Insolvency

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while you’re confronted with too many choices as far as commentary goes…which is just ducky if you’re an aggregator, the smorgasbord fills itself.

Even I commonly group related articles but today we are all over the spectrum. From the war drums pounding over Iran (How ironic is it that North Korea has decided to {for the moment} ‘fall back in line’?) to another ‘overly optimistic’ reading of the unemployment situation.

Falling lay-offs DOES NOT mean hiring is increasing! It only means lay-offs are down, period!

But let’s not get sidetracked, shall we?

Anyway, last weeks squeaks about $ 4 dollar a gallon gasoline has give way to this weeks rumblings of $ 5 gasoline! (and circles back to our photos of a US destroyer ‘escorting’ an unknown flagged oil tanker through the straits of Hormuz.)

Would our bought and paid for media be willing to ‘pretend’ (a la Gulf of Tonkin) that the ship, if attacked, was US flagged?)

But that is not today’s story.

Nope today’s ‘common thread’ as close as I can tell is yet another US municipality facing…’insolvency’:

STOCKTON, Calif. — The signs of better times are easy to spot downtown: the picturesque marina on the San Joaquin Delta, the gleaming waterfront sports arena, and the handsome high-rise that was meant to house a new city hall. But those symbols are now bitter reminders of how bad things are here today: on Tuesday this city of almost 300,000 moved a step closer to becoming the nation’s largest city to declare bankruptcy.

During a contentious meeting that stretched late into the night, the City Council decided, nearly unanimously, to begin mediation with public employee unions and major bond creditors in what is widely seen as the city’s last-ditch attempt to restructure its finances outside of bankruptcy. Facing a budget deficit from $20 million to $38 million on a budget of roughly $165 million, the Council declared a fiscal emergency for the third year in a row.

“Right now we are a city that has frankly hit a wall,” Mayor Ann Johnston told the Council and hundreds of city residents who attended the meeting. “If the players don’t come together and agree to a fix, then we’re all in big trouble.”

‘The players?’ There are only three tax ‘divisions’ good citizen, commercial, residential and agricultural. Most cities don’t have an agricultural base to speak of (although farming or what could be called ‘agri-business’ is Big in the nation’s most populous state.

The trouble with Agri-business is it has lobbyists who keep taxes and fees low…not that there’s any real danger of this industry being ‘off-shored’…(not that our politicians are smart enough to realize that!)

Then there’s the ‘struggling to be competitive’ industrial sector of the US.

You can’t raise taxes on them, the foreign competition is already killing them from 6,000 miles away! (Figure that one out if you think you’re so smart!)

It’s a proven fact that workers in the cheaper there would starve to death if they had to pay the same prices the US/Western worker does!

But that’s not what the cheerleaders for globalization report (because to do so would be to point directly at financial fraud [and heavily subsidized food!] for our foreign competitors!

What does that leave? The mostly underemployed (and underpaid) ‘residential’ sector.

You know good citizen, I ‘allude’ to these things a lot (and I’m fairly confident that most of you ‘get it’, most of the time.)

BUT, FUCKING TICK-TOCK GOOD CITIZEN, the hands on the clock are moving ever closer to the detonation point, if YOU don’t shut it off, then KA-FUCKING-BOOM!

Which is to point out that if you let the city you live in sink under the waves, there will soon be nowhere to run…and worse, no place to hide!

Hide from whom, you ask?

Take your pick, they’re both criminals after the paychecks stop.

Which is to say more than a few former law enforcement personnel will put their badges to ‘good use’ long after the agency that issued their badges became defunct.

What the hell, a shakedown is a shakedown even after there are no judges!

Now there is ‘Jefferson County’ in Alabama that very publicly went bust then there was that city in Rhode Island that went under due to public pension malfeasance…(and so far NOBODY has been busted for that one either!)

And now it’s Stockton…although wasn’t there another city in CA that led this whole thing off. They ‘disappeared’ it (the city was dissolved and cut up into pieces, which were ‘absorbed’ by the surrounding communities, whether they could afford it or not!)

Ven something…

Anyway, it is neither here nor there because the end result is the same.

What is that ‘end result’?

A Banana Republic, of course!

Where the rich live good and everybody else, the few that survive, scramble for the scraps or rot in jail for ‘stealing’ (what should have been theirs in the first place!)

Funny how it all starts off with the wealth getting ‘concentrated’ in the hands of the devious few…and by the time things start falling apart, nobody seems to know what to do about it.

Which brings us to where we are now.

Because the next step is a semi-permanent state of something resembling ‘martial law’ where it becomes impossible to distinguish between a cop and a soldier…hey, wait a minute! It already IS impossible to tell!

Let the attack begin!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

God's Will

Greetings good citizen,

If one thing has become abundantly clear it is that the whole Greek bailout thing is a charade! There is ‘no way in hell’ the Greeks can payback the money that was stolen from them to mask the effects of ‘Globalizing’ the Greek economy.

So what the fuck is this?

"It's important to remember that the stock market is not the U.S. economy, and the U.S. economy is not the stock market," said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist for the brokerage BTIG. "Most people are likely to say, 'Dow 13,000. So, where's my job?"

The consumer confidence reading of 70.8, while much stronger than the 63 that economists were expecting, is still far below the level of 90 that indicates a healthy economy. It was above 110 in mid-2007, before the recession.

Still, Greenhaus said, while 13,000 is just a round number, "it's a round number that's likely to make many [stupid] Americans feel better about the economy and the stock market. It's another sign that things are getting better."

Speaking of ‘useless data’, how about that ‘better than expected’ consumer confidence number?

Better than WHO expected? And compared to what? It has been FOUR fucking YEARS good citizen, by now the general public has adopted the attitude that the economy ‘is what it is’.

Still, this brings us to something we don’t kick around very often and that is the ‘faith-based’ nature of our current economic set-up.

What happens to these ‘faith based’ deals when the party with the ‘upper hand’ decides it no longer has to abide by its end of the deal (a deal made with people that were ready to lynch the dealer, oh so many decades ago?)

The one percenters aren’t ‘stupid’ (not in the traditional sense anyway.) They know they have returned to the point where their ‘predecessors’ were ‘almost’ put to death for their crimes.

What they remember is that this didn’t happen…and they are betting it will be the ultimate outcome this time around as well.

Failure to prosecute practically invites the criminals to repeat the crime! (and you just know their defense will run along the lines of ‘nobody did time/was executed for this the last time!’

Good lordy, lordy but they do have FAITH, good citizen!

(Most of them have put their ‘faith’ in the bought and paid for justice system and that they’ll never stand trial…and that might well be how it goes down. Which is NOT to infer that they {or their successors} will escape prosecution!)

Because the one percenters think nothing of ruining the prospects of entire generations if they stand to personally gain from it (thus do they condemn their own progeny.)

They like it when I use ‘big words’ because they think you’re too stupid to figure out that progeny means kids/offspring!

This is partly what I mean by ‘stupid in the traditional sense’ combine this with the illusion that they will ‘get away with it’ and we return to ‘stupid in the traditional sense’.

Self-delusion is no excuse, neither is ‘well, everybody else was doing it’ (because ‘everybody else’ is going to get prosecuted too!)

But I, once again, digress!

We WERE discussing the ‘faith based’ nature of the current arrangement.

Man has, throughout history, blamed his own, er, ‘failures/shortcomings’ on his favorite ‘whipping boy’.

Most of you know who that is but I’ll point directly to the ‘worlds greatest scapegoat’ for the literal among you, for he goes by many names and the most common of these is God.

Bobo fucks up BUT who does he point the finger of guilt at? God!

If Bobo cheats you out of your fair share, he covers his crime by telling you that it was ‘gods will’ that the collective ‘you’ were shortchanged, he had nothing to do with it!

He makes the decision NOT to install a safeguard and when the crisis arises from this willful neglect, who does he point the finger at?

His favorite Patsy, (the ever ready and conveniently mythical) ‘God!’

Your circumstances in life are ‘God’s fault’. If you have a problem with how you are treated, take it up with God, (in your prayers so the rest of the world won’t have to listen to your WHINING!)

If you are poor that is because it is ‘God’s will’ that you be poor…and what you keep missing is the fucking HUMBLE part!

Why can’t you people be HUMBLE while GOD kicks you in the teeth (repeatedly)?

I (your ‘god’) can’t stand the constant whining! How the hell am I supposed to stay rich AND pay YOU a living wage?

That would take a miracle and it’s not my department, it’s ‘God’s’!

Um, one more thing before we ‘wrap it up’ for another session.

Note how the article points out how the stock market ISN’T the US economy, YET the 1,400 BILLIONAIRES among are all rich because of their…what?

What do they have that the rest of us don’t?

FUCKING STOCKS!

So why is the fucking stock market rising while the global economy tanks?

One answer, good citizen…it’s our term for ‘illegal activity’…come on, good citizen, you know this one!

It’s a fucking CRIME!

We need to shut down Wall Street around the globe! (NOW!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

It's the economy (stupid!)

Greetings good citizen,

Markets opened ‘mixed’ this morning with the imaginary ‘cheaper there’ doing significantly better than the former bastion of manufacturing might, the West.

Who do we have to ‘thank’ for this catastrophic turn of events?

The ‘more for me’ capitalists, of course!

Naturally, THEY blame the failure of the ‘information economy’ to pick up the slack left by the older, production driven model!

But the ‘more for me’ crowd has always known that the Information Economy would leave A LOT of people on the outside looking in.

I mean, spying on the civilian population doesn’t generate wall to wall profits…(in case you were wondering what the ‘information economy’ actually involved.)

To put if bluntly, the Information Economy is tied directly to the ‘security state’…in a world woefully lacking in external enemies you don’t need to wonder too hard as to whom the ‘target’ of all of this watchfulness actually is.

It is YOU, good citizen!

Like the proverbial ‘frog in a pot’ they have put you on the stove to boil and they know they need to watch you because at some point you are bound to realize something is wrong and you’re likely to try to save your worthless ass…and that won’t do!

But (naturally) I digress.

Let us return to the matter at hand and that would be yesterday’s noted ‘acceleration’ of the destruction of our civilization, shall we?

We start with Today’s first disturbing headline

Check out the opening sentence!:

These are the best of times for the world’s most ravenous borrower, the United States of America.

A combination of unusual and unsustainable forces has pushed the cost of borrowing as low as it has ever been, so low that many investors effectively are paying to lend money to the government. [But not to worry, good citizen, it won’t last..despite it already being THREE YEARS!]

Investors buying five-year federal debt are accepting such low interest rates that inflation is on pace to reduce the value of their investments by more than 1 percent each year. Yet demand for United States Treasuries remains much greater than the supply. [Worse, good citizen, it is not so much that US Treasuries are such a ‘great investment’, it is obvious from this article they AREN’T, it is their ‘least worst’ status that makes them, er, ‘attractive’.]

The glut of cheap money has allowed the government to keep its annual deficits much smaller than it had expected, holding down the growth of the federal debt. [snip]

John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York, expects rates on 10-year Treasuries to reach 3.75 percent this year, up from about 2 percent now, as investors awaken from what he described as “extreme risk aversion.”

But he added that he didn’t understand why rates had remained low for this long.

Naturally, Mr. Ryding’s, er, ‘feigned puzzlement’ is right up there with ‘the check is in the mail and I love you!’

I mean seriously good citizen the very next article in the NY TIMES business section explains it all quite clearly!

A big drop in business spending on machinery and equipment helped pushed orders for long-lasting manufacturing goods down in January by the largest amount in three years.

Meanwhile, home prices fell in December for a fourth-consecutive month in most major American cities, as modest sales gains in the depressed housing market have yet to lift prices.

The Commerce Department said orders for durable goods — products that are expected to last at least three years — fell 4 percent in January compared with the month before.

Economics 101 good citizen, you don’t ‘borrow’ money if you can’t make a profit over and above the cost of borrowing it!

With a ‘tapped out’ customer base, why invest in new equipment, you don’t have enough (paying) customers to buy what you are producing now?

Most producers have idle equipment on their hands, sitting there becoming antiquated without ever being used! (so why buy new?)

Or we could return to one of my favorite ‘puzzles’…if you hit the lottery, what would YOU ‘do’ with the money?

Once upon a time is was as simple as a passbook savings account…now the ‘free 5%' doesn’t exist anymore!

Would you stick it in a bank vault as cash (and let inflation ‘steal it’?) This is the conundrum faced by today’s billionaires, paying the Treasury to ‘hold’ their money for them at least minimizes their losses.

Because there IS no place TO invest…which also explains why there are no JOBS in a world where CEO pay is tied to share prices (and the easiest way to pump up share price is by screwing the employees!)

Ironically, in this case causation and co-relation ARE related!

And what a wonderful world we have gained! One unfit to support any of us, made so, ironically enough, by those tasked with supporting us all!

Even a deaf-mute prosecutor could make an open and shut case with the facts already in evidence…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tanked!

Greetings good citizen, Happy Monday for whatever that’s worth. Let me kick off the new week with some news that should be obvious to you all, the destruction of our civilization is accelerating!

The ‘cracks’ created by our (criminal) government’s refusal to prosecute the guilty are widening significantly.

It won’t take much more for the whole edifice to crumble and fall.

Some of these ‘cracks’ are close and easy to see

Sentiment in the markets has been buoyed in recent weeks by a seeming calm in Europe’s debt crisis and a run of strong American economic data, particularly with regard to jobs.

One side effect of the positive economic news has been to put upward pressure on oil prices. Despite a modest retreat back below $109 a barrel Monday, the benchmark New York rate is trading far above where it was just a month ago. Last Friday, it hit $109.77 a barrel, its highest close since May 3. Crude has soared from $96 earlier this month.

“At this stage of the global economic cycle, with activity in many of the major advanced economies sluggish, a rise in oil prices threatens to intensify the recessionary prospects facing these economies while, at the same time, raising the headline rates of inflation,” said Neil MacKinnon, global macro strategist at VTB Capital.

Markets around the globe are bleeding from the eye sockets this morning…why do you suppose that is, good citizen?

Rising energy prices without a ‘co-responding’ rise in demand means supply is dwindling.

Don’t misinterpret, we are not currently in an ‘energy crisis’ nor will we be in one for a while yet, but it’s coming (and ‘traders’ won’t let a perfectly good crisis go to waste!)

While other cracks are obscured by the political agenda of others.

From Madrid to Madison, Tahrir Square to Syntagma Square, London student occupations to Occupy Wall Street, Mason has covered the uprisings of 2011, and he found some surprising similarities everywhere. Those similarities are the subject of his new book, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere (Verso), which combines economic analysis, first-hand reporting, and a theoretical understanding of technology, sociology and history into a potent explanation of why 2011 was the year of the protester.

Sarah Jaffe: Tell us what's happening in Greece; you just returned from a reporting trip there.

Paul Mason: The bailout they did Monday night, I think, is designed to do two things: to put off the inevitable moment of Greek default, and to save the rest of Europe from the impact. That doesn't mean that Greece isn't going to slide very quickly into a social crisis—rather, it's already in a social crisis. In the book I document what it's like for the youth who are waking up to the sound of helicopters, moving homes every two or three days; it's like being in the French resistance.

for the workers it's going to get much worse. People have a misconception that it's all about the public sector, but for the Greek bailout to work, private sector wages have to fall 15 to 20 percent. The minimum wage has been slashed by 20 percent.

On my last reporting trip I went to a clinic that's run by the Greek equivalent of Doctors Without Borders. It's aimed at migrants who've fallen through their social security network, and have no healthcare. Now it's swamped by Greeks who've also fallen through the network.

To be honest good citizen, I didn’t read this article…mostly because this particular news outlet ‘mis-identified’ the original uprisings repeatedly by calling them a ‘cry for democracy’.

This is as ‘tone deaf’ as yesterday’s article which blatantly asserted that ‘most people’ involved with in the ‘underground economy’ were all ‘wannabes’.

What is the ‘correct’ answer, good citizen, it’s the economy, STUPID!

Local economies vary but taken as a whole the ‘global’ economy is tanking! (And the fuckheads running the show know it, so (simply) ‘protesting’ their iron grip on money and markets is nothing more than an exercise in futility.)

Worse, misinterpreting this as a ‘cry for freedom’ totally misses what these people actually want (and are willing to die for!) They want ‘control of their destiny!’

You don’t (and won’t) get that with ‘I’ve got mine, fuck you’ capitalism! (There simply isn’t enough ‘market share’ to facilitate ‘capitalist utopia’.)

The ‘existing system’ only ‘works’ for those who ‘own’ it.

Don’t ‘own’ a piece of the system, tough! (It’s not their problem, it’s YOURS!)

But that’s not the half of it, is it good citizen?

I just got solicited (again) for a campaign contribution to the DSCC.

Not particularly surprising. What is, er, ‘disturbing’ is how the ONLY ‘flavor’ on the menu this coming November is CONSERVATIVE!

Seems as though the only ‘option’ you’re gonna get this time around is picking what flavor of ‘crazy’ you want with your conservatism…

Oh, and I don’t need to tell you, [but I will anyway] good citizen, precisely who is responsible for tanking the global economy (for their own, personal, ‘fun & profit.’) [The fucking whacko conservatives!]

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Let me 'clarify' that the posers who call themselves 'Liberals' (but who are really conservative Libertarians!) are NO FUCKING BETTER!

Talk about 'stacking the deck'!

Worse, complaining about the (obvious) 'lack of choice' gets you labeled as a 'malcontent'!

Lottery System

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we are confronted with ‘if this is what a college degree does for you then who needs it’ conundrum. Interestingly enough, this particular article straddles the dubiousness of both economic AND journalism degrees!

First we look at what ‘Modern Economics’ endows its followers with then we can follow up with some ‘critical reading skills’ which is a skill journalism school supposedly endows its students with…

In their book “Freakonomics,” Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt explain, among other things, the odd economic behavior that guides many drug dealers. In one gang they described, the typical street-corner guy made less than minimum wage but still worked extremely hard in hopes of some day becoming one of the few wildly rich kingpins. This behavior isn’t isolated to illegal activity. There are a number of professions in which workers are paid, in part, with a figurative lottery ticket. The worker accepts a lower-paying job in exchange for a slim but real chance of a large, future payday. [snip]

Okay, wait a minute slim…why is Bobo on the corner, breaking the law in the first place?

Did he take a ‘wrong turn’ on the career path of life? Did his ‘gang affiliation’ somehow preclude him from seeking honest work? I mean just look at all of the ‘entry level positions’going begging today…all NONE of em!

What fucktard ‘overlooks’ is ‘less than minimum wage’ is still better then ‘no wage’.

And the official figures repeatedly omit those who don’t (and never have) collected unemployment because they never had a ‘legitimate wage’ job…

You gotta pay in BEFORE you can collect!

Another thing fucktard overlooks is that the criminal world mirrors the corporate world, it’s not what you know but who…the guy on the corner has no ‘illusions’ about his future, he’s just doing what he can to ‘get by’.

If there’s no ‘legitimate work’ then you have to take work on the other side of the fence, it’s all about survival…not ‘illusions of grandeur’ (as numbnuts would have you believe!)

Hollywood is, in some ways, the model lottery industry. For most companies in the business, it doesn’t make economic sense to, as Google does, put promising young applicants through a series of tests and then hire only the small number who pass. Instead, it’s cheaper for talent agencies and studios to hire a lot of young workers and run them through a few years of low-paying drudgery. (Actors are another story altogether. Many never get steady jobs in the first place.) This occupational centrifuge allows workers to effectively sort themselves out based on skill and drive. Over time, some will lose their commitment; others will realize that they don’t have the right talent set; others will find that they’re better at something else. [snip]

Here we see the ‘it’s just a means to an end’, pitch in play. Those who ‘really want it’ will persevere in the end. Which isn’t the case at all! Again it is not ‘what you know but who…’

This puts the lie to that other old capitalist bromide ‘there’s always room at the top!’ the fuck there is! The top keeps getting smaller all the time as the foolish bastards continue to undermine the public’s faith in all varieties of currency, and by extension, organizations!

These idiotic journalists keep making the capitalist arguments that simply DON’T EXIST!

These people aren’t ‘striving to get ahead’, they’re taking what’s offered because it’s the ONLY game in town…and let me tell you, ‘DESPERATION is a TERRIBLE thing!’

Trying to mask it as ‘clever business strategy’ is something the fucking Libertarians would come up with!

Now, many economists fear that the comfortable Plan B jobs are disappearing. Technology and cheaper goods from overseas have replaced many of the not-especially-creative professions. A tax accountant loses clients to TurboTax; many graphic designers have been replaced by Photoshop; and the small shopkeeper by Home Depot, Walmart or Duane Reade. Though a lottery economy is valuable to various industries, the thought of an entire lottery-based economy, in which a few people win big while the rest are forced to toil in an uncertain and not terribly remunerative dead-end labor pool, is unfair and politically scary. If large numbers of people believe they have no shot at a better life in the future, they will work less hard and generate fewer new ideas and businesses. The economy, as a whole, will be poorer.

Ah me! What can you say in the face of such ‘profound stupidity?’ First they lay out the case against globalization and the global race to the bottom and then they propose we do absolutely nothing about it! Bemoaning the loss of ‘hardworking low wage strivers’ as a sort of self-inflicted wound!

Um, this article is titled something along the line of ‘Harvard Grads in the mailroom’ and the general thrust of the article runs along the idea that not EVERY Harvard Grad goes straight to Wall Street.

Well Bubba, what about the countless millions who DON”T FUCKING GO TO HARVARD?

What about them? (I’m going to guess people who can’t afford to pay $50,000 a semester tuition are NOT his concern…)

It’s not clear what today’s eager 23-year-old will do in 5 or 10 years when she decides that acting (or that accounting partnership) isn’t going to work out after all. The best advice may be to accept that economic success in America will come as much from the labor lottery as from hard work and tenacity. The Oscars make clear that there is only so much room at the top. In a lottery-based economy, you need some luck, too; now, perhaps, more than ever. People should be prepared to enter a few different lotteries, because the new Plan B is just going to be another long shot in a different field. The role model of our time should be an actress who was never nominated for an Oscar. Hedy Lamarr did well enough on the screen but, just in case, she spent her free time developing something called frequency-hopping spread-spectrum. It’s a wireless-communication technique still in use in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Not bad for a fallback.

I’d LIKE TO kick ‘fucktard’ in the nuts for providing us with only a single ‘success story’ but, in his defense, there probably aren’t a whole lot more.

So is it ‘the best advice’ that ‘economic success’ will come from what might be more straight-forwardly be labeled as ‘luck’ than hard work and tenacity?

Well, the ‘win some lose some’ philosophy only works during periods of social stability…and the current period is rapidly coming to an end on a global basis.

How sad is it good citizen that the Libertarians among us are willing to ‘roll the dice’ with the future of our species…

How frightening is it that the typical Libertarian also believe it is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven?

I once again ask you, quite candidly, is this the best our ‘education system’ can do?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Back to Basics

Greetings good citizen,

Once again the weekend is here, markets closed up for the week in most places but as Jesse of Jesse’s crossroads café points out, the markets aren’t performing ‘as advertised’.

Um, today’s headlines tell us that Iran has no immediate nuclear ambitions (best to file this headline away for when they start pounding the war drums again!) but that is neither here nor there…(unless you’re aligned with AIPAC.)

Nope, it is the, er, ‘side effects’ of these troubling geo-political developments that concern us.

What ‘side effects’ are those good citizen?

How about paychecks you can’t live on ?

With 40% of US Households on some variety of government ‘food assistance program’ it’s high time somebody put a stop to the global race to the bottom!

But wait, it’s worse than just food stamps!:

The housing market remains a potent drag on the economy as home prices continue to slip, foreclosed homes fill some neighborhoods and millions of construction workers scramble for jobs.

But one group is sitting pretty: landlords.

Unlike home prices, rents have been rising, up 2.4 percent in January from a year earlier, according to recent data, not adjusted for inflation, released by the Labor Department. [snip]

Rent increases are greatest in places like San Francisco, Austin, Tex., and Boston, where technology companies in particular are hiring , as well as in New York City and the District of Columbia. But cities like Chicago and Seattle, where house prices are still declining quite sharply, have had rental increases, too.

Why are rents climbing while the housing markets tank?

Because you can’t ’legally’ live in the street!

So ’stick ’em up! Good citizen, pay or head for the local shelter…where they lock your ass in at 7:00 PM and throw your sorry ass out into the cold/wet/whatever at 7:00 AM (even if you have no place to go and all day to get there.)

Why?

Because most shelters are something else during the day.

The only thing the shelter does for you is provide a place to sleep where the cops won’t bother you (you’re on your own as far as the other refugees and getting some sleep are concerned!)

Guess who is driving rents up?

Same asshole who caused the collapse of the housing market, our ‘pal’ Flipper!

Flipper still has his old Tom Vu seminar materials and now he’s sure to be buying ‘income properties’ right! (He’s still unemployed so he also has nothing but time on his hands!)

(Except the dearth of homebuyers extends to renters as well!)

Yup, ol’ Flipper spends his days attending foreclosure auctions, finagling with the banks on the properties nobody bids enough on (because you know his bankrupt ass doesn’t have the $ 5,000 for a bidder number!)

Most banks tell him to fuck off but every once in a while he gets ‘lucky’ and his ‘pitch’ works! (He ‘reasons’ with the bank, let him try to turn the property around, it won’t cost them anything and they’re not getting anything for it now!)

The ‘plum’ Flipper dangles in front of the banker is the promise to maintain the property…a promise they both know Flipper will never keep!

If he can’t find a renter (to exploit) he’ll simply let his ‘doesn’t owe me anything’ property go to hell!

How has Flipper been keeping himself in coin during the downturn he created?

Stripping houses of their copper!

Remember, NOBODY has gone to jail for their part in this collapse. By now it must be obvious just how dangerous this situation is…

But what are we going to do, good citizen? We CAN’T AFFORD to lock the bums up because our bought and paid for politicians let the criminals EXPORT the TAX BASE!

WTF! Good citizen…sometimes you just have to ask yourself What The [Flaming] Fuck!

How fucked up is it that we can’t lock up the criminals because the criminals succeeded in exporting our tax base?

That last one is going to be a real croaker when municipalities have to start paring down their police departments!

Will we go back to the ‘Old West’ with a ‘Sheriff and a couple of deputies’ (usually the Sheriff’s drinking buddies)?

Law enforcement the way it used to be, when most Sheriffs were blind in one eye and couldn’t see anything out of the other?

Except when it came to the law abiding, then they didn’t miss a trick!

Sheriff was mighty quick to fine you for a busted taillight but that son of a bitch still hasn’t caught the bastard that raped your daughter (and your daughter told him who did it!)

Which is to ask, once again, Where is the smart?

With the most educated population the world has EVER seen, where the fuck is the ‘smart’?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Slip of the tongue...

Greetings good citizen,

Um (and starting anything with ‘um’ is ALWAYS a bad sign) the markets are ‘up’ this morning, the Dow is 13,001 (and you knew the fuckers would get there eventually!) But (and it’s a mighty BIG but!) oil is $108 a barrel and gold is over $1,775 a fucking OUNCE (it doesn’t matter that there are only ten ‘Troy ounces’ in a ’Troy Pound’ nor is it particularly significant that there are only 33 gallons in a barrel of oil (as opposed to 55 gallons to a barrel of pretty much anything else!)

But it helps to know these things that only serve to muddy the waters and throw off the ignorant.

Which brings us where, good citizen?

Why to Mitt Romney’s campaign speech ‘gaffe’!

Let’s have a look while Mr. Krugman makes his point and I use the same comment to school you on an entirely different fact!

First, Mr. Krugman:

According to Michael Kinsley, a gaffe is when a politician accidently tells the truth. That’s certainly what happened to Mitt Romney on Tuesday, when in a rare moment of candor — and, in his case, such moments are really, really rare — he gave away the game.

Speaking in Michigan, Mr. Romney was asked about deficit reduction, and he absent-mindedly said something completely reasonable: “If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy.” A-ha. So he believes that cutting government spending hurts growth, other things equal.

The right’s ideology police were, predictably, aghast; the Club for Growth quickly denounced the statement as showing that Mr. Romney is “not a limited-government conservative.” On the contrary, insisted the club, “If we balanced the budget tomorrow on spending cuts alone, it would be fantastic for the economy.” And a Romney spokesman tried to walk back the remark, claiming, “The governor’s point was that simply slashing the budget, with no affirmative pro-growth policies, is insufficient to get the economy turned around.”

Weirdo that I am, I will side track for a moment and draw your attention to a word in Mr. Krugman’s first sentence and that word is ‘accidently’.

My ‘spellchecker’ has it flagged as being misspelled, it wants to see accidentally.

Is Mr. Krugman wrong? Did he, in fact, misspell ’accidently’?

Short answer is NO…we have Mr. Gates (and the global race to the bottom) to thank for this slaughter of American English!

But I digress! (knowing full well I am not the only one disgusted to find many common words listed as ‘not in [Microsoft’s] dictionary’)

How fucking sad is it good citizen that such an important utility was treated with the cavalier, “fuck it, ship it!” attitude?

Worse, that NOBODY even tried to fix it tells us something even more disturbing.

That American English is destined for the scrap heap of history…again, thanks to the fucking capitalists!

OKAY, FULL STOP AND SHIFT MENTAL GEARS [rant off!]

Mr. Krugman uses Mr. Romney’s ‘unintentional truthiness’ to label him a closet Keynesian…

I would take that exact same ‘slip’ (made by an individual in a position to know) and direct your attention to the much ignored ‘golden trough’ (Vonnegut was fond of this particular term!)

Ask the average bum, “where does money come from?” and you’ll get answers that vary from the bank to the printing press/stamping machine. You’ll even find a few clueless dolts that will answer God (and they wouldn’t be that far off.)

Again, I needn’t clarify for the average reader that the ‘Golden trough’ is a literary device and not a literal construct.

Money is a ’legal construct’, it is the law itself that provides our money ‘legitimacy’.

If the law said rocks were legal tender then we’d all be rich (for a few minutes anyway!)

But the point is, since money is a ‘legal construct’ our entire economy ‘flows’ from the government!

Which is to point out we have a situation on our hands just like the one with the famous outlaw when he was asked why he robbed banks?

His response was the same as Mr. Romney’s…because THAT’S WHERE THE MONEY IS!

It is also the ‘foundation’ upon which our entire civilization rests.

Properly managed, we would ALL be prosperous…but when 'the few' decide the rest of us ‘don’t deserve’ our share, we suddenly have the ‘unthinkable’; a ‘rich’ and a ‘poor’ ‘class’ (for want of a better term.)

How ironic is it that our ‘major malfunction’ is the ceaseless battle over who ‘deserves’ what, with one side trying to provide for the destitute while the other side creates them by cheating them out of what little they had?

Left to our imaginations good citizen is what our lives would be like without any government at all!

Because that’s the direction the criminal Libertarians are headed with their cursed ‘Tea Party’.

And again we find ourselves confronted with the question of which we will exhaust first, the rope or the light poles?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS, how ironic is it that I live on a street that has underground utilities?

PPS, Give this a read if you want a peak at how all of this 'window dressing' will play out!