IT’S A FOURTH TURNING: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?

“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age break down. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impossible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

What You Should Know About Getting Snowed In - CLC Lodging

“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

I’ve been pondering this Fourth Turning in articles since its spectacular onset in September 2008, with the Wall Street/Federal Reserve initiated global financial implosion. The description above is apt, as this ongoing two-decade long storm gains intensity and our freedoms, liberties and rights are slowly extinguished as the electricity flickers and our modern civilization reverts to a more brutish state of antipathy among competing tribes, based on race, gender, class, party, geographic location, and now medical status.

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THE ONLY THING SYSTEMATIC IS THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair

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Upton Sinclair was describing willful ignorance based upon who butters your bread. The rampant corruption of our society, as power has been consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, has resulted in our political, financial, cultural and economic systems being captured by a billionaire class who use their wealth to dictate the path we are forced to follow – or lose everything.

The sociopath class include the Silicon Valley social media titans, the billionaires running the six mainstream media companies, the rogue billionaires like Soros and Bloomberg who fund chaos and foment insurrection, the Deep State surveillance agency operatives like Clapper, Brennan, Comey and Mueller doing the bidding of the oligarchy, Wall Street criminals like Dimon, Paulson, and Blankfein doing god’s work, and last but certainly not least – Powell, Yellen, Bernanke and slimy Kashkari priming the pump for the never ending systematic pillaging of the nation’s wealth.

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Entertain a Clown and You Become Part of the Circus

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

If I were the devil, I would desire the most efficient system of governance whereby maximum control could be exerted over the greatest amount of people at any given time. I would identify those who stood in my way and take them down either by force or subversion.  There would be no room in my world for individuality, free thought, or vain imaginings of anything, or anyone, more powerful than me.  As an orchestrator of chaos, the only unity I could tolerate would be that which served both my means and ends.

Without a doubt, divide and conquer would be my means and one world under me would be my objective.

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JUSTICE INVOLVED INDIVIDUALS

Criminals and trouble makers = black people = justice involved individuals

Orwellian doublespeak in all its glory.

Via Judicial Watch

The Obama administration has ordered the nation’s colleges and universities to stop asking applicants about criminal and school disciplinary history because it discriminates against minorities. Institutions are also being asked to offer those with criminal records special support services such as counseling, mentoring and legal aid once enrolled. The government’s official term for these perspective students is “justice-involved individuals” and the new directive aims to remove barriers to higher education for the overwhelmingly minority population that’s had encounters with the law or disciplinary issues through high school.

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WHEN DID RENTING BECOME A SALE?

Subprime autonation is alive and well. Orwellian Doublespeak most certainly applies to the fact that the MSM and the auto peddlers don’t actually sell cars anymore. They rent them and call it a sale. The 0% interest rates from the Federal Reserve allow these recall specialists to rent millions of cars to millions of deadbeats using the tried and true method of no down payments and low low monthly payments.

The three year leases and 7 year 0% loans to subprime mouth breathers eventually come due. As Zero Hedge points out, the avalanche of returned vehicles after three years might just have a bottom line impact to Government Motors and the rest of the finance companies disguised as automakers.

But keep believing the monthly headlines announcing tremendous auto sales when they are nothing but short-term rentals and cramming inventory down the throats of dealers.

The Mystery Behind Strong Auto “Sales”: Soaring Car Leases

Tyler Durden's picture

When it comes to signs of a US “recovery” nothing has been hyped up more than US auto companies reporting improving, in fact soaring, monthly car sales. On the surface this would be great news: with an aging car fleet, US consumers are surely eager to get in the latest and greatest product offering by your favorite bailed out car maker (at least until the recall comes). The only missing link has been consumer disposable income. So with car sales through the roof, the US consumer must be alive and well, right? Wrong, because there is one problem: it is car “sales” not sales. As the chart below from Bank of America proves, virtually all the growth in the US automotive sector in recent years has been the result of a near record surge in car leasing (where as we know subprime rules, so one’s credit rating is no longer an issue) not outright buying.

From BofA:

Leasing soars: Household outlays on leasing are booming at a 20% yoy pace – a clear sign that demand for vehicles is alive and kicking. With average lease payments lower than typical monthly ownership costs and with a down-payment not typically required to enter into a lease, the surge in vehicle leasing is likely a sign that financial restraints are still holding back some would-be buyers. Thus, as the economy improves, bottled-up household demand for vehicles could translate to higher sales.

 

Chart 1: Households go for the low capital option: leasing soars 

(yoy growth rate, inflation-adjusted)

 

It could also translate into even higher leases, which in turn bottlenecks real, actual sales.

Of course, the problem is that leasing isn’t buying at all. It is renting, usually for a period of about 3 years. Which means that at the end of said period, an avalanche of cars is returned to the dealer and thus carmaker, who then has to dump it in the market at liquidation prices, which in turn skews the ROA calculation massively. However, what it does do is give the impression that there is a surge in activity here and now… all the expense of a massive inventory writedowns three years from now.

Which is precisely what will happen to all the carmakers as the leased cars come home to roost. But what CEOs know and investors prefer to forget, is that by then it will be some other management team’s problem. In the meantime, enjoy the ZIRP buying, pardon leasing, frenzy.