THIS is Democracy?

Greetings good citizen,

I received an e-mail from Media Matters a short time ago urging me to join them in ‘petitioning’ the advertisers who support Fox New’s Glen Beck to withdraw their support from both the show and the network.

Why?

Because Mr. Beck claims certain progressive organizations (including the current administration) are ‘undermining democracy’.

What do you suppose was the first thing to pop into my feeble mind?

THIS is Democracy? WTF is stupid babbling about?

Let’s be clear good citizen, conservatives don’t give a flying fuck about democracy, civil rights or racism, much less ‘due process’.

Allow me to, er, ‘re-focus’ your attention on what this whole shouting match is about.

It is about the ‘rule of law’ and their unvarnished hatred of democracy in all of its forms.

They only want you to think one thing good citizen, and they want you to repeat it like a mantra so it crowds out every other thought. Do you know what that one thing is?

They want to return to the days when government was indistinguishable from religion and three words ran constantly through everyone’s mind…and those three words were…

Don’t kill me!

Disagree, complain, object and there is only swift and sure ‘retribution’…express any of those ‘heretical’ thoughts and be summarily executed.

Now you have an accurate mental picture of what ‘Conservative Utopia’ looks like.

Naturally, there’s one small ‘hitch’ to this, er, plan…finding enough religious zealots stupid enough to believe that YOU speak for their ‘God’.

Oh, and make no mistake about it good citizen, when things turn ‘grim’, the morons among us turn to god…which leads us to the very intentional ‘destruction’ of the world’s economy.

What poetic justice it would be to send these shiftless fuckers to what they would consider ‘hell’, a place where their survival depended upon their mutual, ongoing, cooperation.

Understand; Superman doesn’t need anybody to succeed. In fact, all of those other ‘useless fucks’ are in the way!

There is no need to execute the criminally insane, just give them enough rope and they’ll execute themselves.

But I digress…back to ‘democracy’ and those who are seen as ‘undermining it’.

Do you think anyone (and I mean anyone) who supports our current system of government is a ‘supporter of democracy?’

They most definitely are NOT.

Anyone who supports stripping YOU of YOUR RIGHT to choose is no friend/supporter of democracy!

Most of you are totally ignorant of the fact that this is precisely what the ‘Founding Fathers’ did when they drafted the ‘Constitution’ (in secret, during an ‘invitation-only’ locked and guarded meeting!)

Their ‘choice’ of a ‘representative’ government meant only those who could afford to ‘purchase’ a representative would be ‘represented’. Much is made of your ability to ‘vote’ but what good has it done you? (The most recent administration is a perfect example of just how ‘futile’ voting really is.) Do you honestly believe you can ‘elect’ a responsible, competent government?

Short answer, NO…nor did the founders believe/desire such nonsense!

The purpose of a ‘representative’ government is to prevent you from voting directly upon the laws we, er, ‘all’ must live by…that would be ‘true’ democracy.

Which is to say the damn revolution was ‘stolen’ before the corpses of the revolutionary soldiers were even cold.

What’s that? You don’t want to vote directly on the laws?

You’re perfectly happy letting someone else decide?

How then do you suppose we ended up where we are standing today?

This brings us back to the old ‘all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.’

Is that what you want?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The Rule of Man

Greetings good citizen,

Welcome to ‘Bizarro world’ where the relentless search for ‘income streams’ has suddenly made all manners of previously prohibited activity, er, ‘desirable’.

Congress is looking into ‘legalizing’ both Pot and Gambling so they can tax the both of them!

Isn’t this the ‘Disaster Capitalism’ Naomi Klein warned us about?

Which is to ask the more pertinent question of how legalizing socially questionable behavior is supposed to ‘stabilize’ our society?

Back-up…

I got no quarrel with pot (even if I don’t prefer it myself) nor do I ‘disapprove’ of gambling, as a pass time, for fun, where nobody gets hurt. I would strongly support legislation that made gambling losses uncollectable.

If you are dissatisfied with the gratification gained by ‘winning’, money isn’t going to make you any ‘happier’. Nor is ignorance or stupidity ‘justification’ for forcing poverty upon anyone!

Yet our, er, ‘mentally challenged’ legislators are having their feet held to the fire to pass legislation that will make a bad situation even worse!

Um, how many of you think it is a good idea to ‘legalize’ another way to operate under the influence? Yeah, people do it anyway but unlike booze, pot doesn’t stink. You can be stoned to the bone and not, except for bloodshot eyes, show any, er, evidence.

And blood-shot eyes could just as easily be hay fever or one of a million other ‘irritants’.

Worse, you can pick up pot in a blood test…if you smoked it anytime in the past month. How much difficulty will this create when it comes to proving the operator was incapacitated ‘at the time’?

Then there is the other side of the coin…doesn’t taxing more income streams just hand more ammunition to the ‘anti-tax’ Republicans?

You can just see it now, they will be ‘howling’ that pot farmers can’t expand their business because of the onerous taxes being levied on them!

Worse, the chiseling fucks will use the tax issue to ‘justify’ importing weed from cheaper labor pools, putting us right back to square one, job wise!

AND, don’t for a minute confuse ‘legalized possession’ with legalized sourcing. If you aren’t a ‘licensed’ pot farmer it will still be ‘illegal’ for YOU to grow your own weed!

You can screw with people’s lives, even throw them in a cesspool if you can turn a profit at it, but you can’t screw with a capitalist’s ‘income stream’. That is what ‘The Law’ exists to protect!

And if you don’t find that deeply disturbing you are fucked up in the head!

We keep bumping up against the same disturbing proposition repeatedly good citizen and that is the one about whether commerce exists to serve society or if it exists to serve those who have laid claim to it?

Ironically, those who ‘volunteered’ (by petitioning the people’s ‘guardian’ (government)) to ‘serve society’ have (unsurprisingly) ended up serving themselves instead (at the expense of those they claim to serve!)

Just because our elected officials have ‘turned a blind eye’ to this social responsibility doesn’t mean the rest of us should.

Here’s an amazing concept for you, ‘the will of the people IS the law!’

We are ‘denied’ our will when it comes down to determining precisely ‘who’ speaks for the people. The fools we elect CAN’T speak for ‘the people’ because they refuse to even talk to us! (They speak with campaign contributors only…and that is hardly ‘representative’.)

No good citizen, there is but one ‘solution’ to this conundrum, we must remove the law beyond the reach of the self-interested and we can only do that via direct democracy!

As long as the powerful have the power to manipulate the justice system, the rule of law will remain superceded by the rule of man…and I shall suffer no individual as my master!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Facts not in evidence...

Greetings good citizen,

A note to anyone becoming frustrated with perceived ‘non-responsiveness’, the damn system does not notify me if anyone leaves a comment. The couple of comments I have found to date I stumbled upon during one of the occasional ‘sweeps’ for comments that I conduct.

I’m not ignoring you, I just don’t know if you’re out there or not.

I often get the impression I am repeating myself but I suspect this is due to ‘their’ (yes, I am referring to the infamous ‘they’) persisting in pulling the exact same shit, over and over again!

I’m trying to ‘break the circle’ but it is difficult.

What doesn’t make things easier is how other commentators often ‘gloss over’ the significance of what they tell you…like we see in this article by Henry CK Liu. Perhaps Henry has fallen into the same ‘trap’ I often find myself in. You ‘assume’ the reader is already aware of the one factor that makes the whole unbelievable situation possible.

Read Henry’s piece with the thought that it is ‘the only game in town’ in mind and it takes on a whole new meaning! Ironically, this all-important factoid is a ‘game changer’ with far reaching implications. That said, it is perfectly understandable that this disturbing fact is commonly overlooked.

I’m a little ‘late to the party’ with this next piece which provides us with a ‘creative’ look at what might happen in some parts of the country after the Republican’s ‘finish’ destroying the tax mechanism that supports ‘civil society’.

The missing piece of the puzzle here is the failure to acknowledge that ‘Law Enforcement’ does what it does for a paycheck (and in most cases a darn good one!) Although admittedly, Mr. Roberts does, er, ‘compensate’ for this bit of wishful thinking by taking the ‘privatized’ approach. That the cops will compensate themselves by becoming robbers!

What a joy that will be!

The Year America Dissolved
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

It was 2017. Clans were governing America.

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and
the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police. [Left to your imagination is just how ‘small’ a tribe that would be. The only ‘friend’ a cop has is other cops…and even they don’t trust each other.]

The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money. [Sadly we’re already well beyond that, the ‘monetization’ of shadow debt continues unabated, bankrupting us all.]

With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base. This process is already underway, the fact that most people can’t afford replacement goods is what’s keeping the supply lines and retail outlets from collapsing overnight.]

The government was forced to print money in order to pay its bills, causing domestic prices to rise rapidly. Faced with hyperinflation, Washington took recourse in terminating Social Security and Medicare and followed up by confiscating the remnants of private pensions. This provided a one-year respite, but with no more resources to confiscate, money creation and hyperinflation resumed. [‘Fanciful’ in the extreme! Everyone north of the Mason-Dixon line (Everyone who needs to pay for heating fuel five months out of the year) would have hung their ‘elected representative’ from the nearest phone pole and marched on Washington immediately afterwards…throwing NY City (Wall Street) into Atlantic on the way past.]

