from Viva Frei
Does Anyone Even Care That the U.S. National Debt Will Soon Cross the 30 Trillion Dollar Mark?
by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
I didn’t think that this would happen. A few years ago when the U.S. national debt crossed the 20 trillion dollar mark, I didn’t think that it would ever get to 30 trillion. But at this moment the U.S. national debt is around 28 trillion dollars, and our politicians in Washington are about to pass a 1.9 trillion dollar “relief bill”. We are going to have to borrow every single dollar that we spend in that bill, and that will be on top of all of the “normal” borrowing that we are already doing. So by the end of 2021, the U.S. national debt will cross the 30 trillion dollar mark. I am sitting here searching for words that will do justice to how foolish this is, but I can’t seem to find any. We are literally in the process of committing national financial suicide, but fewer Americans seem to care about budget issues than ever before.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. GDP declined to 20.93 trillion dollars in 2020.
So once our national debt crosses the 30 trillion dollar mark, our debt to GDP ratio will be surging toward 150 percent.
That is madness.
‘Unusual’ Restrictions Placed on National Guard Before Capitol Riot, General Says
Hourslong delay by Pentagon was in stark contrast to response to summer unrest, Maj. Gen. William Walker testifies
by Associated Press
Market Watch
Maj. Gen. William Walker, commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, told senators that the then-chief of the Capitol Police requested military support in a “voice cracking with emotion” in a 1:49 p.m. call as rioters began pushing toward the Capitol. Walker said he immediately relayed the request to the Army but did not learn until after 5 p.m. that the Defense Department had approved it.
Guard troops who had been waiting on buses were then rushed to the Capitol, arriving in 18 minutes, Walker said.
‘This isn’t Hyperbole’: Beto O’Rourke Says Officials ‘Literally Want to Sacrifice’ Texans to Reopen
by Virginia Kruta
DailyCaller.com
Former Democratic Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke said Wednesday that officials in his home state “literally want to sacrifice” the lives of citizens in order to reopen.
O’Rourke joined MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace to discuss Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s announcement repealing the statewide mask mandate and allowing all businesses to reopen at full capacity.
“There’s some reporting that business leaders do not welcome this, that it now falls to them,” Wallace began, adding, “It sounds like it isn’t going to work on the science side. There’s a lot of skepticism within the business community in Texas that it’s not going to work on the economic side as well. Why is he doing it?”
“They literally want to sacrifice the lives of our fellow Texans, for — I don’t know, for political gain? To satisfy certain powerful interests within the state? And this isn’t hyperbole,” O’Rourke replied. “You heard our lieutenant governor, arguably one of the most powerful positions in the state of Texas, say on Fox News at the beginning of the pandemic, ‘We are willing to die. Old people are willing to sacrifice their lives in order for the economy to reopen.’”
Yuval Noah Harari’s Terrifying Pandemic Future
by Joakim Book
The American Institute for Economic Research
I’m not a big fan of Israeli pop-historian Yuval Noah Harari, the star-spangled author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus, and most recently 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. His writing is under-analyzed, hyperbolic, ideological, and usually somewhere between trivially true and demonstrably false.
It is therefore not a surprise that his long-read in the Financial Times last week (‘Lessons from a year of Covid’) didn’t exactly resonate with me. He does however raise what I find to be the most difficult and most engaging question of our times: how groups of humans peacefully coexist.
Harari spends the first half or so of the essay exploring the many ways that this pandemic differed from those of the past.
Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – Long Time Coming – Stocks Drop Hard Led by Big Cap Tech
Stocks slumped today, with the selling gaining some momentum in the afternoon.
It was clearly a ‘risk off’ consideration.
The VIX got some legs higher.
Gold and silver were pushed lower once again, and the miners could not provide any leadership.
The dollar moved sideways. there will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.
Have a pleasant evening.
