ZIRP – The Burning Platform

FOURTH TURNING 2022 – BAD MOON RISING (PART 2)

In Part 1 of this article I laid out how the global elite have used this covid flu to manipulate the weak minded into a fear induced mass psychosis as a key element in their Great Reset plan to control the world and keep you technologically enslaved under lock and key. Now I will try to decipher how this mass hysteria might play out over the course of 2022 and beyond.

“Americans today fear that linearism (alias the American Dream) has run its course. Many would welcome some enlightenment about history’s patterns and rhythms, but today’s intellectual elites offer little that’s useful. Caught between the entropy of the chaoticists and the hubris of the linearists, the American people have lost their moorings.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

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“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ― George Orwell

The American Dream, where all Americans, no matter the circumstances of their birth, had a legitimate opportunity to live a better life than their parents, based upon their own intelligence, work ethic, and good fortune, is an illusion in today’s world. The ruling elite have stolen the wealth of the nation and its citizens. This was not an accident, but a plan implemented over many decades, accelerating after Nixon closed the gold window and opened the door to unlimited amounts of debt being created out of thin air and backed by nothing.

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FOURTH TURNING ACCELERATING TOWARDS CLIMAX

“At some point, America’s short-term Crisis psychology will catch up to the long-term post-Unraveling fundamentals. This might result in a Great Devaluation, a severe drop in the market price of most financial and real assets. This devaluation could be a short but horrific panic, a free-falling price in a market with no buyers. Or it could be a series of downward ratchets linked to political events that sequentially knock the supports out from under the residual popular trust in the system. As assets devalue, trust will further disintegrate, which will cause assets to devalue further, and so on. Every slide in asset prices, employment, and production will give every generation cause to grow more alarmed.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

I’ve been writing articles about the Fourth Turning for over a decade and nothing has happened since its tumultuous onset in 2008, with the global financial collapse, created by the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street co-conspirator owners, that has not followed along the path described by Strauss and Howe in their 1997 book – The Fourth Turning.

Like molten lava bursting forth from a long dormant (80 years) volcano, the core elements of this Fourth Turning continue to flow along channels of distress, long ago built by bad decisions, corrupt politicians and the greed of bankers. The molten ingredients of this Crisis have been the central drivers since 2008 and this second major eruption is flowing along the same route. The core elements are debt, civic decay, and global disorder, just as Strauss & Howe anticipated over two decades ago.

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NO ONE GETS OUT OF HERE ALIVE

“The seasons of time offer no guarantees. For modern societies, no less than for all forms of life, transformative change is discontinuous. For what seems an eternity, history goes nowhere – and then it suddenly flings us forward across some vast chaos that defies any mortal effort to plan our way there. The Fourth Turning will try our souls – and the saecular rhythm tells us that much will depend on how we face up to that trial. The saeculum does not reveal whether the story will have a happy ending, but it does tell us how and when our choices will make a difference.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

As we wander through the fog of history in the making, unsure who is lying and who is telling the truth, seemingly blind to what comes next, I look to previous Fourth Turnings for a map of what might materialize during the 2^nd half of this current Fourth Turning. After a tumultuous, harrowing inception to this Crisis in 2008/2009, we have been told all is well and are in the midst of an eleven-year economic expansion, with the stock market hitting all-time highs.

History seemed to stop and we’ve been treading water for over a decade. Outwardly, the establishment has convinced the masses, through propaganda and money printing, the world has returned to normal and the future is bright. I haven’t bought into this provable falsehood. Looking back to the Great Depression, we can get some perspective on our current position historically.

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US vs. THEM

“I’ll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. “I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.” “I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.” “Hey, wait a minute, there’s one guy holding out both puppets!”” – Bill Hicks

Anyone who frequents Twitter, Facebook, political blogs, economic blogs, or fake news mainstream media channels knows our world is driven by the “Us versus Them” narrative. It’s almost as if “they” are forcing us to choose sides and believe the other side is evil. Bill Hicks died in 1994, but his above quote is truer today then it was then. As the American Empire continues its long-term decline, the proles are manipulated through Bernaysian propaganda techniques, honed over the course of decades by the ruling oligarchs, to root for their assigned puppets.

