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The Nikkei 225 opened the week by plunging 12%, its worst day since the infamous Black Monday in 1987. European markets followed, but due to their controls on the markets ever going too far down, they declined just over two percent. The American markets are expected to open down as well. As with Europe, there are controls in place to prevent the markets from sliding too far too fast. This is determined by the Plunge Protection Team who protect the bankers.
All of this got going last week when markets began to decline and then it was revealed that the world’s most bullish investor, Warren Buffet, was dumping stocks at an unprecedented rate over the last quarter. Berkshire Hathaway dumped 58% of its Apple stock, which has been viewed as a signal that Buffett thinks the American economy is headed for a recession. In lean times, the companies hardest hit are those who make frivolous items like high end mobile devices.
Even setting aside the economic issues, the market was long overdue for a correction, and they often happen around elections. When Trump left office the Dow Jones Industrial Average was around 31,000. It peaked this year at around 40,000, which is roughly a thirty percent climb in three years. If one wants an example of irrational exuberance, there is a perfect example. The American stock market is a speculative bubble that was due to burst.
The speculation mainly rested on the assumption that the Federal Reserve would once again start handing out free money to its friends. The inflation reports had been manipulated to the point where the only people still worried about prices are the people buying things. The jobs reports and GDP numbers have similarly been set to look as if the economy could use a jolt of free money. The trouble is Jerome Powell is not in a rate cutting mood and has made this clear.
The other assumption has been that the American economy is fundamentally sound and all the bad stuff since Covid has been resolved. That has turned out to be wrong, as new bad stuff has emerged since Covid. The new Cold War launched against China and Russia is accelerating changes in the global economy, which is already putting downward pressure on Western economies. It seems that investors are now starting to understand that we are on the cusp of a new world order.
Of course, equities markets are supposed to reflect the general investor sentiment about the underlying economy. You buy a stock because you think the company will be better tomorrow than today. You sell the stock for the opposite reason. The markets are supposed to be about the future of the underlying economy, but that has not been true for close to forty years now. Instead, it has been about where to put all the extra cash the central bank creates in its role as global banker.
What happened to the American stock markets over the last half century is they went from being a place to bet on the economy and individual companies to a place to bet on the Global American Empire being the sole superpower. As long as the dollar remained the global currency and Washington controlled the rules of the global economy, there was only one bet to make. Everyone did the rational think and bet on this not changing, so over time the line went up at a steady pace.
The last two years have revealed this to be old thinking. The sanctions war against Russia has been a disaster for the empire. The Russian economy has outpaced Western economies during this time. Similarly, BRICS, which was just a worthless acronym, has now become a legitimate alternative to the Western model. Their alternative to SWIFT, the default banking transaction system, is slowly emerging as a viable and perhaps superior option for the rest of the world.
The main reason for this is the chaos at the top of the imperial order. While the endless political drama out of Washington entertains the people of the West, to those outside it looks like chaos and instability. The world’s largest economies have no idea who is in charge of imperial policy, as Joe Biden is clearly a vegetable. Further, Washington is not on speaking terms with the two most important countries at the moment. They have Russia and Iran on mute.
What we may be about to see is the canary in the coal mine fall off his perch, thus signaling the great reordering. Western economies evolved over the last half century on the assumption that Washington would control the global money supply. Over the last thirty years the assumption has been that the days of national economies were over, as all economies would be integrated. The rules based global economy using the dollar would be run from the imperial capital.
That is not going to be the future. This presents a massive problem for the West, as industrial policy, economic policy, government policy and demographic policy has all been based on the assumption that the Western managerial elite would sit atop this global system like Mustapha Mond, the world controller in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World. Of course, that is the reason the dream is unraveling, as Mustapha Mond was both corrupt and cynical.
As is usually the case, the great transition will take time. It took forty years for the West to evolve down this cul-de-sac. It will take time for the world to adapt to the decline of the West and for the West to regain itself. The collapse of the Soviet system was followed by two decades of disorder. The difference is the West has further to fall, as the Russians were already poor. Americans are about to get poor because they no longer deserve to be otherwise.
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It turns out Pat Buchanan Ross Perot, and Ron Paul were right. And the haughty American voters laughed at them.
It is they who have the last laugh! Karma’s a bitch!
Don’t you mean Kamala’s a bitch?
Kamala perhaps *is* karma. The epitome of AA absurdity in America! If she does reach the highest office in the land, she will hold absolute claim to being the worse mediocrity to ever hold the office—and it will be to our country’s deserved detriment for creating and promoting such policy.
That’s a gratuitious insult to all the mediocrities of the world.
You know, you’re probably correct. Most folk I deal with are humble and seem to realize that they “don’t know” everything. In that way they prove to be good and wise citizens/neighbors—and more importantly, steadfast friends when needed.
This point is sad but true.
The entire Western world is rife with unqualified quota hires all the way to the top.
How else you gonna make jews look smart?
Poor Pat entered politics when legacy media had near total control of the landscape and the RNC was unified in a full neocon ideology. He didn’t stand a chance. If his career was 20 years later we would have likely had a President Buchanan instead of Trump.
Buchanan could maybe have been what people hope Trump is. He would have been the right man, minus twenty years. A missed call
He had a chance in 1996, but when we got to South Carolina after beating Dole in New Hampshire, we met the real Republican Party. We had doors slammed in our faces by folks from The Citadel and could not get volunteers. The Republican Party threatened anybody with permanent exile if they cooperated with us. It was an education for me, as I believed we were heading into Pat’s prime territory, and so did he. It was brutal, because everyone knew that the election was a joke (Dole was a cuck behind closed doors and only wanted the nomination; he… Read more »
I share your sentiments. As a Floridian, there is something about the Carolinian people that just never sat right with me. I cannot quite put my finger on it. They seem foreign
I will take a person from Georgia or Bama or even Louisiana any day of the week. Mississippi strikes me as a little off too, but in a different way
Such is life in the Southeast
We were close…if he had been able to win SC, I think we would’ve been able to get some momentum and cash going into the rest of the primaries, esp. Super Tuesday.
He wouldn’t have beaten Clinton, but he would’ve been the prime contender in 2000 in an open GOP field.
I see my fellow South Carolinians who support, Haley, Graham, and Scott as foreign as well. I voted for Buchanan in the 96 primary, but don’t recall knowing anyone else in my circle who did. I remember being told that protectionist trade policies and foreign policy isolationism wasn’t the right approach for the country. All the while, the manufacturing and textile industry was being gutted at the time. The Republican Party had a complete stranglehold on Evangelicals then. There has been a shift in South Carolina with Trump dominating the 2016 and 2024 primaries.
Newt Gingrich had the best line regarding Bob Dole as Senate majority leader – “He’s the tax collector for the welfare state.”
Bob Dole deserved this because during one contentious government shutdown instigated by Gingrich over Clintons refusal to go along with welfare reform.
Gingrich was hours away from Clinton caving, when Dole went behind his back and made a deal with the Clintonistas to reopen the government.
Bob Novak said of Dole, “Gingrich maneuvered himself and the party into a crusade against Washington. Dole is a creature of Washington and people like Dole don’t do well during a crusade.”
that prompted the comment Gingrich made after Dole stabbed him in the back.
So in 1995 Dole backstabs his fellow Republican, the Speaker of the House, and in 1996 Dole gets the party’s nomination for president. What does that say about the party’s attitude towards loyalty?
Trump borrowed heavily from Buchanan. The only thing lacking is Trump’s fiscal policy is no where near those three.
Maybe. Or maybe great minds think alike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPs17_AkTI
Remember, Trump was schooled by Nixon and his people (Roger Stone, Roy Cohn, etc.)
I’m talking domestic economic policy.
Buchanan, Perot, Paul all balanced budget hawks.
Although Trump is right about making other countries pay their share, he didn’t cut off much foreign aid at all. Especially to a certain sacred cow in the middle east.
Trump is a Keynsian. If he thinks printing cheap money will stimulate the economy he will and did do it.
That photo looks doctored.
Note the Nixon suit shoulder hard outline against background lady’s white dress.
i don’t trust that photo.
Nixon’s head is Photoshoped big time.
I tend to believe that virtually anyone the Rs put up against H in 2016 would have won. I’ve never believed it was a triumph of “maga.” She lost it more than he won it. So while I think you are correct, I think it’s just as correct to say Mitt Romney could have won in 2016.
I’d disagree. It took someone who could out-brash Hillary, and none of the other candidates had that.
Yes and no – Hillary was reviled and rightfully so. But a more genteel candidate (romney style) would not have been able to take advantage of it to the extent Trump did. Love him or hate him, Trump showed he was a fighter.
“virtually” doing much work there but it’s true there is no upset w/o a simultaneous collapse.
Disagree strongly. It was Trump appealing to the previously ignored “Middle American Radicals,” (a term coined by Donald Warren, and a subsequent policy devised by Sam Francis and Pat Buchanan) that won the GOP nomination and defeated Hillary.
Jeb, Marco, Kasich and the rest of the GOP were a continuation of the tired global agenda which ignored regular white working folks, and had no hope of energizing them to defeat Hillary. It took the populist campaign of Trump to defeat her.
When Trump took office, well, that’s another subject, that differs from his 2016 campaign.
Things don’t just happen with a snap of a finger. Somebody has to plant the seed. Trump, Perot, Buchanan and others planted that seed.
Agree.
I worked for Buchanan in 92 and 96. It’s very hard to get any news about his health or Shelley’s. He has gone completely silent since his sudden retirement and all I have are rumors. I hope he has some peace now.
If anyone knows, please write something. Obviously I’m not using my real name, but I did work for Pat. In the 2000s I lost touch with my last two remaining friends from the campaign as they drifted away from the world of politics entirely for other concerns. Life moved on.
It’s painful for me to have lost this man’s voice at the very moment when what he taught us would ripen has come to fruition. I wish I knew what he thought of this.
Someday I hope we have the “I tried to tell you” meme with Buchanan and Perot along with Enoch Powell.
They told us and paid the price for it. They weren’t just told they were wrong, but were ridiculed for their warnings.
The truth is like that. May God bless them both.
That must have been a hell of an experience. Been a die hard Buchanan fan since I first started following politics not long out of high school.
Pat seemed a very private man in spite of his highly public profile.
I wish them both the best!
Thanks for sharing!
