“A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all.”
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius
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The shocking crime being committed during this century under the unscrupulous initiative of a few evil men is ongoing and no longer hidden from those willing to open their eyes and see the truth. As conspiracy theorists have proven to be right through the sacrifice of Snowden, Assange, and other patriots for truth, the Deep State psychopaths have double downed and are blatantly flaunting their power and control over the levers of government, finance and media.
Never in the history of mankind have such devious, unscrupulous, arrogant, narcissistic and downright evil men seized hegemony over global finance, trade and politics. A minority of billionaire oligarchs and their highly compensated apparatchiks, ingrained in government bureaucracies, surveillance agencies and media outlets refuse to relinquish their dominance and would rather burn the world to the ground than lose their ill-gotten riches, un-Constitutional power and unlawful control.
When I started pondering a theme for 2020, the “year of living dangerously” immediately popped into my mind. But I had a feeling I’d used that title before. I did a search of my site and lo and behold I wrote 2012 – The Year of Living Dangerously eight years ago. As I reread my predictions for 2012, it was a humbling experience, as not only did most of my predictions not come to fruition in 2012, they haven’t materialized during the next eight years. My facts and reasoning were sound, but my naivety regarding the extreme measures the Deep State was willing to utilize, blinded me to how long they could keep this game going. In my year-end assessment of my 2012 predictions this was my conclusion:
“It seems I always underestimate the ability of sociopathic central bankers and their willingness to destroy the lives of hundreds of millions to benefit their oligarch masters. I always underestimate the rampant corruption that permeates Washington DC and the executive suites in mega-corporations across the land. And I always overestimate the intelligence, civic mindedness, and ability to understand math of the ignorant masses that pass for citizens in this country. It seems that issuing trillions of new debt to pay off trillions of bad debt, government sanctioned accounting fraud, mainstream media propaganda, government data manipulation and a populace blinded by mass delusion can stave off the inevitable consequences of an unsustainable economic system.”
This statement has been applicable for an inexplicable length of time, with no indication of changing in the near future. I thought the national debt reaching $16.5 trillion would surely trigger a crisis and recession. Here we are eight years later, $7 trillion more in debt and still no recession. I thought global debt, particularly in Europe, would lead to a global contagion and breakup of the EU. Global debt has risen by $50 trillion, the EU is intact, and the world muddles on.
The coordinated efforts of central bankers in the U.S., Europe, Japan and China has produced a flood of liquidity, elevating all markets, enriching the .1%, impoverishing senior citizens, and creating inflation for average Americans – underreported by the BLS. By artificially propping up GDP, the economy has not officially gone into recession, which has supported the stock market going up 150% since 2011. Debt to GDP ratios and stock market valuations are meaningless when the Fed’s sole purpose is to enrich their Wall Street benefactors through money printing.
Home prices were still falling in 2011 and I expected it to continue in 2012. Again, I was unable to comprehend the lengths the ruling class would go to in order to reverse the verdict of free markets. Little did I know the Fed, Treasury, and Wall Street would conspire to buy up millions of foreclosed homes, renting them back to the people they kicked into the street, artificially suppress interest rates, and use Fannie and Freddie to again give mortgages to anyone who could fog a mirror. It worked like a charm, as home prices bottomed in 2012 and now have surpassed the 2005 peak.
The official unemployment rate in 2011 was 8.7% and I expected it to tick higher once the recession took hold. But, QE3 was unleashed, staving off recession, propelling the stock market, and driving “official” unemployment to record lows of 3.5% today, even though 101 million working age Americans aren’t working. The combination of QE to infinity and hundreds of billions in corporate stock buybacks have worked wonders for the .1%, despite lackluster GDP and corporate income growth.
Oil reached the highest level in history during 2012 and continued higher in 2013. This normally would have triggered a recession, but QE and zero interest rates kept it at bay. Then the “shale miracle” drove supply higher, oil prices crashed into the $30s, and have remained in the $60 range ever since. The shale miracle certainly created millions of new barrels per day, but the companies fracking for the oil haven’t made a dime in seven years. The “miracle” was created by the Fed’s easy money and Wall Street bankers financing companies with no possibility of ever being profitable. With prices still hovering around $60, frackers are going bankrupt in droves, output has peaked as new investment dollars dry up, and this boom goes bust, as all fraudulent schemes do when reality meets delusion.
As the presidential election approached, the Occupy Wall Street movement was at its height. Just like the Tea Party movement before it, the Occupy movement was co-opted and trivialized within months by the Deep State and their minions in government and the media. Bloomberg did his part and wiped out the Zuccotti Park encampment in one night. Ron Paul’s libertarian attempt to capture the Republican nomination was derailed by the GOP establishment and my dreams of a 3rd party run were dashed. The country’s last chance for redemption was lost.
My expectations of a war between Iran and Israel have still gone unfulfilled, with tensions continuing to grow. But at least the military industrial complex was able to profit from war in Syria, Yemen, and the never-ending war in Afghanistan. Trump’s taking out a key Iranian general with drone strikes have certainly increased the risk of something bigger in the Middle East, but will probably not result in a bigger shooting war.
Eight years of keeping the balls in the air, as their toxic “solutions” poison the system and ensure a cataclysmic demise to this debt-based Ponzi scheme, has convinced millions abnormality is actually normal. Living through my first and only Fourth Turning has proven to be more difficult than I realized. I expected it to proceed at a much faster pace than has materialized. Knowing the details of previous Fourth Turnings convinced me I could predict how this one would proceed.
