307 thoughts on “The New Economy”

1. Here’s the future of economics in the US:
   https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1289997732828962816

   BLM in Louisville attempted to extort restaurateurs for “gentrifying” their neighborhood, then vandalized a restaurant that refused.

   In point of fact: we are owed reparations for every city, town and neighborhood they’ve trashed since the 1960’s.

   Unfortunate fact 2: They have no wealth to garnish for said reparations.

   Unfortunate fact 3: Since they wouldn’t be able to repay us in cash, their debt would have to be repaid in the form of indentured servitude.

   Unfortunate fact 4: We have spot labor shortages on our farms. This means BLM would probably fulfill their indentured servitude on our farms.

   And so we would only come full circle. Reparations can only ever come in the form of separation or repatriation.

2. Z Man said: “All around the modern economy we see things that should not be happening. America has seen 50 million people file for unemployment. The streets are empty during work days in most cities. It has been an article of faith that wide-scale unemployment would lead to unrest. Instead of marches by unemployed workers, we have riots by the delinquent children of the ruling class. They are not demanding jobs. Instead, the jobless are watching the shenanigans on television.”

   Demoralization:

   • n.
   • The act of demoralizing, or the state of being demoralized. Also spelled demoralisation.
   • n.
   • The act of corrupting or subverting morals. Especially: The act of corrupting or subverting discipline, courage, hope, etc., or the state of being corrupted or subverted in discipline, courage, hope, etc.

   https://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-demoralization-of-the-target-audience-is-yet-another-step-in-successful-mind-control-joost-meerloo-90-3-0377.jpg

   “Chaos, breakdown, demoralization, destruction: America’s new normal, how it came about and where we are going.”

   http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball/200531

   • “Biggest Decline In Nominal Output & Income In Our Lifetime… While Stocks Gained $7 Trillion.”
     https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/biggest-decline-nominal-output-income-our-lifetime-while-stocks-gained-7-trillion

3. The evidence is piling up that college economics courses should be taken no more seriously than sociology courses or the various grievance “-studies” courses.

   • The evidence is piling up that no university course should be taken for anything else but factory scale an indoctrination of your future executioners

4. #billclintonispedo is trending on twatter
   https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BillClintonIsAPedo&src=trend_click

5. America’s schoolteachers:
   https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ed0QBtFXsAA1EY8.jpg

   Republicans: “We must reopen the schools! Send our kids back! Our kids must be taught to hate themselves! Their inductions into BLM and antifa await!”

   • Among all lunacies conceivable, the greatest one of all is
     to let your enemies educate your children

     • Stop stealing credit from the black man.

       “Only a fool would let his enemy teach his children.” – Malcolm X

   • Supposedly the meme is fake, with the 2017-era photo’s mugshots not necessarily tied to teachers:
     https://heavy.com/news/2020/07/13-antifa-teachers-arrested-portland-mugshots/

     But the reason the meme is so believable is that the larger phenomenon of radicalized teachers is true and well-documented:
     https://dailycaller.com/2017/09/01/public-school-teachers-behind-violent-antifa-group/

     So the point about idiot conservatives unwittingly sending their own kids and grandkids into seppuku still stands.

   • Republicans: “We must reopen the schools! Send our kids back! Our kids must be taught to hate themselves! Their inductions into BLM and antifa await!”

     This was an awesome opportunity to wean society from the teat of State (re-)education, and of course the GOP blew it. Many parents may see good reason to home school now.

6. “To protect with courage.”
   https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EebNrD2X0AAy7ab.jpg

   If cops can’t protect people from real crime, and all they ever do is arrest people who defend themselves from BLM attackers, why bother keeping them around? Defund them and the world will be a whole lot better.

   • There’s a crime watch type twitter feed out of that city, and the stuff aggregated there sounds like it’s coming out of one of those 70% black and “diverse” east coast cities, not what you’d expect from MPLS:
     https://twitter.com/CrimeWatchMpls

     But I guess we should expect this sort of stuff in MPLS now.

   • “Don’t stop for strangers who are trying to approach you or stop your car.”

     Innocent drivers caught in flash riots have followed this exact advice only to be accused of being “white supremacists.”

     • Near where I live in Orlando, I was coming home one night and a girl was out in the street to stop my car. I sped up to about 45 and she jumped out of the way at the last moment. I would have killed her.

       Later, at home, I told the wife. She said she had read a guy had been robbed and killed there a week before.

       I don’t ever stop. Get in from of me and I will not stop.

7. Huge demonstration in Berlin against the lunacy “Masks make us slaves” Police says 20k multiply that by 5 min

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=yiP0rKR9qVk&feature=emb_logo

   • To estimate real numbers watch this
     Lugenpresse claims 17 k lol

     https://twitter.com/FarukFirat1987/status/1289522414208970752

     • and this

       https://twitter.com/EspinosaBento/status/1289881300665475073

   • That video at 0:35. “The crowd contained a mix, from the far Right, as well as conspiracy theorists…” Hah, I KNEW the narrator wasn’t gonna be fair and say, “…as well as people from the the middle.” Man they won’t give us an INCH. I don’t want a war. But when it comes I’m gonna be swinging my garden tools like a Berserker.

8. Was looking around on Amazon for shears this morning. Seems Jefferson is writing copy for garden tools now. “Fiskars promotes achievement and self-expression by focusing on easy to use, innovative tools to make gardening, cooking and crafting more enjoyable.”

   • Made me smile.
     Fiskars uses good steel. I like their stuff,

     • Good ergonomics too. Liberal use of plastic and rubber made me skeptical, but it’s good stuff. Also in my experience they back up their products.

9. Old story, but relevant –
   A Tourist stops at the motel and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.
   As soon as the man walks upstairs, the owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.
   The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.
   The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill at the feed store.
   The guy at the Farmer’s Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her services on credit.
   She rushes to the motel and pays off her room bill with the motel owner.
   The motel proprietor now places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.
   At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the $100 bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money & leaves.
   No one produced anything…and no one earned anything…however the whole town is out of debt and is looking to the future with much optimism.

   • The whole town is out of debt and each has fewer assets by the same amount of debt they retired. Their net financial position is unchanged (assuming equal credit quality of assets and liabilities)
     If they are more optimistic it reflects a different psychological perception of owing and owning, the latter is less important than the former.

   • In America the prostitute goes down to the corner and gets high instead.
     Tourist: “where’s my money?”
     Proprietor: “Umm…”
     Tourist pulls out his gun.
     Proprietor pulls out his gun.

10. You get to the bottom of these comments and it’s clear that Z and just about everyone else on here craps bigger than Paul Krugman.

    But now I am wondering how the robots will conspire to short the health care sector.

    • Seriously vegetius. I learn something new every day. From how to ask the right questions, to framing the argument; honing a longstanding position, and expanding the universe of things I don’t know, I always come away energized. There is no shortage of ability. Our challenge is one of will.

      One more thing we have let slip through our fingers with the loss of our communities is the IRL forum. The public house conversations and heated debates among friends and occasional adversaries where ideas and beliefs are born, challenged, strengthened and most importantly – shared.

11. Since you bring up quantum physics, a Heisenberg quote:

    ”We can no longer speak of the behaviour of the particle independently of the process of observation. As a final consequence, the natural laws formulated mathematically in quantum theory no longer deal with the elementary particles themselves but with our knowledge of them. Nor is it any longer possible to ask whether or not these particles exist in space and time objectively … When we speak of the picture of nature in the exact science of our age, we do not mean a picture of nature so much as a picture of our relationships with nature. …Science no longer confronts nature as an objective observer, but sees itself as an actor in this interplay between man and nature. The scientific method of analysing, explaining and classifying has become conscious of its limitations, which arise out of the fact that by its intervention science alters and refashions the object of investigation. In other words, method and object can no longer be separated.”

    So then what would this new meta-economics look like? Maybe a lot like the current mess.

12. Wow long post today 🙂 Some thoughts:
    “the modern economy we see things that should not be happening.” Actually, the things you cite are perfectly reasonable, given the enormous money giveaway in progress: the Lion’s share to the wealthy corporations, the crumbs (stimulus checks + unemployment better than your prior wages) for the dirt people. Absent the largesse of Uncle Sugar, yes we would in all likelihood have seen a stock crash on par with 1929’s, rioting or at least tent cities with massive unemployment as well as classical economics working as it should. People often forget to consider the government intervention as one of the factors. Indeed, it often is the strongest factor, especially with macro interventions like creating liquidity/debt/money/whatever.
    As I partially explain above, the USA is exceptional in many ways. Not the least is that we are the “reserve currency” and that has let us get away with a lot of bad behavior for generations. Classical economics says it must end someday, and can in most general terms describe the ruin afterwards, but of course it can’t predict “when”. The stock market, and the economy is general, are just riding the continuous heroin high from all the stimulus. Reality? Not welcome at this time, but it’ll be back with the SWAT team 😀
    As a wise economic writer once said, if the printing press or whatever fashionable “new economy” view was then in vogue, had been the solution to a government’s financial problems, whether ancient Rome, or France of the 18th century, or Weimar Germany, or the Soviet Union, indeed any country that ever tried it, that country and its government would still be a going concern. We in the USA, and other countries operating by the same “rules”, only seem to be an exception to history’s judgment. That’s only because everything is working fine — for now. We pat ourselves on the back, and perhaps think that finally, all those Harvard economists have gotten capitalism under control and they only work for the highest and best good, pulling those levers and turning the dials at the FED or in New York or wherever they do it. To make an imperfect analogy, we are wishing for man’s genius, sort of like the millions of Chinese peasants who live downriver from the Three Gorges Dam rely on the ingenuity and integrity of those who built and operate the dam.
    More transactions = more commissions for somebody.
    “…the robots will reach a point where they know the market value of all items before the market is set. No robot will be able to fool the other robots.” Disagree. This may not be what you were arguing, but your claim appears to assume that the market is not subject to manipulation. Ha! No such market ever existed. Of course, subject to whatever enforcement mechanisms shall be in place, the cynic still expects that human nature, one feature of which is to try and twist things to one’s own advantages, will find cunning ways for his robot to do the same.
    I know Z is a fan of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Actually, the “Trilogy” has grown to triple that or so. When you have a marketable idea, both original author or posthumous collaborators, can continue the series. They did a pretty good job, too. Why a book review now? Because Z has mentioned The Mule, a disruptor who appears in part of the saga. He is a human mutant, with mental powers (charisma) that can influence nearly all people to do his will. As a result, he does quite well being a despot 😀 I bring up Foundation here, because in the last few novels, the robots are revealed to have been splitting into multiple factions over time, due to disagreements, and ways to get around, the original Three Laws of Robotics. There end up being at least four warring groups, all because they adopted additional interpretations of how they were to serve Man. Perhaps this wasn’t a good analogy. In Foundation all robots are sentient beings, effectively Man’s equal cognitively. In the real world, AI is still far from that; no matter, machines can do some impressive things, but they can also do some horrid damage. They are not conscious. They can’t make moral decisions. AS some wise ass said, early in the days of computing, “A man with a computer can make the same mistake that would have taken a team of mathematicians working with adding machines ten thousand years to make.” Garbage in, garbage out. Returning (ahem) to the magic money spigot, it’s all fun and games until a day comes when, for some inexplicable reason, nobody wants to accept the money anymore. That is the end game.
    “Quantum economics?” This would explain why the cash in my wallet magically vanished when it was in the property room during a few hours I spent in jail. Clearly, the currency spontaneously jumped to a higher energy state or whatever it’s supposed to do. 😀
    Whenever you hear the term “science” applied to “economics” beware. Certainly, it’s a valid field of inquiry, but a “science?” In the sense of mathematics, physics or even medicine? No way. At best, a “soft science.” Really? The economic choices of millions of human beings, reduced to a few high-school level algebra equations? And this has descriptive or better, predictive power? Perhaps only in the most vague terms. But to think you can rely upon the arcane theories, often having little clear resemblance to observed reality, no way. That’s as fanciful as Foundation protagonist Dr. Hari Seldon’s psychohistory, which claimed to map the Galaxy’s political fortunes far into the future. Finally, keep in mind Asimov’s world is a fictional universe. Federal Reserve & Co. probably operate, at least partially, in a make-believe fantasy land, but their actions eventually have real-world consequences.
    “Myth” is another word that should be rehabilitated. Most myths have some, sometimes a lot, of truth behind them. They can even be useful for teaching folklore, history, etc. It’s helpful at some point to know what was true and what was false. 
    If Roger Daltrey were here, he’d tell you that he won’t get fooled again, loose a primal scream, and then say meet the new boss, same as the old boss. 😀

13. Z threw some shade on owens and voxs move against patreon. Probally should shift position in light of recent developments.