American voters were warned many, many times of all of the impending disasters that were building up in American life over the past 40 years. Already in the early 80s, demographers were warning of the impending SS disaster in the 2020s. Around the turn of the century, a secretary of the treasury (or maybe it was some other high level bureaucrat, but I don’t recall. Maybe it was from budget office) quit to go on a tour warning Americans of the impending budget disasters. The American Society of Civil Engineers has been warning us for decades of the impending disaster… Read more »
The doomsayers (count me among them) have been wrong, but that’s possibly because the doomsaying assumes some fiscal laws that have been defied, or disproven, since at least ‘08. We’ll see if debts don’t actually have to be repaid.
I have nothing more than vague impressions. The way our global economy is connected, it would only to take a few players to have a major impact in key areas. The key players don’t have complete control, but that was never required. In coordination, for a little while, a small group could appear to defy economic gravity for their own reasons. Some debts will never get repaid, but then we are over due for that. Economic debt jubilees are an act of mercy and kindness from the wealthy to the poor. The idea that we make debt slaves of our… Read more »
I’m shocked the average person has gone along this long. I get the feeling of powerlessness, you look around and see yourself falling behind by not going along, but still.
Admittedly, I used to be a doomsayer, but I’ve stopped in recent years. I am highly skeptical of a total collapse. People saw the Soviet Union collapse and thought a societal governmental collapse was easily possible. But the SU didn’t collapse, the elite gave up and voluntarily ended it. It was obviously chaotic and they probably wouldn’t have given up if not for the economic and social conditions they were facing. But they probably could have gotten through those hard times if they had the political will to do so. But that isn’t to say that our problems aren’t very… Read more »
I think part of it is a trap. Seems like once you get to empire you’re stuck, and empire never lasts.
American’s and we know the type we are talking about, the majority, care only about the cake, icing on the cake, and want nothing to do with the meat and potatoes “infrastructure.”
As long as they’re getting their personal freebie’s from govt, all else be damned.
excellent observations / comment.
Just on principle, one-sided free trade is an embarrassment. I can’t believe the smart set was actually stupid enough to think it was a great idea.
No doubt about it!
The “smart” set was on the winning side of the one-side. That is, they sold out the country because money lenders care not where crap is made or sold, only that the making and selling is financed through them.
“Americans are about to get poor because they no longer deserve to be otherwise.” Americans are poor because they are stupid. Ever since the 1980’s, Americans believed the lie that they can live on credit. They never challenged the fact that most college degrees are (a) useless (b) overpriced and have demonized blue collar workers. And even if they didn’t demonize blue collar work, they successfully outsourced those jobs. Americans believe they are somehow “entitled” to home ownership because it’s a “right”, no thanks to the Clinton administration. Americans think having a $75,000 pick up truck with a 72 month… Read more »
Home ownership should be attainable for the average American. We have plenty of space, infrastructure, and competence where it should be a given for anyone but the lowest level rung. Like the stock market, housing has been bought off by parasites with central bank money who need to plop it somewhere safe and has made it unaffordable to nearly everyone. Also, most Americans do live modestly, and the people you are describing are middle-upper class strivers who, while amounting to a lot of the consumption, are only 5-10 percent of the population. Americans spend most of their money escaping the… Read more »
It will be fun to watch the squirming of the UMC strivers who laughed at those below them who started to feel the pain decades ago. “Learn to code,” they said.
Don’t believe the hype!
The biggest reason housing is unaffordable is gorram gov’t policy. Since ’82, there has been a more or less steady tariff of at least 20% and strict quotas on imported softwood. They destroyed our timber industry with insane environist (there’s no “mental” in “environmentalists”) policies and Canada’s with making it illegal for Americans to buy as much as they wanted, at prices Canadians were willing to take.
Similar with steel, plastics, copper, aluminum, asphalt shingles, etc.
Apparently adding 10 million illiterate, unskilled, dirt poor illegals to the population over the past 4 years along with another 10-20 million in the 20 years before that affected the housing supply.
Black swan, totally unpredictable, I guess.
We May live in the streets and eat in soup kitchens, but at least we have our diversity.
Let’s use your numbers. 30 million is a little under 10% of the US population. Yes, heavily end-weighted so the last 4 is around 3%. Are you telling me you doubt we could have built ~1% more houses over the last 4? Why weren’t they built? Look at what the Greatest built on returning from WWII.
I don’t like immigration any more than you do. But the math is what it is.
Let’s move past ancient history and talk about today. Americans are not doing well and their children are in worse financial condition than their parents were at the same age. All economic and social indicators are pretty clear on that fact. It’s not just the lower or lower middle class, everyone in the US is being affected the same with the exception of the upper 1% (as is always the case anywhere). There are plenty of Americans making well into six figures, living in lovely HOA neighborhoods, who are literally one paycheck away from being on the street. So don’t… Read more »
It was like that when I lived in Silicon Valley back in the 80’s and nothing has changed.
It has gotten much worse. Those in Silicon Valley who make six figures now generally don’t have to worry about HOA fees, just paying the exorbitant rent. The mass exodus from California has not alleviated the housing issue, either, and as the productive leave the worthless “migrants” stream in to help slightly mitigate the population loss. California remains the wealthiest and most prosperous state but it is a house of cards, too, arguably the most tenuous of the lot.
California is a downturn away from bankruptcy. Every time the stock market has a downturn, all the articles start appearing. There were a ton of them in 22. They were rescued the last few times going back to 08. T
hey use fictional non-GAAP accounting to hide their fiscal tomfoolery. But the second the stock market goes down, it is exposed.
“But their day-to-day decision making skills seem to be driven by moronic YouTube influencers, and that will not end well for anyone.”
This is one of those things that fills me with dread for the future.
Just more and more of the old colonial chickens coming home to roost.
Excellent post, but it’s not chickens coming home to roost, because there’s no logical relationship between “colonialism is evil, let’s stop doing it” and “we have an obligation to let them colonize us.”
The notion that this is the inevitable result of colonialism, that it’s of our own making, is an enemy warfare meme. Germany is not being invaded by an army of vengeful Askari.
By colonialism I mean the majority of foreigners who have been migrating into the UK, Netherlands and France over the past 80-years (long before the recent immigration surge) were commonwealth citizens who had the legal right to move to the mother country. As soon as Algerians, Moroccans and Indians had the means and opportunity to leave their shit-hole countries for the West, they did. And in numbers that have been steadily accumulating since then. The results, as we’re seeing in Germany with the Turks (who we invited as guest workers 60-years ago) are not just the odd million who just… Read more »
…who had the legal right to move to the mother country.
This is the problematic bit, but that is not a consequence of colonialism per se, it’s a consequence of a corrupt elite who, at best, wanted cheap labor and at worse, was out to destroy Europe from the start. That’s why Sweden is as mercilessly diversified as Germany and Britain, despite their only colonies being in the Baltic.
These make up the organized gangs that break into our homes, sell drugs, conduct human trafficking, prostitution, etc.
Very important point. The people bombing Swedish cities are Albanians, not Arabs.
The Algerians can tell the French to leave, the Indians can tell the British to leave, but the French and British can’t tell the Algerians and Indians to leave.
They can, but they just won’t (at least the ones in power won’t). It is not a question of ability (can), it is a question of will.
But why? Why are you paying more than $4 a sheet for OSB and $0.84 per stud? Do you really believe even a McMansion would be mid-6 figures if we had lumber prices from the 2000s?
Or why is copper so expensive? Couldn’t have anything to do with environists getting the Anaconda Copper Mine shut down, could it?
Many responses possible, but you’re assuming an immigration distribution dolloped carefully across what was originally natural organic growth.
It wasn’t. Chew on the obvious implications of that.
Not just on housing, but schooling, roads, infrastructure, tax bases, social cohesion, etc.
”Deport them!”
Best analogy I can think of is when the Black Plague wiped out 1/3 of Europe, an economic boom that ignited the Renaissance was possible.
Useless eaters is a thing, unfortunately.
The economic boom in Europe happened because there simply wasn’t enough labor, so necessity invented the early seeds of the industrial revolution. This had already been in motion before the Black Death, because back then the world ran on meritocracy, the more intelligent and successfully-reproducing fraction was rapidly upwardly-mobilizing themselves out of being tenant peasants (the remainder being low-IQ with a near 100% child death rate), and there were literally not enough warm bodies left to till the fields.
I’m not assuming that at all! Put the entire 10 million into one year if that trips your trigger. That’s 3% of the US population, and largely, migrants are larger family size than empty nesters or DINKs or MGTOWs or similar. We should be able to get by with under +2% growth in housing. We couldn’t even do that?????
Per one report there are about 100,000 vacant homes in Los Angeles alone, and I would guess most are foreclosures. Lack of physical housing isn’t the problem, and no one HAS to live on the streets (there’s plenty of public assistance). Tolerating vagrants and criminals is the problem (including illegals, who should receive zero public assistance).
However, when it takes $300,000 in permits before you can stick a shovel in the ground to build a single-family home, THAT is a problem for everyone. (Real number from San Francisco, tripled from about 15 years ago.)
Not too different here. You can look at the statistics going back 80 years and while there was a massive increase in housing construction after the war, it pretty much plateaued in the late 80’s and has remained relatively stagnant ever since. Especially single family homes. German towns are simply not giving out building permits which is why the majority of homes on the German market are over 30-years old as often the former owners simply died and the heirs want the money. And because Germans don’t tend to upgrade after they move in, no one wants a 1970’s avocado… Read more »
Agreed! My whole point was gov’t has been screwing us by the numbers.
I’m not sure we know what living modestly means anymore. Detached 3 bedroom house with a garage, 1/4 acre of unproductive land, getting everywhere by car, buying new instead of fixing/mending old, food from the supermarket, phones, cable subscriptions, etc. And the luxury of moving when the neighborhood goes, like tossing that old pair of jeans wearing thin at the knee. Pretty amazing when you think about it.
Grass is pretty and smells go when mowed.
“Home ownership should be attainable for the average American. “ Should be, but seems it never will be. Wife the other day told me she looked up her childhood home in Scottsdale, AZ on Zillo. She grew up in a bare bones three bedroom home in lower middle class area. The home was nothing to rave about, but suited the family at that stage of growth and was at that time what we’d call a “starter home” for a young family. The home she told me was now worth *more* than our current retirement digs here in poorish, Tucson, AZ. She… Read more »
The Housing affordability issue would be resolved tomorrow if you deported 20 million immigrants. It’s really that simple. All those people are living somewhere. Supply would skyrocket, demand drop, and our future generation would have a chance.
To an extent you are right Karl but I detect some schadenfreude from you. Germany is not doing well and may be at it’s nadir also. Your’s is a big cope about your own country even if 40% of what you say about America is true.
We all have our problems due globalhomo deal with yours first.
