“What The Heck?!”: United Airlines Boeing 757 Loses Wheel After LAX Takeoff
“United Airlines @united @Boeing wheel fell off after take off from LAX this morning going to Longmont, Colorado! Is this another maintenance issue?! What the heck?! husband was on flight and texted me the pilot luckily landed the plane safely,” X user SusanRealtor wrote around noon.
United Airlines @united@Boeing wheel fell off after take off from LAX this morning going to Longmont, Colorado! Is this another maintenance issue?! What the heck?! husband was on flight and texted me the pilot luckily landed the plane safely. @MarioNawfal@ABC7@TMZ@FoxNews
Bloomberg has just confirmed the mid-air incident involving United Airlines.
United Airlines says another of its Boeing aircraft lost a main landing gear wheel while taking off Monday, a near repeat of an incident that occurred in March that helped trigger a federal safety review of the carrier. https://t.co/WupJIpNzf0
A spokesperson for the carrier told the media outlet that United Flight 1001, a Boeing 757-200, lost a main landing gear wheel while taking off from Los Angeles International Airport at 0716 local time. The plane landed safely at Denver International Airport at 1010 local time.
The mishap appears to be a downstream issue, likely related to the airline’s ground crew instead of Boeing.
In mid-March, United CEO Scott Kirby issued a statement to customers, reassuring them that the carrier’s planes are safe following a series of mid-air incidents.
Up close photos of @United Flight 2477 (Boeing 737 MAX 8) that left the runway and came to a stop in grass at George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston. @KPRC2 has learned no one was injured.
hopefully United’s Boeings have downgraded to coal-burning engines, cause another airplane malfunction is just too ridiculous at this point https://t.co/Dd3C7RfsBf
The entire 2019-20 Biden candidacy and subsequent presidency were predicated on a rotten Faustian bargain. A hale Joe Biden would feign his aw-shucks, Joe from Scranton schtick. And an ossified working-class Joe’s camouflage would get the hard left elected – especially thanks to the changes in balloting laws that often saw only 30 percent of the electorate voting on Election Day in key states.
In exchange, the two narcissistic Bidens would bask in the power and attention of the presidency. From the start, Jill and the media would orchestrate deep cover for Joe’s escalating dementia as well as the true intentions of the now-in-power radical Democratic Party with its neo-socialist agenda. The former Obama acolytes would get their long-dreamed-of third presidential term. And this time they would enact a truly radical agenda while their string puppet mumbled to everyone that he was just old, familiar Joe working for the middle class.
The problem, inter alia, with the ruse was that it was based on a complete lie to the American people. Joe Biden was nowhere near cognitively competent. He could not campaign “normally” in 2020. And it would be impossible for his dementia to go undetected even in the ceremonial duties of the presidency for four, perhaps even eight, more years.
And there were plenty of other problems that transcended even Biden’s mental confusion.
First, the new Obama agenda – hyperinflation, open borders, woke crime theories, destroying deterrence abroad, green extremist mandates – was further to the left of the American people than in 2016.
And worse, it was nihilist and destructive. By the August 2021 Kabul withdrawal humiliation, Biden would never again win 50 percent approval from an increasingly exasperated public who felt they had been had by the mannequin Scranton Joe and his false 2020 calls for “unity” and “healing America.”
Second, Joe Biden, senator, vice president, quid-pro-quo sudden multimillionaire, was never a “nice guy.”
His (brief) 1984, 1988, and 2020 presidential runs were characterized by assorted gaffes, plagiarism, and racism (the first “clean” and “articulate” black presidential candidate, “junkie,” “you ain’t’ black,” and the corn-pop sagas).
He always displayed a short-fuse, mean streak (cf. his 1988 angry and falsified defense of his law school and stump speech plagiarism) and bullying (his 2020 slurs of “fat,” “lying dog-faced pony soldier,” etc.).
Biden’s scowls and outbursts grew as he seemed to come alive only when slurring and slandering half the country as “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” deplorables. So, in the recent debate, Biden at least admitted that he had written off half the nation that voted for Trump.
Third, if Trump was an exaggerator, Biden was a long-time mythologist, fabricating his bio, family history, and Trump’s record (from the yarn about cannibals eating his uncle to inheriting a completely unvaccinated country and 9 percent hyperinflation in 2021).
Fourth, there was a creepy side to Joe Biden – from stories of swimming nude in front of female Secret Service agents and the Tara Reade days to his 2020 apologies for sexual buffoonery and his fixations with pre-teen young girls, expressed by embarrassing crowd call-outs or blowing and touching “inappropriately” their hair, shoulders, and necks. Most Washington women knew in advance to avoid Joe’s too-long hugs and bizarre air blasts on their hair and ears.
In short, there were plenty of reasons why Joe Biden never got far as a presidential candidate, given he was a blowhard, cruel to people, a fabricator, of questionable ethics, and eerily interested in young girls—a far cry from ol’ Joe from Scranton, who, in a debilitated state, was supposed to offer the moderate veneer to a Jacobin agenda.
And now? Biden’s dementia has become so overt and so impossible to hide that the entire “crooked deal” has blown up. As a result, in the eleventh hour, there are very few pathways to salvation—as there never are when everything is birthed on a lie and its media-assisted cover-up.
