What's a Pandemic? This video explains it.

In this age of bad news, fake news, sketchy news, and straight out propaganda, this is a pretty straight forward, well produced video explaining what a pandemic is, why people are so freaked out, and why it's a big deal. 

Even Jim Cramer thinks it's a bear market now

It's the Monday morning after Thanksgiving weekend, and CNBC show host, analyst, and morning commentator, Jim Cramer, is now calling this fall's stock drops a bear market in this clip.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 350 points out of the gate.  But Cramer sees it dropping back within a few days.  How does he really feel?

"It's Not a good time."
"Every time you try to make money, it (this market) cuts your heart out."
-Jim Cramer in the clip above.

Just for the record, I don't hate Cramer.  He's a longtime stock trader, he knows that world, and he's really entertaining (usually).  But his job on CNBC is not to make you the most money.  His job is to keep you in the stock market, even when you probably shouldn't be in it.

The Dow is at 24,616 as I write this, up 330 points this morning, but down from it's high of 26,828 on October 3rd.  It's down over 8% in under two months.  The Dow is an average of 30 "industrial" stocks, and has been the benchmark of the U.S. stock market since 1885.  Here are the other major averages:

Nasdaq:  High- 8,109 (8/30/18)  Today (11/26/18)- 7,041  It's down over 13% in 3 months
Index of 100 stocks, primarily tech stocks
S&P 500: High- 2,930 (9/20/18)  Today- 2,664  It's down over 9% in just over 2 months
Index of 500 different stocks
Russell 2000: High-1,740 (8/30/18) Today- 1,508  It's down over 13% in 3 months
Index of 2,000 different stocks

Meanwhile, I'm a currently homeless artist/blogger and lifelong amateur futurist.  I look a big, long term things happening in our world, and try to figure out where we're heading as a society.  In an August 10th, 2018 post I wrote this:

"There WILL, without a shred of doubt, be a serious recession in the next year or so.  This next recession WILL be as intense as the Great Recession of 2008, and it will likely be worse."

Here's that full post: "It's Time to get off the Titanic, a brief history of our future 

The Dow was at 25,313 when I wrote this post.

In the stock market, a "correction" is a drop of 10% from the recent high mark.
A"bear market" is a drop of 20% or more over a time period of two months or more.

Still think I'm full of crap?   Or maybe there's a point to looking a super long term trends.

Guess who's cashing in on the big tax cuts?

The title of this CNBC story sums it up:  Tax cut riches have gone to execs and investors over workers by a nearly 3 to 1 margin.

Anybody surprised?  I'm not.  Several people actually said it ahead of time.  The huge tax cuts for large corporations, real estate investors, and the super wealthy 1% types were the reason the put up with President Trump.  He's done his job, now they'll people behind the scenes will let him tweet himself into impeachment, and our economy will collapse under the $1.5 Trillion in student loan debt that has been turned into investments called SLABS.  Those SLABS are weighing down our economy, making our financial house of cards teeter.  We'll see how long it takes before it starts really tumbling.

The 2018 Tax Plan was, as I've said before, an attempt to further rig the business game to help old, Industrial Age corporations that simply aren't smart enough to compete in today's Information Age, connected world.  That tax plan was the probably the biggest entitlement program the world's ever seen, and it was a welfare plan for the super rich.  "Pass the the Cognac and caviar Muffy, I just got our billion dollars worth of food stamps for the month."

CNBC look at Trump's first year

While I take great pleasure in messing with the goofballs who voted for Donald Trump, I'm not a Democrat or a Republican.  Both parties suck at this point.  I avoid the propaganda news channels of Fox (All Republican all the time) and CNN (Christian (in name only) News Network).  If you want an idea of what's actually going on in the world, those two won't give it to you.

I listen to CNBC for a businessperson's take on things, and usually MSNBC for political stuff.  Neither one is is perfect, but I can get a decent take by checking them out and putting the two takes together with some critical thinking.  In the short clip above, we see the CNBC's take on our first (and only full) year with Donald Trump as president.  This clip is only a couple weeks old, and already the stock market has dropped significantly.  We'll see what else happens in the coming months.  I'm betting on a recession that will be even greater than The Great Recession.  I thought it wouldn't start for another 6 months to a year, but we may be at the start of it already.  Time will tell.  I'm also betting that the coming recession will be what the Republicans use as an excuse to impeach Trump and run him out of office.  Like I said, we'll see.

As I write this, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down more than 1,300 points, or roughly 5%, from it's recent all time high.  Hmmmmmmm.