Much of Germany’s pain was inflicted by the GAE through the Ukraine war and denial of cheap energy from Russia via sanctions and the industrial sabotage of Nordstream II. That was courtesy of the same folks behind the deindustrialization of the United States, which was one of the greatest crimes in history up until that time.
Germany did this to herself. Never mind the nuclear shutdown and the Energy-Turn, their national Green action plan, but if they’d allowed fracking, they wouldn’t have needed Russian gas in the first place.
Oh, wait, fracking IS legal! For geothermal energy…
You heat that sound like geese honking? That’s the French laughing on their way to the bank: they have two nuclear units on the Rhine, servicing Germany for when their propellers-onna-stick don’t produce, and two on the English Channel doing the same for England.
Yep, Germany willingly and knowingly put themselves in this spot. It was not a secret that, sooner or later, it was going to end poorly. The Ukraine war and Nord Stream just sped up the outcome.
True in part but they did rely on Russian energy and it worked out well for them. Like those nuke plants in France, it subsidized the virtue signaling.
True in part but they did rely on Russian energy and it worked out well for them. Until it didn’t. Nord Stream wasn’t a bad idea, but to base your industrial sector on Russian goodwill is criminally stupid, because Russia will not always have a president as reasonable, pro-Western and peace-loving as Putin. Few countries have the privilege of resource autarky, but your energy production, at least, should be domestic if at all possible. Germany has plenty of coal, which they’re now re-discovering, and modern coal plants are almost as clean as gas. A coal plant director here in Denmark… Read more »
No doubt energy self-sufficiency is the ideal, yes, but a close second is a steady supply no matter how tenuous. Germany had the latter and now has neither. But, yeah, that coal has promise.
I will speculate that somebody bought up the rights to all that dirty coal dirt-cheap, the same somebody who wants to recoup their investment in calling coal dirty.
Let’s just call a spade a spade. The entirety of the West–save, for the most part, the Slavic world–joined hands and walked into a propeller. Germany did much harm to itself, but the BFE exported a self-loathing ideology that made suicide seem lovely.
(We can be like they are)
Come on, baby
(Don’t fear the reaper)
Baby, take my hand
(Don’t fear the reaper)
We’ll be able to fly
(Don’t fear the reaper)
Baby, I’m your man
France is on the cusp as well. Why with nukes? Because they are not building more, fast enough. Their plants are aging and reaching end of life. Their latest planet I read is still not on line after 8 or so years over schedule. Those with more current info should chime in, but that was my last reading on the situation.
Fairly spot on. The renewal of France’s nuclear program relied on the EPR-reactor, which has gone three decades over scheduled development time and was put on ice during the Sarkozy presidency. But a lot of the latest reactor shutdowns during Covid seemed oddly synchronized to be regular maintenance, rather than another way to squeeze the consumers and stymie industry. Normally, you’d have staggered these shutdowns. The good news is that the Swedes and the Dutch are restarting their nuclear industry. Alas, a decade or so back, Sweden made it illegal to conduct nuclear power research, so a lot of their… Read more »
“Sweden made it illegal to conduct nuclear power research, so a lot of their expertise is gone.”
Not to worry. Order one from China. 😉
David Wright: Given that most of Germany’s problems were forced upon it by America, your comment is a ‘big cope’ itself. Germany’s ‘diversity’ and high energy costs are due to AINO and the WEF. We backed the wrong side in WWII and have destroyed Europe as a result.
Exactly. Thank you. And let’s not forget the impact of China outsourcing is having on all industrial nations too.
The current “climate crisis” is also more German self flagellation. While the US has oil it can’t use, German has plenty of coal we can’t use.
Evidently Dutch cow farts are the latest threat.
Not forced, they cucked. Own your own problems.
Being fire bombed into oblivion will do that to you.
I agree David. We are both waving at each other from trains on parallels tracks, heading to the same destination.
Americans and Europeans arguing over who is more screwed is really two bald guys fighting over a comb
Exactly so!
Spot on. It was all fun and games as long as the pain was confined only to the blue collar workers thrown out of work due to deindustrialization. Reality is about to spread upwards and in fact that has started. Watch evictions spun as the solution to the housing crisis, and those burger flippers paid $40 per hour. To be fair to my countrymen, they had little say in these policies but to their shame they went along with them.
Europe doesnt have Boomers?
Yes they do and majority wanted open borders and bigger retirement plans. There was a memorable photo of a Boomer Frenchwoman basically begging some new immigrant for “forgiveness”.
“Europeans are not rich, but we’re not broke either.”
HAHAHAHA this is rich. You ain’t got nothing brotha. No natural resources, nothing. Who would want to invade you anyways? You’re living in the past, you wish Putin wanted to invade you. Nobody wants you. A one ton anvil tied around our necks currently.
The only reason we have the problems in the Ukraine is because “europeans” want that sweet sweet 1.5 trillion of natural resources under eastern ukraine.
Mr. House: The only reason we have problems in the Ukaine is because JEWS want the natural resources and Blackrock already ‘owns’ half the land. Try and cry harder, little man.
Move to europe then buddy, i ain’t crying.
Half way there. I’m surrounded by a sea of white faces, how about you Mr. House? Did you get your daily dose of diversity today or are you hiding out in the sticks? I live in a major city full of white people almost no diversity in sight. Can you name one major US city that looks that way circa 2024? F-ck off with this divide & conquer BTW shill. Perhaps it is (((Mr. House)))? Whites are a vanishing minority on both continents but you try and split us even more. Back to Tel Aviv with you, not falling for… Read more »
Wow, take your meds buddy. When did Europe become part of the United States? Where does it say i have to care that they’re in a tough place and my country is in a better position?
How do you know Europe doesn’t fuck with the US, or the English for that matter? They’re just all on the same team right? Europe loves being second fiddle eh? Sometimes yinz guys make me shake my head.
Where do you think all the BS turn everything electric and CBDC comes from? A country that doesn’t need to do that because it has resources or Europe?
Which party reminds you more of Europe? The Dems or the Repubs?
No one cares about the so called natural resources, but they care very much about taking Russia down a peg or two. You can negotiate and trade for those resources. Russia, not so much.
sure and if you control the financial system i’m sure that doesn’t work in your favor. Lets see what the BRICS ask for when we’ve lost control.
Needs to be told that if Italy, Greece, and Spain are broke then he is broke too.
Also need to note that German automotive manufacturing went from on par (deserved or not) with the Japanese back in the 80s to crap you should lease and not buy today. Even the ocean of mud-men in the Empire-proper are building better cars.
Been looking at buying a car. First time in well over a decade. Amazed to see what’s happened to European brands. As you mentioned, they’ve become “lease” brands because their quality has fallen so much. Audi and Mercedes are crap – expensive crap, living off of their styling and past quality. BMWs are still reasonably reliable but so expensive to maintain and service that they’re still not worth it. Even more mid-priced VWs are crap and not worth owning. Volvos are worthless as well. And none of them are in the same universe as the Japanese brands. Even BMW’s reliability… Read more »
There’s truth to that. Some years ago, Merkle though “cash for clunkers” was going to improve life for the top three German automakers.
Instead, thrifty Germans bought must less expensive cars from the French, Italians and Japanese to no ones surprise.
I was truly shocked by the reduction in quality. Sure, Mercedes and BMWs were always way too expensive, but they were quality cars. Not sure about Audi.
Now, their reliability ratings are average at best and that’s in the first few years of the car. After that, they fall apart. And don’t get into their costs for repairs. Sure, they have styling, but they’re eating their seed corn. It take awhile, but, sooner or later, your reputation matches the quality of the cars. The European brands will be in trouble over time.
Part of the reason all the German marques are now lease-mobiles is that the simulation tools for every part in a car are so powerful they can engineer out every last penny.
So, they wind up with 90% of parts that last through the new and CPO lease periods, 9% that get replaced under warranty, and 1% that create a lemon.
For BMW you are not using those heated seats lease or own unless you pay a subscription through their app! Anyone who would pay top buck to be blackmailed like that is an imbecile.
I have a customer who needed new motor mounts on a 2019 BMW. Very rare for any modern car of any brand to need motor mounts before 200,000 or ten years in service. They weren’t cheap and he paid a pretty penny to have them installed because of stupid, “German engineering.”
I have to disagree about BMW reliability. You regularly see horror stories about their engines. There seem to be fewer such stories about Audi and M-B.
Another problem with BMW is their now horrible styling, which is a sop to the Chinese market.
Finally, something called ‘Art Mode’ has no place inside what claims to be ‘The Ultimate Driving Machine.’
Compsci: Just bought a car, and didn’t even consider an over-priced German one. Way back in late ’80s, I thought my Volkswagen Jetta was the most reliable thing ever. Now German cars are the vehicle of choice of rappers. Considered a Lexus GX 460, but didn’t want to pay for 91 octane gas. We wanted something durable and reliable, with 4 wheel drive and a V6 engine but without all of the newest cars’ excess electronics – went with a lightly- used Toyota 4runner.
How does it ride on the highway? I’ve heard they have a bit of a rough ride, road noise.
Seems fine to us – a bit louder than the rav but not enough to bother us. Handles more like a truck (built on Tacoma frame) but dealer put new tires on and seats are comfortable. Even in 2 wheel drive it sticks to our curvy roads and handles the 35-40% hills on the dirt road just fine. We don’t want a cushiony-boat. I’ve read the limited model has a cushy ride (and 20″ tires) ; we got the SR5 premium (17″ tires) and are quite satisfied.
Thank you.
4Runners are bullet proof with a simple, V6 engine. Unfortunately, Toyota is changing the engine to 4 cylinder turbo that will wear out after 100k miles.
https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehicle-dependability-studyvds
Bravo 3G!
One can (almost) never go wrong with a Toyota!
My first car was an Acura (used), and I even sold it to a high school kid for a small profit!
Since then I have had a Subaru, and Jsut got a second (used) Subaru.
After my escape (soon!) from Sodom-on-the-Potomac (TM) I plan to get a used Tundra truck!
Japanese is a way to go.
Sorry, don’t like Subarus. And for various reasons, husband doesn’t like Hondas. We’ve been driving Toyotas (RAVs) for 15 years now; never any issues with them. I’ve wanted a 4Runner for a few years now. When finances permit, hubby wants a lightly-used Tacoma. Scotty Kilmer (YT) pushes Nissan Frontiers, but husband doesn’t want Nissan. He wants what he wants.
No doubt, Tacos are the standard. But 2005-2021 Nissan Frontiers with the VQ40DE V-6 are good stuff. Manual or auto. Sending my kiddo off to college with my old Fronty with more than a quarter-million miles on the odo, no worries. I expect her to get anohter 100k miles out of it before trading it in after graduation. General maintenance and few things here & there. Only mods are helper/load-leveling springs in the rear due to sag whilst towing at 100,000 miles and…nothing else. Mines basic, it has AC and a radio.