    • Yes, it is much worse for them. Patreon has no reason to settle now, so they will proceed with arbitration. Since the claimants do not have an actual claim, it is hard to see how they prevail. Depending upon how that plays out, it could lead to further litigation against the claimants in California court.

      • How do you see that the claimants don’t have a claim?

        On theories of contractual interference and violation of the implied covenant of good faith & fair dealing in the contract, they have good arguments, as well as the argument that Patreon unconscionably and in violation of public policy unilaterally altered contract terms where neither the creator or consumers had meaningful bargaining power/opportunity. They could even smuggle a California Constitution/First Amendment angle in by claiming Patreon’s actions violate public policy. I haven’t actually seen the complaint, just spitballing what I would plead in their shoes.

        There’s always the chance that it turns into a cui bono decision rather than being judged on the actual merits but that’s a different argument. This does involve issues including a conflict between CA and SCROTUS over the Federal Arbitration Act (abusing arbitration clauses to frustrate consumer class actions, among other things) and the Ninth Circuit and SCROTUS may get a badfinger in here, but that doesn’t reflect on the merits of these cases.

        • The claimants did not have a contract with Owen Benjamin. Nothing Patreon did prevented any of these people from sending Benjamin a check. The three legs of a civil claim are 1) the claimant has been harmed, 2) the court can remedy the harm and 3) the the respondent is responsible for the harm. Patreon may have hurt these people’s feelings, but they have no claim the arbitrator can remedy.

          The thing about arbitration is it is not the place for novel or clever legal arguments. The arbitrator is there to get the facts and come up with an equitable settlement. In short order he is going to see that these claims were part of a scheme to shake down Patreon. Maybe the claimants have something more than has been revealed thus far, but it seems unlikely.

          • From what I understand they were never there to shakedown Patreon. They filed the suits because they wanted to cost Patreon a lot of money to live up to their contractual obligations. Owen Benjamin did ask for a certain amount of money to make it all go away, but there is no evidence he could since the cases are all individual cases of arbitration. The process is the punishment.

          • Then your understanding is faulty. If you look at the court filings, Benjamin’s attorney claimed to be representing the claimants and offered to abandon the arbitration claims if they gave Benjamin 2.5 million. The arbitrator will see that for what it is.

            This was my point when this started. Arbitration is a process, just like everything else in the law. Unlike a courtroom, the arbitrator is free to explore the claims of both parties. He’s going to want to know why 72 people in different states filed the exact same arbitration claim. He’ll note that the claimants have no actual claim. He’s going to dig into it, as I would expect Patreon to have filed their own claim in this process.

            The thing is, we will have no way of knowing what has happened. The usual grifters will be out lying about everything, because that’s what they do, but JAMS does not make anything public. What we do know is at the end of arbitration there is an award letter. If the claimants do not post one of those on-line, then we know they lost. Similarly, if we don’t see a commencement letter, then we know the process ended before it began, either by agreement or JAMS terminated the process. Nothing prevents the parties from posting those documents on-line.

          • You’re right, and I have not read the filing. I also don’t know what powers JAMS has to award Patreon a settlement in this case for their arbitration fees. The way corporate American has been banding together I imagine JAMS will waive or reduce their arbitration fees significantly, and thus the whole thing will be a moot point.

          • Third party beneficiary at the very least.

            Patreon can’t be taking a slice of the subscribers’ cash by middle-manning the service and claim with a straight face that they have no privity or duty to the subs.

            As for arbitration not being a place for novel arguments, take a look at case law re: confirmation or modification/set asides of consumer awards in California.

            Did the subs ask for injunctive relief, disgorgement of profits or relief outside of $$$ damages? Any of that would be available under CA unfair competition laws.

          • Having been in arbitration more than a few times, I know the first thing the the arbitrator will dispense with is clever legal arguments. The claimants will need to express clearly and simply how they were harmed, the amount of the harm in dollars and how Patreon is responsible for that harm. On the face of it, I can’t see how they were harmed. They could send Benjamin a check, a money order, cash. Patreon is a service for the convenience of Benjamin, not his fans. My understanding is they charge him the processing fees.

            All we actually know is what was posted on the California State Court website, so maybe there is a lot more going on here that has been revealed. My reading of the docs says they have not proceeded very far in the arbitration process. JAMS told Patreon there was enough to begin the process and Patreon then filed in state court. I would assume Patreon next asks for consolidation of the claims, since they are identical and have the same attorney. This will reduce time and costs. After that you get a hearing and then the commencement of arbitration.

            The thing is, this will not amount to anything. Patreon may get tagged with a bunch of costs, but they will change their terms of service and this door shuts forever. Alternatively, they prevail in arbitration and show this was a frivolous use of the arbitration system in order to facilitate an shakedown for Owen Benjamin. Patreon then goes into a real court to recover their costs from Benjamin.

            That’s the thing with arbitration. It is informal and the arbitrators are usually retired judges. They really believe in the system and they are not passive. They don’t take any bullshit either. I was a witness in a proceeding years ago. I thought it was going to be a few hours of my time and that would be it. I spent all day answering questions from the arbitrator. It became obvious he did not believe any of the participants. I don’t know how it ended, but none of the parties contacted me again, so I assume not well.

      • From what I gather the larger point is not to ‘beat’ Patreon but to make the cost of censorship dear so that companies don’t take it lightly.

        Like fighting a bully, win or lose, the real victory is making him think twice from then on.

14. “The musical Hamilton is a minstrel show for white people” really made me laugh!

    Amazingly, the woke left recently threw Hamilton overboard because its underlying message was too civic nationalist.

    Predictably, conservatives who had previously criticized the musical for its degeneracy are now rushing to defend it.

15. The old economics revolved around overcoming scarcity. The new economics revolves around liquidating surplus. That’s why the old rules no longer apply.

    Liquidating surplus humans btw.

    • “Liquidating surplus humans btw.” nice

16. A plea for help. Not completely off topic.

    I intend to try to teach kids informal logic and “how to think” next year as the Dioceses wants to give us more time in English and Math this year to make up for the situation in last trimester of last year. (distance learning)

    I want to use a book called “The Fallacy Detective” which will help them learn the errors in logic. (straw man, red herring, and so on)

    But I also want to use “Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt. The book is loosely Austrian and so covers Praxeology in its own fashion. This could be a bridge too far. Maybe use only a few of the easier sections.
    (I would love to use Mises “Human Action” but I would need 3 years to do that.)

    So question; what suggestions would you give to work with middle school age kids. I did formal logic with high school kids some years ago but they were so much more mature. Any comments?

    • For the age you’re teaching “The Fallacy Detective” is an excellent choice. A field I am very familiar with.

      Hazlitt may be a bit dry for that age.
      Asked someone in the field and he suggested this:

      Economix: How our economy works
      and this:
      If you need something a bit simpler there’s a 2 vol. Cartoon Guide to Economics

      • Thanks for the feedback. I will get both books and give them a read.

        I really do appreciate the help.

    • Give them the book, “The Richest Man in Babylon.”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Richest_Man_in_Babylon#:~:text=The%20Richest%20Man%20in%20Babylon%20is%20a%201926%20book%20by,classic%20of%20personal%20financial%20advice.

      If you have time The Road to Serfdom.

      • I’ll give “The Richest Man in Babylon” a read.

        “The Road to Serfdom” would be great to sneak in if I was the SS teacher, but might be hard to justify for math class. However, it remains one of my all time favorites.

        Thanks for your ideas and help.

      • I prefer “The Mercy of Allah” by H. Belloc. Captures how the capitalists actually operate.

    • Hazlitt’s Econ in 1 Lesson for junior high kids? This must be some kind of special high IQ school. Otherwise, to quote John McEnroe. “You CANNOT be serious.”

      • I do think we can use some of it. The broken window fallacy can be understood by anyone with an open mind. Some of it is too much for the age group — I have to judge that part.

        Just the first page where he tells us that the following spawns new fallacies every day: the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.

        We could talk in terms of school rules, coaches methods in soccer, or kid’s and their chores. There are ways to talk to kids about even very important things. (plus we try to us humor whenever possible)

        I do appreciate you comment though. The book is not an easy read for kids I’ll grant.

    • Gorgias.

      You’d have to unpack the language but the ideas are simple enough.

      • Yes, I agree. I am hoping that many will have some protection from propaganda and sloppy thinking.

        Thanks.

    • You might give this a look.
      https://mises.org/library/economics-real-people

      Not for use by the kids but as something to help structure what you might want to cover in economics.

      And a class spent on “I Pencil” wouldn’t be wasted
      – Mises has a free audio version.
      https://mises.org/library/i-pencil-1
      Start with asking them-
      How much should you charge for a Pencil?
      Why?
      Then : What are the components?
      Cedar, graphite, tin, rubber, paint, machinery, transportation, premises, labor, packaging etc etc.
      Guess again on cost?

      • Great ideas Bile.

        I will try to incorporate them. I suppose I need to think of this as a 3 year program for 6th, 7th, and 8th. I have to remember our main job is getting them to Algebra or pre Algebra.

        Thanks for the insights.

17. The US is in a Depression right now , bread lines well foo bank lines and all. Our press simply doesn’t cover anything.
    Its been easy to paper over though with wealth redistribution and EBT and all that stuff.
    Frankly the reason no one is protesting on a huge scale , beyond virus fears is why bother? American jobs suck and between unemployment, regulations and the bonus money, many unemployed people were doing just fine and now have to time to live.
    Worse do to shit wages large swathes of the population made near as much on the bonus ($1200 a month tax free) as they would at a job. Other than not getting together with friends there is very little to protest.
    Now if we fail to manage unemployment and massive numbers of people go homeless and hungry well things may change.
    A last note, no there will not be high inflation outside of things that are actually scare and in demand (food and ammo basically) . Inflation requires significant monetary velocity and the velocity of money is now on hold largely for good.
    This doesn’t mean there will never be inflation only that the economy has shrunk for good as a lot of ancillary jobs servicing malls, some retail, offices and other things are gone for good.
    This means unless there is a lot of make work, there won’t be the same types and level of spending even with an income guarantee.
    A few large companies produce far lower economic velocity than more smaller ones.

18. Well, after reading all of this I am more confused than ever. There’s a reason I took only the minimum required econ classes in grad school. My husband’s pissed he sold AMD stock at a previous benchmark of $60 and then it went up to $77. It’s all a crap shoot. If we had the $ to hunker down, we’d be hunkering down, not gambling.

19. The answer is there and it’s not a new one. Why does anybody exchange goods and services for pieces of paper, or even shiny rocks? The answer is the same as it’s been since there has been money. You accept those bits of shiny rock because of faith. This, however, is the Billy Graham economy, or maybe the Jim Jones economy would be closer to the truth. They are drunk with this new power and intend to push it to the point of failure….maybe just to find out where exactly that point is.

    • Civilization always was and always will be a fool’s errand. There’s just too many things working against it for anyone to keep together in one piece for very long. And if the old second coming thing doesn’t pan out, then we’re simply stuck with each other. And honestly, I can’t think of anything more depressing than that.

      • Some one said civilization is a conspiracy against Nature. True enough, in the sense that mankind must labor by the sweat of his brow and all that shit 🙂 “Nature gives nothing away.”

    • Yes, it all comes down to the willingness of the other to exchange with you. And this is equally as true for supposedly valuable things like gold. Yes, it’s true that it takes 1,10, whatever tons of ore to make just one ounce of gold, but it’s still just a piece of metal. If no one would accept it in trade for a good or service, it would not be of much use beyond decoration, dental filling, etc. I admit it it kind of useless, but the Kruggerands do make nice coasters 😀

20. It’s different this time – famous last words as the last ‘greater fool’ bought in. It may take a while but there are ripple effects that are hard to predict. Maybe some of it is papered over right now with stimulus checks – but you cannot have 50m unemployed without an impact. Not paying rent, taxes, suppliers, businesses shuttering forever, etc. It is lurking below the surface and will emerge eventually.

21. I just realized z-man article perfectly reflects Soros philosophy
    https://quotefancy.com/media/wallpaper/3840×2160/744753-George-Soros-Quote-A-global-economy-is-characterized-not-only-by.jpg

    • Ooh, there’s some fun to be had with these quotes over pretty pictures.

      https://imgur.com/a/X7EiW6R

22. Stock prices are denominated in dollars.
    What you are seeing is the depreciation of the doller, not the appreciation of stocks.
    Go look at the indices of Iran and Venezuela to see what the upcoming dollar collapse looks like.

    • indeed. it’s just that the US has more leeway. for a while though. who knows. i went through a currency collapse once, it wasn’t pretty, and see similarities too. ironically the country came off better with the dollar… until who knows when too, it has tons of debt it can’t deflate so something will have to pop the bubble eventually. some peoples are better at paying back debts than others, at the heart of it.

23. I am old enough to remember when TV economists had economic models, literally. They consisted of coloured liquids flowing through various pipes and valves and into compartments labelled employment, inflation, savings etc. All complete bollocks of course. In fact the older I get the more I am persuaded that not only is economics no science, but simply a collection of ad hoc justifications cooked up by apologists for whatever elites are currently benefiting from the status quo. It’s interesting that you mention Tesla and it’s apparent ability to defy the “laws” of commerce. Tesla and electric vehicles more generally seem to be another of those Liberal Goodwhite cults that we see all around today. If you go on youtube and type tesla in the search box you get a multitude of channels generally fronted by rather effete young men literally drooling over the high priest’s latest pronouncements. All rather disturbing in my view.

    • Mikep said: “All rather disturbing in my view.”

      Hahaha! Rather indeed. 😀

    • “economics is no science, ad hoc justifications cooked up by apologists for whatever elites are benefiting”
      It’s jewish scam, it’s made to be convoluted on purpose so that people won’t get to see the strings the jews are pulling.

      • and the secular bourgeois. the whole democratic and capitalistic scam of the enlightenment, and its willing sparring the Marxists. all friends of the Jews. all wanted to take out the Church, the royals, the nobles, the natural rights of the villages and cities and commoners. of course, thanks for overcoming scarcity, it took many dead in the factories and industrial wars fought with industrial guns. true, by the 90s it seemed peace and prosperity finally cometh to the materialists globalists, but this just gave wings to the increasingly degenerate, miscegenated, decultured, atomized, all-consuming rabble that took advantage of the softened up order, led by (((them))). and so the rabble has infiltrated the West, up to its very thought, dragging it down to self-destruction through pain or pleasure, but never growth nor transcendence. other cultures not so much, but the enlightenment virus is coming for them too, because everyone is preached to about dinosaurs and climate change and fake viruses and experts and universal economic laws for universal cog-people and the goodness of women and poc and lgbtxyz – and the evil white and/or Christian traditional man.

    • Tesla (the man) was a fascinating figure. You can read his bio, probably on Wiki. Early radio and electrical pioneer. Created a small earthquake. Could transmit electricity wirelessly over large distances. Basically invented AC electricity. A man named Westinghouse made Tesla very wealthy as a result. Nonetheless, Telsa died in obscure poverty.
      [Insert optional “He was working on a interdimensional space-time portal at the time of his death. US government confiscated all his notes.” which may or may not be true, but adds spice to story.]
      At least he has a physical unit named in his honor.
      I post all that because, do you wonder if the toy car company that now bears his name, wil come to a simialr sad end?

24. In the conversation, you mention a optimistic book saying that war was an impossibility due trade and communication prior to 1.WW. It likely is “The Great illusion” by Norman Angell.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

25. All of the paradoxes you mention are explained by a couple of things.

    First. National deficit spending is now backdoor money creation. So every scenario based on the idea that the money must or even should be repaid is obsolete.

    Second. The threat of financing government via seigniorage has always been inflation. Which is not a factor yet because of the inherent deflationary pressure of industrialization and globalization.

    So where does the new money go if it’s not bidding up labor and consumables? Chasing assets of go is why we see preposterous valuations for stocks and real estate.

    • Yes, I have seen the same argument for gold and (I guess) other valuables. I have no great investing advice, nor a lot of assets. But within reason, this seems a great time to stock up to the max on real world goods that you will actually use. To steal somebody else’s idea, right now I am “long” on 4 cases of Underwood Deviled Ham 😀

26. Z Man said: ” Similarly, the stock markets are doing the opposite of what economics has said should happen on the cusp of a long depression. Apple became the world’s first trillion-dollar public company on Thursday, as a rise in its share price pushed it past the previously unthinkable valuation…”

    I’m not an economist, but I know fraud when I see it. We’re finally seeing the truth about the stock market. It’s only partially connected to the actual economy. The rest is the largest ongoing criminal conspiracy in history. But the people aren’t screaming for their blood. How is it possible, that the whole western world can be handed one lunatic outrage after another, while the vast majority set passively by and do nothing but complain on the internet? That’s what we’re finally seeing as well. Most people are simply going to go along to get along, no matter what. So much for the next civil war.

    • It kind of has to be this way. With 401s the government hooked it’s wagon to the market, so either the market was going to control their fate or they were going to control the fate of the market.

      • wouldn’t it be easier just to have one national pension fund, and the employer and employee contribute what they can and move on, instead of such a convoluted middleman riddled mess as the 401s. one good thing about caesarisms is that they can destroy such waste. except when said caesarism is based on that waste…

        • You have to remember that 401Ks were the answer to a real problem. A shrinking population is incapable of supporting a welfare state. The libertarians who came up with the scheme didn’t envision this, of course. 401Ks were suppose to be exposed to market risks. You took your chances but nobody was on the hook for your expensive pension, but nobody could take it away from you if you got lucky. However, in retrospect it should have been obvious what would happen.

          • Here’s an interesting podcast. Mike Green makes an entertaining, maybe even solid, case that, among other things, Index funds risk collapsing the market. What once began as a very sensible idea (an index fund to passively invest and have super low expenses), has, in a few decades, come to be a lot (50%? More?) of the stock market. Green claims that if say, Vanguard ever has to sell more than a tiny bit of its gargantuan holdings, it could seize the entire market because there are not enough counter-parties that could act as buyers, in his argument the price of a stock would gap quickly to zero.
            https://ttmygh.podbean.com/e/teg_0003/#
            2020 has been a weird year, and barely half over. A pandemic, oil (briefly) at negative $37 a barrel, and with a dicey election ahead, so why not a stock market crash and depression because somebody wants to unload a block of stock?

    • part of it is that most people have been soma’d to sleep by (((them))). gentiles are just cattle in their own little atomized worlds.

      when revolts happened historically, it was either massive hunger, or a massive bloody crime against the people. the blacks certainly lie a lot about their dead criminals at the hands of police, among other things, but they are certainly effective at garnering sympathy using their spilled blood. the Russian Revolution could only happen after the massacre of the martyrs, and not before. in fact, Christianity could take hold and somewhat harmoniously unite white people, and eventually a lot of the world, due in no small part to the blood of its martyrs.

      civil war doesn’t seem heroic when it seems to be carried out only by antifags and bugout weirdos. a breaking point situation will need to come and slap the sense out of people.

      • diconez said: “A breaking point situation will need to come and slap the sense out of people.”

        Exactly, how many more slaps do you want? Half the freaking planet is under house arrest. The main street economy is headed for armageddon. Every stinking day, somewhere in America there’s mass demonstration. Meanwhile, joeblow can’t go to church or get a haircut. And last but not least, that little CDC stink bug fauci tells us the other day, that the communist virus will most likely never go away. Oh yah. Now we all need to ware plastic eye shields as well as masks. We’re all being gaslighted to death here. How much more crap is it going to take to get Jonny reb up off his ass?

        • I am wondering about the face shield thing too. Again, allowing for new disease, developing situation and all that, but I have my suspicions. Most reports say that the virus is mostly transmitted by small exhaled droplets, possibly by smaller particles, but nearly all transmission is by air. So a face shield or eye protection is not going to offer any protection except against a “direct hit” such as being sneezed at. Similar for the plexiglas panels and dividers now seen at restaurants and such. These will help but to me at least, only with “projectile” sitautions 🙂 So yeah, shields make sense in certain situations, but unless you’re in a special siuation where you are directly exposed to breath or spittle from others, I don’t see what wearing a face shield gains one.
          Looked at another way, the paranoid could say this is just another step in the conditioning, to see how much the sheep will accept.

          • Ben the Layabout said: “Looked at another way, the paranoid could say this is just another step in the conditioning, to see how much the sheep will accept.”

            If your not paranoid yet, then your not paying close attention.

            https://i.pinimg.com/736x/cc/77/3b/cc773bf669dc16ed8c00385002ee9c13–normal-is-boring-funny-humor.jpg

27. First, I agree – no one at our level knows what is going on. However, it is quite clear, exactly as pointed out, that the effect of the creation of the transaction, capital economy funnels (nearly) all the newly created wealth towards our overlords. I have an interest in economics, and the way I think of the debt is that all the newly created money is exactly that – money. The big boys at top orient their businesses to capturing as much of that newly created money in order to increase their ownership of the total available money pool. And, I believe it is fair to say we see the results – the middle class getting the last nail in the coffin because our wages and valuation will never keep up. This allows further centralization of wealth through inflation. To wit: if I have a penny and the world only has one dollar, then I have 1/100 of the worlds wealth, and am rich. If there is 10000000000 dollars, and I have a penny, I am a pauper. The money printing allows this distribution to become increasingly unidirectional.
    However, this leads to my next point. Z muses on the way this debt should be unsustainable. I would argue that, through chicanery, the stock market prices are being buoyed not only for the rich to cash out, but also keep the bonds and funds that fuel pensions and superficial monetary systems afloat for as long as possible while the redistribution continues. So much of their psychological and monetary policy is, at least superficially, directed towards keeping the middle class slowly dying but not exploding. The old adage about boiling a frog slowly comes to mind.
    Ultimately, I feel that, after enough of this has gone on for long enough, and the middle class is gone by “outside forces” (lost their homes through foreclosure (the virus!), no sense of safety (those teens!) their pensions don’t pay nearly enough (inflation!), can’t find a job (the economy!), don’t have any hope (netflix and pills!)), TPTB can propose a new solution to the lethargic economy experienced by the average person – Basket Currency/SDR/ Universal Currency. In the same way it took the Great Depression to usher in Bretton Woods and the New World Order, the lower classes will be so powerless, so aimless, and so hopeless, they would have no real interest in whether their monthly stiped is on a debit card from US gub or World Bank.

    • i’d argue it’s healthier to have many global currencies based on region.

      but yes agree on everything else. it’s a soft takeover.

28. Stunning article! Big brain outside of the box thinking, Z. I bound and gagged Basic Husband as he muttered “Laura… Laura… Laura,” turned up his hearing aids and read him your missive.

    The seeds did not land in husband’s brain; in my brain they did.

    Hmm…quantum economics. “The elevation of the transaction over capital formation is one of the unremarked aspects of the new economy. Wealth is now generated by either creating new ways to move information around the system or maintaining a gate through which information must flow to some other part of the system.” Now I see and it resonates; good thoughtful take.

    My uneducated opinion is the economy will work until it doesn’t. Transaction/information will work until the ruling overlords, which do seem to mirror old palace economies of the Bronze Age, decide to pull the plug, or a black swan. From the looks of now, our overlords will determine, with the input of IMF/globalist banks and international Mordor, when and why they take us down and drop kick us. When it is to their advantage and nothing whatever to do with ours.

    Also pushing Their hand is massive population growth of Mr. Oingo Boingo’s family continent. The Camp of Saints will be arriving to beaches nearby in the future. Can’t imagine we make it to Lifeboat Nation first. Money on the table the Overlords’ hate and patience reach boiling point sooner and tank us prior to Lifeboat time. Their hatred of us most likely will jump the gun.

    Should this country go full progressive Marxist tyranny, keep in mind the IQ is dropping whilst Marxists spend their time arguing and eliminating each other and not producing. Sooner or later they run out of Other Peoples’ Money. Read Kirt Schlichter’s “People’s Republic.” China is licking her lips. And Islam is in the wings. Wouldn’t it be delicious to witness China and Islam go at it with hammer and tongs! Crap, I won’t be around.
    Time to kraal up in Our People small communities.

29. One of the distinguishing features of a scientific theory is its ability to make reliable predictions –

    Economics is the most dismal science in this respect.

    Quantum economics may be like quantum physics in the sense that no one really understands it, but Planck’s black box theory yields very consistent and reliable results.

    Quantum economics is more black bag than black box, as it should be considering its experimental results.

    Hyper-concentration of wealth with the other 99.9% losing ground. The complete de-coupling of fundamentals from stock performance and valuation. The overt integration of the managerial private sector with the managerial government class (aka oligarchy). Real world assets divorced from money creation, the supply or scarcity of which is entirely stage-managed by a privileged elite who can step in and out of the virtual casino like Agents in the Matrix.

    Don’t bother calling the police, the shillers are already in the house. Hell, they ARE the house – and they’re paying the cops to take a knee to everyone but thee.

    When you find yourself in a rigged game, the only winning move is to walk away. Cash out while you still can – at least enough for a soft landing back in the Desert of the Real.

    These tables have “quantum” limits now, and no one knows what that means. Paraphrasing Feynman’s famous quotes on quantum mechanics:

    “I think it is safe to say that no one understands Economics. One does not, by knowing all the financial laws as we know them today, immediately obtain an understanding of anything much. The more you see how strangely the market behaves, the harder it is to make a model that explains how even the simplest phenomena actually work. So economics has given up on that.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bag_operation

    https://www.spaceandmotion.com/quantum-mechanics-richard-feynman-quotes.htm

    • Cash out while you still can – at least enough for a soft landing back in the Desert of the Real.

      Better yet, learn how the grift operates, extract money from it, then use that money to purchase real, tangible assets like food, gold, ammo, or even land.

      • Winners win and losers lose. It doesn’t matter much what the game is.

    • in the end economics is the treatment of money by people, and people are just people. fallen sinners, balding monkeys, anything but omnirational beings. they can reason spending on themselves anything and cutting the power off someone they don’t like based on whatever. because reason is a lie, for some more than others specially, but divorced from prime mover’s absolute transcendent truth it can be twisted into anything.

      which is why economic systems keep changing and theories collapsing, as the material world that money deals with, and the people that deal with money, change. back in Austrian School times, it was assumed people needed to save more, until they didn’t need to. now it is assumed you need to spend more, until you can’t afford to. and so on. a change usually takes time to notice, because the economic dance is so global and tumultuously fast now, you can’t see above it – unless a crack eventually happens.

      • “We repeat, people come to believe what they need to believe when they need to believe it”
        — Bonner & Wiggins Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis (2011)

30. Dear Zman.

    Yesterday, I was horrified, because I couldn’t access to your site.

    I pray/beg you, to create an alternate blog onion.

    I think you dislike him, but you and Anglin are the only voices of reason in this ocean of madness (even if I don’t share Anglin’s views about Islamic way of considering women, nor his views about little nations neighboring Russia)

    (I am also ashamed to have been a reader of Counter Current. AOC is more forgivable to say bullshits than “doctor” G. Johnson.)

    • I second the need for an Onion site.

      I’m a little down on Anglin at the moment, as he’s gone full Schiff on the economic stuff. He threw a crybaby meltdown when one of the posters on his message board mildly and respectfully challenged him on it a couple of days ago.

      Counter Currents serves its purpose. I click it daily but don’t necessarily read it daily.

      • CC still have interesting papers, I will not deny it.

        But, for me, the great divide is covidhysterical vs flubros

        Consequently, GJ should be more despised than any leftist.

        (I don’t remember to have read than any member of CC crew wrote something against Johnson’s hysteria)

        • their paganism makes them more fearful than they should be, and trusting in labcoat liars as well.

          they do make some points other times though.

      • CC makes some good points on occasion, on others it gets too pagan enamored with itself.

        • Say pagan a third time.

        • Agreed, Homo Johnson loves that LARPy nonsense

    • French Royalist, are you female?

31. Z – Note that human nature is still the same as when King David killed Uriah the Hittite to cover up the adulterous affair that King David had with Bathsheeba. And remember that “there is a lot of ruin in a nation”. This could go on for years. Or it might not.
    How the system corrects is unknowable. The only thing I am sure of is that it will correct.

32. There’s only one way out from underneath this time. WAR. We need to blame some other party for our stupidity and arrogance, and then we need to kill them. Make the rubble bounce. Lose our own critics in fireballs and pointless rushes at the enemy. So the (((usual suspects))) can deflect attention where it belongs.

    • let me introduce you to a big fat dumb patsy — the PRC.

      • Those would be the folks behind General Tso’s Chicken, right? I have heard of them. Aircraft carriers make great reefs.

        • yeah, just let them keep aborting their girls, and making the living ones work, cramming the excess men into tiny apartments. eventually they will suffer under the same sins.

    • This is what I think the political class will try to use as last resort to keep the various balls in the air for a while longer. I don’t think it will fly though and will trigger the dissolution of the US if nothing has before that. A lot of people in Red States will clearly see this as a neocon Hail Mary to save Ziomerica and that’s when the secessions will begin. Since most of the military personnel and bases are in those states the US may not even be able to mobilize forces for the Great Patriotic War against whatever nation it decides to nominate as the greatest enemy of Freedumb ever.

      • yep. i’ve been thinking a big hope for American whites would be the potential Freekorp reserve in veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. though then again, some of them are patriotically liberal or ziocon, no doubt in diverse units.

      • Nah, we’ll break out the flags, yellow ribbons, “Support the Troops” bumperstickers and someone will do a cover of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA”.

33. It’s about faith. If people believe in it they’ll accept anything as a means of transaction. Of course a heretic that comes along and points out the holes in the dogma will not be looked upon kindly.

    How long can faith last? A long time.

    • How long can faith last? A long time.

      And this is one of the reasons the dollar is still the cleanest dirty shirt among currencies.

      • Goldman/Spengler: “The leper with the most fingers.” Heh.

      • Spray it with deordorant and it’s good for another day’s wear 🙂

    • the Chinese will certainly think twice about accepting dollars when the joggers invading the Macy’s at Central Park become recurrent, and when a green-soyfied ultravaccinated West under mask and lockdown every few months (this twice as strong pneumonia for 0.3% of people isn’t going away) buys less of the oil. after all, the sheikhs also trade in dollars. if they leave and as Eurasia gets taken over by the One Commie Belt or whatever, then it’s back to selling dollars to the Western Hemisphere…

      … except the castizos are less dominant, and the now majority mestizos not as docile or neurotically thrifty as the dwindling Indian, nor as smart or lazy like the castizo, and definitely can be loud and dramatic like the black. ergo the continent is both more consumerist and more violent. yet unlike the castizo, the mestizos have even less affinity with the Anglos, more with blacks and Asians and natives too. besides, economically all these rump nations depend on China now too, as they apparently recognize their lost colonies status. so no chance of trading with Latin America either.

      and lost colonies we are, yet not only due to our flawed rebellious nature, also because mother Europe is so willingly giving itself away; perhaps not as fast as America in real time, but philosophically its united Christian and white spirit is gone. true, ideally a white defense, customs and trade bloc would be formed. but after all, with whites any attempt at coalition forming is a huge dramatic hassle; in this case it’s a white survival crisis as epic as the Lord of The Rings, but the fellowship never agreed to be formed in the first place, so there is no trilogy and Mordor wins. specially if the whole thing is infiltrated by (((fellow whites))).

      i doubt whiter America will be able to form a fellowship as well, so it will split off the globocoasts and turn inward… until there’s no redoubt to hide, as castizos are finding out. same for Europe and elsewhere. in short a basket of currencies would be healthier for everyone, it just needn’t come with the West’s destruction. in fact, the dollar getting cheaper would benefit local production so much, while it still exists that is.

    • One of my favorite songs about faith (or its downside) is Bruce Springsteen’s “Reason to Believe”:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H49obsV6oZ0
      “Nebraska” is one of his darker albums, recalling a Depression or early 1980s recession atmosphere. The album was recorded on “home studio” Tascam cassette recorder, lending an authentic “down home” vibe to the songs. This must have been intentional, since by the mid-80s Springsteen had made a little money and probably could have hired better equipment 😀
      “Still at the end of every hard-earned day, people find some reason to believe.”

34. So the Gods of the Copybook Headings have left? Feels like we’re living in a Dunsany story.

35. I believe the last paragraph touches on the end-game for this. I think we’re in the end-game now, which will take six or seven years to play out. I have some points:
    1) Tesla is a fraudulent company on par with WorldCom and Enron, and exceeding them both by far in brazenness. The CEO literally tweeted a few weeks ago that the SEC stands for suck Elon’s C..k.
    2) The willful blindness by the big accounting firms and ratings agencies is worse than in 2008, after they promised to clean up their acts. Instead of crediting warrantee reserves like every other auto company, Tesla is booking warrantee repairs under goodwill, which is also used to side-step state lemon laws. This one accounting trick keeps a lot of the red ink at bay. In my fantasy PWC ends up like Arthur Andersen over this.
    3) None of the accounting shenanigans matter because Tesla has a customer base (and investor base) of earth-worshipping Trekkies who see it as an emblem of the future. It’s amazing and saddening how many brilliant people I know who are just so stupid when it comes to the green energy con. Elon is saving the world, leave him alone. The CEO’s empty promises on everything from brain implants to robo-taxis is part of that techno mystique. We’re going to Mars!
    4) Tesla, like some many other zombie companies, exists solely because of Fed policy, and artificially low interest rates since the late 80’s and especially since 2001. If you think about it, Delorean had to do everything Tesla is doing, but with 20% interest rates. That’s why he got into cocaine trafficking.
    5) Japan is still a creditor nation, unlike us, that’s why they can carry the debt load they carry. The Japanese central bank has pretty much bought up Japanese bonds and now owns something like a quarter of Japanese stocks. What’s going on in Japan is a leveraged buyout of the Japanese economy by the central bank. The Fed is doing the same. US Treasuries are at an all time low precisely because the “bond vigilantes” were bought out by the Fed. Don’t look to the bond market for answers on this. They too are zombie bitten. The Fed, just as Japan, will create a vehicle to buy stock indexes as soon as we have a major correction, and the market knows this, keeping the market levitated for now.
    6) Italy and Greece are being backstopped by the ECB (Germany) and would have cracked a couple years ago without intervention. Italy is still a basket case that must be dealt with.
    7) Inflation hasn’t materialized much in the consumer economy because much of what’s being created is mostly bank reserves. We’ve been very lucky since 2008 (not for homebuyers) that we’ve mostly had asset price inflation from these excess reserves, and the bank loans made from them. As the Government spends like drunken sailers, this hot money will spur domestic inflation, hence the precious metals rallies as of late.
    8) The central banks of the world can control pretty much every market by simply buying or backstopping it. But there’s one market that they just can’t control. It’s far too big, and that’s the foreign exchange market. The only way to do that is to have a free hand on interest rates. They’re stuck at zero bound. So we will have a dollar crisis from this, and it will be far from the only currency in crisis. When? I would have Jeff Beezos money if I knew that.
    9) The final chapter of the endgame (years from now) only has three options for governments. 1) Default and let interest rates soar. 2) Inflate away the debt. or 3) a mix of both, which they’ll likely do. The US will not adjust well to its new, Mexico like standard of living.

    • Then you have people like me who would never buy a Tesla yet make good money trading options on their stock.

      • It’s definitely a trading vehicle, that’s for sure. But it’s an incredibly dangerous one. Boatloads of calls being bought just before announcements, etc. When you see the fifth and sixth ace come out of the deck, you have to pause and reevaluate.

        • I am certainly kicking myself for not buying puts at the open yesterday. I could have easily grifted a year’s pay out of TSLA.

        • I did part of TDAmeritrade’s online options course, so I know the basics. I’ve toyed with the play money account they give you. What surprised me is how expensive options are. Now, I know they have certain “legitimate” uses like to hedge. I was interested in them for gambling speculation. The most damning datum didn’t come from the house brokerage (Imagine that!): that about 90% of options expire worthless. Why? The only possible answer is because the people who write options are very smart. They know that most of them won’t be exercised. Of course it’s all subjective, and the risks will vary with market conditions, but it seems to me a call or put buyer is paying quite a premium for relatively little protection. Imperfect analogy: to me, buying an option one month out, even 10 or 20 % up or down, the premium you’re asked to pay might be like paying $4000 to insure a $100,000 home against fire — for just a month.
          And most fortunately, for me, is that I don’t qualify to trade options 😀

          • I generally sell options because time (theta) decay works in the option seller’s favor.

            Buying options is a totally different animal. On Tesla, I would only buy options to speculate in a day trade if the indicators I use were telling me that it is a good idea to buy ATM puts on Tesla that day.

            Otherwise, buying and holding options on Tesla is largely a fool’s errand because all your premium (the money you paid) gets eaten up by the incredibly high theta (time) decay on Tesla options.

    • Tesla has reached “too big to fail” status even though 2/3 of what Elon says and does is vaporware. More “quantum weirdness.”

      • Amen.

        There are too many market makers like Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab holding Tesla for it to collapse short to medium term. I’m also convinced the Fed is in on Tesla via proxy through Blackrock.

    • All this cheap credit allows people to buy a Tesla as well. The $35k is mostly fake from what I can gather.
      What I really don’t understand is why so many people are enamored by electric vehicles. Turning the fleet electric faces major obstacles. One many don’t seem to think of is how this would work in America’s old cities. There are huge swaths of my city where nobody has a garage. There is no assigned parking either, nor fixed defined parking spots.
      Installing outdoor charging stations with either a credit card reader or a plug related identification system is the only real way this can be dealt with. That is going to cost trillions of dollars across all of the cities. It has to be built around the worst case scenario where every car charger in an entire neighborhood is plugged in at the same time. This is not especially unlikely given that most people work around the same time and get home around the same time.
      For fast charging on the interstate, particularly because they want to see 18wheelers go electric is going to require large power plants near every rest stop. The amounts of energy required to fast charge is enormous. Charging a single megawatt battery in an 18 wheeler engineered to be charged in 5 minutes would require 20 megawatts. Presumably we would want to re-create whatever exists in these rest stops, just electric instead of gas. So maybe 20 pumps for gas and 5 for the trucks. That’s a lot of juice.

