2008 Crisis – The Burning Platform

FOURTH TURNING WINTER OF DEATH

“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.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

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It was less than a year ago on December 16, 2021 when our dementia patient in chief was instructed by his handlers to lie, obfuscate and demonize critical thinking Americans who refused to become victims of the Big Pharma, Fauci promoted, untested, unsafe, ineffective gene therapy by declaring “we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated — for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm”. Biden’s vaccine mandates were overturned in the courts. The unvaccinated did not die from Covid. Very few people died from Covid. Some really old and infirm people on death’s doorstep died with Covid. Some very unhealthy obese people died with Covid. But even 95% of the old and unhealthy survived Covid.

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FOURTH TURNING 2022 – BAD MOON RISING (PART FOUR)

In Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this article I examined the power of propaganda and the use of fear to invoke a mass formation psychosis on millions of weak-minded victims of global elitist psychopaths weaponizing a flu as part of their plot to Reset the world as lords of a global fiefdom, with the lowly peasants owning nothing and being happy to be permitted to live. The trillions in debt created by central bankers and debased political hacks, play acting as wise all-knowing leaders, are also part of the plan to crash the global economy and further the aims of these globalist billionaires and their parasitic front men.

The third segment of this unholy trinity has been the engineered civic decay spawned by the traitorous deeds of politicians, who have encouraged the invasion of over two million illegal freeloaders, aided domestic terrorists (BLM & Antifa) in burning and looting our cities for a year, facilitated the teaching of degeneracy to our children, and have pitted family against family, friend against friend, employer against employee, over a Big Pharma experimental therapy that doesn’t do anything but enrich those peddling it, injuring and killing millions, and tearing the last vestiges of our civil society to shreds.

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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

“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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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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THE UNBEARABLE SLOWNESS OF FOURTH TURNINGS (PART TWO)

In Part 1 of this article I provided the background regarding the phases of Fourth Turnings and where we stand nine years into this period of crisis. I will now ponder what could happen during the remainder of this Fourth Turning.

“History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong – the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Losing in the next Fourth Turning could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence – perhaps even our nation – might never recover.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

The most important point to comprehend is the death of the existing social order always occurs during the course of a Fourth Turning. Thus far, those constituting the Deep State hierarchy have fended off their demise. They are utilizing every tool at their disposal to retain their wealth, power and control. As their mass media propaganda machine falters, they have redoubled their rigging of financial markets to promote a narrative of economic recovery, while further enriching themselves and their cronies.

It is clear they have reached the peak of financial manipulation, money printing, and artificial interest rate suppression. The narrative is faltering. Their last and final option to retain power is war. As their “everything bubble” (stocks, bonds, real estate) inevitably implodes, civil and/or global military conflict will be utilized to distract the populace from their Deep State domestic disasters.

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THE UNBEARABLE SLOWNESS OF FOURTH TURNINGS

“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

This Fourth Turning was ignited suddenly in September 2008 as the housing bubble, created by the Federal Reserve and their criminal puppeteer owners on Wall Street, collapsed, revealing the greatest control fraud in world history. A crisis mood was catalyzed as the stock market dropped 50%, unemployment surged to highs not seen since 1981, foreclosures exploded, and captured politicians bailed out the criminal bankers with the tax dollars of the victims.

The mood of the country darkened immediately as average Americans flooded their congressmen’s websites and phone lines with a demand not to bailout the felonious Wall Street banks with $700 billion of TARP. But they ignored their supposed constituents and revealed who they are truly beholden to.

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BULL IN A CHINA SHOP

“So the modern world may be increasing in technological knowledge, but, paradoxically, it is making things a lot more unpredictable.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“Success brings an asymmetry: you now have a lot more to lose than to gain. You are hence fragile.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

I had read Nassim Taleb’s other best-selling tomes about risk, randomness and black swans – Fooled by Randomness & The Black Swan. They were not easy reads, but they were must reads. He is clearly a brilliant thinker, but I like him more because he is a prickly skeptic who scorns and ridicules academics, politicians, and Wall Street scumbags with gusto. There were many passages which baffled me, but so many nuggets of wisdom throughout each book, you couldn’t put them down.

When his Antifragile book was published in 2012, the name intimidated me. I figured it was too intellectual for my tastes. When I saw it on the shelf in my favorite used book store at the beach, I figured it was worth a read for $9. I’m plowing through it and I haven’t been disappointed.

His main themes are more pertinent today than they were in 2012. He published The Black Swan in 2007, just prior to one of the biggest black swans in world history – the 2008 Federal Reserve/Wall Street created financial collapse. His disdain for “experts” like Bernanke, Paulson, and Wall Street CEOs, and their inability to comprehend the consequences of their actions and in-actions as the financial system was blown sky high, was a bulls-eye.

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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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WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” – H.L. Mencken

“The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do.”– Andrew Carnegie

I’m 53 years old. The older I get the less sure I am about things I was sure about when I was 25 years old. I believed stocks for the long run was an unquestioned truth. I believed our economy was based on free market capitalism. I believed stock prices were based upon profits and cash flows. I believed a home was a place to live – not an investment. I believed the Catholic Church was run by good men doing good things. I believed journalists and the media were watchdogs working on behalf of the public. I believed our military was protecting our interests. I believed politicians legislated on behalf of the people. I believed the main purpose of bankers was to loan money to businesses and consumers in order to support economic growth. Boy, was I dumbass.

My skeptical nature, reliance on data I’ve personally vetted, and judging our leaders based on what they have done versus what they say, has allowed me to escape the Matrix. I wasn’t truly awakened until I watched Bush, Cheney, Powell, the rest of the neo-con prevaricators and fake news mainstream media utilize propaganda to railroad Americans into a $6 trillion unnecessary war, resulting in 36,000 American casualties, the destruction of a country and the creation of thousands of new Muslim terrorists.

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COMMON SENSE – 2017 (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I explored Thomas Paine’s critical role in the creation of our nation. His Common Sense pamphlets inspired the common people to uncommon acts of courage and heroic feats of valor; leading to the great experiment we call the United States of America. Paine, Franklin and the other Founding Fathers produced a republic, if we could keep it.

John Adams championed the new Constitution precisely because it would not create a democracy, as he knew a democracy “soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.” Their herculean efforts, sacrifices, and bloodshed have been for naught as we allowed our republic to devolve into a democracy and ultimately into our current corporate fascist warfare/welfare surveillance state. Sadly, we were unable to keep the republic Franklin and his fellow revolutionaries gave us.

“From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom.” – Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Some might contend Paine’s Common Sense arguments against a despotic monarchy two and a half centuries ago, with an audience of two and a half million colonists, couldn’t be pertinent today in a divided nation of 325 million people. But when you examine the events, actions and catalysts inspiring Paine to pen Common Sense, you see the parallels with the events, decisions and facilitators of our current Crisis.

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COMMON SENSE – 2017

“Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.” – John Adams

Thomas Paine was born in 1737 in Britain. His first thirty seven years of life were pretty much a series of failures and disappointments. Business fiascos, firings, the death of his first wife and child, a failed second marriage, and bankruptcy plagued his early life. He then met Benjamin Franklin in 1774 and was convinced to emigrate to America, arriving in Philadelphia in November 1774. He thus became the Father of the American Revolution with the publication of Common Sense, pamphlets which crystallized opinion for colonial independence in 1776.

The first pamphlet was published in Philadelphia on January 10, 1776, and signed anonymously “by an Englishman.” It became an instantaneous sensation, swiftly disseminating 100,000 copies in three months among the two and a half million residents of the 13 colonies. Over 500,000 copies were sold during the course of the American Revolution. Paine published Common Sense after the battle of Lexington and Concord, making the argument the colonists should seek complete independence from Great Britain, rather than merely fighting against unfair levels of taxation. The pamphlets stirred the masses with a fighting spirit, instilling in them the backbone to resist a powerful empire.

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A BIASED 2017 FORECAST (PART ONE)

“The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.” – Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to see a live one hour interview with Michael Lewis at the Annenberg Center about his new book The Undoing Project. Everyone attending the lecture received a complimentary copy of the book. Being a huge fan of Lewis after reading Liar’s Poker, Boomerang, The Big Short, Flash Boys, and Moneyball, I was interested to hear about his new project. This was a completely new direction from his financial crisis books. I wasn’t sure whether it would keep my interest, but the story of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and their research into the psychology of judgement and decision making, creating a cognitive basis for common human errors that arise from heuristics and biases, was an eye opener.

In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgments and make decisions. They are mental shortcuts that usually involve focusing on one aspect of a complex problem and ignoring others. These rules work well under most circumstances, but they can lead to systematic deviations from logic, probability or rational choice theory. The resulting errors are called “cognitive biases” and many different types have been documented.

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GREY CHAMPION ASSUMES COMMAND (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I discussed the arrival of Grey Champions in previous Fourth Turnings; their attributes, deficiencies, and leadership skills; and why Donald Trump is the Grey Champion of this Fourth Turning – whether you like it or not. Now I will try to make sense of what could happen next.

“Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people. The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. For those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don’t have your good in mind. The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry.

It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. The only force strong enough to save our country is us. The only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you, the American people.” – Donald Trump

Seventy year old Donald Trump has assumed the Grey Champion flagstaff. In an increasingly chaotic world, normal working class Americans in flyover country were seeking a leader who could bring order, defeat the corrupt establishment, make tough decisions, and capture the zeitgeist of this moment in history. The ruling elite oligarchs and their fawning minions, occupying their strongholds in New York, California, Illinois, and D.C., are infuriated the peasants have dared to resist. In their secretive secure spaces, the elites are plotting with one purpose in mind – this uprising must be quelled.

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GREY CHAMPION ASSUMES COMMAND (PART ONE)

At each of these great gates of history, eighty to a hundred years apart, a similar generational drama unfolded. Four archetypes, aligned in the same order – elder Prophet, midlife Nomad, young adult Hero, child Artist – together produced the most enduring legends in our history. Each time the Grey Champion appeared marked the arrival of a moment of “darkness, and adversity, and peril,” the climax of the Fourth Turning of the saeculum. – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

In September 2015 I wrote a five part article called Fourth Turning: Crisis of Trust. In Part 2 of that article I pondered who might emerge as the Grey Champion, leading the country during the second half of this Fourth Turning Crisis. I had the above pictures of Franklin, Lincoln, and FDR, along with a flaming question mark. The question has been answered. Donald J. Trump is the Grey Champion.

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