Tag Archives: Ukraine

Dec 26 2021

The Sovereign Debt Crisis Arrives


Armstrong Economics Blog/Sovereign Debt Crisis Re-Posted Dec 26, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

While the world is turning, the economic crisis emanating from the SovereignDebt Crisis in Europe is propelling a very serious outlook as we head into 2022. I have been warning for the past 10 years that the situation would become critical. I have attended meetings with many central banks over this period warning that governments cannot continue to borrow perpetually with no intention of repaying what they borrow.

The Day of reckoning is arriving. They have been using this COVID-19 whipping it up into a panic for the shear purpose to bring us to the point where their solution will be to default disguised as a solution for the poeple. I will report on the real state of the world financial system and it may be shocking for most. This is not a question of simple hyperinflation for that even implies that the currency survives, The real outlook is far from the claims of the pundits that keep pitching the same story for decades since the collapse of Bretton Woods. Those in power are already running stories that there will be an armed revolution if Trump does not win in 2024, It would be nice if we even have that long before political chaos upsets the financial system.

There will NEVER be a return to normal. These people have divided the people on race and politics and the key to civilization has always been that people come together when they ALL benefit. Civilization collapses when you divide the people, and turn one group against the other.

Dec 26 2021

Snicker, NORAD Caller Jared Wishes Joe Biden “Merry Christmas and Let’s Go Brandon”


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on December 24, 2021 | sundance | 225 Comments

A little poke in the ribs this Christmastime.   When Joe and Jill were holding their NORAD call with kids and families preparing for the arrival of Santa Claus, a father named Jared handed a little Christmas jab to the White House promotors of “a season of death.”

As Jared wished the Biden’s a merry Christmas he remarked, “Don’t forget, let’s go Brandon”, and Joe agreed.  LOL.  The moment happens at 07:10 in the video below, prompted:

Dec 24 2021

Gifts for Children of Woke Parents


Armstrong Economics Blog/Humor Re-Posted Dec 24, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

The Babylon Bee created a hilarious gift guide for children of woke parents:

1) Brand new gender: New genders are so hot right now. We would urge you to grab one before they run out, but honestly, there will always be more genders.

2) Allowance increase followed by tax increase: This valuable life lesson will impart to your youngling the wisdom found in pretending to give while actually taking.

3) Battery-powered police car to flip over and set on fire: Progressive children love acting out violently in the name love. This flammable gift is perfect if your child was too young to burn actual police cars back in 2020.

4) Crowbar and a ride to Nordstrom: Unique experiences are the most precious gifts you can give your child. This gift offers a hands-on understanding of where progressive policies have led.

5) Playskool Dr. Fauci Shrine™: Turn your child’s dresser into a sanctuary of reverence toward the benevolent Dr. Fauci. These are flying off the shelves, so grab one quick!

6) Twitter account: Hey, your kid is never too young to learn the ins and outs of Twitter, including public shaming, cyberbullying, destroying careers, and contributing to a giant cancerous tumor of hate.

7) Vaccinate Me Elmo™ doll: Have you seen the commercial for this toy? What a great commercial.

8) Coal: This will prevent conservatives from burning it in power plants and destroying the planet!

9) Chairman Mao pop-up book: Let your child’s imagination be filled with stories of the beloved revolutionary who called for equality and fairness for everyone besides the 80 million who died under his rule. (Avoid Tuttle Twins books at all costs)

10) A whuppin’: Let’s be honest here.

The site was kind enough to consider adults as well with “10 Low-Cost Christmas Gifts To Help You Deal With Inflation This Year”

1) A nice shiny orange: Who doesn’t love a nice shiny orange! Vitamin C, amirite?

2) That ball-in-a-cup game: Unfortunately supplies are low, so you’ll have to make this yourself with items you find around the house, such as a ball, as well as a cup.

3) Anything you got at Nordstrom during your last smash & grab: Did you go looting in the name of social justice? Just give away those penny loafers you took!

4) Your parents’ borrowed Netflix password: Time to pay it forward!

5) Slingshot ammo: Otherwise known as rocks. Hours of fun!

6) A small chalkboard: This is basically the same as an iPad. Cool!

7) Love: Give the most precious gift of all: Love! Who wouldn’t want that? And it won’t break the bank!

8) A pet lobster you bought from the Red Lobster tank: This is every kid’s dream pet, and a valuable opportunity to teach them the effects of serotonin levels in the brain.

9) A coupon for an I.O.U.: To be redeemed in 2024.

10) A TV show like The Tuttle Twins that will warn your kids about the dangers of runaway inflation: Maybe your kids will grow up and fix it someday!

Dec 24 2021

Biden Aides Tell Friends in Media Working for This Administration Is a Misery at Christmas


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on December 23, 2021 | Sundance | 151 Comments

The New York Post {HERE} and Politico {HERE} are sharing stories from White House aides about how their job sucks and many of them are likely to leave at the beginning of the year.  The staffers give examples of a joyless and miserable job at the White House while the top tier pass out champagne perks to their DC elite friends and treat the Biden aides as simple servants.

Apparently, under the regime of Joe Biden, if a White House staffer wants to attend an event or bring their family to visit, the aide must agree to work as an unpaid volunteer delivering services and taking care of the invited list of guests and clients.

As the New York Post noted, “Some White House workers reportedly blame the low morale on the presence of longtime Biden aides who remain distant from their colleagues, a situation summed up by the phrase: “No new friends in Biden world.””

WASHINGTON DC – […]   The small perks of working in the White House, like the chance to take part in holiday parties and ceremonies, have also been in short supply. For the White House’s Independence Day party, most White House staff could only attend if they worked as unpaid volunteers staffing the event, per an email from White House operations sent at the time and shared with us. For the Thanksgiving turkey pardoning and the Christmas tree lighting, attendance was doled out via a lottery system, leaving out many White House aides.

The White House also used a lottery to dole out time slots for holidays tours this week, setting aside three days when staffers could bring their family members to see the building’s elaborate Christmas decor. Most were understanding of the restrictions, until White House Operations asked for volunteers to staff five extra days of tours for non-White House staff. Some staffers fumed as “D.C. Randos” posted White House pictures across social media this week, believing that White House staff should have been taken care of first.

[…] The official added: “It’s also hypocritical and ironic that a President whose brand is built on empathy and family has staff policies that fly in the face of that brand. It’s not a good look and it’s emblematic of how this place runs.” (read more)

The ordinary emotional disposition of leftists and Democrats, writ large, is depressing, angry and negative, the result from a lifetime of blame casting.  The most valued skillset advancing the career of any professional leftist, is their ability to project victimhood.  If you do this long enough, it becomes the only thing you know how to do.  ‘Hang around a one-legged man long enough, and you will walk with a limp’. (more)

Dec 24 2021

Former Police Officer Kim Potter Found Guilty of Manslaughter in Accidental Shooting of Daunte Wright


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on December 23, 2021 | Sundance | 473 Comments

Former police officer Kim Potter was found guilty on two counts of manslaughter by a jury in Minneapolis, Minnesota.   After four days of deliberations the jury originally came back with a deadlock.   The judge instructed the jury to keep deliberating and try to resolve their differences.  The jury came back today and delivered a guilty verdict:

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Jurors on Thursday convicted a suburban Minneapolis police officer of two manslaughter charges in the killing of Daunte Wright, a Black motorist she shot during a traffic stop after she said she confused her gun for her Taser.

The mostly white jury deliberated for about four days before finding former Brooklyn Center officer Kim Potter guilty of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. Potter, 49, faces about seven years in prison on the most serious count under the state’s sentencing guidelines, but prosecutors said they would seek a longer term.

Potter, who testified that she “didn’t want to hurt anybody,” looked down without showing any visible reaction when the verdicts were read.

Potter, who is white, shot and killed the 20-year-old Wright during an April 11 traffic stop in Brooklyn Center as she and other officers were trying to arrest him on an outstanding warrant for a weapons possession charge. The shooting happened at a time of high tension in the area, with former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin standing trial just miles away for the killing of George Floyd. Potter resigned two days later.

Jurors saw video of the shooting that was captured by police body cameras and dashcams. It showed Potter and an officer she was training, Anthony Luckey, pull over Wright for having expired license plate tags and an air freshener hanging from his rear-view mirror. During the stop, Luckey discovered there was a warrant for Wright’s arrest for not appearing in court on the weapons possession charge, and he, Potter and another officer went to take Wright into custody.

Wright obeyed Luckey’s order to get out of his car, but as Luckey tried to handcuff him, Wright pulled away and got back in. As Luckey held onto Wright, Potter said “I’ll tase ya.” The video then shows Potter holding her gun in her right hand and pointing it at Wright. Again, Potter said, “I’ll tase you,” and then two seconds later: “Taser, Taser, Taser.” One second later, she fired a single bullet into Wright’s chest.

“(Expletive)! I just shot him. … I grabbed the wrong (expletive) gun,” Potter said. A minute later, she said: “I’m going to go to prison.”

In sometimes tearful testimony, Potter told jurors that she was “sorry it happened.” (read more)

The judge in this case was/is really weird.

Dec 24 2021

White House Has Dancing Nurses Perform “Christmas Amid a Winter of Death” in The East Room


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on December 23, 2021 | Sundance | 353 Comments

Leftism is driven by committee advice; it’s how the echo-chambering communal groupthink works.

After the White House COVID “Winter of Death” messaging was ridiculed and ignored by almost everyone in the general public, the communications team quickly went back to the drawing board.  You can almost hear Ron Klain instructing the team to find ways to avoid the ‘Grinch team‘ labeling.

However, the ordinary emotional disposition of leftists and Democrats, writ large, is depressing, angry and negative, the result from a lifetime of blame casting.  The most valued skillset advancing the career of any professional leftist, is their ability to project victimhood.  If you do this long enough, it becomes the only thing you know how to do.  ‘Hang around a one-legged man long enough, and you will walk with a limp’.

As a direct result, the political left genuinely does not understand or experience joy, nor do they have a connection to the emotion of happiness. So, when the political left gets together in a focus group to discuss the urgent need to shift messaging from pessimism, which turns everyone off, they end up with recommendations like this:

Yes, White House Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, hired dancing nurses to come into the East Room to deliver a performance for the First Lady.  In the video below, the group sings about the joy of covid, the “winter of death”, and needing to spread a little Christmas cheer.

You might find the entire performance cringeworthy, because it is.  The messaging is ridiculous, odd and, well, just plain weird.  However, this is what happens when the narrative pendulum swings wildly amid the communications team.   The base of Biden supporters, ideological leftists, do not see the cringe, instead they see it as cute – but that’s because they have no connection to the actual emotion of Christmas joy.



Odd Note:  All the people of color were forced to wear a mask and dance, the two white ladies prominently featured were not.  If the politics of the administration was reversed, this implied message would be amplified by those who are highly skilled at looking for the victim narrative.  The media would be shouting racism.  However, with a Democrat ally in the White House, the media must pretend not to notice such things.

It’s all bizarre. All of it.

Dec 23 2021

The Great Unwashed – We The People Are Seen as The Problem


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted Dec 23, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

When the people rise up against the tyranny of government, suddenly this is being fueled by populism that must be terminated. It was John Kerry at Davos who was “warning of the dangers of economic populism,” and added that politicians, like Trump, should not listen to the people. “It’s really dangerous to play to the lowest common denominator of American, of global political life.”

The hypocrisy of this statement is really a slap in the face of what we call a free society. It is OK to appeal to the lowest denomination within society that we need to strip the rich of their toys but it is not OK if someone appeals to the people to rise up against the corruption within governments.

They call Snowden a traitor when he told the people the government was acting illegally against the people. Treason is not against the country or the people but is now defined as exposing those in government.

There are those in power like John Kerry who see only their self-interest and not the people. They have no intention of ever even representing the people. This is a political system based upon fraud. Individuals will run for office and declare what they stand for, but when they get to Washington, they are told they MUST vote party lines.  It no longer matters what someone running for office promises, they are told they must vote for the agenda and in this case, it is Agenda 2030 coming from the World Economic Forum.

This is why there is a movement to terminate the right of the people to vote for anything meaningful. We are too stupid to know what is best for us and how dare we expect that government is there for the people – it is there to exercise power. We are the Great Unwashed! We have no representation and we are taxed, regulated, and oppressed all for an agenda that was never submitted to the people anywhere for a vote if this is the future we want to live in.

So when Schwab declares that we construct the future, he did not mean We the People. We have come full circle in politics. Between here into 2032 it will increasingly become apparent that this is a battle for freedom and the future we wish to leave behind. They do not believe in God. Like Marx, they see religion as merely a tool for manipulation. Believing in God is equivalent to believing a politician will actually do what he promises.

This has indeed gone full circle. There has been a major effort to terminate free speech and Google has been aiding the destruction of our way of life.  The American Revolution was against tyranny and tyranny has proclaimed it has the right to govern we the Great Unwashed who are unworthy of ever having a worthwhile belief or thought. Many also believe in this elitist group that there are too many of us and the herd must be thinned.

Dec 23 2021

Rental Costs on the Rise Amid Diminished Supply


Armstrong Economics Blog/Real Estate Re-Posted Dec 23, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

Demand for rentals in the US is increasing at an alarming pace. Single-family rentals rose 10.9% in October year-over-year, according to a report by CoreLogic. There are simply not enough rental properties available to meet demand. Vacancy rates are at a 25-year low as those priced out of the buyer’s market search for housing.

Rentals in every price range are on the rise. The lower-priced homes that represent 75% or less the regional median rose 9.5%. Lower-middle priced homes that represent 75% to 100% of the regional median are up 10.1%. Higher-middle priced homes representing 100% to 125% of the regional median are up 11.3%, while the highest-priced homes (125%+) advanced 11.4%.

On a regional basis, Miami saw the largest spike with rentals increasing 29.7% in the past year. Phoenix (19.3%) and Las Vegas (16.5%) also experienced notable increases. Thanks to Lori Lightfoot, Chicago experienced the lowest annual growth among larger cities at 4.2%.

The National Association of Home Builders stated that housing starts specifically for rental units reached a high in Q3. However, there is simply not enough available housing to meet the growing demand. Additionally, numerous landlords are also now converting their spaces in desirable areas to Air BnBs and vacation rentals, further diminishing the supply. As remote work becomes prominent in American culture, people are flocking to the suburbs and areas that were not designed to host a growing population.

Dec 23 2021

Kamala Defensive as Approval Rating Declines


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Dec 23, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

Someone is not happy about Joe Manchin slapping down the Build Back Better agenda. Vice President Kamala Harris embarrassed herself while being interviewed by a popular radio personality who is known to push buttons. When asked whether Manchin or Biden was the real president, Harris lost her cool and began shouting that the host was “talking like a Republican.” Part of being in power is facing opposition. Imagine if Kamala became enraged while speaking with heads of state over extremely sensitive matters? This woman is not fit to be vice president.

It is no wonder that Kamala currently has a 52.7% disapproval rating, which is likely higher than what has been reported. Last month, some estimates had her approval rating as low as 28%. This means, at a minimum, over half of American voters do not want this woman representing them. Even the Washington Post reported that Harris “burns through seasoned staff members,” with numerous resignations this year alone. No one is allowed to criticize her without being accused of being racist or sexist.

This is not the first time that Kamala Harris has become overly defensive when criticized. President Biden put Kamala in charge of handling the US-Mexico border crisis. When popular journalist Lester Holt questioned why the VP had not even gone to visit the border, Kamala snapped back, “Well, I haven’t been to Europe.” Her team has limited her press interviews since that moment. Even in the video above, her team attempts to end the interview before Kamala shoots herself in the foot. Kamala has yet to do anything to address the border crisis. She is not fulfilling any of her campaign promises and is basically invisible in her position as vice president.

Dec 23 2021

Biden Goes Back to The Stage Set to Participate in Supply Chain and Economic Propaganda Broadcast


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on December 22, 2021 | Sundance | 145 Comments

Joe Biden went back to the White House stage set today (always weird) to read from his script and hold a broadcast zoom meeting with the supply chain and inflation ‘task force’ led by Brian Deese.  [Read Transcript Here]

The occupant of the White House proclaimed that gas prices have dropped ten cents, the port container backlog was almost fixed, and all the retail sales shelves are stocked for Christmas purchasing.   Smiles everyone, smiles.  [Excerpt Below]

♦ A couple of overall notes.  Biden is proclaiming a massive improvement in the port backlog in California.  However, a more careful review of the specifics from the ports themselves, via John Porcari, reveals this nuance: “The percentage of — the number of long-dwelling containers — the ones that have been there eight days or more — has been cut in half.”  The percentage of, the number of, 8+ day delayed containers has been reduced by 50% in the past two months.

So, the container backlog problem is half as bad as the percentage of the problem was two months ago.  That’s some professional parseltongue right there.

Expanding, Porcari says, “Since mid-October, the dwell times for those containers has dropped from 12 days to 5 days; that’s 140 percent improvement.  And in Los Angeles, from nine days to four days — 125 percent improvement.”  LOL..

The 8+ day containers have dropped from 8 days + twelve (20 days) to 8 days + five (13 days), and that’s an improvement of 140%.   At that rate in two more months the 8+ day container backlog will be reduced to,… wait for it…. 8+ days.  Brilliant!  They will have achieved backlog statis!

Who wouldn’t love a job where the goal of your performance review is to get your horrible performance to the point of ordinary failure, instead of it being at a level of extraordinary failure, or failure+.

Seriously, these guys just crack me up.

On the gasoline side of things, I shall remember to use my correct thinking and thank Dear Leader for the new 10¢/gal savings on the gasoline that increased $1.50/gal this year.

#FJB