There are mornings when one wakes up and wonders if it would just be better to skip going to the office, the factory, or fulfilling one’s daily routine and just go straight to a bar and watching the world spin out of control.
Today, April 5, 2024, could be one of those days.
Happy Quds Day everyone, for those that celebrate. What is Quds day? From Wikipedia:
Quds Day (lit. ’Jerusalem Day’), officially known as International Quds Day (Persian: روز جهانی قدس, romanized: Ruz Jahâni Quds), is an annual pro-Palestinian event held on the last Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to express support for Palestinians and oppose Israel and Zionism.[4] It takes its name from the Arabic-language name for Jerusalem: al-Quds.
The tinderbox known as the Middle East is already on fire with the Israeli assassination of Iranian officials at the Iranian consulate in Damascus and the war in Gaza so today’s protests already underway in many Muslim nations only adds to the threat that Iran could potentially retaliate today, perhaps as soon as the Jewish sabbath begins at sunset tonight.
Israel is preparing for such an event and has cancelled all military leaves and begun recalling reservists for a maximum mobilization as a precaution.
The situation in the Red Sea with the Houthi attacks on shipping shutting down 90% of container ship traffic through the Suez Canal is no better. Despite a supposedly robust US Navy presence in the region and retaliatory military strikes against their bases, the situation is still unstable at best and unresolved. When this conflict started, the bravado displayed by President Mumbles and his clown show at the Pentagon was viewed by the flip flop warriors in Yemen as a joke.
It started like this in December of 2023:
And here is the US bluster this week:
Just pathetic.
The war in Ukraine is not going as expected, there is instability in Armenia as they began to reinforce their borders this week for another possible conflict with Azerbaijan, China is toying with Taiwan forcing the US to divert scarce military resources to the Pacific, and have we mentioned the loss of Western influence in Africa lately? Yeah, things are not going well with the “adults” in charge of the Washington, DC junta at the moment.
And all of that doesn’t even begin to address the economic turmoil which appears to be setting up the world for a dramatic change that does not bode well for America or Europe.
The threat of prolonged embedded stagflation appears to be quite real and yesterday’s decline in equity markets triggered by the Federal Reserve deciding to parade their clowns all over the media did not help matters. The perception being promoted is that a 5%ish Fed Funds rate will “contain” and reverse the inflationary effects of twenty years of bad monetary policy.
And yes, as an alchemist I hold the secret formula for turning lead into gold but I won’t share.
Today’s Non-farm payrolls report will be viewed as a major economic event, but in reality it’s the wage and hours worked component that everyone will be focused on. The problem that everyone forgets is that the BLS is a political branch of the government, much more so than a real economic statistical division which acquires and reports accurate data.
With that consideration out of the way, keep in mind that the statisticians simply have to tweak a few things and a deteriorating report will provide the cover the stock market bulls and used car salesmen on the Bubblevisions need to push the Fed to cut rates soon. Even if a rate cut exacerbates an already expanding subprime credit crisis of the poors which is being severely ignored and deliberately under reported by the mainstream “media” of our nation.
So keep your powder dry. Have your preps in order and enjoy the show.
Got gold?
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