Organized food deliveries broke down when the government fought hyperinflation with fixed prices and the mandate that all purchases and sales had to be in US paper currency. Unwilling to trade appreciating goods for depreciating paper, goods disappeared from stores. [Which resulted in their near immediate looting…probably with the local police lending a hand.]

Washington responded as Lenin had done during the “war communism” period of Soviet history. The government sent troops to confiscate goods for distribution in kind
to the population. This was a temporary stop-gap until existing stocks were depleted, as future production was discouraged. Much of the confiscated stocks became the property of the troops who seized the goods. [Consider this ‘fair warning’: hide your ‘stash’ well! They can’t steal what they can’t find…and PS by the way; the ‘authorities’ aren’t the only ones seeking to relieve you of your supplies. Marauders and Desperadoes will abound!]

Goods reappeared in markets under the protection of local warlords. Transactions were conducted in barter and in gold, silver, and copper coins. [Fanciful indeed! Most ‘transactions’ will be conducted in ‘lead’ (or cold steel if you’re really unlucky!) No one in their right mind would go near a market if they saw the same thieves that have already robbed them ‘protecting’ the place!]

Other clans organized around families and individuals who possessed stocks of food, bullion, guns and ammunition. Uneasy alliances formed to balance differences in clan strengths. Betrayals quickly made loyalty a necessary trait for survival. [There’s truth there! ‘Trust’ will be worth more than a bushel of gold, sadly for a similar reason, ‘rarity’.]

Large scale food and other production broke down as local militias taxed distribution as goods moved across local territories. Washington seized domestic oil production and refineries, but much of the government’s gasoline was paid for safe passage across clan territories. [I find it extremely amusing that anyone thinks Washington will survive more than minutes after martial law that precedes the suspension of retirement/disability benefits is declared!]

Most of the troops in Washington’s overseas bases were abandoned. As their resource stocks were drawn down, the abandoned soldiers were forced into alliances with those with whom they had been fighting. [That’s probably the most ‘accurate’ bit of speculation in the whole piece, made that much worse by the fact that the ‘resources’ to bring the troops home will be hoarded by the already wealthy…for sale on the ‘black market’.]

Washington found it increasingly difficult to maintain itself. As it lost control over the country, Washington was less able to secure supplies from abroad as tribute from those Washington threatened with nuclear attack. Gradually other nuclear powers realized that the only target in America was Washington. The more astute saw the writing on the wall and slipped away from the former capital city. [That’s a ‘wildcard’ few ever speculate about, ‘nuclear blackmail’. Will our overlords attempt to hold others hostage once paper currency proves worthless? How much ‘collateral damage’ will this ill-conceived, albeit desperate, strategy cause? Will we really have to deal with the ‘third most powerful man in the world’? (The Captain of a nuclear submarine)]

When Rome began her empire, Rome’s currency consisted of gold and silver coinage. Rome was well organized with efficient institutions and the ability to supply troops in the field so that campaigns could continue indefinitely, a monopoly in the world of Rome’s time.

When hubris sent America in pursuit of overseas empire, the venture coincided with the offshoring of American manufacturing, industrial, and professional service jobs and the corresponding erosion of the government’s tax base, with the advent of massive budget and trade deficits, with the erosion of the fiat paper currency’s value, and with America’s dependence on foreign creditors and puppet rulers.

The Roman Empire lasted for centuries. The American one collapsed overnight.

Rome’s corruption became the strength of her enemies, and the Western Empire was overrun. [Rome’s citizens welcomed the invaders with open arms, which later proved to be a big mistake…]

America’s collapse occurred when government ceased to represent the people and became the instrument of a private oligarchy. Decisions were made in behalf of short-term profits for the few at the expense of unmanageable liabilities for the many.

Overwhelmed by liabilities, the government collapsed.

Globalism had run its course. Life reformed on a local basis.

Yes, something resembling ‘organization’ will ‘persist’ after the collapse and we will once again find ourselves ‘at odds’ with those fighting to preserve a ‘status quo’ that ignores the common good.

Since ‘law enforcement’ is a ‘gun for hire’ proposition, the local, er, money interest will fill the void made by our ‘elected’ representatives…without so much as a ‘by your leave’.

Which is to say that once the paychecks stop (and it becomes obvious that the pension funds are screwed beyond salvage too, the cops will, er, ‘seek employment’ with whoever promises to pay them. Even if that is their former…er, adversaries.

Which, as Hollywood has popularized, the higher up the ladder you go, the more ‘overlap’ you find between law enforcers and law breakers.

The world is a dangerous place, but it always has been.

Prepare.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Small Change...

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The not quite so 'silent majority'

Greetings good citizen,

I kept my ears open as I attended social gatherings this weekend, what do you suppose I encountered? A good deal of indifference mixed with a general feeling of fear that things are headed in the wrong direction, for a laundry list of reasons.

What I found particularly, er, ‘amusing’ is how conservatives seem perplexed by the extreme divisions in our society (just who do you think has been hammering on those ‘wedges’ all of these years?)

A house divided against itself cannot stand. The only reason this house hasn’t blown itself to bits is because people still don’t quite believe the worst of their fellow man…yet.

It’s a ‘critical mass’ thing. The pressure is building but these things take time.

As I have stated numerous times before, you wake the Giant at your own peril. We can only pray that those who have poked it the hardest suffer the full consequences of their foolishness.

Unfortunately, those of us preaching unity also risk the wrath of the Giant. Any who speak out make themselves a target.

The Giant doesn’t give a fuck; it kills indiscriminately.

Not that this will stop a ‘true believer’…death, however, does a rather effective job of crushing ‘dissent’.

Which is to point out that it is already too late for many of us to ‘shut up’…target selection has been underway for quite a while now on both sides of the political fence.

What I find particularly disturbing is the growing consensus that ‘the system’ is broken. Continued participation is increasing viewed as ‘futile’ yet there is no ‘public dialog’ about changing the system. (You don’t suppose the corporate takeover of the MSM has anything to do with this disturbing silence, do you?)

Beneath each of these expressions of ‘civic concern’ is the implicit question of just when ‘hostilities’ are going to break out. Some even openly speculate between whom the battle will be fought…

Since there is no discussion of what our options are, we only have ‘one option’, the way things are…you’re expected to take it and like it…even as the situation becomes increasingly more mercenary due to extreme mis-management.

You can’t keep yelling ‘every man for themselves’ and then act surprised when it actually happens! (Yet conservatives do precisely this with ‘frightening regularity’…always insisting they have been ‘mis-interpreted’.)

When, in fact, it is exactly the outcome they were seeking.

Which leads us where good citizen? The best thing about somebody expressing ‘conservative beliefs’ is it marks them as A.) Stupid and B.) Untrustworthy/unreliable; as someone who can’t be counted on for the smallest of things.

Consider for a moment your conservative ‘acquaintances’ and siblings for the validity of the above statement. Simply put, of all of the people you know, who do you trust the least?

What you need to take note of the ‘amazing coincidence’ between weasely behavior and conservatism.

Really ragging on that one in five minority today, ain’t I?

That being a fact just how does such an unpopular political movement remain viable? This, bizarrely, brings us full circle to the ‘untrustworthy’ aspect of this equation…

Remember; I’ll never tell you what to think, good citizen, my job is to give you something to think about!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Three dog night

Greetings good citizen,

Geez, it seems yesterday’s ‘rally’ had as much behind it as the prior day’s sell-off because today’s market has returned to ‘neutral’. There’s nobody buying or selling…a phenomenon that has been the ‘norm’ for quite a while now but the fucktards in the MSM don’t think that’s news!

You know what a ‘hoodwink’ is, don’t you good citizen? Remove the ‘wink’ and you’ve got the answer, it is an opaque bag they throw over your head so you can’t see.

Well, nobody likes being hoodwinked. The question is whether or not the bag is necessary to accomplish the job?

The MSM realized long ago that it could hoodwink the consumer without the bag because the public has a (deeply disturbing) tendency to believe whatever the media tells them, even when it is demonstrably false! (For an idea of where this is heading you need merely look at Faux News for a sample of ‘newsertainment’ in action.)

Just because nobody has forced a bag over your head does not mean you aren’t being hoodwinked!

Okay, so what if they ‘lie’ about the Stock Market…no harm, no foul…right?

That’s the prevailing belief good citizen, that ‘fluffing’ the stock markets is done to ‘boost confidence’ in the economy. What harm can that do?

Considering how badly ‘mis-managed’ the economy is, it harms all of us plenty!

Worse, the, er, ‘mask’ of creative accounting makes a ‘true accounting’ almost impossible to determine! [Another way of phrasing this is it is almost impossible to guage just how badly we are being ‘fucked’!]

Simply put good citizen, what’s going on is criminal and the bought and paid for MSM doesn’t want you to know about it.

As you know the stock market is the number one argument, in fact, the only ‘tangible’ evidence that the ‘economic recovery’ even exists!

As today’s market ‘proves’, if it weren’t for the trading desks of the big investment banks there wouldn’t be any market activity…or there would be a huge ‘rush to the exits’ IF investors thought they could ‘get out’ reasonably intact. (They know they can’t so most of them stay in.)

ASSUMING I have made myself understood (a lot of people have mental blocks when it comes to this shit!) What should we ‘do’ about the toxic environment we are being ‘stewed & screwed’ in?