Most people can’t discern they are being manipulated and duped by the Deep State controllers. The most terrifying outcome for these Deep State controllers would be for the masses to realize it is us versus them. But they don’t believe there is a chance in hell of this happening. Their arrogance is palatable.

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10 YEARS LATER – NO LESSONS LEARNED

“A variety of investors provided capital to financial companies, with which they made irresponsible loans and took excessive risks. These activities resulted in real losses, which have largely wiped out the shareholder equity of the companies. But behind that shareholder equity is bondholder money, and so much of it that neither depositors of the institution nor the public ever need to take a penny of losses. Citigroup, for example, has $2 trillion in assets, but also has $600 billion owed to its own bondholders. From an ethical perspective, the lenders who took the risk to finance the activities of these companies are the ones that should directly bear the cost of the losses.” – John Hussman – May 2009

This month marks the 10^th anniversary of the Wall Street/Fed/Treasury created financial disaster of 2008/2009. What should have happened was an orderly liquidation of the criminal Wall Street banks who committed the greatest control fraud in world history and the disposition of their good assets to non-criminal banks who did not recklessly leverage their assets by 30 to 1, while fraudulently issuing worthless loans to deadbeats and criminals. But we know that did not happen.

You, the taxpayer, bailed the criminal bankers out and have been screwed for the last decade with negative real interest rates and stagnant real wages, while the Wall Street scum have raked in risk free billions in profits provided by their captured puppets at the Federal Reserve. The criminal CEOs and their executive teams of henchmen have rewarded themselves with billions in bonuses while risk averse grandmas “earn” .10% on their money market accounts while acquiring a taste for Fancy Feast savory salmon cat food.

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GOLDILOCKS IS DEAD

“Once you strip out the effects of the debt binge, the artificial stimulus via currency depreciation, and the fabled ‘wealth effect’ from the equity market runup, real GDP growth stripped-down to its core was the grand total of 0.7% last year. Potemkin would be proud.” – David Rosenberg

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It appears every president finds the religion of false economic narrative once they ascend to power. Trump never stops babbling and tweeting about the fantastic economy and raging jobs market since his election. He has embraced the stock market bubble as proof of his brilliant leadership, rather than the tens of trillions in debt propping up the most overvalued market in world history. Every president takes credit for any good news, spins bad news as good news, or blames the previous president for bad news that can’t be denied. The president has absolutely zero impact on the economy or stock market over the short term. It’s like taking credit for the sun rising in the east each morning.

The Big Lie method works wonders when you have a willfully ignorant, mathematically challenged, easily manipulated populace. I spent the entire Obama presidency obliterating the fake economic data perpetuated by his BLS, BEA and every other government agency trying to paint a rosy economic picture. I voted for Trump because the thought of Crooked Hillary as the president made me ill. Despite disagreeing with many of his economic, budgetary, and military policies during his first year in office, I’d vote for him again over Hillary in an instant. The thought of having that evil shrew running the country gives me chills.

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STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

If you prefer fake news, fake data, and a fake narrative about an improving economy and stock market headed to 30,000, don’t read this fact based, reality check article. The level of stupidity engulfing the country has reached epic proportions, as the mainstream fake news networks flog bullshit Russian conspiracy stories, knowing at least 50% of the non-thinking iGadget distracted public believes anything they hear on the boob tube.

This stupendous degree of utter stupidity goes to a new level of idiocy when it comes to the stock market. The rigged fleecing machine known as Wall Street has gone into hyper-drive since futures dropped by 700 points on the night of Trump’s election. An already extremely overvalued market, as measured by every historically accurate valuation metric, soared by 4,000 points from that futures low – over 20% – to an all-time high. Despite dozens of warning signs and the experience of two 40% to 50% crashes in the last fifteen years, lemming like investors are confident the future is so bright they gotta wear shades.

The current bull market is the 2nd longest in history at 8 years. In March of 2009, the S&P 500 bottomed at a fitting level for Wall Street of 666. In a shocking coincidence, it bottomed on the same day Bernanke & Geithner forced the FASB to rollover like mangy dogs and stop enforcing mark to market accounting. Amazingly, when Wall Street banks, along with Fannie and Freddie, could value their toxic assets at whatever they chose, profits surged. The market is now 240% higher.