Have you ever heard of American cars? Try em some time. All current American cars / trucks / SUV’s are over priced, over optioned, over engineered, over complicated, over “moduled” cheaped out piles of scrap same as the Euro’s but on the whole more reliable and less costly both up front and to maintain. I know I fix them for a living. You want a prestige brand at economy car prices, with American reliability.
When I say American reliability i mean relative to the prestige Euro brands.
We floated Greece for a long time while they happily retired at 55. Who was the fool, eh? Spain, for those who don’t know, is actually the 8th largest automobile producer country in the world. And if they would just stop growing avocados in the desert they wouldn’t have a water crisis. Italy. Well, what can you say. They build Fiats so their spare parts suppliers and repair shops are always busy – is a self promoting economy. Anything good that comes out of Italy comes from the north. But at least in the south the holiday villas are cheap… Read more »
They’re broke, oh and Portugal too. I’ll let you do the math on who will be bailing out the Euro.
At the rate things are going…Russia.
FIAT=Fix It Again Tony
Or: Feeble Italian Attempt at Transportation.
I thought it was: For Italian Automobile Technicians.
What are you talking about? Europe is being invaded by millions of migrants from the 3rd world.
Did that to themselves
Not even close.
I’m not here to defend Germany, Karl can do that, but to claim Germany has no “natural resources” is absurd. And prior to the general insanity of the “Greens” did quite well. Additionally, Germany had perhaps one of the most intelligent ways of developing their workforce. A reasonable and thoughtful bifurcation between those who attend an advanced university education and those who enter the workforce in what we in American call the “trades”.
Karl can elaborate if he cares to spend the time educating yet another ignorant American—and good god we are ignorant of other countries.
Thank you. It’s true and the system worked quite well until it didn’t. Unfortunately, just like in America, all that is coming to an end here too. German industries are leaving in greater numbers every year, taking skilled jobs out of the country with fewer opportunities left behind. We all knew the “diversity brings new workers” was BS since none of these people have any useful skills or a work ethic. As you are seeing in States like California, trying to run a successful company in Germany is becoming more and more difficult no thanks to all the additional internal… Read more »
France,Spain,Greece,Italy etc are in a much worse state than Britain.
I’ll infer that you haven’t been to Amsterdam or Brussels for at least two decades…
Belgium has always been the northern European basket case especially with the lovely colonials they’ve brought in.
We should have just taken it in 1914 and called it a day. I suspect the French would have thanked us for the favor.
You can have all the skilled talent and resources you could wish for, but if you’re not allowed to use them, what to do?
Send them to war so they don’t go to war at home would be my guess…
Germany education system was brilliant. Not sure if it’s the same now, but the splitting of kids between Gymnasium and Realschule was amazing. Created an incredibly well-trained workforce. The American system is retarded.
Here’s today’s example of what you decry. The AZ Dept of Education has come out with the stat’s on truancy in our public school system. The numbers of course track the school’s demographics, but the worse, here where I live, are in the 70% range. ‘Lot’s of blaming of schools and teachers. Same old, same old. But no one mentions the demographics, nor do they question whether or not our system using a “Prussian” education model is suitable for non-Whites (it isn’t). For example, the lowest truancy in the system is in my neighborhood district at 25%. Who’d have thunk….… Read more »
German schools are still pretty good, but due to the numbers of immigrants (including those from old East Block EU countries) they’re trying to cater to, they’re getting worse. Especially in larger cities like Berlin or Frankfurt I remember California was trying to be bi-lingual by catering to Mexican students who couldn’t speak, read or write English. The result was to bring down the education level to the lowest common denominator resulting in local kids getting the short end of the stick. It’s been happening here for a while too. But Germans have figured out the solution seems to be… Read more »
That is a shame to hear. My son is an engineer and went to a pretty good school here in the USA. He’s worked in one company since graduation. Your “landsmen” bought his company a while back. He goes back to Germany every so often for consultation and planning. He’s now in charge of North American operations. He remarks that your (German) “technicians” are often better/more knowledgeable than his/our degreed engineers! Indeed, he never knows whom he’s talking to wrt their education level unless he reads all their title goobly gook Germans are so enamored of—like “Herr Doctor Professor” for… Read more »
How exactly did this work? I’m curious because I’ve never heard it touched on before.
Read your comment and thought, “What? Why would that get downvoted?” Then I noticed your handle.
Germany has the most valuable natural resource in the world: white people.
Alas, that particular coin becomes more debased with each passing year.
It’s more the case of bad money driving out good money, with the white guys on the Volkswagen assembly plants being replaced with cheaper substitutes.
The principal is still fairly unadulterated, with miscegenation rates much lower than in America.
For now.
True, no doubt. But white minds are being corrupted and mutilated by the relentless propaganda typhoon. Turning the white mind into a deranged ball of mush was the necessary predicate to all the degeneracy and dysfunction we see about us today.
But white minds are being corrupted and mutilated by the relentless propaganda typhoon.
Also true. But we’ve been winning the propaganda war for the last ten years. If it wasn’t for the massive globalist censorship clampdown, we’d have owned Youtube, Twitter and Facebook by now.
In the noughties, Jared Taylor mailed photocopied newsletters to a few thousand subscribers, today he has millions of followers.
We’ve crippled Hollywood, Jewstream media and the uniparty. We’re winning this war, gentlemen, but Rome wasn’t burned in one day.
Well, chum, far be it from me to knock your optimism. We need more, not less of that commodity in these parts.
Moving part of the Audi plant to Hungary didn’t help provide jobs (or cheaper Audis) to Germans.
But at least is encouraged the Hungarians to stay in Hungary.
I believe that the VWs in the US are made in Mexico.
Reversion to the mean isn’t limited to blacks (my favorite line anyone ever posted here–“Ben Carson’s grandchildren will rape your grandchildren”). White luxury beliefs and spiteful mutants will burn off when abundance goes away, and expect that to happen quickly. I’ve readjusted my thinking somewhat on this. “We” don’t deserve this, but the minority who do, do.
This. A country of whites who don’t hate themselves could overcome any issue. No sweat.
Not for long I believe. Last I read, Germany—as does the USA—has a slightly higher percentage of the non-White population at the prime ages of early youth through marriage. This being due to Merkle allowing that 1.5M alien invasion a couple of decades ago. Those with more knowledge, speak up.
Demographics is destiny.
Not far from the truth. But as I commented earlier, the 1.5M was just the part we all see (tip of the ice burg). Foreigners have been here since after WW2 and have been marrying and breeding ever since. White Europeans, who generally don’t rely on social welfare, tend not to have kids for various reasons. But regardless, the demographics speak for themselves.
When I was visiting relatives in Netherlands, back in the 60’s, this import of foreign workers was already a topic of hot discussion among my relatives. At that time, I believe the larger part were from Turkey. In any event, when work slowed down, these “imports” never seemed to leave, although they were supposed to be in the country on temporary work visa’s
“No natural resources, nothing. Who would want to invade you anyways? “
Europe’s history is defined by it’s wealth of natural resources, from rivers, to mining, to mini bread basket areas, as in France. Even England could find coal when she needed it.
Even England!? ; the English invented the machines which required
coal ,halfwit.
I hate to admit it, but the Germans stole steel technology from the Brits who were world leaders in steel production.
But once we figured it out we did what we have a history of doing with new technology – started a couple of world wars.
You should all be thankful we’re no longer technically innovative! 🙂
The Germans did some original work in chemistry, which is why people interested in the subject for about 100 years or learned German. The invented many of the modern color dyes, etc.
The English were hardly beneath “borrowing” technology either.
What a decline. I remember visiting Canada’s expo 67. We had to go to the German pavilion. Why, to see the endless variety of machine tooling they made. Beautiful. Most such stuff was no longer made here and what was used were old WWII vintage. Excellent for their day, but of first generation wrt production efficiency. No, Germany machinery was the future at that time. A few years later, Japan came on the scene heavy.
Last time I looked Britain declared war on Germany both times.
That created a World War out of a border issue.
Majority of Europeans own their homes. The only outliers are Switzerland, Germany and Austria and even there it’s very close.
Renting for life is weird. It results in government goons expelling hapless German pensioners from “their” homes to make room for migrants. It makes renters vote for leftist parties that regulate the rental market, while their policies also change the German neighborhood to a Turkish or Afghan or African neighborhood.
Used to live in Germany. Never understood their lack of desire to own a home. Even weirder, renters would fix up their rented apartments, painting, fixing electrical, etc., all on their own. It was bizarre.
They also have to install their own kitchens.
Didn’t know that. Even stranger. Germans are a very odd people.
They are a very industrious people. They improve rental property because it is seen as a proper thing to do even if the benefit doesn’t accrue to them.
Well, the average renter needs to install a new kitchen when they move in, because there usually is no kitchen in the apartment in the first place. The previous renters took it with them when they moved to their new place.
WTF? Who’s moving around kitchens. How did this become part of the system. It seems massively inefficient.
That is wild but also very kraut
Very true! If you rent or buy a home in Germany, there will not be a kitchen and no lights in the rooms either when you move in.
Only unless you make an agreement with the previous tenants and offer to buy their old kitchen since they are legally required to take it with them. Why? Germany!
To be honest, it’s quite stupid really considering what a kitchen costs these days – plus a new stove, oven, dishwasher and refrigerator. It makes no sense.
At least it keeps the kitchen manufacturers busy.
They are industrious. I’ll give them that. But sometimes, they don’t think things through. They also had a bizarre trust of their government, or, at least, the West Germans did.
It’s just part of the German character. What’s also part of the German character is the attempt to tell everyone how to live better, meaning “just like them”. Every nation has it’s weird blind spots.
Their cousins in PA will even tell you how high to cut your grass. Strange, from a Scots-Irish standpoint.
Americans *are* poor, but they don’t have to be. More trees than Canada, more oil than Russia, more coal than China, and more agriculture than Southeast Asia. Get rid of the invaders and the regulators and it would be a new age of the manufacturing barons. The fact that we don’t to that makes poverty a choice.
Control of energy and food is the goal of those who want to enrich themselves and subjugate and genocide the Heritage white population. The totalitarian oppression that is spreading indicates those who want this to continue intend to keep an increasingly poor white population from changing that dynamic.