But I failed to grasp the likely twenty-year length of this crisis and how actions and reactions will develop on their own timeline, not according to the annual forecast of prognosticators and pundits. The key factors driving this crisis: debt, civic decay, and global disorder, triggered this crisis in 2008, continue to gain momentum, and will ultimately merge into a lethal combination which will end the relatively short but eventful period of the American Empire.
My attempt at trying to predict what would happen in 2019, based on the Fourth Turning – 2019 From a Fourth Turning Perspective – turned out to be wrong once again. Not a shocker, since my timing has been off during the first eleven years of this Crisis. Nothing in my assessment has changed one year later. The three driving factors of this Fourth Turning continue to hasten towards a fateful climax. My assessment as we entered 2019 still applies as we enter 2020:
Debt, civic decay and global disorder are on center stage as we enter the fateful year of 2019. A madness seems to be gripping the nation, a melancholy realization all is not right. Everything has a chaotic feel, as financial markets are falling, politicians threaten and attack each other, government dysfunction is laid bare for all to see, Deep State snakes slither behind the scenes trying to bring down Trump, racial tensions grow, foreign governments topple, Russia and China challenge U.S. hegemony, and the global debt Ponzi scheme is entering its collapse phase.
The stock market was falling and signs of imminent recession were appearing as we entered 2019. My prediction that a Fed discount rate of 3% would trigger a recession, stock market collapse and a debt crisis looked solid, until the Treasury, Trump and Wall Street bankers pressured Powell to cease rate increases and corporate executives did their part by buying back their shares. Powell then folded like a cheap suit to Trump’s demands and lowered rates by .75% to goose the stock market over the summer.
When the repo market showed the true underlying distress in the financial system, Powell introduced QE4 and added $500 billion to the Fed balance sheet, with no sign of slowing down. This liquidity injection again boosted the wealth of the .1% to stratospheric levels as the stock market skyrockets to new records daily. There are clearly deep-seated structural issues with a financial system saturated with unpayable levels of debt. So, the Fed will continue to run their electronic printing presses at warp speed until the inevitable banquet of consequences is served to all.
The optimism among the financial class has reached all-time highs. As long as their sugar daddy Powell keeps the candy flowing, all is well on Wall Street. Meanwhile, most economic indicators continue to point downward and our national debt grows by $4 billion per day. Average Americans are up to their eyeballs in debt, as they need their credit cards to survive, student loan delinquencies soar, auto loan debt is going bad at a higher rate than the 2008 crisis, and home prices are now 15% above the previous bubble peak.
Rent and healthcare costs continue to grow at a much higher rate than reported by the government. It feels like something has to give. Reasonable, critical thinking, intelligent observers are flabbergasted by the outrageously blatant disregard for future generations being exhibited by the ruling class, as they pillage whatever is left of our national wealth. The children be damned.
The social distress I noted last year continues unabated today as the glorification of abnormality reaches new heights. The flames of division and disarray are fanned unceasingly by the left-wing media in order to distract from the true desperate financial situation of the country. As young generations, dumbed down and socially engineered in government run schools, are lured into believing socialism is the answer by corrupt lying politicians, they are willfully ignorant of what socialism has wrought in Venezuela and other 3rd world shitholes.
Rather than focus on how politicians of both parties, the Deep State and the Wall Street cabal have destroyed their financial futures through corrupt schemes and rigging the system for their benefit, they worship a thirteen year old regarding the climate change hoax. The puppeteers using Greta as their puppet seek control of your lives, more taxes, and the power to take away your liberties and freedom, while enriching themselves.
The political distress as we entered 2019 was already at looming civil war intensity. If possible, the decibel level has actually risen higher, to 11 on a 1 to 10 scale. The Mueller investigation turned into a big nothingburger as the ongoing Deep State coup against Trump relentlessly marches onward. The Democrats and their Surveillance State co-conspirators have determined the best way to cover-up their treasonous acts is to stay on the offensive by impeaching Trump on bogus charges. Their media mouthpieces produce prodigious levels of propaganda designed to convince the masses Trump should be removed from office. The majority of the public aren’t buying it, as the fake news media has lost its credibility after three years of lies and misinformation.
In Part II of this article I will examine some of the dynamics which will most impact the next year and remainder of this Fourth Turning.
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“blinded me to how long they could keep this game going … no indication of changing in the near future.”
pretty sure it’ll change after nov2020.
How so? Chip
whichever side wins the presidential election in nov2020, the other side won’t accept it. I think trump will lose (because of leftist hyper-voter-fraud) and they’ll try to push their entire agenda all at once (like what is happening in virginia now) and the right simply won’t stand for it. but if trump wins then the left will throw the mother of all hissy fits that will require a crack-down response, which will be opposed by the entire news/entertainment/social/fed/fbi/mossad monopoly/collusion, and it will all roll downhill from there. with either outcome I suspect small nukes, all centered on the basements of the various “holocaust memorials” located in numerous large cities, will play a role.
Iran will have more say in your election than Americans wise up.
Next election Donald the Great is going to drain the swamp……..again.
Sitting here with bated breath, can’t wait for the outcome. Until the Pelosi’s, Clinton’s or Obama’s are in jail it’s just another dog and pony show. Practice makes perfect, and we haven’t caught on yet……
God works in mysterious ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c09Ei7WTRkk
https://conspiracymusicguru.com/
“drain the swamp…again?” Still waiting for the first draining. He has spent 3 years stocking the swamp rather than draining it….or what little was drained was easily compensated for with the re-stocking…..Bolton, Gulianni, Pence….seriously?