Half of French Home Health Workers Say They’ll “Resist the Vaccine”
by Mac Slavo
SHTF Plan
While the COVID-19 vaccine isn’t the only problem facing humanity, it is a big one. But people are finally standing up to it. About half of French home health workers say that they won’t only deny taking the vaccine, but that they will resist it
Reuters, when covering the country’s vaccine rollout finds that only around “half of health workers in French care homes do not want to be vaccinated.” Even after many of these workers routinely witness the ravages of COVID-19 on the elderly and infirm. Does that mean they’ve witnessed the vaccine doing more damage than the disease it’s supposed to present? We’ll let you ponder that one.
“There’s a complete loss of trust,” one home health care worker and trade union representative was cited in the report as saying, reflecting resistance to the growing pressure put on often underpaid staff in difficult working conditions who are being ordered to get vaccinated lest they risk the safety of the elderly patients. And another reflected a common answer of “I’m going to wait a bit.”
Family Fined, Kicked Off Their Own Land for Living in RV
“This is a question about property rights,” says family’s lawyer
by Jamie White
Info Wars
A Georgia family was kicked off their own plot of land and fined for living in an RV.
Polk County resident Tim Leslie bought a plot of land with his life savings after getting laid off due to the pandemic lockdowns, where he and his family lived in an RV as they developed a permanent home.
“Before I could go to court, they showed up at my property, the building inspector and the code enforcement officer, and told me that I had to be off my land or they were going to seize my vehicles and my assets,” Leslie told WSB-TV last month.
Institute for Justice lawyer Ari Bargil said Leslie’s case brings up questions about property rights and freedom.
Gold & Silver in Backwardation at Today’s Lows
from King World News
The gold and silver markets went into backwardation at today’s lows — below $26 for silver and at $1,700 for gold, which hit a low of $1,699.65 in the paper futures market. Here is what that means.
March 3 (King World News) – James Turk out of London: Not a lot of people are watching gold and silver at the moment, Eric, because sentiment is so depressed, which is actually quite bullish. Extreme levels of sentiment often signal important bottoms and tops, from which trend reversals occur.
The low sentiment at the moment is understandable. This ongoing consolidation of last summer’s big rallies in the precious metals continues to drag on longer than normal. So that has put a lot of people on the sidelines. But they should be watching because there were some bullish signs today.
So Should Trans-Alaska and Similar Be Blocked?
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
Since when does the US have the right to tell another sovereign nation what it can and cannot do with its natural resources, including selling them to customers that wish to buy them?
Apparently we arrogated that to ourselves some time ago and still think we have this right.
We are approaching the endgame for the Nord Stream II (NS2) natural gas pipeline. Begun in 2018, the pipeline aims to link Ust Luga, Russia, to Greifswald, Germany. Today, it has under one hundred miles remaining to be completed.
Decisions made over the next few weeks will determine whether gas ever flows through NS2. It is time for the United States to finally checkmate the project, which is neither economically necessary nor geopolitically prudent, and which harms transatlantic security.
It’s none of our damned business.
Yes, I certainly understand that NS2 will “checkmate” the flow-through fees that Ukraine currently enjoys. But Ukraine is not entitled to those fees if no gas transits their nation. Whether it makes more sense to transit Ukraine or bypass it is not our issue to litigate just like it is not other nations issue to litigate whether we’d like to run a pipeline through Canada with their consent, or into or out of Mexico.
When Does This Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Finally Implode?
by Charles Hugh Smith
Of Two Minds
The mutually reinforcing crises aren’t in the future, they’re here now, and Jay Powell’s shuck-and-jive has lost its magical powers to cloak the rot with speculative bubbles.
How many more times do we have to watch Jay Powell claim his speculative bubble isn’t a bubble, and that his massive expansion of billionaires’ fortunes will magically create jobs for all those living in the real world he’s created of stagnation, social depression and inequality?
In other words, when will this travesty of a mockery of a sham finally implode? When will the Universe tire of the lies, fraud, embezzlement and corruption and bring the whole rotten charade down? When will we tire of the stale tale of reflation, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
We all know the Status Quo’s response to the global financial meltdown of 2008 has been a travesty of a mockery of a sham–smoke and mirrors, phony facades of “recovery”, simulacrum “reforms,” serial bubble-blowing and politically expedient can-kicking, all based on borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, yen, euros and yuan, quatloos, etc. and funneling them to financiers, corporations, monopolies, cronies and billionaires.
Will Powell Unveil Operation Twist 3.0 Tomorrow?
from Zero Hedge
There has been spreading chatter that during Jerome Powell’s upcoming appearance at a Wall Street Journal virtual event on Thursday at noon, the Fed Chair may unveil changes to Fed bond buying and potentially unveil Operation Twist 3.0. As DataTrek‘s Nicholas Colas asks, “will he preview a change in the central bank’s quantitative easing program, one that shifts purchases to the long end to bring down 10-year Treasury yields?”
In response, Colas says that the question sent him to the academic literature and historical record concerning the prior 2 times the Fed delved into implicit yield curve control:
The Latest Updates from Martin Armstrong – 2020.03.03
by Martin Armstrong
Armstrong Economics
CNN’s & the Cuomos’ Conflicts of Interest
Dr. Seuss Now Banned & Biden Removes The Books from Recommendation to Read
Dorsey Moves into Banking as Promised to Overthrow Trump
The LEFT Always Seeks to Suppress All Freedom & they Have Now Canceled Justice Thomas for his Vote
Senator Ossoff Drops a Bombshell: “The 12 or 13 Largest Banks” Got the Trillions from the Fed’s Repo Loans Last Year
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
The new, 34-year old Democratic Senator from Georgia, Jon Ossoff, let a very big cat out of the bag at yesterday’s Senate Banking hearing. For at least a year, from September 17, 2019 through at least September 30, 2020, the New York Fed, acting as an agent for the Federal Reserve, doled out a cumulative $9 trillion or more in repo loans. The Fed would say only that the money was going to some of its 24 Primary Dealers on Wall Street, without naming any specific bank receiving the money. In June of 2020, the New York Fed abruptly stopped reporting the dollar amounts it was pumping out each day. (See Watchdog Report: Fed’s Billions in Emergency Repo Loans to Wall Street Didn’t Go Away in June; They Just Went Dark.)
The emergency repo loans by the Fed began months before there was any case of COVID-19 reported anywhere in the world.
It would now appear that the Senate Banking Committee knows where that money actually went. As a new member of that Committee, Senator Ossoff would be entitled to access that information.
Movie Theater Business isn’t Going Back to Normal: Disney CEO
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Are multiplex theaters even viable in the era of streaming and affordable big screen TVs, if studios crush the “theatrical window?”
Disney will release “Raya and the Last Dragon” this Friday in 2,000 theaters and simultaneously on its streaming service Disney+ for an additional $29.99 fee, on top of the monthly subscription fee. In September last year, Disney released “Mulan” directly on Disney+ for $29.99. In December, it released its Pixar animated movie, “Soul,” on Disney+ instead of in theaters. The entire family or a group of friends can watch those flicks when they premier, for $30, on a big screen in their living rooms. Any efforts by a studio to pull this off before the Pandemic would have caused all movie theater chains to boycott the release.
Hold My Beer
by Doctor J
TF Metals Report
Last year, when The Bankers short-bashed silver down below $14, I was somewhat broke but just had to get me some at that price. Just because! The shop was filled with buyers. I joined the line and bought 10 ounces at that price while the big buyers quickly cleaned out all the silver in that little LCS. Not sure if the owner was delighted, or troubled. I left wondering if he hedges his inventory each evening before the Comex close.
This past month we have witnessed a new generation of stackers jump into the pond with us—at least 37K new stackers on Wallstreetsilver over on Reddit. I joined the group also and am enjoying their giddy posts as they show off their stacks. They are on fire and proud of their “contribution to the cause” regardless of the amount, just like we old-timers felt a decade ago at the old Watchtower site.