... even if it's to tell you there are no signs

Look what showed up in the garden today:

Now - even though it's still April - I'll go ahead and declare winter to be over.

Your 401Ks will increase in ... numbers.

But the value will decrease. By maybe 40%.

"$10T Money Print! Fed’s New Plan Will Dwarf Bernanke Era"

If true, this is what also occurred in Oct 2023; the Fed dumped $10T into the market and stock prices went on a 14-month tear from then until mid-Feb of this year. Now they're talking of doing it again?

Do you feel richer from the Fed doing that the first time?

What this actually meant of course, is that the value of the dollar decreased so it took more dollars to purchase something of constant value.

Gold more or less holds its value - look at gold prices over the same period.

With the market turn-down since mid-Feb, the money people begin to get worried - their worth is decreasing.

How to fix that? Dump more money into the market; get those prices back on an upswing. Everyone looks at the "value" of their savings accounts - mostly IRAs and similar - and think "I'm getting rich; isn't life grand?" when actually, the purchasing power of that $1million dollars in your savings is not what one thinks of when becoming a "millionaire" (IIRC, a millionaire is now defined as someone having an income of $1m/yr rather than a worth of $1m. Like a lot of things, the definition had to change to hide reality.)

Certain things will gain in worth; most will decrease. Just because the dollar amount on your savings goes up doesn't mean your purchasing ability has gone up as well; likely, it's going down. There's government inflation numbers ... and the prices you have to pay. Which do you believe?

(I personally have two Federal items in my life - income and outgo - both adjusted to cost-of-living.
Funny how the COL for money coming in is less than the COL for the money going out)

I don't have recommendations. As they say; "The best time to prepare was 10 years ago, the next best time is now". It may already be too late to gain a "bug-out" location; locals most anywhere one goes - especially rural areas - are getting resentful of newcomers. Mortgage rates are high, likely going higher. Doesn't matter though, mortgages will be harder to qualify for regardless of the interest. Guns and ammo are good; not as important as many think though. What else do you need for when you can't get it? Electricity? Water? Food? Waste disposal?

I suspect the market over all will continue down, perhaps another 20%. I suspect a flood of "funny-money" into the market in an attempt to keep prices up.
I suspect a major war ...

It wouldn't surprise me to see an adjustment in our currency - effectively turning the present $100 bill into the "new" 90¢ ... as soon as they can figure a way to do so without bringing out the tar, feathers, and pitchforks.

When? It could be the process has already started; it could be it takes a few months. I'm doubtful we have years.

Since they just print "money" as needed, one might wonder why we pay taxes. Or could an "elimination" of taxes be the way to introduce/force this new currency?

The Trump administration - while far superior to the alternative - is not going to be hoards of men on white horses come to save the day. More likely, just one gang coming in to take the place of the old gang. "Meet the new boss; same as the old boss".

Has this administration really done anything more than blow pretty smoke? A few hundred undesirables kicked out, a few million/billion dollars supposedly saved? Fluffy news stories. Did your taxes go down with all those savings? All the investigations and revelations of criminality and corruption? Anyone high up arrested and convicted yet? Anyone else suspect these district judges are simply a distraction or an excuse? They don't have the authority to tell the Executive branch what to do; they have no national authority in any case. Why aren't they simply being ignored?

Once the baby-boomers are gone, all memory of the way it once was will be gone with them. It was a privilege worthy of thanking God for having been a young adult during the time of the American empire's greatest days.

Shouldn't read the news just before I prepare a post ...

Of course, I could be fully full of it.

Submitted by SK as a comment

Spring has almost sprung in my corner of the Midwest. The dance is always two steps forward, one step back. Then spring actually does arrive, stays briefly and suddenly leaps forward into full summer.

With these longer days of spring and the sun warming the earth there comes the urge to clear and clean, dig and plant. My indomitable English mother was always bottom-up in flower beds and vegetable patches from the minute the clock jumped forward while we children were tasked with picking up sticks and collecting branches that litter the lawn after winter storms.

I never quite remember exactly how my garden was the year before. The first day out in the spring is therefore all about pottering around trying to remember what worked well and what was left undone, taking mental notes and preparing for more important decisions to come later on when frost is no longer a threat. Gardens teach us great patience. You can spend all winter making the best of plans only to have them thwarted because of weather or pests or blight or other unforseens.

The great thing about gardens is that you are never lonely. You are always in the company of bees, earth worms, beetles and birds, all of whom have something to tell you about the state of the things if you are quiet enough to listen.

The birds arriving from their winter places are always a joy. Skeins of geese honk overhead - it's a stirring, ancient sound that we on the ground have heard for eons. Usually the first song birds to arrive in my part of the world are the redwings. They stand on the tip of reeds at the edge of the marsh and sing their happy blackbird tunes.

One of the few Apps I have on my phone and use often is the Merlin Bird app. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the app permits you to record bird songs and then identifies for you, with names and photos, all the birds it hears. One late spring morning I set my phone on a table outside. The app identified 23 different birds in an 10 minute recording. I was astonished because I hadn't heard nearly that many. The result that morning on the app encouraged me to listen more carefully, beyond the songs of bluejays, cardinals, chickadees etc that one becomes accustomed to hearing as daily background noise in the garden.

The University of Texas, last May, published an interesting article on the subject of birdsong and the human voice. They conducted, as part of a study, high-resolution anatomical scans of syrinxes from hummingbirds and ostriches — the world’s smallest and largest bird species — and the discovered that the syrinx of birds and larynx, the vocal organ of reptiles and mammals, including humans, share the same developmental programming.

The genetic connection between the vocal organs, said one of the professors involved in the study, is a new example of “deep homology,” a term that describes how different tissues or organs can share a common genetic link. In short, birdsong and the human voice share the same genetic blueprint. Here is a link to the article:

www dot jsg dot utexas dot edu/news/2024/05/birdsong-and-human-voice-built-from-same-genetic-blueprint/

Looking for more information about this, I came upon a site about bird and animal music and the name of a Canadian composer and "zoomusicologist", Emily Doolittle (what a perfect surname), who creates music from bird song. She has a website (emilydoolittle dot com) where you can listen to examples of her music, some of which I have included below.

The music is unusual, evocative and quite beautiful. Seems at times similar to the dream like music of Claude Debussy. It struck me as something perhaps the music lovers on this site might enjoy and something Gérard might have considered for one of his "Something Wonderful" posts.

How dull would life be without birds!

youtube dot com/watch?v=-E1Kg4J41-c

youtube dot com/watch?v=KF7IlH03UwE

First posted: July 17, 2008

I think about you
almost never
these days.
much less than
once in a while.
funny that, don't
you think, all
those tears
washed my eyes
and let me see,
there is, after all,
life after left over.