This and then some^^^^^
“drain the swamp…again?”
No comprende sarcasm?
Trump has done nothing for the common man, and yet his fan base is screaming for more. What exactly I can’t figure out, but they love him. Sure, he pokes fun of the Dems but in reality, he hasn’t produced much except more television theatrics.
And I see I’ve angered a few of his fan base, they don’t like folks poking fun of their idol. If he was running a company with his manager choices he’d be broke now, oh wait he’s already done that, a few times.
Amen. The party has become as loyalist-scary as the left’s adherents have become- KoolAid of another flavor. Generally speaking…we’ve lost the ability to be discerning, and simply excuse away or turn a blind eye to all the glaring faults. This is the new super-religion: Idolatrous Politics, or Political Idolatry– take your pick. Us gun owners are not amused in the slightest…and the Repubs are responsible for at least half our liberty-killing laws, and most of the compromises. But I trust in God alone. Men no longer have the stomach for what is necessary…come Lord Jesus.
I don’t know who THIS TS is, but it’s not the L. E. Thissell TS. Why don’t you get a new moniker?
If you’re not rich it’s your own fault. The economy has never been so great.
JPMorgan Tops Q4 Earnings Estimate, Sees Robust U.S. Consumer in 2020
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said the U.S. consumer continues to be in a strong position heading into 2020 after his bank topped Street forecasts in a robust fourth quarter earnings report.
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/jpmorgan-tops-q4-earnings-sees-robust-u-s-consumer-in-2020
Too hip for the room, flash.
Crook
You’re pretty wrong, again. It won’t change because the masses like you are dead set for external change to deliver you. You will wait patiently to die with haughty ignorance. You are millions upon millions, and that is why this goes on. Mr. Quin underestimates your emotional attachment to your faith and its ramifications. Mr. Quin has not studied the length of the Roman decline, which includes the Byzantine Empire.
“Eight years of keeping the balls in the air”
well actually it’s been china’s ponzi keeping things going, yes?
Japan.They are living proof that the balls can be kept in the air almost indefinitely…
well the japanese work very hard, they save all their money, they still have all their medium and heavy industry, and they haven’t been infiltrated and pushed to import tens of millions of tribal hostiles. our situation isn’t like theirs.
Agreed, Japan is very hostile to immigration of any kind. They do not mind if you are there working at their request but you will not become a Japanese citizen in any way shape or form. You don’t work in Japan as a quest, you get deported.
“Japan is very hostile to immigration”
and I for one hope they continue in that attitude. whatever the future brings they’ll face it as japanese, not as some captive herd of cattle.
Just for clarity and posterity, it actually is possible, even for an American of Anglo background, to become a Japanese citizen. But it is damn hard. Among other things, you have to submit photographic/video documentation of yourself “interacting with Japanese people”.
Well the rabbis will fight tooth and nail to bring refugees TO JAPAN but not to ISREAL.
But they are a vassel.
Yes, but their balls have been seriously deflated for well over a decade. Not quite the side show it once was when they started. The consequences of their stagflation are rampant throughout their society as well.
Do you get the feeling that the four horseman of the apocalypse are saddled and the gate is opening? We are living in troubled times.
Millenarian sectarians are a big problem in America so are paranoid puritans.
I was sure the US financial system would collapse back in 2005, so I left. I’ve been waiting patiently ever since to feel the shock wave one morning as it actually comes to fruition. I’m still waiting.
Timing is always the issue. What’s not in doubt is the eventual calamity. The US empire is doomed by debt and mismanagement and will fail in my lifetime.
The ramifications will be felt world wide. All I did was get some distance between me and ground zero, but no where on the planet is far enough away to be spared.
I don’t care anymore. Whatever happens, happens and I can’t do anything to stop it. I’m like the character in Dr, Strangelove, I’ve learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Or, I’m like Winston, who, through gin soak tears realized he loved Big Brother.
“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
Meet you all at The Chestnut Tree Cafe for cocktails.
“Timing is always the issue.”
what do you say to “to be early is to be wrong”?
I say to be early is to be ahead of the crowd.
I’m settled in. I have businesses to run that provide me with an income and keep my brain active as opposed to becoming a couch potato.
I expect refugees from the US to head out AFTER the shit hits the fan. They’ll be trying to get established when loads of people all have the same idea.
That’s assuming US citizens can leave the US after TSHF.
by the time they’re trying to leave they won’t have the fuel or other resources to do so.
What do you think the wall is for? Keep the Mexicans out or us from trying to flee?
Watch how fast that wall goes up when people start immigration outwards……just watch. Berlin Wall will be a joke in comparison and unlike our porous unarmed borders today you bet your ass ours will have gators and antifa waiting on us to try and cross to the outside.
I’ve been listening to guys like you prattle on about how brilliant you are for a long time. Here’s the thing…the people who are really brilliant don’t have to explain it to others. Your Black Swan is out there. It’ll find you as sure as mine will find me. The difference is that I know it.
We have bases everywhere. We will rain bombs everywhere. You only think you got away.
I will render a forecast. When Debt vs GPD reaches 130%, when interest rates begin to rise, when bank failures increase, when the dollar declines and the Fed increases more paper, and lastly , as these event multiply gold will rise and the USA empire will shrink to a mere shadow of its former self. When……? 2025.
why 2025?
