Tuesday, November 30, 2010

What's wrong with this picture?

Greetings good citizen,

Those of you with extraordinarily good memories will recall some of my rants about the economy being ‘shrunk to fit’ the ‘new normal’.

This is essentially what a ‘jobless recovery’ results in. Since the, er, ‘customer base’ has been, er, ‘re-proportioned’ (and this is all ‘scam-a-rama’ stuff, you’ve now got people earning a fraction of what you need to make, living like kings, on salaries that you’d starve to death on…)

Did I mention that ALL money is ‘funny’?

Anyway, here we have a article that is more interesting for what it doesn’t say

More Than 8 Million Drop Out of Credit Card Use
November 30th, 2010

Via: AP:


More than 8 million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year. The decline stems from a combination of consumer choices and bank actions.

An analysis by credit reporting agency TransUnion found that use of general purpose credit cards bearing MasterCard or Visa logos, or issued by Discover or American Express, fell more than 11 percent in the third quarter, compared with the July to September period last year.

About 62 million people now have an active card, compared with 70 million a year ago. [There’s the ‘money quote’ that caught my eye good citizen. Where does ‘economic recovery’ come from if you have shrinking participation by the general populace? Worse is the 62 million ‘active cards’ out of 211 million working aged citizens! Does something look ‘out of whack’ to you?]

The Chicago company found that consumers in the subprime category, or those with low credit ratings, were believed to be without cards mostly because they were shut down by banks after payments fell behind or balances were written off.

“One can quite reasonably infer that’s not voluntary,” said Ezra Becker, vice president of research and consulting in TransUnion’s financial services business unit. Banks have written off record amounts of credit card balances in recent years.

But a significant portion of the decrease in card usage reflects decisions by cardholders to stop using credit, Becker said. “They’re simply either not purchasing as much or paying down balances.”

The question here, quite naturally, is ‘what’s wrong with this picture?’

I think 62 million ‘active cards’ is a very, er, ‘telling’ statistic. It speaks volumes about how whoever ‘controls’ our currency regards the ‘general population.

It’s the same old story, no job, no credit…but guess what, if they ship all of the work to Timbuktu, how the fuck are you supposed to get a job?

Short answer, you aren’t…and it’s not their problem, it’s yours!

Worse, this is the ‘brick wall’ our civilization is up against. If we don’t solve this problem, THERE WON’T BE A CIVILIZATION TO SAVE!

Why are we in this pickle? Mismanagement, the people in charge can’t see beyond the end of their own greed, which is to point out that there are incapable of putting the needs of others ahead of their own selfish desires!

If you’d like an explanation of the current ‘global debt crisis’ that is shaking the EU to its core, click here

You wouldn’t mind if the financial sector knew what it was doing but these idiots are obviously clueless and the more they muck around with the world’s financial markets, the worse they fuck things up!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, November 29, 2010

Kids learn what they live...

Greetings good citizen,

Some of these posts are inspired by what I hear on the radio and the other night I was listening to, how to phrase this delicately, a bunch of morons ‘losing it’ over the budget deficit.

IF the deficit ‘mattered’, WE’D ALREADY BE BANKRUPT!

You want to talk about ‘neat tricks’ you have to marvel at how they continue to pull that one off; although it’s not particularly surprising, ‘ignorance’ is a mighty powerful tool!

This also explains why the infamous they have so little respect for the rest of us, the vast majority of us are TOO STUPID to figure out we’re being played!

Sadly, the truth is there is only a tiny degree of separation between ‘stupid’ and trusting/gullible.

They’re NOT SUPPOSED to lie to us so we automatically ASSUME they don’t.

What has some of you scratching your head is, ‘if deficits don’t matter then what happened in Zimbabwe’ (or Weimar Germany for that matter?)

Is it a ‘massive coincidence’ that both, er, ‘governments’ ran afoul of the world’s banking interests?

The very existence of ‘the cheaper there’ proves that the value of money is ‘arbitrarily manipulated’ to the bankers advantage…

Understand good citizen, this sort of shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum, there are a lot of people ‘following orders’ and ‘sticking to the script’ for this sort of thing to go down.

I don’t often lament this ‘directly’ but on the other hand it seems as though it is all I talk about and that is the staggering amount of ‘willful ignorance’ there is surrounding money.

The real ‘baffler’ is that there is no depth of depravity that the truly stupid will resort to if it means a big ‘payday’ for them in the end.

It has become increasingly evident that ‘money’ is meaningless and becoming more so all of the time.

Take the multi-trillion dollar ‘bailouts’, does anyone have the faintest clue just who, precisely, is collecting all of this money?

Shit, even TARP was ‘handed over’ to banks who all claimed they didn’t need the money! They all took it so nobody would be able to figure out which one actually ‘needed’ it.

Such ‘nice’ guys!

WTF!

Did I mention that only rogues and scoundrels need to hide beneath the ‘cloak of secrecy’?

Geez, guess who else is hiding beneath that friggin’ cloak? Isn’t that our ‘elected representative' under there too (playing pat-a-cake with Wall Street?)

Anyway, under ‘A Simple Plan’ money is relegated to its one useful purpose and EVERYBODY starts at zero, no exceptions!

In fact, soon enough, we’re all going to find ourselves ‘flat broke’, well, not all of us. The top one percent will have finished the job they started forty years ago, they will have accumulated almost all of the money in the economy into their own pockets and the rest of us can just go suck rocks!

The hullabaloo caused by this ‘economic imbalance’ is just getting ready to kick off, with the ‘usual consequences’ in store for the ‘average individual’.

Left to our imaginations is whether or not we will experience a ‘wild card event’ like the 9/11 attacks to provide ‘cover’ for the escape of the ‘uber rich’?

Understand, we aren’t talking about planes being flown into buildings again. This time the, er, ‘axis of evil’ (which many of us have come to equate with our own government) will lob either a ‘dirty bomb’ or an honest to goodness nuke at some US ‘target city’.

Considering the ‘scale’ of the theft that needs to be covered up, it is highly likely that the ‘retaliatory strike’ may border on ‘overkill’, which might trigger some ‘tit for tat’ exchanges.

Look at all of this ranting and I haven’t even gotten around to tonight’s offering

What does it mean when a well know ‘financial guru’ comes out and declares the ‘American Dream’ to be DOA?

If you own a home today, you ARE NOT going to recoup what you have paid for it BECAUSE there will be an extreme shortage of ‘qualified buyers’ as we head into the murky future.

You’ve seen the ads on TV, you can buy houses in some parts of this country for a thousand dollars.

Is such a price ‘too good to be true’?

Nothing for nothing, good citizen, if you don’t bring your job with you to the ‘economic desert’ you’d best hope the local wildlife ‘recovers’ fast enough to keep you alive!

That and there aren’t any schools or ‘public services’ (you know, little niceties like street lights, 911 emergency services and trash pick up.)

How’s your ‘American Dream’ looking now?

It looks an awful lot like a nightmare from here.

As I pointed out in a recent post, things AREN’T going to ‘get better’, not in your lifetime if you remain too chicken shit to do anything about it!

Perhaps that last part is the ‘bad news’, if we fail to correct the ‘excesses’ of our self-professed ‘betters’, it will NEVER get fixed!

Kids ‘learn what they live’.

Nuff, said!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, November 28, 2010

The best of the best?

Greetings good citizen,

It’s days like this one that make you say ‘global warming my ass’, the temperature is only slightly above freezing and it’s only a matter of time before it, well, you know.