      • Prog loons simply don’t know and don’t care about the realities of the infrastructure required to convert the entire vehicle fleet to electricity.

        • Electric is sexy and on the surface is “clean.” Liberals love that. And, admittedly, it reduces local pollution. But until we have fusion available, the (literally) dirty secret is that the electric car, on average, is effectively “burning” 63% fossil fuels (natural gas, slightly less coal and hardly any oil), 20% nuclear with all its baggage, and
          [a round of applause for the “greens” please…]
          17% renewables.

          • Quit reading the news for your info…

      • The physics aren’t even there for 18 wheelers to work. Your Amazon package would cost $500 in shipping. A large, conceited swath of the population is conditioned to believe (much like the mask people with fake ass COVID) that their consumer choice of buying an electric car will literally change the temperature of the earth. And Atheists mock Noah’s Ark? Intelligence is not critical thinking. Anyone who scores high on a critical thinking test would not own an electric vehicle. The electric grid is also incapable of handling that even if they caught on to any degree. I was at a golf club in the bay area where 80% of the cars were Teslas. They’re the emblem of a certain class that was buying Volvo 240 Wagons in the 70s. It’s going out of style though. Elon said nice things about Trump two months ago.

        • Yea for sure on the grid not being able to handle it they are stretched thin and overloaded the way it is right now…

          • a electric backhoe is an impossibility. For serious mining, the ground and pound, you need the density of petrol.

          • From what I know, electric large scale mining has been a thing for a long time. It’s just not battery operated. I’ve seen pictures where they have large wheeled machinery connected like trolley line connectors to overhead wires.

            I guess it is highly dictated by the needs of the site. Presumably this is a lot cheaper than diesel where it is possible.

          • Coal is king as long as you can transmit the power.

      • This is one case where our American use of imperial units can hurt us. American cars are rated in horsepower while in other countries they use the metric unit, kilowatts. Think about how your basic economy sedan might have 130 hp. That’s 100 kw. 100,000 watts! 100 hair dryers going at once. Just plug in 100 hair dryers at home and turn them all on and see what happens. If your main breaker is 100 amps your whole house is able to provide about 1/10 of the power your little Honda (or your 100 hair dryers) uses. Behold the magic of hydrocarbon energy storage.

        • and even then, the sissy Europeans only have less cars because they have less space and less gas. also, they were decent enough to keep railroads and unions… for a while at least.

          • But they have an excellent public transit system. And they’d damned well better, given the taxes they pay!!! Transit makes more sense in the much denser population typical of much of Europe. And this system worked very well, as a drunken solider in Germany for two years can attest 😀

          • America used to have great public transportation. But now they are just a gibs program because they are dangerous because of vibrants. Most of these European cities didn’t have vibrants taking over the PT system and destroying it just by their presence. Just like the “inner city” has been destroyed.
            In my city these are all of the neighborhoods surrounding the central business districts and also the colleges. Temple University is right in the middle of one these ghettos. The kids can’t walk around at night because of the realities of living in the ghetto and that’s even with a very heavily police presence.

        • The USA resisted the rest of the world when they wanted to try and push that Metric stuff on us. You gotta watch out for those socialists. You give them a centimeter and they take a kilometer 😀

    • Dude! You could have had your own newsletter business pre-Internet. Nowadays, maybe too much competition.

36. BMW is trying to copy Tesla in the worst possible sense. While Tesla wants to charge you a monthly fee for certain additional software related features, BMW actually wants to start charging a monthly subscription to use the features built into the car! One might assume a seat comes as part of the purchase price of a car, but BMW recons it can charge a monthly subscription for the heated seats functionality.
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/alistaircharlton/2020/07/02/bmw-wants-to-charge-you-a-subscription-for-your-heated-seats/#4628b3403c64

    • You are touching on a point I’ve been making for years wrt that computer on wheels called a car. Who owns the software required to make the car operational? Even more important, why can car manufacturers refuse to modify the software to allow third party equipment modifications/additions? All this hardware-software interface appears to me to be a restraint of trade case waiting to be filed.

      • This has been going on for years.

        Go read about Midwestern farmers battling John Deere for the, “right of repair,” on their expensive farm equipment.

      • I can think of many reasons. The biggest one for the manufacturers is liability issues. Software failures can be fatal. Examples can be found of, at least, passenger plane crashes killing large numbers, that were blamed on a software failure. Almost as big is the re-liablity issue. Sure, the user can in theory tweak the code because it’s “his property,” but adding 20 LB boost on the turbo full time is not good for the engine, but it is damned impressive the teenaged boy man until the engine melts 😀
        Probably this can vary, but usually the actual owner can go ahead and make changes, but it voids the warranty.

        • But this has always been true even before the days of chipping and then reprogramming. Not only that, but there are usually disclaimers in the warranty that using the car for purposes not intended such as off road, drag racing or even using the car as a source of energy will void the warranty. At one point in the 60s Chrysler was selling hemi packages that came with a simple 30 day warranty that covered little more than if the engine was bad right off the bat.

    • ah, the subscription model ball and chain.

      at least in the old days there were less institutions to pay tithes to.

37. I listened to that podcast. Over the course of 2 hours, I think you had less than 10 minutes total air time. I really don’t know why some shows do this. You have a guest so people can hear from that guest, not to listen to the hosts.

    • Those guys seemed intelligent enough, but I also didn’t really want hear them drone on.

    • This is a major reason why I won’t listen to most podcasts. Plus the ummms and uhhhs.

38. Quantum economics also stresses the importance of financial transactions and in particular the role of money as an active force in the economy, for example in the way that it entangles debtors and creditors through loans…and service providers that are making the most of money’s virtual side…
     from The Evolution of Money by Orrell & Chulupaty.

    So virtual money funding virtual promises yields a virtual pot of gold at the end of the rainbow…if and only if we never get to the end of the rainbow? It only exists if we never get there? If we get there it won’t exist? Schrodinger’s Payoff?

    …But what happens when the system slows or begins to lock up and virtual money has no value because the people who own it have no real assets? Or to protect the assets the money changers do have most of the population finds itself priced out of the market because their access to virtual money has been cut off?

    Would bond buyers be willing to continue purchasing bonds to maintain a system that has begun to rattle apart and may never give them a return?

    If I go to the track and everyone who places a bet to win,place or show gets nothing…only the owner of the horse get a winning stake…what happens when people are no longer willing to place a bet? The owner’s pool also dries up. Foreign investment is going to find a situation this volatile worth the risk?

    This all has a pyramid scheme flavor to it where everyone outside of the elitist of elites ends up holding the bag.

    Many of those getting the shaft will be smart, organized, armed and highly motivated to rebuild and begin again from scratch if they need to…after they settle some old scores.

    • The central banks are the prime buyers now. They’re even buying junk bond index funds. Unload anything you want onto them. The Swiss National Bank owns boatloads of Tesla stock. And that’s the Swiss. I pity the fool who has bonds or an annuity as a pension.

    • Soros’ version of quantum economics was reflexivity, same bullshit, different wrapper.

      It works until it doesn’t and while it does I want Our Guys squeezing that lemon until the Jews run down Uncle Shmuely’s leg.

      The limit to psychology-and-finance-based economics is fear. The Zucky Trillions Casino will crater only if and when something spooks the suckers – particularly at the Han Hub of the world market. A dam in China, China vs. Taiwan. Or even resurgent WuFlu.

      Until then, hopium floats. But so does shit.

      • https://youtu.be/Zyhu2ysqKGk

    • Would bond buyers be willing to continue purchasing bonds to maintain a system that has begun to rattle apart and may never give them a return?

      They must or the system will fail. Their very financial survival depends on them continuing to believe. How is faith destroyed in the system? You have to devalue the checks that the average person gets whether it be from work or the government. That’s why people are content to sit home and……..wait to see what happens. They are getting paid and don’t have to work, so it’s not a bad deal for them, but the smart ones are scared. They are like little forest critters who smell the hint of smoke.

    • the horse owner is also the owner of the venue, and has total power to bar competition on either end, or simply he is part of a racket. so even though his gambling operation is worthless, he now just raises ticket venue on those semi-rich who can’t own horses (stock) or venues (bonds) ever, while giving out free caviar at the exit. most people will only afford watching on tv with potato chips, as they won’t be allowed to have wages to gamble away.

39. There is a huge struggle going on world wide, between at least two factions. assets are being sacrificed for no real purpose in a panic. that is the other bizarre phenomena to the one zman is discussing. e.g. the sports leagues are being explicitly politicized even though that is catastrophic to their survival. it is this opaque struggle that is causing the distortion effects you talk about; it is putting tons of energy into the current system, and burning it off at the same time — a transient equilibrium.

    • I would love to see the sports leagues fail. But, since so many of the teams are owned by rich jews, I don’t see it happening. I’m pretty sure they will be bailed out by the government.

      Of course I’m a pessimist by nature.

      • Not sure the ownership may much care. For years it seems that purchasing a “team” has been less a well thought out business decision than an egotistic acquirement of folk who have made their bones elsewhere.

        • spectator games and sports was always a plaything of the rich, and drug of the poor.

          the old victorian ideal is gone, like the victorians.

    • yes for the first time ever the establishment is openly messing with the bread and circuses. That is what disturbs me most about this. That signals a change in the attitude of the establishment and how they intend to deal with the public.

40. And in other awesome news, after that little protracted downtime the other nights. Voting is now working again!
    Some of the peanut gallery will whine about this, but for those of us who need a tool to parse 400+ comments it is the best one we have. Vote away! 🙂

    • Upvote.

41. I’m reminded of those words to the song in Disney’s “Dumbo”:

    “Well, I have seen most everything
    When I’ve seen an elephant fly!”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v2exWrsGOc

42. So the new economy is not about production any longer, it’s about middle men, people who do tranzactions, moving capital from one hand to another.
    It makes sense if we view current US economy as a cog of the entire global economy that mostly focuses on moving capital based on its jewish ideology. Basically as long as China & other asian countries produce goods & accept dollar as transaction currency in foreign exchange markets, US economy won’t fall, despite massive unemployment.
    In conclusion USA might have massive unempoyment, but China does not, thus US economy will keep going.

    • This is why we should not worry too much about the dollar because it is used for over 86% of international transaction settlements. No other currency is even close at this time.

      China’s main issue is ensuring the Three Gorges dam does not collapse under record summer flooding.

      • No you should worry. What is China forced to do when we print massive amounts of money? That inflation goes somewhere. The currency peg ensures those nations that use a peg eat the inflation. We are financing our modern economy with the slave labor of the third world, in a sense.

        • If/when it all breaks down, let us assume that the US Dollar, or at least the Federal debt, quickly becomes worthless. On the one hand, this will of course be a slap in the face of major trading partners who hold the bulk of our debt. On the other hand, it’ll be payback to the USA in the sense that we had greatly benefitted these countries over a long period with such things as exporting much of our industry and jobs to them (China and others), providing essentially free military umbrella for much of the world (Europe, Japan, etc.). Karma is a bitch.

      • that’s also another reason they want to keep the slaves consuming, the dollar is propped up by it as globalist currency. meanwhile the Chinese can afford to pay their peasants in yuan crumbs and also work them a lot more to death and depression because of their materialist-imperial commie ways, yet at least give them sweeter compensation in public services (for the time being) and ethno-cultural pride (ditto). the US prices its peasants out with the expensive dollar, so they must be made to work and consume for their atomized selves while community and culture breaks down due to lack of public caring. two sides of materialism, the one collective, the other individual, one usually devolving into the other because none are meant to last.

        the key question is, how fat can the hamsters get, before their wheels (which power everything) break down. that’s why both systems fail. the Chinese with their higher iq and materialism will kick the can down the road, but eventually they will too get fat and tired of spinning, even if at higher speeds. that dam may not break, but the environmentalist crap China will get for record summer rain (nevermind solar cycles) will make them spend into bureaucracy even more, those hamsters can indeed get very fat. meanwhile, growing numbers of lonely people in apartments i bet, single women encouraged to live it up, single men encouraged to live it down. when will the dam break, who knows, but water keeps rising…

      • We avoid much of the consequences of money creation because the dollars are quickly exported. But what happens if overseas transactions slow significantly and the dollars are stuck in the US like a backed up toilet?

    • The “grift” as they say. Many companies are outsourcing their AP to credit card companies, the credit card company bags 2% of the charges and return 1% to the company. In a ZIRP environment that’s highway robbery.

43. We are truly living in strange times where nothing makes sense anymore – at least those tried and true things we always took for granted. And the coronatard fear/uncertainty keeps churning along, retarding any semblance of returning to some kind of normalcy. I guess tens of millions of people out of work, a stunted economy, 401ks going to the moon for no apparent reason, or collecting one’s ubi fro uncle sugar IS the new norm.

    • I saw what looked like an affluent 60ish white guy pumping gas, no mask, then he got into his car and put a mask on and drove off. There was no one else in his car. I don’t even know what to do with these people they are so crazy and it just seems to be getting crazier. I think this is one of the paradoxes. The more safety we demand the less safe everything becomes

      • I’ve seen them on hiking trails in wilderness areas. They see me coming, then hurriedly put on masks. Sometimes I see them just huffing and puffing along wearing a mask…miles from the nearest road. Wrap your head around that.

        • I am so tired of being treated like a disease vector. When I’m walking down the street I refuse to cotton to this nonsense but almost always people than walk in the street so they can stay the requisite 6 feet away from me because, you know, I’m a disease vector

          • All part of the plan sister to make us more atomized and distrustful of one another…It’s easier to get people to turn on one another when they hate or fear each other…

        • My neighborhood has joggers with masks. I hope they blow out their heart valves.

          • I hope by the word, “joggers” you mean the traditional White people exercising. If you had feral Blacks running through your neighborhood… 😉

          • Uh, what is the correct term for a Melanic Hominid® member of the track and field team, if he’s out running through town? They are tops in certain track events. We must give them their due. 🙂

        • At the marina I see couples
          wearing masks on their boats
          as they motor or sail out into the bay.
          Absolutely jaw dropping stupid.
          They are 100’ from other people.
          Its a minority but every time I see it
          I wonder what kind of personality
          does that? If it wasn’t so dangerous
          to interact with crazy I would enjoy asking them. As others have noted the best thing about the masks is I can identify crazy
          from a hundred feet away now.

      • My son wondered aloud to a guy in his car wearing a mask “ do you wear a condom when you jack off?”

        Masks have just been made mandatory in the downtown area of my NE latte/college town. Nuts, just plain nuts.

        • It just occurred to me today: A year ago it was unacceptable and proably illegal in some cases to enter a store with your face masked. Today failing to be so, can get you cited or arrested or refused service. What a difference a bat virus (with optional stopover in a laboratory) and a year makes…

          • Year! It started in March. And we still have five months to go of this year and half the country seems to be demonically possessed

        • Way visual! I love this ZBlog!

      • I was masked today. I went to the outdoor farmers market, which has lanes separating everybody by tapes, at 645am by habit because in former times the restaurants would all call for the best items at 7. It was sparsely populated but except for me they were all old hags. I purchased my desired items as the hags would pull up to me and scream “where is your mask!!!” and I would ignore them. I bought my final item with a faggot screaming in my ear, “you need to leave sir!!” At which point I told him, quite honestly, that if he continued to violate social distancing I would whoop his queer ass. I then departed for home.

        I tell my good friend about this event, not my first rodeo, and he’s one of us but said anyway, “why don’t you just go along with it.” I cannot for the life of me acquiesce to these Karens and fags.

        Apparently I’ve awoken in a parallel universe or something. Jeebus, when did it come to this bullshit? Everything is completely fake. Was I slipped LSD or something? I’m ready to put them against the wall.

        • I agree about the masks.

          However, the Karens and fags will eventually summon the badge gang and you will have a real issue on your hands.

          • I have get-outta-jail-free cards in my wallet. My state and municipality are utterly corrupt and I provide professional services to this person and that person. Shy of murder, I won’t get arrested.

            If only I could manage to procure a Karen/No Fags card … wishing ….

          • I have get-outta-jail-free cards in my wallet.

            I’m glad for you. The vast majority of us, myself included, don’t have that type of option available.

            So, for now, for me it’s grey man theory.

          • well that’s what i call building community. Now start making freinds with the farmers and you are covered.

          • in the last week, a boomer white woman maced two people outside for not wearing a mask, a boomer white woman in a Walmart told a woman and her toddlers that she hoped they would all die because the toddler’s weren’t wearing a mask, and a guy shot into a hotel because people weren’t social distancing

          • Just wait until the goggles are mandatory, too. Full hazmat suits aren’t far off.

          • Holy shit! Girlfriend, get your butt moved and gone.
            Went to the post office yesterday in small town amerika, just me and 2 plygs (FLDS polygamists in their big hair and long dresses. Rather have plygs as neighbors than obsequious stupid Fs). You laugh! But the 3 of us didn’t mask up. 8 people came in behind all masked up looking furtive and scared. My height lengthened, my shoulders straight and tall, have learned to stare with an 8 on the Ricter Scale look. When forced, I do wear a mask…under my nose. So far not messing with The Range. Will pick my battles.

        • https://youtu.be/MpmRWGRM1RQ

          Couldn’t resist 🙂

      • In the scene you describe, his mistake was putting on a mask in his car with I assume hands that had just touched the gas pump (without being sanitized.) While transmission by air is far more likely than by contact, what that customer did probably exposed him to a random sample of a few dozen people’s hand germs. Not wise.
        If I’ve read the scene correctly, it is a good example of crazy. Not , as you might think, because wearing a mask is foolish. But you just described someone who is pretending to take the precautions but doing it wrong, in fact in this case, probably upping his risk of catching COVID-19.

        • I think contact is a far more likely transmission route than airborne.

      • Good point. Those safety maniacs don’t seem too concerned about the danger presented by Burn, Loot, Murder and ANTIFAG.

    • uncle sugar will be the norm from now on.

      will be nice for some productive people who do need the gibs, but most will just give it back to the machine, which is always ever efficient and ruthless in sterilizing its inefficient members, by ever more robotized standards, until all cogs are worn, then it breaks down.

      also, if robots replace brokers, why wouldn’t they replace union negotiators, or any bartering for that matter. whoever controlled these automated blockchains and algorithms would control tender, and in effect the means of production. not to mention, crypto itself is controlled by access to real life power and servers, and the globalists may well eventually declare private servers and offgrid power production illegal because natsees or whatever. why do you think they like drones so much…

44. History is pretty good predictor of the fate of economic bubbles. The only thing novel about our current bubble is it’s enormity. Ask a Venezuelan about life in a post bubble-collapse world. And we are a bifurcated people now. When the going gets tough, the productive will roll up their sleeves and go to work, and the other half will whine and bitch and riot for government gravy. And there will be jackboots to quell the unrest and enslave the dwindling productive class. And it all will be done for the “Greater Good.”

    • Cops are hired and judged by their ability to follow orders. They will do as they are told. They will stand by and watch vibrancy riot and crush whites who even try to fight back.
      The conservatives who the military and cops are on their side are total fools.

      • Yes, reality is reality, and it’s best to accept reality as it is and deal with it rather than bemoan it’s downside. All tyrannies require an enforcement corps, and most of the jackboots are simply ordinary Joe’s doing a job. Accept that reality and work around it. The path to victory over tyranny does not involve fighting the peons on the bottom of the social pyramid, be they jackboots or deranged rioters. Focus your efforts where is matters most.

      • The only way the Hutus could come close to “crushing” whites is if the cops are actively on their side. That won’t happen. Once it all goes down, we will smoke the Negros like a cheap panatella.

        • I don’t think negroes have ever won a battle or war unless they have overwhelming numbers and outside help. The exception is Isandlwana where they only had a 5:1 superiority. Even the civil rights war was really won by jewish lawyers.

    • “When the going gets tough, the productive will roll up their sleeves and go to work”

      Up until they decide not to.
      When the productive decide to only produce for their own needs, without producing surpluses to sell into the market, that’s when TSHTF.

      • Exactly which is why I push for Communities so hard that way you keep working but its for your own people and you can succeed where others are failing…

45. sea people = phoenicians

    • says you. wouldn’t the locals, who were neighbors of the phoenicians, called them by their name?

46. Back in March, we all thought we were headed towards a new Great Depression. It didn’t happen.

    Kudos to Z for having the intellectual honesty to address the reasons why, rather than kicking and screaming that it’s forever right around the corner, Peter Schiff-style.

    • The joke about Schiff is that he’s predicted “12 of the past 4 recessions…”.

      All things the same, Schiff and the Austrians are correct that the creation of credit by fiat leads to the situation at hand. The banks have the ability to “manage” the economy strictly through the extension of credit. However, they HAVE to lend at this point otherwise the negative interest rates prevail like they do in Europe.

      I’m inclined to the Peter Schiff pessimism. Something breaks. Where and what I have no idea but the powers that be are running this thing on spit and duct tape at this point. Nobody knows what comes next….

      • Everyone sings the praises of the bankers on the way up.
        I don’t think timing is that important in the grand scheme of things in the event of a collapse. But gold and silver will not protect you. That is my difference with Schiff. He has already left the US, at least on a part time basis and can always run to Israel. We have nowhere to run. The vast majority of Americans have no real savings to protect. They have a job and a house. Mass unemployment will devalue their house and lack of a job will be their biggest problem. Real prices of food and consumer goods would go through the roof. Getting out of Dodge is really the only way you can be protected from what Schiff is predicting.

        • This isn’t the first time in history that this has happened. The French Revolution had its assignats. Precious metals and farm land are always the best protections for what’s coming. And owning your dwelling outright. What makes the US unique is just how long it has gone without a currency crisis. There’s no generational memory for how to protect yourself.

          • I don’t think there is a good past analogy. America is a far different place than revolutionary France. If anything, Tsarist Russia and Stalin are better examples. The ethnic problems of the Early Soviet Union are pretty ignored today. From the mass starvation of the Ukrainians to the ethnic transfers Stalin did to quell the locals in various places are much closer to the US. How are a bunch of Samalians going to affect Minnesota post collapse? Or the presence of generic Africans in every major city in the US? Various Mestizo groups?

          • The best thing you can do has already been stated here 100 times over tars… I don’t know how many times it has to be said before it sinks in… Build fucking Community and if you can’t do that where you are at move to somewhere you can…We can talk and talk about it until the cows come home but if your not moving in that direction then your pretty much accepting your defeat without even trying…Also for some people that might mean leaving the country but for me and mine we are doing it here in the Bitterroot Valley and any of the like-minded are welcome to join…

          • Lineman, you should set up a survivalist timeshare company. Aquire some land with gravity fed water. Throw up a barn with cattle. build cheap functional cabins. sell time shares for summer vacations and a clause for permanent settlement should the shit hit the fan. Don’t know how one would exclude vibrant diversity. but if you might not have to actively if you advertised on sites like this one. Bitterroot Christian settlement. It would be sorta like a insurance policy for people living in the death traps to bug out to went the balloon goes up. Build enough meat on the bone for capitol improvements and getting more land and paying a manager.

          • The Vibrants don’t like the mountains. Whites are mountain people.

          • Shhhh don’t tell anyone…

          • WTF you’ve already done so multiple times in the past week. (Told anyone). Most people I know in MT would prefer you keep your trap shut.

          • I’ve had that talk about other states in the NW – we want more based Whites for neighbors. It’s not as if MT is a secret.

            You can have Us for neighbors or you can have Them. The more of Us that live there, the less welcoming it is for Them and the fewer jobs, homes etc… for Them to live in rather than Us.

          • They don’t get that Brother and then they bitch when the Commie moves in next door but since they didn’t do shit except hide out instead of inviting our guys to come be neighbors they get surrounded and have to pick up and move again…Tried to tell those kind people but their just to stubborn or stupid to get it…

          • Your reference to “they” speaks volumes.

            Get a clue, everyone is not your brother.

          • Most of them regardless political persuasion want to turn it into the shit hole they came from.

            They build their mcmansion or hobby ranch and drive up taxes.

            Yes, “they” do get “it”. “They” have been here before you considered it.
            You referring to “they” speaks volumes, lineman.

          • Avoiding debt would seem to be good advice. As for gold, there is a world of difference between owning gold and owning paper purporting to give ownership, as many people will no doubt discover before too long. Even physical possession is no grantee against a government which decides that it’s need to own precious metals is the greater.

          • disagree, this may the time to borrow and buy hard assets. asset that can be lost in a nearby lake.

    • We have to leave open the possibility that the crap has not hit the fan, but it is on its way. The end of unemployment checks will be an interesting development. The expiry of the eviction freeze is another. A trillion or so in magic money may simply have delayed the inevitable.