By 2025, every penny of new Federal spending will go to paying interest on the national debt. By 2035, EVERY Penny of Federal spending will go towards paying interest on the national debt. We will be wiping our asses on $100 Trillion bills.
yeah. but other disruptive situations will come to a head sooner, so we’re not likely to get to that one.
No probalemo I will Always have my social security check…..um sir you dont get a ss check but they will get their welfare checks. Betcha.
Why not?
When the USD loses its place as the reserve currency of the world, we will be toast. As long as we can sustain our support for Saudi Arabia, it will remain as the reserve currency.
As I see it, it is a race between the US and China to see which financial market collapses first.
Agree with your timing, it will be after Trump leaves office 1/20/25
I realize you’re playing the cards you were dealt and I’m not arguing against your predictions as they seem reasonable to me, but I think it’s worth noting that the real debt to real GDP ratio already far exceeds 130%.
It’s almost impossible to say what will turn allow fear to trump greed, but it will look obvious in hindsight. Anyone who says they know is not a serious person.
You have to give it to them. How the political, financial and media psychopaths keep it going bewilders me.
How the political, financial and media psychopaths keep it going bewilders me.
Your first sentence explains it all. We have to give it to them, all of it, everything,or else.
It’s different this time. ?
In a world where corruption is your #1 problem the house always wins. Always.
That is, until the peasants burn the damn place DOWN!!!
Just protect the rail bridge at Rock Island and keep Cuffy Meigs away from the Doomsday Device.
I’m sure most of here share your frustrations, both with how our society is dying and with the immoral means the oligarchs in charge are using to keep it going. I fear you’ll be writing the same missive next year at this time. Every time the charade is about to crash, they simply open the spigots and print trillions of dollars. I’ve said before here that I’ve come full circle; whereas I used to be convinced the end was imminent at every moment, now I’ll be as shocked as the typical sleeping sheeple when it does come. I’ve cried wolf so often I don’t believe it myself any more. Of course, it all has to come crashing down–that’s just math–but they’ll print hundreds of trillions if they have to to keep the farce going, especially during an election year. So I expect the status quo to continue until we’re using trillion-dollar bills as toilet paper.
Quite so, first rising inflation birthing hyper inflation, and then a plunging deflationary collapse..And 2 decades of misery to follow…We will all be recycled before the goodtimes roll around again..Hav a nice day!
Something akin to that has already happened after WWI in Germany and I believe it is happening right now in one or more countries in Africa and very close to that in Venezuela.
Im sorry but if i were in Venezuela I would have already lost my shit and flew over the nest. I am not gonna live like that, nor watch my loved ones die. People will have to pay under my rules. Many..Bad..People. I will not stand by idled like a sheep in fear while they live it up and gangs, gangbang. I am wrath and they would feel my pain. I would have surmised it might not end well and might end soon but I would have dished out a shitpile of pain upon the treasonous before I left. I would make sure of that.
Sure you will.
He’s got a keyboard. He’s already doing more than, well, nobody.
Top form, and full of welcome reminders detailing dirty deeds done dirt cheap.
I’m not sure why Admin would say we don’t have socialism. We do. For the oligarchs and corporations. As long as we have a currency back by the petro-dollar and military force, they could easily give people medicare-for-all. When money is not backed by anything and there is no limit to debt, they chose 800 military bases and 14 floating targets instead. The misconceptions of medicare for all are many. I think they boil down to two points;
Who do you trust for healthcare the government, or a for profit corporations who stated goal is to make as much money as possible no matter what.
The cost of Medicare for all vs the cost of people paying for profit insurance companies. About the same.
The 3rd and best option is to have neither and let true free market forces act on the health industry, lol, but that WILL NEVER HAPPEN because they won’t let it. It may serve the people the best, but not TPTB.
I have had my share of Trumptards actually say they have no problem paying 40% of their income in taxes, while having no issues with multi-nationals pay no tax. As long as corporations exist to serve shareholders and not the general population the problem will never be fixed without extreme violence.
Frankly, what America has now is worse than socialism.
Excellent points. I couldn’t agree more. This country has been increasingly collectivised for the past hundred years. It’s in the form of fascism-the lethal mix of corporations and government, both of which are unaccountable to anyone but each other. As Anon says above it’s worse than socialism. It’s tim cook and lindsey graham evil. The thought that some soulless carnival barker like trump was going to stem the tide of evil was always laughable.
Corp socialism is allowing our govt to bring in visa workers in tech. Lay off all the 50 yr old american and make them train their indian visa workers for their job at 1/3 the pay. That is is socialism for the wealthy corps. You have farmers doing the same with temp workers and refugees by governors. These people are doing this all for like $5,000 campaign contributions. Sad
Laura Ingraham grilled trump’s ass in an recent interview on H1B visa’s and training foreign workers. Trump just bullshitted his way past it-his usual.
So if I understand this correctly, the fed is rebuying bonds, that it originally bought with credit (debt), again on credit (debt)? Isn’t that like me buying a car on a credit card and paying that credit card off with a different credit card? Wow!!
the Fed creates the digital credit money by typing in digits and transmitting them to the Treasury in exchange for Treasury debt with interest added. using the TBTF banks as intermediaries. it also uses this “money for nothing” to purchase outstanding Treasury bonds and other market debt. the latter is QE.
last night over on the pension article i posted the fed’s preliminary #s 4 2019 if you care to see them–
The fed has been monetizing our debt for quite a while.