If you find yourself wondering what ‘toxic environment’ I’m referring to, you obviously didn’t comprehend my point…so I will explain further:

You are being lied to. Not just about the economy but about pretty much everything. Worse, nothing will be done to, er, ‘repair’ the damage that has been done because the perps, the ‘buyers’ of what passes for a government around here, don’t want it ‘fixed’.

What the idiot politicians don’t realize (but you don’t either) is they can be hanged for what they have, er, ‘neglected to do’.

In the process of explaining what’s going on we have also covered what needs to be done, the first step in restoring ‘liberty’ is to re-establish justice by restoring the ‘rule of law’.

Our politicians have sold the public interest for personal gain…this is treason, a hanging offense.

A Simple Plan contains the details of how we would avoid returning to this same spot. Educate yourself before you argue to ‘save the traitors’ (or worse, to save the system that spawned them!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

(PS. I have an extraordinarily full dance card this weekend so consider this ‘fair warning’.)

Shocking!

Greetings good citizen,

Apparently yesterday’s remarks from Chairman Bernanke were, er, ‘disposable’ as this morning markets have recovered all of the ground they lost yesterday and then some!

Left to your over tasked imagination is the daunting job of determining which statement is true, is the economy going to be ‘rocky’ for the foreseeable future or is the (thus far invisible) recovery still on track? (As this morning’s markets seem to indicate.)

This morning’s NY Times has this article to help us ‘ferret out’ the truth…

Stocks were sharply higher in morning trading Thursday on Wall Street after another strong batch of earnings and some encouraging signs of growth in Europe.

Investors are largely writing off a jump in weekly jobless claims that might have been skewed by seasonal factors. Instead they are focused on earnings from a broad range of companies that demonstrate businesses are not seeing a slowdown in the recovery that economic data would otherwise indicate.

Apparently ‘logic’ won’t help us in our quest for truth, the MSM insists on reporting ‘manufactured fantasies’ and accounting tricks as proof the economy is in, er, ‘recovery’.

Sadly, logic tells us otherwise. Trillions of dollars worth of ‘value’ as well as billions of dollars worth of income have been destroyed. There has been ‘zero’ return of either jobs or value so what is this recovery they’re babbling about?

Are they psycho? They have to be to persist in pointing to something that nobody else can see while making, er, ‘unverifiable’ claims that ‘economic activity’ is improving by any measurable degree.

We have a simple term for what they are doing, we call it lying, which makes them liars.

No irony should be lost on the fact that most of you would agree with that assessment. Here we encounter one more example of ‘what are you going to do about it?’

And we already know the answer to that one too…nothing.

Not right now anyway. Later, once the same bastards are hunting you down like a feral dog, you’ll remember all of their lies and swear vengeance…if you survive.

Maybe not a good plan but it’s the only one you’ve got.

So once again we wonder who are these so-called ‘investors’ and why, oh why do they believe in fantasies and falsehoods?

Perhaps it is but another symptom of ‘Conservative disease. For more on that topic we have this from today’s Alternet.

Shocking: Ben Stein Says The ‘Unpleasant’ Unemployed ‘Do Not Know How To Do A Day’s Work’

Posted by zaidjilani on @ 5:50 am

This post originally appeared on Think Progress.

Today, the Senate extended unemployment benefits for millions of jobless Americans. Despite the terrible shape of the economy, conservatives resisted extending unemployment insurance for weeks for Americans who can’t find work, launching a filibuster to prevent a vote on the benefits. [Tax breaks for billionaires but nothing for you!]

Writing at the American Spectator yesterday, former Nixon speechwriter and TV personality Ben Stein downplayed the suffering unemployed Americans are experiencing by writing that the people who are unemployed right now are “generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities.” He claims the unemployed are Americans with “unpleasant personalities…who do not know how to do a day’s work“:

The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say “generally” because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job. Again, there are powerful exceptions and I know some, but when employers are looking to lay off, they lay off the least productive or the most negative. To assure that a worker is not one of them, he should learn how to work and how to get along — not always easy. [Are you ‘howling’ yet good citizen. How do you suppose Mr. Stein came by his, er, ‘familiarity’ with working people? You don’t suppose he picked up this ‘insight’ by rubbing elbows with, gasp, employers? (Because numbnuts is ‘parroting’ the vapid claims of employers.) It is laughable indeed to think employers (not bound to union contracts) don’t cut payroll by first looking at what they are paying the employee. If you show up on time every day, you can be the biggest asshole on the planet and keep your job. In fact, if you’re a real pinhead, you’ll probably get promoted!]

Of course, saying that the 15 million Americans who are unemployed right now are “generally” people with “poor work habits” is as offensive as it is wrong. The current recession is a global phenomenon caused by the collective bad behavior of the world’s largest financial institutions. Before the recession, the unemployment rate hovered around six percent; it is ludicrous to say that millions of Americans suddenly got lazier and less able to work within the span of a few months. [So we can only wonder if Mr. Stein will appear in public without bodyguards for the foreseeable future? It’s hard to determine which was more irresponsible, expressing these opinions or allowing them to be published without first consulting an attorney?]

Unfortunately, Stein is a widely respected voice on the American right who regularly appears on cable news to offer his thoughts on politics and policy. Using the Critical Mention media search engine, ThinkProgress finds that the name “Ben Stein” was mentioned 64 times in major television media networks within the past thirty days alone.

No irony should be lost on the fact that Mr. Stein has achieved the same ‘fame’ Mr. Limbaugh is noted for and that is you can’t be slandered by a ‘known liar’.

No ‘reasonable person’ would take Mr. Stein’s opinion to heart…and that’s probably a good thing. If people reacted to this the way they might if it was said directly about them, I wouldn’t give Mr. Stein good odds for surviving the day, much less the week.

The insanity rages on and we are expected to keep on doing what we do like everything was just as normal as ever as it becomes increasingly obvious nothing could be further from the truth.

It is like watching someone burn to death while they vehemently deny they are on fire. You can see the flames, why can’t they?

Is the answer as simple as they ‘refuse to believe?’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Advice

Greetings good citizen,

The best advice about giving advice is to be wary if not downright reluctant to do so, the wise don’t need it and fools won’t heed it. That said, advice taken out of context is often disastrous.

Which is to point out that a lot of advice is worthless as well as being extremely ‘context sensitive’ as you will find here

Mr. Hughes-Smith ‘assumes’ his readers enjoy a certain degree of, er, ‘liquidity’ that just isn’t there for ‘average’ people. Worse, few tend to have a clue as to what constitutes ‘average’.

It is not surprising, good citizen, that there are far more ‘destitute’ people out there than the media would have you believe. The MSM writes for the top twenty percent of the income distribution, the rest, er, is there a way to put this delicately…don’t matter.

Who gives a flying fuck about poor people living in slums out in the god-forsaken wastelands that surround this nation’s cities?

Maybe you? If you don’t, you should! You see, chances are good that YOU live in one of those god-forsaken wastelands, you just don’t think things are ‘that bad’.

Ironically, this is due to a phenomenon known as ‘what you’ve become accustomed to’.

Pick up the local rag and what do you see?

The same old, same old, right? The usual crimes taking place in the same ‘bad’ neighborhoods that they always happen in. You don’t live there…what you’re missing is you don’t live very far from there, do you?

Read about the location of the latest crime in the paper and give the perp a car, how long would it take them to get to your house?

Surprise, not that they’d have a reason to land on your doorstep, today anyway.

But I digress, we were talking about ‘advice’, which is only tangentially related.

I don’t like giving advice, for the same reasons you should keep your trap shut whenever someone asks ‘What do you think’ (the correct response is ‘Why do you care?’)

Blogging isn’t about ‘giving advice’; it is about expressing one’s opinion.

It is my ‘opinion’ that you should have a small stockpile of non-perishable food to tide you over when foraging doesn’t prove as productive as you had hoped.

It is also my opinion that you should arm yourself. You don’t need to buy a machine gun, if you are skilled enough with the weapon of necessity, you can get all of the machineguns you want. If you’re impatient and a shitty shot chances are good you won’t survive long anyway.

Same thing with the ‘modest’ stockpile of food, over reliance on pre-packaged foods (failure to educate yourself on what is wild/edible) is planning to fail, you’re doomed from the start.

That, my friends, is all of the ‘advice’ I have…use it wisely, or don’t, your choice.

I find it, er, disturbing how captive we all are to our ‘preceptions’…and how easily those perceptions are ‘manipulated’.

The sooner you accept that you possess a head full of nonsense, the better off you’ll be!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

(I swear I didn’t leave any nonsense behind!)

Gegner

Karmic Retribution

Greetings good citizen,

All ‘crises’ start somewhere and the current crisis has its roots in (deeply misguided) globalization. In case anyone was wondering, it’s not a coincidence that the crisis is ‘global’.

The idea was ‘sold’ to the governments of the world as a vehicle that would increase prosperity by eliminating ‘redundancy’…when what really happened was competition was eliminated, so the ‘last man standing’ most certainly prospered.

As has been learned across the centuries, there is EXTREME danger in ‘sole sourcing’ pretty much anything. Yet the greedy fucks behind globalization have so aggressively eliminated ‘redundancy’ around the world that unemployment has become a universal crisis.

