Continuing with the theme that if you look hard enough you an find someone who agrees with you, allow me to introduce someone who practically channels me …
I know I posted first today so the similarities in our points of view are more than a little eerie.
Um, the similarities of which I speak are in the ‘conclusion’ of this piece, just as mine are in yesterday’s offering.
No, I didn’t write about housing.
But we both beat up on the so-called ‘pros’ in the financial markets…
We both expressed our doubts about ‘economic recovery’…
And while I wasn’t as ‘articulate’ as Ilagi, we both expressed the view that the crisis is more than just a financial downturn, it is a crisis of confidence caused by what will come to be known as the ‘crime of the century’.
Ilargi: Although it's under threat of being swamped by tons and tons of rotting shoots, the most interesting number today, for me, probably comes from Dean Baker, who has this statement about US real estate:
Housing equity continues to be destroyed at the rate of $400 billion a month ....
What intrigues me about this, of course, is how it rhymes with Nouriel Roubini, Paul Kasriel, Henry Blodget plus a whole slew of anonymous economists hired by a spin bureau with great media access, who all came out today proclaiming recovery is here, or at least it'll be here before the end of the year. If US homeowners, who also double as consumers, and as such bear responsibility for over 70% of US GDP, lose $1333 per capita every month, or $15.996 per year, or $63.984 per nuclear family, where for all the mothers of all the prophets in history, or so I wonder, will that recovery originate?
Now, I know that man cannot live by home (or home-made bread) alone, that there is more to the economy than real estate and mortgages, but if on average a family needs to earn over $60.000 just in order to not fall even deeper into the debt trap, while at the same time every single month over 600.000 jobs are lost that are crucially needed to pay for just that play-even scenario, I’m starting to have some serious questions about that recovery. Come to think of it and while we’re at it, I also get serious doubts as to the reasons why these folks say these things to begin with. It makes no sense to me, that much is clear.
As far as I can see, the best thing that they can possibly envision, and that would still be greenshootingly delusional, is for houses to lose 10% per year instead of 15%, and for the US to shed 500.000 jobs instead of 600.000. It’s of course challenging at times to state the obvious in the face of all the oh-so-pretty predictions, but that’s fine, I just play the numbers in my head and hope to be wrong. After all, if I’m right, my own world will steeply degrade with everyone else's. But I'm not wrong, and all these voices are not right. I know, that means calling a lot of respected economists out as dulled drillbits, but so be it. The numbers don't lie. The government, the banks and the economists do.
Why are we still listening to these people? All they do is just erase from the field all considerations concerning anything serious. Economics is politics, and economists merely function to justify whatever political model they happen to serve in their respective nations and regimes.
We are in the middle of a crisis. Which has to do with money. And so we're all thrown into the hands of a bunch of people how pose as scientists, even though their field demonstrably fails in even the most basic requirements to be recognized as such. Economists cannot solve this crisis. First, they have no proven models, they only have theories that could fail as easily as they could succeed, and that's already handing them leeway. Second, and I return to what I've said many times before, this is not a financial or economical crisis, and neither should nor can therefore be solved by economists.
We are being eaten up alive by an all-out all-encompassing societal crisis. It's not about money. It's about you, and your families and friends, and ultimately about survival. Forget about recovery. You'll never get back to what you once had. And knowing that, accepting that, it's time to celebrate life as it will be, to make the best of what is, not of what was or could have been.
Smoking green shoots doesn’t seem to me to be the best way to do that. What we are in is not something we would ever have chosen, but here we are. And for once it's accurate to say that nothing will ever be the same. There's no way back, no recovery. And we're going to have the work the land real long and real hard before it rewards us with anything green.
Okay, maybe I’m just a tad more optimistic than this guy but that’s because I have an answer to our problems and he doesn’t.
I have to admire Ilargi because he comes out and says something I’ve only hinted at…because I fear most of you won’t believe it.
This crisis isn’t about money, it’s about ‘control’.
They could very easily pay us more and the ‘crisis’ would (at least temporarily) disappear.
I say temporarily because there is no such thing as a sustainable debt driven social model.
That which has gone before is indeed gone since we live in the perpetual ‘now’.
The root of the crisis exists in ‘overpaying’ for that which is our birthright. We have ‘allowed’ some humans to charge us for what they have no right to claim as their own.
Well good citizen, the time has come to put those greedy individuals in their place…those who do not value the benefits of civil society shall have those benefits withdrawn from them!
The greedy that charge us for every little thing do not bring us the world as we know it, the workers do! Without the workers there is nothing!
It is time for the worker to regain their rightful place in our society. It is time to enforce the rule that only labor earns one a place at the table and not some frivolous claim of ownership but the act of creation the provides one with ‘membership’.
We do what we do because it needs doing and money is only useful as it makes it possible to focus on what we do well so we aren’t forced to do everything ourselves!
Money is a tool, not an objective in itself!
Those who have ‘pirated’ society for their own benefit have ‘bastardized’ money so they don’t have to contribute to the common good!
Money is no longer a ‘means of exchange’ but the means of control.
Investors are a parasite to be purged and not the ‘champions of freedom’ they make their lazy asses out to be!
The audacity of defining themselves as ‘indispensable’ while the only thing they contribute to society is a paycheck that they steal from you in the first place!
This is criminal! And criminals have no place within civil society.
The sun will continue to rise, the crops will continue to grow and the factories will continue to produce whether someone ‘owns’ them or not.
I find it astounding that with so many willing, clever hands that we have failed to banish want from our society…but we have allowed greed to rule us and the greedy care not for the welfare of those that do society’s heavy lifting! (While doing none themselves.)
Hand in hand with this misguided belief (and they do believe it) is the notion that we’re too ‘stupid’ to take care of business ourselves. What reinforces this ‘belief’ is the fact they are allowed to get away with their criminal behavior!
No irony should be lost on the fact that this is due to their control of society’s legal apparatus.
We have been indoctrinated to do as we’re told and nothing more or nothing less if we don’t want trouble. This applies double for the legal community.
This ‘blind obedience’ to the ‘boss’ has murdered any semblance of personal sovereignty we may have had outside the workplace.
Worse, our inability to question (never mind fire) the boss puts us in the often untenable situation of ‘do and like it or you’re fired!’
It is this brand of unswerving loyalty that has turned us all into the slaves of the monied class.
Since they cut our paychecks, we have to do as they say…or we’re out of a job.
This is no way to run a society…especially when the end result is a hollowed out economy, which forms the basis for a class war.
Does ‘someone’ need to be in charge? Definitely…but that someone (those someones) have to be constrained by the same rules as everyone else is, something that clearly isn’t happening now.
So the question facing us is an ancient one, the rule of law or the rule of man?
Once again this issue will be decided by the willingness to fight for freedom.
If the will does not exist then neither will freedom exist.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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