Yes, we New Englander’s are ‘superstitious’ due to the fickle nature of our weather. It seems no sooner do you utter the ‘S’ word than it’s in your face…for the next four months…relentlessly.

But at least we know how to deal with ‘you know what’ (yes I’m still refusing to say it because even if it wards it off only for a single day it’s worth it!)

No, today’s topic is not New England weather. Today’s topic runs more along the lines of the measure of a nation.

Or more succinctly the measure of its citizens…

While the tendency is to view our current situation as ‘the same old, same old’, this variety of thinking couldn’t be more wrong-headed!

Still the Best Congress Money Can Buy
By FRANK RICH
Published: November 27, 2010


While Mr. Rich doesn’t pose the question directly but you know I will.

That question is ‘What’s the difference between a monarchy and a government that answers to only the wealthiest?

In fact there isn’t one…save the lack of royal ‘titles’. A king’s word was law and it’s the exact same thing if you ‘own’ the government. Save that under the second set of circumstances, the laws are either ignored completely or ‘bent to fit’ the desired outcome.

As history has shown, every revolution has produced a ‘counter-revolution’ that quietly assumes control the moment the dust begins to settle and so it was for the ‘John Jay’s’ here in the early days after the American Revolution.

Not only did Mr. Jay establish this nation’s legal framework but he was also famous for his ‘governing philosophy’.

What was that philosophy?

I shouldn’t have to mention it because it is ‘omnipresent’, which is to say everywhere.

He famously proclaimed ‘Let those who own the land, rule the land!’

Understand good citizen, he wasn’t talking about Joe Homeowner, who only ‘leases’ his land from the bank and enjoys only the feeblest of claims upon it, he was talking about people powerful enough to have entire counties named after them!

How did you think counties got named? Did you think they drew those names out of a hat?

Oh, PS by the way, almost EVERY early public official ended up involved in some type of land scandal within twenty years of the original revolution!

Virtually institutionalizing the concept of public service equals ‘self-service’.

Even today, politicians use public office for personal gain. Harry Truman was the last U.S. president to exit the White House and NOT become a millionaire.

Yup, corrupt from the get go and that’s how they all end up because NOBODY got to see the plans ahead of time.

Hell, even the ‘sacred’ U.S. Constitution was drafted IN SECRET with an armed guard keeping the general public and other ‘uninvited individuals’ into the meeting, which brings us full circle to the little controversy over how NOT ONE signatory of the Declaration of Independence also signed the Constitution…

At least with ‘A Simple Plan’ you know up front what you’re getting!

And if someone does something, er ‘underhanded’ or ‘self-serving’ you, the average individual would be perfectly within your rights to kill them on the spot because when the ‘new rules’ take effect, ‘justifiable homicide’ returns!

You will never again have someone dare you with ‘What are you going to do about it’ because you would be perfectly within your rights to kill them! (Understand that the laws and conventions surrounding dueling need to be observed, otherwise it’s murder!)

One of our ‘major malfunctions’ of our modern times is the loss of ‘civility’ due actions no longer having consequences. The, er, ‘blunt instruments’ within ‘A Simple Plan’ are intended to ‘restore balance’.

You don’t ‘have to’ accept a challenge to duel and if you are ‘wronged’ you will still be able to pursue ‘legal remedies’ like reporting the misdeed to the authorities.

Just as long as you understand that it is also a crime to falsely accuse someone of a crime.

But I digress.

We get ahead of ourselves when we start discussing a legal system that doesn’t, as yet, exist.

The question, good citizen, is what are we going to do about the farce that passes for our current legal system/government?

Are we going to exile the assholes who would make themselves our kings or are we going to practice ‘groveling’?

Understand, pretty soon we’re going to have to kiss their asses if we want to keep our miserable jobs.

And that’s just wrong on so many levels.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Of Cabbages and Kings...

Greetings good citizen,

Op/ed is indeed the ‘opinion’ of the commentator. While we have this very ‘perceptive’ offering from the razor sharp pen of Mr. Bob Herbert of the NY Times. ‘Skippy’, the editor of the conservative leaning ‘local rag’, spent his editorial ammunition pleading for judicial leniency on the behalf of ‘The Hammer’ or the criminal more widely known as Tom De Lay.

Yes good citizen, I am just as guilty as you are of not making a ‘burning example’ of a CO media outlet that so richly deserves it…mea culpa.

My ‘excuse’ is that this is the ‘Red’ portion of an otherwise ‘Blue’ state, thus my ‘nom de plume,’ which literally translates as ‘enemy/opponent/foe’.

Not that I’d switch to calling myself ‘Buddy’ if the area suddenly shifted into reverse and became a Democratic stronghold…mostly because that would change nothing.

The D and the R are meaningless if they both take their marching orders from the same cadre of selfish bastards.

Which leads us to tonight’s article:

Winning the Class War
By BOB HERBERT
Published: November 26, 2010

Even as millions of out-of-work and otherwise struggling Americans are tightening their belts for the holidays, the nation’s elite are lacing up their dancing shoes and partying like royalty as the millions and billions keep rolling in.

[Left to your imagination is just who, specifically, is ‘cleaning up’ off of our misery? Do you remember what I said about the ‘win-win’? Not only do they win by not having to pay ‘living wages’ but they win again by not having to pay for the standard compliment of benefits US workers (used to) expect. Now a days, your ‘principle benefit’ is you get to come back again tomorrow to see if you will win an invitation to come back the following day. That’s how ‘bad’ it has become!]

Recessions are for the little people, not for the corporate chiefs and the titans of Wall Street who are at the heart of the American aristocracy. They have waged economic warfare against everybody else and are winning big time.

The ranks of the poor may be swelling and families forced out of their foreclosed homes may be enduring a nightmarish holiday season, but American companies have just experienced their most profitable quarter ever. As The Times reported this week, U.S. firms earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter — the highest total since the government began keeping track more than six decades ago. [This is ‘Magic with Math that has more to do with ‘more with less’ than an increase in sales because overall payrolls have shrunk by roughly 20% between reductions in ‘headcount’ and company ‘grab backs’. You can rest assured that most of this ‘profit’ is due to irrationally priced stocks, driven by the Federal Reserves’ ‘dilution’ of your purchasing power!]

The corporate fat cats are becoming alarmingly rotund. Their profits have surged over the past seven quarters at a pace that is among the fastest ever seen, and they can barely contain their glee. On the same day that The Times ran its article about the third-quarter surge in profits, it ran a piece on the front page that carried the headline: “With a Swagger, Wallets Out, Wall Street Dares to Celebrate.”

Anyone who thinks there is something beneficial in this vast disconnect between the fortunes of the American elite and those of the struggling masses is just silly. It’s not even good for the elite. [It is even worse for the ‘perceived elite’, those who toil insane hours for a really big paycheck…but it’s still a ‘paycheck’ and if you rely on a paycheck to cover your expenses…YOU’RE A PEASANT! (Even if it’s a really big paycheck…)

There is no way to bring America’s consumer economy back to robust health if unemployment is chronically high, wages remain stagnant and the jobs that are created are poor ones. Without ordinary Americans spending their earnings from good jobs, any hope of a meaningful, long-term recovery is doomed. [It is SO REFRESHING to read those words knowing that I am not the one who wrote them! That aside, ‘recovery’ is NEVER going to happen if we don’t prosecute the self-interested for their crimes against society…and the penalty for treason is death!]