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STEVE EISMAN: SMART, LUCKY, ABRASIVE & NOW ONE OF THEM

I loved Michael Lewis’ book – The Big Short – about the 2008 Wall Street created global financial catastrophe, that is still impacting the little guys on Main Street eight years after it was supposedly resolved by Paulson, Bernanke and Obama. I even wrote an article about it called The Big Short: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street. I also loved one of the main characters in the book – Frontpoint Partners hedge fund manager Steve Eisman – a foul mouthed, highly skeptical, open minded guy who figured out the fraudulent subprime mortgage scheme and shorted the crap out of the derivatives backing the fraud, making hundreds of millions in the process.

I had the opportunity to attend a 90 minute talk by Steve Eisman last night where he discussed the financial crisis, the response by the Fed and government, and the future for the financial industry. My perception of him, based on the book and movie, was he was a cantankerous asshole who didn’t care what anyone thought about him. My perception matched what I experienced. He was dropping f-bombs, insulting the institution hosting his talk, making fun of business school students (he graduated with a liberal arts degree) and dismissing any question he found to be stupid.

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WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? (PART THREE)

In Part One and Part Two of this article I revealed how the Deep State’s fake data and fake news propaganda machine can be overcome by opening your eyes, observing reality, understanding how Fed created inflation has destroyed our lives, and why the election of Trump was the initial deplorable pushback to Deep State evil.

“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.” – H.L. Mencken

“This new regime will enthrone itself for the duration of the Crisis. Regardless of its ideology, that new leadership will assert public authority and demand private sacrifice. Regardless of its ideology, that new leadership will assert public authority and demand private sacrifice. Where leaders had once been inclined to alleviate societal pressures, they will now aggravate them to command the nation’s attention. The regeneracy will be solidly under way.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

We are now seven weeks into the Trump presidency and it seems like seven years with amount of incidents that have occurred before and since his inauguration. When in doubt, Trump’s brain dead, hyperventilating with hate, opponents either blame the Russians or declare him Hitler. The histrionics displayed by the low IQ hypocritical Hollywood elite, corrupt Democratic politicians, fake news liberal media and Soros paid left wing radical terrorists over the last two months has been disgraceful, revolting, childish, and dangerous.

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CIVIL WAR II – FOURTH TURNING INTENSIFYING (PART I)

“History offers even more sobering warnings: Armed confrontation usually occurs around the climax of Crisis. If there is confrontation, it is likely to lead to war. This could be any kind of war – class war, sectional war, war against global anarchists or terrorists, or superpower war. If there is war, it is likely to culminate in total war, fought until the losing side has been rendered nil – its will broken, territory taken, and leaders captured.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe -1997

As we enter the final stretch of this vitriolic, deplorable, venomous, propaganda saturated, deceitful, rigged presidential election spectacle, it becomes painfully obvious this Fourth Turning is careening toward bloodshed, bedlam, confrontation, and civil war. The linear fixated establishment, who fancy themselves intellectually superior to the irredemables, are too blinded by their sociopathic, increasingly audacious subversion of the Constitution, to grasp the level of rage and disillusionment of a white working class that has been screwed over for decades.

As the Wall Street shysters frantically accelerate their embezzlement of what remains of middle class wealth, with the Fed and the corporate media propagandists as their wing-men, the country devolves into a corporate fascist state. The disposition of the nation grows dark like the sky before an approaching deadly blizzard. As passions boil over and violence portends, this Fourth Turning hastens towards a bloody decade ahead with an uncertain climax.

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WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

As this vitriolic, unpredictable, outrageously entertaining presidential campaign enters its final stages I find myself pondering what happens next. I was reminded of the last scene in the 1972 movie, The Candidate. The movie is about a young untested non-politician candidate for U.S. Senator in California who puts his fate in the hands of a veteran political operative and overcomes a double digit polling deficit to win a huge upset victory. His entire focus during the campaign was to win. In the final scene of the movie he is standing among the celebrating campaign staffers and the fawning press corp. with a befuddled look on his face. He grabs his political consultant campaign manager and pulls him into a room. As the press break into the room he asks, “What do we do now?” The question goes unanswered and the movie ends.