Run well America would be very rich indeed. Argentina is a lesson here because it’s a smaller version of the same situation, a country blessed by nature. Argentina started squandering its advantages decades before America did but it shows how crazy politics can completely negate natural advantages. There are no signs the other half of America understands any of this which is a bad sign
Argentina, where I’ve been living for 20 years now, has a different “heritage” population than did the Anglophone countries and in large measure the squandering has been due to that plus the financial parasites of global infamy realizing that the Argentine population of yore was as easy to befuddle as the present USA population seems to have become; it just took longer. And yet, the present government here seems to be making sincere and somewhat successful efforts at purging bureaucracy, a good start.
Argentina has always struck me as a two steps forward, two steps backward kind of place.
The US does not have more trees than Canada, though it does have a larger variety of forest-types. But what forests remain west of the Mississippi (after a century of industrial-scale logging) are critical for preserving watersheds, and those are being lost to fire at a dizzying rate. Things are getting hotter and drier and have been for a couple of decades now. But don’t take my word for it, just ask a wheat farmer in Montana. This is why the notion of some sort of western redoubt for tens of millions of white people in the northern Rockies is… Read more »
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing conservatives that ecological literacy was code for marxism.
Hear, hear, but conservatards are so easy to fool Satan sends his lesser demons like Sean Hannity.
Cadillac West
Baloney! There are plenty of examples of private landowners that have changed their land management practices, and see a huge turnaround. Same with Kenya. There are also plenty of examples of landowners continuing the same-old same-old management practices of the last couple centuries and turning it to sage and prickly pear.
Google something called “holistic range management” and learn something rather than spout decades-old talking points.
“More trees than Canada, more oil than Russia,” This is categorically false. The US oil reserves are much smaller. Probably less trees too. The high US oil production (though we are still a huge net-importer of oil despite what you may hear on fox news) is artificial in a sense. It’s tight oil which requires huge amounts of money and only produces a lot of oil for the first 12-18 months. 1/2 the wells are unprofitable. So many oil companies have declared bankruptcy in the various tight oil plays around the country. I’ve read (from pessimists like Gail the actuarial)… Read more »
More trees? I thought that James Watt took them all back in the 80s.
“You better stop James Watt,
If you want to keep the trees that ya got”
Americans believe they are somehow “entitled” to home ownership because it’s a “right” It should be. Not only because muh rights (which, for once, oughtn’t be in scare quotes) but because national security: if you own your home, you own a little bit of the country and that subtly changes your perspective on matters of the Mutterland, because you suddenly have to think in terms of keeping the neighborhood nice and white, if you don’t want your house to depreciate in value. Renters don’t care about the neighborhood because they have no ownership to it. Home ownership rate in Singapore:… Read more »
Ben Franklin understood this very well. I miss being ruled by people like that.
Tangentially to this, I’ll take a speculative stab at the low German home ownership rates: If you have a strong sense of living in your ancestral homeland, you don’t need to buy a home to feel like you have one.
If your sense of belonging springs from the notion that a home is something that needs to be wrestled from the wilderness, or won in competition with other tribes, ownership becomes more important.
That’s a really smart take. Like-people have a greater need to cluster in a low-trust society.
Very interesting. I think that you’re on to something. Might also have something to do with the Anglo-Saxon mentality dominating American culture until recently. The Anglo-Saxons, despite being of German origin, evolved differently on that island.
The Anglo-Saxons, despite being of German origin, evolved differently on that island. Or perhaps because of their German origin. Britain always had a smattering of Brythonic and Celtic natives living in the fringe areas, a perpetual reminder that the A-S are foreign invaders. There are no remnants of the tribes that lived in Germany before the Germans came, nobody to tell them “you took this land from us.” This ties on to the difference between implicit and explicit nationalism: if your country is named after your tribe, rather than vice versa, you don’t need much parading and flag-waving and allegiance-swearing,… Read more »
It’s not clear we’re of near German origin.
English shares some words with German. It also shares a lot of words with Latin and French.
There is a Northern European viewpoint that is closer to each other than Southern Europe. But ultimately, WWI and WWII was the English and the Germans duking it out for world domination. (Hint: The Jews won). Less than 100 years ago, people were pretty aware that Germans <> English.
The Mutterland is now Mutter Paneer Land…
Germany was doing very well until Merkel and the Eurocrats decided to flood the country with ill-behaved migrants, sign on to the USA’s proxy war against Russia, and wreck the energy industries with Green idiocy. The future for the stolid Bürgerin and Bürger doesn’t look much better than that of their American counterparts.
Too bad. I lived in Germany for 15 years and am fond of the country and it’s people.
The Cold War? Forced migrations at the end of WWII? If we’re honest, all of the 20th century sorta sucked for Germany.
It certainly didn’t help that Germany was split in two, and the functional half that worked and produced and made the country wealthy ended up paying for the other half after the reunification.
Not to mention we were also busy working to pay off our war debts for both wars.
Imagine what Germany could have done on a commercial, economic and scientific level if we hadn’t wasted blood, treasure and brain power on two pointless wars.
(Tongue in cheek) America would still be trying to figure out how to put a man on the moon.
Not so fast, Horst. We didn’t need Von Braun or any of those puffed-up Peenemunde poppinjays. Our space program was powered by Sassy Mammies, and don’t you forget it!
It is hard to keep track, really, between the anger expressed in WHITEY’S ON THE MOON and the more recent laurels for those mammies who put him there. It ain’t easy bein’ a pimp or an aeronautical engineer or both. I’ll let Kamala explain it all between gulps.
We was Math Queenz!
An dey diskovered da See o’ Tanqueray on da Moohn
Germany screws itself every few years. On a roll from 1871 to 1914, Just starting recover until 1939, knocked flat and divided in 1945, then a pretty decent recovery followed by reunification in 1991. Things going well until Merkel’s Millions of Male Muslim Migrants, the astonishing stupidity of die Energiewende and joining the US in its sanctions war on Russia.
The Germans just must need to be beaten down when things start to look up.
Well said! Now let’s hope Europeans get even smarter and turn away from going along with the GAE’s war against Russia. Make peace with the Russians, rebuild your pipeline and tell the American neocons not to let the screen door hit them in the backside.
Best place to put this comment is behind Karl, but applies to many that follow him. Karl is correct—credit is the problem, or at least a big part of it. I was a youngster living with a single parent when we (mother) received (1960’s) an unsolicited bank credit card in the mail. The limit on it was $300, which was greater than her *monthly* take home pay. I remember sitting at the table with her as she wondered what the hell is this thing? Heretofore, we have never seen a credit card, but had heard “rich people” used them. We… Read more »
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
When she died, she had no debt. None, zero, and a somewhat large estate for one of her class.
That’s why bankers hate people like your mom.
Great comment and thanks for the reminder that widespread consumer credit is a relatively new disease. I’m younger than you but there was no table set up to peddle credit cards when I entered University. It may be that where I went to school was poorer and a higher credit risk (when that mattered).
Consumer credit is poison.
I remember the first time I saw someone buying groceries with a credit card (early 1980’s). I was fairly shocked as we always either paid with cash or check up to that time. Now, it’s pretty much the opposite. Times have changed and not for the better.
It’s been awhile since I purchased a new car, since my 14 year old Honda keeps cranking out miles like it’s new. But I recall car salesmen used to negotiate a monthly payment you could afford rather than haggling over the purchase price. I’m not sure if that is still a thing.
I can’t be sure either, but I assume it is *the* thing still. I have reached a point in my life, the end point obviously, where such a purchase can be done in cash. Albeit, the last several cars *were* on credit or loans simply because the car companies offered 0%! Even with the EV’s as of a few months ago (7-8% then charged for car loans) when I bought one. This was a somewhat better deal than selling investments, and no, out the door price was discussed first, payment discussion after the deal was made. (Although today’s market news… Read more »
Around here (Western Oregon), it’s Teslas. My neighborhood has lots of apartment complexes and you always see tons of those damn things in the parking lots or parked out front. I think part of what drives it is that this is tree-hugger land and they need to be seen “saving the planet”. Between the crippling rent and the crippling payment on the Tesla, these people will never save anything. I’m sure most of them have huge student loans too.
Because we weren’t sure when the insurance check for our wrecked car would clear, we applied for a car loan. USAA offered us their lowest rate for a 36 month loan, but also included rates for a 72 month loan. I cannot imagine paying on a car for 5 years. Fortunately the check cleared and we had enough additional cash on hand to pay in full and get an excellent out-the-door price. Fwiw, the two dealers we visited, in two different states, were almost empty. And one additional place that wouldn’t budge on price over the phone still has the… Read more »
Can’t go wrong with a 4runner. We got my wife a 2018 model in brand new for a great deal (through a dealer friend). It’s fully off road equipped and is great for long trips. Gas mileage is great. It is of course paid for. I bought a Ford Bronco in February. I refuse to have a car loan so I paid cash. It’s excellent. We are planning on moving rural in a few years and we will be needing the capable trucks. If I don’t ever have to buy another car again I won’t.
Tired Citizen: We got a 2017, with 50k miles, for a great price. In pristine condition, with the heavy duty rubber mats and brand-new tires – and dealer threw in the tonneau cover at our request. We were looking at a 2019 off-road model (about 3 hours away in the opposite direction of where we bought one) but it was red, and the dealer wouldn’t budge on the almost $36 k price. Today it’s listed for $34,950. If they had been willing to bargain they might have had a cash sale. Their loss.
LOL Karl went to the jugular! To be fair, no lies detected, Americans have been propagandized for decades into entitlements that apparently do not need people to work hard to be built. Europeans, not being perfect, have been put in an economic diet that almost mimics the difference in bodies between Americans and Europeans. We have enjoyed the benefits of cheap energy and having great academic institutions and a job market that can use the best talent around the world for decades. But the party has been ending for decades. It starts at the bottom but it starts going up.… Read more »
You had me until:
“ But we need to starve the gay communist federal government to restart the old USA. We need to restore the republic we could not keep!”
No. We need to cut out the whitest homeland possible and learn from the mistakes of the old republic, which were manifold.
I suppose the average German is responsible for Merkel allowing millions of Africans into Europe? The average person in the EU is responsible for negative interest rates? And all the freaks who run the EU and every bureaucracy in Europe? The war on farmers?
Disney and Starbucks are in the EU too. Not to mention Disneyworld gets a lot of European visitors.
As much as the “average” American was responsible for Biden, the war in Ukraine and a dozen other things we so decry here. The average German does not comment in this group, but Karl does.
I will grant you Disney Paris has done very well despite a very slow start. But that’s due to difference in culture and if you understand that, it explains why they put it in France. Because it would have been a total disaster in Germany. Walmart is a good example of what doesn’t work everywhere. It works great in the USA (my favorite after Bass Pro) but here in Germany, total failure. However American fast food is very popular in Germany with McDonalds, Burger King and KFC leading the way. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE US TACO BELL??? Starbucks is generally… Read more »
If I were in charge, the entire Walton family would be in a concentration camp with the Sacklers and many others.
Walmart is symbolic of everything wrong in AINO.
To be fair, as we did with steel production, we learned how to do concentration camps from the Brits during their Boer war.
Oh, and the Bellamy salute came from the Americans. Thanks for that!
Word of caution, if you ever come to Germany, please don’t do that here unless you want to visit our prisons shortly afterwards. 😉
I don’t have that peculiar fascination with the 1930s badmen. I say they were the worst government Germany ever had except Merkel’s government possibly.
Everyone conveniently forgets that America had concentration camps in the 20th century at the same time the Nazis had them. We rounded up the Japs and some Germans and Italians, took all their stuff and sent them to concentration camps. We were forcibly sterilizing people for eugenic reasons into the 1970s. I think the last court ordered sterlization was in like 1978, but I don’t recall for sure.
“I don’t have that peculiar fascination with the 1930s badmen. I say they were the worst government Germany ever had except Merkel’s government possibly.”
The endless chatter about Yatzees is the gift of Jewish governance and the intersection of Boomer fascination with WWII that keeps on giving. God willing, my children will able to talk coherently about evil and 20th century history. Right now society babbles like the History Channel on continuous loop about nothing. H man bad!!! Okay…
Bring back forced sterilization, sez I!
When interrailing in the nineties, me and the guys trolled some German füßbøll-fans by singing the illegal lines of the anthem, the “Deutschland über Alles”-part.
The poor guys turned sober on the spot.
You don’t want Taco Bell. It was good a quarter century ago but now it is shit
amen to that. reminds me of little ceasars, not sure if its the box or the pizza to eat. nasty.
I have to admit that if I MUST eat crappy fast food, I usually go for Taco Bell over those others. Yes, I know, beaner-chow. As many here like to point out though, we’ve got the recipes now so we can deport them all and keep the food. We just lack the will.
i get way better beaner chow from the coaches for less. they usually take only cash, but hey the meat is recognizable and tastes way better. 2 bucks a taco. 2 taco lunch for 5 bucks, with a dollar tip, they load up the meat.
Well, a people tend to get the gubmint they deserve. And that means all of us.
Yes, we don’t vote for it, but our gubmint tends to reflect the underlying virtue of the society at the time.
IDK, I think “deserve” is too strong a word. Despite the voters being fed nonstop propaganda and have their voting choice severely limited, it’s not like we the voters haven’t tried stopping them. I just hope what is going on in the UK expands rapidly to all of the UK. The elite have no fear of the Real Brits, or in the US, the Real Americans. Fear of prison used to hold them in check. Now that fear is gone. They need to fear either lady justice or the people. They fear diversity in both countries. The loudest wheel gets… Read more »
“The elite have no fear of the Real Brits, or in the US, the Real Americans. “ They stomped all over a subject that is near and dear to most Brits and likewise most Americans, even the most irreligious. The subject is “fair”. Endless immigration is fine…if the immigrants are subject to the same rules as everyone else. Thus “fair” in a strange way. When the elites so obviously hold their thumb the scale, all hell was eventually going to break lose. What does a poor Brit have to lose right now? Housing they can’t get and will never get because… Read more »
You Euros live modest lives because your governments take half of everything you earn, give most of it to the EU, and make you believe you like it that way.
America is not quite that screwed…. yet.
That is not completely true. Much is exaggerated when comparing/computing our “taxes” and what we get for them. I no longer fall for this line from our elites. For one, you have certain benefits like health care often included in the Euro tax rate, such as it may be. We do not. Second we often conflate in that we have several large taxing entities in many American jurisdictions. I was born in NYC. My father, who lived and died there, was plagued by income tax from City, State, and Fed’s. Added up to a 50%+ rate for most of his… Read more »
By the time you add up federal, state, local, sales, property and God knows what other taxes, we are probably not that different. Toss in “hidden” taxes like paying for health care and higher ed, and we may actually be worse off. Comparing what one pays in versus what one gets out, who knows who is better off.
Oh, get off your high-horse. Talking in such broad strokes of European and American shows you know nothing about the world. And, for the record, i have no debt except for my mortgage.
You have a mortgage?
“Europeans are not rich, but we’re not broke either.”
And if you’re from a less prosperous part of Europe, you came here with more of a depression-era mindset. You save because you never know what’s around the corner or who’s going to invade your country. I am thankful that I grew up with that mentality.
“The market” is a Boomer Ponzi scheme that has been institutionalized as a national retirement program. It is clear that it responds not to “free market” incentives, but to political decisions and government policies — interest rates, housing credits, MFN deals, tax breaks, tax-sheltered investment accounts. I stayed out, and I feel like I got fucked. I applied the basics of sound financial decision-making — saved money, no debt, no impulse buys, used cars, no vacations, tried to get a steady 3-5% interest rate on savings. But if you weren’t in on the scam it turned out that didn’t do… Read more »
The seizing pensions has been proposed for decades now, by some economists no less. It’s the conversion of paper script, or other liquid assets into crypto that’s “interesting”. In any event, it was shown years ago via some simple paper and pen scribbles that such seizure would not cure what ails the government fiscal problems for more than a year or two.
One thing to keep in mind is that federal govt tax receipts are highly tied to asset prices. Even without a recession, govt deficits increase significantly when the market corrects. If you throw in a recession – and thus have a big increase in govt spending – the deficit will explode.
Outside a catastrophic war, govt debt is what will ultimately bring down GAE. A recession with a crash in asset prices will push forward that timeline.
The trouble is Jerome Powell is not in a rate cutting mood and has made this clear. Powell predictably has been tagged as the fall guy. Bill Ackman last night commented that Powell had been too slow to earlier increase interest rates and too slow to cut them now. Yes, ethnicity plays a role here, and left unsaid is the world economy was a tinderbox in the aftermath of the Covid madness and inflation remains a massive systemic problem that threatens to get incredibly worse. Powell will be pressured to cut rates by more than the expected .25 percent, and… Read more »
The economies of both America and Europe were shut down during covid, of course this broke the camel’s back. It’s been crazy on overdrive ever since, culturally, politically, economically etc.
Z and others I read had commented on the apparent failure of the predicted repercussions from the lockdowns to emerge. While it doesn’t account for all of what is happening at the moment, some of this is just the sugar rush of liquidity poured into Western economies from 2020-2023 burning off. Basic economics didn’t change but they did got delayed a bit. This also shows the complete uselessness of hypothetical UBI over the long term, which doesn’t mean Western governments won’t try it anyhow.
Try 1997 to 2022. It’s been 25 years of serial bubbles. The tech bubble started in the late 90s, then we got the housing bubble, then we got the tech-startup/everything bubble and finally the covid bubble. Not to mention the bubbles in China.
You could say that the 1970s-1980s, or maybe 1990s, was when AINO stopped manufacturing goods and started manufacturing bubbles. aka financialization
I would think the very high interest of the early 80s was what kicked it all off. People were loading up with credit card debt and then refinancing their homes at the new lower mortgage rate. My parents did this several times over the period of 1980-2005. That’s what 25 years of falling rates did or at least it appears that way to me. The problem is, you eventually hit a point where it is already too low. Since we started outsourcing everything, all the talent is retired and no new talent was behind them. There was supposed to be… Read more »
The Fed has just been following short-term treasury rates. Given that a rate cut should be in the offing since after years of stability the rates have dropped. If he doesn’t cut in the next few weeks then maybe there is some grand plan, but my bet will be on a rate cut because just mirroring the market is a pretty safe way to play.
I think the stock market will be fine. It’s still the best way to get this excess money out of the economy. There is still too much money in the economy which is why inflation has been so sticky (yes, despite what the media tells you, the inflation rates would be unacceptable in any other time). The stock market bubbles are great for the people in charge and gets money out of the system. I still think they have an interest in doing so. The real problem is that our Greatest Ally is committing blatant and illegal acts of war… Read more »
I don’t know if this is the foothills of the big crash but it has to come. The Ukraine war sped up the revelation to the perpetual chumps that Western economies don’t produce very much tangible value. A country with a nominal GDP the size of Italy outproduced the entire west in artillery shells and other weapons. There’s a latency built in but eventually that made people realize that moving money around on screens is not producing value. It didn’t help that one of the most visible genuine products of the US, Boeing airliners, started dropping doors and wheels left… Read more »
Except Russia Produces Goods.
GDP in the West consists of a tatted up dyke with a face full of fishing tackle selling blue checkmarks on Twitter/X for $7 a month.
When on that Dow-Jones historical chart, I untick both “inflation-adjusted” and “log scale” I am struck by how closely the raw numbers follow the national debt.
Of course, I’m old enough to remember when the national debt hit a billion and everyone was in a panic. But then it was still real money. Now it’s not even imaginary money, it’s square root of -1 money.
The Dollar is a Dollar and that is all it is. Nearly all, if not entirely all of our debt is Dollar denominated. We owe the world digits that are free to create.
There are consequences that flow from this fact, but it is still a fact. Gold bugs might eventually be right, but they’ve been wrong for 40 plus years.
There is a bright side; when the Sovietzky system collapsed workers and military abandoned a lot of posts so some citizens were able to raid these places and get cool guns.
There’s always an upside.
I predict the government will do what it always does, throw money at it. The end result will be a currency crisis .
It has to. Govt receipts and people’s retirement at tied to the stock market. The govt can only let it fall so much before stepping in. No choice.
How Weimar wouldn’t that be??
I think everyone’s being a little quick to jump on the Doom Wagon. Yes, we’re screwed in the long run, but as I type this the Dow is only down about 1,000 points. That seems like a lot given that a lot of us remember Dow 1,000 and Dow 10,000. But today, 1,000 points is 2.5%. It hasn’t even tripped the breakers (7%, then 13%). The Government Party simply will not permit conditions that would allow the man they just tried to murder to win in November. The best advice always and everywhere is to keep your head. There are… Read more »
I’m gonna learn to hunt this year I swears it!
Hunting is the easy part if there’s a population die-off big enough to make subsistence hunting a viable strategy. It’s the butchering and storage that matters so you don’t accidentally kill yourself by spoiling the meat.
Where I grew up, there were lots of dead deer in November…but nearly everyone took their carcass to the local butcher.
Now there’s a guy who will make bank in a TEOTWAWKI scenario. Which this isn’t.
If the “government party” had tried to kill Trump, he’d be dead. That is, if it was the same “deep state” who’d been out to get him since 2016, he’d be dead. I’m leaning more to the Biden circle specifically as the source of the plot, and it was a rush job, to save his presidency that was under assault. If he could get rid of Trump, then he could fend off the coup against him. Biden hadn’t expected to face a coup. He was more blindsided by it than anyone. The fool thought they actually loved him. So in… Read more »
The Government Party’s main strategy is to do bad things but not be seen doing it. Nordstream, Moscow theater, rigged elections, etc.
They used apathy to try and kill him. And they cratered his security to give the appearance of a lone wolf taking advantage of incompetence.
The muted response by both wings of the Government Party and its media reflect a government that is stunned that they missed.
Dunno. I would have lost lots of money on a bet that Powell would have held off with cuts this long. The market cratering simultaneously with their political convention doesn’t make for good optics.
1,033 pt sell off is not a crater. It’s barely a pothole. Low 30,000’s? Ok, that’s a correction, but given how hyperinflated the market is, still not a crater. It would only erase the “gains” since Trump left.
When it drops enough that Harris gets flushed out into the open to take unscripted media questions, then we’re getting somewhere.
No matter where you are, you’re always at the beginning of the end.
“The Government Party simply will not permit conditions that would allow the man they just tried to murder to win in November.”
Fortunately (unfortunately?), I think you overestimate the amount of control The Party has.
Judging by their ham fisted assassination attempt, I’m not the one overestimating their abilities. But I understand your point. i just meant they’ll pump whatever they need to into the economy to make it look like things are fine. Then let it collapse if Trump prevails. Zman writes a lot about the collapse in competence. The problem with stupid people is they think they can control all outcomes. I think they’ll be proven wrong, again. But I don’t think the system will implode. They’ll just push the easy button again because the Fed’s paradoxical dual mandate says maintaining low unemployment… Read more »
When the ‘market’ went down to 17,000, I waited and got OUT altogether at 33k, locking in earnings and ran. Sure cash gets eaten away by inflation moths BUT it does not have the habit of disappearing overnight, when the criminals take their ‘earnings’ and leave everyone else holding the bag. Life is too short to ‘watch’ your lucre every gdamn day. Who has their focus on money, money, money all the time? Haha, right. Lo and behold this thing called ‘cash’ although also fake and numbers on a screen, grows with the horrors of high interest rates. As for… Read more »
I had friends and family buying into the 2020 panic. We just held fast and used the low-cost lockdowns to save money and retire debt. Within 6 months the DJIA was at pre-crash levels. All of my friends who got out cemented their losses.
I’m blown aware by how few people on the other side even know what the BRICS countries are, much less understand the dynamic in play.
Those fools live in the Power Structure’s echo chamber and know nothing the PS doesn’t want them to know. They believe dieversity is our strength, lopping off a little boy’s tallywacker and replacing it with a naugahyde vajayjay is a blow for human decency, and that Ukraine is encircling Moscow even as we speak.
By accident, out of what conservatives pretty much rightly diagnose as aversion to “responsibility” and “consequences” and such, the left (or whatever) has stumbled into a great insight, upon which they consistently act whether or not they consciously acknowledge it: Of all things fake and gay, The Economy™—I’d say economics in toto—is the fakest. The best evidence that antisemitism is irrational, a distorted envy, is that JQ enjoyers don’t accept this revelation. Instead they’re the staunchest defenders of a financial—of finance’s—worldview. See this page. Half of it is wishes to immanentize the libertarian-economic eschaton because it will further impoverish normal… Read more »
These words are scary for those who are unfit to face the coming future of hardship and challenge. For them, whining is the only tool they have for enhancing survival in an environment of existential competition. They produce nothing of value and solely rely on government gibs for sustenance. When resources become scarce, nature has no use for the parasite. DC is a cesspool of parasites. The time is soon approaching when all good men must turn on the light, take off your shoe, and smash the cockroach in the corner.
OT: I’m surprised your post wasn’t about the unrest happening in England. We live in interesting times.
It’s a target rich environment these days. You also have the whole “will Iran attack Israel? / WW3” thing. And the Left’s collective freak out about Trump’s epic NABJ appearance where his smack down of the ABC reporter was cheered by audience members.
There is a not small number of people cheering as white Britains flee the knife wielding savages. Serves them right.
I know there are a lot of things to write about, but I am still amazed at how Z can always think of these essays on a daily basis. I wouldn’t be able to do one a week never mind every day.
I wonder if you aren’t overly pessimistic Z. Russia had two decades of disorder because they had a LOT of old Soviet baggage to get rid of. Add in thug politics, black markets, massive corruption…and a populace that was used to a relatively low living standard compared to ours. Note that Putler’s fortunes began to change when he ran the jews out of the nation’s finances and corporations out on a rail. He tied the Ruble to gold. He made honest national sacrifices that paid off later. In short – he created a fair marketplace where non-jews and non-westerners could… Read more »
The anti white ethos of the west is very deeply embedded. It’s at least as predominant today as the Catholic Church was in the Renaissance. A few empty stomachs aren’t going to purge it.
Disagree. Empty stomachs and cold houses in the winter change everything. The widespread anti-white oppression is an inadvertent admission of this but will prove ultimately futile. The pain that is coming will be horrible but will lead to carving out of homelands.
How do I trust these whites when I know what they have said about me? They will burn their BLM merchandise and torch the photographs, but we have a problem going forward in many parts of the US where whites have been at each other’s throats for generations. We have been conditioned to hate each other and many do.
Lack of trust in good times must logically entail even less trust in bad times. I don’t know these White Injuns.
Luxury beliefs and troublesome whites will be the first things to go when things pop off. The former requires the latter, which requires lots of spare time and tolerance.
A foolproof loyalty test: force them to take a dump on a picture of BO. Any who refuse are Leftists and accordingly must face the music.
And call it a shit test into the bargain.
Keep a list. A long one. Certain groups, like AWFLs, can be jettisoned entirely. If any of them have truly learned better, too bad so sad. Let God sort them out.
cold houses in the winter change everything
Not as fast as hot houses in the summer.
“It will take time for the world to adapt to the decline of the West and for the West to regain itself.”
Maybe several decades, maybe centuries, and possibly never as it was a unique conjuncture of circumstances that led to the rise of the West. Maybe the unfolding of events will be similar to Miller’s “A Canticle for Leibowitz.”
The West has been demographically vandalized. Make my day by proving me wrong but I don’t see how the old Western world is coming back from that. Britain is teetering on civil war along ethnic lines. The future is not rose-colored
Surely the developments in Britain are positive. How did you think the regime would be challenged?
Britain is not so demographically transformed as the US so a war on ethnic lines could turn out favorably. Imagine if the revolt against the regime in the US had kicked off in 1987…
The British are right to rebel, no question. It’ll be tough though. The local globohomo regime will savage on the uppity indigenous
This is the topic I was expecting Z to address today.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the S&P 500 is highly tied to employment via 401ks and target-date funds, which are invested in index funds, mostly the S&P 500 on the stock side. A huge portion of the new money coming into the market – the money that matters – is 401k contributions. Rising unemployment reduces that inflow. Heaven forbid your average Joe start to move their 401k money out of the default target-date fund and into cash or bonds. The last 15 years has seen a huge decline in active stocks funds, i.e., funds with a person… Read more »
Retirement more or less is a thing of the past even now. People with greatly diminished 401k’s unable to sell them likely will work until they drop.
Well, that’s another issue related to index funds and 401ks. The stock market is no longer a pricing and capital allocation mechanism. It’s now a retirement plan for a large portion of the country. That makes the Fed and the govt look at it very differently. They simply can’t let it collapse like in the 1930s or even 2008-2009. Between govt receipts and so many people relying on the stock market, the govt will have to step in to protect it at some point. Maybe they’ll allow a 20% or even 30% drop, but they will intervene to keep it… Read more »
If and likely when the government “steps in,” look for de facto seizure and putting the accounts into a non-existent “lock box” for safe-keeping and propping up ESG companies and the MIC. This has been threatened for decades now, and these are the same folks who never let a crisis go to waste.
Also note the threats to tax unrealized capital gains. Seemingly unrelated but the same goal–keeping the grift going longer.
401ks are like everything else – if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it. We took some out to pay in full for the property we bought in 2023 plus a few other debts. We still have a significant sum remaining, but my husband’s still working so we take quite a tax hit on withdrawals, and his employer only recently started offering a decent match to 401 with holding, so he wants to wait. It’s a gamble.
The problem is that once you purchase equity stakes held in your 401(k) you no longer have any money… you have spent the money and the only way you get it back is for someone to buy the equity stakes from you at the same or higher price that you purchased it for. It is the very definition of the Ponzi. Conversely if you hold paper money in the bank it is only as valuable as the government says it is, and if the government wants to print more paper then they devalue your current paper holdings. Unless you hold… Read more »
It’s not a Ponzi, but the rest is pretty much spot on.
A Ponzi would be something like Social Security.
It absolutely is a gamble. As to the things you can actually hold or touch, I suspect the proposed unrealized capital gains tax is focused on those, particularly the real estate the Boomers and early X’ers intend to pass onto children and grandchildren. It really is a matter of holding and hiding now to the fullest extent possible. There is no easy solution, but you do have to roll your eyes when people discuss, say, gold and then go on to explain it is in the form of tokens/securities/funds. I mean, really, they own at best hypothetical gold, which means… Read more »
Overtime disappeared at the beginning of the year with no prospect of any more. I am applying for part-time jobs now and intend to work until I am 72 at least. Thank God at 66 I still have a strong back. Retirement may never happen, but I have a large garden and orchard and will probably be raising chickens again in the backyard. I had them before in wealthier times in a trendy West LA neighborhood; this time the set up will be more rustic. Watch for backyard swine to make a comeback and I don’t mean pet miniature potbellied… Read more »
I had a fellow at work who ate squirrel. I asked him why he went through all the trouble of hunting squirrels when he could just go to Petco, buy a couple hampsters ant throw them on the stove.
“I don’t want anything grain-fed”
That’s a great one!
Just curious, when did the concept of “retirement” actually come to become part of the American landscape?
I would be very interested to know how and when that began.
I think people always retired in an sense—unless they died first—it’s the how, where, and when that’s changed. I bet it was the same in Germany. The old used to do what they could as they got old and were part of an extended family within which the found support. Around the Great Depression, things started to perceptibly change for oldsters, who—unable to work, became a distinguishable older class. Hence FDR’s initiation of Social Security. People get old, has been forever. At some age the best you can do is take care of your bodily functions. Now if you are… Read more »
Might be true of city slickers, but it’s a fairly new phenomenon to rurals. Since one of the kids is taking over the spread, dad takes it a bit easier, takes the old pickup out to fix fence, and is available when you need to move the cattle. Though he will be driving his pickup, not riding a horse.