Now, as Stoneleigh points out, we are left with supply chains so fragile that much of the planet will grind to a halt almost instantly if only a few of those lines snap…because there is no back up!

Globalization

[The following is but a snippet from a longer piece that can be found at the link…]

[Stoneleigh:] Where countries had been inclined towards more expensive self-sufficiency,[‘redundancy’ is only ‘expensive’ if you allow others to manipulate the value of your currency…otherwise the ‘cost’ is identical!] market forces have often made this approach untenable, as large cost differences can make countries or industries uncompetitive. Local production has been progressively out-sourced as a result. [And wherever this has occurred it is due to currency manipulation and nothing else! The ‘cheaper there’, wherever it is found, is a pure ‘legal construct’, and act of fiction!]

By 'better off', economists mean that goods will be cheaper for all, thanks to global wage arbitrage and economies of scale. Globalization has indeed delivered falling prices for many consumer goods, particularly electronics. In an era of massive credit expansion (effectively inflation), such as we have lived through for decades, one would normally have expected prices to rise, as a lagging indicator of money supply expansion, but prices do not always follow money supply changes where other major complicating factors exist. [Especially when/where currency manipulation is involved!]

In recent years, the major complicating factors have been the ability to produce goods in places where wages are exceptionally low, the ability to transport those goods to consumer markets extremely cheaply and ready access to letters of credit. [Since all currencies are legal fictions, the bottom line price of anything you can imagine is …wait for it…zero. So, what is the ‘race to the bottom really about? It’s about ‘I’ve got mine, fuck you!’(Read: shut up and get back to work.)]

For nominal prices (unadjusted for changes in the money supply) to fall during an inflationary period, real (inflation adjusted) prices must be going through the floor. This has been the effect of trade as we have known it, and it is all many of us have known. What we are not generally aware of is the vulnerability of the global trade system, due to the fragility of the critical factors underpinning it. [This is a piss poor job of explaining how globalization increases ‘supply’ while radically cutting ‘demand’, forcing prices down. As formerly productive members of society are literally ‘eliminated’ from the labor pool, supply overwhelms demand. Sadly, this is a prime example of ‘Stupid is as Stupid does.’ Worse, these idiots are in charge, making the whole situation that much more desperate. What do you suppose the odds are that these imbeciles will admit their, er, ‘mistake’ before civilization unravels totally? You got that right, ain’t happening!]

By producing goods, particularly essential goods, in distant locations, we [they, ‘we’ have no choice in this]] create long and potentially precarious supply lines. While relative stability reigns, this vulnerability does not cause trouble and we enjoy cheap and plentiful goods. However, if [when, it’s only a matter of time] these supply lines are disrupted, critical shortages could result. [replace ‘could’ with ‘will’, there’s nothing ‘ambiguous’ about these outcomes.] In a very complex just-in-time system, this may not take very long at all. Such a system is very brittle, as it has almost no redundancy, and therefore almost no resilience. When Jim Kunstler refers to efficiency as "the straightest path to hell", it is this brittleness he is referring to. [How sad is it that it is this same ‘brittleness’ that makes globalization so profitable for the few who are fucked up enough to risk it?]

The most ephemeral critical factor for trade is the availability of letters of credit. These became scarce during the first phase of the credit crunch in 2008, and the result was goods stuck in port even though there was robust demand for them elsewhere. Goods simply do not move without letters of credit, and these can dry up extremely quickly as a systemic loss of confidence results in a systemic loss of liquidity. In a very real way, confidence IS liquidity.

I sincerely hope nobody misses the ‘significance’ of the ‘fragility’ wrought by excessive greed. Not for nothing the engineers of our current disaster planned this as an ‘end game’. Hard to tell if the misguided morons think a pissed off Christ really is about to pick up where he left off or if they believe creating an ‘epic failure’ of ‘biblical proportions’ will cover their tracks?

Like many ‘historical events’ this has the fingerprints of man’s willful mismanagement all over it…so naturally it will be blamed on God. (For, once again, failing to prevent it.)

Just as the idea/eventuality of immortality would (likely catastrophically) ‘Warp your mind’, the ‘imaginary’ effect of wealth is also capable of twisting one’s ‘moral compass’ into unimaginable directions…

Money is a ‘wonderful’, albeit, extremely dangerous human invention. If mismanaged, it can cause ‘irreparable harm’. We are about to witness just how much ‘karmic retribution’ the mismanagement of the resources of the planet can cause.

This is going to be much more than just ‘bad vibes’, it’s going to be biblical, because only man can fuck up this royally!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Unfocused...

Greetings good citizen,

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I am seeing some of my more dire predictions come true; they are simply not as ‘spectacular’ as most of you may have imagined them.

I have been warning for years now that a time would come when a vast number of people would find themselves with paychecks that didn’t cover their living expenses.

Is there an outcry from these desperate individuals? There sure is…but if you aren’t within earshot of these pleas you won’t hear them.

Worse good citizen, this variety of ‘desperation’ has struck close to home, one of my siblings is a ‘victim’ of these terrible times. As a $5 an hour part-time driver, I’m not in a position to do much about it.

I use this personal example as a mirror to larger society; none of my other siblings are in a position to ‘help’ either. This has left my sibling living out of a car in a friend’s driveway (even this charitable ‘non-relative’ can’t afford them house space!)

I share this only to demonstrate how ‘common’ this woeful set of circumstances is. I’m sure many of you could share tales that make this one look like the lap of luxury.

There were two recent news items that gave me pause over the weekend although one of them is from today’s NY Times…the other is from Saturday’s edition of the same paper.

Saturday’s story was about how the rich were, er, ‘letting down’ the budding (but otherwise invisible) ‘economic recovery’ by reining in their spending at high end retailers. Is this another stunning example of MSM cluelessness or is it ‘reality’ as the owner class sees it?

Because today’s, er, ‘belabor the obvious’ news story centered on the ‘fruitlessness’ of jobs programs.

Should you read the article, accept the truth on the ground from someone who knows, there are NO JOBS in Boston that are going unfilled due to a lack of ‘qualified applicants’, that is total bullshit! (Because the article claims otherwise.)

Flip that rock over, every company trains you to do what you do ‘their way’, bar none. In that respect there is no such thing as a ‘qualified applicant’ anywhere!

So we arrive full circle at the ‘more education will solve all of our problems’ canard! Six months of ‘skill enhancement’ training is, as you would expect, worthless if the applicant is 50.

Our profit driven social model ignores the needs of society while favoring the, er, bottom line of the owners.

In fact, it is this ‘mercenary tendency of owners’ that has placed us in today’s untenable economic environment.

Thing won’t ‘get better’ until the interests of society are made superior to individual greed. If anything, this, above all else, scares the hell out of modern day capitalists. The market niches that provide them with their income streams will be forcefully taken away from them, and they will have to work for paychecks, just like their (former) employees do…

BUT, this ain’t gonna happen all by itself.

Just saying, you know?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The danger of being clueless...

Greetings good citizen,

After a couple of days of being ‘irresistible bargains’ stocks have again returned to their ‘toxic’ status. Markets around the globe are tanking as we speak…not that this is anything to be alarmed about, it happens all the damn time!

With a vast majority of ‘trading’ being done electronically these days, what you see/can observe seldom has any relationship with reality.

That, good citizen, is truly disturbing.

There are two important facts to keep in mind good citizen, one is that none of this is happening for any particularly good reason, it really is ‘mismanagement’ and secondly, the only, I repeat ONLY way to correct this clusterfuck is a total re-write of the social contract!

What you SHOULD understand by now is that the current ‘crisis’ is no ‘accident’ nor is it a tiny hiccup in the otherwise ‘smooth operation’ of a well-designed system of commerce. (As operating systems go, the ‘fuck you, pay me’ model leaves much to be desired.)

The greed-heads have been forcing this corrupt system on the rest of us for over 400 years at the point of a friggin’ gun and it STILL doesn’t get the damn job done!

More then HALF of the worlds working aged population is unemployed, worse, the most ‘successful’ (depending on how you measure success) economy on the planet is (nominally) communist! WTF is wrong with this picture you Republican pukes?

Understand good citizen that our nation’s economy was ‘hollowed out’ and surrendered to the Chinese communists while Republican’s controlled what passes for our government!

Not that the Democrats have proven themselves to be even an iota more responsible, they too pretend they can’t see what’s happening or don’t know what to do about it.

Naturally, the question isn’t whether or not this is sad, it’s far beyond that. What we are seeing, perhaps clearly for the first time, is how all of the principles we’ve been taught are false and that justice has become a ‘salable commodity’ available to the highest bidder!

I don’t know about you good citizen but I didn’t sign up for any of this…and I’m not so sure how much longer I’m going to sit still for it either.

What say you?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Hey buddy, you got a 'match'?

Greetings good citizen,

Sometimes stuff percolates for a couple of days before it’s ready to come out. Such is the case with tonight’s offering, born from a radio show where the ‘shill’ repeated a tired old claim that is no more valid now than it was when it was first uttered, possibly millennia ago.

What was Dopey saying? He was expressing the old ‘politicians’ lament’, that there were ‘millions’ of jobs out there people didn’t possess the requisite ‘skills’ to fill.

If this were even partly true we’d be ‘well and truly’ if we ever had to go to war with our suppliers! During both ‘World Wars’, people who had never seen a machine tool before were quickly trained to produce precision, quality tools and consumables.