The chattering class on the boob tube is enthralled and aghast at every seizure, collapse, and deplorable comment by the two most disliked presidential candidates in U.S. history. The establishment and their corporate media mouthpieces are perplexed and irate that Donald Trump has overcome their propaganda campaign to be leading in the polls with 51 days to go. He is a non-politician who was behind by double digits in the polls a month ago. He hired professional political operatives who have molded his message, while his opponent has been lying about her health, lying about selling access while Secretary of State, and denigrating blue collar middle class Americans in campaign speeches. The momentum is clearly in his favor and absent a major gaffe during the debates he could win an unlikely come from behind victory in November.

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Trump Slams Yellen: The Fed Has Created A “Stock Bubble” And “A False Economy” To Boost Obama

by Tyler Durden

One month ago, Donald Trump urged his followers to sell stocks, warning of “very scary scenarios” for investors, and accused the Fed of setting the stage for the next market crash when he said that “interest rates are artificially low” during a phone interview with Fox Business. “The only reason the stock market is where it is is because you get free money.”

Earlier today, speaking to a reporter traveling on his plane who asked Trump about a potential rate hike by the Fed in September, Trump took his vendetta to the next level, saying that the Fed is “keeping the rates artificially low so the economy doesn’t go down so that Obama can say that he did a good job. They’re keeping the rates artificially low so that Obama can go out and play golf in January and say that he did a good job. It’s a very false economy. We have a bad economy, everybody understands that but it’s a false economy. The only reason the rates are low is so that he can leave office and he can say, ‘See I told you.'”

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THE ANTI-CINDERELLA MAN (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I made a fact based case that most Americans are experiencing an economic depression on par with the Great Depression of the 1930’s. In Part Two I will compare and contrast two very different men who raised the spirits of the common man during difficult economic times. As we approach the perilous portion of this Fourth Turning, it will take more than hope to get us through to the other side.

Cinderella Man

Likening Braddock to Trump might seem far-fetched, until you think about parallels between the economic conditions during the 1930’s and today, along with the deepening mood of crisis, despair and anger at the establishment. Braddock’s career coincided with the last Fourth Turning. James J. Braddock was born in 1905, to Irish immigrant parents Joseph Braddock and Elizabeth O’Toole Braddock in a tiny apartment on West 48th Street in New York City. His life personified that of a GI Generation hero. One of seven children, Jimmy enjoyed playing marbles, baseball and hanging around the old swimming hole on the edge of the Hudson River as a youngster. He discovered his passion for boxing as a teenager.

Braddock refined his skills as an amateur fighter and in 1926 entered the professional boxing circuit in the light heavyweight division. Braddock overwhelmed the competition, knocking out multiple opponents in the early rounds of most fights. As a top light heavyweight, he stood over six feet two inches, but seldom weighed over 180 pounds. But his powerful right hand was no match for opponents that weighed close to 220 pounds. His star was ascending. He earned a shot at the title in 1929. On the evening of July 18th 1929, Braddock entered the ring at Yankee Stadium to face Tommy Loughran for the coveted light heavyweight championship. Loghran avoided Braddock’s deadly right hand for 15 rounds and won by decision. Less than two months later the stock market crashed and the country plunged into the Great Depression.

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THE ANTI-CINDERELLA MAN (PART ONE)

There are several movies I will watch every time they are aired on one of my generally useless 600 cable channels. They all have the same thing in common – a compelling character portrayal which keeps you riveted and mesmerized by how the protagonist deals with adversity and circumstances beyond their control. The movies I can’t resist include: The Godfather I & II, The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, Apocalypse Now, and Patton. Another captivating movie, which didn’t do well at the box office, is Cinderella Man. The portrayal of Depression era heavyweight boxing champion James J. Braddock by Russell Crowe is inspirational, with a rousing and improbable victory by the champion of the common man. While watching this great movie a few weeks ago I found myself equating the themes to the current presidential campaign.

The Greater Depression

Braddock was an inspiration to all downtrodden demoralized Americans during the Great Depression. The parallels between the 1930’s Great Depression and today’s Greater Depression are uncanny, despite the propaganda emitted by the establishment politicians, media and banking cabal that all is well. The corporate mainstream media faux journalists scorn and ridicule anyone who makes the case we are currently in the midst of another Great Depression. They are paid to peddle a recovery narrative to keep the masses ignorant, sedated, and distracted by latest adventures of Caitlyn Jenner and the Kardashians. An impartial assessment of the facts reveals today’s Depression to be every bit as dreadful for the average American as it was in the 1930’s.

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Carl Icahn Turns Apocalyptic: “I Am More Hedged Than Ever, A Day Of Reckoning Is Coming”

by Tyler Durden

We profiled Carl Icahn’s notorious bearishness most recently two weeks ago when we showed that for the second quarter in a row, the billionaire’s hedge fund, Icahn Enterprises had kept on its record short bias, manifesting in a net -149% market exposure.

Unlike other hedge fund managers, however, Icahn does not provide monthly letters explaining his mindset which is why we eagerly watched a expansive, 40 minute interview he gave to Bloomberg’s Erik Shatzker, in which in addition to a detailed discussion of Trump and how the Republican presidential candidate would change the US economy, he shared some much needed insights into his gloomy vision of the market.

Below are some of the key excerpts from his discussion of the market:

Shatzker: Why is it that the stock market is where it is? That with valuations so high that I noticed in the letter that — or at least in a statement that you made with your son, Bret, earlier this month, that you don’t feel confident making any large investments?

ICAHN: Aabsolutely, Erik. I have hedges on, I’m more hedged than I ever was. I will tell you there’s certainly good companies. [The market] is way overvalued at 20 times the S&P and I’ll tell you why: a lot of it is a result of zero interest rates. It’s just what I said. You have zero interest and a lot of buybacks. Money is not going into capital.

So think of it as a rich family that just decides “we’re just going to have a lot of fun, we’re going to sit around in the pool, and we’ll keep printing up IOUs to the town, we’ve got a good name.” You keep doing it until you go broke. And this is what’s happening in our economy. Zero interest rates are building huge bubbles. You have retirees that saved a million bucks, half a million bucks.

I think the market is at literally very high levels because of zero interest rates, and if you really look at it, the dollar is pretty strong right now, which is going to hurt international earnings. The S&P, they live on international earnings. That’s going to be hurt. There’s going to be a day of reckoning here. I’ve seen it many times in my life. When things look good, they look great. You go into the sky. But that’s when you have to really pull down and really stop buying. That being said, I’m not going to tell you it’s going to happen tomorrow, next week, even next month, even next year possibly. But it’s going to happen, and you have to change the direction of our economy. I can’t say it plainer than that.

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ALL TIME HIGHS

The stock market has reached new all-time highs this week, just two weeks after plunging over the BREXIT result. The bulls are exuberant as they dance on the graves of short-sellers and the purveyors of doom. This is surely proof all is well in the country and the complaints of the lowly peasants are just background noise. Record highs for the stock market must mean the economy is strong, consumers are confident, and the future is bright.

All the troubles documented by myself and all the other so called “doomers” must have dissipated under the avalanche of central banker liquidity. Printing fiat and layering more unpayable debt on top of old unpayable debt really was the solution to all our problems. I’m so relieved. I think I’ll put my life savings into Amazon and Twitter stock now that the all clear signal has been given.

Technical analysts are giving the buy signal now that we’ve broken out of a 19 month consolidation period. Since the entire stock market is driven by HFT supercomputers and Ivy League MBA geniuses who all use the same algorithm in their proprietary trading software, the lemming like behavior will likely lead to even higher prices. Lance Roberts, someone whose opinion I respect, reluctantly agrees we could see a market melt up:

“Wave 5, “market melt-ups” are the last bastion of hope for the “always bullish.” Unlike, the previous advances that were backed by improving earnings and economic growth, the final wave is pure emotion and speculation based on “hopes” of a quick fundamental recovery to justify market overvaluations. Such environments have always had rather disastrous endings and this time, will likely be no different.”

As Benjamin Graham, a wise man who would be scorned and ridiculed by today’s Ivy League educated Wall Street HFT scum, sagely noted many decades ago:

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”

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