Damon Vrabel “Debunking Money ” series explains it best:
We, in the U.S. live in a Communist-fascist hybrid, Fabian(creeping) Socialism where Big Business oligarchs socialize their losses and privatize their gains (neoliberal economics is used to deregulate industries and privatize valuable markets and industries previously owned by the people of thst country).
Immigration and work visas are used to reduce labor and health care costs for aging indigenous workers….some more global communism. Destruction of purchasing power and the continued raising of “minimum wages” to the service industry (largest industry left in the U.S.) are large leaps to the leveling of the global marketplace and tighter control of everything by our NeoFeudal billionaire overlords.
Standard of living in the West must be thrust downward and the poker chips funneled to the East and Africa.
STARVE THE BASTARDS
Peter Schiff pointed out in a recent podcast that another reason that the Everything Bubble hasn’t popped yet is that most people aren’t smart enough to see it coming. Most investors are oblivious to how bad things are going to get, so they keep on investing with the expectation that they will keep making money. If they realized how bad the fundamentals really are they would have abandoned the markets already, and the crash would already be upon us. But sooner or later the Everything Bubble is going to collapse in spite of their ignorance.
What’s to keep the Fed from simply buying what investors stop buying?
absolutely nothing. in fact that’s the plan – for the fed’s owners to have all the money and for us to have all the debt.
Donkey,
The Plunge Protection Team has long been ‘buying what investors stop buying’ for a long time.
https://www.sgtreport.com/2019/09/meet-the-plunge-protection-team/
And to piearesquared’s correct comment…one word:
CONFIDENCE!
When the last snowflake lands trigging the unstoppable LOST CONFIDENCE AVALANCHE the Plunge Protection Team will be buried alive under a mountain of worthless fiat SHTF stained toilet paper.
(Hold onto that bright shiny stuff)
“When the last snowflake lands trigging the unstoppable LOST CONFIDENCE AVALANCHE the Plunge Protection Team will be buried alive under a mountain of worthless fiat”
actually, WE will be buried. the ppt and all it’s tribal relatives will be standing far away, laughing.
gman, not me buddy…I am 5 months out of being 98% out of the banking system (just leaving enough with Mr. Potter to pay bills) with a significant amount of hard assets, no debt, living on a two house self-sufficient farm…armed to the frigg’in teeth.
If I can make it the PPP can shove their worthless fiat up theirs, and their tribal relative’s asses.
I can control one man, and one woman and our lives.
Fundamentals? What fundamentals?
/s/
don’t blame yourself for getting the economic/market picture wrong. the lowest interest rates in five millennia could never be foreseen, and are an invisible black swan swimming in our midst.
And WE THE PEOPLE are skinny dipping…to the soundtrack of JAWS!
I didn’t know Banksters had so many teeth…
Jaws was and is my favorite movie of all time….when I say that I get strange looks but think about it….it scared the crap out of me, the acting was great and the venal mayor refusing to close the beaches was a great moral tale. Plus, at the time I had the hots for Robert Shaw…go figure. Oh, remember the girl eaten by the shark during that moonlight swim….this is her today…..
I thought it was Bruce Jenner.
Not sure which is worse.
Not him too!
Looks like a dude..
Man, that shark sure fucked her up.
at least she lived
I would spit that shit back out too!
Mygirl,
Right after Jaws came out I flashed back to a week I spent at a friend’s grandparent’s beach house and taking midnight swims by myself.
Have never done that since I saw the movie.
Years later I made a retail training video, with a team of talented people, but I wrote the storyboard. It was for retail plainclothes Security Offices tasked with apprehending shoplifters. One scene had the camera following a professional booster/shoplifter slickly stealing all shot from the eyes of the plainclothes Security Officer following him, blending in as a customer…as he and his partner was moving in to detain the thief I had the theme music from Jaws playing/building, and the apprehension (filmed it as it often was with a bit of a forceful physical confrontation) reaching a crescendo as the music made a crescendo as they made the bust.
It was widely popular becayse of that scene.
Then I had t-shirts made for the guys & gals, with the old Saturday Night LAND SHARKS on the chest with a picture of a vicious shark with legs under it.
Huge team builder, they ate it up with a spoon.
any chance of that video being on-line somewhere?
gman…naw , it was made into a company training VHS tape, 1986. I wrote the story board and directed/acted in a few others as well. The national retail company I was in had a quarterly contest on in house made training videos for a few years. Every district made one, 70 some districts, then the top 4, one from each reagion, competed at HQ. I won the company competition twice. They helped get me a couple promotions, and I enjoyed making them.
I did another one as a consultant for Cracker Barrel that went to every one of their stores nationally to train the staff on the ‘Dining and Dashers’ and ‘Shoplifting Deterrence Tactics’ much later about 2003. That is two huge problems for them.
I was a young Recon Marine swimming the beach in N.C. when that movie came out, scared the shit out of me. We used to helocast from choppers a mile offshore and swim in, got bumped by something while still 1/3 mile off the beach, closest I ever came to having a heart attack. Spent yrs scuba diving but floating around on the surface like bait is unnerving, even to this day.
Many moons ago this young lass was in the crystal clear waters off the Florida panhandle. I was and am an excellent swimmer and had swum out past the breakers and was playing Mermaid, swimming underwater and sculling in 360 circles. In one of my circles I caught a flash of silver and stopped moving a few feet from a very large and motionless barracuda who was checking me out.
I very slowly began swimming backwards towards shore, coming up for brief sips of air and back down again, never letting that fish out of my sight. I made it to the beach and that was the last time the Little Mermaid made her appearance in those waters.
