Clusterfuck Nation
Now appearing Mondays and Fridays
Support this blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page!
Further proof, as if more were needed, that God is rather cross with the world’s number one exceptional nation: Hurricane Irma is tracking for a direct hit on Disney World. In the immortal words of the Talking Heads: This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around.
Houston is still soggy and punch-drunk, with a fantastic explosion of breeding mosquitoes, and otherwise it’s not even in the news anymore. This week, the cable networks had their scant crews of reporters scuttling around Florida, asking the people here and there about their feelings. “What’s gonna happen is gonna happen….” I think I heard that one about sixty times, and there’s actually no disputing the truth of it.
For the moment, though (Friday morning), it’s a little hard to calculate the effect of a complete scrape-off, wash, and rinse of the state of Florida vis-à-vis the ongoing viability of the US economy. There’s going to be a big hole with dollars rushing into it and that will likely prompt the combined powers of the US Treasury, congress, and the Federal Reserve to materialize tens of billions of new dollars. Overnight the DXY plunged to a new low for the year.
Am I the only observer wondering if Irma may be a fatal blow to the banking system? The mind reels at the insurance implications of what’s about to happen. Urgent obligations triggered by an event of this scale can’t possibly be serviced. Look for it to snap the chain of counterparty leverage that has been propping up the banks, insurers, and pension funds on mere promises for years on end. Finance, both private and public, has been feeding off unreality since well before the tremor of 2008. The destruction of Florida (and whatever else stands in the way up the line) will be as real as it gets.
You’ve heard the old argument, I’m sure, that a natural disaster turns out to be a boon for the economy because so many people are employed fixing the damage. It’s not true, of course. Replacing things of value that have been destroyed with new things is just another version of the old Polish Blanket Gag: guy wants to make his blanket longer, so he cuts a foot off the top and sews it onto the bottom. The capital expended has to come from something and somewhere, and in this case it probably represents the much talked-about necessary infrastructure spending that is badly needed for bridges, roads, water and sewer systems, et cetera, in all the other parts of the USA that haven’t been hit by storms. Instead, these places and the things in them will quietly inch closer to criticality without drawing much notice.
The second major weather disaster this year may not be enough to induce holdouts to reconsider the issue of climate change, but it ought to provoke some questioning about the development pattern known as suburban sprawl, which even in its pristine form can be described as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. Surely there will be some debate as to whether Florida, or at least parts of it, gets rebuilt at all. The wilderness of strip malls, housing subdivisions, and condo clusters deployed along the seemingly endless six-lane highways that accumulated in the post-war orgy of development was an affront to human nature, if not to a deity, if one exists. There are much better ways to build towns and we know how to do it. Ask the shnooks who paid a hundred bucks to walk down Disney’s Main Street the week before last.
Apart from all that remains the personal tragedy that awaits, the losses of many lifetimes of work invested in things of value, of homes, of meaning, and of life itself. Many people who evacuated will return to… nothing, and perhaps many of them will not want to stay in such a fragile place. But the America they roam into in search of a place to re-settle is going to be a more fragile place, too. A week or so after Irma has gone away, the ill-feeling that heaps this country like a swamp fever will still be there, driving the new American madness into precincts yet unknown.
Great Fall Reading… JHK’s new book!
“Simply the best novel about the 1960s.”
Read the first chapter here (click) on Patreon
Buy the book at Amazon or click on the cover below
or get autographed copies from Battenkill Books
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series: | |
Book 1:![]() |
Book 2:![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
Book 3:![]() |
Book 4:![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
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
New Paintings from the 2022 Season
Barrel Racers, Cambridge, NY
Just Out! The whole shootin’ match going back to 1987!
For autographed copies:
Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY
Also at: Amazon, Barnes & Nobel
Other Books by JHK
The World Made By Hand Series:
Book 1:![]() |
Book 2:![]() |
Book 3:![]() |
Book 4:![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
They’re saying 180 billion for Hurricane Harvey. If Irma hits just right it’ll be double that to 360 billion. If Hurricane Jose hits Charleston you’re pushing a trillion dollars. If Hurricane Katia hits Houston God knows what’ll happen. There are many roads still flooded and the reservoirs are full.Those 3 hurricanes together at the same time looked just like the three storms in “The Day After Tomorrow.”
“A trillion here, a trillion there, and soon you’re talking about real money.”
paraphrasing Tip O’Neil
The Fed just hits Cntl-P, and all is unicorns and skittles again.
That was Senator Everett Dirkson (R-Ill) who said originally “a billion here, a billion there, etc….”
I thought it was Magellan Funds Jeff Vinik who said that.
In the 1980s, when a billion was worth a lot more.
Wiki—A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money.
Although often quoted, it seems Dirksen never actually said this. The Dirksen Congressional Research Center made an extensive search[dead link] when fully 25% of enquiries to them were about the quotation. They could find Dirksen did say “a billion here, a billion there”, and things close to that, but not the “pretty soon you’re talking real money” part. They had one gentleman report to them he had asked Dirksen about it on an airflight and received the reply: “Oh, I never said that. A newspaper fella misquoted me once, and I thought it sounded so good that I never bothered to deny it.”
It was Vinik. When he was working for Fidelity.
Dirksen was a cool cat though, what with that gravelly voice and old beaten up suitcase face and demeanor.
I’m stealing that. Old beaten up suitcase face.
Old beaten up suitcase face
I forget now where I first heard that phrase, but I think it was referring to one of the early black jazz musicians.
Seawolf, sorry, but Steve Bannon is the “Old beaten up suitcase face” guy.
seawolf
No disrespect to DA but it’s a cliché.
I’ve been hearing that quote since the 1960’s, attributed to Sen. Dirksen.
Jeff Vinik was born in 1959, so if he said it first he was a truly precocious child.
Do you not find it amusing that in a nation of failed money managers that are hopelessly indebt and who cannot even cough up $300 for an unplanned household emergency, bantering about damages in the 100’s of billions or trillions is no big deal?
What’s the old saying? Owe the bank $100K and you’ve got a problem. Owe the bank $100B and the bank has a problem. Although in this case we all have a problem, in that it’s our money the Fed will be debasing by printing more. Those of us who still have any dollars left to debase, anyway.
No doubt my friend, no doubt. Those of us inside the beast can never escape the smell of bile and rotting meat. As the Financial Committeeman in my Township, I am hard pressed right now trying to scare up $200k out of a $2.8m for next year’s budget in order to make payment on our outstanding notes and it ain’t easy with a degrading tax base, interest rates, and public employee benefits and raises that have been rising steadily for the last two years. The civilians has no idea, but that is going to change in time I assure you.
Correction. It’s not our money. It’s money lent into existence by the Federal Reserve System. The lender of last resort, as the story goes. We pay rent on it in the form of interest, so if anyone owns it, logically it would be the ones charging rent on it. All those notes you see scurrying around a mint are just receipts for Federal Reserve credit. They’re not issued by the US government as value, but just printed up in clever ways that make them somewhat difficult to counterfeit. One might consider the Federal Reserve Act to be the opening salvo in the war to privatize the entire economy. Privately owned money is a blow to democracy that would likely have stunned the Greeks senseless.
True that DurangoKid! Very perceptive! Unfortunately, we are the one’s forced to use it though, if only to pay our tribute to Uncle Sugar.
Time for me to pull out “The Halloween Ball” by our host and re-read it.
Besides those rushing out of South Florida right now, I need a good escape and this book is it.
By the time Irma gets to Disney those 185mph winds will have dwindled to 40mph. Disney is not in danger. Take an umbrella.
I’m sure the people of Miami will be comforted by the sparing of Disney.
Disney is imploding from within, because as with everything touched by globalism, they have cheapened the brand.
Not to say they are going under or anything, just that Disney as we knew it is over.
Disney went satanic.
Disney helped Von Braun fake the lunar landings I’m sure. The best manufactured drama money can buy. It deserves to go. Disney is passe post Baby Boomers. I’m sure like Harley Davidson it will go the way of the dodo once us Baby Boomers start dropping like flies. Funny I think it’ll start with George HW Bush biting the dust.
Is he still alive? Why?
Going to Disney World in Orlando was one of the biggest disappointments of my vacation life. I still can’t believe it is in business.
I would prefer to go to jail than Disney. I hope it gets wiped off the map.
Next time your are in Orlando consider visiting Wekiva springs instead.
Friends of mine in Long Island have no kids and are both retired school teachers. One is a doll collector and the other is a Civil War enthusiast.
Every year they take $10,000 and go to Orlando to Disney World for a week. She always takes a few dolls along to “share the experience” with. And of course the pictures! The pictures!!!
That place caters to suckers.
That’s the spirit janet! What, us worry?
Word has it that the Little Baby Jesus will descend from out of the whirling maelstrom just as Irma makes landfall and declare, “These are my chosen people! Let no storm put asunder what I have brought together and blessed with my heavenly grace, for they shall remain
a beacon unto all of mankind, a glimmering shining city on the hill, beckoning to all the world to repent their wicked ways, and so too come to know my righteous favor!”
A bit of Ronnie Raygun crossed with Jules from Pulp Fiction.
“ “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.”“
Baby Jesus stories are always so heartwarming.
True!
“Baby Jesus stories are always so heartwarming.”
Da/Dog,
Posted as a subscript on an Avalon Ballroom coming events posters in the late ’60’s…San Francisco, of course…
…”May the baby Jesus shut your mouth and open your mind…”
I had that poster. My mom threw it out.
Aren’t moms just THE WORST?
That baby has a good vocabulary.
He’s miraculous in every way. Only begotten Son of God and all that.
“Like a newborn baby it just happens every day”
Mick Jagger/Keith Richards
Simple physics, DA… No false optimism is needed. JHK’s map shows the hurricane moving over land. There is no low-pressure area on land. It’s not fed with moisture on land. There is no high-pressure area on land. Gravity pulls it back. Simple physics. No hocus pocus required to state the obvious about Disney’s safety.
Some false optimism’s always nice anyway though.
It was a Grateful Dead poster.
My mom probably saw it as sacrilegious.
“The second major weather disaster this year may not be enough to induce holdouts to reconsider the issue of climate change,”
No S…. Sherlock. Because they don’t believe in their position in the first place. They assume their position for social reasons as people cling to garbage beliefs for social reasons all the time. As social reasons require them believe garbage people will believe. The brain dead madness of fundamental religions everywhere attests to this fact. The more you believe in garbage a better member of those groups you are.
The only hocus pocus with Janet here is a desire to pick and choose science to support a particular sociopathic desire. Simple physics indeed.
When the sun hits the ground, light turns to heat, and an extra thick blanket of CO2 slows the heats escape back into space warming everything up we have simple physics.
Simple physics, my favorite kind.
K-Dog,
Whether there is global warming or not, it’s much too late to do anything about it.
Janet, Janet, Janet, you’re not feeding into Kunstler’s end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it narrative by adopting his practice of ignoring the relevant facts. You should be ashamed of yourself.
You know, there’s ashes on all my plants from *TEH LAST* of teh forests burning down…
And I think I’ve been shroomin’ all week… (amanita muscaria)
Californians are going to be able to vote for the legalization of those type mushrooms in November 2018.
Apparently scientists have discovered they are helpful for PTSD.
I am not kidding. It is going to be on our ballot.
