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Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

Do you remember how crazy things got when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit the United States and widespread hoarding caused serious shortages of certain goods all over the United States? 

Well, it is starting to happen again. 

As we approach the end of 2020, a “perfect storm” of circumstances is causing the anxiety level of many Americans to go through the roof, and millions are preparing for the worst.  I have been hearing from so many people that are deeply concerned about what the outcome of this presidential election could mean for our nation, and a lot of them truly believe that we will witness tremendous civil unrest.  But as an article in the Washington Post recently noted, that isn’t the only thing we are potentially facing…

Add a frightening pandemic, a burst of protest and anger about racial inequalities, and a sudden economic collapse, and the result is pervasive mistrust, a sense that the world’s most powerful nation can no longer come together in common cause.

“We’re facing a difficult time,” Barkun said. “The threat — the virus — is invisible, and that makes it more frightening. There’s an increasingly widespread belief that authority — scientific, political, informational — is suspect. It can be more comforting to believe in an unpleasant outcome than to embrace uncertainty.”

In modern times, there has never been a year quite like 2020 when we have had to face so many major challenges all at once, and now a lot of people out there are convinced that things could shortly go to an entirely new level.

Many believe that the civil unrest after the election could be even worse than what we saw earlier this year, others believe that the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic lies in the weeks ahead, and our economic problems just seem to keep escalating.

With so much going wrong, many have decided that now is the time to prepare for worst case scenarios.  The following are three ways that Americans are preparing for the chaotic months that are in front of us…

#1 The stockpiling has already started

If there are some things that you want to purchase before things get really crazy out there, you may want to do it as soon as possible, because retailers around the country have already been reporting new shortages…

Shoppers and retailers are reporting that certain items are already running low, including liquid hand soap, disinfecting wipes and canning jars (especially lids). Some products have been difficult to find ever since the first wave.

But a wintery second wave could trigger new shortages, as Americans spend even more time indoors. In a panel discussion with doctors from Harvard Medical School in September, White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said Americans should prepare to “hunker down to get through this fall and winter.”

As I write this article, the election is just over a week away.  If the outcome of the presidential election causes protests and rioting to erupt in cities all over the nation, that is likely to make the emerging shortages even worse.

#2 Americans are buying lots and lots of guns

We have never seen Americans purchase guns as fast as they have been buying them this year.  At one gun shop in Orange County, the owner literally has a hard time keeping any guns on the shelves at all…

At Ade’s Gun Shop in Orange County, owner Emily Atkinson can’t keep up with demand – she’s seeing a run on guns during this pandemic, similar to the run on toilet paper.

“We would put 20 guns out and they would be sold in three hours,” Atkinson said. “We were doing in two weeks what we would do in a quarter.”

And I am being told that in some parts of the country ammunition is in very short supply right now.  We have already seen so much senseless violence all over the U.S. so far this year, and a lot of people believe that much more is on the way and they want to be ready to protect their families.

#3 Concern about what is coming has fueled a crazy real estate boom

It is very strange to talk about a massive real estate boom during the midst of an economic depression, but that is precisely what we are witnessing.

In recent months we have seen an unprecedented mass exodus out of our major cities, and “millions of house hunters” have been driving up prices in desirable rural and suburban locations all across the nation…

The COVID-19 pandemic, the loss of millions of jobs, a weaker economy—none of it stopped millions of house hunters from flocking to Zillow, Redfin, and other online platforms to browse, plan their move, and, in many cases, purchase their first home.

Home prices have been climbing steadily over the past few months, and industry players are projecting they are likely to peak in some markets this fall, causing a tempering of the market driven by a decline in supply and a prolonged economic recovery.

I certainly can’t blame anyone that wants to move.  If I was living in one of our major cities, I would be looking to get out too.

Coming into this year, I kept warning that we were heading into a “perfect storm”, and that is precisely what has happened.  It has just been one thing after another here in 2020, and many believe that 2021 will be even more chaotic.

As for the immediate future, so much depends on the outcome of the election.

If a clear winner is declared shortly after Election Day, that may help to minimize the amount of chaos that we witness in the streets.

But if the results are very close and are bitterly contested for weeks, things could get out of hand very rapidly.  And no matter which side ends up winning in that sort of a scenario, there are going to be millions upon millions of people on the other side that will feel like the election was stolen from them.

There are countless numbers of people out there that will never accept a Trump victory under any circumstances, and there are countless numbers of others that will never accept Joe Biden as president.

I feel like we are on the precipice of a really bad chapter in American history, and at this point it is going to take some sort of a miracle to avoid it.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

Today China’s top leaders represented by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee started the Fifth Plenum of its 19th Party Congress where they will chart the course for the economy’s development for the next 15 years and set the country’s long-term priorities, with are expected to focus on boosting technological self-sufficiency and domestic demand while Xi cements his influence over the party.

The Plenum will run until Thursday, and will conduct the country’s most important exercise in central-planning: drafting the next Five-Year Plan against the backdrop of a worsening global economy and US sanctions (it’s unclear what if any role the recordings China intelligence has of Hunter Biden will play in this exercise). The plenum will also discuss a broad plan for the next 15 years, with goals that are likely to endure for at least the rest of 67-year-old President Xi Jinping’s rule, who as a reminder made himself ruler for life several years ago.

According to the FT, the process to draft a plan typically reveals the biggest worries and priorities for the Chinese leadership, although these are usually for private consumption and rarely officially disclosed to the public. This year’s meeting comes as the deadline for meeting the previous overarching goal of achieving a “moderately prosperous society”, is due to expire in 2021, the centenary of the founding of the Chinese Communist party.

Beijing has recently hinted it would broaden out its focus on economic growth to include targets for environmental protection, innovation and self-sufficient development — such as in food, energy, and in chips. The Planum will also explain how the government will meet Xi’s target of zero net carbon emissions by 2060, which is ironic since China is the world’s biggest emitter of CO2.

Xi is also expected to use the exercise to consolidate his influence over the party and the party’s influence over governance, said Holly Snape, a fellow in Chinese politics at the University of Glasgow. “It’s useful to understand these broad goals in the context of an expression Xi seems fond of: the party, government, military, people, education, east, west, south, north, and centre — the party leads everything.”

At the end of the meeting, China will release a brief summary of the proposals to describe the broader directions of the 14th Five-Year Plan at a high level, including discussions on “dual circulation” – in which China will develop domestic demand and self-sufficiency as the rest of the world remains stalled by coronavirus – strategy, a focus on technological innovation and a push for factor market reform. However, Goldman does not expect a GDP growth target to be announced in either the proposals or the detailed plan when it is released next March.

Below is a preview from Goldman on what to expect from China’s 14th Five-Year Plan:

Main points

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will hold the Fifth Plenum of its 19th Party Congress on October 26–29 to discuss the proposals for the 14th Five-Year Plan. The finalized proposals from the party will be released to the public shortly afterwards in a brief summary. Over the next several months, the National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC) will consult specialists and coordinate efforts from other government ministries to prepare a detailed plan draft to be submitted to the National People’s Congress (NPC) for final approval during the “Two Sessions” in March 2021.

Challenging external environment and key domestic development stage

The external environment is likely to get more challenging for China in the next five years, and China’s senior leadership’s view on the external environment has changed significantly. As President Xi has emphasized since the 19th Party Congress, the world is undergoing profound changes , both economically and politically, which are being accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, on the economic front, global growth may be low in the coming years, and trade protectionism, which has increased in recent years may continue, with disturbances to the global supply chain.

On the domestic front, the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025) will mark the first five years of China’s moves towards its second centenary goal to build a “modern socialist country” after achievement of the first centenary goal of building a “moderately prosperous society”. And as the government has emphasized, China’s development has entered a new stage, focusing more on quality. However, Chinese economic growth has decelerated notably in recent years, with accumulation of many structural issues/imbalances. The contribution of total factor productivity (TFP) to GDP growth has declined notably in recent years. The share of household consumption in China remains low at 39%, compared to 51% for the upper middle income countries and 60% across OECD countries. The share of service sector value-added in GDP has been trending up in recent years to around 54%, but remains below the average level for upper middle income (56%) and OECD (70%) countries. Regional disparity/household income inequality in China has increased or remained large.

Overall, how China can achieve sustainable, balanced and high quality growth in coming years and enter the high income group from the upper middle income group currently is the key long-term question for policymakers in China. Although the Chinese government has been calling for a transition in the development model for a number of years, we think the next five years will be particularly important, both politically and economically.

Growth target expectation

In proposals for prior five-year plans, the government typically mentioned their growth expectation for the next five years, citing “doubling income” goals (except for the 12th five-year plan), and an average GDP growth rate target was included as a key indicator in the detailed plan. These “doubling income” goals were proposed by Deng Xiaoping (for the period between 1980 and 2000) and Jiang Zemin (for the period between 2000 and 2020), with the goal of doubling income between 2010 and 2020 reiterated by President Xi. But for the period beyond 2020, there have been no official comments like these goals so far, and although President Xi mentioned in 19th Party Congress about the second centenary goal beyond 2020, he didn’t make similar numerical remarks on growth.

With the increasing focus on growth quality, we think there is a high chance that the government may not mention growth expectations in the proposals for the 14th five-year plan (and probably the five-year average growth rate indicator could be also missing from the detailed plan released next year). For major indicators in the detailed plan, we think the government may adjust to reflect a focus on quality (there were 25 indicators in the 13th Five-Year Plan, categorized into four groups–economic development, people’s well-being, innovation, resources and environment).

“Dual circulation” strategy to follow in coming years

Against a more challenging external environment, and at a key domestic development stage, recently President Xi has stressed the facilitation of national economic circulation to establish a new development pattern, which takes the domestic market as the mainstay and allows the domestic and foreign markets to boost each other. This has been called the “dual circulation” strategy. There has been a lot of discussion on how to interpret “dual circulation”. Based on President Xi’s remarks, we think there are two key elements:

• First, an emphasis on demand and supply being more domestically driven (“internal circulation”). From a demand perspective, this means growth more driven by consumption and investment. This is consistent with the “expanding domestic demand strategy”. From a supply perspective, this could imply production to rely more on domestic technology and supply chains. In our view, this does not mean “external circulation” is not important, but the way China participates in global trade/supply chain and the role it plays could change.
• Second, an emphasis on supply-side structural reform to facilitate economic circulation and to make supply better match demand. As Chinese policymakers have said, currently the major issues with China’s development are on supply side and are structural. On the top of supply-side reform initiated in 2015 focusing on “five major tasks”, in 2018 the government expanded the content and came up with a more comprehensive strategy—reinforcing previous structural adjustments, energizing micro market entities, promoting innovation and supply chain upgrading; and facilitating economic circulation.

Overall, “dual circulation” is about the long-term development landscape Chinese policymakers would likely to achieve, primarily through supply-side structural reform. The key elements are actually not new and have been mentioned previously by policymakers. From an economic perspective, this means boosting total productivity factor and rebalancing economic development across sectors/regions. But given that the broad external and domestic environment has changed, as we mentioned, we think the government should accelerate the pace of relevant reforms. From a high level, we think the government may stress several key broad areas (the table at the end of this report lists some announcements from government authorities related to 14th Five-Year Plan).

Promoting innovation—key for TFP growth

As President Xi recently mentioned, strengthening innovation capacity and achieving breakthroughs in core technologies is key for the “dual circulation” strategy. The Chinese government has been fostering innovation and industrial upgrading (and development of the digital economy) in recent years, but there remains significant room to improve. R&D expenditure in GDP has been rising and reached around 2.2% in 2019, higher than the average level in upper middle income countries but still well below the OECD level (also likely to fall short of the 2.5% target set in 13th five-year plan). The Economic Complexity Index for China, measuring the capability of a country to produce varied and more complex goods has been trending higher persistently, but still has notable gap with the frontier economy Japan.[1] We have seen strong policy support through measures such as the establishment of government supported funds (e.g., national chip funds) and tax incentives, we believe the efforts would ramp up in coming years. In addition to provide financing support/policy incentive, in order to upgrade supply chain, optimizing industrial allocation across regions based on their comparative advantage would be also key, which is also part of coordinated regional development strategy the government has been pushing.

Factor market reform—key for TFP growth and economic rebalancing

The Chinese government has released two important documents this year aiming to accelerate improving the market economy/allocation, particularly in factor markets (e.g., labor, capital, land, technology, data). One source of slowdown in China’s TFP growth in recent years may reflect misallocation. And distortions in the markets have also contributed to economic imbalances. For instance, regarding the relatively low household consumption to GDP ratio in China, in theory, this could potentially be related to several factors—distribution of national income (between labor and capital), income inequality which is also affected by redistribution effects of tax/benefit systems, and consumption/saving propensity. Distortions in the labor market, such as Hukou system and related regional segregation of the social security system (China’s public spending on healthcare and pension benefits is also quite low as a share of GDP based on international comparisons) has negatively affected household consumption.[2] Spatial mismatch of supply/demand in the land market (undersupply in regions with more population inflow) may have also pushed up housing prices and negatively affected household consumption. As a major part of the “new urbanization” strategy, reform on labor market and land market could accelerate in coming years. Existing regulation on interest rates and SOE privilege in credit availability may have distorted capital allocation and contributed to a high investment ratio in China. Recently, the government released an SOE reform plan for the next three years, as a guide to optimize sectoral distribution of SOEs and improve their efficiency. Further pushes in market reform and reducing distortions will be important to mitigate economic imbalances and boost TFP growth, in our view.

Reduce inequality across regions/households

Less inequality across both households and regions is a focus for the government. China’s Gini index, which measures household income inequality, remains at a high level relative to many other countries and has even increased in recent years, and inequality in wealth is higher still.[3] Regional inequality has also trended up in recent years. On the one hand, these may reflect structural issues/distortions in the economy as we mentioned above, and on the other hand, these may worsen economic imbalances. To address this, the government has been trying to reform the personal income tax system, but in China the share of people paying personal income tax is small. Also, the share of GDP that makes up spending on the social assistance that targets the poor and vulnerable is comparatively low. The overall redistribution effect of China’s tax/benefit systems is pretty limited currently. On a regional basis, the Chinese government has implemented a coordinated regional development strategy, which is also related to factor market reform and could help narrow regional disparity.

Environment

Over the past decades, the Chinese economy has expanded at a very fast pace but at the expense of deterioration in environmental conditions. In recent years, the Chinese government has been increasingly strict on environmental regulations. For instance, ten of the 25 indicators in the 13th five-year plan concerned the environment and resources, with the targets for these indicators all required (in contrast, some other targets are just for guidance, e.g., urbanization ratio). As a key element in high quality growth, we think the government will continue to focus on environment protection in coming years. There might be economic costs incurred by environment regulations — in addition to a short-run shock on growth, environmental regulations might lead to lower long-run growth. [4] But innovation and further market-oriented reforms could help offset.

 

Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,

Most political philosophy is just an elaborate justification for theft and fraud.

What’s called the silent majority is really the ignored majority, who for the most part are happy being ignored. Their lives revolve their families, jobs, friends, and community, not the media, publicity, polls, or politics. They’re sick of elections well before they’ve seen their hundredth campaign ad, received their hundredth mailer, or ignored their hundredth telephone call. They know that politicians are phony and corrupt and make jokes about them, but hope that their rulers don’t screw things up too badly, cross their fingers, and vote for the perceived lesser of two evils.

There’s a shortage of blue-ribbon pedigrees, Ivy League degrees, and gold-plated resumés among the ignored majority, but a surfeit of hard-knocks wisdom and common sense. Benjamin Franklin said, “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” Everybody does foolish things, but by and large, the ignored majority learns from the dear school and puts its lessons to good use.

The gilded class denigrates those outside it: Hillary Clinton deploring the “deplorables,” Barack Obama saying working-class voters, “cling to guns or religion,” and Obama telling entrepreneurs, “you didn’t build that.” Yet, it consistently, almost invariably, demonstrates a complete lack of the common-sense street smarts found in abundance among those it disparages.

The quotes’ condescending arrogance rankles, but at a deeper level illustrate the real division in American politics—between the productive class and those it supports. At the intellectual level it’s the irreconcilable difference between those who believe that value can and should be conferred by the government, and those who know it must be created and produced. It’s believing or not believing that something can be had for nothing.

Freeloaders’ delusion stems from psychology, not ignorance. Every human faces a choice. They can produce value or they can beg, borrow, defraud, or steal it from someone else. For every advance humanity has made, there’s always been someone claiming their unfair share. Most of what we call history is merely an account of who’s stealing or defrauding from whom.

Because production is necessary for human survival, not producing anything of value creates a gaping psychological fissure, one not generally recognized or acknowledged. What’s generally accepted is that humans grasp at rationales and justifications for their actions, not just for the audience to which they’re playing, but for themselves. Most political philosophy is just an elaborate justification for theft and fraud. Political systems don’t spring from philosophies, the philosophies spring from the systems’ actual or potential beneficiaries.

Governments can take every scrap of what is produced. They can pledge every scrap of future production as repayment for their debts. The legitimization of unlimited current and future plunder leads to ever-increasing plunder and debt—and ever-diminishing production. Present governments are merely repeating a cycle that’s played out countless times throughout history.

You would think that government rapacity would be curbed when taxes, regulatory extortion, and debt disincentivize and begin reducing legitimate production. Unfortunately, that assumption flies in the face of historical fact; countless regimes have killed their golden geese. The only regimes that haven’t are those that are currently in the process of doing so.

One among many of rulers’ delusions is that the ruled are buying their lies.

Over time the victims see through the propaganda and narrative management. The lies fool the rulers more than the ruled and are essential psychological support for this predatory and parasitic class.

Commentators from the alternative media bemoan the lack of intelligence and awareness of the American people, and the supposed dominance of the mainstream media narrative. Yet, any number of alternative media commentators, YouTubers, and sites routinely receive more readers or viewers than touted mouthpiece media “powerhouses.” More people watch dissident Paul Joseph Watson’s videos than Rachel Maddow’s nightly screeds, but Maddow receives an inordinate amount of attention from the alternative and mainstream alike and Watson virtually none.

The alternative media’s thousands of sites have eclipsed the mouthpiece media, which exists in a bubble of its own creation. It’s a hugely underreported trend—without fanfare millions of people rejecting the mainstream, reading, researching, and coming to their own conclusions. There’s 330 million Americans and many of them are neither stupid nor duped. It’s just that nobody pays attention to them.

The media bubble envelopes the government-centered corruptocracy and allows those within to preserve the self-deception of personal worth. Someone who lives off the corporate-lobbyist-political food chain, shuffles paper in a government bureaucracy, enforces tax or regulatory extortion, or is otherwise supported in a something-for-nothing scheme cannot have the self-respect that comes from producing value. Instead, the predatory and parasitic classes cling to psychological crutches: conceit, arrogance, condescension, delusion, and willful ignorance.

The most intense predator and parasite condescension is directed at the producers who provide their sustenance. This may seem paradoxical but it’s not. Honest production is an obvious moral rebuke to those who live by theft and fraud. Acknowledging either the value of producers or their own dependence on them would undermine the fragile edifice of their rickety substitutes for self-worth.

Disaffected veterans were the core of a group that would grow to millions, their “faith” in government and the people who ran it obliterated by its repeated failures and lies. Revolutions dawn when an appreciable number of the ruled realize their rulers are intellectual and moral inferiors. The mainstream media is filled with vituperative, patronizing, and insulting explanations of what’s “behind” the Trump phenomenon. It all boils down to revulsion with the self-anointed, incompetent, pretentious, hypocritical, corrupt, prevaricating elite that presumes to rule this country. It is, in a word, inferior to the populace on the other side of the yawning chasm, the ones they have patronized and insulted for decades, and the other side knows it.

“Much More Than Trump,” Robert Gore, SLL, March 3, 2016, reposted November 6, 2016

Nothing has changed over the last four years, except that the ranks of disaffected have swollen. Trump gave voice to them in 2016 and he’ll do it again in 2020. Once more it’s the productive businessman outsider against a government hack insider. After Russiagate, the impeachment, the coronavirus power-grab, leftist and Marxists riots, and endless media-driven tempests in teapots, the somethings in this country are far more contemptuous of the nothings who presume to rule them—and farcically, have designs on the whole world—than they were four years ago.

The ultimate farce is the Harris/Biden ticket: a corrupt, doddering, old fool and a nakedly ambitious shrew who even Democrats don’t like, neither with a scintilla of detectable principle, waging the most inept campaign ever in front of face-masked, socially distanced audiences that number in the tens.

If he gets anything approaching an honest vote count Trump will win in a landslide. The “reputable” pollsters have become another arm of the entrenched powers’ narrative management. Like everything else the corruptocrats have tried, this effort will prove inept. The purported double-digit Biden leads will motivate, not discourage, Trump’s voters. By every other indicator—voter registrations, growing black and hispanic support, the crumbling entertainment and sports complex, the crumbling mainstream media, the ascendent alternative media, millions of new gun owners, backlash against the riots, slowly fading coronavirus hysteria, and off-the-charts attendance and enthusiasm at Trump rallies—Trump’s winning by a country mile.

And let’s not forget Hunter Biden’s hard drive, much as the corruptocracy, Twitter, Facebook, and most of the mainstream media would like us to. The revelations are important not because they reveal that the Bidens are a criminal enterprise—we already knew that—but because they further confirm the suspicions of millions of street-smart, disaffected Americans: our country is a corruptocracy.

If Trump wins and quells the Super Tantrum, he’ll have to do more than give voice to the disaffected. He’s forced the corruptocrats from the depths of their swamp, and he may or may not be blackmailing them for his own purposes. But not a drop of swamp has been drained, and if nothing happens the next four years, Trump’s tenure will be nothing more than a feel-good fantasy for his fans.

He’ll have to either blackmail paid up swampsters William Barr and Christopher Wray to do their jobs or get rid of them for people who will. Nothing less than indictments and prosecutions that cuts a wide swath across the corruptocracy— Clapper, Brennan, Comey, Mueller, Page, Strzok, Haspel, the Biden crime family, Obama, the Clintons, many of the listings in Jeffrey Epstein’s black book, and the rest of their insidious ilk—will do. Arresting Hunter and Joe Biden the day after the election would be a good start.

Trump must put up or shut up on draining the swamp before he can proceed to his long list of other unfinished business. The swamp is the inevitable backwash of a government that has arrogated unlimited power to itself, has first claim on everything produced within the United States, issues debt without limit, and maintains a confederated global empire. Power creates corruptocracies. There is a one in a trillion chance that Trump or any other ostensible outsider changes any of this, and a one in a quadrillion chance that the system reforms itself.

Trump or no Trump, the disaffected will get more disaffected, at least until the system collapses, which it will. The failing of all governments is that they can’t produce, only coerce. What they can force their citizens to produce is astonishingly low compared to what those citizens would produce if left to their own devices in free markets. The productive economy is straining under the tax and debt loads it’s being forced to carry. The debt orgy this year is probably the last straw. The shut-down real economy and debt-bloated financial markets will force a reckoning.

That reckoning will be global and governments will get smaller. Not because anyone within them experiences an intellectual conversion towards less government—and consequently less power—but because they are bankrupt and access to credit will be severely limited. Central banks may continue to buy their governments’ debt with their own devalued debt, but that daisy chain will come to an end as well. A bear market in debt of all stripes and a bull market in interest rates loom. The silver lining: long suffering savers (both of them) and creditors will finally be compensated for the credit risks they bear.

With the crumbling of governments will come the crumbling of current political institutions and boundaries. The breakdown of the corrupt and doomed old order presents the opportunity for the establishment of new orders. What seems inconceivable now may occur with astonishing speed. A year ago, who envisioned what’s transpired so far in 2020?

Millions of salt-of-the-earth, common sense Americans have watched in horror as their country has imploded from lockdown insanity and riots. There’s an exodus from urban hellholes to safer and saner locales. The response to those who say breakdown can’t happen is that it’s already begun.

Alasdair Macleod is writing about Europe, but what he says applies to the United States:

The fate of the euro will be shared with the majority — if not all — of other fiat currencies for reasons specific to them. The recovery from the ashes of government incompetence can be swift — a matter of a year or two, so long as successor governments quickly learn that free markets, sound money and minimal interference from government are all required for the restoration of economic progress. Additionally, all socialist policies must be discarded, and the profit motive and individual wealth creation embraced.

“The destruction of the euro,” Alasdair Macleod, goldmoney.com, October 22, 2020

There will be jurisdictions, some borne out of secession or insurrection, that will institute “free markets, sound money, and minimal interference from government,” along with the concomitant essentials: freedom and the protection of individual rights, because they work and have worked throughout history. They are the quickest way to recover from economic and financial devastation. Most importantly, freedom is the only moral system, the only system compatible with productive survival, and the only system that promotes human happiness.

Freedom, rather than Trump, represents the best hope for the righteously disaffected.

NASA scientists used a robotic spacecraft and a Boeing 747SP plane modified with a special telescope to detect water on the Moon’s sunlit surface for the first time. This discovery indicates water could be more widespread than previously thought, and it allows for NASA’s return of humans to the lunar surface via the Artemis program by 2024. 

Two studies were published in the journal Nature Astronomy Monday morning, describing how NASA detected “widespread hydration” on the lunar surface. The research is based on data collected by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as the agency’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy airborne telescope, also known as SOFIA, mounted within a heavily modified Boeing 747. 

The first study, titled “Molecular water detected on the sunlit Moon by SOFIA,” detected water molecules on the lunar surface. 

The second study, titled “Micro cold traps on the Moon,” found “water ice is thought to be trapped in large permanently shadowed regions in the Moon’s polar regions, due to their extremely low temperatures.” Using data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, lead planetary scientist Paul Hayne of the University of Colorado, Boulder, discovered “small-scale shadows in the polar regions, which we term ‘micro cold traps,’ substantially augment the cold-trapping area of the Moon, and may also influence the transport and sequestration of water.” 

“Our research shows that a multitude of previously unknown regions of the moon could harbor water ice,” Hayne said, who was quoted by Reuters.”Our results suggest that water could be much more widespread in the moon’s polar regions than previously thought, making it easier to access, extract, and analyze.”

The findings were also released during a NASA press conference that began around lunchtime on Monday.  

“For the first time, water has been confirmed to be present on the sunlit surface of the moon,” CNN quoted Hayne at Monday’s press conference. 

Findings Are Discussed At NASA’s Press Conference 

The water found on the Moon might be challenging to extract. We noted, by 4Q22, NASA is planning to send an ice-mining drill rig to the south pole of the moon to extract “water ice.” 

NASA is planning to return humans, or to be politically correct this time, land the first women on the Moon in 2024 as part of its Artemis program. 

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine released a statement last month, announcing the new mission to put a human back on the lunar surface would be the first time since 1972.

Astronauts’ ability to harvest water on the Moon is essential for their survival as the US prepares to erect a moon base this decade, with the prospects of moon mining rare materials by 2025. 

By Nicholas Colas of DataTrek Research

We recently picked up an original copy of then-NYSE president Edward Simmons’ 1930 report on the 1929 stock market crash. In recognition of that event’s upcoming anniversary, we have a summary of Simmons’ key observations. The comparisons to 2020 are remarkable, ranging from uncertainty on how technology might change business, to questions regarding sustainable corporate earnings, and even a sudden rush of retail investors.

We want to introduce you to Edward Henry Harriman Simmons. Born in 1876, he was the nephew and namesake of the famed US railroad magnate. He trained to be a doctor at Columbia University, but switched from the healing arts to finance in 1900. Simmons became a member of the New York Stock Exchange in that year and was named president of the institution in 1924.

The reason for this introduction is that we recently acquired a copy of Simmons’ May 1930 annual report to the NYSE’s Governing Committee, which includes his detailed analysis of the October 1929 stock market crash. Since we are coming up on the 91st anniversary of the event next week, this week’s story is his near-contemporaneous review of that event.

As a starting point, here is a brief description of what sorts of companies were listed on the NYSE at the time of the October 1929 Crash, as listed in the Appendix to Simmons’ report. At the time there were 821 companies on the Big Board, with 1,261 issues (common, preferred, etc.) between them.

Half of all NYSE stocks were in eight capital-intensive industry sectors:

• Railroads: 11.1 percent of all listed companies
• Autos: 7.1 pct
• Machinery and metals: 6.9 pct
• Foods: 6.3 pct
• Chemicals: 6.0 pct
• Petroleum: 5.8 pct
• Mining: 5.0 pct
• Steel and Iron: 4.1 pct

Despite the Roaring 20’s reputation for rampant consumerism, outsized Wall Street profits, and the growth of innovative technologies like telephony and mass market radio, industries related to these trends were not heavily represented on the NYSE:

• Chain stores/department stores: 6.7 percent combined of all listings
• Finance: 2.9 pct
• Cable, Telegraph, Telephone and Radio: 1.1 pct

This brings us to our first observation: unlike the world today, the stock market of 1929 wasn’t just “the economy”; it represented the highest fixed cost, most operationally levered parts of America’s economic output, employing millions of workers.

Moving on to Simmons’ own thoughts about the 1929 Crash, 3 quotes from his report and our thoughts.

Pages 3 and 4, where he lays out his analysis of what has just occurred in American capital markets:

“… it is particularly difficult to draw comprehensive and at the same time positive conclusions upon the business and financial developments of 1929, for the very fact that the period in American economic history since 1924 or 1925 has so largely been one of almost universal change and flux.”

“In the field of manufacturing, the steady installation of quantity production and standardization methods had in recent years wrought a transformation in industrial earnings power which astonished the economists and business men of the whole world; at the same time, newly invented products superseded old ones so rapidly as to render accurate estimation of corporate earnings power highly speculative.”

“Some students, bewildered by these and other novel changes in business, declared that we were living in a ‘new era’. This phrase … has been much ridiculed after the 1929 stock market collapse… Nevertheless … it is an equally serious error to disregard these momentous changes occurring through American business and economic life.”

Our take: the comparisons to today are clear. Just as now, the 1920s saw dramatic advances in the use of technology. What Simmons failed to appreciate in that upbeat final sentence was that a severe economic contraction could, and did, reverse adoption rates for technologies like the telephone and companies could, and did, cut their workforces in response to economic conditions regardless of technological advancement. Thanks to fiscal and monetary stimulus, the 2020 recession has not created the same negative feedback loop.

Page 21, where Simmons discusses US stock market valuations through the lens of dividend payouts:

“While it seems apparent that low yields in the summer of 1929 constituted an important reason for the readjustment of stock prices the following autumn, at the same time it is not equally certain what should be considered normal share yields, particularly under the many complicated circumstances of that extraordinary financial year.”

“While security buyers should undoubtedly consider this factor of yields more carefully in the future, at the same time dogmatic formulas in this regard are also capable of producing much misunderstanding.”

This is the chart opposite the page where that text appears:

Our take: price earnings ratios and other more modern valuation approaches make no appearance in Simmons’ 112-page analysis, but his thoughts on dividend payouts capture the right message. 1929/1930 saw a large dislocation in the US economy, and he was right to question the validity of using historical yield analysis as it did not capture uncertainty about future cash flows. There is much the same debate about 2021 earnings at the moment, of course.

Page 52, where Simmons outlines an explanation for why the American public suddenly embraced stock investing in the 1920s, which had been considered a rich person’s game before:

“The vast spread of security investment in this country which followed the gigantic Liberty Loans fundamentally altered this situation. Where previously American security buyers had been few and – supposedly at least – fairly well posted as a class in regard to Stock Exchange technique, now millions of small and often quite experienced investors appeared as a permanent factor with which American finance and the American security market must reckon.”

Explanation/Our take: the US issued 4 tranches of Liberty Bonds in 1917/1918 to fund World War I, and the first 3 were partially/fully repaid in the 1920s. These were very large issues, the first 3 amounting to $92/person for every US citizen, or $1,585 in today’s dollars. Simmons’ point is that it was this capital, often held in brokerage accounts, that when redeemed for cash ignited public interest in equity investing. The similarities to 2020’s stimulus checks and the recent increase in retail investing is, needless to say, uncanny.

Summing up: whenever we do one of these historical retrospectives, we can’t help but think there’s literally nothing new under the sun and policy makers in many ways still look at the 1929 Crash and Great Depression as their “don’t do this” playbook. Simmons, as both a member of a powerful family and NYSE Chair, could and should have been ringing the alarm bell in his 1930 review but his report is nothing more than a detailed recitation of fact and figure. He did not see 1929 as a historical turning point. While his name is mostly lost to history now, no policy maker wants to replicate his error. They may end up doing too much (we’ll see if that proves to be the case in 2020), but they never want history to judge them as doing too little.

A large military drone, commonly used for classified missions over the Middle East, was recently “activated” by the Department of Defense (DoD) to combat wildfires in California, read an Air Force press release.

“At the request of the National Interagency Fire Center and upon approval by the DoD, U.S. Northern Command activated the 432nd to provide Incident Awareness and Assessment support using the MQ-9 aircraft to aid civil authorities in California,” the release stated. 

The release continued, “This is the first time active-duty aircraft from the 432nd have supported in a Defense Support of Civil Authorities capacity.” 

The MQ-9’s specialized optical sensors provided the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) with “real-time video to map fire perimeters and alert first responders of the spread and potential impact of the fires, proximity to infrastructure or buildings, and containment,” the Air Force said.

Lt. Gen. Kirk Pierce, commander, First Air Force, Air Forces Northern, said, “The 432nd’s ‘near-real-time’ support to CAL FIRE enhanced both agencies’ ability to move limited resources quickly to protect lives, save property, and be postured for next day operations.” 

From Sept. 26 to Oct. 17, the MQ-9 conducted more than 120 hours, providing real-time data on the fire situation. The activation came as devastating wildfires scorched more than 4 million acres so far. The Utility Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) meteorology team warned Friday that some of the strongest winds of the fire season could arrive in Northern California by Sunday.

PG&E said hundreds of thousands of customers might have their electricity shut off Sunday to avoid trees and branches from blowing into power lines and sparking accidental fires. 

Besides monitoring wildfires, we noted the federal government used the MQ-9 to monitor social unrest in Minneapolis this past summer. The military drone was also seen flying above other parts of the US. 

The proliferation of military drones flying above American skies should be very concerning as it merely suggests the country is diving deeper into a surveillance state.