The Emperor has no clothes.
They got a ranch they call number Fifty-One
UFOs are extremely important to contemporary civilization because irrational forces are an integral part of the nature of man. These forces can be recognized; once they are recognized they can be nurtured and used. The subtle power of groups like the contactees lies in the unwillingness of existing structures to recognize the reality of new phenomena and the need for change. This failure makes it necessary for each individual to deal with the challenge on his own spiritual level.
I believe there is a machinery of mass manipulation behind the UFO phenomenon. It aims at social and political goals by diverting attention from some human problems and by providing a potential release for tensions caused by others. The contactees are a part of that machinery. They are helping to create a new form of belief: an expectation of actual contact among large parts of the public. In turn this expectation makes millions of people hope for the imminent realization of that age-old dream: salvation from above, surrender to the greater power of some wise navigators of the cosmos.
With the release of popular UFO movies, many people who previously were skeptics have begun to jump on this bandwagon from outer space. I wish them bon voyage.
However, if you take the trouble to join me in the analysis of the modern UFO myth, you will see human beings under the control of a strange force that is bending them in absurd ways, forcing them to play a role in a bizarre game of deception.
This role may be very important if changing social conditions make it desirable to focus the attention of the public on the distant stars while obsolete human institutions are wiped out and rebuilt in new ways.
Are the manipulators, in the final analysis, nothing more than a group of humans who have mastered a very advanced form of power?
Let me summarize my conclusions thus far. UFOs are real. They are physical devices used to affect human consciousness. They may not be from outer space. Their purpose may be to achieve social changes on this planet, through a belief system that uses systematic manipulation of witnesses and contactees; covert use of various sects and cults; control of the channels through which the alleged “space messages” can make an impact on the public.
Part One of this book will assemble the arguments against the idea that UFOs come from outer space. It will describe what the contactees are actually experiencing: confusion, helplessness, and often despair. Part Two will expand the discussion to a subject that is shunned by all UFO researchers – politics. For if UFOs make an impact on our social reality, they are bound to change our political realities as well. This discussion will lead to a new “model” of what is happening, a model in which UFOs appear against the background of a worldwide manipulation operation. Part Three will show the brutal consequences of this model: it may add apprehension to disappointment as we suggest that the mutilations of animals that are taking place throughout the Western states are part of the same manipulation.
A friend who read this book in manuscript advised me not to publish it: “That’s not what America wants to hear,” he said. “America wants a big UFO that flies down from heaven, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, filled with new hopes for mankind; America wants a shiny spacecraft to replace the deflated balloon of its religious values. If UFOs are connected with unexplained mutilation of cattle and with behavior modification on a grand scale, America doesn’t want to know about it.”
Jacques F. Vallée, Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults, 1979
Nearly 45% of respondents to the weekly sentiment survey conducted by the American Association of Individual Investors believe that stocks will rise over the next six months, up sharply from the 29.1% share seen last week.
Concurrently, 24.3% of those surveyed expressed a bearish view, compared to 36.8% over the seven days ended May 31. The share of bulls and bears each stand at their highest and lowest, respectively, since mid-November 2021, a few days before the Nasdaq 100 logged its everything bubble highs.
“Fraud and scam and corporate malfeasance is the weather,
and the Fed creates the climate.”
Christopher Leonard (excellent interview.)
A few excerpts from Leonard above:
“The incredible awe and respect, and the fact that Bernanke just seems beyond criticism, is mind-blowing to me....I don’t understand it. I think that this guy is totally reckless. The hubris is on the record...This guy was stunningly dishonest with the American people...”
“Ben Bernanke took so many huge risks and was so astoundingly wrong about so much. You just look at the debate about quantitative easing in 2012. Bernanke had his staff draw up a forecast of what was going to happen. All the numbers are in the book; it’s stunningly wrong.”
"It’s totally tearing apart our society, honestly. I think it’s at the root of a lot of our ills right now."
I have mentioned Christopher Leonard a number of times here on Substack and on Twitter. He is one of a handful of business reporters who gets the scam, and honestly reports on it. I encourage you to check out his other writings on the Fed, including his book, The Lords of Easy Money.
Just saving this for future historians:
New York Times, January 19, 2008:
David W. Tice, a renowned bear, said Friday that the Dow would sink to 6,000 by the end of the year as the country slides into a recession. But Abby Joseph Cohen, the superbull at Goldman Sachs, maintained that the Dow would roar back to finish 2008 at a level 22 percent higher — 14,750 is the number — as the economy perks up later in the year.
…President Bush called for $145 billion in tax rebates for American families and incentives for businesses to keep the economy from sliding into recession.
We were already in recession when this article ran.
The Dow ended the year at 8,776.39, a drop of 33.84%.
Irina Slav, “one of the bluntest critics of Europe’s climate policies and the “energy transition.”” Money quote: “Brussels is the new Moscow.” Interesting perspective from someone used to living under totalitarianism. Here Substack is here.
Markets Are Signalling A Recession Is Imminent | Eric Basmajian
Vincent Daniel on Forward Guidance
…the liquidity started to suck out of the market, and as a result…it started to expose a lot of the things that we were feeling, some of the names we were seeing - particularly in the, what I would call, fake consumer fintech area, the Affirm’s, the Upstart’s, the SoFi’s of the world…
That glorious time lasted up until about October 2022…that’s when I think Jerome Powell actually showed that the Emperor really had no clothes. If we think about what happened in October 2022, that was probably peak tightening of liquidity, the UK pension system was in shambles, so global central banks actually started instituting QE…it was QE. They printed money, or expanded the balance sheet to be exact…
Please please please, for all investors, don’t short stocks.
Lots of great quotes, including “The Fed Put is never dead” and “You show me the asset with the low risk weighting, and I will show you where the next bubble is."
In "The Emperor's New Clothes", the child who pointed out that the Emperor was naked wasn't suddenly right, like a stopped clock.
The Fed’s BTFP (Boost the F****** Ponzi) program hit $100 billion for the first time:
Remember when the Fed’s Reverse Repo thing started out in 2019 with $0.08 billion…
…and now it’s over $2 Trillion?
At this moment the betting on the Fed’s next move is 74.8% skip/pause, and 25.2% hike.
One-Third of U.S. Homebuyers Are Paying in Cash, the Highest Share in Nearly a Decade
Investor Home Purchases Fell a Record 49% Year Over Year in the First Quarter
“Still, investors bought up 18% of homes that sold. That’s down from a peak of 20% a year earlier but is higher than pre-pandemic levels.”
“Investors gravitated toward low-priced homes and condos; starter homes made up a record 2 in 5 investor purchases.”
The Starter Home Is No More, Even in Second Tier Markets
Here’s a video from Bozeman via Melody Wright. Back around 2006 there were a couple guys on Youtube I’d follow who would drive around and film empty development after empty development in various sand states, even as the MSM heralded the housing boom. I myself went to visit someone around that time and drove through a pricy development in the middle of nowhere where there were already hand-scrawled signs on the lawns of the few occupied homes: “For Sale. Please make offer.” This was a couple years before the Fed woke up.
I’m told there are well over 2 million AirBnb listings just in the United States.
The way I see it, that’s a couple million housing units which have been turned into short-term rentals. These are homes that might otherwise have been sold to actual people who would live there. It seems like this is a big, not often mentioned, contributor to the “housing shortage” (which I’m skeptical of - I ran some numbers a while back and it seems that housing units per capita are about the same as 20 years ago. I do agree we have an affordable housing shortage, but my preferred solution for that is to have prices fall. This is hate speech to many people.)
So here is a biased sample of comments re:AirBnb investors that I suspect might be correct:
“$800 per month to live in a room 1hr outside of Atlanta with no access to kitchen or laundry but you can cook on a skillet in a literal closet”
This is interesting: Percentage of Countries With Home Prices DECREASING
Countries with Rising Building Permits
United States NFIB Small Business Optimism Index
Landlords Face a $1.5 Trillion Bill for Interest Only Commercial Mortgages
Good grief.
60%+ Markdowns on San Francisco Office Buildings!
Sunbelt Construction Boom Threatens Top Apartment-Building Owners Rental profits are vulnerable because of increased supply of units
Nationally, more than 950,000 multifamily units are under construction, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That equals three times the number for apartment construction from two decades ago.
What a nightmare - rents might not go up as much, or even go down! There’s always winners and losers - the Fed pick winners and losers all the time, and the winners are always the same people in the end.
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class,
that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Warren Buffett, 2006
Sad Barry Sternlicht Story Of The Day
Starwood’s well runs dry at troubled West Texas multifamily portfolio
On the heels of the 2014 oil bust, Starwood picked up four investments in Midland and Odessa, twin cities in Permian Basin, the heart of Texas oil country. The firm had likely bet on a boom — the oil industry is defined by its fits and starts. Instead, two gnarly busts sent oil prices spiraling and rents following suit.
Through the down years of 2016 and 2020, the Miami Beach, Florida-based private equity firm struggled to keep up with payments on $100 million in debt covering more than 900 units. Two multifamily assemblages have landed in default and face foreclosure, while the other two are struggling with delinquency.
The loans covering the assets — Park at Caldera, Aviare Place Apartments and Hawthorne House Apartments in Midland, plus University Gardens in Odessa — come due in November 2024.
"Inflation that is driven by wage growth is fabulous...You can pay higher rents..."
Barry Sternlicht, September 2022
Ackman-Backed Builder Says 48 Lenders Rejected Apartment Project
Howard Hughes Corp., the Texas-based real estate developer that counts hedge fund manager Bill Ackman as its chairman, is struggling to find viable financing for new apartment projects as lenders pull back.
Chief Executive Officer David O’Reilly said he reached out to dozens of lenders with a pitch for a new project in The Woodlands, a master-planned community in the Houston area. “Zero showed up and gave me a bid,” he said. “I talked to 48 of them.”
Howard Hughes company can’t self-finance these projects? I guess that’d be too conservative.
[These are] highly leveraged commercial office investment groups we are talking about here…mortgaged to the gills to maximize real estate capital gains under eternal ZIRP that has ended and the only thing keeping the cash flowing was unsustainably low cost of money now cut off. Because if they had any more cash flowing they would have leveraged it into more property again. Basically, most of the market. The fast money flippers. The smartest guys in the room.
US National Debt Spikes by $359 billion on 1st Day after Debt Ceiling Suspended
The Debt Ceiling Charade ended over the weekend when President Biden signed the “Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023,” that suspends the debt ceiling through early 2025. A US default was “averted.” The ending of the charade is always known in advance: Congress will agree on a deal at the last minute, and the President will sign it, as it has been done for the 80th times since 1960. But the process of getting there can make you nervous. Then, after the Debt Ceiling Charade is over, we get a huge spike in the debt.
I’ve seen this floating around…Cardboard:
I long remember WH meetings with (pre- Fed) Greenspan explaining current state of US economy based on that day's cardboard box orders--his definitive coincident indicator. Cardboard boxes were Greenspan's primary current indicator of economic activity. - Harald Malmgren
Annotated United Kingdom 30-Year Treasury Gilt Auction Bond Yield
May 2020: "UK sells negative yielding government bonds for first time"
"If the invention of interest was the greatest invention in finance back five millennia ago, then negative rates are probably the dumbest idea in the entire history of finance and we’ve just been living through it."
- Edward Chancellor with Grant Williams, September 2022
This looks to be an extreme:
The pattern of drawdowns from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve since the beginning of 2021 is unsustainable. The 283 million barrels released took 25 years to accumulate. Can these be replaced? Will they?
Losses on meat alternatives leave investors with sour aftertaste
9/11 Families Horrified by PGA-LIV Golf Saudi ‘Sportswashing’ Deal
Friend of the Show Matt Stoller weighs in: The Saudi-PGA Tour Golf Deal Isn't Going to Happen
Apparently Disney is now censoring The French Connection, which won 5 Oscars.
What the heck is going on with UFOs?
It is my speculation that upon discovery of ‘Oumuamua, elements of the United States Intelligence Community began work on a large scale disinformation operation targeting Avi Loeb and his subsequent research. I suspect the end goal of the operation is to discredit Professor Loeb and to disrupt The Galileo Project (we’ll come back to this project later) as much as possible.
Who knows. Below is another take…
A comment on a video analyzing David Grusch's body language (The guy who claims the government has “non-human” vehicles and “pilots”). Watch the video too. I have NO opinion on the veracity of any of this, just sharing because it's weird.
As a current Aero-Engineer for the US Air Force (26years and still going) I can help you decode at least some of this. First, I know that Grusch has only limited ability to talk about this subject. He did get clearance to speak to a certain extent but he MUST withhold quite a bit in order to avoid very serious law violations. So, expect him to be holding back some things he could say and this also necessitates rephrasing on-the-fly language he would normally use. Second, this retrieval program is REAL and is the most highly classified program in the US. The program is called ZODIAC and this may or may not come out in the public hearings soon. Take this in when viewing this man's speech. He is 'trying' to talk to us about the most highly classified project in the world. People have historically died, lost careers, lost family due to this secret. So to say this is stressful to talk about would be an understatement. Third, when he shook his head talking about the 'spacecraft' and 'alien' is because we don't really think this is what they are but this term is in common use publicly and is as close as we can describe the phenomena to the general public and be understood. These are much more than spacecraft. They are trans-medium-interdimensional craft to the best of our knowledge. And on the 'alien' aspect this is just the easiest term we have because we don't really know for sure but this term is pretty close. At present we consider most of these 'beings' to be advanced-biological-AI (manufactured beings). Lastly I can tell you from my own experience while on duty these are REAL. I can tell you this because I was present on two occasions where these 'craft' were above our base watching us. I wasn't read in to this program I can only tell you I was there on two occasions (happenstance) and they are as real as the nose on your face.
I personally believe there is evidence non-human intelligence out there, and we don’t know what it is, can’t control it, and don’t know what its motives are (although trickery seems to be a primary feature. i.e., It’s messing with us.)
John Keel, on January 24, 2002 sums it up:
Art Bell: "You have to be absolutely convinced, John...that our government is really well aware that these things are going on..."
John Keel: "Yeah, I think that's been the case for a very long time, and I would suspect that they're as baffled as we are."
Here’s Keel talking about a related phenomenon, Mothman, in 1992:
"If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have bothered with it. I thought then that there was a chance that this thing was a living creature and that I could catch it...and now I don't believe there was any chance at all."
One (unproven of course) theory that all High Strangeness1 might be varying manifestations of the same thing. What that thing is, I’ll leave up to you.
For example, John Keel talks about Bigfoot and UFO’s in “The Eighth Tower”:
Believers in monsters—and there are growing numbers who are convinced these things are real animals—try to explain the simultaneous appearances of UFOs as mere coincidence. The UFO believers, for the most part, prefer to believe flying saucers have nothing to do with hairy monsters. Yet both monster witnesses and UFO sighters often suffer from the same aftereffects: conjunctivitis, thirst, headaches, and muscular soreness. In many cases motorists had been inspecting their motors after their engine had stalled when the monsters sprang at them from the trees or bushes. Obviously there is a relationship between these manifestations and the superspectrum.
Joshua Cutchin and Timothy Renner expand on this idea extensively in their two-volume Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon.
“Depending on whether you have looked into this before, you may or may not be aware that bigfoot sightings frequently occur in conjunction with UFO sightings... sometimes they are even seen piloting disc-shaped objects,” wrote author and magician Gordon White. “Bigfoot then, is best understood as another denizen of Magonia. And it is important to emphasize that an extradimensional origin does not automatically mean the being is non-physical.”
Few books redefine fields of study in the same fashion Jacques Vallee’s Passport to Magonia redefined Ufology. The 1969 book was the first large-scale comparison of UFOs to Western European folklore, particularly the Fairy Faith, and compellingly argued modern extraterrestrial abductions and medieval encounters with the fae folk display striking similarities; the “little men in green” of old became the “little green men” today.
Alien abductions share a great deal in common with faerie kidnappings. In both cases, the victim (asleep at home, camping outdoors, or travelling a lonesome road) is confronted with a presence, usually in the form of a being or blinding light. They are kidnapped, either bodily or astrally, to the Otherworld (a UFO or Fairyland, depending on one’s cultural framework), where short beings examine them invasively, sometimes sexually, before returning them home hours later with amnesia surrounding their experience.
While plenty of modern interactions occur in the presence of physical “spacecraft,” an equal or greater number do not. This inconsistency, combined with similarities to fae folk—and bigfoot, as soon illustrated—seriously calls into question the extraterrestrial narrative.
Introduced by the astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek in the 1970s. (idiomatic) A quality of being peculiar, bizarre, utterly absurd.
In 1966, 1 was a lifelong atheist raised in the hard school of objective journalism, skeptical but hopeful that I could somehow validate the enthusiasts’ speculations about extraterrestrial visitants. The extraterrestrial hypothesis then seemed to me to be the only acceptable explanation.
But my experiences over the past few years have changed both me and my outlook, just as similar experiences have changed so many others. I have stood on many a windy hilltop staring in amazement at the multicolored objects cavorting about the night skies. I have dealt with thousands of honest, sincere witnesses by mail, phone, and in person. My skepticism has melted away, and I have turned from science to philosophy in my search for the elusive truth.
The late Wilbert Smith, the Canadian scientist who chased UFOs in the 1950s, apparently followed a similar course. “The inevitable conclusion was that it was all real enough,” Smith said in 1958, “but that the alien science was definitely alien—and possibly even beyond our comprehension. So another approach was tried—the philosophical—and here the answer was found in all its grandeur…”
John Keel, Operation Trojan Horse
"Investors gravitated toward low-priced homes and condos; starter homes made up a record 2 in 5 investor purchases.”
It's not a crime or immoral to be an investor in real estate but it is both of those things when you grant access to capital to the least needy, and let them compete without restriction to purchase the most important asset in the capital structure of the most needy.
Listening to the Forward Guidance Warren Mosler and Vincent Daniel episodes back to back gave me whiplash.
I think the recent "pill" UAPs are some kinda ground based phased radar system creating plasma balls. I think there's a long history of wireless energy transfer testing out around groom lake, but I'm having trouble finding sources right now. Maybe they installed something like that on the Zumwalt.