I hate to ask but why spell “the” as “teh”? Just in Oregon so have first hand experience with the smoke and ash. I have heard there is only 5% old growth forest left. Is that what is burning or is it the forests that have already been logged?
I’ve a powerful dislike of Disney for the greed manifest in all they do. I wish a pox on them, and hope Irma shuts them for a good long time. We visited their Florida empire 20 years ago and will never return; I’d rather have a colonoscopy.
With a sedative, a colonoscopy isn’t so bad. Without, you wish you were dead.
I agree. Took the family there 15 years ago and it was fortuitously not crowded so they closed concessions and rides so you would have to stand in line and wait anyway. Someone probably gets a lot of corporate management points for that….
Janet,
As long as the animals are ok, I wouldn’t mind seeing Disney get pummeled a little. They have become too big for their britches and charge way too much.
I can’t exactly be considered a climate change holdout, because I used to think it was plausible, especially after seeing that “hockey stick”, but after learning more about that graph, and seeing some of the things the proponents of the climate change notion have used to try to push it, I have concluded that it’s just another one of The Rackets. Possibly the biggest one of all, because it works on so many levels.
President Trump’s over the top response to Hurricane Harvey must have met the MSM’s test (why should they have a test?), because I see that all 5 living former presidents now want to garner some of that glory for themselves. Of the 5, only one wasn’t in on the ripoff that was the response to the Haitian disaster.
Perhaps though, they are motivated by good. Perhaps they know the free government money won’t be there, so they are hoping the Americans who still have some money stashed away at home might be persuaded to part with some while it still has any value.
I think I, and a lot of people just like me, will all be long dead before any of this is proven one way or the other, so it’s probably best that we just stop giving a fuck. Not like it does any good anyway.
That’s the spirit, DA! Embrace apathy. It’s TPTB who decide, not us… right?
Actually, it is.
“seeing some of the things the proponents of the climate change notion have used to try to push it”
Like what?
The issue is already proved. It is your personal decision to decide that fringe elements who are a bit off should nullify the well researched conclusions of responsible science. There is no logic behind your conclusion only desire. The ‘issue’ is already proved but now is being re-framed so any consequences can be perceived as inconsequential.
Because in all precincts of the land some of us want to party on!
The fish swimming in the streets in Miami Beach, for one. That’s rapid overdevelopment combined with zero investment in aging infrastructure, not climate change.
No, the issue is not already proved. Not when the only “proof” is fudged.
I had no desire one way or another. As I’ve said, I thought it was plausible, have since concluded it is yet another Racket.
I think for myself.
I’ve been right about the other Rackets, I’m right about this one too.
I wonder if they’ll find alligators swimming in their living rooms as they did in Houston?
And maybe a python or two lurking about out near the shed?
They’ve been caught fudging temperature readings again and again, typically ignoring low readings and focusing on high ones, either anomalies or from damaged equipment or equipment poorly placed.
Unz.com
Thought you might enjoy;
India has a 3 layer IQ structure
The top layer – 20%, consists of Brahmins, Merchants, Scribes, Nobility etc
The middle layer – 40% consists of Patels, Sikhs, peasants
Bottom layer – 40%, Muslims, Untouchables, Forest Tribals
Per Devesh Kapur book, The other 1%,
In the USA, this group, mainly Tamils, Telugu, Maharashtrians and Bengali Hindus
has a median household income of $140K, far above Jews, and for comparison, Bangladeshi ( muslims from a low caste origin ) have median household income of $40K
Caribbean Indians, also from a low caste have similar performance to Bangladeshi
*2nd Generation Indians in USA, show no signs of regression to mean, in fact they have widened performance gap vs whites , much more than 1st generation Indians, per the Devesh Kapur book
If you look at US National Merit, for California 2017,
there are 125 Jews vs 275 Indians, but zoom-in further and 125 Indians are Brahmins, 65 are Merchants, 60 are Dravidian ( South Indian ) Landlords – all from layer 1
and just 3 Sikhs and 4 Patels – from layer 2
But Sikhs in USA have median household income of $80k and Patels about $120k, vs $55k for whites
This is because even lower IQ Indians dont tolerate unwed mothers, alchoholism, drugs , crime etc
*Devesh Kapur also documents that Indians in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK also outperform almost everybody else
I see where Whites will soon be the minority in the U.S.
Makes me feel “special”.
I wonder if we’ll be able to demand admittance into the schools of higher learning??
Cough……
Surprising how well they’re doing. Of course they’re masters of gaming the system and the system helps Asians in ways it doesn’t help Whites. Of course they produce some very smart people, as one would expect with a population of 800 million or more. But the average is a low 85, taken all together in the aggregate.
From what I’ve heard, the Brahmins don’t test any better than the rest. So your source disagrees with that. Interesting.
K-dog, when people are utterly convinced of the rightness of their views, they resort to the kind of thing you just resorted to. Assigning motive to people you don’t know, for example.
How about some references to back up your assertions?
‘They’ve been caught fudging temperature readings again and again, typically ignoring low readings and focusing on high ones, either anomalies or from damaged equipment or equipment poorly placed.’
Hopefully people will not choose the ill-informed opinion of the resident fascist over actual science. No, actually, wait a minute, this is the USA, where actual science doesn’t get a lot of exposure compared to the blatherings of the fossil-fuel-subsidised disinformation that’s used up billions of dollars trying to keep US Many people think with their informed brains (and read the actual science, not the cynical disinformation) rather than filtering everything through their ideological imperatives.
*keep US citizens ignorant…
Green Alba
Don’t you people even notice what you are doing? You just engaged in namecalling, and said absolutely nothing of value.
It only weakens your case.
@Janos
‘They’ve been caught fudging temperature readings again and again, typically ignoring low readings and focusing on high ones, either anomalies or from damaged equipment or equipment poorly placed.’
Please provide links to the peer-reviewed papers you are quoting that prove this repeated fudging you claim. Or give it a rest. And websites financed by fossil-fuel interests don’t count because they’re not science, they’re ideology.
K-dog,
So, it appears the distractors want to revisit this “it ain’t so!” shit again, does it?
……Well, right about now Anthropogenic Global Weirding doesn’t care what we BELIEVE or don’t — or how many fucking shithead You-mans want to live like fucking kings and queens. (That would be: far too many for the planet to support in their idiotic Jabba-the-Hutt dreams).
Don’t try it now, foolish pukes; it’s a little late in the day to be sifting through your shit looking for an “answer” or a “solution”. It’s consequence time and events are steering the boat through some mighty rough seas; changing the subject won’t affect things a whit.
BTW, how are the distractionary cadre allocating their scarce resources in these days of in-yer-face shitstorms? Maybe they’re “hunkered in their bunkers” (built with tax-provided, petro-control dollars… of course… and obviously… at the end of the day… when all is said and done…).
All we need now is a massive earthquake in Los Angeles and Trump’s plate will be FULL.
We are due…..
Be careful, your evil is showing.
DA — “You might be right on any or all counts, but you didn’t offer up any proof either way. I’d say your last two points are definitely true, but I think the first is almost certainly false.”
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=PCA0YWsw&id=C4643F281B11463F5CBA128734E1CBA6517D46B8&thid=OIP.PCA0YWsw4goa9uD_rE1zLQEsC0&q=hurricane+statistics+by+year&simid=608037984946357362&selectedIndex=9&qpvt=hurricane+statistics+by+year&ajaxhist=0
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=rh%2fdBN1W&id=2828A99FBA9B4DCC13068D3CDAFE6E0E2574DBB0&thid=OIP.rh_dBN1WevcxZHf_oLuVcAEsCS&q=hurricane+statistics+by+year&simid=608046712318395471&selectedIndex=6&qpvt=hurricane+statistics+by+year&ajaxhist=0
Obscure young scientist Michael Mann “rises without a trace” and provides the ‘proof’ a flagging IPCC were desperately looking for. Statistician Stephen McIntyre and economic professor Ross McKitrick examined Mann’s data and were amazed. Some have suggested that anything fed into his computer would have come out as a hockey stick. I am not one of those. Mann sued one kindly and elderly ‘denialist’ (whose name I can’t remember but he was a professor of geography in Canada) for cracking a joke at his expense (something about Penn State and State Pen).
Christopher Booker goes into the story in his book about AGW. The hockey stick had been comprehensively discredited but then another amazing new paper arrived which proved it was right after all. The IPCC wanted to put it in their next Report but no scientific journal would publish it (I’m sure they wanted to but there are limits) and they couldn’t use it if it wasn’t. You know, all this ‘peer review’ stuff. The toing and froing to get it published at the last minute is, er, interesting and quite entertaining.
Mann is the spitting image of Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafon, whose best-selling Shadow of the Wind is one of the worst books I have ever read. It drips with political correctness and flatters its readers. My favourite bit is where our bookish hero (a Barcelona snowflake called Daniel) arrives home one evening to find his father (who had stayed up waiting for him) sleeping in his armchair (I suppose it might have been his ‘favourite armchair’). He notices the fine lines etched into his features (and similar stuff along the lines of battered suitcases) and open upon his lap is Voltaire’s Candide.
Ahhh…Voltaire!
Voted the greatest radical free thinker in history!
“Candide” is one of my favorite musicals!
I can easily imagine the voters and would be surprised if more than a handful ever read him, not that I blame them. I read L’Ingénu and it was dull.
Here is Marion Sigaud, who has spent years researching his life and times, telling a class of Canadian students what a liar and a scoundrel he was. He was also extremely well-off.
You’ve just gone up in my estimation.
That was for Beryl.
Well…..I hear The Clinton Foundation has about a trillion dollars squirreled here and there (even though Charles Ortel and other countries are about to pounce on them for massive charity fraud):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjLoqu_X540
Perhaps Bill and Hillary! and Chelsea can be persuaded to actually do something righteous with all that dough.
I gotta figure the Fed will jump in with more and more QE, if only because they don’t know what else to do. While QE is certainly hitting up against diminishing returns, I’m guessing the bond market collapse could be delayed by several months at least. I wouldn’t short your bonds just yet.
The long-overdue stock market correction, however, may not be delayed this time by an aggressive Fed pony doing their one trick. Of course, I’ve been wrong in predicting an equities correction for the last two years, so maybe the Fed actually has destroyed the “business cycle” after all…
Is Cuba gone? Do we not have to *worry* about those cigars NE-moarz?!? SRSLY *ghad* – heh. Nasty mofo – there’s gunna be thousands dead.
Dr. Z.,
Florida might want to take a few practical tips from Cuba. (But most certainly, won’t; them ‘Mercans know eeeeeva-thang! Them hurricane-island-dwellin’, evil, commie fuckers don’t know nuthin’ ’bout nuthin’!)
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Cuba-Leads-the-Way-in-Hurricane-Irma-Preparedness-20170907-0023.html
As fer them deeelishits Cohiba see-gars; regardless of the weather, the rich and diplomatically corrupted have never had much trouble acquiring them, now have they? 😉
I can’t find any news on what’s happened in Cuba – I’ve already seen the eye of the category 5 strip it…
Seems like members of the Federal Reserve are jumping ship…:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/stanley-fischer-no-2-at-the-federal-reserve-resigns-unexpectedly/article/2633519
The second major weather disaster this year may not be enough to induce holdouts to reconsider the issue of “geo-engineering”, but it ought to.
Geo-engineering is far too confusing a term for the happy people. People can only deal with things that can be dealt with by simply writing a $20 check so they can return to important issue like sex change and statue removal. It’s all good, it’s all over, back to sleep we go…
https://geopolitics.co/2015/06/06/us-air-force-admits-they-can-control-weather/
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/links-to-geoengineering-patents/
I don’t think it’s confusing, as much as it’s a bad idea and most people who have heard of it understand that, but we don’t know exactly what to do about it.
Most people I know, contrary to what the media tells us, think illegal immigration is a bad idea, but our efforts to actually do something about it come to nothing. That’s something that is imminently more doable, in that we have the laws and the enforcement already in place. All that needs to be done is to do it.
So why would I worry about something I have zero control over?
You make an argument that is difficult, if not impossible to argue, but I like to fight them even in the small ways that I do because it not only pisses them off, but makes me feel good that I still resist. How we live is not nearly as important as how we die. Quit ye like men!
I’m a girl.
Ever hear of Wonder Woman? It is a fight that welcomes all.
Jack and Jill went up the hill, both with a buck and a quarter
Jill came down with two fifty, and they didn’t go up for water
The argument that building the Wall is too expensive is spurious. I’ve read that it’s much cheaper to build a mile of Wall than it is to build a mile of highway. And the Wall will at least accomplish something, while a mile of new highway only makes matters worse.
I should have said Trump’s Wall.
Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to monitor the border with drones etc.??
I am not a fan of the Wall thing. I can’t tell whether it is keeping “dangerous” people out or me in. And I don’t like paying people to guard it since it reminds me of TSA looking futilely all day at people’s luggage. When you take away the incentives like jobs, free health care, and children in school then the problem solves itself.
And the weather makers can even create a lovely hurricane if they so please while other parts of the West are frying.
Geoengineering is the most dangerous idea around.
We do not know enough and cannot estimate the consequences
(and usually don’t bother to reflect on the consequences of major courses of actions taken).
Some of the published ideas are fully idiotic in every respect.
My favorite is the proposal to lift millions of tons of aluminum flakes into orbit to reflect part of the incoming sunlight.
Apart from the impossibility to get that sort of mass in orbit if it were possible how do we then collect these flakes again should that be necessary?
The allure is that geoengineering will be the catalyst of industrial activity and government subsidized corporate profits on a massive scale. This will kill us a whole lot faster than global warming has any chance of doing.
I don’t think geo-engineering is just an idea. I think they’re doing it. I know, that makes me a tinfoil hat crackpot. So be it.
“The Villages” — the world’s largest planned retirement community also appears to be in the direct path of Irma.
Jim & Duncan have an entertaining Podcast from 2011 with author Andrew Blechman who wrote a book called “Leisureville” about life in “The Villages”. I remember it was a very funny podcast and well worth a listen.
http://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast_146_geritopia/
A lot of people are going to be praying to god this weekend.
What they should be praying for is that there is no god, because
if there is, he/she is unquestionably disgusted w humanity–Americans
most of all–for what they’ve done to his planet, and has
run out of patience. We’ve gotten plenty of warnings, perhaps
beginning w Andrew, but have shown no desire to change our
ways.
God bless America? Goddam America is far more likely god’s sentiment.
And Jim, as far as Irma being a fatal blow to the banking system,
I think this will be the black swan that triggers a rapid descent into
collapse–economic, financial, and possibly social. It may take months
to fully unwind, but this has the ability to be the domino that sets
collapse in motion. It would be difficult to design a more catastrophic
storm for the 3rd most populous state in the country.
Yes chip there is little use for fear but concern is always a good thing to maintain under such circumstances. People that believe in God cannot lose if there turns out to be One or not, but those that do not believe have only a 50-50 shot at oblivion or judgment. As an avowed Coincidence Theorist, I find it rather interesting (yet certainly coincidental of course) that last year’s Jade Helm military exercises in Texas, the Walmart /shelter conversions, now followed by these two monster hurricanes, and even the statue teardowns are all happening in the South. That would be the same South that was “divided off” by the recent Total Eclipse is it not? I recall reading that the Solar event included sending “bad energies” Earthward. Good thing it is only coincidence, eh?
When it comes to the left and the right, Hurricane Irma is showing us how to split the difference.
Is it true that these hurricanes come from Africa?
If not, is there some way to blame the Jews?
I think the worst ones are Cape Verde hurricanes.
A theory Janos will love.
Black skin in Africa absorbing heat warms the air making it rise and starts it turning.
The Atlantic Ocean only intensifies and makes the turning stronger. The ocean is only a facilitator but is not the root cause of this climate evilness.
Some of these black skinned perpetrators are no doubt Jews.
Q.E.D.
LOL!
You have a strong Will to Believe in the things you believe. For example, in one part of your mind you know that Rosa Parks was a member of the Communist Party and that that whole incident was a staged psy op against White America. But you still love her and “believe” it was absolutely Just. That Blacks now make public transportation unsafe for Whites doesn’t faze you a bit. You simply don’t care. They’re not compassion objects that win virtue points. Blacks are so you care about Blacks.
Global Warming is another tenet of the PC Religion, of course you believe in it with all your heart. You want to go to Multicult Heaven with Martin and Marvin and that half Black woman you’re infatuated with. She had mercy on you – even though you’re just a White.
Rosa sued a hip hop group.
And, as you know, she got her diversity mugging. Oh,
A comment at Freds blog,
I recall the old communist jewish gal in S. Africa, Nadine Gordimer , who championed Black insurrection, etc.
A couple years ago she experienced the fruits of her labor by a home invasion by her Liberated Ones.
She said she was not raped, and that may be true since she, if ever she had any attractiveness, was long gone.
Fred needs to get a similar experience, but he, like Nadine, will never admit to Reality.
Fred on Everything is Nothing.
Fred knows a few things. I bet his Mexican digs are all right. He is probably in a better place to survive collapse than we are.
“Meanwhile Trump, the first President to elevate Brownian motion to a policy position, says he will give Congress six months to come up with legislation that does the same thing DACA did. This is nuts.” <= Fred
DACA Dies, Sort Of: Right Wing Flaps Wildly: Our Precious Bodily Fluids Safe
Thwacked,
Ask, vladdie, your [literal] “better half”.
The development of suburbia is one of JHK’s major complaints of modern America, and rightfully so. It begs the question of why it developed in the first place. The real problem is the development of the megopolis urban centers as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the concurrent development of the internal combustion engine and its effect on the farm community. (The Grapes of Wrath). The economic chaos caused by the advent of the tractor drove millions to the infant cities to survive. As the population increased due to higher birth rates and especially immigration, the cities grew quickly after WW2. As density increased, people with the ability moved away from the pollution, congestion and diversity of the city. They still had to work in the urban center so voila, the suburbs evolved. Today, we have a new phenomenon, the exurb. That is where the newest remaining members of the middle class are going to get away from the problems of the suburbs. And so it goes! Ironically, part of the latest mass migration is back into the city centers, renovated of course. They are trying to get away from the automotive problems of suburbia and all the bad parts of that environment. The gimme attitude of the new urbanites is becoming more potent as they start to outnumber everyone else at the ballot box. Extrapolating down the trend lines for everything portends an interesting future.
Where I live, the young people look at the houses in the urban centers, see that the property taxes will be higher than the mortgage, also see that for the same monthly payment you can have a house that isn’t affected yet by aging infrastructure, and they won’t have to support a bunch of retired cops and elected officials who get to live markedly better than they do.
Where I live, we still have ‘walkable’ neighborhoods, but the government is doing its level best, along with various business interests, to destroy that.
I’ve noticed that the people buying the houses here tend to be either brown-skinned immigrants or people with government jobs. The Chinese in this area seem to prefer the suburbs.
Whence suburbia? There are several reasons. 1, cities in the 19th century stank. The well-to-do decided to skip town and the wannabees followed on their heels. 2. After WWII there was a housing shortage. As a response, drywall tent cities started popping up like puffballs after a storm because they were cheap and easily financed. 3. Gasoline is a byproduct of oil refining. There was a lot of it around and oil companies needed a market for it. 4. The invention of neoprene for the manufacture of tires solved the latex crisis. A new product needs a market such as millions of private cars shuttling between the stud-framed hut in the burbs to the place where you sell your labor during the day. On the way home, pick up a six-pack and the latest piece of plastic crap from Walmart. 5. Rather than slice up and sell plots of land for multistory dwellings in walkable neighborhoods, slice up and sell more plots of land for single family dwellings. More commissions, profits, taxes, fees, interest, you name it. 6. Real estate interests typically contribute about half of the election campaign expenses for local politicians who typically are reluctant to bite the hand that elects them. 7a. In the hyper-individualistic propaganda state coordinating our efforts to find low energy/material solutions to housing is seen as communism or the work of the devil. The big players in the housing market keep telling us we have to let the market decide the highest and best use for capital and resources. If there’s a conflict of interests here, it’s not so big that it can’t be hidden behind the elephant next to the credenza. 7b. The cult of hyper-individualism keeps the population atomized and powerless. It’s inherently antidemocratic and if anything scares the crap out of the elite owners and planners, it’s democracy. 8. Anyone who criticizes this amalgam of idiocy, greed, and corruption is immediately marginalized. Just go to the real estate section of your local Sunday paper. The number of column inches devoted to convincing people to buy into the suburban delusion tells you just how powerful it is. Now look for the section devoted to rebuilding the suburbs into low energy, walkable communities. Having trouble finding it?
My local paper, on the front page of the online edition, runs advertisements for real estate, disguised as news, and passes along bad information to unwary first-time buyers.
No, a ‘granite kitchen’ does not make a house in an undesirable area “worth more”, for instance.
What happened to the Green Refrigerators?
They were so ‘in’ 40 years ago.
Kitchen Kitsch has changed.
Kitchen chic, now.
But too, high immigration (legal and illegal) was part of the deliberate plan to create ongoing (and rising) demand for “the American dream” and sustain value of residential properties already degraded below code level. Uh huh, the plan has worked, then too there was always the call for more jobs — standard political pitch — while not acknowledging that population growth rate surpassed job growth rate in the early 1970s. Wow, do you think we’ve been given a “head fake” by those “parties of interest”?
“Deliberate plan”
Deliberate: we now know that Blair’s New Labour wanted to speed up immigration for “social reasons” in order to “rub the Right’s noses in it” by creating an irreversible fait accompli. Merkel’s decision to admit the waves of Asian and African immigrants two years ago was down to the hysterical reaction on social media to a single photograph.
Plan: when the EU was enlarged in 2003 (or thereabouts), while other members were cautious, Britain followed the Irish lead (what were they thinking?) and decided to put no restriction on immigration from Eastern Europe. The government (the Home Office) estimated that between 5k and 13k would come. The Guardian’s estimate is 1.4m, and I assume they would want to play down the figure.
Correction: The Guardian’s estimate is that the present figure is 1.4m.
No, democracy is hyper-individualism and keeps people utterly atomized and confused. Why? Because most people aren’t very smart and are easily confused and thus easily lead. The Elite love it! Such people naturally think they’re unique even though the mob is all the same in its undevelopment.
They are terrified of the Republic, where only qualified people vote and lead their lesser brothers.
Blacks forced Whites to flee. Enter the Burbs.
They are terrified of the Republic, where only qualified people vote and lead their lesser brothers.
Thing is, you get the same effects either way. The masses don’t have enough legitimate information to vote and the elite vote their own narrow interests.
