Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[aedens]

https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/ ... Report.pdf

Bigger fish as the Officer was working security for the counterfeit money operation and the useful idiot Floyd
who was purported to work in was arrested after a store clerk reported He made a purchase using a counterfeit $20 bill
the actual idiots worked in "the club".

It was top shelf knowledge already how many runner coyotes and how much cash if you want to include how much was legit moved
until it was sanctioned to stop the operations. The thread was forwarded in the forums BOTH knew each other.
The training Officers use for restraint I will ignore since any one who even should have a clue already does and knows where it came from.
https://www.somaliguardian.com/news/som ... d-somalia/

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/f ... KBN23C21C/ <---- Enjoy the simple irony.

The only at hand point today noted is how fast and far the ass covering is progressing.
Taxpayers smell the rot as they contact about who's law do they actually consider.
Some time back recently that is we said mind the spread. We anticipate only this simple aspect.
They are way the hell over there ski's and as seen on real the 4x leveraged Ai was not enough to even survive round one
of this visceral shit show. Mercy in the short positions will not exist as warned even before Hayek and Minski.

Key Themes from 1992.
The power and potential abuse of independent counsel investigations
The weaponization of legal processes against political opponents
The fine line between legitimate prosecution and political persecution in cases of policy disagreements

It never sleeps.
It only changes its voice.

[tim]

The Hidden Looting by the Rich leads to the Physical Looting by Those Who've Been Looted

CHARLES HUGH SMITH

An astute reader summarized the dynamic succinctly: “Looting by the rich is hidden, silent, not criminalized while the physical looting by the poor is overt, thunderous and criminal.”

This was brought to life in a big way with the George Floyd incident.

Some poor down and out bloke passed a fake $20 bill to buy a pack of cigarettes. The obeisant tentacles of the State quickly descended on him, beat him for 9 minutes and asphyxiated him.

Before this happened, Bernanke had already shown he can willfully counterfeit trillions for big banks with impunity and, ultimately, it winds up in the coffers of big tech mostly, but some pathetic dude possibly made poor and pathetic by these very actions can't even pass a fake $20 bill without being killed.

The quote comes to mind...

"Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world."

[Higgenbotham]

https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p ... rich-leads

The Hidden Looting by the Rich leads to the Physical Looting by Those Who've Been Looted

CHARLES HUGH SMITH

This set of values would turn human ingenuity away from wasting resources to increase profits to virtuous ingenuity—living well by reducing our consumption of resources by two-thirds. My personal experiences with reducing consumption while maintaining a high quality of life persuade me that the reduction by two-thirds is not as preposterous as the waste is growth mindset has led us to believe.

https://www.oftwominds.com/IIR-Intro2.pdf

There's that two-thirds estimate, this time coming from Charles Hugh Smith. It's entirely realistic and attainable. It's how the stock market falls by 98%.

The Buffett Indicator
US Total Stock Market Cap divided by US GDP. Warren Buffett called it “probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment.”

Current value
241%

https://buffettindicator.org/

This is the highest value ever. For comparison, at the 1982 low it was 32%. The people at dshort.com are looking at a number of valuation measures and coming up with an average 156% overvalued.

That's not the whole story in my opinion. GDP since 1982 has been strongly dependent on debt growth. So in 1985, when the country was concerned about debt growth, it had just surpassed $1 trillion. Now there is some talk about it passing $40 trillion and inflation adjusted that may be up 10 fold or so. In a true economic boom, there's no need to grow your debt 10 fold; you just pay it off and retain some surpluses. The Buffett indicator shows an 8 fold growth.

The part no conventional analyst will consider is that GDP can fall. They just can't conceive of it. The other piece is profit margins. Now this sounds off the wall, but with so much misallocation of capital over the past 50 years GDP can easily fall by 2/3 and profit margins by half. That gets the stock market to the 98% loss vis a vis 1982 valuations on the Buffett Indicator.

[Higgenbotham]

On Friday, the Democratic party rep stopped by here. I talked to him for quite awhile about Talarico vs Paxton, the death in the Amazon warehouse and other things brought up here. He was about my age and claimed to be a former Republican leaning independent. I doubt it, but maybe so. The main takeaway from him is he said the difference between 2024 and this year is people are a lot more angry and energized due to the cost squeeze. That I don't doubt. I told him I wasn't going to vote. His reaction led me to think he's been a Democrat all along.

Meanwhile, there are a few subdivisions south of here on the way to my daughter's school and a few days ago I noticed some fluorescent colored hand made signs advertising "community wide garage sale" in front of each entrance to take place today from 8 am to noon. I've seen these other years but thought this year is the year to start getting in tune to this type of thing. Out of perhaps 200 homes I drove past there were about 6 sales going on and not much for sale. Not many customers. As of now, the activity is too spread out and not enough to be significant. That'll change when the collapse of the economy forces the change. So they may be angry due to the cost squeeze but they aren't inclined to do anything serious about it yet.

[Higgenbotham]

There are two things that John said that I think are relevant to insert at this time.

One was generational change is a force of nature.

The second was that you can prepare.

My next task will be to revisit all those applicable quotes to get John's exact take on those two things. Or if anyone else wants to jump in and do it that is fine.

[Higgenbotham]

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, there is still one more "shoe to drop" -- a massive, worldwide generational panic and crash. I've described many times what I expect to see happen; here's a summary: An elemental force of nature, where millions or even tens of millions of Boomers and Generation-Xers in countries around the world, never having seen anything like this before, and not having believed it was even possible, suddenly try to sell everything in a mass panic. This will bring down computer systems for hours, perhaps even for a day or two, as people watch tv in glazed horror as their life savings disappear.

https://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg ... 081215.htm

We can also still expect a massive, worldwide generational panic and crash -- An elemental force of nature, where millions or even tens of millions of Boomers and Generation-Xers in countries around the world, never having seen anything like this before, and not having believed it was even possible, suddenly try to sell everything in a mass panic. This will bring down computer systems for hours, perhaps even for a day or two, as people watch tv in glazed horror as their life savings disappear. This will seal the "debt minimization" behavior for decades.

https://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg ... 081224.htm

About the time John was researching and posting this, I was researching generational panic and came across a description of the Panic of 1857 in a book called The Emergence of Lincoln by the Columbia University professor Allan Nevins, where he described that panic in a similar way.





Back to Charles Hugh Smith:

This book has an entirely practical aim: to inspire the adoption of a new set of values that establishes goals and incentives to do more with less so we use fewer resources to sustain a high quality of life that’s accessible to all who embrace these values and contribute to a fairer,
more sustainable way of living.

This set of values would turn human ingenuity away from wasting resources to increase profits to virtuous ingenuity—living well by reducing our consumption of resources by two-thirds. My personal experiences with reducing consumption while maintaining a high quality of life persuade me that the reduction by two-thirds is not as preposterous as the waste is growth mindset has led us to believe.

If we cease admiring and emulating excesses of self-glorification and award the highest status to those who devote their effort and capital to virtuous ingenuity that serves our common interests, then the world will change in ways few deem possible.

To those who declare all this impossible, I would note that if there is one trait that stands out in human history, it’s our ability to adapt when the alternatives leave us no other choice.

https://www.oftwominds.com/IIR-Intro2.pdf

While the sentiment of Charles Hugh Smith is admirable, generational change is not about people willfully and proactively adopting a new set of values. For the vast majority, it's about being shocked to the core by generational panic first. The change comes after that.

[Higgenbotham]

This is not a complete analysis by any means and I'm too lazy to do one. But I'd remiss not to at least add something along these lines.

How will a generational stock market panic per the fourth turning theory of Strauss and Howe be different now that the world has entered a new dark age?

AI Overview

A generational stock market panic occurring today differs fundamentally from the classic 1929 model outlined in William Strauss and Neil Howe’s The Fourth Turning due to modern structural, technological, and geopolitical shifts.

1. Central Bank Backstops and Liquidity Interventions

The 1929 Precedent: The Federal Reserve and government stood largely passive during the initial free-fall, allowing bank failures and deflation to run unchecked into a multi-year depression.

The Modern Dynamic: Central banks and regulatory agencies now operate with rapid-response liquidity tools, standing facilities, and direct market-stabilization playbooks. Instead of a clean, unmitigated cash-liquidity freeze, a modern panic is immediately met with massive intervention, turning a sharp free-fall into a managed or prolonged grinding devaluation, or shifting the damage into sticky, structural inflation rather than classic deflation.

2. Algorithmic Velocity and Retail-Led Coordination

The 1929 Precedent: Information moved via ticker tape, newspapers, and physical bank runs where depositors physically lined up outside brick-and-mortar institutions.

The Modern Dynamic: Trading is executed at microsecond speeds by algorithms, amplified by round-the-clock digital media and decentralized retail movements. Contagion spreads globally across asset classes in minutes rather than days, and collective digital action (such as coordinated retail hedging or meme-stock dynamics) can produce wild, non-linear volatility that defies traditional institutional control.

3. The K-Shaped Economy and High Valuations

The 1929 Precedent: The market crash hit an economy with lower baseline debt-to-GDP ratios and a less financialized everyday populace, though leverage among speculators was high.

The Modern Dynamic: Neil Howe and contemporary analysts note that today’s Fourth Turning enters with extreme asset valuations and a heavily K-shaped economy, where a narrow slice of mega-cap tech and wealthy households drive the bulk of consumption. A generational panic today threatens not just equity portfolios, but highly leveraged pension systems, sovereign debt loads ($37 trillion in the U.S.), and real estate markets tied directly to everyday retirement security.

4. Fragmentation vs. National Consensus

The 1929 Precedent: The Fourth Turning of the 1930s and 1940s culminated in a unified national mobilization (the New Deal and World War II) that forged a strong sense of collective public purpose.

The Modern Dynamic: Instead of rallying around centralized institutions, the current era is marked by deep polarization, regional/tribal divides, and a fragmented global order. A modern financial panic is less likely to yield a clean, unified patriotic re-founding and more likely to accelerate institutional distrust, regional economic secessionism, or geopolitical decoupling rather than a tidy systemic reset.

Something should have been said about supply chains. That's the elephant in the room.

Also, the generational panic in the context of a new dark age will not be cleansing. It will kick off an accelerating decline that will last for a couple decades before a bottom is reached. Number 4 describes that a little bit but not enough in my opinion.

The era of energy intensive and energy wasting fiat-obtained free rides for the few will come to a close.