What’s the difference between then and now? Then there was a job that needed doing and if it didn’t get done, the free world would cease to exist (assuming it did in the first place.)

Now, jobs have been shifted overseas to take advantage of (artificially) cheaper labor and benefits structures and the main defense of this practice is to claim there are ‘too few’ qualified candidates to fill the job (domestically.)

Truth be told good citizen, in light of current labor laws, the number of candidates the greed-heads are willing to hire domestically is zero.

This insane posture is defended as protecting the shareowner’s interests, never mind that they are turning the shareowner’s nation into an impoverished Banana Republic…these are apparently ‘acceptable losses’, the shareowner can move, the rest of us aren’t so lucky.

Someday, because these assholes all think they’re better than the rest of us, they are going to make their own ‘exclusive’ nation, which should simultaneously become the first ‘above ground’ test site for thermonuclear weapons in forty years.

Worse, this claim that there are ‘millions of jobs’ (unfilled due to the lack of ‘qualified candidates) out there is totally false! There isn’t a single career field in the entire world that isn’t ‘super-saturated’, I dare say we even have far too many soldiers.

While we could use more, er, competent medical professionals even those jobs are being blocked by the greed-heads, How do you justify charging all outdoors for a simple medical procedure if there are battalions of qualified surgeons capable of performing the procedure?

(Not that this sort of thing doesn’t happen all of the time but hey, nothing’s perfect!)

As can be observed across the career spectrum, even jobs where the bar for entry has been raised ridiculously high, there are no/few vacancies. We can only wonder what Jerky is smoking…

All arguments suffer from the failure to be specific and Dopey didn’t provide a single ‘fer instance’ to back up his obviously frivolous claim. What do you suppose this does for his claim that there are ‘millions’ of jobs out there but nobody is ‘qualified’ to fill them?

His argument might be more valid if he claimed there were ‘dozens’ of jobs (which is still an exaggeration) but now what is his point? Once upon a time there was nobody ‘qualified’ to do anything, you just did it because it needed doing!

This ‘qualification’ BS is exactly that, an ‘artificial barrier’.

If it needs to be done bad enough, a qualified individual will be found from within the pool of ‘available candidates’…happens all the time.

Funny how ‘need’ trumps pre-requisites!

Sadly, sometimes your only ‘qualification’ is more balls than brains!

A ‘sane person’ wouldn’t do this…but you would!

But I digress…but only a little.

Just because you have raised artificial bars to entry does not mean there aren’t any qualified candidates.

We may also observe that the principle ‘disqualification’ or lacking qualifier is the sum the candidate expects to be paid for their efforts.

As we can see from the second massive wave of foreclosures in less than two decades, if your paycheck doesn’t crack your nut, it is NOT your employer’s problem, it’s YOURS!

This leads us to another ‘baffling’ claim coming out of the so-called ‘middle class’…that you now ‘need’ a quarter of million dollars to retire.

This is in light of the fact that vast majority of us have NOT earned anywhere near a quarter of a million dollars in our entire lifetimes, so how the…heck is that supposed to work?

Are we, once again, excluding the people that ‘don’t count’? Just because they don’t give a shit about you doesn’t mean you’re not here…mad as hell and ready to go medieval on their asses!

I guess it’s time to take a deep breath and count to ten, it doesn’t do anyone any good to get all worked up over what is obviously nonsense, I just wish they had the sense not to go public with obvious bullshit!

But if everything were ‘thoroughly vetted’ there would be little to complain about…and I could live with that.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The Royal Bull's Eye

Greetings good citizen,

The markets had a ‘stellar’ day yesterday (for no particularly good reason, as usual) while the ‘real’ economy continued to tank.

Are the markets really ‘rising’ or are we observing the considerably more disturbing phenomenon of watching the ‘coin of the realm’ being diluted into nothingness?

Think about it good citizen, the markets shed some nine thousand points then, without anything actually ‘changing’, they tacked four thousand points back on. How much trouble do you think we’re in if those four thousand points are what I suggest they are (a subjective value adjustment?)

What does this say for you, who are paid in these diluted instruments? Worse, you are expected to work just as hard for money that buys you considerably less…can you say ‘fucked’?

Increasingly, more and more of us are finding we can’t survive on what we are paid, the paycheck doesn’t cut it…what do you think your boss is doing about that?

That’s right, he’s sending your job to the cheaper there, it’s a ‘win-win’ for him!

Left unexplored is how the chiseling fucks who are responsible for these, er, ‘irregularities’ manage to stay alive? Judges have bodyguards these days, you don’t suppose ‘currency manipulators’ have them too, do you?

Um, this crap doesn’t happen by itself, somebody is giving the orders, ‘calling the shots’ if you will and this is the same person who is threatening to crash the world’s economies if we don’t go along with it (or so our idiot politicians believe.)

Well good citizen, what do you do when you discover something is broken? You either fix it or you replace it…although you could ignore it but that makes other problems significantly worse.

We’ve ignored our broken political system for a long time, we will soon no longer enjoy that luxury.

Funny how certain ‘institutions’ depend upon the continued function of other institutions, the political system of a nation with an ‘unviable’ economy is worthless.

For all of the claptrap about economic recovery, what do your ‘lying eyes’ tell you?

There ain’t no recovery, not where it matters…all you have is roadblocks as far as the eye can see.

Naturally, we arrive at the fateful question, is it the system that is broken or is it just the players who have gotten too big for their britches?

Since most of you have been ‘indoctrinated’ to believe that ‘I got mine, fuck you’ capitalism is as good as it gets, you might be inclined to ‘replace’ the incumbents with ‘fresh blood’, wipe out past ‘mistakes’ and start over with a (more or less) clean slate.

Odd that something like this brings us full circle to the old if you took all of the money in the world and divided it equally among all of the world’s people, the ones who had it taken away from them would end up with it back again.

Bizarrely, the explanation for this ‘logical outcome’ is these people ‘have a knack for making money’ (which is an absolute lie!) because the truth is these people ‘get theirs’ through their (legal) control of the markets…no ‘knack’ (or mystery) involved.

While many people suspect ‘money’ is the problem it is not…although it is very close because money is ‘a legal construct’.

Our social problems, ALL OF THEM, lie with the LAW!

The first problem we encountered was the collection of ‘backwoods lawyers’ that gathered (in secret) to write the, er, ‘laws’ of this country (which tended to benefit attendees/invitees considerably more than those who remained unaware of what was going on…)

AND THEN the appointed, not elected Senate of each state ‘ratified’ this treacherous document that conservatives revere, a masterwork so nasty and bulletproof that despots around the world stepped off of their thrones in support of it!

Finally, the ‘Bulls Eye’ removed from the backs of Royalty!

Well, if you consider the origins, the document modern politicians are ‘sworn to uphold’ isn’t as wonderful as some imagine it to be. I has done absolutely zero to protect you from the predations of the powerful as we can see today (and through our extremely bloody national history.)

Understand good citizen, history, as it has been taught to you, is neither the ‘whole story’ nor a true recounting of events past.

The ‘Shot Heard ‘Round The World’ isn’t what it’s been made out to be, the ‘surprise overthrow’ of the world’s mightiest Empire isn’t how it actually went down.

The real ‘achievement’ of the American Revolution was the solution to the ‘Royal Bull’s Eye’ problem. The Royals still call the shots even though most of them abdicated their thrones centuries ago.

Naturally, the ‘test case’ for ‘government in a box’ had to by necessity swear off any connection to Royalty.

Is that how you want your children raised, to bow and scrape to Royals who were never defeated; understand these are people who consider you to be no better than a slave, a servant to be disposed of at a whim.

If you work for a paycheck, you’re a peasant…no matter how big that check is.

I think it’s time for paychecks all around!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

This guy 'gets it'...

Greetings good citizen,

At the end of the day good citizen it is important to remain focused on the LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) which the incomparable Joe Bageant points out is…calories.

Like a business, any life unit that fails to collect enough calories soon ceases to exist. Why would this be important to focus on, here in the ‘golden west’?

Because here capitalists tell you that calories are of no consequence, you need to keep your eye on the gold! (Which is actually worthless, especially when you need something to eat.) Yes good citizen the day when the moronic greed-heads get to check out their ‘theory’ that gold = money is rapidly coming upon us and it will be proven once again that lead serves this purpose much more effectively!

With a major source of food being wiped out by an alleged ‘accident’ and many other sources being removed from service to build industrial complexes on (farms to factories) calories are going to become mighty expensive/scarce.

Left to our collective imagination is why the ‘more for me’ management system continues to be tolerated? Why are our collective resources squandered so ‘a few can be rich’?

Worse, more than a few of those ‘lucky souls’ only achieve ‘relative wealth’, they have a little more than their dirt poor peers, who they have sold out in order to obtain their minor advantage.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading Mr. Bageant’s latest screed you can find it here.

He makes many points that are worth noting such as:

Along with the EU, Japan and the rest of the industrial world, the US continues to flood the market with cheap credit. That would be hunky dory, if [there] was actually wealth for anybody but a banker. The real problems are debt and fraud, and tripling the debt in order to cover up the fraud. And pretending there no natural costs of our actions, that we do not have to rob the natural world to crank up the money world through debt.

As I have stated before, money is an extremely ‘abused’ tool that was originally intended to restrict access; criminals quickly found the flaw in that plan. Physical money ‘accumulates’. All you need to do is grab money from the points where it accumulates and you have all of the access you want! Defeating the ‘purpose’ of having a ‘medium of exchange’.

Worse, those ‘entrusted’ with creating and distributing ‘money’ have, er, ‘helped themselves’ further diluting/defeating the ‘intended purpose’ of a medium of exchange.

Sumthin' fer nuthin'

The main feature of capitalism is the seductive assertion that you can get something for nothing in this world. That you can manufacture wealth through money manipulation, and that it is OK to steal and hold captive the people's medium of exchange, then charge them out the ass for access. That you can do so with a clear conscience. Which you can, you are the kind of sleazy prick who has inherited or stole enough wealth to get into the game.

The problem with the answer is that economy is now toxed out. Radioactive. Crawling with paper vermin and all manner of vermin, especially toxic derivatives -- about $1.4 quadrillion worth (even as we are still trying to get used to hearing the term trillions), according to the Bank of National Settlements. That is 1,000 trillion, or $190,000 for every human being on the planet. There is not now, and never will be, enough wealth to cover that puppy -- because there is not enough natural world under the puppy to create it. Not the way capitalism creates wealth. [This speaks directly to the ‘scale’ of the theft that is taking place. Ironically, the most common ‘defense’ of this practice in ‘everybody’s doing it’ (but you need to have access, which ‘everybody’ don’t have!) Left unanswered here is how do you put a stop to this before it stops by itself? And it will, eventually, stop by itself. It is already becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the fiction of value/worth with so much theft going on.]

As the economy slowly implodes, money will become more volatile stuff than it already is. The value and availability of money is sure to fluctuate wildly. Most people don't have the luxury of escaping the money economy, so they will be held hostage and milked hard again by the same people who just drained them in the bailouts. As usual, the government will be right there to see that everybody plays by the rules. Those who have always benefited by capitalism's rules will benefit more. That cadre of "money professionals" which holds captive the nation's money supply, and runs things according to the rules of money, can never lose money. It writes the rules. And rewrites them when it suits the money elite's interests. Capitalism, the Christian god, democracy, the Constitution.

These are snippets from the whole article, which is very much worth the read (if only to put these snippets ‘in context’!)

Mr. Bageant does something else that few others do, he acknowledges that we are in a ‘no win’ situation that most of us CAN’T escape from.

It is not uncommon to read articles that pointedly ‘blame the victim’ when most of us are powerless to effect change (and it really frosts my ass when I encounter them.)

Sorry about not posting yesterday, the ‘honey-do list’ continues to expand beyond the time allotted to complete it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Send in the clowns

Greetings good citizen,

Here in the home of the ‘world’s worst weather’ the heat wave continues unabated; this isn’t a good sign because around here record heat is usually followed up by record cold.

Today’s ‘top story’ in the NY Times is the tale of a ‘recovery’ of hiring on Wall Street. (Allegedly in ‘anticipation’ of economic recovery, where we can only wonder if their anticipating the same recovery they’ve been claiming was right around the corner for years or if this is supposed to be some ‘new’ development?)

Let’s do a little calculus here and see what a ‘pick up’ of hiring on Wall Street tells us. First, you have to have the ‘credentials’ to get offered a Wall Street job straight out of college. Like the ‘world class’ legal industry, this means your degree has to come from an Ivy League school (not that this has ‘improved’ the legal industry a single iota.)

We can go a step further and point out that we have suffered mightily because of the ‘in-breeding’ the ‘pay to play’ environment the college system supports.

I mean what do you need to work on Wall Street? First and foremost you need an ‘in’, someone who will vouch for you that you will not betray the secrets we call the ‘magic of Wall Street’.

So here (like most places) your reputation will precede you. It is not a reputation for brilliance one requires but a reputation for, er, ‘discretion’ that a striving Wall Streeter needs to cultivate.

Like a lot of things, there are some aspects of the job that can only be learned ‘hands on’, so you have to display an ‘aptitude’ for judging who you can screw with and who you can’t.

At the end of the day good citizen, the ‘Wall Streeter’ does nothing ‘productive’ for society, they merely pimp their side of a ‘trade’ (and they do this at the behest of their employer, although there is a degree of ‘self-interest’ involved as well.)

So, hiring on Wall Street is picking up…this tells us that ‘financial reform (which doesn’t take effect until 2022) is worthless.

Left to your imagination is whether or not there will even BE a Wall Street (besides the physical location) come 2022. It is not an idle question to ask if there will still be a USA in 2022 either.

Makes you wonder what they’re going to call the new place when ‘regime change’ becomes official?

Were I to ‘mentally prepare you’ for anything it would be the fact that the same sleazy characters who ran our nation off a cliff are the same ones who will be at the helm of a takeover, bizarrely, to save us from themselves!

This is more ‘change you can’t believe in’. This is the ‘Obama disappointment’ to the nth degree!

The only thing that will ‘change’ come the takeover is the job titles and a huge ‘hit’ in civil liberty.

Worse, it will be led by none other than Glen Beck and Sarah Palin; cheered on from the side lines by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity! (Although I think the ‘theocracy’ part is going to blow up in their faces…a case of classic ‘over-reach’.)

Sound clownishly insane? It is, which should give you an idea of what ‘kind’ of government you are being offered, a ‘corrected’ version of the one we already have, where it doesn’t matter who you vote for because they all take their orders from the same people. A government not even intended to ‘protect you’ (except from those who complain too loudly) You already know governments can’t govern! (The GOP has proven it repeatedly) You will get the government you ‘deserve’ a totally powerless body that will be used to enforce laws you have no say in, made by people they don’t apply to.

Welcome to hell, good citizen.

Fight, don’t fight, it doesn’t matter…you WILL die.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Fraud and participation...

Greetings good citizen,

As the situation continues to deteriorate at an accelerating pace, the MSM continues to ignore the inevitable outcomes.

As Ilargi commented yesterday, most know that ‘change’ is coming…will this same ‘most’ accept whatever they are offered or do you think people will want a voice in the coming changes?

Bad news good citizen, you ain’t gonna get one. So far the wrangling for position has been confined to the periphery, things that are easily dismissed or explained away as not being what they appear to be…like the Halliburton detention centers. You’re a ‘paranoid lunatic’ if you think the US government would build prisons specifically for US citizens who haven’t ‘directly’ violated any laws…per se.

But, push is rapidly coming to shove and the game of ‘cat and mouse’ will soon be out in the open, they’ll have to make their move (although they are probably amazed they have gotten away with as much as they already have…)

Some (perhaps too few) view the last election as evidence that the ‘ballot box’ is broken beyond all repair. 230 years of consistent failure to protect the people of this nation from the predations of the powerful would be another ‘no brainer’ indication that the game is rigged and the ballot box is useless.

This spells trouble for the upcoming ‘mid-terms’ with a capital ‘T’. The GOP is suddenly remaking itself into the party of the revolution…hoping that nobody will remember that the crisis we are facing today has its roots in the Reagan Revolution (Which brought us globalization and the ‘desertification’ of the US/Western economies…)

I say some because it is difficult to guage just how deep the ‘dissatisfaction’ with our system of government actually is. The ‘Happy’ camp is miniscule, it is made up of incumbent politicians and their owners, nobody else sees this ending particularly well.

As you know, there is a ‘worse’ waiting here, this is me you’re dealing with and there’s always a ‘worse’.

Worse is the lack of consensus on what needs to be done to fix the current…well, depending on what side of the fence your lean on, even the situation runs the spectrum of possibilities/descriptions.

Depending on your mindset, the current situation ranges from 'economic downturn' to TEOTWAKI or anywhere in between. I personally find it astounding that some are still saying this mess can be 'fixed'. We most certainly will emerge from this crisis, the only question is what the 'body count' will be?

If you’re a ‘free-market Libertarian’ this is merely a hiccup in the road towards capitalist utopia, that magical land where all capitalists meet as equals in the marketplace while the ‘surplus population’ offs itself rather than starve to death.

Of course, there are very few people who are actually THAT deluded (although Rush Limbaugh and company would have you think otherwise.)

There is a larger segment (surprisingly large) that believes any possible ‘solution’ has to be beneficial to the rich and powerful first and foremost and whatever trickles down to the rest of us we need to make the best of.

The single most common objection I get to A Simple Plan is ‘the rich will never go for it’.

Which often makes me think I am talking to the walls…’who’ is ‘rich’? We’re talking less than 1 percent of the nation’s population…most of them are ‘trust fund babies’ they got theirs the ‘old fashioned way’, the inherited it!

This bizarrely causes some confusion because those people whose elevator doesn’t travel all the way to the top can’t see a problem with those who inherit ‘large sums of cash’.

It’s not the cash; it’s the resources! None of them are interested in Grampy’s bank account, let Junior have it as long as I get the old buck’s controlling interest in Proctor and Gambel!

A central premise of ‘A Simple Plan’ is the resources of this planet belong to ALL of us, this ‘finders keepers’ bullshit is what wars are made of! The resources of the planet MUST BE managed for all of the inhabitants and not just those who falsely claim them as theirs!

If there were any ‘justice’ in this wacky world of ours, claiming to ‘own’ what belongs to us all would earn the claimant an instant divorce from society along with the denial of their frivolous claim!

Perhaps we should end today’s piece with that thought…what does the enforcement of ‘property rights’ say about the mental fitness to judge?

Any so-called judge who backs up the claim of an individual vs. the needs of society is seriously mentally deficient! None of these fuckers can produce a valid ‘bill of sale’, not one!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

It's over

Greetings good citizen,

If there is one thing that should frighten the crap out of you it is the harsh reality that no recovery is possible. You (and by extension, your children) will NOT prosper, not now…not ever.

Um, some (conservative pukes are a fine example) contend that if you manage to survive their, er, ‘austerity measures’, you will have ‘prospered’ (Sadly this is because you aren’t supposed to survive so if you do, they have ‘mis-calculated’.)

Life as it was explained to you in your youth is (unofficially) ‘out the window’. You can forget any ‘scripture’ you were taught for the fraud that it is (and was at the time.)

You have been raised to believe that the world outside your door was a harsh but ‘fair’ place, where advantages were ‘won’ and not ‘snatched’ (bought) by the unscrupulous through nefarious means.

Odd what happens when ‘justice’, like ‘quality’, is ‘assumed’. You ‘assume’ justice is being done even though nobody is held responsible or liable for their claims/actions.

Understand, good citizen, that we are living with the ‘consequences’ of allowing others to make decisions in our name without ever consulting us. The ‘representative model’ as deeply flawed as it was, has now proven itself broken beyond repair and MUST be scrapped!

If civilization is to survive, if humanity is to survive, we must act to end the reckless, selfish actions of the self-serving.

Understand, if we don’t act there won’t be anything left to save.

The greatest ‘flaw’ in conservative ideology is its insistence that individuals are ‘rugged’ and dependant on no one. (For all of their claims of being ‘self-made’, you won’t find one of them who is willing to ‘chuck it all’ and build a second fortune from scratch!)

I have included the following ‘intro’ from yesterday’s Automatic Earth (in case you haven’t seen it.)

Ilargi: Is it merely an ironic twist of fate, or is it more, to see the New York Times feature Robert Prechter prominently over the weekend? Prechter, after all, is the man whose economic theories are based to a very large extent on public mood and herding behavior. Does the paper's sudden attention for him then indicate a major mood swing by itself?

When you see that the new UK government plans to cut its spending by up to 40%, you’d be inclined to think so. The fact that some 750.000 Americans simple dropped out of the work force in June, a near record, -while 100.000 entered- can also serve as a sign of a changing public perception of the economy and their lives in general. As can the 30% plunge in pending home sales that was announced recently.

While US states and counties need to cut $180 billion, or even more, over the next year. Illinois comptroller Daniel W. Hynes says his state owes $5 billion to schools, rehabilitation centers, child care, the state university — and it’s getting worse every single day. [..] "This is not some esoteric budget issue; we are not paying bills for absolutely essential services. [..] That is obscene." And there is nothing that points to improvement. So Illinois will have to go where Britain is going: massive cuts to essential services, which always and inevitably will hit the weakest citizens first.

There are now 9.2 million unemployed Americans who don’t get a penny in financial help, says Jeff Weniger at Harris Private Bank. If they all have one dependent, that’s nearly 20 million people in the US with no means of even bare survival other than charity. Moreover, those massive cuts will mean massive additional lay-offs, which through positive feedback mechanisms will lead to more lay-offs and more budget cuts. This will happen in Illinois, in California, in Greece, Spain, Italy, and eventually all over the world. [Make no mistake about it good citizen, this die is cast, this WILL happen!]

I was going to address the upcoming bank stress tests results in Europe, but reading about them made me realize that it would be a waste of time. The European stress tests are just as much of a joke as the American ones were. The fact is that there is no president or prime minister in the present western world who would volunteer to actually look at what's in bank vaults, simply out of fear for what they might find.

Grandiose posturing and equally grandiose bail out schemes, whether secret or public, are far easier and much less risky for political careers. If you let your banks fail, odds are your time in power is over too. And so they continue to talk about recoveries and returns to economic growth, even as the numbers by now make blatantly clear that there is no such thing on the horizon, and as the politicians force those who voted for them into ever deeper and darker holes.

Market analyst Ralph J. Acampora says about Robert Prechter:

"I don’t want to agree with him, because if he’s right, we’ve basically got to go to the mountains with a gun and some soup cans, because it’s all over."

Sounds like it can't be true because I don’t want it to be...

Prechter himself implies that it is already over. We just don’t see it yet, but what's coming cannot be avoided. It's all been temporarily papered over, but that can't last. Not if you leave tens of millions in the US alone in a ditch without any kind of assistance. [Which is to point out the ‘Claret’ is already flowing freely nationwide, ask any cop!]

Prechter has never shied away from addressing the issue of social unrest that must rear its head as a society winds down. Me, I increasingly have the impression that there are new ruling forces out there in for instance the US and UK who would like nothing better than a series of seriously violent riots, with lots of blood and lives lost, so they can install a clamp down regime and a police state in which civil liberties are eroded at 100 times the speed at which they were obtained, often also with loss of blood and lives. [Those who trade their Liberty for Safety will enjoy neither!]

And the -seemingly- strange thing is, as Stoneleigh here at The Automatic Earth has pointed out before, that many people will be so afraid of what comes that they will actually welcome such regimes. Like sheep herded by dogs. It will feel like we're traveling back in time, both financially and as societies, to 1932 Germany. There is one thing that even Americans who don’t have a penny left to scratch their asses will still have lots of: guns. That and a ruling class that knows this very well. [Hard to tell what Ilargi is pointing at here. I’d speculate he’s saying the tyrants will be particularly vicious in an attempt to dissuade the peaceful from resorting to defending themselves. Only ‘sheep’ will willingly submit to the privations these monsters will subject them to.]

The typical answer has always been: expand, go conquer nations, find Lebensraum, and rally the people around the troops. In both the US and in China there's a palpable danger that the respective regimes may choose to go that way. The UK may side with America, but continental Europe lacks the political cohesion to join in. Pakistan, India and Russia may either feel forced to take sides or see opportunities for themselves. We’re well on our way towards a far more volatile world, both domestically and internationally. As Prechter would confirm.

Ah, the old ‘nation at war’ as cover to preserve ‘national unity’. Just how far will the criminals go to hang on to political power? Will these ‘I don’t give a fuck’ types destroy large swaths of the planet to demonstrate their ‘superiority’?

For this reason alone many believe mankind does not deserve to survive; must be the ‘liberal’ in me that falls back on the old ‘one bad apple’ defense…even if I had to qualify that with the recognition that we can’t move forward as a species if we don’t address the task of ‘weeding out’ the bad apples among us.

A Simple Plan provides the vehicle to tackle the road ahead, all other (mainstream) options only lead backwards into despotism and destruction.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Don't expect recovery (before collapse)

Greetings good citizen,

Under the category of ‘that didn’t last long’ here we are, two days into the resumption of regular posts and I’m already working from somebody else’s copy…but this is an ‘example’ darn it! Don’t expect it to become a regular thing…even if I have been doing it for almost five years now.

Um, every once in a while you encounter an article that can be used as a ‘foil’ for the mainstream perception they keep trying to sell you.

The headline often says it all, in tonight’s example the headline reads “Don’t expect a full labor market recovery’, like anyone actually expects this!

In a moment of unusual candor, the Vice President belabored the obvious by coming right out with what everybody already knows…those 8 million jobs we lost during the ‘transition’ between the Obama and the Bush administrations are ‘gone for good’, they ain’t ever coming back.

So what’s wrong with fucktard? Where did s/he (sorry, Casey can swing both ways) get the idea that anyone expected thirty years of the ‘race to the bottom’ to suddenly reverse itself?

What we are experiencing now is the ‘end result’ of this socially irresponsible, er, ‘consolidation of market share’. It don’t do jack for the consumer but it sure made a hell of a lot of billionaires, and in ‘jig time’ too! (Even if most of them have already sunk back into multi-millionaire territory, as was inevitable…)

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if ‘blogger’s suck at economics’ (because it’s a proven fact that economists suck at it worse!)

Don’t Expect a Full Labor Market Recovery
By CASEY B. MULLIGAN
Today's Economist

Casey B. Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago.

Labor market statistics for June 2010 were widely received with disappointment. But it is no surprise that some workers whose jobs ended in this recession will never work again. [Okay, second sentence and we’re in trouble already. Casey is ‘correct’ that ‘some’ workers, due to their age/type of work they performed, won’t work ‘ever again’. What s/he isn’t saying is if you’re over 50 in this ‘man-cession’ you’re toast. If you’re unemployed, you’re also unemployable.]

It has always been clear that there would eventually be some kind of recovery from the 2008-9 recession. After all, falling housing prices and underwater mortgages were not going to last forever. Our population continues to grow, and eventually that population will demand more space in which to live. And worker productivity [in China] remains strong. [It would be EXTREMELY tedious if I were to refute every, er, ‘mis-conception’ Casey puts forth so I’ll try to stick to the ‘whoppers’ like ‘some kind of recovery’: this is an outright lie. ‘Shrinking’ the economy to fit the level of economic output is NOT a recovery, it is ‘creative accounting’. It is the same kind of ‘fiction’ that allow our already bankrupt banking sector to pretend it is solvent. This runs dangerously close to the fiction that allows us all to pretend our money is actually worth something…]

Consumers apparently agreed with this assessment, because they reduced their spending from previous trends much less than employers cut jobs. [Read that a couple of times and see if it confuses you. Is Bobo saying consumers reduced spending less or is s/he saying consumers are spending more than they did during previous economic downturns? Since there is no ‘magic’ and you don’t get to have it both ways (although those who ‘lie with statistics’ are constantly ‘re-labeling’ negative outcomes as positive events) the truth remains there to be seen IF you know what you are looking at.]

The chart below shows seasonally adjusted indexes of consumer spending (adjusted for inflation and productivity growth before the recession) and hours worked (adjusted for population growth). For example, a value of 96 for consumer spending means that inflation-adjusted consumer spending was 4 percent below its trend before the recession, and a value of 90 for aggregate hours means that hours worked per American were 10 percent below what they were when the recession began. [Um, did I mention ‘lie with statistics’? There still isn’t enough information here to reach any kind of a conclusion, much less an accurate one! ‘population growth has nothing to do with the size of the workforce, which is now global, thank you very much! (So how the hell do you ‘adjust’ that unless you are pulling shit out of your backside to support your own foregone conclusions, based on the flimsiest evidence available.) Same thing with ‘hours worked’, what does measuring the hours worked by the ‘non-redundant’ workforce tell you? That demand is down…because they cut 8 million workers from the payroll. Workers that they have no clue about how to return these people to productive activity!

Consumers reduced their spending a lot by historical standards – it’s only once in a generation that consumer spending falls 4 percent below trend as it did by the end of 2008 – but by late 2009 their spending had been cut only half as much as their hours worked had. Either consumers have been expecting that employment will at least partly rebound, or they plan yet further large spending cuts. [Honestly good citizen, most of you are scared spitless that the wheels are about to come flying off of this shit wagon and you’re going to find out what being ‘on your own’ is really like! Stupidly, this article ‘implies’ that people are hoarding ‘cash’ (and maybe the idiotic rich are) but wise are actually still spending it while it is still worth something against the day when you won’t be able to get what you need without resorting to ‘deadly force’.]

Thus, one piece of good news over the last nine months is that the latter has not yet transpired: the average consumer has not cut spending further, but rather since September 2009 has increased spending at a rate somewhat faster than before the recession (the trend-adjusted consumer-spending index went to 96.8 from 95.9; the spike in August was related to cash for clunkers). [Punctuation belongs inside the parentheses, but Casey is an ‘economist’ and not an English major, which apparently differs little from those who major in journalism, who are just as guilty of such ignorance.]

The other news is that hours worked have increased somewhat faster than the population over the past nine months, which is consistent with the view that the labor market would at least partly recover, and not get worse than it was in 2009. [Again left unsaid here is the fact that after beating the crap out of worker’s wages for the past two years, the pricks have finally started handing out (tiny) pay increases, which has allowed consumers to start spending again. Sadly, these miniscule raises are going to a significantly smaller workforce, while the overall population proceeds to rise at a ‘pre-crisis’ pace.]

On the other hand, no one should have anticipated a rapid and full recovery for hours worked. For example, it will not be too long until large numbers of baby boomers are retired, rather than working as most of them are now. [Like I said, I’ll try to cover the ‘whoppers’. ‘Most’ baby boomers ‘should’ still be employed but only a handful have managed to hold on to their hard own posts, ‘most’ have been ‘churned’ multiple times and a significant number of boomers now work part time because they can’t find full-time jobs. So the ‘inaccuracy’ here is that ‘most boomers’ have sufficient funds to ‘retire’ now or at any time in the extremely uncertain future.]

For better or for worse, many in our country want a more extensive safety net and more government regulation of business activities, as Western Europeans already have. Economists may argue about the short-run effects of a generous safety net, and whether it is desirable in the long run, but they agree that one way or another a generous safety net eventually reduces hours worked per person. [Logic alone should tell you that the more workers there are, the less each one needs to work to achieve ‘market satisfaction’, IF these workers were being managed for the benefit of humanity and not just the humans who claim to own our collective inheritance…]

Even without expanding social programs, it seems that the Bush tax cuts may expire, and the federal government may otherwise raise taxes. With higher tax rates in the future, we have to expect hours worked per American to remain below what it was before the recession. [How can an ‘economist’ responsibly make a statement like this? You can’t assume an equation that eliminates wide swaths of the population will produce a viable economy. As I have said many times before, the problems created by globalization are ‘insoluble’. There is no way for ‘capitalist democracy’ to move forward without splitting the population into an ‘us vs. them’ scenario, where the destruction will be incredible.]

Consumer behavior also seems to agree that the labor market will not fully recover. By my calculations, consumers could have cut their spending half as much as they actually did if they had expected the labor market to get back to pre-recession levels by 2012. But in fact we saw the biggest consumer spending cut in a generation. [Worse, Casey is using a ‘distorted’ picture of what constitutes a ‘consumer’, the same twisted model most economists use, that of only looking at the top ten percent of the payroll distribution. In the past, like now, the top ten percent accounts for 80% of consumer spending which equals 80% of the economy. Is it any wonder economists keep ‘getting it wrong?’]

So if you expect all of the people who lost jobs in this recession to someday be working again, there will be many disappointing employment reports ahead. But you can expect the job market to grow at least as fast as our population over the next couple of years.

[Sigh]

How do these people show their face in public?

Our ‘currently global’ labor market will indeed continue to expand roughly in pace with the global population…but this talk of ‘global parity’ isn’t particularly comforting when the developed world is being thrown head first into its own septic system.

The weasels who did this to us are at the ‘pay-off’ stage of the big bet they made so many years ago, that the people they outsourced the ‘Western way of life’ to will now pick up the harness and pull them to the top of their newly created markets.

Bizarrely, at the end of the day it wasn’t about ‘ideology’, it was all about numbers. The fucking beancounters threw their own civilization ‘under the bus’ to capture ‘larger markets’ that will ultimately do them zero good.

Dead people don’t need your junk…which will become the sad bottom line of the coming ‘resource wars’.

If you don’t appreciate the dire need to radically alter what we do and why we do it, please do the rest of us a favor and blow your own head off!

That said, thanks for letting me inside YOUR head,

Gegner

What's in it for you?

Greetings good citizen,

After plummeting last week the stock market is in positive territory as far as the eye can see this morning…I don’t need to caution you that a lot can change in a few hours.

For some bizarre reason, last week’s ‘losing propositions’ have, once again, magically transformed themselves into ‘bargains’ as ‘traders’ demonstrate their complete lack of rationality.

What if the whole world was subject to this utterly irrational behavior? Would civilization even exist?

The disturbing answer to the second statement is yes because the only thing that is ‘irrational’ about civilization is the totally arbitrary rules regarding money.

The true mystery is why we continue to tolerate this nonsense.

Sadly, the answer comes in the form of ‘you don’t have a choice’ and for some really bizarre reason, the topic never seems to come up in polite conversation…

I don’t need to rub your nose in the pile of excrement for you to make the connection. You ‘slave away’ for the same thing the assholes gets handed to them by the bucketful for doing nothing.

You want a ‘little more’? You are forced to prove you are ‘deserving’ of more, usually by knifing your co-workers in the back.

The self-serving chiseler that pays you has ZERO incentive to pay you a solitary penny MORE than anyone else…and (s)he pays all of them the least (s)he can get away with.

You know it’s not ‘worth it’ but it’s the ‘only game in town’, well there is another game but it isn’t nearly as much fun…if that’s what you want to call the daily exercise in humiliation you currently experience.

Which brings us to the ‘starting point’ of A Simple Plan, what’s in it for you?

If it takes more than a ‘leveling of the playing field’ to satisfy you then you aren’t going to like this; which is sad because you probably have never considered just how much better off you’d be if only you could catch an even break!

Think about this one for a minute…what if you WEREN’T someone else’s ‘income stream’? How many things are you forced to pay for (most of them perpetually) that should be ‘free’?

Understand that 99% of all personal income is derived from ‘paychecks’, only owners get to pay themselves, er, ‘creatively’.

Is the answer we’re looking for here to have everybody become ‘owners’?

There’s a damn good reason ‘capitalist utopia’ doesn’t exist and the simple answer is ‘market share’.

Here’s our ‘educational thought’ for the day…how many of you are aware that your employer charges more for your services than (s)he pays you? More interestingly, there is a ‘multiplier’ involved…this multiplier varies with the specific industry and in some cases it gets pretty outrageous.

For example Cisco Systems (a few years back) reported they ‘earned’ over $600,000 ‘per employee’…and you know damn well they don’t pay the rank and file anywhere near that much!

Why doesn’t ‘management’ accept the same conditions they force upon you?

If we flip that rock over we arrive at the price issue, how much more are you paying so the management at Cisco can ‘reap’ $600,000 each on every employee they have?

How is this NOT price gouging?

Just a little something to think about; worse, this is related to the ‘goofiness’ that is stock prices!

Essentially, everything is free (to the ‘owner’) and because of this, ‘stocks’ are worthless.

Stick ‘em up!

Which is another way of saying if ‘money’ doesn’t make any sense then working for money makes even less sense!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner