from Lauren Chen
The Piper is Calling: A Sea of Debt, a World of Problems
by Nathan McDonald
Sprott Money
The world remains steadfast, tightly gripped in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is another calamity lying in wait, one that is sadly unavoidable at this point.
The debt bomb is primed, set, and ready to go off, not just in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom, but rather across the entire world.
There is no escaping it, but there is still time to prepare.
Economic Disaster After Economic Disaster Has Taken Its Toll
The dot com boom and bust, the housing collapse of 2008, and now the economic ruin caused by COVID-19 lockdowns have all systematically chipped away and destroyed the foundation of many economies across the world.
Alasdair MacLeod Just Warned We Are Now in the Eye of a Giant Storm
from King World News
Today London analyst Alasdair Macleod told King World News that we are now in the eye of a giant storm and it will lead to all kinds of chaos in major markets.
October 17 (King World News) – Alasdair Macleod: “I think, Eric, this is like the eye of the storm in a sense. If we remember back to March 23rd, that was the date that the Fed came out and said, ‘We will print whatever it takes to rescue the economy.’ The whole situation then just sort of changed on a dime. Gold and silver started rising, the S&P started rising, having fallen 1/3 in the first couple of months of this year, and other commodity prices started rising — the hyperinflation story was beginning.
Joe Knew Hunter’s Business, Tech Censor Storm, Economic Update
Greg Hunter’s Weekly News Wrap-Up for October 16th, 2020
by Greg Hunter
USA Watchdog
For months, Democrat Presidential candidate Joe Biden denied he knew anything about his son’s business dealings. New emails released by the New York Post show a different story. Joe Biden not only knew about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in foreign countries such as Ukraine and China, but he got a piece of the action. Some of these dealings are linked to the transfer of U.S. technology to the Chinese military. This comes at a time when tensions are mounting between the U.S. and China over trade and Taiwan. Is it a campaign ender for Joe Biden? Nope, because the mainstream propaganda media, along with big tech, are covering for Joe.
New Biden Email Obliterates Burisma ‘Debunking’ Over Fired Prosecutor; Giuliani Teases More Devastating Releases
from Zero Hedge
After footage emerged of Joe Biden bragging about withholding $1 billion in US loan guarantees unless the country’s chief prosecutor Victor Shokin was fired, the MSM scrambled to cover for the former Vice President – ‘debunking’ claims that Biden’s quid-pro-quo had anything to do with the fact that Shokin was investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company which hired Hunter Biden to sit on its board.
“The firing of Shokin was universally urged by Ukraine’s benefactors,” writes the Washington Post, citing former Ukrainian foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin. Yet, beyond hearsay, there’s zero evidence Shokin was corrupt.
Except that Shokin’s successor, Yiuri Lutsenko, said in a January 2019 deposition that Shokin is ‘honest,’ while Shokin says that Burisma founder Nikolay Zlochevsky hired Hunter Biden and his associate Devon Archer ‘to protect himself,’ according to the depositions which were released by the US State Department.
Stock Mutual Funds Have Had Net Outflows for 25 Weeks, Bringing Total to $388.7 Billion – A Record
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
Refinitiv Lipper, which has been tracking mutual fund flows for the past 18 years, reports that for the week ended Wednesday, October 14, equity (stock) mutual funds marked their 25th week of net negative outflows, losing -$8.6 billion for the week. Year-to-date, that brings their net outflows to -$388.7 billion. Refinitiv Lipper notes that if that figure stands, it will be the “largest annual net outflows ever, significantly outdistancing last year’s net negative result (-$294.0 billion).”
That’s a pretty historic achievement given that the U.S. had the worst stock market freak out since the Great Depression in 2008 and early 2009. The S&P 500 Index lost 56.8 percent from October 9, 2007 to March 9, 2009.
What raises further alarm bells about the steady outflow from stock mutual funds this year is that for the past 9-1/2 months there has been new money flowing into 401(k) plans from employees who have the money automatically deducted from their paychecks and sent along to their 401(k)s. Since stock-based Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) have barely cracked the 401(k) market, it’s the stock mutual funds in 401(k)s that should have been the big beneficiaries of this money – and yet they are still seeing historic net outflows of money.
The Economic Implosion of 2020: Job Losses Ramp Up Again as Millions of Americans Continue to Slide Into Poverty
by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
The mainstream media keeps trying to convince us that things are about to get a whole lot better for the U.S. economy, but instead they just keep getting worse. On Thursday, we learned that another 898,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week. That was the highest number that we have seen since August, and it is yet more evidence that a new wave of layoffs has begun. But according to the experts that the mainstream media relies upon, this wasn’t supposed to happen. According to them, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits was supposed to be steadily tapering off as the U.S. economy shifted into recovery mode. Unfortunately for all of us, those experts have been dead wrong.
Yesterday, I wrote about the decline of the middle class in our country, and here in 2020 this pandemic has greatly accelerated that process.
Afraid of Foreign Election Meddling? Worry More About America’s Sick Political Culture.
That so many Americans believe Biden and Trump are foreign-backed puppets is less testimony to the effectiveness of overseas scheming than to our own political culture.
by J.D. Tuccille
Reason.com
For a people famously disinterested in events outside their own borders, Americans offer up a lot of rent-free space in their minds to foreign political operatives. Liberals fret that Russians plot nefarious schemes to support President Donald Trump’s reelection effort, while conservatives worry that Chinese and Ukrainian energy companies are funneling funds to Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden through his son.
That foreign players have fiddled with U.S. elections in recent years is no revelation, though it seems unlikely that the efforts had much impact. That so many Americans find it believable that major presidential candidates are foreign-backed puppets is less testimony to the effectiveness of overseas scheming than to the fraught nature of U.S. political culture.
Twitter Mob Forces Dictionary to Change Definitions
by Sovereign Man
Sovereign Man
Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.
Dictionary changes definition of “preference” for Twitter mob
For a long time, the terms “sexual orientation” and “sexual preference” have been used interchangeably without controversy.
That all changed in an instant when Judge Amy Coney Barrett said “sexual preference” during her Supreme Court nomination Senate hearings.
A few extra-woke Senators chastised Barrett, claiming the word “preference” implies that gay people choose their sexual orientation.
‘The Big Guy’: Is Joe Biden a Presidential Candidate or the Godfather of a Mafia-Style Crime Family?
by Monica Showalter
American Thinker
Is Joe Biden a presidential candidate or the godfather of a mafia-style crime family?
It looks like the latter, based on the latest revelations from Hunter Biden’s abandoned MacBook Pro computer, which at this point has so many damning revelations coming from it it’s starting to remind me of the captured FARC computer of 2007.
The latest emails reveal a man obsessed with getting his payment cut for “introductions” to people like his dad, not just with the Ukrainians, but the Chinese, to the tune of tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars.
Hunter in fact drove a hard bargain for his “introductions” to his father and perhaps others in the Obama administration and the cash rolled in.
Boeing Has Negative Jet Sales in September
by Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock
The Street
Boeing sold no jets in September but did have cancellations of previous orders.
No Sales, Hundreds of Cancellations
Boeing reports No Jetliner Sales, Just Cancellations.
Boeing said Tuesday that it sold no commercial planes in September, and three orders for the grounded 737 Max were canceled.
On top of that, Boeing is dropping orders for 48 more planes because it’s not sure that financially troubled airlines will be able to close the deals.
So far this year, orders for 448 Max jets have been canceled and Boeing has dropped another 602 from its backlog because of doubts about the sales.
NYU Students Suspended for Going to Party Before School Year Started Sue the School
by Penka Arsova
LaCorte News
Students at New York University have sued the school for suspending them over a picture that shows them at a party, which took place before the school year, without masks.
How we got here: The school suspended Elnaz “Elle” Pourasgari, Marc Santonocito, and Ashley Storino after reportedly receiving an anonymous tip that there were social media posts of the three students at a party where they did not wear masks or follow social distancing guidelines, the New York Post reported.
The students filed a lawsuit against New York University in September. They claimed they were not breaking any rules as they only spent time with a “bubble” of friends. The students also said the event took place at an apartment that wasn’t on campus grounds and happened on August 14, before the school semester began.
Their lawyer, Karen Edler, argued that the school has no evidence that her clients put anyone in danger and that the students never contracted the coronavirus. She said they were all tested before the start of the school year.
Rand Paul is Right About the Nazis and Socialism
by David Gordon
Mises.org
In “No, the Nazis Were Not Socialists,” which appeared online in Jacobin, the philosopher Scott Sehon makes a surprising claim. In the course of criticizing some remarks by Senator Rand Paul, Sehon says,
Paul seems to quote the mid-century economist Ludwig von Mises:
Under national socialism there was, as Mises put it, “a superficial system of private ownership…[sic] but the Nazis exerted unlimited, central control of all economic decisions.” With profit and production dictated by the state, industry worked the same as if the government had confiscated all the means of production, making economic prediction and calculation impossible.…
It turns out that Paul’s most clear assertion about Nazi control of the economy was, apparently, just something that the senator made up and falsely attributed to Ludwig von Mises. (blockquote ellipses and brackets in Sehon)
Had Sehon looked into Mises’s views more carefully, he would have found that Mises did indeed believe that Nazism was a form of socialism, marked by state direction of the economy rather than collective ownership. In Omnipotent Government (p. 56), Mises says,
‘Young and Dumb’ Traders Have Created a ‘Total Nightmare’ in the Stock Market, Fund Manager Warns
At 40 times earnings, there is a 0% chance that Microsoft stock will produce wealth for someone over the next 10 years to meet their needs, Cole Smead says
by Shawn Langlois
Market Watch
‘The buying that went on in August and September is a 10-year phenomenon the likes of which we have never seen, among millennials and in the risk-taking among people that don’t want to own bonds and want to own overpriced U.S. quality businesses, it is of record proportions.’
That’s Cole Smead, president of Smead Capital Management, explaining in a CNBC interview on Thursday how “young, dumb” investors have created a “total nightmare” in the current climate.
Smead went on to say that these nosebleed valuation levels are an example of a “stock market failure” at the hands of these inexperienced millennials who have gotten lured in to taking oversized risks in equities for the first time in their lives.
“They are buying bullish call options that expire inside two weeks. There was ($500 billion) of bullish call options bought in a four-week stretch by small retail traders,” Smead said. “In ’99 it was $100 billion, in ’07, it was $100 billion.”
The American Tradition of Ordered Liberty
by Alexander William Salter
The American Institute for Economic Research
What is the relationship between money and liberty? In answering this question, I do not want to limit myself to abstractions. Instead, I want to explore how monetary institutions are related to political freedom in a specific time and place. While there are undoubtedly timeless principles about money, freedom, and the relationship between them, I want to put these principles to work, which requires applying them in a specific context.
As an American citizen, I am primarily concerned with American money and American liberty. To get the most out of the ensuing discussion, I first have to elaborate on the nature of the American political experiment.
We Deserve to Die
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
The title sounds pretty awful, but really, if you want to know where the fault is when it comes to Covid19, get up and go look in the mirror.
We’re nearly nine months into this, and really, closer to ten. We ignored the first month because we felt like it. And our culpability goes back even further, because the evidence is very strong that we were funding the Wuhan lab, and we were not keeping any sort of surveillance over in China with regard to what was going on with our money.
You can stop the bull**** about China being a sovereign and thus entitled to do whatever it wants whenever you’re tired of dying. Which, apparently, we aren’t and haven’t been. After all we’re still perfectly ok with lithium being mined and processed over there in open leech pits, which is the only economically-viable way to process it, and which inevitably poisons both the air and ground (and thus water.) We ban the trade in ivory from elephant tusks but not the mass destruction of land and people “required” to build a Tesla.
So save me the pearl-clutching because it’s just getting started — and so am I.
Can Trump Pull a Second Rabbit Out of the Hat?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
LewRockwell.com
“Apres moi, la deluge,” predicted Louis XV after his army’s stunning defeat by Prussia’s Frederick the Great at the Battle of Rossbach in 1757.
“La deluge,” the Revolution, came, three decades later, to wash the Bourbon monarchy away in blood and to send Louis XV’s grandson, Louis XVI, and his queen, Marie Antoinette, to the guillotine.
Donald Trump is issuing similar warnings for the republic if Joe Biden wins the presidency and Democrats capture the Senate. And the stakes, given the magnitude of the chasm that divides us, are indeed high.
The Democrats are out to remake America, and, 17 days from the election, a Democratic sweep remains a real possibility.