“This will be the ruin of the nation,” said Mr. Sinclair. “Young man,” said the Dean, Adam Smith, “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”.
Great post Jim.
To improve your prognosticating, I suggest you expand your concept of what the breakdown of systems will mean. If you accept that billions of deaths and cities in ruins await us, then you can understand that there is nothing that will not be sacrificed to forestall collapse.
You should also accept that the vast majority of human beings are completely dependent on the system continuing to function – whether they know it or not. Either Leviathan rules or they die, therefore they will surrender all to Leviathan.
This is just beginning.
“Either Leviathan rules or they die, therefore they will surrender all to Leviathan.”
sure. but leviathan is a consumer, not a producer – it can’t give the majority anything unless it takes from them first. so when a critical mass “surrender to leviathan”, it will all break down very quickly.
“…fake news media has lost its credibility after three years of lies and misinformation.”
ONLY three? Chip
I think we all under/over estimated this scenario. The level of corruption up high and the level of stupid in the masses don’t surprise me in the least, I’ve been preaching against it for decades, but my greatest surprise is it hasn’t burned down yet.
And for those of you that think Trump will change anything in 2020, won’t you be surprised. These folks are masters at dragging out wars and stealing public money, Pelosi won’t be charged, nor will the Clinton’s, Obama’s or any of their partners in crime. The sole purpose of our gov’t/media today is to steal and obfuscate for an indefinite amount of time, just like they told us the war on terror would run on into the lifetimes of our grandchildren. They told us up front and no one listened.
The wealthy aren’t going to stop making money just because a few of the slaves are upset.
“And for those of you that think Trump will change anything in 2020”
we hoped he might. whatever else he’s done and not done, he HAS delayed what is coming. make good use of the time.
“he HAS delayed what is coming”
So instead of dealing with it today when I’m 65 and still fit enough to fight for myself, I can deal with it when I’m 83 and they pull the plug on my respirator and i can slowly choke to death?
Your attitude is what I see wrong with the masses, always running from a confrontation instead of charging into it. People will willingly walk into slavery rather than deal with any form of confrontation, I’d rather kick this pig today than wait another 10 or 20 yrs. And I think I can speak for many here, we’re sick and tired of waiting for the collapse.
I agree
I’m also 65 and my high school weight and I’m with you bro
I’m 70, 12 lbs over my miltary discharge weight. I just need 6 months, building a house…then bang the frigg’in gong!
mark
Great stuff, Admin, thank you and so honest to review all those years ago. I started writing my book in 2013 when the Cyprus bank robbery took place and there were no cops in sight. The EU, IMF and ECB robbed the people blind and it just passed into oblivion and ‘Bail-in’ was created. But not one in 100,000 knows this, yet it is all over the internet.
All, except the wise and wonderful here at TBP, are living a dream in a virtual world created by the masters of illusion – yes I do believe in magic – I have witnessed it with my own eyes, close up and have no idea how they do that! So I am not surprised the Wizard of Oz is maintaining his illusion so far but I am sure Dorothy will turn up eventually and remove the magic curtain – just be patient.
I believe Toto pulled the curtain back. It wasn’t Dorothy. I find this fact significant, Dorothy was a niave young girl, it was her trusted best friend, a dog, no less who showed them the Fraud of Oz
Ah, yes Plato, thank you, my aging memory failed me and the subtlety is clear, dogs obviously know better than young girls; I have upgraded my brain cell accordingly.
If I have learned one lesson about human behavior over the course of my lifetime it’s this: Never underestimate the power of a steadfast belief in a lie.
People will cling to their beliefs to where you can’t remove them with dynamite. They will die before they change, and unfortunately, way too many of the masses are like this.
Showing them the truth only gets you ire in return, let them die in ignorant bliss. The bad side to this is they drag us down with them.
Changing someones belief system normally involves making them room temperature, if history were a teacher.
I would think you would see serious inflation before a major collapse after they move to printing to keep the grift going a bit longer.
David I agree but it is such an overwhelming issue(s) makes me wonder since dollars globally are in short supply and in massive demand we may not actually see inflation before a pop.
Deflation if you look atVelocity of money People are hoarding cash evidently especially the wealthy They see what’s coming
As Kurt Russel exclaimed in Soldier “I’m going to kill them all sir”
The last time a world leader had such unchecked power he exterminated millions of people . Now we find this power spread throughout a systematic control engineered by elitist animals who exterminate by indentured servitude to the masses till they drop and their just doing my job minions keep the unwashed in line living well as average Americans lives spiral down a rat hole .
To paraphrase JFK those that make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable !
FORGET ME NOT
Just to clarify for the group: What world leader was that?
Best crisis ever so far. The last 10-12 years has given me the last bit of time I needed to do everything I can to prepare for the inevitable. At this point, it’s just fun and games until things beyond my control turn ugly.
jim,
don’t feel bad about your timing being off–
when i was a teenager in the mid 70s i used to go work in the summer on my granddad’s oklahoma ranch–
he wasn’t a prepper by today’s standards but he always kept a trace & plow around along w/a few horses who could be put to use plowing,along w/many bags of seed–
he couldn’t believe that we were in so much debt & look where we are now 40+ years later–
It’s been what? Ten years since I discovered Mike Ruppert…..and about the same time I started reading your blog, Jim? I think that’s about right.
I’m glad you’re still writing. My work is mostly done. All my kids have masters degrees now , and my Doomstead is lying fallow. I sold my livestock last year and I haven’t even planted a winter garden, which is the best one you can plant here in the Hill Country. I’m tired of prepping, although I still do it. But not like I once did.
I see what’s happened to most of the ex-pats I use to keep up with.. Frankly, I’m glad I stayed here, kept my day job, and bought more real estate. I’m probably a million bucks richer, not that it means shit anymore in these times. Small change.
Whatever is coming, I say let it come. We certainly are living toward the end of an era, and I expect some fairly radical changes to happen, and not the ones I’d like to see. Human society continues to disappoint me, but human individuals still often impress me a lot. That gives me some satisfaction.
The deck has always been stacked against the little guy and in favor of the bond kings and the political class. It just gets more that way, from what I see. Will it all come crashing down? No doubt, at some point. But betting on soon is still a risky proposition.
Happy New year.
My best to you and your family
Eddie
Eddie said,
I like that mindset! Nice way of putting It! I might have to borrow that one.
Another great article. I also thought this corrupt mess would collapse much sooner. Economic collapse is inevitable, but the world’s reserve currency is a powerful weapon that can forestall the inevitable collapse, and that delay is further extended by the fact that most of the other fiat currencies are worse. Take solace in the fact that it’s better to be early in predicting a calamity than it is to be late in your predictions. Most people will never see it coming and will only realize it’s here when they’re neck deep in it.
2nd paragraph: “than loss their” –> “than lose their”
5th paragraph: “particularly in in Europe: –> “particularly in Europe”
The orchestrated “Race to the Bottom ” will accelerate until an inflection point, a trigger of some sort, then the other currencies in the basket of SDRs will be much closer in value to the dollar.
Trump will surely win.
The left will meltdown.
The Swamp will get water
Iran won’t have The Bomb.
The Fed will still ease
Comey won’t be in jail
Fake News will deceive
Hillary will be free
As for financial doom
being nearly upon us.
It’s my opinion
You beat yerself up
way, way, too much.
Another year will be gone
The werld a bit moar dumb
Because Maff is hard
on this rock we’re on..
But most importantly of all..
Jeffrey Epstein still wouldn’t have killed himself.
The dream was real…for a little while.
“I got violently assaulted and nearly beaten to death,” she says, speaking in Dec. while still recovering emotionally and physically from the incident outside the recording studio. “They broke my jaw and severe blunt force trauma just really fucked me up. Aimee Allen ( Ron Paul Revolution)
https://archive.org/details/ronPaulRevolutionMtvsAimeeAllenUncensoredVideo
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy
im just thinking its privately owned central banks doing whatever they want to consolidate their version of the future . of course im just a cook . also I stand by my statement that trump is controlled opposition , if your an old timer you remember when I said this .hope everyone is well, we are entering some interesting times as per the Chinese curse lol ,I dare anyone to look at the world wide privately owned central banks and dispute it. engineered chaos is the agenda . later all ,just a cook with his 2 coppers lol
“A madness seems to be gripping the nation, a melancholy realization all is not right. Everything has a chaotic feel”
It has been my life’s experience when you feel someone or some system is totally corrupted but so engrained it will never change, the smallest of things ends up crashing it all down. Like a well run bank robbery, and one participant goes out for coffee and uses a wrong bank note.
I feel this is where we are. Everyone is deeply concerned of civil war, up is down, grift and graft, and yet in the same breath they are discussing dinner plans. Almost as if prepping has become mainstream in a way. All those new to prepping know how they felt they were late and in a rush and today it is just a way of life and a lifestyle. This is what has gripped our nation thanks to the deep state and dems. Last year the market was up over 20% but the dems fear tactics kept many here broke and made no money. (Not that I am a believer in our mkts by much).
I do feel eventually things will collapse on a very fast scale, due to something small and unexpected vs something major unless it is a false flag narrative to provide cover for the bastards. Certainly this will continue to run much longer than expected probably until 2030. A dem will need to restart and rebuild their efforts since trump may have set them back 2-4 years.
Is it worse than even that Bix Weir was on about in that video the other day..
Young Spanky Bernanke.
Rascals!
OMG… I’ve been doing so much research (can you really intellectually call trash reading “research?” Well, in today’s academic environment, you can get a doctorate in just about anything, including Human Sexuality.
I’ve been doing some reading of literature (egad, can I call it literature?) to determine when pulp fiction got so raunchy. So, your comment brought a whole different image of Spanky Bernanke than you probably had in mind.
All this bedroom smut turns that Hand of Bernanke’s into more than just the Invisible Hand old Adam Smith was talking about. I don’t think that was what you intended weird symbol L.
Try to think of Spanky Bernanke now.
Hey! You dissed berspankme story!
Just because Minnesota and Iowa are west of the east coast does not make them mid west for fuck sake.
Again,all I can say is BLOAAFT!
Buy Lots Of Ammo And Firearms Today!
Only 8 more years, baby! Who would have thought it?
We are so following the path of the fall of Rome (Western), 400 AD. Sadly, many will likely perish in the fall.
We will have a civil war. Maybe “hot”, maybe “cold”. Much will change. But a vastly smaller govt will exist following full debt default. New gold backed dollar. We can grow enough food to feed ourselves and deliver enough domestic energy to power ourselves, even if our dollar is not accepted by foreigners. Domestic programs will not exist.
But we will not even resemble ourselves from 2020. We will return to the isolationist policies of our founding with sufficient ICBMs to assure our independence.
As long as we don’t become socialist, a la Europe, or the former USSR.
Just my opinion as a student of history and economics….
Isn’t your 409(k) up this quarter? I heard all our 409(k)s were at record highs or some such. I’m thinking about upgrading my 409(k) to a 410(k). That’s one higher. Full employment, greatest economy ever, yadda yadda…
I feel your frustration. We all want to try to predict what’s going to happen. It has to be some part of our planning nature as providers. I dunno the answer either. Maybe the best we can do is avoid their debt schemes as much as possible and switch to real estate (overpriced or otherwise) and hard assets.
Waking up tomorrow to total chaos would not surprise me. The date of 9-10-2001 was mild compared to the warning signs we are seeing about an ‘event’ that could happen as soon as tomorrow.
It’s every family and person for themselves at this point.
Here will go again, focusing on symptoms and low-level treasonous agents of destruction while ignoring the elephant in the kitchen. The noise is deafening but it seems even Jim Quinn cannot hear the sound of crashing china and fine crystal. At least Solzhenitsyn figured it out for Bolshevik Russia but it also applies to the neo-Bolshevik USA and the entire European world. Only the truth…the total truth…will set us free but it must be sought and spoken freely. Currently, we live in a satanic world of lies, deceit and deception…fake news, fake history, fake culture, fake money…fake just about everything.
“You must understand. The leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. The October Revolution was not what you call in America the “Russian Revolution.” It was an invasion and conquest over the Russian people. More of my countrymen suffered horrific crimes at their bloodstained hands than any people or nation ever suffered in the entirety of human history. It cannot be understated. Bolshevism was the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant of this reality is proof that the global media itself is in the hands of the perpetrators.”
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Nobel-Prize-winning novelist, historian and critic of Communist totalitarianism
“To destroy a people you must first sever their roots.” —Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Yes, the elephant in the living room, the one who programs your TV and your media, who spouts his lies and claims to be your friend, who for centuries has played the victim while dragging his host society down, the enemy who shall not be named, for it is now a crime to name the criminal.
Increasingly true in the US with Trump’s recent executive order on anti-Semitism which is bit ridiculous considering Ashkenazi/Khazarian (non-) Jews are not Semitic. Maybe it refers to attacks by Khazarians on Semitic Palestinans? What a crazy world we live in built on lies as far as the eye can see. Of course in many European countries, you would be throwing into jail.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-anti-semitism/
Both a great quote and graphic.
Yesterday, I helped clear some brush by what we refer to as our “treehouse” and realized it had been ten years since I first walked the property and declared it my own.
That was 2010. I started reading the blogs around the time Alex Jones was first telling the world about the Bilderbergers and the Skull and Bones people and Glen Beck was telling us all about the Powerful People connected in mysterious organizational charts chalked onto blackboards.
I followed one of your Thirty Blocks of Squalor links from Lew Rockwell or American Thinker or who knows now because once I discovered your unique blog, I bookmarked it and stopped by from time to time JUST to see if there was a good shitfest ongoing. Around the time AWD passed, I stopped lurking and started talking.
And, pretty much haven’t shut up since except when I was sick and let’s just let that go… Build a Bridge and Get Over It or Stand in the Shit.
Your 2012 post was one of the first I read here, shortly after my father-in-law had passed and left us with enough extra cash to pay off the log home a full 6 months early AND pay for the barn to be built to store the logs and finishing wood.
I showed the map to my husband this morning and he said ‘which one are we claiming’ and I reminded him I moved him into Missouri Territory and the other viewpoints don’t really matter.
I will post this as a link so as to not overclutter, but if people think it is funny, I hope they will consider reading here and supporting the blog however they can.
https://postimg.cc/MMV8XdX4
if you visit the link, I will explain that the Brown Farm is just a couple of quarter sections over from the Indiana Spur, which is just south of Hog Heaven.
That’s “farm country.” Is why I’m a hillbilly now.
Am looking forward to Part II on my next break from my own whittling post.
pretending to not be me so i dont have to read it all
See that’s the thing with yanks while you keep calling other countries shitholes because you introduced neoliberalism to them you’ll never figure it out.
Good luck ol chap you’re going to need it.
Accelerating climate change will make most future economic predictions a moot point. In 2019 there were 14 climate-weather related disasters in the USA that cost over a billion dollars apiece. 2019 is the fifth consecutive year (2015-2019) in which 10 or more billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events have impacted the United States.
Such excellent writing. Amazing to see a journalist admit they were wrong. Refreshing. However, he wasn’t that wrong, just the timing of evil people is hard to track.
As always, great analysis. I’ll be heading to Part 2 as soon as I comment.
What this all means to me is to be as ready as possible for anything, whether man-made or natural. Then I enjoy each day. It might be my last day, for whatever reason, or I might have 30 or 40 more years. NO ONE KNOWS. Except God.
Ok what map is that and how do I make it happen?
“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)
Canadian economist
If Trumpet gets dumped for the good reasons he’s broken EVERY election promise another A$$hole will be Elected. ALL USA presidents since Kennedy have been awful War Mongers except Jimmy Carter who was forced out because he was least inclined to want War. The rest all war Mongers. Only a revolution will fix the problem.
The other problem seldom spoken is that a LARGE % of Americans have been lobotomised to CHEER for the USA Wars & Invasions & Killings thinking they’re being Patriotic. What imbeciles – what hope for USA — NONE !
One power is the absolute power, for it can buy or subdue any other challenging one, anywhere on earth. The “deep state” is the emanation of that unnameable world power, that visited England in 1694 and, later, the US in 1913. As long as it is being called “deep state”, “oligarchy” etc…, it has nothing to worry about.