Still is that way for a lot of people.
People did always slow down with age and eventually stop working. That’s true of even slaves in ye olde days. The concept of a 20-30 year vacation until you died is a recent development, only supportable by the industrial revolution and large scale governments. That’s the 20th century in the developed world. Retirement as a concept came to the US during WWII. Wage controls were put in place during the war. Corporations started to offer pension plans, conveniently timed for the first attack of a men eating on industrial food their whole lives. Depressed wages and keep “company men” was… Read more »
I was going to say official retirement came in with FDR’s Social Security, a scheme to get the young ones off the farm and into the city factories owned by FDR’s buddies. Government subsidised wage suppression that broke the extended family and family farm model of a predominately agricultural America. (Even our school year was timed to the harvest season.) The first SS check was mailed in 1944, wasn’t it? That would put the scheme right in line with WWII wage controls and corporate pension plans. Related, old age state pension was invented in Germany by the great Bismark. German… Read more »
Maybe from the Social Democrats and Bismarck in late 19th century Deutschland? It was initially set at 70 in 1889 but reduced to 65 in 1916. Mind you, life expectancy in those days wasn’t what it is today.
Moar of this content pls
I prefer hunting deer to squirrels, it’s a lot of work to drag and cut it but once you have it cut and wrapped and frozen you have meat for a long time. You have to kill and skin a LOT of squirrels to match what you get out of even one small deer. Too much hassle.
Which reminds me, I should thaw some venison for tomorrow, killed five of the bastards last year…
I’ll probably never eat another squirrel in my life. Venison is great, but I think it was very rare in the 30s and 40s Tennessee and Illinois when my parents grew up, so it wasn’t something I was exposed to growing up. I’ve known plenty of folks since that hunt deer in Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi— all over. I am happy some of my nephews are hunters and if my daughters fell for hunters . . . let’s just say that would be a plus. Bride price denominated in a decent currency: venison jerky!
“Retirement more or less is a thing of the past even now.”
Yes, very sad—and dangerous. The aspect of what Citizen talks about, the Fed’s propping up of market to avoid people starving in retirement, seems not to useful to those retiring with *no* real assets except a bit of equity in a house and maybe $100K in the bank. Every analysis I’ve seen says this description—or worse—applies to 80-90% of the population.
Mass retirement is a 20th century concept. The general human condition is to work until you can’t work any more and then ask the kids for help.
That was very much the case in Germany and Austria and probably Switzerland too. Until at least the 1940’s, on farms anyway, the old people would move out of the main house and their kids would move in. They’d build a little addition onto the side of the family farmhouse and the old folks stayed there until they died. This is one of the reasons many really old German farm houses are so large. As the family grew, so did the buildings. I’d have to dust off some history books and read up on German retirement scheme and when exactly… Read more »
Okay, why am I not surprised. Quick Google and I got this from the American Social Security website! The German Precedent Germany became the first nation in the world to adopt an old-age social insurance program in 1889, designed by Germany’s Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. The idea was first put forward, at Bismarck’s behest, in 1881 by Germany’s Emperor, William the First, in a ground-breaking letter to the German Parliament. William wrote: “. . . those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well-grounded claim to care from the state.” One persistent myth about the German program… Read more »
But remember that Bismarck and the Kaiser were trying to undercut (or accommodate, if you will) the Social Democrats. Also recall that employers like Krupp had welfare provisions for their workers before it was enacted as legislation. Provisions that most American workers still don’t have. “Dirigisme” is the word.
For some odd reason I knew that about Bismarck, maybe because so many social programs like kindergarten originated in Germany and spread to the Anglosphere decades later.
Yes, a lot of the American world comes from the Prussians, just decades later.
I was surprised at a Chinese woman’s delighted look when she told me had four sons- until I realized to her, these were her retirement.
Try the house and $100K in debt- with no income and $500 left in cash, in an envelope – and now you’re in my ballpark. At least I finally got the 36 year-old beater running, and still have 1200 gallons of water in the house tank. (And, the ditch is full, so grey water for the swamp cooler and flush.)
51 years working, never missed a day. Not one. 30 years in business for myself. Just didn’t have what it takes.
I’ve made several phone calls to the bank that handles my company’s 401K inquiring about early withdrawal over the past few weeks. With the market the way it is right now, I’m leaning toward cashing out.
Not to pick on you—I know nothing of your situation and past. However, a common caveat is that if you can’t afford a downturn, you should not have that money in such an asset class. In other words, if you are retired or just about to be and you depend upon those assets to fund you retirement expenses, you’ve made a financial mistake. My suspicion is that any number of folks today decrying the current downturn are in that position. I lived through the “dot com” crash and the Great Recession and never missed a beat as I was employed… Read more »
We can endure neither our vices nor the remedies for them.
Get ready for Peter Schiff , “I predicted this, I told you so!” Blasted everywhere on the internet. All the wannabees also.
Is this it? Just another step probably but anyone here already knows where we are headed.
That guy’s ability to stay in the public eye despite being wrong for decades is amazing.
Maybe Kamala will make a speech and the market will rocket past 50,000, and they’ll call it the “Kamala Bounce.” Remember it’s Klown World we live in now and “anything’s possible.”
Kamalapalooza 24. We’re all gonna be in the chips, I tell ya’.
If the Fed cuts, you will know the fix is in for Kamala.
I dunno. The fact of a big crash prior to the election (if this materializes into one) would suggest the fix is not in for Kamala. Or at least that the ptb are divided on the matter, which is the way it appears to me.
I do agree with you here. There is an elite schism, and while there is no political solution to our problems, a divided elite is a precursor to actual separation and change.
Yeah, but in general things go down a lot faster than they go up. Including economies.
Why?
Because it is far easier to destroy than build.
I remember somebody a few days ago took me to task for not being sufficiently loyal to our side. How can you be loyal to any of these people?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GUPbIBWWMAE5iND?format=jpg&name=large
The markets more often than not seem to have a correction in late July-ish since I’ve been alive. My theory has been that this is the time people go on vacation so that lessens activity in the markets, maybe? Could be nothing more than that.
The Nikkei’s decline today suggests something more than correction as usual, and something more than fear over people halfway around the world plinking at each other.
if that happens, will Mr man write about it?
The DOW actually doubled from its scamdemic 2020 low – fueled of course as has everything since 2008/9 by central bank helicopter money raining from the skies. 35T in debt which no doubt will all be repaid with interest – just like dumb & dumber Jim Carrey…. Who wouldn’t have full faith in the most moral, upstanding, egalitarian and “rules based” government in the history of humanity???
Damn, poor just as i was seeing light at the end of the tunnel.
Guess it’ll be noon on the day I die now.
There’s a guy I follow (he’s jewish btw), on the basis of whose forecasts I cashed out of the stock market completely back in March, as I posted here at that time. He called the tops and bottoms of the 2020 covid crash almost perfectly, and he did it before anybody had heard of covid. He also at that time predicted that subsequently the SP500 would see a great rally to 4000+. So I did some stock buying at the covid bottom he predicted, which did in fact turn out to be the bottom. For the last year or so… Read more »
Maybe you and me read Avi Gilburt differently. I think he has been predicting multi decades stock market crash after S&P would hit about 5500. He has been comparing this incoming crash to the Great Depression in severity and length.
No disagreement there. Most recently, about a week ago, he said he thought the market “most likely” had one more rally in it to about 5800, but in the same note he said he wasn’t that confident about putting money into it.
It’s been a while since I saw him lay out the bear market rally that should come after the initial crash. The head and shoulders was my inference, not his, but I couldn’t help but notice how that lined up.
hang in there, boys!
Despite having it rubbed in their faces every day…people seemingly always underestimate the speed and impact of emergent behavior.
Also this from MarketWatch: “The Sahm rule that is designed to signal the start of a recession has officially been triggered. It reached 0.5%, as in, the three-month moving average of the unemployment rate is now 0.5% above the low in the last 12 months.”https://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/jobs-report-for-july-employment-growth-seen-slowing-with-hurricane-providing-a-drag/card/the-sahm-rule-is-officially-triggered-tvQVLLwkOPdqTIA45gsP
It is never too late to read Dmitry Orlov’s book on Collapse –
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-06-17/review-reinventing-collapse-revised-and-updated-dmitry-orlov/
Here is a video from 2008 –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3rloGDFinM&ab_channel=FORA.tv
And the sequel, “The Five Stages of Collapse.”
“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.”
This is not a likely scenario. Not even close!
I think you misunderstand where we currently stand. Oh i think they’ll cut and QE again, but it won’t last long. Either we’ll have hyperinflation or rates will be higher at the end of 2025 then they are now.
Why did they keep rates at 0 from 08 until 2015? Why couldn’t they do that again after 2020? Something changed, trust me otherwise they would have kept rates at 0% forever if they could. Someone or a group of people told them No MAS!
China, Japan and Saudi Arabia stopped buying T bills was a factor. Suddenly money wasn’t free anymore
Ding Ding Ding we have a functioning brain here!
It’s the national debt. The deficient was never shrunk, it exploded in 2020, and was never thereafter reduced—indeed, it increased because of Biden paying back his constituents. That deficit needs to be funded through sale of Treasuries, currently $3T+ yearly. At a certain point you can’t get enough suckers in the GAE, so the Fed buys them. The Fed buying your debt is the same as taking money from your right pocket and putting it in your left and counting that as an “asset” or increase in wealth. This is not unnoticed by the suckers in the GAE. They reduce… Read more »
2020? Remember Zero’s 2009 $1 Trillion Stimulus? It was not a one-time thing. It was added to the baseline budget and spent in each year thereafter, with the annual increase in government spending attached. Shrub’s deficits look downright quaint in comparison.
Yes, but the added to the baseline thing was that Obama would never allow a fully defined budget to be passed. That’s right, the USA went the full Obama term on continuing resolutions without a formal budget being decided (IIRC). Remember the shutdown and near shutdowns under Obama because he’d not sign the Rep budget? That.
Dear Z,
Thank you for emphasizing what this country deserves.
For half a century we have focused on giving people what they want (which tends to be the opposite of what they deserve) and it has made Americans into delusional and petulant children.
I say let the poverty come. It is time Americans reconnect with reality and realize what is up and what is down.
Is the crash gonna finally happen for real this time? All the internet people are saying so…
No. Nothing ever happens.
I cannot disagree.