I remember when I first stumbled on The Woodpile Report, realizing that what I had found was an absolute treasure.
As future posts confirmed, I was spot on with my gut feeling.
Ol’ Remus himself was a treasure.
Filled with wisdom gathered over his many years and blessed with an insight that I have so far, been unable to find duplicated anywhere else.
Even after extensively searching.
I also realized after a few posts that what I had found was also very likely to have a limited window of new inputs. Also due to his advancing age.
Unfortunately I was correct in my assessment there, our reluctant mentor will have been gone two years here shortly.
Very, very fortunately, someone else realized what a treasure trove of wisdom and knowledge he left behind and they immediately set about gathering up into a repository, as much as they could possibly glean from what he did leave behind. Unfortunately, Ol’ Remus didn’t archive his posts.
Occasionally I get a hankering for a touch of that and off I go, searching for that font of knowledge, stashed away still on the internet.
Every time, I am very happy to see it is still there. Some day it might not be. I may try to find the time to download it all and save it on a removable hard drive for safe keeping.
I found this old post a few minutes ago, re-read it and found that it is just as applicable today as it was when he first pecked it out and shared it with us’. So I copied it and I am pasting it here, along with a link to the site that still has many of his old posts.
Simply titled, Woodpile Reports.
THE COMING UNPLEASANTNESS – OL’ REMUS
from
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2014/07/29/the-coming-unpleasantness-ol-remus/
THE COMING UNPLEASANTNESS – OL’ REMUS
This is another post from Ol’ Remus at The Woodpile Report. I like his style of writing quite a bit, and agree with him entirely. He is forecasting catastrophe – and how could it be otherwise?And yet I get the US Trust “Investment Strategy Overview” newsletter in the mail, and, of course, it is completely in opposition to Ol’ Remus – it’s bullish! Apparently, we are only 5 years into a bull market of 20 years! Major advances in technology are coming! Progress towards US energy independence! A manufacturing renaissance! The imbalances of the past cycle are correcting themselves! Etc.How does one reconcile these two views?What an absolutely bizarre time we live in, when there is such a massive disconnect between the mass media hypnosis and reality. Every day is another chapter in Cognitive Dissonance…http://woodpilereport.com/html/index-380.htm
The Coming Unpleasantness
The guilty are sneaking away unpunished, nobody’s fixing anything, there’s an orderly-so-far devaluation of the dollar going on, the Treasury has fallen into the hands of counterfeiters and the election process has gone third-world. The home folks are broke, or nearly so, and unemployed, or about to be. Suddenly they understand DCisn’t on their side and now they’re debating whether DC is run by the criminally insane or the merely criminal. Oh yeah, this will end well.According to a new study by the Russell Sage Foundation, the inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36% decline… it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too.
Tyler Durden at zerohedge.comNow the people who warned of 2008 are saying the market is running out of Greater Fools. They say few retail investors are in equities that don’t have to be—meaning the funds, the 401ks and IRAs, the insurance companies, the compulsive gamblers. And those that don’t hate the market fear the market. They say it’s a gas leak looking for detonation. They say the event will arrive before the warning does.There are usually no warnings that trouble is coming because everyone at the top of the financial food chain are highly incentivized to keep quiet about problems… Just about every CEO from every major bank spent much of 2008 claiming that all was well… As former banker Jean-Claude Juncker put it, “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”
Phoenix Capital Research at zerohedge.comIn early 2008 I noted a fairly serious decrease in online “revenue per impression” in the advertising space. This was not reflected in so-called “official” reports from various online ad firms, but I saw it quite-clearly across data I had available to me. What followed, of course, was quite clear in the markets. I am seeing the same pattern develop now.
Karl Denninger at market-ticker.orgDue diligence and fundamentals count for nothing because the arithmetic makes no sense, successful investing amounts to insider information and front running the Fed. The oscillations are wild and coming closer together. But still it goes up. One day it won’t. The crash will be 2008 on afterburner because no one trusts anybody, no one honors anything, no one believes anything. The flash-crash will look stately by comparison. It’ll be like being pushed out of a tree in the dark—pain and terror every inch of the way.Another horrific stock market crash is coming, and the next bust will be “unlike any other” we have seen. We have never had this before. It’s going to be very painful for investors.
Jeremy Grantham, GMO, via moneynews.comWarren Buffett’s “best single measure of where valuations stand,” comparing the market value of UScompanies to the gross national product before inflation, is flashing near record bubble red. Still we are sure, you’ll be able to exit before everyone else when this ends.
Tyler Durden and Bloomberg at zerohedge.comThe most reliable valuation measures have never been higher except in the advance to the 2000 peak (and for some measures the 1929 and 2007 peaks), but they have started to treat these prior pre-crash peaks as objectives to be attained… Make no mistake—this is an equity bubble, and a highly advanced one. On the most historically reliable measures, it is easily beyond 1972 and 1987, beyond 1929 and 2007, and is now within about 15% of the 2000 extreme.
John Hussman at hussmanfunds.comWe have no right to be surprised by a severe and imminent stock market crash.
Mark Spitznagel via moneynews.comThe market isn’t the economy, true enough, but a couple dozen trillion dollars isn’t exactly budget-dust. The citizenry would see a yawning crater where their 401ks and IRAs used to be. They’d notice when their checking account is gone but their debt isn’t, and when the ATM doesn’t recognize their account number, or when their bank is an empty storefront and their car loan has been sold to Vinnie, or when their insurance company doesn’t answer the phone. As always, people don’t go nuclear until reality invites itself into their living room and defecates on the carpet. That’s when things get interesting—when people notice, when they have to face what was formerly unthinkable and their only fallback is what good people they are.Those who drove the financial bus off a cliff know the controls still work fine—the brakes and accelerator and steering wheel, all of ’em, but when the rubber isn’t on the road the effect just ain’t the same. But all that “driving” stuff keeps the passengers from panicking. We’ve seen the grandest larceny in all history. Now, after we’ve been cleaned out, we know the wacko conspiracy guys were right. In fact we’re worse than cleaned out, the place has been turned into a debtor’s prison from sea to shining sea.Some would have us believe things are turning around—the market’s up and the trend is your friend. Trend? Trend?! The market made gains after the Crash of 1929 too, genuine record recoveries. “Prosperity is just around the corner” referred to those 1930-1931 upticks, not to the unstoppable plunge that followed. As they say, it’s not the fall, it’s the sudden stop. The fall itself can be surprisingly profitable. But what a fall it was. By July of 1932 the Dow had dropped from its high of 367 down to 41. Ten years later, in April of 1942, it touched 100 or so, and that was after foreign panic-money poured in from a Europe at war. The highs of 1929 weren’t seen again until the 1950s. That’s a trend.There’s always been fraud, but sometime in the recent past the market buckled in a fundamental way and the fraud poured in. Proven reforms painfully enacted over decades were swept away. Fundamentals no longer counted. Creative finance counted. Bubbles and deceit counted. It became a criminal enterprise top to bottom. Accounting firms and regulatory agencies went over to the dark side en masse. As Mark Twain said, every profession is a conspiracy against the common man. Finally the retail investor did something sensible—he ran for his life.The players left are those who have to stay; the funds, the retirement accounts, the insurance companies, et al, and HFT piranhas are eating them alive at millions of tiny nibbles a second. What used to be an investor’s clearing house has become a betting parlor on the Federal Reserve’s next move. The market goes up on tiny volume and bad news, and way up on very bad news and nearly no volume. They know dark horizons light up the printing presses. Meanwhile, the banks don’t know what they own, or don’t know what it’s worth, but they do know they’re insolvent and so does everybody else. So DC gives money to the banks and then pays the banks to lend it back to them. It’s IOUs paid with IOUs and they can’t write ’em fast enough.The bottoming is not completely done. In fact, it has barely even gotten underway yet. We keep propping up losers. The result is we still need to see a repudiation of debt at a massive scale and until that happens, the Long Wave bottom won’t be here. We’re just dancing on the front end of real economic collapse.
George Ure at urbansurvival.comWhat to do. The demand for collateral will be ferocious when the debacle starts. Treat debt like any other roadside bomb. Staying current isn’t enough. Any collaterized debt is too much debt. You can’t know which exit is the last exit. The grace period with the trillion-dollar price tag is ending and it’s ending badly. This disaster has been bought off for decades. When it happens it’ll go down fast. Exactly how and when can be sorta-kinda foreseen but not actually known. A cascade can start from anywhere. But this much can be said: the collateral chaos will hit the system like a weapons-grade laxative. Everything that’s been contained, covered up and denied will come spewing out looking for daddy. It’ll take weeks, not months to come apart. Maybe days.Get as independent as you can while you can. There are parts of this game where the only winning move is to not play. Doesn’t mean you have to go all Rambo and head off to some mountain valley, although that’s one way. But it does mean putting stuff by so you can get by. “Stuff” means food stored long-term and the wherewithal to get or grow more, uninterruptible for-sure potable water, an off-the-grid heating system, meds and medical supplies, clothing for hard times and hard work and being out in life-threatening weather because you have to be, the means to defend hearth and hoard, batteries and a way to recharge them, cash and real money—meaning gold and silver—all the things you already know but haven’t done. Knowing isn’t doing, doing is doing.FDR‘s bailout of the Federal government also went so far as to also issue Executive Order 6814 “Requiring the delivery of all silver to the United States for coinage.” And what was that worth at the time? In terms of present dollars, that works out to about $22.77 per ounce. Given that silver is trading below current dollar equivalents of the Depression confiscation prices and gold is still trading at 3.44-times Depression confiscation prices, my personal bias may be inferred.
George Ure at peoplenomics.comPlan B. If you’re in a city, have a viable destination and two or three tried and proven ways to get there. Practice and take notes. Again, only doing is doing. Plan as if your life depends on it. Take a hike, go the hard way through the hills and woods, you’ll discover how long an unpaved mile can be. Make a squirrel dinner, yes they’re cute, but there may come a day when only one of you is going to live. Besides, they’re yummy. Mankind acquired these tastes over geological epochs, you’ve not lost them, merely misplaced them.Everything seems obvious and predictable in retrospect. This stuff is pretty obvious and predictable now. And there are always better reasons to not do something than to do it. You know most people won’t get serious until after it was absolutely necessary. Too late. They’ll fail, mostly. Worse, they’ll needlessly fail at the easy part of the learning curve. Prepared is prepared, you are or you aren’t. Do what you can. And as always, stay away from crowds.
The man could see what was coming from a mile away.
What he didn’t get to see, Thank God, was the Covid Hoax and The Fed dumping several TRILLION more FRN’s into the market and The Bubble having had at least two more years of expansion.
Afterburners indeed.
It is now virtually on our doorsteps.
That makes posting this again very timely.
God rest your soul sir.
I am grateful at this point that you aren’t here to see what is about to unfold on a completely unsuspecting general public.
Yes, that one is a treasure. I’ll point to it in a post soon.
Two years gone, and his wisdom still applies, thank you for the post, Phil.
Remus, Acidman, den Beste…I feel like my parents generation must have as the old celebrities passed away.
Oh yeah. Some of us remember Gut Rumbles and USS Clueless. Sorely missed.
Thanks for the post and the link.
It is going to be epic ladies and gentlemen. I have been reading Woodpile report at least 12 years before Remus passed. I wished I had saved every Tuesday posting he ever did. His unique wit and wisdom ranks up there with the greats. I too am glad he doesn’t have to partake and suffer what we know is coming. Batten down the hatches, DAMN the torpedoes (democraps), Full speed ahead!
You say that , as if republipukes will fare any better.
I suspect that most will not…
Going to be a lot of folks hurting when the UD Dollar takes a massive shit.
Got food, seeds, tools and trusted friends?
Almost afraid to post this as my postings on the article under this I cannot see any of the now 5 comments, mine and our hosts replies. Odd.
You can find most (all?) of his posts on the Internet Archive. You may have to jump around with the visit/capture dates but I can find pretty much any post.
Here’s a link to get you started:
ht tps://web.archive.org/web/20190715162401/http://www.woodpilereport.com/
Notice the capture date in the URL (2019-07-15)
Here’s a link to some older posts:
ht tps://web.archive.org/web/20151203072022/http://woodpilereport.com/html/index-398.htm
Remus, a wise and knowing man. Able to articulate the truth in such an eloquent way. His wisdom and presence are greatly missed. And yes, his words are just as relevant today as the day he wrote them – if not more so. Thank you Phil for posting his insights here.
I still think about him often.
I miss his blog too. He was able to find great information and report about it, attaching links for us to find out more if we were so inclined. I hope he and his missus are re-united, having a good time.
Outlier – thanks for the links. I plan to use some of me ‘free time’ to go back and revisit the web pages and see if I read it before.
Stay away from crowds.
I remember reading this one back then. I too was a follower of Ol’ Remus. Such insight and clarity of writing is rarely duplicated these days. I still have the bookmark to his site in my blogs tab, in memoriam.
Are you going to have these reprints as a regular feature?
https://web.archive.org/web/20110101000000*/http://woodpilereport.com/
Most Tuesdays I go back to a corresponding week from the calendar here and reread his posts. Truly a treasure and missed by many.
Remus
One of a kind
One of the best
I began archiving his posts when I found him – maybe eight /nine years ago?
I looked forward to reading him every week. He is sorely missed.
Damn near had a heart attack the other day while perusing one of GVDL’s posts that he recycled, retaining comments (he has some excellent ones worth revisiting, and shares them as they become relevant). Read one that said new Remus is out! Heart flipped.
I did go to the wayback machine to capture what I could before and after he passed. Been doing the same with Mike Vanderboegh, whose site is still maintained.
Got double-digit TBs of offline storage going, redundant+ (Phil, you’re not the only one that’s been documenting the death of America, along with needful bits of information). As long as I can cobble power, I’ll be able to access the treasures.
Thanks for posting about him.
Like Nemo, I still have his link in my blogs tab. I miss his wisdom dearly. He so accurately informed us of what may come and I will always be indebted to him for that. As cruel as it may seem, I’m glad that he will not suffer the misery he warned us about. Ol’ Remus may be gone, but will never be forgotten. I hear him tell me every time I go out; “Stay away from crowds”.
Great stuff thanks fer postin it . Best have the 3 B’s Bible beans an bullets.
Great stuff, thank you for reposting this. Did we ever find out what happened to him beyond what was posted on Woodpile upon his alleged demise?
http://www.virtualmirage.org
.
Larry Lambert:
Intelligent, worldly, competent, retired spook, retired hunter of corrupt bureaucrats.
Military leanings with little regard for TheO’BamaGrifters, TheBidenCrimeFamily, ThePelosiCrimeFamily, TheClintonCriminalSyndicate.
Owns a remote mine and homestead in the middle of noplace, Arizona.
.
One of my daily pleasures.
Marge,
Just tried to access through your link. Got “Site Unavailable. If you are the Owner, Contact Your Hosting Provider.”
One of my favorites from Remus is “Frankly, My Dear”. On top of the BLM bullshit before it’s time.
Frankly, My Dear Ol’ Remus (my archived copy)
With all the recent troubles we’re again being invited to an honest and open conversation about race, or said differently, the browbeatings will be resumed. Try this for honest and open: many of us, probably most of us, are tired of your whining, your so-called grievances, your violence and crime, your insults and threats, your witless blather and pornographic demeanor—all of it. You’re not quite 13% of the population yet everything has to be about you, all day, every day. With you, facts aren’t facts, everything’s a kozmik krisis, and abusive confrontations are your go-to.
Here’s the thing: some of us despise you, although fewer than you believe, but most of us plain don’t care about you or your doings. There was a time when we did care, but you betrayed our good will and played us for fools. We laugh about it now, but we actually believed you wanted equal opportunity and mutual respect and to live in harmony—all that stuff. Ain’t it a hoot? Imagine our embarrassment.
We talk among ourselves just like you do. It’s true, we have “frank and open discussions” when you’re not around. Why? Partly because it’s exhausting to tippy-toe around you. Partly because you think it’s your celestial right to tell us what we can say. And partly because you’re alarmingly aggressive or painfully dim-witted by turns. We never know which “you” will pop out of the box, or when. But mainly because you’ve revealed yourself as grasping opportunists without honor or principle. There’s your deal-breaker. There’s more.
During the recent riots you expected us to believe heisting snack food then torching the place was “standing up for justice”. When we didn’t buy it, you told us the looting and arson wasn’t done by the rioters after all, no, all the bad stuff was done by rioters from out of town. Apparently you think it makes a difference to us. And if we don’t fall for that one, you tell us you’re the real victims, you’re the ones “hit hardest” because the neighborhoods you looted and burned are, um, looted and burned.
We’ve never stood in your way but we don’t really care if you have good neighborhoods or not. The evidence says you don’t care either, unless we build and maintain them for you, what your enablers call “investments in urban communities.” They don’t mention the return on our past “investments”. Our former neighborhoods weren’t improved by your arrival. Your contempt for ordinary civility tells us no level of “investment” would make a difference. Listen up. It’s simple. Just like our neighborhoods are our responsibility, so are your neighborhoods your responsibility, not ours. Your clownish leaders will tell you otherwise but they’ve always been your responsibility and they always will be your responsibility. Accept it or don’t, you’re the ones who live in them. There’s more.
Your air conditioned, smart phone equipped, EBT-financed “poverty” doesn’t wash to begin with, yet you’d have us believe poverty causes crime. There’s no payday for assault and rape and random killing. Police say 20% of your criminal violence is related to dope-dealing, okay, business disputes of a sort, but it says the rest of it is largely pro bono. We also notice you have a working knowledge of jury nullification and take pride in not “snitching”, typical gang behavior.
We say “what you think, you do. What you do, you are.” We know what you think—we hear it every waking minute. We know what you do. How could we not know what you are? Just so it gets said, crime causes poverty. It drives away productive people, their businesses and the opportunities you said you wanted. More bad news: you’re free to accuse them of anything you wish but they’re not coming back.
Schools haven’t been educating our kids for a long time. They’re too busy conjuring up new ways to teach yours, in fact, we’re beginning to think yours are the only ones who matter. There’s always some new scheme claiming dazzling success which, in the end, amounts to handing out the answers with the tests, or taking the annoying hard stuff out of the coursework, or entering unearned grades by hand. Whatever they’re doing they’re doing it wrong. Your kids are telling us, in every way they know how, they have neither the interest nor the inclination for academics. Perhaps we should listen. If what they want is “out” it’s worth considering and probably worth encouraging.
You tell us the schools have “failed to meet their needs.” And what are their needs, pray tell? Higher standards and tougher tests? Stricter rules and a dress code? Or some alternate universe where credit is earned for putting teachers in the ER, or for a string of abortions before the tenth grade? If you’d tell us what their needs are we’d at least know what needs we’re failing to meet. Until then we’ll mark it down for what it is, another lame excuse. They’re supposed to be schools, not day care or orphanages or theme parks.
You pester us with the “civil rights movement” of fifty years ago as though it happened last week, with tedious 1960s footage and cloying voice-overs, in an endless loop, like Groundhog Day, decade after decade. It’s understandable, you haven’t met any real resistance since those days. Breaking news: none of it matters any more, it all devolved into just another swindle, an extortion racket, “pay up or we’ll make a stink—and the bad optics are on you”.
Schools now teach something called White Privilege, which claims no overt act is necessary for us to be racist, in fact, absence of such acts is said to be direct evidence. It’s the “original sin” concept in a different wrapper, meaning our putative racism is bone deep and can’t be discharged by good works. Even so, they say we must atone in perpetuity for being white. They suggest we devote our lives in selfless service to you. No. Sorry. Whatever white privilege there may be, it isn’t enough. In fact, being subjected to White Privilege prattle is worth a couple of privileges.
Speaking of privilege, 60% of your college grads—and 20% of all of you—are employed by government. The intent is to create an artificial middle class of course, hence the trivial positions with imaginative titles and weighty salaries. In the lower reaches it’s the quota hires, typically unqualified. It’s a great offer. You pretend you’re doing something useful and we pretend to believe you. The rest of your grads are largely diversity directors, window dressing, teachers of dubious “studies” and improbable “histories”, and similar warehousing schemes for the otherwise unemployable. It’s as good as it’s ever going to get, except for those on the skinny end of the bell curve—for whom we have genuine, i.e., earned respect. You’d be a fool to leave it on the table, for as long as it lasts.
So here’s the deal. If you want to know what we really think of you, the answer is we don’t, unless you’re making yourself unavoidable or we’re cleaning up your latest mess. We can safely rely on you to make astonishingly irresponsible choices and blame us for the consequences. And you’ll demand we make good on them for you. We won’t take a chance on your sincerity ever again. Take it somewhere else, you have no credibility left with us. You’re a net liability, predictable to the point of surety. So we attend to our own lives and our own problems. It’s as it should be. We recommend it. As for you, frankly my dear, we don’t give a damn.
Let’s all say it together: “Stay away from crowds”
Great advice, IMO