Beyond that, extreme economic inequality is a recipe for social instability. Families on the wrong side of the divide find themselves under increasing pressure to just hold things together: to find the money to pay rent or the mortgage, to fend off bill collectors, to cope with illness and emergencies, and deal with the daily doses of extreme anxiety.

Societal conflicts metastasize as resentments fester and scapegoats are sought. Demagogues inevitably emerge to feast on the poisonous stew of such an environment. The rich may think that the public won’t ever turn against them. But to hold that belief, you have to ignore the turbulent history of the 1930s. [Workers burned factories to the ground good citizen, that is the primary reason behind the ‘New Deal’ getting passed. The ‘BAD NEWS’ is today’s ‘degenerate rich’ think their forebearers ‘caved in’ too easily. We’ll see if they’re right. Considering it took less than a hundred years to end up right back where it all began, I’d opine that the forces of justice were too easy on our self-professed ‘betters’. Trust me, that won’t happen again.]

A stark example of the potential for real conflict is being played out in New York City, where the multibillionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has selected a glittering example of the American aristocracy to be the city’s schools chancellor. Cathleen Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, has a reputation as a crackerjack corporate executive but absolutely no background in education. [While Mr. Herbert’s point is well taken, it also speaks volumes about what our elite think of education OUR children. (Our kids don’t need to be taught anything but which end of a rifle to hold and when to pull the trigger, talk about a damning indictment of widely held conservative views!)]

Ms. Black travels in the rarefied environs of the very rich. Her own children went to private boarding schools. She owns a penthouse on Park Avenue and a $4 million home in Southampton. She was able to loan a $47,600 Bulgari bracelet to a museum for an exhibit showing off the baubles of the city’s most successful women.

Ms. Black will be peering across an almost unbridgeable gap between her and the largely poor and working-class parents and students she will be expected to serve. Worse, Mr. Bloomberg, heralding Ms. Black as a “superstar manager,” has made it clear that because of budget shortfalls she will be focused on managing cutbacks to the school system. [How sad is it the ‘working and poor’ are far too often cited in the same sentence never mind paragraph!]

So here we have the billionaire and the millionaire telling the poor and the struggling — the little people — that they will just have to make do with less. You can almost feel the bitterness rising.

Extreme inequality is already contributing mightily to political and other forms of polarization in the U.S. And it is a major force undermining the idea that as citizens we should try to face the nation’s problems, economic and otherwise, in a reasonably united fashion. When so many people are tumbling toward the bottom, the tendency is to fight among each other for increasingly scarce resources.

What’s really needed is for working Americans to form alliances and try, in a spirit of good will, to work out equitable solutions to the myriad problems facing so many ordinary individuals and families. Strong leaders are needed to develop such alliances and fight back against the forces that nearly destroyed the economy and have left working Americans in the lurch. [Sadly, trying to ‘lead the clueless’ is a task akin to herding cats.]

Aristocrats were supposed to be anathema to Americans. Now, while much of the rest of the nation is suffering, they are the only ones who can afford to smile.


As you are aware good citizen, higher profits can be achieved by reducing ‘cost’.

Under the ‘fucked up’ way they currently measure unemployment, you could theoretically reach zero unemployment when NOBODY HAS A FUCKING JOB!

Once again we are expected to tolerate this kind of IDIOCY while doing nothing to correct it.

Calculating ‘inflation’ while leaving out ‘volatile’ food and energy prices is also MORONIC, but what the hell, this whole STUPID party is being run by the same clueless bunch that none of us voted for!

Not that I need to lecture any of you on the dangers of, er, ‘grassroots organizations’ especially when their ‘roots’ are funded by people with very deep pockets and very narrowly defined ‘interests’.

We don’t allow people who want to eat babies to form ‘grassroots’ organizations, we should also exercise the same ‘restraint’ over people whose ‘best interests’ are not in the interests of the general public, don’t you agree?

Every day is a new battle, keep fighting good citizen!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, November 26, 2010

Now, if I may direct your attention to our 'Center Ring'

Greetings good citizen,

As uncouth as it might be, I feel compelled to redirect your attention to that slow motion train wreck we call our ‘civilization’.

As I commented earlier, we lurch from disaster to disaster largely because, UNDER CAPITALISM, disasters are ‘fought’ with copious amounts of money.

[No irony should be lost on the fact that this ‘money’ is both useless and, er, ‘make believe’, a legal construct at best and a noose around your neck if you allow yourself to be bound by its ‘promises’. (The ‘worse’ part of this argument is entirely ‘relative’, so fill in your own blank…)]

Which is to point out that not only is our system of commerce ‘fucked up’ but so is our political system.

Understand good citizen, the level of ‘incompetence’ we are regularly expected to tolerate would land the most robust commercial venture in bankruptcy court in record time!

Yet, try as we might, we seem unable to ‘elect’ competent leaders.

In fact, we seem unable to elect anyone with enough backbone to so much as open a door for themselves!

What we have are puppets serving unseen puppeteers. And these puppeteers are driving our civilization off a cliff for their own unfathomable reasons.

I have posited before that we are headed for a ‘kill-off’ because of the way our society is structured. Our entire civilization is based on ‘cheap and abundant’ energy.

The problem is we have arrived at a point where the ‘exponential increase’ in the number of end users has shortened considerably the projected life span of energy reserves…

Oh, what to do? Since we can’t ‘Abracadabra’ more energy into existence there is only one other thing to do that will put the equation back into ‘balance’ and that would be a significant reduction in the number of, er, ‘surplus’ people.

You don’t suppose our political system is ‘fucked’ because these self-serving assholes have only one way to control policy and that is to ‘buy’ our politicians?

Again, no irony should be lost on the fact that ALL money is FUNNY, so these idiots are selling the future of our species down the river for some worthless pieces of paper!

Like tonight’s offering asks, precisely ‘who’ is all of this bailout money ‘owed’ to?

And, naturally, why is ‘the public’ being asked to pay for something they had no hand in?

Once again we are confronted with ‘treason’ on a grand scale but those we elected to uphold the laws are both ‘blind and deaf’ (and soon to be dead, due to their own, er, ‘machinations’, compounded by their own stupidity!)

Let’s Try Some Perspective

The drumbeat against the euro is increasing daily. It will fall apart, it will be limited to a hard core of Northern countries, it was a bad idea to begin with, you can't have uniform monetary policy without uniform fiscal policy, etc. The cacophony is so loud it is making common sense impossible to break through, particularly since "the free market" is screaming at the top of its lungs.

Let's try some perspective on that "free market", eh?

* Gross Folly #1: How come the eurozone's financial center is... London?!! What this means in practical terms is that a scrum of bottom-line-is-everything bonus-hungry twenty-somethings hardly out of school are running the show. And to top it off, they and their country (the U.K.) are not even members of the eurozone. They don't use it, they don't believe in it and, if anything, they hate its guts. Literally. [Republicans all, this lot, eh?] This like trusting a bunch of juvenile delinquents who amuse themselves with setting cats on fire to run the pet shelter.


* Gross Folly #2: We let those same kids deal in sovereign bond CDS (credit default swaps) in an unlimited amount, without any regulation, in a completely opaque OTC market. They don't have to hedge their positions with the underlying sovereign bonds, they don't have to account for their actions to anyone but their immediate boss - who is also in line to make a huge bonus from their profit - and they don't give a damn if they push some poor country into bankruptcy and its people into starvation. Literally. This is like giving the nuclear missile launch keys to a bunch of manic-depressives and telling them they have to compete amongst themselves for their meds.

* Gross Folly #3: We have allowed huge amounts of public and private pension monies to be managed by "alternative-investment" firms, e.g. hedge funds who are compensated on the outrageous 2/20 schedule. (The US Social Security is still OK, as it can only invest in Treasuries, but it came close to succumbing a few years ago.) This is like giving a bunch of convicted arsonists a tank-farm full of gasoline, asking them to put it to profitable use.

* Gross Folly #4: The people of Europe have entrusted management of the whole shebang to politicians, their appointees and committees of clueless bureaucratic mandarins who wouldn't know the difference between a CDS and a CDO if it sat up and hit them in the face. (Again, the US is somewhat better at this since key government positions are frequently filled by experienced financiers.) This is like staffing Bedlam with a bunch of South Italian city managers, soviet-era Russian chefs from Vladivostock and over-sized German nurses named Helga. All overseen by the ghost of Joe McCarthy come back to life. No doctors. Oh, and only Wagner allowed in the rec room.

Have a nice weekend…


Perhaps that last wisecrack illustrates our perilous position best (The whole thing, not just the Wagner part!)

If it weren’t for the bloody mess this is all going to end in, it would be outrageously funny!

The disturbing part is more than a small percentage of us can ‘see’ this unfolding yet nobody is doing anything.

Naturally, the unanswered question here is ‘what can you do?’. The average stiff isn’t in a position to do anything, the most they can hope for is to save their own sorry asses!

As least that’s the plan from where I’m sitting.

That and I (naturally) intend to ‘take control’ once civil order collapses. How long I’ll be able to hold on to it is the wildcard.

We’ll see.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, November 25, 2010

What's wrong with this picture?

Greetings good citizen,

It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the corrupt land of the dazed and home of the Mesmerized.

Tradition dictates we roast up a turkey and share it with our relatives, the ones we like anyway…or at least the ones who continue to tolerate our presence.

No irony should be lost on how little the modern celebration resembles the ‘original’ Thanksgiving Day feast, presumably one shared by the colonists and the original inhabitants of this, their former land.

Now may not be the time to go into the hearsay and rumors surrounding how modern native Americans ‘celebrate’ this particular holiday but from what I’ve heard, it is ‘appropriate’.

Left to our imaginations is whether or not the natives are having a good laugh for themselves at our expense considering ‘Pale Face’ turned out to be an ‘equal opportunity exploiter’…

Not satisfied with screwing the natives out of their homes, they have proceeded to screw everyone who came after with equal, er ‘deceit’.

Not that most people find such personality traits, er, ‘endearing’, but I guess that’s one of the ‘primary tenants’ of capitalism, it’s got nothing to do with love, its all about the money!

When asked, most managers said they preferred to be ‘feared’ than loved or even admired. How sad is it that ruthlessness is often its own reward?

Anyway, I navigated away from the source of tonight’s offering before I could copy the link and now I can’t find the damn thing…

So you’re gonna have to take this one with a BIG grain of salt.

Corporations Have Most Profitable Quarter in US History as Unemployment Soars

[As the original article asked, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’]

According to a new report (PDF) from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. corporate profits are at an all-time high, despite the turbulent economy. At the same time, the real unemployment rate remains astronomically high, affecting some 1 in 5 Americans.


Reports Raw Story:

America's poor and middle classes are under siege, with a mostly stagnant job market that has shown only marginal signs of improvement.

Yet for seven fiscal quarters running -- since President Obama's election -- American corporate profits have shown strong growth.

[Now scratch your head and try to figure out how the ‘survivors’ of ‘the great recession’ are reporting higher earnings in a time when overall payrolls have shrunk by almost 20 percent? The key word is ‘survivors’. Think ‘market share’ and the whole situation comes into focus. The survivors are sucking up more market share, driving their profits. What the assholes AREN’T TELLING YOU is that overall sales volume is down significantly from previous years!]

According to a New York Times analysis, Q3 2010 saw the largest corporate profits in recorded US history, at $1.66 trillion. [This is still ‘smoke an mirrors’, there’s more ‘creative accounting’ going on here than actual product being moved!]

The government releases a few different unemployment rates. The official rate stands at about 9%, while the so-called "real" unemployment rate, which includes underemployed Americans, is an astounding 17.5%. Even worse, experts have found that as many as 22% of the nation's households have at least one member looking for full-time employment.

So basically, it's the same old story: the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. Indeed, a July Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report (PDF) found that the income disparity between rich and poor in America is at its widest in over 80 years. [Which would be alarming if it weren’t a foregone conclusion that we are rapidly becoming a ‘Banana Republic’…]

The top 1 percent of households in the US have seen a 281 percent rise in after-tax income since 1979, the center found. Meanwhile, the bottom fifth of American earners have seen only a 16 percent increase since 1979: a percentage which doesn't account for value lost due to inflation.

According to inflation calculations by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it would take $75,313.71 of today's money to match the buying power of just $25,000 in 1979.


That’s about right good citizen, I started making a LOT more money in 1979 and I got to spend a lot more too.

The fuckers ‘doubled’ our pay but by the time the dust settled they had quadrupled prices!

Then they ‘altered’ how inflation was calculated (because all union contracts had strong COLA provisions.) Don’t want to pay massive pay hikes, simply change how inflation is, er, ‘calculated’.

Which brings us full circle with the opening argument…Pale Face is an equal opportunity exploiter.

The question facing you good citizen is whether or not you want to go on living like this…always holding the shitty end of the stick.

Most of us would prefer to die on our feet rather than live on our knees. The problem is there isn’t a ‘clear target’.

If we could point a finger at someone and say unequivocally, ‘He did it, it’s his fault.’ I know that whoever had the finger pointed in them wouldn’t live long enough to draw another breathe…but it’s not that easy.

The fucker who pretends ‘give you a job’ is one of the many ‘responsible parties’.

It should come as no shock to anyone that there is no such thing as a job created ‘by’ an employer. The need to do a particular thing exists naturally whether there’s an ‘employer’ or not. This is why there is ‘unemployment’. There is only so much that needs doing and over time we have built up such a legendary amount of ‘overcapacity’ that it doesn’t take very many of us to do it.

If you’ve read ‘A Simple Plan’ than you know the solution to the ‘employment problem’ rests in worksharing. It is impossible to be a ‘member’ of society if you aren’t provided with the opportunity to participate!

Who’s ‘responsibility’ is this? Society’s!

Why isn’t it done now?

Too many STUPID greed heads in charge.

How do we fix this?

‘Fire’ the greed heads!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Just say No!

Greetings good citizen,

Today is one of the heaviest ‘travel days’ of the year as people cover what can be great distances so they may reunite with their kin.

Somewhat ‘in tandem’ with this annual event is the TSA’s ‘stepping up’ of ‘security measures’ in the ‘war without end’ against terror.

Oddly, nobody has stepped forward to lead others in exercising the ‘obvious’ retaliatory measure…boycott.

If they are going to strip search or force you to walk through a device that renders you virtually naked, ‘just say no’…meaning DON’T BUY AN AIRLINE TICKET!

Make the planes SIT ON THE FUCKING GROUND! FUCK ‘EM!

At ‘what price’ safety good citizen? I would posit right here and now that the price we’re being, er, ‘asked’ to pay is too fucking much. If you want to live with/like ‘Chicken little’ knock yourself out. The thing you need to be aware of is the ‘cost’ of this intrusive herding; this gross violation of the ‘presumption of innocence’ costs you your humanity as well as your dignity!

For the moment you can take the train or the bus without suffering the ‘indignity’ of being treated like a steer in a chute or, more factually, a ‘potential terrorist’.

Although I did see today that ‘our legislators’ have already proposed putting both of these ‘safety measures’ in place at ALL REMAINING transport terminals. Hell, the article went on to point out that these ‘defacto’ strip search machines are already turning up in the nation’s courthouses…but those weasels have a right to be paranoid, they are well aware of the crimes they have committed!

Please allow me to direct your attention to the fact that THIS KIND of intrusive legislative action will sail through the supposedly deeply divided houses of Congress, the same way funding for ‘war without end does’ while any proposed extension of unemployment benefits is blocked by ‘partisan politics’…

How STUPID are you good citizen? You’d have to be pretty fucking dumb not to recognize what’s going on both in your name and right under your nose!

Just to give this particular drum another well deserved pounding, why is it that the LYING, CORPORATE OWNED MEDIA HASN’T BEEN BURNT TO THE GROUND?

Are reporters ‘blind’ or (and more likely) they are too fearful of ‘biting the hand that feeds them.’

Not that this admission does the rest of us any good.

So no, nobody would be more surprised than me to learn of even one media outlet ANYWHERE, being deliberately destroyed by angry consumers.

Ain’t going to happen and when it does, it will be attributed to ‘collateral damage’, the station burned down because the whole block burned down with it.

Which is to point out that the lying media wouldn’t admit to its own destruction unless it was impossible to deny.

Naturally, it is ‘inadvisable’ to stick around after committing an act of wanton destruction of private property no matter how ‘righteous’ the act was.

Sort of brings us full circle to that ‘bought and paid for’ government thing and how their ‘toadies’ ‘do as they’re told’ as opposed to doing what’s right.

There is a ‘flip side’ to this sudden, heavy handed ‘deterrent’ to travelling freely and that is the ‘Peak Energy’ issue.

In the not too distant future, only the very wealthy (who also happen to enjoy a certain ‘immunity’ from the tactics so freely employed against ‘lowlifes’ like you) will be able to afford to travel.

And AGAIN, the important distinction will be ‘how’ you derive your income…if you get a paycheck, you’re a ‘peasant’ but if you ‘own an income stream’, you’re one of the privileged few…

Um, Forgive me good citizen by ‘subtlety’ is not my strong suit…

Nor is what’s happening here particularly subtle by any stretch of the imagination.

Continue to believe in ‘THE BIG LIE’ at your own peril.

Naturally the question returns to ‘which big lie are you talking about?’

That should be the first ‘red flag’ good citizen. When there is so much (obvious) falsehood being transmitted by ‘official sources’ that one is uncertain which lie is the subject of the moment.

Well, let’s cut to the chase and go to the most persistent lie we’ve been told over the past forty years…that ‘everything is going to work out fine.’

There is no ‘happy ending’ waiting for you once you hit retirement age or any other age for that matter. Even a lottery jackpot contains your certain doom within it!

If you don’t use your fellow humans as an ‘income stream’, your goose is cooked!

A one time, huge pile of cash will do absolutely nothing for you good citizen because our entire economic system is based on faulty premises supported by ‘short-term thinking’.

Politicians regularly ‘gild the lily’; pretending things are more equitable than they are in reality, which is why I pull no punches with my proposal. It is what it says it is, it is both brutal AND fair.

We’d all love to believe that we could all get along with everybody else and be content with our share of what there is…but, there isn’t enough of ‘the best’ for all of us to enjoy.

So, who gets the dregs is the eternal contest of the moment…

We should not be put off by this distinction; even competition for ‘the dregs’ is fierce!

It’s that ‘serve in Heaven’ or ‘rule in Hell’ thing again…

Bizarrely, there is no shortage of people willing to do whatever it takes to make themselves ‘kings of the shit-heap!’

Yet again we encounter that dubious distinction between ‘famous’ and ‘infamous’…

Which is to point out that there isn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between a ‘serious person’ and a ‘seriously defective person(ality.’)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

It is time once again to remind you that I am not here to tell you what to think, I am here to provide you with something to think about!

Gegner

Monday, November 22, 2010

There WILL be Blood...

Greetings good citizen,

I highly doubt that the newsmakers of the NY Times read this insignificant little collection of wild mental ramblings but how do we account for their, er, ‘channeling’ me?

Yesterday, we had Mr. Rich parroting my ‘prediction’ that we would be faced with another ‘untenable choice’ come November 2012.

As I pointed out yesterday, Hillary has (for now) stated she’s ‘not interested’ in making another run at the White House but will The Media take ‘no’ for an answer?

Okay, maybe that’s just drawing a ‘logical conclusion’ from observing who has been (and continues to) suck up to the ‘spotlight’…

But today we have This Piece from our Nobel Laureate echoing my, er, ‘prediction’ of two weeks ago that we face the very real danger of the government, um, ‘dissolving’ itself…

The only thing ‘worse’ than the mess we are currently suffering from is the ‘certainty’ that nobody is in charge.

For the moment we can cling to the notion that somebody, somewhere is taking care of business. While Mr. Krugman points to what amounts to political hostage taking, the end result is the same.

The party of ‘One in Five’ could bring what passes for our government to a standstill, just to prove they can.

And, like the man says, There will be blood.

The ‘rage meter’ is off the charts on both sides of the political fence…worse, you can’t ‘reason’ with a closed minded conservative, they believe what they believe because they believe it!

So it’s ‘head cracking time’ (again) where we demonstrate to the 20 percent of us who can’t understand normal thinking what the difference is between a ‘minority’ and a majority…again.

Understand good citizen, we find ourselves in the same old jam BECAUSE we have failed to rein in the baser instincts of the psychopaths among us.

Worse, we have also failed to implement safeguards that would prevent these anti-social psychos from rising to positions of authority.

Adopting ‘A Simple Plan’ will solve these issues; it’s ‘built in’ to the system.

The tests measure more than just proficiency at a given skill, they also measure the candidates, er, ‘moral compass’.

Ironically, we won’t have time to explore the finer points of ‘alternate proposals’ once the current government is, er, ‘derailed’.

There’ll be too much blood flying around and nobody will be stepping in to stop it once the paychecks stop flowing…

Does anyone else see the ‘major flaw’ in ‘taxpayer supported’ government now?

You get the ‘government you pay for’ BUT that fails to take into account what happens when the same people who fail to pay you also fail to pay for your government…

We have a word for situations like this…we call it ‘fucked’.

Are you ‘fucked’?

Well and truly!

Is it high time we abandon this reckless free for all we’ve been saddled with and adopt a more equitable, sustainable model.

No more ‘debt driven’ economics, it is time for a ‘people driven’ model!

We do what we do for YOU!

If you give more than you get we’ll all be better off!

No irony should be lost on the fact that we should now be working only 20 hours a week (because we have so many ‘workers’) but we don’t because the employer class uses us as their ‘income stream’.

It not about us, it’s about THEM.

Time for that bullshit to go out the window too!

Peak Oil is a clear and present danger. If we don’t act soon it will be too late.

The time to disincentivize fossil fuel is now while we still have some left. This way the remaining supply can be used to smooth the transition to a ‘new/old’ way of doing things.

Wind power IS the future, if we don’t start building it now it won’t be ready before we run out of fossil fuel.

Here is just one of the many, er, ‘political discussions’ that we aren’t having thanks to the ‘disaster Capitalists’.

Naturally, you know why we keep lurching from disaster to disaster don’t you?

Because under capitalism, you solve problems with money…too bad the money is already decidedly ‘funny’.

Under my unspoken credo of ‘not too many foreign concepts at once’ we’ll adjourn this edition of ‘Rambling with Gegner’ for another day,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Buy American? (How the hell are we supposed to do that?)

Greetings good citizen,

Your circumstances drive your actions. It is unlikely that you will be seeking ‘investment opportunities’ if you don’t have enough ‘capital’ to fill a thimble…which pretty much describes 97% of us.

However, as tonight’s second offering suggests, could the actions of a ‘few’ blast an irreparable hole in our already foundering economy?

Isn’t one of the key factors of the current crisis due to the ‘consolidation’ of much of the nation’s (as well s the world’s) wealth into the hands of those who need it least?

If we posit that commerce exists to serve the needs of society, a crime of stupendous proportions has been committed.

Worse, the (bought and paid for) US ‘Supreme Court’ invalidated itself by ruling that the ‘primary purpose’ of commerce was to generate profits for its shareowners and nothing else!

This decision, by itself, invalidates the entire purpose of government! (For that alone every one of the justices literally shredded their law degrees, never mind their right to practice law, anywhere!)

Does anyone else find it ‘odd’ that this decision has never been challenged?

If we consider that this, er, ‘judgement’ dovetails nicely with the agenda of our corporate overlords, it’s not surprising at all!

So we arrive at tonight’s first offering where the reporter to a very exclusive section of society ponders a pretty ‘bone-headed’ idea…

Buy American? Upscale Investors Look Abroad
By PAUL SULLIVAN
Published: November 19, 2010

Well-heeled American investors have been doing something lately [Excuse me but how does the last four decades translate into ‘lately’?] that they resisted for decades — becoming more like their European, Asian and Latin American counterparts and substantially diversifying their portfolios outside their home country. [Obviously Bobo is referring to ‘small time’ investors…’simple millionaires’ who have, until recently, found ample ‘investment opportunities’ right here in their own back yard.]

Are overseas investments worth the risk? Which ones can be part of the mix for a prudent investor?

There are two reasons for this. The financial crisis and the slow recovery showed them that the United States was not immune to devastating crashes of the kind that wealthy people in emerging markets have tried to hedge against by investing abroad. And second, American investors are worried that their portfolios are going to suffer for the foreseeable future, given the size of the United States’ budget deficit, the weakness of the dollar and the uncertainty over the stock market.

“I’ve never seen a period in which clients have expressed such an interest in nondollar investments,” said Kent Lucken, managing director at Citi Private Bank. “People are spreading their chips around more prudently and I think more wisely.” [Could ‘quantative shredding, er, easing’, the ‘direct dilution’ of the US dollar be behind this sudden ‘rush for the exits’?]

What is different is how directly these investors are going into non-American markets. They are not content with buying international equities or going into an international bond fund. They are looking to invest directly in Chinese private equity, Indian real estate; Brazilian equities denominated in reals and Australian government bonds. They are also opening cash accounts in multiple currencies. [As you can see, the suggestion here is these particular investors aren’t very ‘sophisticated’ because they are only just now getting around to something they should have done years ago….]

“International clients understand the need to diversify currencies, but this is something new to U.S. clients,” said David Frame, global head of alternative investment at J. P. Morgan Private Bank.

The people putting as much as 40 percent of their portfolios into nondollar investments are quite wealthy. But consider it this way: What can investors of more modest means learn from what the wealthiest people in the country — with the best research and advice at their disposal — are doing with large portions of their fortunes? [What about you? If you don’t have a ‘fortune’ does this behavior have an ‘impact’ upon your future? It sure does. As the money ‘flees’ your future employment is likely fleeing with it.]

UPSIDE Investors who lived through the 1990s will remember the crises in Asia, Mexico and Russia that shook global capital markets. Investing internationally has always carried risks and it is by no means without perils today.

But many investors see a different trade-off, one based as much on a stagnant or declining United States as on certain international markets that are growing, if not booming. [If we keep in mind this article ‘assumes’ that the reader is, er, ‘wealthy enough’ to at least ponder the investment advice offered here, the same statement is ‘incendiary’ to those of us, er, ‘left behind’ by the investor class.]

“When you make an investment in nondollar currencies, you’re making two investments at once,” said Tony Roth, head of investment strategies at UBS Wealth Management. “You’re betting the dollar will go down, but you’re also buying another investment. You need to be compensated for that source of risk.”

He cited the example of buying a one-year Australian government bond, yielding 5.25 percent. He said he believed that the American dollar was going to lose value and the Australian dollar was going to gain it. That’s Part 1. Part 2 is that the Australian government is stable, so an investor can count on receiving that 5 percent annual return. The alternative is less than half of a percent if invested in United States Treasuries.

“I’m going to receive a return,” he said, “that more than compensates me for the marginal risk I’m taking.” [Notice the disturbingly ‘self-centered’ tone of this last paragraph. It’s not about the community you live in (being devastated) it’s all about making something for YOUR pocket! ‘Invisible hand’ my ass! It’s always been about ‘hooray for me and fuck the rest of you!’ It’s high time we put that kind of treasonous tyranny where it belongs, on the hangman’s platform!]

But there are far more risky investments. And the ones that are less liquid — infrastructure in China, say, or a private equity fund in Brazil — carry more uncertainty. But like their equivalents in the United States, they provide a higher return, in theory.

Mr. Frame said clients were investing in Asian infrastructure and Asian private equity by pooling their money with other investors. “There is a lot going on when a country is growing and developing that is hard to address through the public markets,” he said.

While there’s an obvious "pull" to international investments, there is also a bit of a "push" out of the United States: investors who are making their portfolios more international are doing so because they believe that the role of the United States in the global economy is shrinking.

Mr. Roth said the United States contributed 40 percent of global gross domestic product 15 years ago and now contributed 21 percent. He predicted that that figure would fall to 12 percent in another 15 years. Going along with this is the shrinking market capitalization of American stocks compared with global stocks.

“We have the U.S. experiencing flat to 2 percent G.D.P. growth, but you have Brazil, India and China with substantially higher rates,” Mr. Lucken said. “Equity investors are investing abroad to capture higher returns and invest ahead of higher growth rates.” [snip]


Do not fail to recognize this for what it is, it is nothing short of treason! These traitors are putting their own financial interests ahead of the interests of the rest of the nation. Until we regain control of the government, these worthless slimeballs will continue to literally bleed the rest of us to death…because in case you haven’t noticed, you are a ‘captive audience’, you have no place to go!

Unlike the three characters in tonight’s second offering

If you have enough money YOU CAN ‘buy your way out’ of the sinking US economy…

Could Millionaires Fleeing the U.S. Cause a Wildcard Economic Event?

November 21st, 2010

For years, I’ve received emails from people who want to move to New Zealand. Some young, some old. Some well off, some not so well off.

Over the last month or so, three millionaires have emailed me about moving to New Zealand. [Truth be told good citizen, if I had the money, I’d be looking for a ‘safer’ place to be myself…]

The three people who emailed me were all going to invest their way into New Zealand. In case you don’t know, millionaires can make “investments” in New Zealand to, in effect, buy different types of residence visas. New Zealand Immigration calls these “Business Visas.” Depending on the type of arrangement and the age of the applicant, between NZ$750,000 and NZ$10 million is required. [So plans to open a Pez dispenser sales booth isn’t good enough to buy you entry into a, er, ‘safer’ environment.]

It’s one thing for me to leave the U.S., with my meager savings, boxes of books and already old clothes (not much, in other words), but what happens if large numbers these wealthy people leave the U.S., pulling millions of dollars out of U.S. banks and moving it… elsewhere? [I think Kevin has the wrong ‘take’ on this, these people are fleeing the growing ‘economic desert’ where ‘lack of funds’ is increasing the incidence of ‘lawlessness’. There are still roughly 750 US Billionaires so a few, er, ‘multi-millionaires’ isn’t about to cause a financial panic…especially when we consider ‘what’ it is that makes most of these ‘refugees’ rich…stocks! These people AREN’T going to liquidate their holdings just to move to a different economy.]

It worries me that I heard from three of these people in such a short period of time. What does that mean, in terms of the bigger picture? Might this be a leading indicator of something to come? I started to wonder if this flow of wealthy people out of the U.S. represents a sort of wildcard threat to the U.S. economy. Is there a way to know how much money is leaving the U.S., and at what point it places the system in jeopardy?

I know, many of you are thinking, “Who cares if a few fat cats flee the U.S.?”

Well, in case you haven’t noticed, a tiny number people have most of the money in the U.S. The absurd U.S. ponzi scheme depends on these wealthy people leaving their funds in U.S. institutions. One of these people leaving the U.S. (and taking their money with them) would be like thousands or tens of thousands of “normal” people pulling their money out of the banks. [Still, the ‘percentages’ aren’t there…most of us don’t have a pot to piss in, never mind a window to throw it out of!]

Anyway, if little-old-Kevin on his backwater conspiracy blog heard from three millionaires who want to flee the U.S., what might we be able to extrapolate from that in terms of the bigger picture, if anything? Has some kind of tipping point occurred? Or, is this not that big of a deal?


Um, I’d be inclined to say ‘no biggie’, there’s aren’t ‘millions’ of millionaires and a lot of people who are so fortunate CAN’T liquidate their holdings because they’re locked up in a trust!

There are only a couple of hundred thousand ‘households’ with networth in excess of seven figures. Of those ‘couple of hundred thousand’, only one percent of them control 85% of that wealth! This brings us to our handful of billionaires, with a large percentage of members having a single billion and change.

Worse is how much of this exists only ‘on paper’. You can be fabulously wealthy ‘on paper’ but ‘penniless’ in fact. We are extremely fortunate that most of the ‘quadrillion dollars’ worth of CDS debt exists only ‘on paper’ because push come to shove, there isn’t a ‘quadrillion dollars’ in the whole fucking world!

Sort of like ‘old times’ where instead of ranting for three or four pages, I provide you with half dozen pages of somebody else’s stuff!

Then I’d worry that I’ve taxed your patience and sign off real quick

Leaving my opening comment unexplained…actually, half the time, I leave a lot of topics open for interpretation…

I guess I’m just no good at pinning something down and beating it to death. If I get bored writing it, you MUST get bored reading about it!

One last comment before I do close this out. Didn’t Mr. Rich focus this week’s piece on the potential for a Palin presidential bid?

Ironically, ol’ Hil has just gone ‘on record’ as stating she ‘isn’t interested’ in making another run at the White House.

Naturally, politicians seldom say what they mean…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, November 19, 2010

Workers of the World, Unite!

Greetings good citizen,

Events are conspiring to rob me of time so this post may be unusually brief.

Often previous posts inspire future musings and such is the case today. Specifically, it is yesterday’s observation that the next ‘push for the White House’ will focus vaguely on jobs and more closely on ‘workers’.

Since the Democrats and the Republicans are BOTH corporate ‘sellouts’, it doesn’t matter which one you vote for because what you'll wind up with is an opportunist willing to sell you down the river to the highest bidder.

Is there any irony here that this is both ‘treason AND politics’?

If ever there has been a greater opportunity for a ‘genuine third party' now is that time!

And the ‘Workers Party’ is the ‘way’…although there’s a little problem with that particular name…it’s already spoken for.

Yes good citizen the problem is compounded by the fact that the ‘Worker’s Party’ is better known as the ‘Socialist Worker’s Party’. (Not that this is a ‘bad thing’ considering our biggest ‘capitalist rivals’ are the COMMUNIST CHINESE!)

Key to setting up this new political party would be the vetting process designed to ‘weed out’ both Dino’s and Rino’s alike.

What use would it be to create a genuine third party only to have it usurped by the same sellouts who market themselves under the current two party ‘labels’, shifting allegiances as the political winds blow back and forth?

We don’t need another ‘vehicle’, what we need is a genuine foundation for change!

Something to vote ‘for’ instead of trying to pick the lesser of two evils!

Sadly, until things change, this is probably the most we can hope for.

The real challenge, as you know, will be preventing a true ‘people’s party’ from being ‘hijacked’.

Secondary to that will be the job of protecting the reputation of the defenders of the public trust from being smeared by the, er, ‘opposition’.

How sad is it that the MSM has already proven ‘ready, willing and able’ to besmirch the reputation of any organization that challenges their employers?


Which is to point out that sometimes the only way to fight fire is with fire…

Any ‘worker’s party’ that ISN’T attacked by the CO media has already been corrupted by the same influences that now control the Democratic and Republican parties.

It will be the intensity of these attacks that will indicate the degree with which the forces of corruption have succeeded.

The initial attacks will be, ‘feeble’…a grasping at straws, making nasty accusations for the sake of making them sort of thing.

As they succeed in ‘misrepresenting’ the statements of the candidates, the attacks will get more specific and ‘baseless’ will no longer have anything to do with it.

Left to your imagination will be the ‘validity’ of their claims that supporters of the workers party are behind the burning down of their media outlets.

They’ve been lying for decades, they’ve made a LOT of enemies…whose to say it wasn’t just a good time to go on the offensive?

Sidebar: Worker’s Party or not, media outlets WILL be attacked for their continued, repeated misrepresentations of the facts as they stand. This will happen in the not too distant future.

Let me slip my ‘fortune teller’s turban’ off here and return to ‘the political crusade’…

The ‘success’ of this wildfire ‘people’s movement’ will be marked by the eventual ‘dissolution’ of our current government after a ‘coup’ led by a group masquerading as the, er, ‘extreme right’… you know, those ‘one in five’ that keep winning elections?

The wildcard here is whether or not this will result in a bona-fide ‘civil war’?

What it will do is provide cover for the greedy as they escape the sinking USA…most will join their ‘off-shore’ operations in the artificially ‘cheaper there’…

And THERE good citizen, is the rub! Do we let these miscreants ‘escape justice’ or do we pursue and prosecute them?

Here we confront the true purpose of ‘politics’…

Some would be ‘content’ to be rid of the selfish and greedy, while others won’t rest easy until ‘justice’ has been served.

I’ll leave you to your own thoughts on this matter.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, November 18, 2010

American Reality Check...

Greetings good citizen,

The ‘idiot markets’ are up 170+ points as of this moment, shortly after noontime here on the East Coast.

Naturally, there is no ‘reason’ for this buying frenzy other than the sell off of the past couple of day has, er, ‘cheapened’ share prices making them more ‘attractive’ to investors who have nowhere else to dump their useless, er, ‘funds’.