The elite vote their own narrow interests.
People are selfish. Nature designed us that way? Yes?
Stalin was selfish, Gandhi, too.
No, the masses are too stupid to even vote their own interests. The only hope is to let the qualified among them vote. Only this might could check the power of the Elite. Who are the qualified? Those with the knowledge and ability to use it. Financially solvent and with a record of service to the Nation.
You see what’s wrong but lack the Vision to correct it. Thing weren’t always this bad. We need a return to natural hierarchy – no doubt kryptonite to your Sibling Society outlook.
Not sure what you mean by smart. I know lots of people on the progressive left with good educations and above average IQs and they’re all easily duped.
DK, excellent stuff, each item deserves it’s own column. My gripe is that local zoning laws have been tweaked over the years until you can’t even run a snowball stand out of your garage without violating zoning laws. Developers and auto dealers have made sure you have to drive to get even a damned cup of coffee.
I like that the younger crowd is moving back INTO the cities to get a walkable life, perhaps they get the message that JHK has been putting out for years, but I think it’s just their disgust with the cost of cars, insurance, gas, and gridlock, plus the sterility and cost of suburban living.
Durango Kid,
NAILED it! Some others will just have to live the hurt to understand this particular extraction machine.
A big Gold Coast, Florida hello to the entire CFN!
My preparations are in the final buttoning-up stage:
Corrugated steel storm shutters up over all windows, bolted and torqued down good.
Doors without shutters to get sandbags plus plastic sheets to the entire portal to prevent water intrusion.
House is a 1950s cottage made of concrete cinder block with concrete tile, low pitch hip-roof. A friend that worked for the county property appraiser said that my construction is the preferred if not best, type for these types of events. I hope he’s correct.
Patio furniture into the shed with steel door-jacks on top to hold it and the rest of the stuff in there down.
Plants – and I got a bunch – are going, pot and all, into a bamboo grove. Animals such as lizards and frogs are already there wondering why I was bothering them (the creatures know that a big bad one is coming!)
Have 90 days or so of food and water with a propane BBQ grill and several cylinders for back up on the porch. All this chained under a huge heavy fiberglass ladder and concrete blocks.
Neither have I forgotten about Messers Cash and Glock. They shall accompany me wherever I shall be with a bug- out bag with seven days supply of food plus a Steri-pen and a pump ceramic filter.
If the roof comes off or the stuff goes flying, then I suspect I too shall wind up airborne en route to the Real Magic Kingdom.
Whatever happens, I should like to provide the CFN updates on the shituation on Florida’s glamorous GOld Coast, as it happens, should I be able to.
Praying for God’s protection to all in Irma’s path. We are going to need it.
(P.S. Confidentially, and off the record, this sure has the flavor of God’s wrath – this thing is a monster.)
House is a 1950s cottage made of concrete cinder block with concrete tile, low pitch hip-roof. A friend that worked for the county property appraiser said that my construction is the preferred if not best, type for these types of events. I hope he’s correct.
Pequiste,
That description fits to a “T” the officers quarters on Okinawa that was built to survive serial storms…sometimes three or four a year, and the building type I inhabited during the “worlds strongest” typhoon…no damage whatsoever.
Stay safe.
Thank you.
And a big Brown Coast hello in return.
Muchas gracias Wolfie.
Good luck! I tell you, in the old days up here on the Chesapeake Bay, every “cottage” was built with block walls and cement floors. After a big storm, you dry it out, furniture too. Now the new owners build cheap MacMansions.
You’ll do fine, and I hope you don’t need Mr. Glock to do any talking! On my homestead, we have similar pals with different names but the same job descriptions.
Prayer? I’m not against it, if it boosts morale, but you’d done what you can already and the rest is atmospheric science.
Appreciate it, Bro Jobe
Yeah really. Most of them come ashore with 75 mph winds, gusts to a 100 or 120. Or 100 with gusts to 130. 185 mph with gusts over 200 is something else entirely.
Good luck.
Vielen dank, Janos.
I wonder what country would take little old me as a “refugee” should this turn into a personal catastrophe?
Would I have to walk to the border? Could I fly in and claim refugee status?
WHat about the BMW, the 4,000 Euro a month stipend, the condo near the ski resort and some nice female ( in my case) companionship??? It was in all the advertisements…
pequiste,
I wish you much luck! (That’s really all I can do from my location — and I won’t lower your chances by trundling down that-a-way to “help” by wasting yet more of your local resources.)
Watch your butt, and your neighbor’s, as best you can, and I’m hoping we’ll hear [relatively] good news from you soonish. (Life and limb intact would be a fine start!)
Thwack, you made me chuckle. What is really happening though, is there is a large meeting of our Left wing someplace trying to figure out how to place the blame on Trump for all three hurricanes. Right wing too. And so it goes!
“driving the new American madness into precincts yet unknown.”
Elegant…a great turn of phrase….
With only 1 out of 6 people having flood insurance in Houston, I’m wondering how 100,000 homes are gonna be replaced or repaired. If you couldn’t afford flood insurance in the first place, how will you be able to fix your home?
As far as irony goes Harvey tops the list. Normally a disaster loses an insurance company a ton of money. When it comes to Harvey, think of all the new business it just generated.
True that, but the losses will be realized immediately – the one’s they actually pay out anyway. The new premium revenues will take a while to catch up.
I’ve heard a repair to a flooded home is between $30,000 and $100,000 depending on the levels. That’s coming out of people’s pockets, not insurance companies.
True. They’re going to renege on everything they possibly can.
Insurance is gambling that not everyone will need a payout at the same time.
Same thing with the origin of our money system. The guys who held the gold realized that they could lend out far more than they actually held since people never (they hoped) would ask for it all back at the same time. Now of course they have severed all connection with gold or any physical reality and can print out or type up as much as they want. The trick is to get real assets from their fake ones. Shear the sheep!
For the most part, it seems like the insurances companies are off the hook. I’m betting that the 5 out of 6 people are gonna be screwed and what will they do? Where will they go? Considering the number of uninsured, Houston may be screwed.
I remember how there used to be a thing called saving for a rainy day.
The financial changes that enabled the mortgage racket and fueled the sprawl, also really put the screws to the savers in our society.
Not having more house than you can afford to replace ( such as the CBS house mentioned above, it sounds as if a homeowner could do much of the repair work on a house like that himself), being able to self-insure by putting the money you didn’t spend on expensive flood insurance into an account where you didn’t lose value, not buying a house of inappropriate construction for the area it is built in, all those old ways would have been of major help after a natural disaster.
Is your ‘name’ a play on words?
What state and country r u in, my dear?
With “just a little shanty, in old Shanty Town.” That’s how a lot of the world already lives and it’s coming soon to the sprawl-lands near you and me.
My hope is now that there is no building boom resulting from an influx of refugees from Florida and Texas into central Iowa, the Sprawl Capital of the World.
I call central Iowa that because the land here that gets destroyed by suburban sprawl is the best in the world.
My fear is that, absent a collapse of the financial system, that building boom will happen. So sad to have to hope for collapse.
Good points. A lot of those people are going to be relocating, whether they like it or not. Is the local economy up there robust enough to sustain them?
If you are mostly White, I guarantee they are interested in darkening you, storm or not storm.
Collapse, the sooner the better.
But collapse may lead to Fukushima or Chernobyl, yes?
BRING IT ON.
“But collapse may lead to Fukushima or Chernobyl, yes?”
Are you kidding? Collapse will GUARANTEE Fukushima and Chernobyl, a thousand times over. Do you have an escape plan for yourself and loved ones? A spaceship, or somethin’?
2 mentions of a god in one post.
Someone is getting old, getting scared, hedging bets.
People are predictable on a calculable scale.
A large swath of Florida is going to look unrecognizable, come Monday when you write your next post.
Except the Everglades. That might do a thing or two to the hubris of homo sapiens who actually pay attention.
Meanwhile, we’ll keep trying “the old Polish Blanket Gag” until we ruin the blanket. Shares of stock in Home Depot and Lowes may be soaring, but South Florida is doomed and has been for a long time, overbuilt and flat as a pancake. With rising, warmer seas, what could possibly go wrong?
As for the deniers, they’ll run into an actuarial problem long before Modernity falls apart under the strains of economic collapse and climate disorder. I’m past the point of arguing with them. I wish them doom, preferably at the water’s edge. Mar-a-Lago needs some erasure. That would be some operatic justice for that gilded shitpile to vanish, wouldn’t it?
What about the overpopulation deniers?
Sprawl and exhaust and energy consumption and pollution and light and noise pollution. Human pollution. Time for a scrub, huh lady Gaia?
Speaking of overpopulation denial, the other night on Tucker Carlson he was debating immigration with a libertarian woman who is for open borders. Tucker kept asking how much immigration is too much. The woman wouldn’t give a number. Finally he asked if a billion people living in the US was too many, and she said that would be fine as it would add to the economy. If it happens, I’m glad I won’t be living then.
LIBERTARIAN IDIOT.
What economy? The economy needs an environment. Oil and soil. A billion non Whites?
How many people are too many?
When we have to live in towering apartment towers?
In megacities?
When we can subsist on Soylent?
When only the wealthy have access to produce and protein?
The naturally occurring varieties?
When we can no longer afford to travel?
When there is nowhere worth traveling to?
When all the forests, prairies, and oceans are dead?
When we are all bred in tubes?
When we all look, act, and think the same?
When everything and everyone is OK?
When the real world is in the ether, in the cloud, in a man-made, man-controlled realm?
In other words, when we’re already dead.
Avatar,
“…And that might not be a bad thing….”
Then we can move on to other planets!
The urgency of the situation will inspire efforts to overcome all scientific and technological obstacles.
Theory is already in hand (Alcubierre drive, only 500kg of antimatter needed, goes superluminal — a warp drive as it were):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
There are literally billions of suitable planets in the milky way and not a single alien detected anywhere to be in our way.
Michael,
Earth First! …We will mine and log the other planets later….
And you and your Anti-Fa goons will be happy to help in the clean up operations (scrubbing out White Humanity) no doubt. Do you want to reincarnate as a microbe like Prince Phillip?
“The wilderness of strip malls, housing subdivisions, and condo clusters deployed along the seemingly endless six-lane highways that accumulated in the post-war orgy of development was an affront to human nature, if not to a deity, if one exists. There are much better ways to build towns and we know how to do it. Ask the shnooks who paid a hundred bucks to walk down Disney’s Main Street the week before last.”
Not a solution. The hurricane would merely pummel and destroy countless villages and cities. The issue is scale. The scale of humanity, particularly in precarious places.
It’s all finite. We’re just witnessing the end of some of it.. like South Beach apartment towers.
I happen to know a number of Floridians who are rooting for those towers to go.
It’s almost as if people want to eke through life without bad things happening. They know horrible things have and will happen, but their psyches demand a death without witness. Peculiar.
If you watch the local newscasts at all, you’ll see they have been pitching the notion of “keeping you safe” for decades now. These stories assigning blame for everything that happens are really commercials for the insurance and legal industries disguised as news.
Mr. Kunstler mentioned before that there is a line of thinking extant, that every disaster is recoverable, or words to that effect.
If they (the media) didn’t pitch that, they wouldn’t be able to sell things that people can’t afford to own.
War is very profitable – but only if it’s not on your turf and you don’t lose. Either one makes it not and both together are even worse because then other people get your stuff.
War is first and foremost a criminal act. You cannot justify a criminal act with truth. It must be done with lies. Thus truth is the first casualty of war.
It is their reaction to fear. We humans all have fears and it is important to have them. Fear motivates some to action, to forethought and preparation while for some it paralyzes them completely. Some seek the trill of it through adventures such as skydiving, bungee jumping and high speed motorsports. Others cower in closets and shake. Those debilitated by fear are the saddest cases for they spend much of their time here avoiding far too many things and pretty quickly they are wasting away in some hospital bed wondering where it all went and why so fast. We need to all learn to embrace our fears, take hold of them and let them fill our sails and power our voyage upward and onward. After all, do any of you remember that day last year when absolutely NOTHING happened? Nope, didn’t think you would.
When Menelaus came calling, Odysseus hid on his or Laertes’ farmstead. His sails were filled all right. There can be little doubt if after it all, if he were presented the choice, if he would desire to have been undiscovered shrinking behind the plowshare. Certainly, he is more famous for being found, but perhaps not more contented. Voyages, upwards, onwards, and always away breed lament. Lament for the overlooked contentment.
I would think that Polyphemus would have wished that Odysseus would have stayed home and cried like a baby…
It’s human nature, I guess. Talking to some people, I get the sense it’s like the couple at their window watching the old guy next door trying to make it up the ladder to his second story roof carrying a workload.
Waiting, staring intensely. “Oops, did you see that !” “O my God!” “Damn, that was close!”
Kind of hoping he takes a tumble.
Not looking to see anyone hurt, but I would like to see every high rise in Florida, particularly along the coast, turned into a pile of pebbles. And of course never rebuilt.
Let Florida take a tumble.
Then the people whom you do not like to be hurt must noetheless tumble with it.
Little Black kids staring at old Whites coming down the subway steps, hoping to make them self conscious and stumble. Born that way as Gaga says, their every impulse towards evil.
Evil bastards almost got me once on the IRT. Made it though, and whites cheered and applauded at the bottom of the steps. I held onto both my cane and my wallet.
cool.
Did any Whites offer help?
My own take on this:
“Given the track that Hurricane Irma is taking, it might be retroactively be named ‘Hurricane Princip‘.”
http://peakfuture.wordpress.com
The insurance angle is another issue that a friend brought up. It’s not looking good.
Would a third hurricane strike on the US make people think twice about building in flood plains, or change the way they build? What happened with rebuilding after Katrina?
I happen to live in Irma’s path albeit around the Sarasota, Florida area and there’s a thought that Jose which is smaller may follow the same path as Irma.
CFN, I shit you not.
I am in west central FL (30 miles from the Gulf), and my 20something
neighbor across the street just finished leaf blowing his driveway (noon
Friday).
And this tool works for United Health Care. Yikes!
Another reason for single payer…
This made me laugh…a fellow obsessive compulsive.
Well lets not go crazy now…
What color were the leaves?
Brown? never Black or White.
Hilarious. Maybe he believed Rush’s liberal conspiracy idea.
I use to live in Fl until recently. As to home owners insurance, all the major well known carriers in the rest of the nation generally don’t write business at all in florida. They pulled out after hurricane Andrew. What you have are a lot of small insurance carriers that are underfunded and you have a lot of coverage placed in the excess and surplus markets….my hunch is fema will be out of $ and there will be a number of insurors out of business as a result of this storm, and a lot of people only partially paid for losses. It will then be even harder and costlier to find any insurance providers in florida in future, especially if the frequency of this magnitude storm increases, and my guess is they will exponentially as the years go by. Welcome to the new world order.
Exactly. Insurance companies will prove climate change is occurring because their business model will no longer work.
Excellent point. Climate change will never be accepted as a bottoms up proposition, but rather only gradually as a top down solution imposed on people whether they like it or not as the current business/actuarial models fail. At that point it won’t matter what most people believe about climate change in the least, only what insurers and the like do in response. Rest assured they’ll also lobby their governments to enact policies beneficial to their interests as well.
There has been no general increase in severity of storms. We’re a little spoiled as we’ve been in a lull for several years. But if insurance companies go under, it might be due to increased population and building in inappropriate areas.
You might be right on any or all counts, but you didn’t offer up any proof either way. I’d say your last two points are definitely true, but I think the first is almost certainly false.
“What you have are a lot of small insurance carriers that are underfunded and you have a lot of coverage placed in the excess and surplus markets….my hunch is fema will be out of $ and there will be a number of insurors out of business as a result of this storm, and a lot of people only partially paid for losses.”
I thought re-insurance prevented this from happening? In other words, the small insurance could cover the losses but of course go out of business after settling all claims with reinsurance funds.
FL is destined to become a “live at your own risk” state.
Very likely! A haven for the remaining rich among us? Although, without the subsidies from the poor, basic services will go away too, so the rich will gradually have to pay their own way. And one thing we know about the rich, they don’t like to pay their own way at all, which is one of the main reasons that they’re rich in the first place!
400 jobs from a factory that makes 24 MILLION shirts a year,
Enter automation,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXW0EsexMys&t=6s
No Finca today. I wonder if Little Baby Jesus took him up into the storm?
Maybe he’s at his finca.
Maybe Little Baby Jesus took his finca up with him too?
What is the opposite of opportunistic price gouging? Human nature, kindness?
Delta Air Lines has added flights out of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Key West to Atlanta, and is letting passengers affected by Irma to rebook flights for free. Hunan nature = kindness.
Uh a sale?
Are you saying a sale is when customers are in a life-and-death situation, desperate for your product, so you lower your price?
No I’m saying a sale is the opposite of opportunistic price gouging.
“Are you saying a sale is when customers are in a life-and-death situation, desperate for your product, so you lower your price?”
Yes
Trump’s Hurricane Harvey relief bill passed both the Senate and the House. All of the “no” votes came from Republicans. In both the House and the Senate, every Democrat present voted for the deal.
Those Republicans who voted NO on the Donald/Chuck/Nancy hurricane relief bill should be voted out of office.
Oh, oh, oh Janet, catch up on history; charity to those who’ve not faced reality has, more often than not, swamped those who reasonably prepared but then allowed reflex emotions toward charity to guide their actions. Taking you position would have our immigration policies shaped by reflex emotions to allow the billions of desperate people elsewhere to come here.
If “billions” wanted to come here they would be here. After all you say we have had, these last 30 years, a “porous” southern border. The fact is billions do not want to come here.
You remain a clueless, propaganda spewing twat/twit (twat-twit?) as always, janet. Billions of people – literally – in the world today live on less than a US dollar equivalent a day, many or most of whom don’t live on the American continents, and in any case, can’t afford to move far from where they are for fear of risking what little they have.
You’re inadvertently right in one sense then, in that they don’t necessarily want to come here, but instead simply want American capitalism (with all its attendant evils) to come to where they are. A wish made all the more attractive and realistic because the enforcement arm for American capitalists, their CIA/Dark Ops goons, have long since greased the wheels of corruption with their local governments and murdered anyone who stood in their way. All for enormous profit all along the way of course!
K-Dog: Not sure if this off-topic comment will reach you here, but many thanks to you for recommending “When the English Fall,” by David Williams. Excellent book, and for me it was better as a spiritual metaphor/allegory than as prophecy or speculative near-futurism.
As luck has it I dropped by. I am happy you enjoyed the book, it is a good read on many levels.
You can’t be serious about being off-topic. Here collapse as the ultimate consequences is an eternal topic. Despite countless attempts by other avatars to make this blog into what they wish the pendulum swings back to relevancy of the unpopular view that there will be consequences for our societies atrociously bad choices.
collapse as the ultimate consequence
I wonder whether Mar-a-lago is on the itinerary of Irma or Jose?
It would make for an interesting “conversation'(a the kiddies say these days).
Or Rick Scott’s beachfront mansion in Naples…
I agree that we have built in places we never should have but take a look at this article. All generations seem to think they are the only people to ever inhabit the earth and the most important. Big hurricanes have been happening long before us and will continue long after we are gone. Mother nature bites us in the ass every so often.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2938762&page=1
Hear! Hear!
Anthropocentrism knows no worldly bounds.
I guess I’m the only person in the world to point to the fact that buildings are not built out of stone and brick in these areas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2tyJcETYvI
Do we really need federal flood insurance for the one percent?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbXQ5NFSAjg
It’s not the 1% here in Houston that benefit. No beach front property. BTW flood insurance covers maximum $250k for buildings and $100k for contents. Would not cover a lot of those 1%’ers houses and contents.
Jim dandy to the rescue;
” Verrit’s collection is finite — filled only with carefully curated cards that confirm Clinton voters’ views. It serves no purpose except to spare those voters the need to confront beliefs that conflict with their own.
Verrit has taken all the worst parts of today’s liberalism and turned them into a website. It is a safe space for middle-of-the-road Democrats, seeking to shelter them from conversations that would help far more than they hurt, based not on any actual issue of identity but instead on their preference for a candidate who was defeated 10 months ago. It’s only going to help them lose again.”
comfort for the comfortless…
Messy-D.,
I may be terminally stupid, but I fail to see the relevance in this strange and limp reference to [even more] idiotic D.C. electoral flailings and bloviation. Focus please?
(Yeah, yeah, duh peephole are lazy-minded and don’t want to think, so they elect assholes to “think” for them. I think we all realize that there will be no real solutions/workarounds coming out of the politician’s swamp/personal playground. Anything edifying?)
Messy-D? That one’s got LEGS.
Hurricanes and sunspots and quakes. There is no virtual reality. Time for a reminder.
Forever yours,
The Universe
A Cosmic “smack upside the head” sort of reminder.
Sixteen per cent of Americans like how Trump has conducted himself as President. We are getting close to single-digit territory. We are already in impeachment territory, waiting for Mueller’s legal case of high crimes and misdemeanors against Trump. Embracing “Chuck and Nancy” was a last ditch effort, but it won’t work to save Trump from impeachment. To be clear I am not referring to the 25th amendment. I am referring to impeachment by the House, conviction by the Senate, and removal from office.
Take it easy Janet. I doubt it happens. Never does. Live your life and don’t let a bunch of idiots in Washington ruin your day or days. Smell the flowers revel in the wind blowing through your hair. Hug your spouse, kids, parents pets or friends. Make your community better yourself. Life is beautiful. It was almost taken from me 27 years ago and ever since it is one day at a time. Do I have crap days? Yes but that is part of this life. Washington has become the sports teams of the nation with everyone letting their life get wrapped up in each play. They don’t care about you so why should you care about them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy6WqCpApfM
I love this guy. This blizzard. He is alive.
Approval ratings have never been a sound indicator for impeachment prospects anyway. The Shrub was famous for laughing them off, and rightfully so. He knew who owned the place, and that it damn sure wasn’t a bunch of fucking idiots responding to intentionally biased opinion polls. Impeachment proceedings make everything and everyone fair game, and if there’s one thing professional politicians don’t want, it’s the bright light of scrutiny shining their way.
I’m a faithful follower of Rush Limbaugh, and I’ve got some news for all of you liberals out there. All of this bullshit you’ve been hearing about Hurricane Ida is nothing more than fake news. It’s just another marketing ploy by the phony climate scientists to help businesses sell water & supplies to all the chumps who believe what the liberal media is saying. Just to prove it, I’m gonna take off from Key West tomorrow in a rowboat and fish for sea bass. Boy, all you idiots who believe the news, are gonna feel mighty stupid when I show back up with a big fat string of fish. If you wanna know the truth, just stay tuned to Rush, and Sean Hannity, they will tell you what’s REALLY going on. You know, like everything else that’s going on. It’s been a whole new world for me once I understood what is going on with all that fake news.
Megadittos. Thanks for the humor!
Rush knows he cant talk R_A_C_E much or he will be banned.
Like Ambrose Kane, Stormer, SBPDL all were banned.
I dont listen to him. He is for [limited] immigration. So I stopped listening.
Best wishes to all those who lay in the path of the hurricane.
And now I would like to discuss a completely trivial matter. I can’t believe that Vanity Fair didn’t name Melania Trump one of the best dressed women–yet Michelle and Pres. Obama were on the list?
No matter what your politics, Melania is gorgeous and has excellent fashion sense. Stupid left-wing Vanity Fair. I’m always interested in what Mrs. Trump is wearing and I love all her shoes. Michelle’s butt is at least twice as big as mine!
I wouldn’t dream of going to church without wearing a dress, lipstick, high heels and perfume. (Perfume-hating lesbian congregants be damned!)
Jen in San Jose
“Perfume-hating lesbian congregants be damned!” –Jen
That is not Christian. Jesus said to love others. Tell me what church you go to so I can avoid it when I am in San Jose.
Not to worryJanet; your preferred congregation has a convenient branch right in San Jose!
https://www.facebook.com/TheSatanicTempleSanJose/
Lucky you.
They keep Melania on a short leash; but I think if they let her talk more she would be very popular?
(file this under shit that will never happen)
DONT MOVE TO VEGAS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSH56Zt2Pq0
I know the city pretty well, and the video is mostly accurate. Downtown at night though can be a lot wilder than portrayed.
For about five-six months the weather is quite good. Otherwise, right on.
Malthuss,
My satellite internet download is so slow that I cannot use U-Tube without a protracted wait…what is the gist of the video?
I always thought sex in church was a good idea, right on the altar of God, especially in one of the great cathedrals.
Not gratuitous, but “sacred”.
Sure to increase attendance I’d bet! Although Sunday mornings would no doubt get a little messy. And what would the poor priests do? Whack off in the confessional booths?
Trump’s deal with Democrats is a nightmare come true for conservatives
It is the scenario that U.S. President Donald Trump’s most conservative followers considered their worst nightmare: he spurned the GOP to cut a deal with Democrats.
WASHINGTON—It is the scenario that U.S. President Donald Trump’s most conservative followers considered their worst nightmare, and on Wednesday it seemed to come true: The dealmaking political novice, whose ideology and loyalty were always fungible, cut a deal with Democrats.
If Trump’s agreement with the two Democratic leaders, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, to increase the debt limit and finance the government for three months did not yet represent the breaking point between the president and his core, hard-right base of support, it certainly put him closer than he has ever been to tipping his fragile political coalition into open revolt.
Trump went further on Thursday, agreeing to a “gentleman’s agreement” with Schumer to permanently remove the requirement that Congress repeatedly raise the debt ceiling, the Washington Post reported.
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/09/07/trumps-deal-with-democrats-is-a-nightmare-come-true-for-conservatives.html
—
So Trump has a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with Chuck Schumer to eliminate the debt limit permanently and… Crickets? On this of all blogs?
This deal passed both house and senate. A few Republicans voted “no” and went against Trump. Anyone who voted against Trump should be voted out of office.
Mr. Kunstler, Your opening this week is classic America, Clemens maybe Rogers. Then to close the week a bit of clarity.
Thank you sir!
“I’m sure the people of Miami will be comforted by the sparing of Disney.” –bruce e
Bruce, Miami will also be spared. The storm is going to SW Florida, towards Fort Meyers and Tampa.
Tell us more Ms Science! Still basking in the warm afterglow of carnal bliss, I see.
DA,
Rooting and fumbling behind a dumpster in an alley hardly provides for carnal bliss. Much in the way of tears and excuses…shame, and eventual loathing…vague promises never meant to be kept…no joy.
There will be no comment from either party…too painful…the body can be cleansed, but never the mind be expunged of the horror…the horror.
UGLY visuals! SHAMEFUL behavior! And yet…
“Tell us more, Ms Science” — DA
The important thing is that our beloved pequiste will be OK.
So janet… was it… dare I even say it… EIGHT-fucking-teen? GOOD GAWD!
Hmm… Even the liberal rag WaPo is predicting devastation this morning.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/09/08/hurricane-irma-churns-over-the-bahamas-on-collision-course-with-florida/
And don’t forget that there are no regulations on developers for buildings in flood zones and other precarious areas….the money must go on.
How will Mari lago fare and how much are we on the hook for the payments.
“How will Mari Lago fare” –Being There
Don’t worry, big government has Trump covered. Trump’s property has a flood insurance policy through the National Flood Insurance Program. Yayy! Big federal government!
(the small government crowd who think government is evil and corrupt should immediately start hurricane relief bake sales so THEY don’t have to participate in such evil)
Rush said yesterday that all of this hurricane nonsense is just more liberal provocation designed to push the agenda of the global warming crowd. He said this as he was preparing to evacuate. I agree with him. If you think about it, there’s something very suspicious about all these hurricanes appearing in alphabetical order. Well, time to head out for the sea bass. See ya on the beach tonight.
See you on the beach tonight.
Bring an umbrella. It might rain.
Let me guess. You’ll be the three hundred pound beached whale waving in the distance?
Where do you catch Rush these days Captain? AM and/or Satellite radio only? I haven’t hear that numb-nut in a LONG while.
I listen to him on AM radio while I roll cigarettes. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes, and that’s about all I can take anyway. He’s the only radio guy I know who talks in ALL CAPITOL LETTERS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!
Learn History!
To begin with, the ancient pagan world did not know the notion of nationality.
Despite the enormous social inequality, the slave-master relations were not related to the origin, but were circumstances that were determined by the game of chance, that is, the gods. And they prayed to these gods, realizing that
As flies to wanton boys are we to th ‘gods. They kill us for their sport
The top of this ancient world was the Roman Empire – Rome the First, which suddenly became the Christian Empire – Rome the Second, and what happened at that time on the lands where Russia now is not well known, you can say nothing is known.
And suddenly in 862 everything changed and these lands turned out to be at the center of World History, after the prince in the Great Novgorod, by invitation of such tribes as the Chud, Ilmen Slovenes, Krivichi became Varangian Rurik.
He created a colossal Empire, which was first called Kievan Rus, then was conquered by the Tatar-Mongols and became part of the Golden Horde, then Moscow became the capital of this Horde, which until then was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and Saint Rus, then the capital became Saint Petersburg, then this city became the capital of the Russian Empire, which in 1917 became a confederation called the Soviet Union, whose republics were united not only by the Communist Party, but also to a no lesser extent by Russian culture engendered by the people of Rus, the head of which was the above-mentioned Rurik.
I tried my best to bring well-known facts that are more or less recognized by everyone, since disputes arise in connection with the nationality of the above-mentioned Rurik, and these disputes began with a history textbook written by the son of the Palenov’s estate manager Illovaysky.
Although it is believed that the predecessor of the antinormanists was Mikhailo Lomonosov and Tatishchev, but in fact they simply did not know who Vikings really were and, from the pitch of the main enemy of Lomonosov, the president of the then Russian Academy of Science Miller thought that the Vikings and Scandinavians were some sort of Germans.
But in fact, such a huge period as the Middle Ages was held under the sign of confrontation between the Vikings and the Germans, or rather the Christian Empire of the Vikings, part of which was Holy Russia and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
That’s why one of the Brexit authors Viscount Norwich tries to unite the UK with the Viking Empire, and the British intelligence (Knights Templar) paying for Ilovaisky’s education and him writing a history textbook.
Think about the fact that as soon as the Englishwoman managed to drive a wedge between Rurik and his brainchild, it broke up, first to the confederation in 1917, and in 1991 to …. well for this you need to come up with another name.
Holy Christ! It’s Finca back from his time with Little Baby Jesus! Welcome back Finca! How’s your weather?
Finca,
A few friendly suggestions from someone who appreciates your posts and would like to see you become a bit more reader friendly:
Your posts are usually about the right length and of marginally appropriate content, but they don’t seem to exhibit a lot of continuity from post to post, or coherence within posts, at least to lesser minds like mine/ours.
In general, the generally accepted format if you want be an effective communicator is this: one paragraph to generally accept/refute the post/issue you’re addressing, one to three paragraphs to make your case, and one to make a summation/closing argument.
I say this because I work with a fair number of very smart people myself, and I see them make the same mistakes daily.
In closing, I hope you’re doing well down there in the Caribbean and continue to enlighten us with your insights regularly. Your contributions are VALUED!
DA
Get a room.
Was it… fucking… NINE-GODDAMN TEEN? YOU FUCKING SLUT!
Get back on your meds.
Unlike janet’s, which are purely simple-minded MSM derivative shit.
Lol! Finca only publishes Russian MSM and you gobble it up!
As I rapidly close on the old 6-0, I find myself, like The Godfather’s fictional Hyman Roth in his final days in Cuba, appreciating college football, aka the new professional football, on sunny early fall afternoons. Not because I particularly care who wins, but simply because it seems to be the new American spectacle/diversion. The NFL has long since sold its soul (if it ever had one) to the highest bidder, but the college game still offers the soft illusion to the soft-headed that there’s at least a handful of players out there playing for reasons other than obscene short term remuneration.
Even as I say that, it’s funny to watch an “old school” program like Nebraska get blown out against an “new school” program like Oregon, even as they’ve supposedly updated their program’s philosophy. Radical change is indeed uncomfortable and more often than not unwelcome, and god damn it to hell, ain’t we all in for a boat load of it in very short order!
DA,
In my youth, I noticed that college ball players rarely reflected their institution’s student demographic…and it occurs to me, in my 7th decade, that “programs” that succeed do so at the expense of NCAA rules, morals and often decency. I will watch the games involving the service academies, although even they are sliding, slowly, towards perfidy.
Don’t even get me started on the NFL, and the “Prevent” defense….
I was an immediate wash out from all of my schools’ football programs as well. Nonetheless, football has always held a peculiar fascination for me. Perhaps I’m just jealous? It’s a tough sport, for sure.
What position did you play?
Did you have “good hands?”
Small hands (and matching you know what), white skin, and slow. The perfect storm of mediocrity.
Looks like the Shuckers “held on” to a (relatively) close 42-35 loss to the Ducks in Eugene. Probably not a double kegger night in Lincoln tonight, I’m guessing. Oh well! No hurricanes blowing through at least!
If it keeps on rainin’ levee’s goin’ to break
If it keeps on rainin’ levee’s goin’ to break
When the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay.
….Cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
Now, cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.
– Led Zeppelin
America’s levees, physical, cultural, social, spiritual, etc..are passed or close to their stress points. We’re staggering to our death with each “gunshot” like we’re high on Angel Dust, to zonked on the orgy to know we’ve been hit by untold numbers of bullets. It’s just a matter of time now. How sad but how horrifying too.
I see everyday first hand here in Florida what JHK speaks of in the grotesque disfiguration of human relations, pathetic and depressing senior internment camps called retirement communities spawned from valuable agricultural land, ticking teenage tragedies waiting to detonate, abandoned strip malls cum ghost towns, dilapidated communities brushed to the side by “newer, brighter developments”, Although there is much good here the hopelessness and brokenness I see in peoples’ faces is heartbreaking. But the anger and fear is even more troublesome. What a mess.
Nice post and nice reference. Always loved that song. Any news to report from the land of the perpetually wet?
Locally, Orlando area, that doesn’t seem to be as much panic. There’s still fuel and water to be found. Lines aren’t terribly long, and most of my neighbors are staying. We’re expecting some damage but not the apocalypse.
Best of luck then!
“ticking teenage tragedies waiting to detonate”
Nice….
Thanx.
but they don’t seem to exhibit a lot of continuity from post to post ==DA
They do, you just don’t see it yet.
Star Wars For the Idiots
I could never understand the meaning of this movie and why it attracts so many people. As it turned out it was not done in the right language. As soon as it sound in the right language immediately everything becomes clear:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtfDbQlqvXQ
For comparison, a silly Anglo-Saxon romantics. Can’t understand anything:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPhHl2DpD4E
OK. I’m game.
I get what you’re saying, in that soporific US/Western capitalist sheep don’t recognize their own fascist captivity, even as it overwhelms them and theirs completely. But I fail to understand how – for instance – that makes janet any less of a slut and and a whore for swallowing NINETEEN (TWENTY?) FUCKING INCHES OF THWACK, allegedly behind a dumpster late at night, for no fucking apparent reason. These are SERIOUS QUESTIONS deserving of A SERIOUS ANSWER! Don’t you think?
And where is Jim in Florida?
I’m guessing somewhere else.
He’s getting a great blow job?
Hurricane hint #17: Put a wiener in your pocket, & the search dog will find you first.
“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around.”
You can say that again!
So the economy is going down the shitter, we get a couple of massive hurricanes, there’s a lot of damage, and the Russo-Chinese bloc are instituting plans to ditch the
…Dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Yeah, and we’re not gonna be destroyed by the weather or the Yellowstone supervolcano, but we are heading for a financial and social series of disasters. Every day we carry on as an organized society is really a gift. I’m interested in sticking around to experience the vast changes we are about to go through. And then see how we reset. We do indeed live in interesting times.
Since the big solar eclipse we’re being pummeled with ferocious hurricanes because we didn’t perform human sacrifice to the Sun God, Kukulakan.
Irma will walk widdershins over Florida.
Thanks for new word……..widdershins
Example: ‘Clam diggers’ are a type of pants where a woman walks along widdershins showin’.
Now use its antonym, deosil, in a sentence. Example: The correct way to draw a Swastika is deosil, not widdershins.
We must evolve, Q, not devolve. The Solar Path is the true one for Man, not the Lunar.
” and… Crickets? On this of all blogs? ”
* Giggle giggle *
What, have they torn down the temple to Abraham Lincoln ?
Bulldozed the marble shrine housing those sacred documents The Declaration Of Independence , and the U.S. Constitution ?
Have they misplaced John Locke somewhere ?
Have sales of Christopher Hitchens books tanked since he croaked ?
Given the routine cute comments regarding Christianity on this blog , for example , what we clearly have here are —
—a majority of secular humanist atheists ( or maybe just agenda –
less materialists using all of that for window dressing . )
— one or two eastern pagans . ( except they are westerners, who in no way resemble , or sound like , any actual eastern pagan I have ever known. )
and living in a secular humanist atheist materialist world that thinks paganism adds aesthetic spice.
The wonder is not any silence . There SHOULD BE SILENCE.
What can they possibly be honestly complaining about or criticizing when they have exactly what they wanted , still want , advocated, still advocate ?
While I still have electrical power, I can only tell you that the catastrophe Hurricane Irma will bring to Florida shall be of Biblical proportions.
The Keys and southwest Florida coasts look to be certainly drowned and perhaps even washed away by the terrible storm surge and ferocious winds.
I am watching the big radar image of the approaching storm from the local newscast via Internet: the green rotating mass with orange and yellow arms punctuated with blood red — swirling and swirling, swirling and swirling ever nearer to the Rendez-Vous.
All the while listening to Tchaikovsky’s “Hymn of the Cherubim.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZQzW_QfPew
Beyond words am I,…
Orange? Did someone say orange? The storm is a manifestation of Trump’s Wrath!
Which Florida coast are you on again, the Left or the Right?
“I zigged when I should have zagged.”
Zig Ziglar or Zag Zigler. Commies or Capitalists? Eva or Zsa Zsa Gabor?
“…cute comments regarding Christianity…”
Given most so-called Christians act as materialist money changers, they deserve to be driven out by the wrath of Jesus.
Forget about the dollar. The Yuan becomes a new world reserve currency
The world’s largest importer of oil, China, is finalizing preparations for the launch of the Shanghai Oil Commodity Exchange, the Yuan-denominated futures. It is assumed that the futures exchange trading will begin already this year. This is reported by Reuters. This is, to put it mildly, an important event.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-oil/china-sets-sights-on-oil-benchmark-after-years-of-delays-idUSKBN19W0N5
Exchange trade in oil and its derivatives is now being conducted on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the London Oil Exchange and the Dubai Commodity Exchange. All 3 exchanges belong to one group – CME group. Plus there is also the ICE exchange, also trading in oil futures. I think that the owners of ICE and CME are the same. These trading platforms manipulate the price of oil as they want – they want oil will cost $200, or vice versa $30. If some country – an oil exporter wants to organize its own oil exchange, then what happened to Iran would happen to them.
Therefore, there are no anymore oil exchanges in the world. In 2005, Iran decided to create its own oil exchange, but the UN Security Council suddenly imposed sanctions against Iran and banned all other countries from buying oil from Iran. Just a coincidence, of course.
For the above reason, the organization of trading in oil futures in China is an event of exceptional importance. But there is one more reason why this is important. The fact is that the Chinese have already organized trading in gold futures, denominated in RMB (since April 2016 in Shanghai and from July 2017 in Hong Kong), and now also trade in oil futures, denominated in RMB. This means 2 fundamental things:
1. Now the price for oil in Yuan will be established and accordingly it will be possible to conclude contracts for oil in Yuan.
2. Now the company selling oil or other commodities for Yuan under a long-term contract will be able to buy gold futures at the same time as concluding the contract, for the amount that it will gain from the sale of oil (or goods). So the Yuan will be backed with gold.
So far, there has been only one country that has been able to protect trade revenues from currency fluctuations – the United States. Now there will be two such countries.
But China will have an advantage. The fact is that in New York (London) it is almost impossible to buy physical gold, only futures for gold, which in general is not the same thing. And on the Shanghai Stock Exchange you can buy physical gold. In order to organize a liquid market of physical gold, China bought up gold in horse-load volumes in recent years. Now China has 20,000 tons of gold :
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/monetary_policy/67401516/254506/254506_original.png
For comparison, the USA has 8000 tons, Germany has 3400 tons.
In other words, in the coming years, when the exchange trade in oil and gold in Shanghai will work in full force, for the first time since 1971 in the world there will be a currency backed by gold – the Yuan. The Yuan will not be tied to gold (as in its time the dollar was), but it will be provided. Thus any trading partner of China will be able to purchase the physical gold at the exchange price of the Yuan.
So that’s how the new gold standard will look like.
In general, now you can forget not only about the US dollar, but also about the US itself. Because the main US export item is dollars. Tomorrow they will be of no use to anyone as much as today and a hole in the US balance of payments(trade deficit) will collapse.
This will not lead to a collapse of the economy, but the dollar will become cheaper by 25 – 30%.
Accordingly, prices for all prom products in the US will grow by 25-30% and the population will not be delighted.
Will the US lose the opportunity to print dollars? No they will not, but they will not print. Actually, they are no longer printing them.
Will the US lose the opportunity to increase public debt? No, they will not, but they will be bought only by US residents and the Fed. For foreigners the US Treasury bonds will not be very interesting.
Good explanation. I think, though, the US economy will collapse. Who is going to buy Treasury bonds? Banks? I doubt it. Large corporations? No, why should they? No other major entities are left. The Treasury Department can issue all the bonds they want, but if no one wants them, what good does that do?
Yeah, the bonds could be sold if the interest rates are high enough to induce investors to take the risk, but that means the government’s cost to pay the interest will increase a lot. More and more of our operating budget will go into servicing the debt. Either taxes go up a lot, military expenditures go down a lot, or entitlement programs get cut a lot.
Guess what expenditure won’t be cut, given who holds power? Guess what happens to our country when food stamp programs or social security benefits are cut? The outlook is grim. It’s just a matter of time until things here change drastically. That time is measured in months, not years.
Since the FED will cease to be the Central Bank of the World, but just the Central Bank of the United States, FED could do the main buying, keeping inflation at a reasonable rate, but higher than now.
Also regular citizens will invest at a reasonable 3 – 5 percent interest rate to [partially?] protect their investment from inflation, just like it happened in the USSR.
Ii is NOT going to be the end of the world, just the beginning of the new cycle.
“Since the FED will cease to be the Central Bank of the World, but just the Central Bank of the United States, FED could do the main buying, keeping inflation at a reasonable rate
Finc,
No, this is not the case. The Fed forced the world to accept the US Dollar at whatever value/exchange rate) the Fed decided. With another option as a currency to purchase Oil, there will be a disinclination to use the heavily debased dollar, and the resulting exchange rates, no longer controlled by the Fed, will be brutal….. We are an economy based on Imports…. This will be a perfect storm…our comeuppance will be swift, and with negative consequences we can only shudder to contemplate.
The military option is the only one we will have against this assault on the dollar, and China has been preparing….
Finc,
Good analysis. Remember Gresham’s Law…Bad money drives out the Good….
We have been “taking advantage of”* the rest of the world with our debasement of our currency. I expect that, other than in the US, there will be an immediate flight to the new(er) reserve currency. Yes, the US economy will crater, things will become much more expensive…there will be life-changing shortages…real and induced, for the majority of our population…even expat Russkies will feel the lash.
* Read “long stroking”….
The Russian State was founded by the Vikings
In the annals (The Tale of the Temporary Years) – it is said that at first the Vikings came to the Russian land, but the Slavs drove them away.
Then the local tribes quarreled among themselves, began to fight, and eventually after a while gathered together and decided to call the Varangians (Russian name for Vikings) to bring law and order, and at the same time to guard the borders from the invasion of the enemies. The third force, coming from the side, equally satisfied with the Slavic tribes (Slovene and Krivichi), and Finnish (chud and all), because it was equally far from everyone and did not have its own support group here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians
Viktor Vasnetsov, The Invitation of the Varangians: Rurik and his brothers arrive in Staraya Ladoga:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/%D0%92%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8F%D0%B3%D0%B8.jpg
Exactly. So your “Russia was never White” was just a lie and remains so.
What about Moscow becoming a capital of the Golden Horde?
Yes, the Russian People and Nation suffered under a foreign boot and yoke for a long time. Now you want to accept them. You simply prove that you aren’t a true Son of the Russian Soil.
In the histories I have read, the word russia came from the slavic word “rus” for red. Referring to the red hair seen on Scandinavians, who were invited to rule them. The only reference I have read about Varangians referred to the vikings who guarded the Byzantine emperor, who were called the Varangian Guard. As to the origin of that word, I have no idea.
Russian cruiser “Varyag” (Varangian)
During the Battle of Chemulpo Bay at the start of the Russo-Japanese War, “Varangian” (under the command of Captain of the First Rank Vsevolod Rudnev) accepted a badly unequal battle with the Japanese squadron of Admiral Uriu (one armoured cruiser, five protected cruisers and eight destroyers) in a heroic attempt to break out from Chemulpo (Incheon) harbour 9 February 1904. Chemulpo was in neutral Korean waters. Admiral Uriu gave the Russian ships in harbor a written ultimatum to sail by 12:00 noon or be attacked in the harbor itself. Captain Rudnev sortied, accompanied by the gunboat Koreets; having lost 31 men dead, 191 injured (out of 570) and outgunned, both ships returned to harbor by 1:00 p.m., the crew decided not to surrender, but to sink the ship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZVpYggVKRo&t=70
“So the economy is going down the shitter…” –beantown
Yes, Trump is destroying the United States. I predicted Trump would trash the economy. Don’t elect as president a lying businessman with a history of actual bankruptcies. We would have been better off with Hillary.
janet, you ignorant slut.
you one Trump achieve 3% GDP….record stock valuation and confidence….
you one corrupt slut Hillary not qualified to lick sweat off onehunglo’s balls!!!
-onehunglo
“lick sweat off onehunglo’s balls!!!”
Ball….
Rush Limbaugh forced to evacuate Florida by a “liberal hoax”!
He never said hurricanes were hoaxes or that this hurricane should be ignored. He simply said they have nothing to do with global warming. Try to get it straight. Until you do, nothing you say matters.
He nevertheless declines statements by 97% of the climate scientists who say that global warming is exacerbated by humans, while accepting their predictions of hurricanes. Oh well, the thing about science is that it happens whether you believe in it or not. Personally, I’m a little suspicious about gravity. It is just a theory you know.
And these “scientists” or at least the UN that cherry picks their reports, claim that the Sun has no effect on the Earth’s climate.
You know, the more times you guys pretend that those who don’t agree on the interpretation of data are anti science, the more tiresome you become.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israeli-pms-son-under-fire-anti-semitic-post-073115379.html
Our enemies are naked and in chaos. Strike Barons, strike!
Rush: Eco Sex is the new electrical banana. The Earth has a clitoris and Eco Sex experts know how to find it and manipulate it attain an Earth orgasm. There are videos of students licking the earth and having sex with trees. How do the trees consent? How is this not rape?
In other news, a transgender (m2f (and if you don’t know what that means you are contemptible)) rapist was incarcerated in a women’s prison where “she” has been sexually harassing the other inmates. She still has a penis you see, and evidently wants to use it. She has now been separated from the other prisoners.
Eco Sex is where earthquakes and those big, gushing volcanoes come from.
Oh how this era will squirm under the future spotlight of scrutiny of its stupidities!
Muslim Wisdom from Hershey (sic) Ali:
Miss Ali attended Muslim Girls’ Secondary School in Nairobi, where many of the children were from India and Pakistan: “The Untouchable girls, both Indian and Pakistani, were darker-skinned. The others wouldn’t play with them” (p. 68). She also recalls that “on the school playground . . . [t]he Yemenis, Somalis, Indians, and Pakistanis played with each other and interacted, but in the hierarchy of Muslim Girls’ Secondary School, the Kenyans were the lowest” (p. 68). It is extremely unusual for natives of a country to be socially inferior to immigrants. Yet, in her school in Nairobi all immigrant groups were higher in the social hierarchy than the Kenyans. Miss Ali seems to have thought that the reason was so obvious she did not have to state it: the Kenyans were the darkest and the only ones with Negroid features. When Miss Ali was 16, a teacher at her school, Sister Aziza, a Kenyan of Arab extraction, converted her from ritualistic, superficial Islam to the new, all-encompassing Islam that was spreading rapidly. Miss Ali recalls, “Sister Aziza was young and beautiful — light-skinned and fine-nosed” (p. 80).
The best chocolate is Ms Ali’s color. Dark chocolate is too dark.
https://www.amren.com/news/2017/09/infidel-ayaan-hirsi-ali-review-islam-the-west/
My Caveat or Warning to the Aryans anent Ms Ali:
Remember though, Ms Ali REJECTS this precious wisdom. I’ve read a couple of her books: she wants more Somali immigrants for Europe. In the end and despite her apostasy, she stands with her people and against the People of Europe. She doesn’t think like this – but she subconsciously does. It’s her natural instinct. She thinks they can be trained to be just as good as Whites. If that isn’t true, then her Liberal Faith is wrong – and that can’t be. So she will keep on trying no matter what the results. She has the typical fervor of the Convert. The greatness of Europe has nothing to do with Whites in her book. Thus she is an Enemy. We must learn to see the Enemy no matter what color they are or guise they wear.
At least she knows which bathroom to use.
Just sayin
Dark chocolate is too dark.
*********
have you tested it on white girls?
https://www.prisonplanet.com/jennifer-lawrence-says-nature-is-punishing-usa-with-hurricanes-for-voting-trump.html
Jennifer was so winsome when she first appeared on the scene, always falling down and gushing about it or meeting her celebrity heroes. But then she started feeling comfortable enough to open her mouth and talk. It’s been downhill ever since. She’s a complete idiot and anti-Christian hater.
She’s a complete idiot and anti-Christian hater.
========
She hates anti-Christians???
There is a natural ambiguity to all expression and indeed life itself. Context and Culture are so important. You and I are divergent, although you know what I mean. In any case, you grammar is no cure all against the fundamental Ambiguity, born of space, both cultural and physical, and of course, time.
Why Vikings are crucial in understanding current events
The meaning of the World War that have already begun as a Civil War in the United States, is in the confrontation of those who had concluded a separate peace on May 8, 1945 with Nazis and ended the Second World War as an ally of Hitler’s Germany, and those who proclaimed the Second World War as the Sacred Christian War.
And the fact that the Vikings before the Fourth Crusade were the main and principled opponents of the First Reich – the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation through diligence of John Norwich is written in every Western history textbook of a fairly high level.
And the question of the Viking Rurik is the question of the place of Russia in this war, the more urgent that the Russian anti-normanists do not care about who he really was, and reject his Norman heritage from nationalism in the worst sense of the word.
They want to build a national state of the Russians, not a little caring that for this they will first have to destroy Russia, which the descendants of Rurik built on the basis of Orthodoxy, and the fact that he was a Viking played an important role in this.
This is especially important because I am very sorry, but Russian nationalists in the Second World War usually took part on the wrong side of the barricades, fighting either in the army of General Vlasov or under the command of General Shkuro.
In the year 862 not only Rurik became a prince in the old Ladoga, but “Ansgar convinced the king of Jutland Horik II to the adoption of Christianity,” and if you look up Angars, the first thing you see is the cross of Saint Ansara, which clearly shows that the descendant of the Viking Rurik – Vladimir the Holy – was not baptized from a big hangover, but as a result of a long historical process in which a great role was played not only by Byzantium, but also by the Irish Orthodoxy of St. Patrick. It was thanks to Irish Orthodoxy that by that time most of the Vikings were already Christians.
Which once and for all closes the question of the forceful baptizing of Russia.
“Our enemies are naked and in chaos.” –janos
Janos, I have no enemies. You, as a white nationalist, are a member of my multicultural, multiracial nation. White supremacists are also members of my nation. I intentonally use “nation” … not “country.
My one nation is comprised of many: E PLURIBUS UNUM. Even people like you, people who would prefer a separate nation with only non-whites and non-Christians, are welcome and protected in my nation.
You have rights, including the right to believe in the superiority of whites. Those rights are protected by the first amendment, even though you deny your “enemies” are equal to you under the law.
I continue to value you as a minority voice in our multicultural interfaith nation. But understand one thing: Non-whites and non-Christians are here to stay. I love that fact. You chafe and bristle and futilely fight, calling others “enemies”, instead of living in peace with your compatriots who are different from you. So be it. Your choice.
“There is a natural ambiguity to all expression and indeed life itself.” –janos
That’s the spirit, janos. That natural ambiguity is diversity. Diversity is strength. Kumbayah!
Out of the Chaos, Man must impose Order – or He is not Homo Sapiens or Man the Thinker. The first order of business is to secure your survival and to breed more like unto yourself or better. Thus mating with Non-Whites is forbidden.
onehunglo agree with janet on diversity!!!
however, why is it all looter in you Houston and Miami of African descent??
where is you call on diversity??
red China have many problem….however introduction of this type diversity not one.
that ok.
let not you heart be troubled.
may God be with you.
-onehunglo
Here in the Insurance Capital, honchos in the insurance companies — Aetna, Cigna, Travelers, Hartford Insurance Group — state “No worries, we got this covered”.
They looked a little nervous tho, a tad bit nervous.
Now, the big back up re insurance companies, AIG for example … back in ’08 AIG got a $50 billion bailout from Uncle Sucker, then saw fit to throw an extravagant party for its top employees, charting yachts to ferry them from Manhattan to The Hamptons, and fly them out from rooftops on helicopters. I read it was a helluva a bash. AIG might have to tap into its reserves to cover twin disasters in Houston and Florida, again, no problemo.
brh
As far as reconsidering ‘Climate Change’, check out the number of hurricanes that hit Florida in 1871, and then the hurricanes of the 1920s and 1930s. A hurricane in 1926 essentially shut down development in the state for 30 years, ending the first real estate boom. The hurricane of 1935, which Hemingway famously chronicled in ‘New Masses’ magazine, wiped out the Keys. This was before anybody thought of politicizing the weather, and when American Lefties believed strongly in the Bolshevik revolution taking place in Russia. When the Soviet Union collapsed , proving to have been a bloodsoaked staughterhouse, we started hearing about global warming. Pete Seeger started singing about it instead of folk songs honoring Uncle Joe Stalin. This was about 1990.
brh
Check it out!
the looters in Orlando look like the looters in Houston.
Do you think they’re related?
brh
“the looters in Orlando look like the looters in Houston.
Do you think they’re related?”
Both groups belong to the Family of Man, perhaps?
Haven’t seen those images but possibly the looters are descended from Vikings (as discussed ad nauseum earlier in this forum). Or Vandals.
…mating with Non-Whites is forbidden…” –janos
Forbidden? It’s what is happening! And it is good.
Janos, you are going against nature. We are human animals. The benefits that come from mixing genes from different populations are well-known to plant and animal breeders.
Mixing genes is not only beneficial; when mixing doesn’t occur, there can be negative consequences. As the world’s population becomes increasingly mixed, some genetic disorders will become less common. Inbreeding is a hazard. Miscegenation is natural and good for the human race.
After watching Russian TV this weekend…
I do not like modern Russian pop-art, especially Dima Beeline, although I recognize their certain artistic achievements.
But when the so-called “New Wave” began with the song of Makarevich and Kutikov, performed by three creatures, sufficiently brazenly demonstrating their homosexuality, I slightly grew stoned.
And so they showed the viewing hall and I saw gloomy men and pretty smiling women who somehow like men on stage with exaggerated grace of movements.
Of course, I understand that Vladimir Putin can be said to fight alone with a terrible enemy, saving humanity and such, but while he is at it the struggle for the Russian world he lost, and Russian culture most of all now resembles a chicken with a cut-off head that runs around the yard and thinks that it feels just fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vxUmXEOSNA&t=98