[Free Press] I have been thinking a great deal about Russia these past few days in light of Thursday’s dramatic prisoner swap, which culminated with Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich emerging from an airplane at Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington, D.C. More to the point, I’ve been thinking about those courageous Russian souls who, like Gershkovich, escaped from the authoritarian darkness and found their way to America.
At the top of that list is Alexander Solzhenitsyn—the author of one of the few books that actually changed the world. The Gulag Archipelago, a three-volume nonfiction account of life inside the notorious Stalinist penal system, first appeared in French in 1973, and the next year in English.
It created an audible and devastating crack in the Iron Curtain.
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#1
This is about a speech at Harvard: "How embarrassing to have been an American—a soon-to-be graduate of the nation’s most prestigious university, or, better yet, an esteemed professor or dean at that university—and to be forced to listen to a Soviet exile, a man who could not even speak to his audience in English, lecture them about their many shortcomings. "
He thinks Harvard people, even back then, would have been embarrassed by the speech? This writer is clueless.
That two-by-four upside our country’s head you’ve been waiting to get whomped with? Looks like it’s landing now. We got a banger in 2008, but it didn’t make an much of an impression. Maybe you don’t even remember these people, but then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke came in like a code blue squad and hooked up the banks to an IV-drip speedball of cocaine and heroin, i.e., “money” that didn’t actually exist (a.k.a. “liquidity,” hallucinated capital), and that crew kept it coming for years.
And then Janet Yellen and her posse kept it coming with never-ending zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) until the national debt canceled America’s future. And that left Jerome Powell pretending there was a way out of this doom-loop. Then came the repo market spasm in September 2019 that freaked out the blob so badly they shut down the whole world with Covid and locked-down economies. And everything since then has been a waiting game. The financial world was in hospice.
The wait is over. Everything that can break is breaking: stock markets, bond markets, the galaxy of derivatives — bets on this and that, which will never be honored. Banks are next. Gold and silver are hanging in there for dear life just now, because they’re actually worth something. (And because they are worth something, they‘ll eventually sell off some too, to cover margin calls on other stuff hemorrhaging value. But they will not go to zero like a lot of other stuff, and they’ll come back stronger.)
You understand this can’t play out like it did in 2008-9. The authorities are out of tricks and out of fake money. They can try the emergency interest rate cut, but it won’t change what is actually happening: the epic revaluation of everything humans make and own — with much of it losing value and quite a bit losing all value because it never really had any. The spooky catch is that there will be an attempt, in this wild and terrifying process, for certain devious, unprincipled parties to take possession of many things shaking loose — what remains of collateral. . . real things. . . commodities. . . facilities. . . properties. . . chattels. . . artworks. . . and, of course, whatever securities still have a relationship to realities of production.
This brings a sharp end to the current political sitcom, especially the situation of the Democratic Party. They will get blamed for the economic carnage left behind by the shattered money system. They lied about everything for years, every number, every index, every supposed “policy”.
Kamala Harris won’t be cackling her way out of this.
Posted by: NoMoreBS ||
08/05/2024 12:12 ||
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Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
[TownHall] Wall Street is likely to be a bloodbath today. The first warning signs were on Friday, culminating on Sunday night when all hell broke loose in Asia. The Nikkei had its worst day since 1987, sinking nearly 4,000 points. It suspended trading after sinking nearly eight percent. South Korea’s stock exchange halted all sell orders as a looming wave of brutality is expected to hit Wall Street this morning. We’ll update this post accordingly, but a drubbing on the New York Stock Exchange shouldn’t surprise anyone. Also, don’t look at your 401ks (via CNBC):
#4
NASDAQ futures off 5% as of now and other markets off not much less. That translates into about $4 Trillion loss in market cap.
As for the Federal Reserve, I have some sympathy for them. Biden's fiscal policy was so awful their job was impossible. In retrospect they should have tightened about a year before they did and then should have loosened about 3 months ago. But that is retrospect.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/05/2024 9:18 Comments ||
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#5
Also FWIW, assuming the wipe out today is not quickly followed by a recovery, it will knock a couple of points off the numbers for the Democratic ticket. This is because the more the voters talk about the economy, the worse it is for the party in power.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/05/2024 9:58 Comments ||
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#7
Japan's Nikkei stock index down over 4,000 points, largest drop in its history
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
08/05/2024 10:23 Comments ||
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#8
Alot of Directional and MWD hands stockpile gold and silver. One asked me if I wanted in on it and I said, "I'm stocking piling ammo, if you have ammo, you can get gold or silver or gas or anything else"
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
