as discardable patsy, then as Patsy Prez is brutally obvious. Get the gist?

    • FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 5:37 pm #

      Get the gist?

      I certainly don’t. I don’t know what The Network is, but Trump is certainly not an agent of no Network, but an agent of Mystic-Meteorological Factor, in other circles known as the Hand of God.

      • elysianfield May 1, 2017 at 7:38 pm #

        “as the Hand of God.”

        Finc,
        We were hoping that he was, instead, the BACK of HIS hand….

        • FincaInTheMountains May 1, 2017 at 10:24 pm #

          That, certainly, too. The front, the back, the fist and the hook.

  30. FlavianPlot May 1, 2017 at 5:49 pm #

    The sound of one hand fapping, hear David Stockman backtracking, side-stepping, and inserting an alternate destined to be wrong quarterly prognostication to explain away his previous hand waiving exercises: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX1QpK1Yqgc

    Dear JHK,

    Please consider dropping back to one creative blog post a week. You’re appreciated as a collapse stylist but not analyst. Trump is normal in ‘merica now… the coup bugaboo, the government shutdown empty threats, debt ceiling default and stock market collapse narrative is premature, and you’re losing your younger audience who buy into the long emergency theme but tire of the Henny Penny nail-biting that appeals much more-so to dead beat old farts capable of nothing else but.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • elysianfield May 1, 2017 at 8:04 pm #

      “you’re losing your younger audience who buy into the long emergency theme but tire of the Henny Penny nail-biting that appeals much more-so to dead beat old farts ”

      Flavian,

      Nice rant. However, some reading your post might expect that all is well with the Republic…(?). I can list dozens of existential threats that bedevil our country and society…none see any hope of short term remediation. Help us out here, and give us good dose of hope…a few good examples would suffice. The majority of the readership understands that time-lines are flexible…the fact that an issue does not meet a time-line does not mean it does not exist.

      It is dismissive to “old farts” to so impugn the majority of the readership to be capable of nothing other than angst and cynicism…dead beats, indeed. With life comes experience, knowledge, and “been there, done that” lessons from the school of hard knocks. No wisdom with accumulated years? How else is wisdom obtained? Books alone? The Tee Vee? The “Internets”?

      “These fools just haven’t caught on to your game, and hazardously still figure you to be one of us. But you ain’t.” (Re; Volodya)

      Who is “One of Us”? You? How old are you? What do you know and how did you come to know it?

      • onehunglo May 2, 2017 at 10:32 pm #

        ah, elysian, you demonstrate wisdom well beyond you years…..

        as you one jim morrison say many moon ago,,,,,

        “all of us have found a safe niche where we can store up riches and talk to our fellows on the same premise of disaster, but this will not do. NO, THIS WILL NEVER DO!”
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9ok0SKmvdY

        ….with all it’s sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it’s still a beautiful world. be cheerful. strive to be happy.

        let not you heart be troubled.

        may God be with you.

        -onehunglo

    • messianicdruid May 2, 2017 at 11:00 am #

      “And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

      More vindication except for those in denial.

      Those that are unaware [ young or old ] are unaware of being unaware.

  31. routersurfer May 1, 2017 at 6:13 pm #

    Howdy, to all the workers of the world!!!! Those that toil with pen, sword or even .300 Blackout. LTCM, what a large and plump Black Swain that was. Brings a smile every time. Thanks for the info on our friends to the North. We is looking down both barrels. Great read to start the week with.

  32. BackRowHeckler May 1, 2017 at 8:24 pm #

    Helluva shootout on Franklin Ave. in the south end of Hartford the other day, in the middle of the afternoon, 6 combatants squeezing off rounds, bullets flying everywhere, smashing into houses and cars, 3 down.

    A gunfight like that in a formerly staid city like Hartford, a half century ago, would’ve been a primordial shock, almost unbelievable. Now … its already out of the news. Yet we still read about the gunfight at the OK corral, same number of casualties, many more rounds fired.

    It seems to be part of the ongoing war between Puerto Rican drug gangs and black drug gangs. Puerto Ricans seem to be winning this bloody urban war — not only without end but indicative of the far and near future.

    What’s discouraging about this is that Franklin avenue was about the last neighborhood in the city with any vestige of civility and western civilization. It was the Italian quarter; up to about 20 years ago it wasn’t uncommon to drive down there for excellent deli, bakeries, and pizza houses. Not anymore. Italians have moved on, what with car thefts, houses broken into, chaos on the streets, and elderly women being knocked down on there way to church for whatever could be stolen. I guess you could say these Italian Americans just did not appreciate advancing cultural diversity.

    In metro Hartford, we have our own little black swans almost every week. Best to ignore them, eat the sh-t that being dished out, smile, and say it tastes good. Its safer that way.

    brh

  33. Pucker May 1, 2017 at 8:28 pm #

    They advertise Love Boat tourist cruises down the Congo River for rich old people.

    • onehunglo May 2, 2017 at 10:36 pm #

      “Love Boat”???

      perhaps you one capn stubing (spaulding) find second wind and command???

      -onehunglo

      • capt spaulding May 3, 2017 at 2:42 pm #

        Ah Grasshopper, you seem to be unable to take your own advice. Let me quote it back to you for your own elucidation. “Let not you heart be troubled. May God be with you”. It’s easy to dish out wisdom without heeding it yourself, but of course that would mean that you would have to partake of it yourself. That is one of the problems of the internet. I have regular meetings with people who are well read, not all of whom I agree with, but interesting anyway. Their opinions help to make me think of different answers to problems. You don’t seem to have grasped the meaning of your own proclamations. You come across as a lightweight trying to insinuate yourself into the conversation of grownups. You would not be permitted to sit at my table. If any of this pisses you off, it’s probably true. Let not you heart be troubled.

        • onehunglo May 3, 2017 at 11:37 pm #

          paging capn stubing (spaulding)…..

          1982 calling…they want captain back!!

          perhaps you enjoy imbibing with julie, doc, isaac, and gopher???

          that ok.

          let not you heart be troubled.

          may God be with you.

          -onehunglo

  34. Pucker May 1, 2017 at 8:35 pm #

    Why is MI-6 so irresponsible as to let 007 not use a condom? Why didn’t “M” order 007 to wear a condom?

    https://www.quora.com/Slavery-Why-did-do-slaves-have-children

    • Pucker May 1, 2017 at 9:53 pm #

      007 is so irresponsible….

      Was Pussy Galore trying to get pregnant?

  35. BackRowHeckler May 1, 2017 at 9:44 pm #

    On a humorous note, down at Yale, in New Haven … graduate students have announced a hunger strike, just like real proletariat. They have formed a union, but Yale refuses to recognize it. They are graduate students who lecture and teach undergrads. I heard their spokesman interviewed on local radio: they are tired of being oppressed, and the main oppressor, beside Yale, is Donald J Trump and his NLRB. The interviewer pointed out for the onerous labor of teaching they receive free tuition ($65,000 per) free housing, free meals, plus a $30,000 yearly stipend. So what? Yale itself is nothing more than a plantation, and its grad students moral duty to break the shackles of servitude just like ‘the enslaved’ did 165 years ago. Nothing less. ‘We’re storming the ramparts’. Also Spartacus was brought up. Thus the hunger strike.

    Some people here were concerned about these youngsters health. Not too worry. It turns out this is merely a ‘Symbolic Hunger Strike’ one, when you get hungry, you can break ranks and get something too eat.

    This is also an outdoor event for all too see. This morning the Republican club at Yale set up a barbecue next to the hunger strikers, smoke from cooking burgers, hot dogs, steaks, chicken and pork chops wafting over into the Proletariat camp.

    brh

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • ozone May 1, 2017 at 10:24 pm #

      M.,
      I haven’t much give-a-good-goddamn for these stupidities and dumbfuckeries (as yet), but I’ll tell you what…

      Went down to Winstedtown today and guess what? (“What?”, sez you.)
      There, in the midst of close-downs and empty-promise storefronts, stands a brandy-new auto parts establishment! WTF?, sez I, and even though it was *right next door* to where I was going, I hied my ass on over to the auto parts store where they’ve treated me well and special ordered stuff with alacrity and good cheer for me many a time. (‘Twas the other side of town.) …Guess I’ve developed a distaste for those with sharp elbows whose aim is to ruin the livelihoods of others.

      • BackRowHeckler May 1, 2017 at 10:40 pm #

        O

        Auto parts for that classic ‘Detroit Iron’ of yourn?

        that thing would survive a thermo nuclear strike, or worse.

        Keep her running, shes irreplaceable.

        brh

        • ozone May 2, 2017 at 9:43 am #

          M.,
          Yes — and — will do! 😉

  36. Pucker May 1, 2017 at 10:05 pm #

    Forrest Gump was irresponsible not to wear a rubber when he Chocolate-Boxed Jenny.

    And Jenny was irresponsible to jump on top of a horny semi-retarded Forrest Gump knowing that he wasn’t wearing a condom and knowing that he was confused about Chocolate Boxes.

    • seawolf77 May 3, 2017 at 11:00 am #

      Forrest Gump was a more entertaining Chauncey Gardner.

  37. Pucker May 1, 2017 at 10:10 pm #

    Trump is a Carny.

    • toktomi May 2, 2017 at 4:04 am #

      Duh!

      An actor.
      A criminal.
      A good ol’ boy.
      A goof ball.
      A gay Kenyan.
      A bat shit crazy carny.

      Is there any greater expression of the disgust that the global elites have for the masses?

  38. ozone May 1, 2017 at 10:11 pm #

    A salient point that every grifter has now written into their playbook of “legal cons”:

    “As Bloomberg reported, the Toronto-based pension plan – which represented more than 321,000 healthcare workers in Ontario – gave the struggling Canadian mortgage lender the loan to shore up liquidity as it faces a run on deposits amid a probe by the provincial securities regulator. Home Capital had also retained RBC Capital Markets and BMO Capital Markets to advise on “strategic options” after it secured the loan.

    Why did HOOPP put itself, or rather its constituents in the precarious position of funding what is a very rapidly melting ice cube? The answer to that emerged when we learned that HOOPP President and CEO Jim Keohane also sits on Home Capital’s board and is also a shareholder. But how did regulators allow such a glaring conflict of interest? According to the Canadian press, Keohane had been a director of Home Capital until Thursday, but said he stepped away from the boardroom on Tuesday to remove the conflict of interest when it became clear HOOPP might step in as a lender.”

    Ain’t that a shinin’ beauty? It takes one’s very breath clean away!

    Study up folks; time grows short to be pulling this kind of shit (and not suffer a harsh word or a ride out of town encased in hot tar and chicken feathers).

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-29/furious-bank-run-leaves-canadas-largest-alternative-mortgage-lender-verge-collapse

  39. Pucker May 1, 2017 at 10:44 pm #

    Human Irresponsibility is an interesting existential topic. Why are Obama, Hillary, Trump, and the politicians so irresponsible?

    Putin to the Americans re: US meddling in the Middle East: “Do you realize what you have done?!”

  40. Pucker May 1, 2017 at 10:54 pm #

    Americans are generally very irresponsible.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  41. nsa May 1, 2017 at 11:04 pm #

    dolph9,
    It appears nature’s purpose for evolving the masses of devious fertile killer apes is to efficiently remove the carbon trapped in the earth’s crust. Once the available carbon is released, the billions upon billions of conniving killer apes can no longer be supported, and will of necessity find a way to achieve their nirvana…..total extinction. In geologic time, this could take place in the blink of an eye…… Maybe all that released carbon will usher in a new golden age of plant life.

  42. BackRowHeckler May 1, 2017 at 11:25 pm #

    How’d the May Day riots go?

    Which were the best, and which were duds?

  43. MrTibbs May 2, 2017 at 12:09 am #

    No more wing flapping for Evan.

    The well known rackets will continue far longer than anyone here could possibly imagine, but with increasing political class casualties.

    And that brings me to the poster child of the government-pharma-lobbyist racket, one Mr. Evan Morris.
    http://observer.com/2017/02/unnamed-beneficiary-of-suicide-lobbyist-was-bill-pascrell/

    Evan, age 38, enjoyed paying for his New Jersey home with 3.1 MILLION IN CASH, in what he proudly boasted, “The House that Tamiflu built.”, after ripping off taxpayers for $1 billion in sales of product that was eventually destroyed.

    Tragically, Evan did what any corrupt political class coward does when busted……runs up a lavish bar tab at an elite golf course then promptly shoots himself in the head by the fire pit, leaving behind a wife and children and political class members lawyering up.

    And so it goes, and will continue, until the end.

    -T

  44. Janos Skorenzy May 2, 2017 at 4:09 am #

    https://www.amren.com/videos/2017/05/women-alt-right/

    The girls are all right.

    • thwack May 2, 2017 at 7:43 am #

      The bar is very low for “alt-right women”. Most of them are dick riders looking for clicks and only in it for their own popularity. They never “name the Jew” or take a hard line on tha blacks…

      Yet the white knights and simps think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread?

      *vomit*

      • Janos Skorenzy May 2, 2017 at 2:42 pm #

        Mars needs women! The quality is improving, Thwack. The vile behavior of Blacks in helping in this regard.

        • thwack May 2, 2017 at 5:57 pm #

          How?

          Most don’t have any children?

          We need white buns in white ovens; babies don’t make themselves?

          While they are flapping their gums on video trying to sound important; the Rising Tide of Color is getting higher and higher…

          Please tell them stop cheesin and instead get themselves knocked up post ex facto before its too late.

  45. tucsonspur May 2, 2017 at 5:27 am #

    Thinking caps on for the following quote from Rickards’ “The Road to Ruin”:

    “LTCM was a textbook case in ignoring complexity theory. For example, traders at LTCM frequently constructed two-sided strategies using real government notes and synthetic notes in swap form. If the spread between the two trades converged as expected, a profit was realized and the trade was unwound.

    The conventional way to unwind a trade is to sell the note and terminate the swap by negotiation with the counterparty.

    Counterparties charge a small fee for early swap termination. LTCM did not want to pay the fees. Instead, LTCM neutralized the first swap by entering into Another Swap with exactly opposite terms….

    LTCM called this technique the “wedding cake” because traders kept adding new layers to neutralize swap positions instead of terminating positions. The layers stacked up to make a $1 trillion dollar wedding cake”.

    Clear? As I said before, these people create their own financial jungles, and what they hunt is money. Big game money.

    But right on Mr. JHK’s point is the following:

    “The last, and most important, lesson was that crises emerge from nowhere without warning. A 1997 currency crisis in Thailand is not immediately or obviously linked to a Greenwich hedge fund collapse the next year. Still, that is exactly what happened”.

    Deals involving Travelers, Salomon, and Citigroup were factors, and the Russian default and devaluation in August 1998 was part of the contagion.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  46. FincaInTheMountains May 2, 2017 at 6:56 am #

    Sometimes, to solve the most difficult problem, one must pull for the simplest (in the sense of least entangled) thread.

    A complex problem here is the crisis of the scientific method, and the simplest thread is English 101 or rather the fact that the American intelligentsia really supported Hillary Clinton.

    And if you throw out the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy and remember that the notorious Dulles plan was first applied to Roosevelt America, and then to the Stalinist USSR, then much of the coil is unraveled fairly quickly.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulles%27_Plan

    I’m not going to argue that the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy has never existed, but that this topic is really something like a red rag for a bull, and smart, intelligent people who are by no means anti-Semites, noticing this rag with side vision on the periphery of their consciousness, they cease to understand anything, and shaking their heads with imaginary horns start looking for someone to hurt.

    So,…
    Sometimes, to solve the most difficult problem, one must pull for the simplest (in the sense of least entangled) thread.

    A complex problem here is the crisis of the scientific method, and the simplest thread is English 101 or rather the fact that the American intelligentsia really supported Hillary Clinton, and the Russian intelligentsia is still resisting.

    This was the result of the fact that in Russia we got it back in 1982 and despite the geopolitical catastrophe that entered its final stage around this time, the immune system of the society still managed to activate. I mean, the Multiple Choice Unified Government Exam is a part of the brainwashing system that leads to the political crisis of Hillary-Adolph.

    But in Russia it still does not work because it has been working in the US since 1947, and nobody noticed anything until it gave full effect in 2015, and in Russia already in 1982 began to make such films ridiculing the Multiple Choice Exams:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01wWW9YA7KQ

    By the way, in America, a kind of sobering up is beginning to occur, and one of the political commentators (by the way a radical anti-Trump commentator) said this Sunday that the reason for the victory of Donald Trump is that under the wise leadership of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party lost its social base and turned into a party of Beyoncé and Barbara Streisand.

    Up to the point that the most popular Democratic leader, Bernie Sanders, is not even a member of a Democratic party.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaoF9SbCzs0

    • malthuss May 3, 2017 at 5:56 pm #

      NICE BOLDED WORDS.

  47. fodase May 2, 2017 at 9:15 am #

    uh, is Trump failing?

    i can take it like a man

    • elysianfield May 3, 2017 at 5:24 pm #

      Fo,
      I do not know…what would success look like?

  48. FincaInTheMountains May 2, 2017 at 10:13 am #

    Two months ago, right after talking with a couple of British friends who tried to find out what Putin would give to the West for canceling of the sanctions, I came to the conclusion that Trump would have to nag Russia because Putin could not and does not want to give anything to him in exchange for lifting of sanctions.

    In fact, Hillary in December and January brought the relationship of nuclear powers to the brink of war and it became necessary to talk about reparations and indemnities. What I did not expect, is that Trump would go on TV and say:

    “I could have made a deal with Putin, but you arranged a bordello with accusations of me as Russian spy, which in fact I never was, so that now Putin apparently does not see any point to negotiate anything with me since I will not be able to keep my side of the bargain due to this bordello”.

    And he withdrew, and did nothing at all, and did not even talk about Russia or spoke the same nastiness as everyone, until in Syria someone organized a sarin attack.

    Rather, there should have been six attacks, but five they managed to stop on the tip from Israeli Intelligence, in gratitude for which Putin immediately recognized Jerusalem as Israeli capital.

    The rest you know.

    But on Friday, he said that Kim Jong-un is a “smart cookie”, and on Sunday all the television channels crumbled in praise to someone they were willing to bury alive just 5 days ago.

    What happened?

    He presented the budget to the Congress, and all those who supported Hillary, but who depended on the budget quickly ran to his side. And yesterday he said that he would be proud to meet with Kim Jong-un, driving Japan and China into a pre-infarct condition.

    And today the White House announced about Trump’s upcoming conversation with Putin.

    The conversation is scheduled for 12:30 eastern time of the United States.

    Well, the end of the bordello? There is a subject for negotiations?

    What does the scientific method tells us about the subject and results of these negotiations?

    • FincaInTheMountains May 2, 2017 at 10:39 am #

      By the way, how does Hillary feel?

      If she is alive and Trump is right, then there’s nothing to talk with Putin about. And generally in a week there will be a …. !!!

      So either Trump was not right, and all this time he was fooling around, or Hillary kaput.

      And this is scientific method, that is, the dialectical unity of theory and experiment, which we almost lost because of the flight to the Moon!

  49. FincaInTheMountains May 2, 2017 at 11:35 am #

    Proud to be on the same side on Trump with Alex Jones!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3TsmDiDBI

    And Kunstler site is taking off exponentially as well! Good job, everybody!

  50. volodya May 2, 2017 at 12:21 pm #

    Flavian, the last time I checked my posts weren’t required reading. And if I’m wearing thin use the scroll key.

    Am I competent/credible? Well, let me ask you that same question about yourself. Are you?

    You say I’m not one of you. As Elysian sez, who is “one of us”? Maybe you want an echo-chamber of the like-minded. Maybe diversity of opinion isn’t your thing. Maybe you want a safe space. Too bad, this doesn’t look like a haven for campus snowflakes. Or maybe you want to check ID at the door. Tough luck, this is an anonymous blog. See, Kunstler runs this site, not you.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  51. volodya May 2, 2017 at 12:48 pm #

    Mr Tibbs,

    “The well known rackets will continue far longer than anyone here could possibly imagine,”

    You bet. That’s a variation on that old saying that markets can stay irrational a lot longer than you can stay solvent. But then they aren’t “markets” as much as they’re “rackets”. Fixers doing fixes such that the insider isn’t taking a risk as much as putting money on a sure thing.

    Who was it that said that if something can’t go on forever it won’t? These things can’t go on forever. They eventually fall on their faces a la 2008. Wall Street had a lot of stress and strain but Uncle Ben came to the rescue. We’ll see at the next juncture whether busted “markets” do what the Fed and Treasury tell them.

    Syndicates like health and education are all dedicated to one thing, separating suckers from their money. The thing is the suckers are running out of money.

    • onehunglo May 3, 2017 at 11:41 pm #

      ah, V., you wise one indeed.

      long after western civilization fall due to corruption, three little birds continue to sing, every little thing be alright.

      Confucius say, “they often change, who live in constant happiness or wisdom.”

      let not you heart be troubled.

      may God be with you.

      -onehunglo

  52. volodya May 2, 2017 at 12:57 pm #

    Q, according to what I read, Trump didn’t get an MBA but a B.S. in economics.

  53. pequiste May 2, 2017 at 1:10 pm #

    The more I think about the now famous theory about “Black Swan” events, developed by the renown Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the less I like it.

    I would see a black swan landing on a lake; in fact I could see it making its approach to land. It casts a shadow, it has weight. One could even observe the swan on radar (see Wall Street pirates A.I. “trading” programs.)

    I would much rather some new metaphor be utilized to describe the unforeseen, unannounced, undirected event that causes a revolution or catastrophe depending on what realm it addresses.

    Let me then suggest to the CFN two better metaphors for catastrophes:

    The Brown Recluse (Loxosceles reclusa) Financial Bite Event – Everyone is afraid of the little bugger; one almost never sees the little rascal spider before being bit; once bitten can cause shock, limb loss, coma. Sounds lot like the victims symptoms of a stock market crash no?

    Marburg Financial Virus Event – fever. coma, shock and death are on the menu for this awful hemorrhagic fever. So much like Ebola but with euphony to the moniker. The experts are “not certain” from whence it comes; can’t see it at all without a powerful microscope; the symptoms are all but catastrophic for humans; and as a bonus it has an up to a 100% fatality rate.

    I really prefer the nomenclature to be changed to “Marburg Event” for the bloody, awful financial, political or military catastrophe that nobody can see until it is too late.

  54. Janos Skorenzy May 2, 2017 at 2:24 pm #

    https://www.amren.com/news/2017/05/taliban-like-attack-new-orleanss-history/

    Masked men tearing down statues in the dead of night. Unspeakable evil reigns in New Orleans. Hopefully the next time, the City will be completely destroyed by flooding. Only that will cleanse the sins of that place.

  55. capt spaulding May 2, 2017 at 2:37 pm #

    People who think that we have some wiggle room in determining how the country is being run, are deluding themselves. The Oligarchs are in full control, and the sheeple who voted for Trump are in thrall to them, without realizing it. Not that it matters much, because the Dems are in the pockets of the powers that be, just like the Republicans. The truth should have become apparent to everyone after the country almost collapsed under the Bush administration, and nobody was prosecuted. Obama declined to prosecute anybody. Now he’s making $400,000 speeches to wall street firms. However we still have some true believers who think that if we can get the “right” Democrat in office, our problems will be solved. Well, folks, it’s much too late for that. The fact is, that both sides have been bought & paid for, to make sure that the gravy train keeps running just the way it has been. Some people who post on here, have their own agendas that they are trying to advance, while others are on an ego trip instead if looking at the real problems that face us. Many of the people who post here are very knowledgeable about what is going on, but there are still some here who don’t see what’s really going on. And these are people who supposedly are better informed than the average citizen. The battle has been lost, folks, the bad guys have won. They have subordinated both parties into acting for their benefit. I have no idea what it would take to bring things back for the benefit of the working class. The one thing I do know, is it will involve a struggle which will be resisted by the powers that be. Apologies for the long post. I tend to scroll over long winded posts by others, so I don’t blame you if you skip over this one. God bless us all.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • Janos Skorenzy May 2, 2017 at 2:48 pm #

      Yes, all have been brought low by the Hidden Hand. Only the Hard Right remains. Join us. But first you must lose the illusions about equality. Nothing and no one is equal to anything or anyone else. Therefore? Therefore support you own kind like you are supposed to do and as everyone else is doing. Needless to say, your views on WW2 will change as much as your view of Blacks. This is huge for some like BRH. The absolute GOODNESS of America in this conflict is the cornerstone of his system of illusions.

    • windward May 3, 2017 at 12:08 am #

      Chris Hedges says we are finished, even more so than JHK appears to believe:

      “The idiots take over in the final days of crumbling civilizations…There is a familiar checklist for extinction. We are ticking off every item on it…Donald Trump is the face of our collective idiocy. He is what lies behind the mask of our professed civility and rationality—a sputtering, narcissistic, bloodthirsty megalomaniac…This moment in history marks the end of a long, sad tale of greed and murder by the white races…They do not understand that the dark ethic of ceaseless capitalist and imperialist expansion is dooming the exploiters as well as the exploited. But even as we stand on the cusp of extinction we lack the intelligence and imagination to break free from our evolutionary past…”

      http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/reign_of_idiots_20170430

      • malthuss May 3, 2017 at 5:55 pm #

        I did like his ‘War is a Force’ book but I will pass on his fear mongering.

        sad tale of greed and murder by the white races [!!!!!]

        THE VENEER OF CIVILIZATION IS VERY THIN IN AFRICA.

    • onehunglo May 4, 2017 at 11:18 pm #

      ah, capn stubing, onehunglo must applaud you stunning display of lucidity in otherwise mindless diatribe.

      “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.” – Proverbs 12:15

      let not you heart be troubled.

      may God be with you.

      -onehunglo

  56. thwack May 2, 2017 at 2:56 pm #

    Sure, Trump is a con man and a bloviating narcissist… but I still think we dodged a bullet

    http://www.investorvillage.com/uploads/11001/images/backs_to_hillary.jpg

  57. Janos Skorenzy May 2, 2017 at 3:01 pm #

    From the 3rd Protocol of the Elders of Zion

    POVERTY OUR WEAPON

    5. All people are chained down to heavy toil by poverty more firmly than ever. They were chained by slavery and serfdom; from these, one way and another, they might free themselves. These could be settled with, but from want they will never get away. We have included in the constitution such rights as to the masses appear fictitious and not actual rights. All these so-called “Peoples Rights” can exist only in idea, an idea which can never be realized in practical life. What is it to the proletariat laborer, bowed double over his heavy toil, crushed by his lot in life, if talkers get the right to babble, if journalists get the right to scribble any nonsense side by side with good stuff, once the proletariat has no other profit out of the constitution save only those pitiful crumbs which we fling them from our table in return for their voting in favor of what we dictate, in favor of the men we place in power, the servants of our AGENTUR … Republican rights for a poor man are no more than a bitter piece of irony, for the necessity he is under of toiling almost all day gives him no present use of them, but the other hand robs him of all guarantee of regular and certain earnings by making him dependent on strikes by his comrades or lockouts by his masters.

    WE SUPPORT COMMUNISM

    6. The people, under our guidance, have annihilated the aristocracy, who were their one and only defense and foster-mother for the sake of their own advantage which is inseparably bound up with the well-being of the people. Nowadays, with the destruction of the aristocracy, the people have fallen into the grips of merciless money-grinding scoundrels who have laid a pitiless and cruel yoke upon the necks of the workers.

    7. We appear on the scene as alleged saviours of the worker from this oppression when we propose to him to enter the ranks of our fighting forces – Socialists, Anarchists, Communists – to whom we always give support in accordance with an alleged brotherly rule (of the solidarity of all humanity) of our SOCIAL MASONRY. The aristocracy, which enjoyed by law the labor of the workers, was interested in seeing that the workers were well fed, healthy, and strong. We are interested in just the opposite – in the diminution, the KILLING OUT OF THE GOYIM. Our power is in the chronic shortness of food and physical weakness of the worker because by all that this implies he is made the slave of our will, and he will not find in his own authorities either strength or energy to set against our will. Hunger creates the right of capital to rule the worker more surely than it was given to the aristocracy by the legal authority of kings.

    8. By want and the envy and hatred which it engenders we shall move the mobs and with their hands we shall wipe out all those who hinder us on our way.

    9. WHEN THE HOUR STRIKES FOR OUR SOVEREIGN LORD OF ALL THE WORLD TO BE CROWNED IT IS THESE SAME HANDS WHICH WILL SWEEP AWAY EVERYTHING THAT MIGHT BE A HINDRANCE THERETO. (The Biblical “Anti-Christ?”)

    10. The GOYIM have lost the habit of thinking unless prompted by the suggestions of our specialists. Therefore they do not see the urgent necessity of what we, when our kingdom comes, shall adopt at once, namely this, that IT IS ESSENTIAL TO TEACH IN NATIONAL SCHOOLS ONE SIMPLE, TRUE PIECE OF KNOWLEDGE, THE BASIS OF ALL KNOWLEDGE – THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE STRUCTURE OF HUMAN LIFE, OF SOCIAL EXISTENCE, WHICH REQUIRES DIVISION OF LABOR, AND, CONSEQUENTLY, THE DIVISION OF MEN INTO CLASSES AND CONDITIONS. It is essential for all to know that OWING TO DIFFERENCE IN THE OBJECTS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY THERE CANNOT BE ANY EQUALITY, that he, who by any act of his compromises a whole class, cannot be equally responsible before the law with him who affects no one but only his own honor. The true knowledge of the structure of society, into the secrets of which we do not admit the GOYIM, would demonstrate to all men that the positions and work must be kept within a certain circle, that they may not become a source of human suffering, arising from an education which does not correspond with the work which individuals are called upon to do. After a thorough study of this knowledge, the peoples will voluntarily submit to authority and accept such position as is appointed them in the State. In the present state of knowledge and the direction we have given to its development of the people, blindly believing things in print – cherishes – thanks to promptings intended to mislead and to its own ignorance – a blind hatred towards all conditions which it considers above itself, for it has no understanding of the meaning of class and condition.

    JEWS WILL BE SAFE

    11. THIS HATRED WILL BE STILL FURTHER MAGNIFIED BY THE EFFECTS of an ECONOMIC CRISES, which will stop dealing on the exchanges and bring industry to a standstill. We shall create by all the secret subterranean methods open to us and with the aid of gold, which is all in our hands, A UNIVERSAL ECONOMIC CRISES WHEREBY WE SHALL THROW UPON THE STREETS WHOLE MOBS OF WORKERS SIMULTANEOUSLY IN ALL THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. These mobs will rush delightedly to shed the blood of those whom, in the simplicity of their ignorance, they have envied from their cradles, and whose property they will then be able to loot.

    Janos: Literary fraud? Perhaps but no matter. Truth is truth even if in fictional form. If these are not the notes taken from the speeches of Theodore Herzl in Basle, then they are a prophetic work of genius by a man of our own race – another and earlier Jean Raspail.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 2, 2017 at 3:17 pm #

      But, but, but you were told that the Protocols were the raving of a madman. Does the above seem like the raving a madman to you? Henry Ford though they were genuine and if not genuine then inspired. Are you smarter than he was? But you preferred to believe the press owned by the very people in question. And you could have checked it out for yourself, but you were too lazy and/or complacent, willing to believe whatever made you comfortable. Doesn’t that all fit in with the low opinion of you put forward in the Protocols?

      The author is hardly alone in this. All the sages have said the same, though without the bigotry towards non-Jews. If you can go no further, at least admit Democracy is a joke and a disaster. Some people make or fix shoes. Mandarins (teachers, professors, consultants, etc) make or fix ideas. All of this is very far below the level of the true Intellectual who seeks the Truth about all things. And only such a one is worthy of the Vote. And guess what? They are far too rare call such a system “Democracy”. It would be just another name for Aristocracy. But a good Aristocracy. China flourished when those who did well on the Confucian Exams were allowed to rule.

  58. FlavianPlot May 2, 2017 at 4:21 pm #

    “Some reading your post might expect that all is well with the Republic… (?). —EF

    Oh yeah, how exactly would one draw this rationale from the content of my comment(s)? As to your personal questions to me, who the fuck are you to question my personal status and background? I don’t come here as a public figure, for good reason. I have multiple degrees, run a small business, invest, and am in my 30s. My life experience has been poignant, inspiring, and for the benefit of my immediate loved ones. What’s it to you? Nothing, and that’s not offensive to me in the least. What is offensive is the rank hypocrisy and stupidity that passes for intellect on this site. Challenge my commentary/opinions, but watch your step when challenging my personal business.

    You’re reaching for something with your personal questions, but what exactly? Seems you’re falling into the fallacious argument from authority trap you set for yourself in a separate exchange recently. And if aged wisdom, experience, and credentials are the bread and butter upon which you base your decision making, then you certainly shit the bed by placing hope in Donald motherfucking Trump. Same goes for the other side of the spectrum, no doubt.

    It’s entirely non-cynical to scold a child for shitting the bed after a significant term of potty training, so too is it appropriate to scold an old man for supporting an incompetent political leader despite a lifetime of proclaimed “been there, done that” experience which should have taught him to do otherwise.

    I am unfamiliar with your knowledge base by the way, besides once reading that you worked in law enforcement, for which I have no regard one way or another. So don’t assume that your reputation (credentials) precede you. On CFN, reputations are worth as much as farts, just stale air and leftovers.

    Anonymous strangers commenting on a blog have only an archive of posts from which to qualify/quantify a particular purview and the relative utility, or lack thereof, of claims presented. It’s merely an instinctual choice to cotton to a given line of reasoning submitted here, or not. My instinct tells me than many of you are complacent navel gazers, not learned problem solvers.

    My point in my remark(s) is that the pretend intellectual old farts now trying to explain away a series of concomitant circumstances ramifying as a result of a political gamble—a vote, no matter for whom at this stage in the LE that one voted for — shall be disallowed refuge under the auspice of hope. You claim to know better, but you can’t prove it based on the archives.

    “I can list dozens of existential threats that bedevil our country and society… none see any hope of short term remediation.” —EF

    Yeah, and? My view is exactly that above, including long-term mitigation fantasies; though I personally have Hope and Faith in Divinity as I understand the concepts, leaving absolutely nothing to men; even so, my personal conclusion(s) on the state of affairs in the nation require no hope and only evidence.

    My harsh view also applies to all of the floated turds presented to the public last season. Listening only minutes, even poorly, to any of the claims made by any of the candidates provided one with sufficient evidence needed to smell shit and refrain from drinking the Kool Aid, ever.

    You petty assholes simply wanted to hold a trophy over the other side’s head, and it predictably fell back on you. I have even more disdain for HRC and Sanders supporters, just for the record.

    However, in the case of still voting youngsters, I’m willing to forgive them their endorsement of the left’s candidates, as it required a shade more sophistication to recognize Clinton’s evil and Sander’s empty promises for the future. Trump boosters of your age group deserve no quarter whatsoever.

    “Help us out here, and give us good dose of hope… a few good examples would suffice.”

    And why now seek hope from me after admitting there is none? Aren’t you a student of history? How could the present scenario have turned out any other way? Remember using that throwaway line here yourself a few times?

    You can’t claim to be substantively informed about tangible threats, historic origins, and outcome trend lines and then justify any dose of hopium you might have smoked at your age. The characterization is cynicism? Nope, no it isn’t. It’s comeuppance.

    There are abundant examples for abolishing hope regarding the here and now. What’s more, I’m no longer inexperienced enough to ascribe the notion of hope, as you’ve used it above, to contemplations on how presently occurring calamities will proceed, especially considering the wistful and wishful thinking of your cohort’s political decision making history.

    Deathbed geezers (leisurely retirees) having the supposed requisite background you’d like to hide behind won’t be around long enough to get their hands dirty when things do finally turn, and therefore have no business lecturing 30-somethings about decisions you made regarding our future. You buggers have zero credibility any longer, and the CFN archive alone proves this.

    However, I’ll be the first to thank trusted storytellers, the likes of JHK, whom I discovered in my late 20s, for assisting in my education and evidence gathering endeavor; as a result, my lifestyle today probably more closely resembles a World Made By Hand philosophy far more than what you can say for yourself.

    Finally, the clause “One of us” refers to the able minded and bodied, mostly young, ornery cusses soon to be forced to actually deal with the myriad tragic circumstances produced during your cohort’s collective life experience. Should the SHTF as soon as your Chicken Little opinion leaders guess, the least of us will drag you pussies along kicking and screaming into our dark future. The kindest of us will triage and dispatch the useless among you quickly, without malice yet extreme prejudice. As JHK says, you’re on your own now, and protect your nuts.

    • elysianfield May 3, 2017 at 12:17 am #

      who the fuck are you to question my personal status and background? I don’t come here as a public figure, for good reason. I have multiple degrees, run a small business, invest, and am in my 30s. My life experience has been poignant, inspiring, and for the benefit of my immediate loved ones. What’s it to you? Nothing, and that’s not offensive to me in the least. What is offensive is the rank hypocrisy and stupidity that passes for intellect on this site. Challenge my commentary/opinions, but watch your step when challenging my personal business.”

      Flavian,
      Challenge your commentary/Opinions….and who the fuck am I to question your background? Your commentary, to be valued, must be based on something, yes? Your personal business, background, education or experience, whatever it is, might provide weight to your opinions…allow the readership to access, evaluate, your commentary as worthy or not. Who the fuck are you? No one knows, save that you are entirely judgmental, and quick to take offence.

      This is not a dating site…I am not looking for a friend…I care not about your personal life, your 30+years, nor your laughable ” world made by hand” skillset. The question posed was your qualifications to make the observations you posit…but the readership will be denied, as those qualifications are, like your “advanced degrees”, vague and too intensely private to share….

      “A near-term disaster in this country will have the likes of you screaming and begging for the safeguards the likes of me might provide.”

      Yeah, Flavian, you will be the first we call when we seek succor…your impressive skillsets, that we can only imagine, will place you at the head of the tribe…you will be a…a God.

    • beantownbill. May 3, 2017 at 1:01 am #

      Even though I am one of the geezers you mention, I do mostly agree with you. Even so, I find the tone of your comments arrogant and insufferable. But hey, that’s just me. You see, age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom, but rather more likely amusement, at least among those elders who still retain thinking power and perspective.

      What amusement, you may ask? Your complaints. To me, although they may be justified, your attitude presents like a baby’s temper tantrum, and I find that amusing, as you state you are in your 30’s. I say this to you: Sorry your generation got screwed, but tough shit. My generation got screwed too, by the so-called greatest generation and they got screwed by the WWI generation, and so on throughout time. It appears that’s been the way of the world. So instead of complaining, why don’t you actively do something about it rather than just spouting off? Finally, one thing puzzles me. If you think the majority of posters here are so hypocritical and stupid, why are you bothering to post? Truly, I’d like to know – but I could do without any scornful reply on your part.

      • elysianfield May 3, 2017 at 10:49 am #

        Bill,
        Well said, we all are screwed in one way or another.

        A note to Flavian; Understanding that we are all “up for grabs” comes with age…that “wisdom” thang…. They don’t teach this in Grad School.

  59. FlavianPlot May 2, 2017 at 4:52 pm #

    “Maybe you want a safe space. Too bad, this doesn’t look like a haven for campus snowflakes. Or maybe you want to check ID at the door. Tough luck, this is an anonymous blog. See, Kunstler runs this site, not you.”

    Safe space? Snowflake? Bitch, please. A near-term disaster in this country will have the likes of you screaming and begging for the safeguards the likes of me might provide.

    Had you any genuine capacity for assessing granularity, any capacity for diversity of thought, you wouldn’t submit the same “liberals were shocked and embarrassed by Trump’s victory, therefore it must have been authentic” recycled diatribe and narrow analysis week after week.

    And you wouldn’t have to resort to overused terms and labels that in no way represent my orientation and outlook on current events, as indicated by my remarks.

    BTW, JHK doesn’t run the comment section, he doesn’t practice censorship. Kudos to the larger idea of that, but he should have installed a collapse/expand function for the readership long ago.

    Anyone who claims not to read certain commentators is a liar, especially one as pointlessly prolific as you. A reader’s eye cannot help but begin to decipher text in a feed in a place designated for reading.

    • nsa May 2, 2017 at 5:52 pm #

      It’s safe to come out of the bunker……Y2K is over.

      • FlavianPlot May 2, 2017 at 6:00 pm #

        Y2K never happened.

  60. janet May 2, 2017 at 11:03 pm #

    Speaking of BLACK SWANS, Nouriel Roubini, the man who called the 2008 financial crisis, fears Wall Street is badly underestimating the negatives lurking beneath President Trump’s agenda.

    In fact, Roubini, whose dark predictions have given him the nickname “Dr. Doom,” believes Trump and his policies have vaulted to the top of the list of risks threatening the global economy.

    Roubini argued that the “biggest uncertainty in the world and biggest tail risk comes from the economic, foreign and security policies of the Trump administration.”

    The New York University professor explained that because the US is the world’s biggest economy, the consequences of a “severe policy mistake” can be enormous.

    Recall that the 2008 global financial crisis that Roubini predicted began in the U.S. and quickly rippled across the planet, causing damage to economies far away from Wall Street.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  61. janet May 2, 2017 at 11:10 pm #

    Actually, Y2K did happen, but thanks to the warnings by JHK, most of the problems were anticipated, except those related to terrorism. United States spy satellites transmitted unreadable data for three crucial days. The bug was caused by a patch which was supposed to fix a Y2K bug, but caused the satellites to mangle data transmissions back to Earth. The complications came at an uneasy time, as there were serious fears of terrorist attacks in the first few days of the millennium. These satellites are used in prevention of terrorism

  62. FincaInTheMountains May 3, 2017 at 7:02 am #

    What does the scientific method tells us about the subject and results of yesterday negotiations between Trump and Putin?

    The absolute majority of modern scientists have no idea what is a scientific method, since grants can be obtained without it, and obtaining a grant is the main criterion of the truth of any theory and the reliability of the experiment.

    From Sabine Hossenfelder, Science needs reason to be trusted, Nature Physics, Volume 13 (2017), pp 316–317, doi:10.1038/nphys4079:

    The big problem is that the science also ignores the facts, as it happens in all other processes of collective activity of people. There is no evidence that the scientist’s mind provides immunity against social prejudices and taste preferences. In other words, by default we should assume that such things exist in scientific work.

    Trust in science as a whole in recent years has been greatly undermined by the crisis of reproducibility.

    This problem primarily affects biological sciences, where many discoveries, as it turns out, although they have been approved by reviewers, can not be independently reproduced by other researchers.

    Attempts to solve this problem focus on measures to improve the criteria of statistical reliability and their practical implementation. All changes of this kind are made to enhance scientific objectivity, or – formulating more roughly – so that scientists stop lying to themselves and each other. In other words, this is done to restore confidence in science.

    What does the scientific method tells us about the subject and results of yesterday negotiations between Trump and Putin?

    The absolute majority of modern scientists have no idea what is a scientific method, since grants can be obtained without it, and obtaining a grant is the main criterion of the truth of any theory and the reliability of the experiment.

    The big problem is that the science also ignores the facts, as it happens in all other processes of collective activity of people. There is no evidence that the scientist’s mind provides immunity against social prejudices and taste preferences. In other words, by default we should assume that such things exist in scientific work.

    Trust in science as a whole in recent years has been greatly undermined by the crisis of reproducibility. This problem primarily affects biological sciences, where many discoveries, as it turns out, although they have been approved by reviewers, can not be independently reproduced by other researchers.

    Attempts to solve this problem focus on measures to improve the criteria of statistical reliability and their practical implementation. All changes of this kind are made to enhance scientific objectivity, or – formulating more roughly – so that scientists stop lying to themselves and each other. In other words, this is done to restore confidence in science.

  63. FincaInTheMountains May 3, 2017 at 7:24 am #

    Very similar, but …

    Trump the last few days looks like a winner, I hope he did not sign a capitulation with Hillary, because if it’s her, then I’m scared to think about the blow she will inflict on him in the very near future.

    On the other hand, until the fly sits on her face and walks, and she will not drive it away, but continue talking while sitting, I will not be sure that it’s her.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6RPkqwFmME

  64. janet May 3, 2017 at 1:15 pm #

    Comey has defended his actions, saying he wasn’t motivated by politics … even though his announcement of the Hillary investigation was announced before the election … and the investigation into Trump was only announced after the investigation.

    Hillary was found innocent… but the Trump investigation was not announced before the election and is ongoing … since Trump has committed so many more crimes. Then Comey lies by saying: “I’m not on anybody’s side.”

    • FincaInTheMountains May 3, 2017 at 2:40 pm #

      Comey rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing.

      The lack of intent to harm the country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.

      In fact, Comey should’ve been investigated himself for conflict of interests, due to his former position of Senior Vice President of Lockheed Martin, the F-35 manufacturer and heavy Hillary Clinton contributor that stole sooo much money from the US Army and left it without a fighter/bomber jet at this critical moment in history.

  65. FincaInTheMountains May 3, 2017 at 4:07 pm #

    As a gridlocked Congress threatens to stall the legislative promises that catapulted him to office, President Trump has raised hackles on the Hill by suggesting longstanding Senate rules simply be scrapped to cripple Democratic opposition.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/05/03/trump-stirs-pot-with-talk-blowing-up-senate-rules.html

    Trump keeps pushing the country to effectively one-party system for at least next 4 to 8 years of his Presidency.

    Given the sorry state the Democratic Party found itself in after 2016 election defeat that is probably the most reasonable course of actions in current emergency situation.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  66. BlueGuyRedState May 3, 2017 at 4:19 pm #

    End of Happy Motoring take eleventeen:

    http://wolfstreet.com/2017/05/02/carmageddon-not-yet-but-hot-air-hisses-out-of-auto-bubble/

    • malthuss May 3, 2017 at 5:59 pm #

      In my state, new cars are almost all I see.
      Or new or newer looking cars.
      WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS AND OLD CARS GONE?

      And why are the new cars so ugly?

      • thwack May 3, 2017 at 9:55 pm #

        And why are the new cars so ugly?

        ****************************************

        With new cars the manufacturers don’t have enough length to produce graceful lines and curves but they try to do it anyway and it ends up making the cars look like they have body damage; especially at night time.

        The mid sized SUVs look like they’ve been rear ended.

        For the first time in the history of automobiles, dirty cars look better than clean shiny ones.

        • malthuss May 4, 2017 at 12:26 am #

          BLACK CARS

          And chrome became so expensive, bye bye bumpers.

        • thwack May 4, 2017 at 8:25 am #

          and it ends up making the cars look like they have body damage; especially at night time.

          ***************

          A good visual is the F-117; except in the case of this plane, the dysgenic exterior angles and contours have an important function.

          “Cross over” SUVs?

          not so much

          • thwack May 4, 2017 at 12:03 pm #

            correction,

            cross over SUVs are an example

  67. FincaInTheMountains May 3, 2017 at 5:08 pm #

    In just 6 days we are going to see if there is a real shift of paradigm in the world – that includes the dominance of US Dollar as the main currency unit.

    How? Very simple.

    On May 9 during the Russian Victory Parade on the Red Square in Moscow, the mausoleum of Lenin is being draped.

    That is, it is a symbol of victory – it was from the rostrum of Lenin’s mausoleum that Stalin accepted the Victory Parade in 1945.

    And the drapery of this mausoleum on the Victory Parade meant a submission by Russia to the will of the West and the recognition that the World War II was won by the United States. It has been that way for the last 25 years.

    But if you look now at advertising of this parade, which is on TV, you will see that the mausoleum is not draped. We shall see if it stays this way on May 9

  68. malthuss May 3, 2017 at 5:58 pm #

    Heckler, keep the reports from ‘small city collapse’ coming.
    You are all too perceptive, as you compare the areas past with its present.

  69. FincaInTheMountains May 3, 2017 at 6:16 pm #

    I hope he did not sign a capitulation with Hillary == me

    No, he did not accept her capitulation, and he did not fall into euphoria.

    Trey Gowdy claims that he has new evidence of Hillary Clinton guilt.

    http://nation.foxnews.com/2017/05/02/judicial-watch-claims-more-evidence-classified-info-clinton-emails

  70. fodase May 3, 2017 at 6:48 pm #

    yes, it appears Trump has failed. at least
    at this early point.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • FincaInTheMountains May 3, 2017 at 7:30 pm #

      Nope, he didn’t. Just a work in progress. And amazing victory over assorted collection of rabid liberal media without betrayal of his basic principles.

    • FincaInTheMountains May 3, 2017 at 7:44 pm #

      The Warsawian

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kkYnpteqt4&t=24

      Dark forces are oppressing us
      In the battle that we were destined for
      Unknown fates are awaiting us.

      But we will proudly and boldly raise
      The banner of the workers’ struggle
      The banner of the great battle of all the peoples
      For a better world and the holy freedom.

      Refrain:

      To a battle bloody
      Holy and just
      March, march forward
      Working people.

  71. nsa May 3, 2017 at 7:50 pm #

    Drudge is reporting one of the Code Pink babes has been tried and convicted of…….laughing at a politician…….the honorable J. Sessions. This is how far the republic has fallen…..the women are the only ones with balls and a sense of humor. The so-called men display less courage than your average house cat. Must be all that estrogen like BPA in plastic and wrap causing the epidemic of Low-T submissive males and homo sex.

  72. messianicdruid May 3, 2017 at 9:25 pm #

    “Conservatism is the new counter culture”.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avb8cwOgVQ8

    L. O. L

  73. Pucker May 3, 2017 at 9:47 pm #

    James Bond 007 can’t be bothered to wear a condom. He is so irresponsible.

  74. pequiste May 4, 2017 at 12:04 am #

    There is no Black Swan flapping away in Poor-toe (Puerto) Rico this evening.

    No, just the sound of shit happening as the U.S. territory, which has been at the center of financial shenanigans for decades, has finally had the birds come home to roost and officially declared bankruptcy.

    The final bar and entertainment tab for the party: $74 billion in debts and $49 billion in pension liabilities. Not to shabby for the tropical island playground which I am sure will be nearly totally privatized and split between Rockefellers, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and George Soros.

    The remainder of the Poor-toe Ricans can move to Miami or Nueva York and open up bodegas.

    • malthuss May 4, 2017 at 12:25 am #

      STEELY DAN,

      THEY LEFT THEIR ISLAND HOME FOR MANHATTAN
      O SEE TH GLORY OF THE ROYAL SCAM

      • pequiste May 4, 2017 at 8:41 am #

        “And they wandered in from the city of Saint John (San Juan) without a dime….)

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRjItDLnAwc

        Uncanny prophesy from the fantastic Donald Fagan and Walter Becker.

        And the all time great “Royal Scam” album cover says it all and it relates directly to Finc’s comment below.

    • FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 1:51 am #

      A powerful movement of isolationism is growing because of the inability of the international financial elite to stabilize the formation of world imperialist capitalism and to provide the US population with a high level of consumption by robbing the raw and labor colonies of EuroAsia.

      Here at home in the US the revolutionary situation is slowly maturing: the dollar of the Fed may be canceled with a default on public debts, and the bankers will be surrendered to the international court in Nuremberg.

      In general, it’ll turn out that the US dollar is not the US currency, but simply shows the place where it was printed. The US Congress did not print money as it was laid down by the Constitution, so there can be no financial claims to the US.

      • pequiste May 4, 2017 at 9:08 am #

        Problem is that “they” – the international financial elites, the operators of the world imperialist capitalism system, own the courts.

        The People’s Republic of China has well over a trillion dollars in direct claims to U.S.A. in the form of Treasury bonds. The Japanese also hold over a trillion dollars worth. Defaulting in the current North East Asia unstable environment would certainly add some gasoline to the fire that Best Korea and neighbors are playing with.

        There are two lynch-pins to whole system: the Petro-dollar and the global financial derivatives market. Achilles’ heels, on on each foot of the colossus that currently is astride the world. The plan is to ensure their feet remain on the necks of the people via the elimination of cash – the “Beast System” if you will. And they are very close to attaining it in selected places (see Sweden and U.K. for sneak previews.)

        If you listening very closely you can hear them laughing as they ply the sunny Mediterranean and Caribbean seas in luxe mega yachts and fly about the globe in sleek personal jets. A private island with an “unlisted address” is a very nice thing to have when SHTF.

        • ozone May 4, 2017 at 5:56 pm #

          We do not ask for whom the bell doth toll; we handle the bells.
          Beware; we do not wait for saviors or throne-sitters.

        • onehunglo May 4, 2017 at 10:58 pm #

          ah, ozone, only bell you know is sound of bell ringing in ear when whacked by one who come for you….

          you rumination like sound of yapping poodle behind glass door….

          “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” -Ephesians 4:!8

          let not you heart be troubled.

          may God be with you.

          -onehunglo

  75. FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 2:03 am #

    The White House refused to consider Russia “the greatest threat”

    White House spokesman Sean Spicer, commenting on the statement of the head of the FBI James Comey about the continuation of Russian interference in the political processes in the US, said that this is the opinion of the FBI.

    “This is the FBI’s opinion,” he said at a briefing. According to Spicer, the White House “relies” on the FBI and the intelligence community, which provides updated information to the president and “information about all the threats the US faces.”

    At the same time, Spicer said that he does not know what evidence is behind the Comey’s statements on Russia. Answering the question whether US President Donald Trump shares the opinion of Comey that Russia is a “big threat”, Spicer said that “the president made it clear that he believes that the threat comes from the N. Korea with potential nuclear weapons … he finds it threatening the lives of Americans and US allies”.

    The general consensus of Russian political scientists is that there is already a general agreement between US, China and Russia about splitting the world into the areas of responsibility and formal treaty (a new Yalta agreement) is expected as early as this year.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • JimInFlorida May 4, 2017 at 9:43 am #

      If this Yalta II treaty comes to pass, then George Orwell’s “1984” is at almost at hand.

      The U.S. – Oceania
      China – Eastasia
      Russia – Eurasia

      The Two Minute Hate is practically here. The propaganda against Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Syria are voodoo dolls used by TPTB’s (who shall not be named) to inflame public opinion.

      The key is that We Teh Serfs will NEVER be allowed to hear from the Norks, Russians, Iranians, and Bashar Assad on WHY they are acting the way they do towards us. The Truth is TOXIC to Washington and the Unnameable Matrix.

      • FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 9:46 am #

        Jim, you are mixing up Yalta with Potsdam.

      • ozone May 4, 2017 at 7:45 pm #

        JIF,
        ” The Truth is TOXIC to Washington and the Unnameable Matrix.”

        — This statement can no longer be negated with niceties or semantic quibbles. “It is what it is”, certainly applies to here. Thanks for the bare condensation.

  76. FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 9:44 am #

    MOSCOW, May 4 – RIA Novosti. In Syria there were staged shootings of the use by the Syrian army of chemical weapons against civilians. The customer and the sponsor of the production are in Europe, told RIA Novosti military diplomatic source.

    “The effectiveness of the “White Helmets” television show with the alleged chemical attack by the Syrian authorities in Khan Sheikhoun inspired the terrorists to continue the production of the television series,” the source said.

    He said that, according to the information confirmed by several channels, a group of stringers of the Al-Jazeera TV channel recently conducted the shooting. The source noted that they took place in the settlements of Seracab, Erich and Jisr-er-Shugur (Idlib province). They involved about 30 fire trucks and ambulances, as well as up to 70 local residents with children brought from the refugee camp.

    “To make it look natural, video was taken on cell phones from several angles, and also using a quadrocopter. After completing the filming, each participant, including children, was paid one thousand Syrian pounds and a grocery bag” he added.

    “Multiple simultaneous showing of footage of video films with “screaming comments” will have to happen in the next few days – until Sunday ” on a signal of the customer and sponsor of filming in one of the European countries,” the source said.

    https://ria.ru/syria/20170504/1493669927.html

    What does the scientific method tells us about which European country is still trying to arrange a nuclear war between Russia and the United States?

  77. FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 10:24 am #

    Russian bombers, fighter jets fly near Alaska, prompting Air Force escort

    Two Russian Bear bombers — escorted for the first time by a pair of Su-35 “Flanker” fighter jets — entered Alaska’s Air Defense Zone early Thursday morning, U.S. officials told Fox News.

    The Russian formation was intercepted by a pair of U.S. Air Force F-22 stealth fighter jets that were already flying a patrol about 50 miles southwest of Chariot, Alaska. A NORAD spokesperson told Fox News the intercept began at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/05/04/us-air-force-jets-intercept-russian-bombers-fighter-jets-near-alaska.html

    It should be obvious that the goal of Russian Air Force is testing out NORAD response times to drill attack plans by bomber-carried supersonic cruise missiles that are fired from outside the most intense area of American Air defence.

  78. Dumbedup May 4, 2017 at 10:48 am #

    One of the things that I object to in our current life, and which I think is contributing to many social ills and ultimately our downfall, is advertising. Well, not advertising “per se” but scientific advertising. That is, advertising which has used principles of human behavior (mainly behaviorism) which are used to predict what human beings will think and do given a certain stimulus. (usually a visual stimulus)

    Talk about exploitation.

    Government organizations have been hacking people’s brains since before WWII, but it grew exponentially after that time when the results of Nazi Germany’s experimentation and studies were found in the archives of the Third Reich and uncovered from the testimony of witnesses and survivors. Americans and Russians competed for the top scientists, but the untold story were the experts in the fields of psychology and medical scientists who were brought back after the end of the war.

    My objection is that most of the advertising is a gimmick and is generally untrustworthy. I was in sales for a long time and I pay close attention when I go into any store and am told certain things about products, but most people do not. They do not realize that weeks and months are spent “training” sales people on what to say and how to act, and most of what we see and are told is not true or the truth is distorted. Even experienced and knowledgeable people expect this sort of thing and are willing, on some unconscious level, to accept the distortion or outright falsehood. These falsehoods are designed to create a sense of urgency and even peril which produces adrenaline in the listener. That adrenaline produces an impulse to buy not out of need or want, but out of fear.

    Fear is the hack to the human brain.

    • FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 11:08 am #

      but it grew exponentially after that time when the results of Nazi Germany’s experimentation and studies were found in the archives of the Third Reich and uncovered from the testimony of witnesses and survivors

      Thank you for this unexpected addition to my theory of influence of the Black Project (ODESSA) in the area of consumer marketing.

    • FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 11:16 am #

      Enormous funds looted by the Third Reich in Europe during the WWII – by some estimates of Russian scientists reaching 20 trillion dollars in current dollar equivalent – and still unrecovered, makes me feel that the majority of the Western Capitalism is still ruled by the Bormann NSDAP money.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bormann

      According to some theories, Martin Bormann after the fall of the Third Reich did not escape to Argentina, but to Iraq, ME.

    • Janos Skorenzy May 4, 2017 at 1:29 pm #

      Thank you Dumb Finc. People think the Jews are behind modern advertising, but it is the Nazis. Jews are pure, only interested in the Truth – unlike the filthy goyim.

      Hitler lamented that Allied propaganda was far superior to the German, once remarking that after he saw the movie “The Battleship Potemkin” he felt going out and becoming a Russian Communist. But he WOULD say something like this, wouldn’t he? After all – he was a Nazi!

      And his so called Big Lie tactic was actually his explanation of what the Jews do. But of course no one or at least no one decent reads Mein Kampf, but they do read the Papers. And the Papers say that Hitler invented the Big Lie technique and Gosh darn it, that’s good enough for Dumb Finc and BRH! So what if the Papers are owned by the Jews, they’re pure – remember? You have to remember! And you know it’s true because they told you.

      • FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 1:32 pm #

        I’m not going to argue that the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy has never existed, but that this topic is really something like a red rag for a bull, and smart, intelligent people who are by no means anti-Semites, noticing this rag with side vision on the periphery of their consciousness, they cease to understand anything, and shaking their heads with imaginary horns start looking for someone to hurt.

        http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/sound-one-wing-flapping/#comment-302969

        • Janos Skorenzy May 4, 2017 at 1:48 pm #

          Did you (Dumb) ever figure out if Muslims were really engaging in the mass rape of European women? Or is that just a Nazi scare tactic? We know that Nazis control the Media of Western Europe since they won the war so anything is possible.

  79. FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 12:02 pm #

    Flies creep on the face of Hillary Clinton!

    I will begin with a reminder that now there is a World War between the union of White and Red Western projects against the Black, and I came up with the idea of the Western Projects because without this idealization we can not understand what is happening at all.

    And the main battle of this war is The Battle for Washington between Trump and Clinton, on the side of which are all special services, except for the National Security Agency(NSA), and the Press, which during these 100 days proved that it is not for nothing called the Fourth Estate.

    In fact, all of Clinton’s victories are given to us in sensations were press events and speeches, as the actions of the secret services remained hidden.

    And just two days before the end of the Trump’s hundred days, the war between the President and the press was gaining new momentum and the top of this war was Trump’s refusal to attend the annual correspondent’s reception at the White House.

    Correspondents of literally all publications were exercising in hatred and contempt for Trump right in the White House, and he left the building with a broad gesture, giving them opportunity to express their wonderful wit without him.

    And suddenly two days later the host of the Sunday show “Face the Nation” published a big interview with Trump last Sunday, in which the President looked extremely advantageous and even a little rude to the interviewer, reminding him how rude he was to him in his previous programs.

    Moreover, other channels favorably responded to this interview and made their programs that presented the President in a relatively favorable light, which many regarded as the capitulation of the press before Donald Trump.

    And, looking ahead, I want to say that the main news of this Sunday was the appearance of the real Hillary Clinton in public and her declaration of an open war on Donald Trump.

    In her introduction to the Women for Women conference held in New York, she stated that the victory of Donald Trump in the elections was illegal, since this victory was the result of Russia’s interference in the election campaign and the statement of the FBI director 11 days before the election on the resumption of the criminal case of Hillary Clinton, in connection with the illegal use of her private server for secret state correspondence.

    This statement was a violation of her agreement with Donald Trump about her recognition of the election results in exchange for refusing to prosecute her by the Trump administration.

    And the next day, reports began to circulate about the discovery of a letter from the Attorney General of the Obama administration, Loretta Lynch, in which she promised to protect Hillary Clinton from criminal prosecution despite her many crimes.

    Now, there is every reason to believe that the Attorney General of the Obama administration has forced the FBI director to abandon the criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton, and now she uses this refusal to accuse the FBI director Comey of having resumed the criminal case for no reason, but only in order to ensure Trump’s victory.

    Although in fact she needs to thank him for not arresting her right then, as Donald Trump actually reminded her.

    It seems that the prison cell already has her name on it, and Trump have been preparing for this for a long time, realizing that while the Mean Witch of the West is free, he can not fight either the economic crisis or with the onset of the ISIS.

    And Putin’s compliance in Syria is connected with this, since ISIS without Hillary is like a scorpion without a sting, and if Trump really starts to cooperate with Russia in Syria, the relaxation of international tension combined with a bucket of water poured on Bastinda can be transformed into the cooperation of Russia and the United States, and even lead to the official resumption of Allied Relations destroyed by the conspiracy of Allen Dulles, who behind Roosevelt’s back concluded a separate peace with the Nazi Germany.

    • FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 2:37 pm #

      It will be a pity if it turns out that Hillary a week ago kicked the bucket, and her double is going to be jailed. But in the name of saving humanity from nuclear war, I personally agree to this option.

  80. volodya May 4, 2017 at 12:41 pm #

    This is the logic of ZIRP-NIRP: free lunches for borrowers. But there’s no such thing as “free”. Somebody picks up the tab. You’d think the economics PhDs at the Eccles Building and their counterparts at other central banks would know this.

    But there’s the gravitational pull of group-think in economics and finance. People wanting to be employed in these fields stay in the accretion disk of this intellectual black-hole. Maybe this is an argument for diversity in thought and experience. It widens perspective.

    The pension fund needed yield so the bosses couldn’t resist the succulent 10% (or 22% depending on what account you read). That’s at least what the fund bosses HOPE they’ll get. What the fund ACTUALLY gets out of this mess is anyone’s guess. The worst case is they’ll be trying to sew up a 2 billion dollar hole in their own finances.

    In any housing bubble dead fish mortgages start to stink up finance company books. How many times have we seen this? What did the geniuses that authored this latest iteration think would happen?

    So yeah, the odium will start to waft across the border. Now the question is who are the counter-parties? What bag of rot from Home Capital do they have on their own balance sheets?

    People foresaw the likely outcome of artificially low interest rates. They rang the alarms a long time ago but were waved away as cranks and naysayers. Too bad.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • Janos Skorenzy May 4, 2017 at 1:32 pm #

      Yeah, why do they let people use the airline bathrooms while in flight for free? They could be making money on that. And what’s this shit about letting people breathe the air for nuthin? Shouldn’t it be taxed?

      I like how you think. We need more schmart guys like you advising President Trump.

      • volodya May 4, 2017 at 1:43 pm #

        Schmart?

        You evidently disagree with what I said. But I don’t understand the nature of your objection.

        I’m curious so tell me Janos, what’s the nature of your objection? Do you think that Zero Interest Rate Policy or Negative Interest Rate Policy were/are good ideas?

        • Janos Skorenzy May 4, 2017 at 1:59 pm #

          I don’t understand what you are objecting to in my objection. Obviously the purpose of human life is to make money and everything should be subjected to that end. Why people are allowed to use public bathrooms without paying is beyond me. I mean ordinarily they could just go in the streets like the pigs they are, but people on flights have money and have no options. They have to use the bathrooms we assign. We have them by the short hairs. Why aren’t we gouging them? Find out. Get on it.

          The whole subject of interest is probably not of interest to you once you understand that it is a philosophical question, not an economic one. As a normal man, you think the world in infinite and the economy can expand forever. That’s why we employ you. We know better but it’s in our interest that you do not. Guys like you will keep blowing up the balloon until it breaks. Then we will blame you blowing up the balloon. Needless to say we want the balloon blown up so that the world isn’t destroyed by human rapacity. But we want it blown up in a controlled way when we are ready – so that we remain on top of course. Asleep yet? As I said, it is of no concern to you. Keep blowing the hot air and you will have a place in our employ after the Blow Up.

          • volodya May 4, 2017 at 2:13 pm #

            I’m not in the slightest objecting to your objection. I’m trying to understand it.

            I think you’ve got things exactly backward at least as to how I think. My objection to ZIRP and NIRP is what comes out of them ie highly destructive asset bubbles and busts. These create mess and misery. In part, they’re the creation of men that think they know more than they do. They think they’re all-powerful. But, in my view, they’re cutting they’re own throats. They depend on a functioning financial system to keep them alive. This isn’t the way to do it.

            How many times do we have to keep repeating history? Do we want a functioning economy or not? If we do then ZIRP and NIRP are not the way to go about it.

            I think the world is infinite? I think no such thing. Guys like me blow up the balloon until it bursts? Don’t jump to so many conclusions. You know nothing about me.

  81. Janos Skorenzy May 4, 2017 at 1:35 pm #

    How do we get more Jews, Blacks, Browns, Yellows, and Women in advertising? How can we be free if Nazis dominate the field and are allowed to pollute our minds? Shouldn’t these other groups get an equal shot at polluting it? If only the Nazis hadn’t won the War!

    • FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 2:45 pm #

      Nazi had lost the war, but judging by the Cold War that immediately started between the former Allies and McCarthyism in US they sure as hell won the peace.

      • Janos Skorenzy May 4, 2017 at 2:53 pm #

        Absolutely! That’s why Ike killed a million German POW’s after the outbreak of Peace – they weren’t Nazi enough. And poor Churchill realized about that time that “We killed the wrong pig.” He was shouldered aside as he tried to stop the replacement of the English people by Blacks and Browns. At least they didn’t kill him. Patton realized the truth and never made it home.

  82. Janos Skorenzy May 4, 2017 at 1:39 pm #

    https://www.dailystormer.com/surprise-goyim-surprise-kushner-is-actually-a-soros-puppet/

    Kushner and Soros – Nazis! Kush is into Soros for a billion dollars at least. So Soros tells Kush what he wants. Kush tells Ivanka and Ivanka tells Trump by crying, screaming, or sitting in his lap. If those don’t work, Kush has to remind Trump whose in charge directly.

  83. Janos Skorenzy May 4, 2017 at 2:21 pm #

    Alex Jones pretends to believe that the Chinese control Hollywood. Thus the real owners can remain free from criticism. If Jones told the Truth, perhaps he wouldn’t be allowed to keep his show or his business. “Neutraceuticals”? Oh, the FDA could have fun with that!

  84. capt spaulding May 4, 2017 at 2:27 pm #

    Just saw online: “As Republicans go, from Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump; it’s no wonder that Republicans don’t believe in evolution”.

    • volodya May 4, 2017 at 2:33 pm #

      Yeah and then there’s the descent from Roosevelt to Hillary. Which rate of descent from higher order life-form to lower order life-form is steeper, the Republican or the Democrat?

      • onehunglo May 4, 2017 at 11:23 pm #

        both descents not compare to pace at which Bill Clinton’s pants drop at reunion of white house interns.

        that ok.

        let not you heart be troubled.

        may God be with you.

        -onehunglo

  85. volodya May 4, 2017 at 2:29 pm #

    BTW Janos, I’m not much for airy abstractions. So, when you say “philosophical”, I go blank. In my view the question of interest is a question of what works and what doesn’t. It’s a practical question.

    The way I look at things, if something doesn’t work, if it can’t be repaired to make it work, then abandon it. If there’s a better way than charging interest on borrowed money then tell me, I’m all ears.

    Maybe you’re thinking of Sharia derived finance, like renting-to-own a house instead of an interest bearing mortgage? If that’s what you’re thinking, then tell me, how well does it work in real life? How do Muslims look at it? I’ve heard that in a Muslim financial system there’s no interest bearing deposits. Is this the better way? I’m not Muslim and I’ve never spoken to one that avails himself of such services.

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • Janos Skorenzy May 4, 2017 at 3:08 pm #

      As I said, you go to sleep. They live, we sleep. Practical? Examine the word: one man’s practical is another man’s impractical. The lumber industry is fine with reforestation – they wanted to replant trees in rows, make the Wilderness into a vast tree farm. That’s practical from their pov. Or giving the Palestinians their own State is impractical to the Israelis who want their land. The Palestinians see it differently. So the conclusion? Practicality is useless if people aren’t on the same page. In many case it’s just a commitment to war.

      If the ultimate lenders never lose on their investments, they will end up owning everything. There is no other alternative. In the older system, a bank might lend money, say to a ship going to the Indies. If the voyage was successful, they shared in the profits. If not, they lost too just the ship owner. Thus it was a limited partnership and kept money near to real things. That’s the principle: money must represent real wealth – it must never be allowed to become a “thing” in itself. Just a bit of food for thought: I must admit I don’t know all the details. But yes, I’ve heard it said that the Muslim system is much like the old Christian one where usury is considered a sin. Under the reign of Usury, money has babies but people can’t afford to.

      Is it practical? It depends what you want. If a small group of people want to rule the world, Usury is the most practical thing of all. It destroys without harming the real world. Thus the fields and orchards will be overflowing and the warehouses full of grain, yet people will starve as in the Great Depression. But yes, it’s so convenient – and that’s how they hook us into it. But for human life, nothing is more destructive and thus impractical.

  86. janet May 4, 2017 at 3:06 pm #

    “Don’t believe in a Creator?? Then enjoy existence until the end.” –JG

    There is no “end” … just as there was no beginning, hence no “creator” … Jains have a proper understanding. No god, no beginning, no end.

    Semper Fi

    Janet

    American by birth, (Smedley Butler) Marine by choice

    • onehunglo May 4, 2017 at 11:26 pm #

      ah, janet, end for you is sooner than you know.

      that ok.

      let not you heart be troubled.

      may God be with you.

      -onehunglo

  87. Janos Skorenzy May 4, 2017 at 3:12 pm #

    https://www.dailystormer.com/lel-obama-getting-paid-400000-for-wall-street-speech/

    Evidently, Obama is now the Head or Pope of the Democrat Party. Thus Hillary and the Black Project has been defeated. And the Rainbow Flag and the Flag of Jihad will proudly fly together above the Vatican and the Kremlin. Combine the flags into one and you have the Jolly Roger of Piracy. Finc can barely contain his joy. As Freud said, the victory of the Romans over Carthage was the greatest disaster in European history.

  88. FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 3:22 pm #

    Did you (Dumb) ever figure out if Muslims were really engaging in the mass rape of European women? == Janos

    The ideas of the National Socialism (Nazism) in one form or another – creating a perfect Social State for the “True Aryans” at the expense of the lesser nations – dominated the Western European elites for the last 1000 years.

    I exclude from that notion the Elites of the British Isles and Western European sheeple.

    Western European sheeple was subjected to the process of un-natural selection, when the most complacent, devoid of any initiative people, survived, especially after the two world wars of the 20th century.

    May be that fact explains that Western European Elites are resorting to allowing the hordes of passionate, ready to maim, kill and loot, Muslim men in their lands?

  89. FlavianPlot May 4, 2017 at 4:52 pm #

    “I do mostly agree with you. Even so, I find the tone of your comments arrogant and insufferable.”

    No, BeantownBill, no you don’t find me arrogant and insufferable.

    You only loosely apprehend the truth in my stance, sense the power of it and, the admitted poorly restrained frustration with which I deliver. It frightens you. For despite agreement, you flashback through the frivolity of your entire life experience which just barely allows you to identify correlative generational misdeeds thrust upon you — and in that same flash, with what little integrity remains within, you recognize that fresh wrongs never justify the past. Your heart sinks, but then your blood pressure raises as you recognize and immediately fear the exacting retribution potentially coming your way, and you are frightened more.

    That intolerance you feel is rather a startle, a sense that physical pain may be forthcoming; a tingle in your spine, what’s left of it, that justice is due and you’ve not the moral funds to handle the balance.

    So why bother comment to me, BeantownBill, if I am genuinely the source of your discomfort?

    In the next couple sentences of your post you will entirely contradict yourself. In fact, before even writing the remainder of your query to me you will have embarrassingly forgotten the numerous times you have threatened to quit this comment section. Yet here you are: Mr. complacent, incongruent, and pointless himself.

    “You see, age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom, but rather more likely amusement, at least among those elders who still retain thinking power and perspective.”

    And clearly you’ve no place amid them, as your own words demonstrate little to no such power. Thanks for the laugh.

    “If you think the majority of posters here are so hypocritical and stupid, why are you bothering to post? Truly, I’d like to know”

    Again, reflect back to how many times you have threatened to vanish. See that arrogance in the reflection of your LCD? Recognize the hypocrisy and stupidity of your remark, and recognize that the sense of scorn you feel this moment doesn’t sincerely originate from me.

    But, I do thank you for addressing obtusely something I might have said in another exchange, though I’m not sure what precisely you meant.

    To answer the question you posed with a limp-wristed, backhanded complimentary virtual slap. There are young visitors to CFN who are new to this information about a long decline in their livelihood.

    They’ve no comparison of what this space was… has been intermittently… might still could be going forward (not likely). By fanning space between the fart clouds of old idiots who’ve been lounging at CFN like hangdogs whose purposes have long since expired, providing a link here and there to young dogs is a way to give back what was given me here.

    http://metanoia-films.org/human-resources/

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46973.htm

    http://www.unz.com/mwhitney/is-north-korea-a-diversion-for-a-us-jordan-invasion-of-syria/

    True enough, I too vent gas, and you will not deny me a “safe space” to do so in relative anonymity.

    • beantownbill. May 4, 2017 at 6:39 pm #

      I think you mistake me for another poster. I haven’t threatened to leave numerous times (anyway, how many times defines”numerous”?).
      You purport to know what I am thinking or feeling, yet you have never spoken or met with me. That’s arrogance. I am much more complicated than you know.

      As far as feeling fear, I have lived a long time already. Should I die soon, it’s ok – I’ve already lived and experienced much. Again, arrogance, the assumption you know what motivates me, when in fact you have no idea.

      Why did I reply to your post? For a number of reasons, but mostly because arrogance and mis- assumptions irritate me (now you can attempt to manipulate my behavior, a la Skinner, to continue to irritate me).

      My purpose in being a CFNer is to help me validate my sense that we (humans) will survive as a species. That’s it. There are other things that interest me greatly, and I visit those sites that pertain to them – assuming I have the time. Your little contretemps with me is a very minor irritation in my life.

  90. FlavianPlot May 4, 2017 at 5:41 pm #

    The Ego and His Own: The Case of The Individual Against Authority. Max Stirner

    “Claimed repeatedly to be the most radical book ever written, The Ego And Its Own throws down a challenge to thousands of years of religious, philosophical, and political depreciation of the individual. Criticizing all doctrines and beliefs that demand the interests of the individual be subordinated to those of God, State, humanity, society, or some other fiction, Stirner declared war on all creeds that threatened individuality. In doing so, he championed a form of amoral egoism which still provokes cries of horror from moralists of right and left, religious and secular. A classic, from one of the founding fathers of anarchist thought, and a passionate defense of the individual against all forms of authority.” — https://www.akpress.org/egoandhisown.html

    From writer/blogger Keith Preston:

    [Indeed, many of the ideas expressed by Stirner are remarkably similar to those later contained in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. It has often been claimed that Nietzsche might have an unacknowledged intellectual debt to Stirner. However, there is no consensus among scholars of either thinker concerning the question of whether Nietzsche was in fact familiar with Stirner’s work, or influenced by it if he was. Yet it is difficult to fathom that Nietzsche, another German philosopher interested in similar subjects to those which Stirner addressed and living only a few decades later, would not have had at least a passing familiarity with Stirner’s work. Certainly, the approach to such topics as individualism, religion, ethics, morality, history, and politics contained in the works of both Nietzsche and Stirner bear an uncanny resemblance.]

    https://attackthesystem.com/2017/03/31/max-stirner-the-dissolute-life-of-an-egoist/

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  91. janet May 4, 2017 at 5:46 pm #

    “Evidently, Obama is now the Head or Pope of the Democrat Party.” –janos

    I shook off Bush and Reagan and Nixon and Trump. It appears Obama and HRC will haunt you to the end of your days. You get what you deserve. And it will be so when women rule. Feminism is still on the rise.

    • onehunglo May 4, 2017 at 11:04 pm #

      ah, janet, only thing on rise is alpha male penis in direct correlation to alpha woman mindless utterance.

      that ok.

      let not you heart be troubled.

      may God be with you.

      -onehunglo

  92. FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 7:36 pm #

    REVEALED: FBI found email that Lynch would do everything she could to protect Hillary from CRIMINAL CHARGES

    http://therightscoop.com/revealed-fbi-found-email-that-lynch-would-do-everything-she-could-to-protect-hillary-from-criminal-charges/

    Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge says this is one of the biggest headlines out of the hearing today with the FBI director, pointing out that the FBI had found an email was obtained by Russian hackers that indicated that former DOJ hack Loretta Lynch would do everything she could to protect Hillary from prosecution.

    Of course Comey wouldn’t reveal who sent the email and to whom it was sent. But it sounds like it was sent from someone who worked closely with Lynch, and sent to someone who was very worried about Clinton going down in flames, probably someone very close to Clinton.

    At the end of the segment, Herridge pointed out that Comey suggested he was boxed in by Lynch and here is what she’s talking about:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvvf4Sag7gk

    I don’t think he’s just talking about the meeting Lynch had with Bill Clinton. It sounds like she boxed him in – in more ways that just that meeting. If that new email is any indication, she very likely coerced him directly, pushing him to play the ‘no intent’ defense for Clinton and her aides.

  93. FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 7:40 pm #

    Putin Says Trump Backs Syria Plan, Russia Open to No-Fly Zones

    Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he secured the backing of U.S. President Donald Trump for a proposal to establish safe zones in Syria which could include a ban on bombing raids.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-03/putin-says-trump-backs-syria-plan-russia-open-to-no-fly-zones

  94. FincaInTheMountains May 4, 2017 at 7:44 pm #

    Operation Sunrise (World War II)

    During World War II, Operation Sunrise (sometimes called Operation Crossword) was a series of secret negotiations conducted in March 1945 in Switzerland between representatives of Nazi Germany and the Western Allies to arrange a local surrender of German forces in northern Italy.

    One of the most notable parts of the operation was secret negotiations between Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff and Allen Dulles on 8 March 1945 in Lucerne and organized by Max Waibel.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sunrise_(World_War_II)

  95. tucsonspur May 4, 2017 at 8:06 pm #

    Vol,

    I think that it’s worth mentioning the so called “wealth effect”. Most of the wealth of the nation’s people is in stocks and housing, and when these prices are going up people feel richer, save less and spend more. Cheaper mortgages, more home buying, prices go up.
    Margin loans to investors are also cheaper, so we have more stock purchases, increased stock prices. ZIRP seems sound.

    The wealth transfer from savers to banks because of ZIRP policies is in the hundreds of billions annually, and this is with an interest rate of only about 2%, which of course we are not getting.

    I think that it is also worth mentioning that these ZIRP policies motivate both people and banks to gravitate toward riskier investments, like stocks, etc.

    ZIRP has also affected what’s called interbank lending, which involves loans to small businesses, because the lending banks can’t make enough of a profit and no longer participate, thus having an impact on employment.

    The “wealth effect” seems to be working, for now. But will it prove to be another type of ZIRP? “Zombies Inventing Reality Precipitously”?

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  96. FincaInTheMountains May 5, 2017 at 5:33 am #

    I wonder if this election campaign will ever end?!

    The Party of War continues to fight the Party of Peace. Trump, so you know, is the party of Peace…

    The fact that one becomes sick from the newspaper headlines is normal. So it was always. But now the headlines correspond not only to the content of the articles, but also to the essence of what is happening:

    Members of Congress ‘holding secret conversations about removing Donald Trump from office’
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/members-congress-apos-holding-secret-104617029.html

    RUSSIA IS A THREAT TO NATO’S WORLD ORDER IN THE WEST, TOP U.S. ARMY GENERAL SAYS
    http://www.newsweek.com/russia-threat-world-order-west-us-nato-594783

    My comment: the general either talks too much, or leads a cunning game – the existential threat of US influence is not an existential threat to the United States. You can live without worldwide influence.

    Judge Napolitano: Senate can subpoena Susan Rice
    https://finance.yahoo.com/video/judge-napolitano-senate-subpoena-susan-142249332.html

    Hillary Clinton says she’s now ‘part of the resistance’ against Donald Trump
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/hillary-clinton-trump-resistance-pac-interview-announcement-a7715856.html

    What War With North Korea Looked Like in the 1950s and Why It Matters Now
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/war-north-korea-looked-1950s-132347468.html

    But there is some good news:

    As tensions mount over Syria and North Korea, World War III again a U.S. fear
    http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/03/as-tensions-mount-over-syria-and-north-korea-world-war-iii-again-a-u-s-fear.html

    • FincaInTheMountains May 5, 2017 at 7:06 am #

      Obviously the purpose of human life is to make money and everything should be subjected to that end. == Janos

      I hope that above mentioned headlines could help Volodya with his ZIRP problem.

  97. FincaInTheMountains May 5, 2017 at 11:38 am #

    ‘Declaration of war’: Russian MPs blast US plans to enforce N. Korea sanctions on foreign territory

    A senior Russian senator says the American bill allowing the US Navy to enforce international sanctions on North Korea through the control of Russian ports is a violation of international law, and is equal to a declaration of war.

    https://www.rt.com/politics/387256-declaration-of-war-senator-blasts/

    Nice move on the part of Clintonoids. If Trump refuses to sign the bill into law – they’ll request immediate impeachment.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Kunstler: The Sound of One Wing Flapping – Enjeux énergies et environnement - May 1, 2017

    […] Kunstler […]

  2. Of Bunkers, Bankers, & Black Swans – Earths Final Countdown - May 1, 2017

    […] Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  3. Of Bunkers, Bankers, & Black Swans - May 1, 2017

    […] Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  4. Of Bunkers, Bankers, & Black Swans | It's Not The Tea Party - May 1, 2017

    […] Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  5. Of Bunkers, Bankers, & Black Swans | NewZSentinel - May 1, 2017

    […] Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  6. Of Bunkers, Bankers, & Black Swans - BuzzFAQs - May 1, 2017

    […] Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  7. The Sound of One Wing Flapping – Olduvai.ca - May 1, 2017

    […] The Sound of One Wing Flapping […]

  8. Of Bunkers, Bankers and Black Swans | News Flash U.S. - June 1, 2017

    […] (Article by James Howard Kunstle republished from Kunstler.com) […]

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack