Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

Over the past month, the stock market has made a few false starts to the downside before going back up to or near all time highs. My guess is that Friday's move down is the start of the real move which leads to the first longer lasting wave of a bear market. This first wave may last a few months.

I think the stock market may put a top in today or tomorrow before it once again has a larger drop. The main indices like the S&P made new highs on this move over the February 19 high but the small caps and Transports are below the earlier highs.

[Higgenbotham]

Major harmonics and time cycles were hit this morning as the S&P posted a new intraday all time high and reversed lower.

As aeden has said, rope burn and wasting have been going on for years. Now I think the major financial centers will crumble and world will plunge into the new dark age.

My more specific predictions would be:

• There will be a major global financial panic and crisis. Supply chains will break, resulting in unavailability of critical raw materials and components. Global trade will begin to shut down. As it begins to become apparent that the supply chain linkages are permanently broken, the global interlinked financial markets will shut down and cease to exist. This will all happen very quickly. It will not take years from the initial panic.
• The focus of governments will turn to controlling their panicked and hungry populations. Due to lack of availability of imported goods and adequate storage "sufficient to reconstitute" a system consistent with nation state government, this will prove to be too little too late and most government will devolve to the local level as populations lose faith in their national governments and the national governments lose the resources and ability to control their populations.
• There will be no large scale nuclear war. Instead, the population will be culled through starvation, local strife (including settling of long-standing scores) and disease. Wave after wave of pandemics will sweep the world.
• Similar to national economies and governments, centralized utilities will fail or become so decrepit as to be unsafe and unusable. All centralized utilities including the power grid will shut down permanently.
• The initial worldwide kill rate during the first couple decades following the financial panic will exceed 90%. The global population will be in the range of a few tens of millions when the bottom is hit in two or three centuries. Similar to the last dark age, the world's largest cities will have a population on the order of 25,000 and a large town will be 1,000.
• Life during the coming dark age will be similar to the last dark age but worse due to environmental damage and pollution.

In my opinion, what will trigger it will be a major global financial crisis.

[aedens]

Tanks being eliminated by IDF as the Druze and Christians are being wiped out.
ISIS and much worse Mercs just wiping them out. They attack the Villages taking the young
as slaves. Jihad gets another free pass from the EU and Donald Trumps executive order lifting
US sanctions on Syria. The free pass allowed Moon Cults to cleansing operations.
Your being played. Delay Deny Death is the only plan.
The Press decieves as ground Intel knows they are paid killers.
Liberals played as fools again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO7UZmS9cyE Best talent on stage today.

[Higgenbotham]

We got another 2 inches (July 7) after I posted this, bringing the total here to about 7 inches. That additional 2 inches did some damage as it left the area around the garden with standing water for several days.

When a garden area floods, it takes about 5 days to totally assess the damage, so by late tomorrow. Early next week I can post that, then circle back to the general discussion about location and resilience to heat and extremes in rainfall.

The left third is thriving, the middle third was damaged but will mostly survive and the right third is mostly dead. The dead areas will be replanted in August for a Fall crop. The vines that have lived will likely carry through the Summer all the way to the first freeze (because they are cherries; otherwise they normally die in the heat).

I expected any flash flood of over 4 inches of rainfall in a short time to be a problem. If the weather changes and we get more frequent flash floods of over 5 inches in future years, I will have to dig a trench and put in a drainage pipe. I'm not expecting flooding of the frequency where that would be justified. Continuing to build healthy soil will increase the amount of rain it can absorb.

Also, production over the next month or so will drop even on the healthy plants because there was a lot of blossom drop due to the excess rain. As of today, though, production hasn't dropped as tomatoes are still ripening on the dead plants.



Finally, the left third will do most poorly in heat and drought, while the right third will do best.

[Higgenbotham]

Nominations & Appointments

President Donald J. Trump Announces Nomination of Jerome Powell to be Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Issued on: November 2, 2017

Today, President Donald J. Trump nominated Jerome H. Powell of Maryland to be Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a term of four years beginning February 3, 2018.

https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/pr ... ve-system/

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Donald Trump today:

1:02 "He's a terrible Fed Chair. I'm surprised he was appointed. I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him."

https://www.livenowfox.com/news/will-tr ... ion-letter

[Higgenbotham]

Exclusive / Thom Tillis isn’t mad — but he is prepared to tangle with the ‘disrespectful’

Burgess Everett
Congressional Bureau Chief
Updated Jul 15, 2025, 7:23pm CDT

Thom Tillis isn’t in rebellion mode against President Donald Trump or Republican leadership. He’s simply making clear that he won’t tolerate disrespect from Trump — or anyone else.

The North Carolinian, who announced his retirement in the middle of last month’s grueling debate over Trump’s massive tax and spending cuts bill, is no longer beholden to Trump or the broader world of electoral politics.

He’s not planning on using his perches on three powerful committees to undercut the GOP: He’s preparing to support Trump’s package of extra federal cuts and to advance controversial judicial nominee Emil Bove.

But Tillis also contends that the president is getting bad advice on everything from Medicaid cuts to tariffs, and he’s warning Trump against antagonizing him. It could make for a very interesting next 18 months.

“That’s President Trump’s choice,” Tillis told Semafor in an interview in his office on Tuesday, when asked whether he’ll be a thorn in the president’s side. “I’ve tried to defer to him and show him respect, but I do have a habit of mirroring the behavior that I’m presented with.”

Tillis pointed to a recent confrontation with a bystander who confronted him about his opposition to Trump nominee Ed Martin: “You can just ask the poor guy in the Washington National Airport about seven weeks ago what happens when you get up in this former trailer park resident’s face. There’s no human being on the face of the planet whose behavior I wouldn’t mirror if it’s disrespectful.”

https://www.semafor.com/article/07/15/2 ... respectful

[Higgenbotham]

Donald Trump's Approval Rating Plummets to New Low
Published Jul 15, 2025 at 11:55 AM EDT

President Donald Trump's approval rating has declined, according to YouGov polling.

According to a survey by the pollsters, Trump's net approval rating is -17, a decline from the last time YouGov polled voters, when it was -11.

Why It Matters

The decline comes amid backlash to the Trump administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-a ... ov-2099016

[Higgenbotham]

Donald Trump is acting like a man who is in trouble, maybe for reasons we don't know. But if I had to guess, he is desperate to keep the economic bubble going, which is why he's attacking Jerome Powell and lying about who put Powell in.

The root cause of the declining approval could be the economy.