Bidengate is far worse than Watergate. The media this time around was not exposing the wrongdoing of a conservative president but instead serving as a force multiplier in deceiving the very American people it was supposed to inform. “Democracy Dies in Deceit” is now the Washington Post’s de facto motto.
Remember, the left is worried only that Biden is so challenged that he cannot win an election. But they are not bothered that he has no business continuing in his dementia as commander-in-chief and putting the country in real danger each day he occupies the oval office—a bitter paradox that is beginning to infuriate the American people.
So, can Joe Biden just press ahead, sleep more, and fulfill his Faustian obligations?
Or is he not in a doom loop?
The more he rests, sleeps, and avoids the media, the more the public considers him an inadequate, one-quarter president. Yet the more he might welcome more exposure, interviews, press conferences, debates and town halls, the more his ensuing dementia becomes apparent to the public. So, his handlers haggle over the choice between an ensconced virtual president versus an all-too-real, obviously senile one.
Some House liberal presidential historians cite a failing FDR in 1944 who was visibly ill during the campaign and from a variety of serious ailments. They chirp in that Roosevelt nevertheless mocked his critics, got reelected, and entered his fourth term on January 20, 1945. But they forget; the end of the story negates their very point. FDR dropped dead in office, as his critics feared, just 11 weeks later, and as historians seem to pass over.
What if Biden does an FDR, ignores critics and runs – and likewise somehow wins?
Unlike a failing Biden, had FDR not given into intense pressure from the Democratic donor class, the big-city machine bosses, the Southern segregationists, and the liberal print media, and thus had he not removed then-current Vice President Henry Wallace as his running mate, then the wartime commander-in-chief overseeing the Okinawa campaign, the Potsdam Conference, the decision to drop the atomic bomb, and dealing with an ascendant Joseph Stalin and the postwar Soviet Union monster would have been socialist/communist President Henry Wallace.
But unlike FDR, Biden still has no plans to remove Vice President Kamala Harris. Most certainly, then, soon the next president of the United States in 2025-6 will be an unelected and more incompetent successor: President Kamala Harris. And that thought terrifies seasoned Democrat donors, insiders and politicos as much as it did in 1944.
More realistically, Biden is far more cognitively challenged than FDR was in 1944. The chances that he will stay cogent for the next five months and win the election are quickly vanishing. Even the Biden-inspired, now discredited lawfare campaign against Trump has not just failed but boomeranged by increasing Trump’s popularity.
And if a stubborn Biden stays on the ticket and more likely loses, he will destroy what is left of the vestigial Democratic Party of the once triangulating Clintons. He will forever discredit the old-boy hierarchy and final obstacle to the full and overt manifestation of a Democrat, woke European-socialist party of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Squad, and the DEI caucuses.
Note Biden has already taken down with him most of the Washington-New York media, who only now confess they participated in suppressing real evidence of Biden dementia—and this from the same “journalists” who used to insidiously shout “25th Amendment” during the Donald Trump years.
Biden and the apparat that presses on with the current farce might well lose more than the presidency—by losing both houses of Congress and ensuring Trump an unobstructed legislative trajectory to implement a complete reversal of the Obama-Biden years.
Yet, if Biden should step down voluntarily, pundits have run through the endless ensuing problematics. They are considerable: will his successor be on the ballot in all 50 states? What will the Party’s leftist base do if the identity-politics-selected Harris is pushed aside (and what will it do if she is not and steps up to the presidency?).
And how would a successor to Biden emerge in a free-delegate luche libre at a Chicago carnival convention, with chaos both inside the convention hall and a more violent “Death to America!’ bedlam on the streets outside?
So given all these nihilist alternatives, the two Bidens’ choice for now is to bark at the public. They will insult their own toadish media and deny the obvious. They will put the country’s interest dead last and connive that Joe can scowl, scold, lie, and yell at his critics—with not a care that our enemies abroad will conclude this is a golden Biden moment to do something stupid that may not come again.
Stocks & Bonds Sluggish In Post-Holiday Hangover; Black Gold, Bitcoin, & Bullion Battered
After a long-ish July 4th weekend, some liquidity returned today but activity levels were relatively flat compared to the last two weeks.
Goldman’s trading desk noted they were tilted slightly better to buy:
LOs are +6% better to buy with demand for Energy, Cons Disc and Mats outweighing supply in Tech, Staples & Comm Svcs
HFs are +4% better to buy with demand in HCare 2x larger than Industrials, driven by covering. Every other sector’s net $ skew is +/-$30mm with demand in Cons Disc, Energy, Utes, REITs & supply in Comms Svcs, Fins, Tech & Staples
The cash open saw some chaos with The Dow and Small Caps immediately panic bid but heading into the European close, those excited gains sold off and everything but Small Caps fell back into the red…
The best example of the chaos was in “most shorted” stocks which squeezed bigly at the open, then oscillated back and forth before fading back as Europe closed…
Source: Bloomberg
The ‘Energy vs AI’ trade swung back in AI’s favor today as Tech outperformed and Energy stocks lagged…
…as Goldman noted today’s very tight range-bound session, with the SPX intraday band just 26bps, but under the surface there are clear signs of Low Momentum strength driven by cover demand coupled with continued inflows into Mag7…
Source: Bloomberg
Treasuries were mixed but also traded in a very narrow range with the long-end outperforming modestly (2Y +2bps, 30Y -2bps)…
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar was well and truly in the doldrums today, barely managing to show signs of life…
Source: Bloomberg
Crude prices tumbled back towards $82 (WTI) from $84.50 highs late Friday…
Source: Bloomberg
Crypto was chaotic too; dumping overnight back near $54,000, then panic bid all the way above $58,000 into the European session and then dumping back to $55k during the US session…
Source: Bloomberg
Friday’s post-payrolls pump in gold was dumped today, back into July 4th’s range…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, with the record long gamma comes the (almost) record low realized volatility…
Source: Bloomberg
Somewhere, Minsky is turning in his grace at the lack of concern and quiet complacency… that’s slowly building the ammo for a ‘Moment’.
I frequently receive comments about the strength of the United States economy and the unfairness of perceiving things as less than stellar. Is it really the “strongest economy ever”?
It’s evident that it’s far from being the “strongest economy ever.”
The United States unemployment rate has risen to 4.1%, the highest in three years, which is also significantly higher than the level seen in 2019. In June, a 70,000 increase in government jobs boosted payroll employment by 206,000. One-third of job creation is public sector jobs paid with more debt. Both the employment-to-population ratio and the labour force participation ratio are below the pre-pandemic level and immigrants account for all the labour force growth since the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Ned Davis Research.
Inflation remains persistent and citizens have lost more than 24% of their purchasing power since 2019, with a 0.6% negative real wage growth in the January 2021–June 2024 period.
Real wage growth in 2024 is rising only 0.8% year-on-year.
This shows why the United States Misery Index is rising to 7.4% in June from 6.8% in January. The Misery Index, which measures unemployment and inflation, bottomed out in 2023 and has been worsening since then. Furthermore, the index is far away from the pre-pandemic level of 5.4%.
All these measures allow us to understand why Americans are negative about the economy. Despite messages of redistribution, social policies, and equality, the average citizen is poorer, and only the wealthy have been able to improve their position and navigate high rates and inflation thanks to investments in the stock market. While this shouldn’t come as a surprise, it’s important to remember. There is nothing social about increasing debt, deficit spending, and taxes.
The problem for most Americans is that it is increasingly difficult to make ends meet despite record government spending, or because of its negative impact on inflation and taxes.
There is a reason why we should be worried about rising discontent and impoverishment. The placebo effect of government spending on GDP is declining. Real gross domestic income (GDI) increased 1.3 percent in the first quarter, a downward revision of 0.2 percentage points from the previous estimate and a market slowdown. The average of real GDP and real GDI, a supplemental measure of U.S. economic activity that equally weights GDP and GDI, increased 1.4 percent in the first quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
If we look forward, Americans are going to have to choose between two options:
further impoverishment with Keynesian policies;
or making a dramatic pro-growth turn where policy is targeted at improving disposable income, increasing investment, and strengthening productivity and real economic growth.
We know that it will be impossible to cut the current deficit with tax hikes. There is no revenue measure that will generate two trillion US dollars per year, and it is impossible to increase taxes further without punishing investment. The problem in the United States is mandatory spending, as the CBO expects outlays to reach 24.9% of GDP in 2036, while revenues will reach a record but insufficient 18%. If the Federal Reserve continues to monetize debt, Americans will suffer from the inflation impact as well as the rising cost of housing. The US dollar’s purchasing power will continue to decline. However, it is easier to create two trillion US dollars of productive GDI than to tax two additional trillion dollars per year out of the existing fiscal base.
Yes, the only solution for the United States is pro-growth, pro-business policies that defend the purchasing power of the US dollar. So-called social policies have only made everyone poorer and hurt the middle class.
Credit Card Debt Unexpectedly Surges As Card APR Hits New All-Time HIgh
One month after we recorded the first decline in revolving credit (i.e., credit card debt), since the covid crisis, the expectation was for continued consumer retrenching and more credit card paydowns at a time of record high APRs. However, it is far easier to drag the horse to the water and to get him to drink, than to keep spending-addicted US consumers away from their credit cards all time high APRs be demand, and according to today’s latest release of Consumer Credit data from the Fed in May revolving credit surged by a whopping $7 billion, a sharp reversal to the April drop of $0.9 bilion and the biggest increase since February.
At the same time, non-revolving credit – student and auto loans – posted a modest $4.3 billion increase, down from the $7.3 billion in April but a big jump from the $3 billion drop in April.
Combining the two, in May total consumer credit rose by $11.3 billion the biggest jump since February which however was an outlier monthly driven entirely by a burst of credit card spending. And while May was clearly an unexpectedly strong month, the trend is clear: we peak in early 2022 and it has all been downhill since then.
Finally, a vivid reminder that once credit card rates go up they almost never go down, in Q2 the average interest rate on credit card accounts rose again, up to 22.76% from 22.63% in Q1 and 1 basis point below the all time high.
While so far consumers have pretended they can afford to pay this interest upon interest, there will come a day when the brick wall will finally be reached and the US consumer’s Wile E Coyote moment will finally come meet its gravitational implosion.
The key takeaway here is: don’t count on a simplistic ideology or reform or a “supreme leader” to save the status quo from internal failure.
Humans prefer simplicity to complexity. This is why mythologies still resonate with us, despite our hubristic claims to rationality and “following the science.” What we actually crave isn’t the challenge of teasing apart highly complex systems of interconnected dynamics in which each subsystem influences every other subsystem.
What we crave is a simplistic explanation / answer and a leader who we can follow because they keep repeating the simplistic answer. So we boil complicated systems such as societies and economies down to “capitalism” or ‘socialism,” and cling to simplistic versions of these ideas as the explanation of human nature and the answer to all our problems.
When these simple ideas fail to map reality, we’re forced to say things such as “ah, capitalism / socialism works wonderfully and perfectly, but we don’t have true capitalism / socialism,” with the unstated cause of this troublesome imperfection being, well, the pesky humans in the otherwise perfect system.
Which leads us to the present. A great many people cling to a simple reform which they believe will either solve all our problems at the root, or at least go a long way to setting the course that will solve all our problems. These reforms include: hard money / return to the gold standard; adopting bitcoin as the universal currency; seeking “market-driven solutions” to every problem, more regulatory oversight to make sure bad things stop happening, and so on.
If simple reforms / “getting back to basics” actually worked, history would be composed of well-run, boring utopias interrupted every so often by spots of bother that were quickly vanquished by one of the tried-and-true simple reforms. But this doesn’t map the historical record, which tends to exhibit long periods of stability characterized by complex city-states / empires establishing a system of governance and economic organization that is productive and adaptive to the predominate conditions of the era.
These stable system are eventually fatally disrupted by one or both of these forces:
1. The predominate conditions change dramatically, demanding adaptations that are beyond the capacity of the system that had worked so well for hundreds of years. These externalities include epidemics, long-term droughts, depletion of vital resources and invasion.
In some cases, these external forces overlap, generating a Polycrisis in whih each external challenge reinforces the others or depletes the system’s reserves to the point there is nothing left to deal with the last set of crises.
(To borrow a phrase from correspondent T.D., we can say that these crises got inside their OODA Loop–observe, orient, decide, act–leading to a fatal inability to react fast enough and decisively enough to meet the challenges successfully.)
2. The system’s internal limitations–invisible to the participants–fatally restrict the flexibility and adaptability needed to recognize and respond to gradually-developing weaknesses generated by the internal limitations. The weaknesses are papered over by underlings fearful of reporting the troubling truth–“everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you”–or narrative control–the empire is forever, no worries–or the system responds by doing more of what’s failed spectacularly: the gods are angrier than we thought, sacrifice ten times more captives next time, that should do the trick.
“The year 1587 may seem to be insignificant; nevertheless, it is evident by that time the limit for the Ming dynasty had already been reached. It no longer mattered whether the ruler was conscientious or irresponsible, whether his chief counselor was enterprising or conformist, whether the generals were resourceful or incompetent, whether the civil officials were honest or corrupt, or whether the leading thinkers were radicals or conservatives–in the end they all failed to reach fulfillment.”
The status quo has already reached its limits and reform on any scale beyond the usual incremental “policy tweaks” is impossible, and it no longer matters who’s nominally in charge, if rulers are competent, officials are honest or corrupt, or thinkers are radicals or conservatives–the system is beset by forces it fostered but no longer controls, and indeed is incapable of controlling due to the intrinsic limits of the system’s core structures, limits which were invisible during the Boost Phase of rapid expansion.
The Ming Dynasty’s highly centralized system of governance was unified and guided by a Confucianist moral code rather than a highly developed system of laws and regulations. The current global status quo is unified and guided by a code based on a specific definition of Progress: the eternal growth of production and consumption of goods and services, and the eternal growth of the credit needed to fuel this growth in a permanent economic expansion in which whatever is labeled “innovative” is reckoned better than whatever it replaced. Any evidence to the contrary is dismissed as “negativity,” “Luddite,” and other derogatory labels: new is by definition the epitome of Progress.
It is now clear that “Progress” defined as whatever is “new” and “innovative” is in many cases the opposite of actual Progress–what I term anti-Progress–and so this simplistic ideological underpinning of the status quo is crumbling.
The “innovation” may well be highly profitable–financialization, globalization, social media, etc.–but its impact may be disruptive to the point that the system is internally incapable of responding fast enough and decisively enough to correct the resulting run to failure.
We can visualize the system reaching internal limits and the resulting decay of adaptability / run to failure as an S-curve:
Given the internal, structural limits, the entire system has only one pathway: decline to the point that a seemingly modest crisis disrupts the last shreds of coherence in an increasingly nonlinear system and the resulting asymmetric effect collapses the system.
The Ming Dynasty took 57 years to decay and collapse from 1587. Given the nonlinear dynamics and the inherent fragility of the status quo’s many dependency chains, this timeline could be reduced by an order of magnitude to 5.7 years. We won’t know until a crisis that would have been controllable in decades past generates asymmetric effects the system can no longer control.
The key takeaway here is: don’t count on a simplistic ideology or reform or a “supreme leader” to save the status quo from internal failure: we’re on our own, and it’s far better to face this daunting reality now rather than place our faith–and our passive inaction–on the altar of false gods.
Orbán In Surprise Visit To China, Focuses On Ukraine: “Peace Mission 3.0 Beijing”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made a surprise visit to China, as part of his continued “peace mission” tour that within the last days and week took him to both Moscow and Kiev.
The Hungarian leader revealed the visit by posting a photo of himself on X arriving at the airport in Beijing and being greeted by Deputy Foreign Minister Hua Chunying. He captioned the Monday morning pic with the words, “Peace mission 3.0 Beijing.”
This month he’s already met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. The Moscow trip outraged European Union leaders and officials, given Orban says he is acting in an official EU capacity, given that Hungary just recently took over the rotating EU presidency.
EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell had slammed the Moscow visit and meeting with Putin, saying the Hungarian premier is “not representing the EU in any form.”
Orban on Monday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. While China has been officially neutral on the Ukraine conflict, the US and Western allies have consistently charged that Beijing is aiding and abetting Putin’s war.
However, even Ukraine’s Zelensky has acknowledged that China’s voice is urgently needed toward forging a path to peaceful settlement (which Kiev sees as conditioned on the removal of all Russian troops from occupied territories.
State broadcasters have briefly summarized the Xi-Orban meeting as follows:
During talks with Orban Monday, Xi reiterated Beijing’s call for a ceasefire in Ukraine, according to CCTV.
That longstanding call from Beijing has been criticized in the West as positioned to help Russia consolidate illegal territorial gains as it comes without first stipulating that Moscow’s troops withdraw from Ukrainian territory.
Orban and Xi last met in May, when the Chinese leader was welcomed with fanfare for a state visit to Hungary.
Then, Orban defied a mood of mounting European concern about a security threat posed by Beijing to upgrade the countries’ ties to an “all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership.”
Xi hailed that “successful” outcome during Monday’s meeting and reiterated his wish that Hungary during its EU Council presidency would play an “active role” in promoting the “healthy and stable development” of China-EU relations.
Orban agrees that getting China on board with any peace plan is key to moving peace forward, at a moment Moscow and NATO are still escalating:
China “is a key power in creating the conditions” for making peace between Russia and Ukraine, Orban wrote on X, explaining why he came just two months after Xi visited Budapest. Chinese state media reported that Orban briefed Xi on his recent visits to Ukraine and Russia, and that Xi “stressed that an early cease-fire and a political settlement are in the interests of all parties.”
Ouch! Orban in Germany’s Die Welt: with regards to Ukraine “China has a peace plan, America has a war policy, and Europe, instead of having its own strategic approach, is simply copying the American position.”
As for China-Europe relations broadly, EU members are expected to vote later this year on whether to apply further tariffs on Chinese EVs.
Notably, Orban’s Economy Ministry has blasted additional tariffs as “brutal” – a stance which has served to deepen and cement positive Beijing-Budapest relations. China on Monday repeated its vow to retaliate if the EU moves forward on tariffs.
I was driving to work the other day, when the song Nothing Else Matters by Metallica began emanating from my radio. It is a haunting tune and far different then their normal heavy metal repertoire. Depending on my current state of mind, certain songs trigger thoughts about the state of affairs in this increasingly warped world and my place in this chaotic spiraling civilization. This song meant one thing to their lead singer and songwriter James Hetfield, but everyone who hears the song relates to its lyrics in a way personal to them.
He essentially wrote the song about being on the road and away from his girlfriend. But, as he explained in later interviews, the song’s meaning grew to encompass much more for others:
“It’s about being on the road, missing someone at home, but it was written in such a way, it connected with so many people, that it wasn’t just about two people, it was about a connection with your higher power, lots of different things. I remember going to the Hells Angels Clubhouse in New York, and they showed me a film that they’d put together of one of the fallen brothers, and they were playing ‘Nothing Else Matters.’ Wow. This means a lot more than me missing my chick, right? This is brotherhood. It’s pretty powerful.”
Some might interpret the lyrics to reflect on how difficult and challenging life can be on a daily basis, with adversity and tragedy constantly shadowing our foot steps. The lyrics force you to confront one of the most consequential questions of our time – What really matters? Do we control our own destiny, or are we controlled by greater forces, be they spiritual or earthly? In a tumultuous world spiraling towards civil and global war, with a dementia patient Trojan Horse pretending to run the most powerful country in global history, and a globalist cabal of billionaire oligarchs really calling the shots, do we have any real control over our future? Does anything we do matter?
To me, the lyrics at the top of this article capture my view of government, corrupt politicians, surveillance state spooks, police state thugs, apparatchiks for the bureaucracy, regime media outlets, woke warmongering generals, greedy criminal bankers, far left academics, vacuous hollywood celebrities, and the globalist billionaire Davos scum controlling the world from behind the curtain. I may not care for what they say, but the games they are playing threaten the future for my children, their children, and all future generations yet to be born. I would prefer sitting on a beach, reading a book, and not caring what they do. But I know I can’t sit still and just let them do what they plan to do, without using my platform to warn others.
I’ve been writing articles for the better part of the last sixteen years warning about government debt, the government surveillance state, the military industrial complex, the Fed, the regime media propaganda machine, and the Wall Street cabal, all coinciding with the onset and progression of this current Fourth Turning crisis. Since my views are considered apocalyptic and conspiracy theory driven by most normies, I just keep my views to myself when in the company of coworkers, family, neighbors and friends. They can go to my website if they choose to confront the reality of our dire circumstances.
But, a couple weeks ago we were at the Jersey shore and out with friends I haven’t seen in awhile. We were at a bar in the late afternoon to see a band we like, and I put on my normie persona, talking sports and other non-touchy subjects, while swilling a few beers and listening to 80’s tunes. After the band finished we moved on to another establishment with an outside bar and a band playing. I had a couple more beers and one of my wife’s best friends sat next to me at the end of the bar. She wanted to talk politics, the markets, and the economy. These are the subject areas where I normally just listen and keep my views to myself, but after several drinks I let my guard down.
I proceeded to school her about the coming financial crash, the Great Taking, how the U.S. initiated the conflict in the Ukraine, and how it didn’t matter who got elected, because shadowy globalist billionaires continue to pull the strings. Her retort was that I was saying the same things ten years ago and her stock portfolio is now at an all-time high. She acknowledged my facts were correct, with the national debt at $35 trillion, and interest on that debt exceeding $1 trillion per year, financial disaster should be close at hand. But, to her, nothing else mattered than the fact nothing bad had happened to her so far, so why should she worry.
Then I turned to the covid scamdemic, the national shutdown, the vaccine, the coming bird flu hoax, and how much I despise my government. This is where I may have gotten a little too vehement in my “discussion”, as the others in our group seemed concerned I might have a heart attack, even though they couldn’t hear what I was saying over the music. She was vaxxed and boosted, believed everything the government told her (masks, social distancing, etc.), was appreciative of the government PPP money which kept her restaurant from going bankrupt, and thought Fauci was a hero. If she didn’t know I was unvaxxed then, she knows now.
I loudly declared Fauci to be a mass murderer who should die for his crimes; told her the vaccine had killed and injured far more people than it ever saved; shutting down the country over a flu was the work of fascists; and the entire plandemic was used to steal the 2020 election though mail-in ballot fraud. From her perspective, nothing else mattered other than the fact she had not died from the jabs and her business actually made more money from the PPP program than it would have by staying open. I told her anyone who can’t see the truth at this point is purposely keeping their head in the sand because they don’t want to admit they were wrong.
I didn’t have the heart to point out the serious illness her husband developed after getting the jabs. I can’t prove it was because of the toxic concoction, but he didn’t have it before the jabs. I did tell her that hundreds of thousands of small businesses did go bankrupt because of the government shutdown, and she was lucky hers survived. The PPP program was essentially the government breaking your legs, giving you a wheelchair, and expecting you to thank them for their generosity with your own tax dollars. The illusions spun by the regime media run deep, and normies don’t have the wherewithal to break their mental chains.
I had exhausted my repertoire of unequivocal truths, but realized it was no use in changing the mind of a normie, who had been conditioned and propagandized for decades to believe what she was told by politicians and regime media talking heads. Her discomfort caused by the cognitive dissonance of knowing the current trajectory of the nation’s finances will lead to disaster, but seeing her net worth continue to grow as the markets rise, has led to an overwhelming level of normalcy bias in viewing the world. Millions of people have fallen into this mental trap. It will not be resolved until the economy implodes, bombs are falling on our cities, and warring factions leave chaos and death across our countrysides.
Trust I seek and I find in you Every day for us something new Open mind for a different view And nothing else matters
As we accelerate towards the dark, partially obscured, multi-dimensional climax of this Fourth Turning over the next several years, every one of us will need to determine what really matters. Personally, I have become even more cynical, if that is possible, about the odds of righting this ship. The U.S. Titanic ship of state has already struck the iceberg and is surely going to sink. There aren’t enough lifeboats, and many will go down with the ship. I often feel like I’m just going through the motions, going to work every day, posting articles warning people who already know we are f*cked, and trying to figure out how to survive whatever is headed our way, without becoming too depressed to carry on.
I trust my immediate family, but my trust circle is not wide or deep. I know what I believe; I know what I think is going to happen; I have warned anyone who has been willing to listen; and now it doesn’t matter to me what anyone else thinks about me or my beliefs. Some visitors to my website are outraged when I post commentary and views contrary to what I believe. I have core beliefs about economics, banking, the government, the military, and the propaganda media outlets, but I have an open mind to hear different points of view. I agree with Trump and RFK Jr. on a number of issues, while vehemently opposing their views on other issues. The only politician I’ve every felt perfectly aligned with was Ron Paul, but I also thought he wasn’t mean and forceful enough to succeed.
Does any of the daily drama regarding Biden’s senility or Zelensky’s acting abilities fronting the U.S. war against Russia matter? To me it seems like theater, designed to confuse, distract, and obscure what is really happening behind the curtain, where the real people running this world are plotting their next move in their never ending war on humanity, family, and freedom. With a vast swath of the populace too dumbed down, propagandized into subservience, and sheep-like in their adherence to regime media narratives, does it matter what I say, do, or write? Ed Dowd has little faith in humanity, and I agree with him.
The next four months will be portrayed by the propaganda spewing pundits as leading up to the most important election of our lifetimes. We will be told by the regime media nothing else matters, other than this election. But, does any of this Potemkin village bullshit really matter? Will the course of this country be materially altered depending on which figurehead president is installed by those running the show. Will there even be an election if those really in control believe they will lose power? Would they start WW3 to stop the election from happening? At this point, anything is possible.
The rapidity and degree of decline may be altered by a Trump victory, but with a $35 trillion national debt; $1 trillion annual deficits; $200 trillion of unfunded social welfare liabilities; an open southern border inviting terrorists, drug cartels, child traffickers, and welfare leeches; neocons intent on starting WW3; a lawless surveillance state, and psychotic globalist billionaires intent on depopulating the planet, the president has virtually no ability to positively alter the course of this Fourth Turning. They always drive relentlessly towards a bloody conclusion, and this Crisis will end no differently, with civil and global conflict beckoning.
Never opened myself this way Life is ours, we live it our way All these words, I don’t just say And nothing else matters
In my normal day to day existence, interacting with coworkers and shooting the shit with neighbors, I’ll continue to pretend all is well, never opening myself to reveal my true beliefs. My website and my writings are where I can say all the words that really matter. People can choose to heed them or not. I really don’t care. I might be wrong or I might be right, but I’m going to live my life my way, and nothing else matters. What matters to me is what kind of country my children and future generations are left with when this Fourth Turning comes to its bloody denouement. I am haunted by the threat of the Great Taking and a global war with Russia/China destroying the financial system and leaving millions of corpses strewn across the globe.
I can’t worry about the empty vessels of humanity who choose to believe those in control of our society have their best interests in mind. I know that is not true. They have their best interests in mind. The existing system is bereft of freedom, liberty, justice, fairness, and honesty. The corruption runs so deep, and the unholy alliance between corporate interests, the banking cabal, captured politicians, regime media, and unscrupulous bureaucrats, is so all-encompassing, the only way this ends is by the destruction of the system and starting over. At this point, my sole purpose in life is to buck the system, provide a forum for dissenters, rail against the Deep State, and try to maintain my independence, individuality, and integrity.
Never cared for what they do Never cared for what they know But I know
For people with critical thinking skills and aware of what has happened, is happening, and will happen, the near future appears daunting and filled with terrifying uncertainty. We know a huge portion of society is too ignorant, too distracted by their electronic bread and circuses, and too brainwashed by decades of government and media propaganda, to resist the globalist agenda methodically enslaving the world in electronic chains and totalitarian measures.
The impulse to just roll over and accept our fate, because nothing we can do on an individual level matters, is unacceptable to me. This Fourth Turning could end badly, with the destruction of the world as we know it, or it could end with a new beginning. I know we might lose this fight, but if we don’t fight we will surely lose. Together we stand a chance, but separately they will win. Resist until your dying breath.
Short-Term Inflation Expectations Slide In NY Fed Survey Despite Earnings Growth Optimism
Inflation expectations at the one-year horizon dropped for the second month in a row, sliding to 3.02% in June from the previous month’s 3.17%, and from a 2024 high of 3.26% in April, according to the New York Fed’s survey of consumer expectations. At the same time, 3 year inflation expectations rose modestly to 2.93% (up from 2.76%) and the highest since Nov 23. Finally, the median five-year ahead inflation expectations also dropped to 2.83% after hitting a one-year high of 3.00% in May.
Some more details from the survey: disagreement across respondents (the difference between the 75th and 25th percentile of inflation expectations) remained unchanged at the one-year ahead horizon, declined at the three-year-ahead horizon, and rose at the five-year ahead horizon. Median inflation uncertainty—or the uncertainty expressed regarding future inflation outcomes—declined at the one- and three-year-ahead horizons, but rose at the five-year-ahead horizon.
The survey affirms other recent data showing that inflation decelerated in recent months after being more stubborn than expected in the first quarter of this year. Thursday’s CPI report is expected to show that the core consumer price index, which excludes food and energy costs, rose 0.2% in June for a second month. That would mark the smallest back-to-back gains since August, a pace closer to what Fed officials would like to see.
Median home price growth expectations decreased to 3.0% from 3.3%, back to the series 12-month trailing average.
What was more notable is that median year-ahead expected price changes decreased for all goods in the survey: by 0.5% for gas to 4.3%, 0.5% for food to 4.8%, 1.7% for the cost of medical care to 7.4%, 2.6% for rent to 6.5%, and 3.1% for the cost of a college education to 5.3% (the series’ lowest level since December 2020).
Turning to the labor market we find the following:
Median one-year expected earnings growth surprisingly increased to 3.0%, “the measure’s highest reading since Sept. 2023”, even though wage growth continues to slide.
Mean unemployment expectations—or the mean probability that the U.S. unemployment rate will be higher one year from now—declined by 1.0 percentage point to 37.6% in June, just below the series 12-month trailing average of 37.7%.
The mean perceived probability of losing one’s job in the next 12 months increased by 2.4 percentage points to 14.8%. Since the beginning of the year, the series has been moving within a relatively wide range between 11.8% and 15.7%. The mean probability of leaving one’s job voluntarily in the next 12 months also increased (by 0.9 percentage point) to 20.5%, above the series 12-month trailing average of 19.0%.
The mean perceived probability of finding a job (if one’s current job was lost) increased to 53.4% from 52.2% in June, the measure’s highest value since January 2024 but well below its February 2020 pre-pandemic level of 58.7%.
Finally, looking at expectations about household finance, here are the main findings:
Median expected growth in household income declined 0.1 percentage point to 3.0% in June. The series has been moving within a narrow range of 2.9% to 3.3% since January 2023 and remains above the February 2020 pre-pandemic level of 2.7%.
Median household spending growth expectations rose by 0.1 percentage point to 5.1%. The series had remained stable between 5.0% and 5.3% since August 2023, and remains well above its February 2020 pre-pandemic level of 3.1%.
Perceptions of credit access compared to a year ago deteriorated slightly with a smaller share of respondents reporting that it is easier to obtain credit than 12 months ago. Consumers were slightly more polarized about future credit access with a larger share of respondents expecting tighter credit conditions a year from now, and a larger share of respondents expecting looser credit conditions.
The average perceived probability of missing a minimum debt payment over the next three months rose by 0.3 percentage point to 12.3%, above the series 12-month trailing average of 12.1%.
The median expected year-ahead change in taxes (at current income level) increased by 0.4 percentage point to 4.3%, above the series 12-month trailing average of 4.1%.
Median year-ahead expected growth in government debt was unchanged at 9.3%.
The mean perceived probability that the average interest rate on saving accounts will be higher in 12 months decreased by 1.7 percentage points to 25.3%.
Perceptions about households’ current financial situations deteriorated slightly with more respondents reporting being worse off than a year ago, and fewer respondents reporting being better off. Expectations about households’ year-ahead financial situations were less dispersed with fewer respondents expecting to be better off a year from now ago, and fewer respondents expecting to be worse off.
Finally, while earnings optimism may be thoroughly unjustified, at least consumers were somewhat more sanguine about where stocks – which are making new all time highs every day – are going next. Here, the mean perceived probability that US stock prices will be higher 12 months from now declined by 1.3 percentage points to 39.2%.
Watch: Senator Says Biden Is Politically ‘As Dead As Fried Chicken’
The public consensus after Joe Biden’s incoherent performance during the first presidential debate and during his first major post-debate interview is that the candidate’s career is over. Some have argued that the only way Biden can win now is for Democrats to cheat and cheat big, because this time the vote won’t be close. Once blindly devoted progressives are starting to panic as they realize it’s not a conspiracy theory – Their guy is truly mentally disabled.
The typical spin brigade is scrambling to pick up the pieces of a clearly broken campaign. Even Stephen Colbert is attacking his own leftist media allies, telling them to stop the coverage of Biden’s dementia. “Whatabout-ism” is the only argument they have in favor of re-electing a man who barely knows where he is most of the time: “What about Trump? Didn’t you see what Trump was accused of?!”
BREAKING: Stephen Colbert just demolished main stream media for their hypocrisy in how they are covering President Biden’s every word and completely ignoring anything Donald Trump says. Retweet so every American knows main stream media has lost its way. pic.twitter.com/ZkLa1vzbha
Whatabout-ism is not going to win the public’s support, not when their wallets are increasingly empty and the west is increasingly approaching open global conflict with the east. There are those that will argue that all of Biden’s important decisions are made for him by committee anyway, and they would be right. However, the American people don’t want shadow governance and they certainly don’t want a vegetable in the Oval Office making the country look weak.
Reports indicate that numerous political representatives on both sides of the aisle are meeting out of public view to discuss what needs to happen next. At least one Republican Senator, John Kennedy from Louisiana, has not been afraid to say exactly what he thinks of Joe Biden’s condition and the predicament the US faces. Biden is cooked, and if he somehow stays in office, we’re all cooked.
You might be familiar with Kennedy from his hilarious viral campaign against “Defund The Police” policies promoted by Democrat run cities nationwide.
The Senator is telling it like it is. Biden’s condition cannot be covered up or ignored any longer simply because the political left values “winning” over the truth. For most people the election is purely symbolic, a representation of where the country stands ideologically. We all know that there are other powerful elements at work influencing America’s path. But if the public shows they are willing to tolerate something like this, then they’re telling the powers-that-be that they’re willing to tolerate anything.
For the political left the election is not symbolic, it’s an existential crisis. Any shift away from the woke ideal (even a symbolic shift) cannot be allowed. For them, losing the election would mean the country has rejected their religion, not just Biden. It’s unthinkable.
Keep in mind, the DNC, some Neo-cons and the media have been consistently lying about Biden’s health for years. They have been gaslighting the American people, suggesting that what the populace sees with their eyes is not what is really happening. The exposure of Biden’s breakdown calls into question many things beyond the election; it calls into question the very fabric of American government.
