The Matrix

The American people are feeling really good right about now.  For example, Gallup’s economic confidence index has hit the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.  In addition, nearly half of all Americans believe that 2015 will be a better year than 2014 was, and only about 10 percent believe that it will be a worse year.  And a lot of people are generally feeling quite good about the people that have been leading our nation. Unfortunately, when things seem to be going well common sense tends to go out the window. Sadly, what we are experiencing right now is so similar to what we witnessed in 2007 and early 2008.  The stock market had been on a great run, people were flipping houses like crazy and most people were convinced that the party would never end. But then it did end – very painfully.

America has managed to construct an entirely one-dimensional political system. There’s no discernible difference left between left and right, other than in spin language pre-cooked for the sole purpose of faking the concept of elections. America is living proof that once money is allowed into politics, the accumulation of it, and of the power it can buy, will and eventually must fully control a democratic system, which in the process, of necessity, suffocates and dies a painful death. What once was a proud American democracy has been turned into a circus that rolls into town every four years, filled with clowns that pretend to fight each other with over the top grotesque contraptions, but sleep in the same bed once the show is over and the audience has gone home.

It has become exceedingly apparent that most Americans no longer think for themselves.  Rather, most conversations in America today consist of an exchange of sound bites, phrases, ideas and talking points that the “matrix” has fed us.  Most of us are just zombies that spend our days searching for the things that we are desperately craving.  For fictional zombies, that usually consists of brains.  For American zombies, that usually consists of something that will feed our addictions. Our society is breaking down in thousands of different ways, and we can see the evidence of this all around us.

George Orwell once said that “during times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act“. That perfectly describes the era that we are currently living in. The truth does not bring fear and despair. Rather, the truth brings hope and it sets people free.

All of this mighty, tragic effort to prop up a matrix of lies might have gone into a set of activities aimed at preserving the project of remaining civilized. But that would have required the dismantling of rackets such as agri-business, big-box commerce, the medical-hostage game, the Happy Motoring channel-stuffing scam, the suburban sprawl “industry,” and the higher ed loan swindle. All of these evil systems have to go and must be replaced by more straightforward and honest endeavors aimed at growing food, doing trade, healing people, traveling, building places worth living in, and learning useful things.

Our technological culture seems to place us firmly in conflict with time itself. The rush to cram as much as possible into as small a slice of time as we can seems to be the holy grail these days, and the pace is accelerating exponentially.

"... the admissions of financial danger by internationalists, the sharp drop in stocks at the beginning of fall, the reversal of the political theater, and the fact that mainstream investors now recognize the illegitimacy of the markets yet continue with the scam anyway, signals the last gasp of the global economy. I expect increasing market instability from this point on, as well as numerous geopolitical distractions which will be blamed for the fiscal chaos. Needless to say, the coming storm is a deliberately engineered one, meant to achieve very specific goals, including a fearful and panicked populace, easy to manipulate as the system goes off the rails for the last time."

Our degenerate Central Bankers have tossed up yet another asset air-ball into the debt financed Bubblenomics Millennium. The only remaining question is why?

While the world was poring through the details of the latest round of preannounced western sanctions against Russia - a round which Russia commented would have little actual impact - and just as excitedly awaiting the Kremlin's retaliation, which Putin warned is coming shortly, far from the glare of the center stage Europe quietly folded to a bigger Russian demand namely to delay the implementation of a Ukraine free trade deal by more than one year until the end of 2015 and likely beyond.

If nothing else we have learned it doesn’t matter how obvious the lie is if people don’t want to know the truth.

It is the effective manipulation of our belief systems that enslaves us to the present day insanity.

Ten dark suited men entered the premises of FBME bank in Cyprus on Friday afternoon and took it hostage. The men were from the Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC). And they commandeered FBME because an obscure agency within the US government recently issued a report accusing the bank of laundering money. It just so happens that FBME... and Cyprus in general... is where a lot of wealthy Russians hold their vast fortunes. Bear in mind, there has been no proof that any crime was committed.

Moments ago Netflix reported Q2 Revenue and EPS which were precisely in line with Wall Street estimates, at $1.34 billion and $1.15 EPS. None of this mattered, because just like Amazon, nobody cares about where NFLX is now, everyone is much more focused on where it will be at some indefinite point in the future, with an emphasis on what many believe is virtually unlimited subscriber growth both in the US, but primarily, in the international market. Here is what NFLX reported to its subs growth.

The central banks have created moral hazard on a scale which is simply unbelievable and set a stage for a bonfire of the vanities seldom, if ever, seen in history. Professional Investors who have spent a lifetime playing these contrarian opportunities offered by human behavior are being carried out on stretchers as historic market behaviors fail to materialize. "Never in my 30+ year career as a market observer have I seen so many out on a limb which is about to be sawed off." Those who live within the matrix are fully loaded for a recovery which is not and will not appear. But when the leverage fails, the world’s developed economies will be thrust into the next leg of the cleansing process of deleveraging and the destruction of it will be equally bigger. This conclusion is firmly on the horizon; let’s call it the great insanity.