      I suspect state politicians will now suddenly get religion on the economy. Their drama was underwritten by the Federal government.

      • The lack of hyperinflation over the last four months is going to make Universal Basic Income all the more popular.

        • yep. it will happen. the hamsters will be fed. just enough though, so they spin. it’s simple, the debt apocalypse never comes, because the doofuses keep working 60 hour weeks and refinancing their debts forever, to get Daddy a sugarbaby and a Mustang and transdaughter PreP and a Tesla.
          since we are officially all palace economies, we have to measure by the first most important asset of these: the slaves that keep it going. examples: Russia has oil and serfs and vodka factories, China has bees, India classy butterflies and worthless ants, Mexico coke-roaches; America has its hamsters, usually the lighter kind, feeding and preaching credit and consumption to the world.
          … until the wheel breaks. perhaps because the hamsters eventually fatten up, degenerate, miscegenate, and die, as they power up the whole home ironically. perhaps the owners are just tired of hamsters, seeing that the hamsters are passe 90s pets now; and they instead wanna be getting diabetic from harvesting the bees’ honey, while dealing with the other bugs. plus they do like to presume their solar panels too. but don’t worry, the owners will let these poor hamsters die in consuming pleasure. seems fitting. in the end we are all dead, said the owners’ hamster-friendly pagan prophets, so they lay waste to the living by worshiping themselves through idolizing matter. some may even believe to be chosen.
          thus only God can get the sinners out of the cage. if not, we will just work to buy our fewer young ones robots, and then their robots will replace many of them as they work to give their even fewer young ones a trip to lower space; or some other bs gib that President Elon will pull out of his butt as a carrot for the ever dwindling hamster masses.
          oh and the robots and the algorithms and the blockchains will be owned by pump-and-dump friends, no escape there, did you see Bezos’ dog? there will be more autonomous robot sex dolls than fair robot brokers, believe me. after all, elite humans like to fix scales and dumb down the populace with hookers since time immemorial, some more than others, but still…
          … unless the information is hidden, which kind of defeats the purpose, but may be done with enough coordination. some may be able to go rogue and install servers and robots somewhere, creating parallel systems. for how long would these mythical offgrid communities remain though, who knows. the hamsters do power up drones too.
          meanwhile, whether the hamsters get too fat or anorexic or whatever, here’s hoping they stop. perhaps the way the cage rattles and falls apart surrounded by the other pests will be enough.

        • UBI was inevitable anyway. Automation has eliminated so many kinds of jobs and categories of jobs as the render the economy highly unstable.
          Hell even the job killers are unstable, things like Expedia which contributing to killing most trip planning jobs (that used to be a decent jobs BTW) have lost 90% of business.
          Its going to get worse when the office has people working from home and not be called to go back. Ignoring the horrid social costs and work/life issues, the economic spill over effects will be profound.
          All those shops that serviced the office along with the office will just dry up and blow away.
          Mostly the jobs we create don’t pay enough either to live or for family formation and we’ve seen the results in record low fertility (biggest generation, fewest babies)
          Since there isn’t going to be hyper inflation or really much inflation in most areas, why not pay people off?

      • Nothing but good times ahead. With the Biden/Harris administration it will be a squirrel, rat, pigeon, family pet, miscellaneous road kill in every pot.

        • Skink would approve

      • The implosion already is beginning. State and local govt. pension funds soon will start blowing, like Puerto Rico, leading to dozens of bankruptcies, first in Blue States, then Red (see link). Unemployment will remain above 10% for 4 years. When a Dem wins in 2024 (not this year), everything will crash even faster. After that, who knows.
        https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-state-pension-crisis-goes-beyond-the-big-blue-states-11590791639

        • If GM (a pension that happens to build cars) is too big to fail, why not public pensions?

          Muni bonds and state pensions can be rolled into fed’s infinity balance sheet or some other public loss private profit Blackrock sidecar.

          Not that there wont be some cram-down where beneficiaries get a shit sammy. But half a shit sammy is better than nothing they will inform them.

          I am sure the process would involve a million billion transactions over some protracted timeline to keep the advisors and banks and certain underlying assets picked as winners long enough to send another generation of elites through Yale.

          All that economic paper activity would be a boom. Plus TPTB would get another massive asset repricing and consolidation event, which is nice.

          The other option is to cull the blue haired beneficiaries who are drawing on those over-promised bennies (covid-20) or carve out the medical portion of such and hitch them to medicare. Hell, why not all of the above.

          • When CalPERS blows up the explosion will be visible from space. Illinois will go first. Fed bailouts for these states are 101% guaranteed.

          • This is absolutely true and sad. And Senators from places like WY will sit there with thumbs up asses. The small list of fiscally responsible states will become even smaller. The whole point of a Senate is to either stop something like that or give your state something in return.

          • On Calpers it’s a fiasco for sure talking to a guy that works for them but is trying to get out he says he has to not only pay in for his pension but he pays a separate portion in for the retirees that’s how bad it is…So not only do they need his portion to pay the retirees they also need him to pay an extra portion because his regular isn’t cutting it…If they were a private sector they would be in jail for a Ponzi Scheme writ large…

          • They have a 7% guaranteed return. I don’t think that’s changed. In a market with zero % interest rates. They have to make more aggressive moves every year, and the Chinaman in charge is routing a lot to Chinese ponzi schemes.

          • the blue haired and other monkeys are already are on medicare, getting free emergency treatment at private hospitals, where do you think the infinity balance sheet comes from? it’s the lower middle segment that has no coverage, the famed donut hole left by the destruction of unions and their health plans. cover these more, and the bottom rung less, and charge the rent-owners at the top more instead of the producers in the upper middle.

            otherwise i agree, it’s what the fascists did a century ago, roll the public debts into some instrument that could be paid for by whoever was wealthy. the problem now is, so few are the elites who can repay these instruments, in effect the pyramid will remain smooth and steep because asset repricing and consolidation.

            and the half-shit sammy like you say is inevitable, in fact it might have to be a big sammy if there’s nothing else to eat… because after all, the elites are now global. back when fascists or any other movements or governments redistributed, they could fall back on local industry and autarchy (and dare i say order and tradition) generating a new elite to replace the degenerate one, economic and otherwise. today instead we are talking of robot brokers.

            if the brokers are replaced, then their clients would simply talk to a machine on the phone for longer, while still getting screwed. in fact, if robots really did away with human intrigue and negotiation, then whoever owned them would just own the means of production… and dispense them, or not.

        • As a retired college professor and “proud” recipient of CalSTRS pension money you need to understand that CalSTRS, while about 64% funded at the moment, has a plan. We gots a plan, OK.

          The plan is that the state and the districts will make everything right by 2046. Got it.

          We are going to make a killing in the stock market while also being SJWs about who we invest in. The stock market cannot tank, the federal government will bail out the fund, and whats left of the stupid middle class will fill in the gaps with tax increases.

          You need to understand that the CA government unions pick the state politicians. And the TPTB tell these totally dependent parasites what to think. It is a win/win. If Gov Newsom came out on Monday and told the parasites to jump up and down 4 times on their left leg while humming the Hamilton theme song to keep COVID at bay then the parasites would do it, gladly. And declare that they are following the science. We always follow science and the facts; we are not racist flyover idiots who believe in magic.

          Now at some point it ends but when that is nobody knows and the vast majority of “educators” think that the magic money tree is real and incredibly most think they are underpaid even though a number of retired college teachers pull in a 6 figure annual pension.

        • Pensions will be allowed to go under before gibs, particularly EBT, but they will be bailed out up until that trade-off has to happen. One major driver of the Left’s furious power grabs is in fact the pending implosion of pension systems.

      • A large percentage of American workers actually got a raise from the unemployment benefits. They bought i phones and paid some credit card bills.

        • I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that the local pizza chain couldn’t get drivers (who make $20+ per hour) because of the $600 per week.

          Surprise! They $600 went away and they’ve got drivers again.

          • Yup. I’ve had trouble getting ranch workers all summer. Then, the last week of July before the benefits run out, they started showing up again.

          • Those damned lazy proles. Don’t working people suck?

            Is this really the look you’re going for here, Meme?

          • I don’t think it was particularly fair to working people that the unemployed were making more money for doing nothing, no…

          • That’s what they want though meme to drive a wedge in between us even further…Am I pissed about it sure I’m out busting my ass and didn’t get anything from the government but let’s be pissed at the government who allowed women in the workplace, hordes of aliens, and got in bed with corporations which drove down wages where the average guy can’t make a decent living even if he bust his ass…The only way we win is to get back to the basics and work up from there with a collapse mixed in along the way…

          • Lineman…so this is Divide and Conquer…us against us?

          • Yes so we have to be smarter than them and be mad at the real culprits…

          • Maybe its unfair to pay such low wages to working people that an extra 1200 a month seems like a good deal.

          • It’s $600 per week, on top of the state benefit. For most places that’s 50K per year. Gourmet poverty and new iPhones (viz Apple stock)

          • $600 per unemployment check which is $1200 a month at least here in California.
            That amount puts many workers roughly where they would have been if wages as percent GDP had kept pace with GDP growth and weren’t arbitraged down.

          • At the wife’s business, employees asked to be laid off or fireD in order to get the Fed $600 extra and the $240 State unemployment.

          • Rather shortsighted of them, don’t you think?

          • Not really. Its not like they’ll get in come otherwise and the odds are very good that unemployment will end up morphing into UBI or if the economy picks up they ca be hired back.
            If you want conscientious workers focused on the long term it costs money regardless of skill level.
            This does mean that a lot of business models need to change which won’t be easy.
            Getting say many slaughter houses and meat packers to do the minimum for safety requires a huge armed federal bureaucracy and many of them would rather shut down and starve people than change.Thus meat shortages.
            It make same understand why the Soviets sent people to labor camps to be honest.

            Now don’t get me wrong, I’m no Red and what was being asked of them was unreasonable. Still some people are so truculent they won’t even do reasonable things,
            its very bad for society at large and for the same reason we don’t allow fentanyl for recreation, we can demand reasonable measures for public safety.
            At this moment however, its not certain the union will make it past this year. Democrats are off war gaming succession and coup and everyone else is arming up.

          • You need to get used to this as it’s unfortunately your future. For example I have a work colleague who’s father is trying to build a house in Mexico. A strange pastime for a retired British civil servant perhaps, but he has recently taken ownership of a Mexican woman and needed somewhere to keep her. Anyway, he decided to combat the notorious Mexican work ethic by paying an extremely generous bonus to his workers after they had finally completed some task or other in the hope that he would see some improvement in their punctuality as a result. Sadly he was disappointed, in fact he didn’t see any sign of the work force until the bonus was finally spent. It seems that Mexicans AKA new Americans have highly developed ability to judge the absolute minimum of labour required to avoid starvation and consider doing anything more as a matter of deep personal shame. On the plus side, at least they’re not Pakis, you have at least have that to be grateful for.

          • the Church and the nobles fed us for longer, it’s what we know. and like you say, at least we don’t smell of curry nor cover our nice women up.

            although at least back then we were more decent, and y’all could keep us at bay. since the freemasons took over, not so much.

          • The thing about the Protestant work ethic is that it is only suitable when enough gains go to the man doing the work. No one in Mexico is going to get ahead nor will a moderate pittance of a bonus improve the life of an 90IQ Mestizo in any meaningful long term way so why bother?
            Given the situation in Mexico and to a lesser degree in the US its outright cuckholdry to work hard for the man when you aren’t forced too.

          • This is a big part of the dilemma. The Prot work ethic is a moral gloss to a sucker’s bargain unless the worker has meaningful work – a family & home to support and/or work that really provides a sense of accomplishment and purpose, not just a McJob.

            Our economy does a shitty job of that largely because of scale and wealth concentration issues, as well as a consumer aesthetic that prefers cheap mass produced goods instead of artisanal craftsmanship and quality.

          • The problem is that an artisanal economy can’t protect itself against a mass production one. Just ask the Southrons how that went.

          • Clearly Mexicans do honest work at least sometimes, or else they wouldn’t be in demand in the USA. I’m not sure how current this is, but here’s an anecdote from a Rand book if I recall. An American corporation had a small plant in Mexico. A visiting executive figured out how he could double the productivity of the line. As the employees were paid piece rate not hourly, their wages would double. The old Mexican boss smiled, shook his head, and voiced doubt it’d work. No matter, the changes were made and put into operation at the next month’s start. The new plan worked well for two weeks. But one morning, none of the workers showed up. Explanation? The workers had made a month’s wages in two weeks, and there was no reason to work for the rest of the month. 🙂

          • Those Mexican workers may not necessarily shine on IQ tests, but they’re clearly not stupid. When making the window and door openings for this same house they are careful to make them all uniquely different sizes, thereby guaranteeing work for their neighbour the carpenter. No mass produced plastic Chinese windows are gonna be putting him out of work.

          • American “Capital” is more addicted to cheap labor than Anthony Kiedis was to smack. Cheap labor however is anti civilization especially when combined with anti family policies.

          • An indictment of American wages, suppressed for decades from mass immigration. Like an extra $600 a week is living high on the hog. How far America has fallen. Meanwhile, our politicians and friends engorge themselves with millions of our tax dollars.

          • I just googled and got (slightly) updated: in real terms, wages peaked in 1974. What suprised me is that, the graph claims, they matched that peak just over a year ago, March 2019. Given 2020’s dramas, I think we can assume it’s dropped since. 🙁

        • For perspective, I was paid $20/hour to operate an air hammer in refractories circa 1985 before I snagged a micro-programming job, yes I know VAX, for $20/hour as an engin student at Michigan. It’s 2020 and people are enjoying $600/week?! Eff me. I was poor so long and then I wasn’t. Who can live off $600/week on their own let alone support a family? The negroes control more than that per household.

          • It’s +$600/week over and above the unemployment they would normally be getting.

            There are lots of people out there working for $10-$15 per hour, so normal unemployment +$600/week is a huge raise.

          • I did not know. So, double-dipping. Pay off those credit cards until next time, Bob ….

          • that’s another perverse incentive. they don’t reward you for not needing credit, they reward you for needing it and working your ass off to pay it. in short, you have to bend the knee to the patrons. at least back in the day the Church and the nobles let you and your community stay in your land and eat from it, and keep your saints and weapons and fair women from foreigners and nature. now you have to beg different patrons – patron bank, patron government, patron retailer, patron entertainment, patron tech.

          • Are you patronizing me? 🙂

          • The US is guaranteed a catabolic collapse because of wage arbitrage.
            Wages must come up to an immigration ban and family stability imposed but the people with power cannot and will not allow it
            So baring a war or radical forced change over the long term, collapse is certain.
            Society has become more and more costly to operate and the things that are required to mitigate that, increasing wages and decreasing social costs are impossible so the system will fall.
            In the short term, mass money printing and handouts can hold the line a bit but if we don’t fix this situation fast, we are all screwed.

          • Also usually when you’re living in Mom’s basement and all utilities are paid, rent is cheap to non-existent 🙂

          • So long as you pay into the household fund, its fine.
            If you are bothering with nookie. go rent a motel room.
            We assume that its a good idea to split families.
            Its not.
            Extended families are in every way better than nuclear families. We push nuclear families mainly to pump consumption and because its the smallest, weakest, stable configuration.
            A large extended family has littl eneed for the state and if big enough and mean enough can even protect itself to a high degree.
            What it doesn’t do is consume as much which a growth based, Mammon loving economy can’t have.

          • The average salary in this berg is about $20-22k. That $400+ a week or so. You add $600 on top of State unemployment of $240 and you’re sitting pretty. Since those type of jobs are pretty much at the bottom end, you can pick one of them up anytime, anywhere.

          • Cool story.

        • And saved. More money has been saved at this point than I think ever, before.
          The big money boys at the Fed were talking about stopping people from saving that transfer payments but its pointless as most of the people who needed them spent them and those that didn’t who got say a stimulus, could just pay bills with that and save the earnings.
          High savings also suppress inflation and while yield is low to zero, so is price inflation.
          Covid and the stupid appears to have killed consumerism , no idea what comes next. Hopefully not ideology and war.

          • If you want to make people spend the money, send them a debit card that expires in 30 days.

          • Won’t work. The supply chains can’t handle the shock.
            Also bills still need to be paid and having people go without electricity or homeless won’t fix the velocity of money, quite the contrary.
            Lastly, people who still have an income can just shift earned funds to bills and debt reduction anyway. They are the issue, not the suddenly poor.
            As far as long term fix, if you want efficiency in your economy, go to a basic income of 1200-2400 a month for everyone for good.
            If you are able or willing to regulate or capable of long term planning which we aren’t, debt default, reindustrialization , autarky and bimetallism along with an immigration freeze/reversal.
            My guess is we’ll do nothing though and who knows what will happen with mass poverty hunger and homelessness, ethnic divisions and guns lots of guns.

      • At least we have Zman helping to lead the way in the thinking behind what’s going on. Advice for short-term and long-term financial investment, etc.? Short-and-long-term preparations?

        • The only thing Z-man has taught me is that I don’t know “jack” about economics.

          • Don’t know “jack” about economics! That’s almost as much as our leading experts in the field.

        • Based on first-hand field research in just the past few months, I heartily suggest you avoid shorting the markets, at least with leveraged inverse funds 😀

        • I’m thinking, seriously, of a long term dollar short by taking out a 30 year loan on a big piece of rural property/farm land. I figure worst case scenario I have to sell out to for whatever the dollar is (not) worth at the time.

      • The other 6 trillion vanished into the pockets of austerity and moral hazard shills like Kudlow, Mnuchin & Laffer who are lashing the proles about “no more free lunch, get back to work, bums.”

        Never forget the 6 trillion.

        • This post made my day. “Never forget the 6 trillion!” Thank you kind sir.

        • yes, we knew the rich had to get their free lunch first, several courses of course.

          there’s legit too many bums too though, which doesn’t help, they are only given lunches when needed. and of course there’s the willing cogs in the middle.

      • A little noted aspect of the dems latest Covid relief bill is a $1trillion dollar bailout package for state and local governments.

        • That’s probably one of the reasons Trump is “threatening” to veto it. Another one of his tough guy threats to do this, that or the other.

        • if only it actually bailed them out.

      • This is also my take on things. No evictions + government handouts for basic expenses means that there’s a feeling that nothing has changed. Officially there’s 30% or so unemployment but until the money stops it won’t matter that much.

        • That’s over in 2 days and in a few weeks mass evictions start.
          Hope you have lots of ammo and food things might go hot.

      • i think every branch of government from a town in maine to the federal gov are operating at a defecit state right now. they are buying stuff they will not be able to pay for when the bill come in. I think they are counting on the dems printing them all masses of money when they take power after the election . this may or may not be what happens. I really don’t think they understood the economics of the shutdown they did. they businesses they runout of existence because they were owned by republicans took a lot of other industries with them and the staggering loss of tax revenue may not have been expected . there is also a major exodus from the blue cities that will take a lot of revenue with them . Who knows. to me this is a forest fire of unplanned consequences that nobody can predict.

      • The shit already hit the fan. Soon it will fly about the room.

    • That argument is like watching the first five minutes of a two hour murder mystery movie and proclaiming that no one got murdered. March was four months ago. This is a long haul. Peter Schiff is like a broken clock. It is right twice a day, and it’s half past 11. What Schiff does know is that you can’t get or have something from nothing. A sacrifice must be made for everything. Consumption must somehow come from production.

      • Four months is plenty of time for warning signs to set in.

        Where’s the inflation? Why are tourist zones still packed?

        Life isn’t all that much different than February, except everyone wears a mask and the professional class works from home now.

        There’s plenty of evidence that in a credit-based economy, the classical rules no longer apply.

        • Our economy is debt-consumption based. The Fed jumped in $6 Trillion. That better create some activity at Applebees carryout. Have you seen the mortgage Forbearance level? I’m reminded of football players with broken bones from the 70s that were just shot up with painkillers and given a slap on the ass to go back out onto the field.

          • And what’s to say that “money printer goes brrrrr” can’t last forever?

            I’m well aware of the classical arguments as to why it can’t, and until March I was fully on-board with them.

            But now?

          • I’m going to go with the laws of nature. That there’s no free lunch. God likes macabre irony. We’re in the short era between the laws of nature being violated, and the consequences to be paid. In this time, everyone either questions their sanity or begins believing in the lie.

          • It’s getting to the point that the only thing you wonder about is why you didn’t buy Apple, tesla, zoom, Amazon etc., four months ago…

          • The stock market is the first sign of inflation. Ten years from now, Tesla will be selling their cars for 10 million fiat buck each.

            2 thousand fiat bucks a share for Tesla is a bargain.

            Going forward people will still loose thier shirts on the stock market, but it will look different.

            The guy who makes a %200 annualized return will maintain his wealth, while the investor with a mere %100 return will see the real value of his wealth severely reduced. He also gets to pay taxes on that “return”

          • why would Tesla be successful?

            otherwise i agree. the bottom and middle will simply disengage more from the top, even if eased into it with ubi and free credit and netflix and chill culture. it’s not noticeable now because the distance is so big, and the top knows how to keep the others busy. it’s like knowing the sun is incredibly much larger than what is seen in the sky, but distance and the atmosphere and the warmth make it palatable.

            eventually many will have their wealth severely reduced, but the drones will simply be over them, and they will simply have to keep ordering netflix and grubhub and die with the mask on webcam. it’s not about keeping the slave in a ball and chain anymore, more about having a nice vr helmet on his head until his bloodline is sterile enough. ironically these means the more brutish will swallow this middle rung, while the top disengages to Elysium safezones between wastelands. again, castizo experience.

            do you think the rich will allow the poor free/cheaper family formation? maybe. do you think they will offer the poor, even those few with higher iq, free/cheaper birth control and abortions and porn and tranny drugs? definitely. Elon probably wants a colony so these rich flee in the end from the ensuing disaster. still affected by his youth i bet.

          • Lol, sucka. Some of us did. Got a new-to-me pickup and deer rifle, too.
            Investing tip: assume everything in the news is the opposite of reality, and the banksters will never allow anything that actually hurts them.

          • Paraphrasing Keynes here The economy can stay irrational longer than you can stay alive,

          • Heinlein is a master of sarcastic humor. In his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress he posits a world where the Moon is colonized, and it is needed to grow food for Earth, sent there by electromagnetically launched containers. This is scarely economical by any conceivable use of energy. Yet after the Moon rebels, it’s official motto is TANSTAAFL (“There ain’t so such thing as a free lunch.”)

          • I recall during the DotCom boom, NPR’s MarketWhatever show had a story about how companies with negative profits are the new normal, the line being that no one would have shorted the rail companies back in the early 1800s.

          • It can go on for a very long time so long as the velocity of money is kept low.
            Discussing the complexities of demand would require a blog of my own, not that I am an economist but as far as I can figure consumerism has collapsed.
            This means between debt and lack of ways to spend money or invest in money isn’t moving which means in anything that isn’t high demand . inflation will be low.
            Food is excluded here as there is a global food crisis as is ammo for obvious reasons but its very possible money printing will be a many many years thing if only to avoid widespread disorder

          • That all makes sense. Probably the most coherent explanation I’ve heard for the past four months thus far.

          • Thanks for the high praise.

          • In this case the field no longer exists and there is no reason to support the NFL anyway.

      • Yes and no. True in the sense of phsyical goods or services of course. However, once you invent a debt based accounting system, anything is possible 😀 Right now, we are the privileged class in a seemingly magic land where we can charge and charge on our credit card, and we haven’t had to make any payments yet. This works great until nobody accepts the credit card… Oh yeah, when that happens, the repayment of the accumulated debt becomes rather unlikely 🙁

    • Not sure paying people to stay home and not work is avoiding a recession—just papering it over.

      • I don’t disagree- but I’ve found myself asking “what evidence is there that this can’t go on forever in a post-scarcity economy?”

        I don’t have definitive proof that it can’t.

        • Yeah, i promised myself to study the economy after 2008 so that i wouldn’t be such dumb money. My money is dumber than ever. That mike burry said the play is land with gravity fed water source back in 2011. That sounded ominous.

        • i think eventually the moral and mental, and even physical, degeneracy created by this lack of scarcity, will break the dam somewhere. materially everyone has a lot, but people are weary or bored, only living the moment, and therefore prone to ignore evil to try to keep sane. still, many somehow feel “something ain’t right”. when the productive works at the Amazon warehouse 12-16 hour days, while the monkey collects checks and rapes outside at night, and it happens in the same neighborhood everywhere in America, maybe something will change. until then, we are on a slow drip.

      • We are already in a depression with 35% GDP decline.
        Problem is there is zero demand for labor that pays well, requires moderate skills and can support a family in an urban society.
        Demand for low skill, modest pay jobs is declining too. Kiosks and Apps reduce employment in food service
        Given the labor surplus even without immigration, wages are easy to arbitrage down,
        Ultimately to prevent favella nation and or race war now we have to paper it over as there is no way to raise wages or to lower prices to meet wages.

    • You think this is over? It hasn’t even begun yet. It’s all being held above our heads by the power of faith….and yet they attack the foundation of that faith at every turn.

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