Just as ‘idiot’s delight’ is the practice of converting money into power and then back into money, we can only speculate what the opposite of this is.

What do idiots do with their money when there are no ‘good’ investments?

There must be some sort of ‘regulation’ that keeps investors from bidding up their own holdings by more than a certain percentage over a given period of time.

Because if the only thing you had to do to make yourself richer was to bid up your own share prices, that’s what you’d do!

In recognition of that, it must be, by broad general agreement, prohibited. Thus do the ‘trading desks’ of the Wall Street investment banks, er, ‘control’ share trading.

Understand good citizen that ‘share price’ has no foundation in reality, we need only look as far backward as the ‘dot gone’ crisis to find companies that were trading at over $500 per share that HAD NEVER MADE A NICKEL IN PROFITS!

And many of them never did. (Make a nickel of profit…except for the law firms that liquidated them…)

You don’t suppose America Needs a Reality Check do you?

This country was built atop a strong middle class workforce and with the belief that anyone could aspire to achieving the American dream. But that foundation has been crumbling as middle class jobs -- manufacturing and service alike -- have been sent overseas in recent decades to low-cost labor markets.

The 'Great Recession' isn’t helping this reality. Unemployment is stuck at 9.6% and record numbers have been out of the workforce six months or longer.

To top it off, CEO pay is on the rise -- even during this economic downturn -- and the wage gap between the rich and poor is the widest it has ever been.

The percent of income garnered by the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households hit 48.2% in 2008, up from 34.6% in 1980, according to a recent report on income equality by the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. "Much of the spike was driven by the share of total income accrued by the richest 1% of households. Between 1980 and 2008, their share rose from 10% to 21% making the United States one of the most unequal countries in the world." [And that, my friends, is the end result of the ‘Reagan Revolution’…I’d say it’s time for a counter-revolution that makes ‘The Terror’ look like a family picnic!]

And the income gap has actually widened since the financial crisis: According to the 2010 Census, the top 20% of workers -- those making more than $100,000 each year -- received 49.4% of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4% earned by those below the poverty line. As reported by Slate.com, that ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968. (See: "Great Recession" Pushes Gap Between Rich and Poor to Record Levels)

This dire situation is not likely to get better any time soon, says Gary Shilling, president of A. Gary Shilling & Co, who predicts a prolonged period of slow economic growth and high unemployment. Even when thing do start to look up, “people are going to have to be much more realistic about their income levels.”

Shilling believes there will be jobs, but says, “People are going to have to work very hard to get trained and educated for jobs that do exist.” [Okay, like most present day ‘economists’ this guy just held up his ‘I’m an idiot’ sign for all to see! How much ‘time’ do these assholes think we have? This shit can’t go on forever nor will it. The media may ‘ignore’ the violence but you won’t, you’ll be hard pressed to escape it!]

To that point, in his latest newsletter he makes the argument that a college degree is not for everyone, nor should you expect a degree to yield you a certain level of income. [Is this a shred of ‘truthiness’? Did you study for a spot on Wall Street that doesn’t exist (because you don’t already have a relative who is willing to hire you)? You’re Bad, and piss poor planning ON YOUR PART!]

“Wouldn’t many be better off learning a skilled trade rather than facing bleak job prospects and lifetime student loan repayments after graduating from lesser institutions?,” he writes. [Um, not necessarily. We’re back to the pool of people able to pay a living wage to the ‘contractor class’ shrinking down to almost nothing (and they’re going to demand ‘perfection’! The slightest ‘defect’ and these pricks will refuse to pay, even going as far as demanding that you ‘undo’ the job at your own expense…)]

Shilling, author of a new book "The Age of Deleveraging", is optimistic [beyond credibility] and believes that America is “still the land of opportunity” where the American dream can be achieved. But first, he says, Americans need to “align themselves with reality” and become comfortable with the fact that things are not going to be the same as during the "salad days" of the 1980s and 1990s.


I don’t know what that FOOL has been sniffing but it has certainly, er, ‘clouded his judgement’.

We will all count ourselves as fortunate if we don’t find ourselves swimming in blood by the beginning of the coming year!

The only way to become that ‘disconnected’ from reality is be a conservative, so whatever Mr. Schilling thinks, you know he’s coming from the ‘insanely deluded’ side of the equation.

You can only marvel at how much these assholes believe people will tolerate…

And people will tolerate quite a bit…until they decide they aren’t going to put up with it anymore…then watch out!

Anyway…

Then we have this mea culpa from Mr. Panzer regarding yesterday’s post.

Should you follow the link you will find this boils down to his ‘misstating’ that the, er, ‘affluent’ are stepping up their spending.

The wildcard here is just how far down the ladder do you have to go to be considered (merely) ‘affluent’?

The guy with shoes looks ‘affluent’ to the barefoot individual just as the guy with feet looks ‘affluent’ to the person who has no legs…

How far do we push this rock before we arrive at a universally accepted ‘standard’?

You see, if you have to tap your credit cards to facilitate (routine) home repairs, you’re not ‘affluent’ in my book. This is pretty much SOP for the average ‘paycheck peasant’ so is the yardstick in use here the one where having a job at all makes one ‘affluent’?

That would be a ‘fair assessment’ to the newly homeless, although I’d opine that affluence is somewhat more than simply not being ‘destitute’…

This is nearly as disturbing as the ‘disappearance’ of the term ‘working class’ from the political vocabulary.

It is so disturbing that the next president, whoever that may be, is likely to ride the phrase right into the White House (regardless of their political ‘affiliation’.)

As far as I’m concerned, Obama was ‘the last straw’. This nation won’t survive another ‘liar’. Although it is difficult to argue that there is anything worthwhile left to ‘salvage’ from our current political system.

You can’t kill what’s already dead…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Contradictions

Greetings good citizen,

Well, we can all see that the global economy didn’t do any ‘cliff-diving’ today, but that’s today, what has some economists worried is the ‘food-fight’ that is brewing on the periphery.

Considering the basic nature of economics it is baffling that so many ‘financial experts’ ignore the implications of too much money chasing too few investment opportunities…

‘People Just Don’t Have the Resources to Buy the Basics'

I don't get it.

If, as the bulls say, the U.S. economy is primed full of Fed-created easy money; investors have lots of cash on the sidelines; corporate profits are near historic highs and businesses have the healthiest balance sheets they've had in years; and, the wealthy are really opening up their wallets, how is it, as WBIR-TV reveals in "Report Finds Millions of American Families Struggle to Put Food on the Table," that so many people are just barely getting by? [Here we once again (because this isn’t the first time the media has done this) see how the economy has been artificially divided to, er, ‘ignore’ the existence of the ‘surplus population’. Understand good citizen, if you work for a paycheck, you are in this group!]

A federal report released Monday reveals that millions of American families are struggling to put enough food on their tables.

The report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture says 17 million American families had trouble putting enough food on their tables in 2009.

That's roughly 15 percent of all U.S. households. [Worse, it suggests that that many again may be eligible but too proud to apply for assistance…]

"It's a very shocking and compelling figure," says USDA Undersecretary of Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Kevin Concannon.

"People just don't have the resources to buy the basics, the essentials," adds Dr. James H. Johnson of the University of North Carolina. [Better sing ‘the hymn’: If your paycheck doesn’t crack your nut, it’s not your employers problem, it’s YOURS!]

Johnson and other experts believe the number of "food-insecure" American families is tied directly to this country's troubled economy. [Well, ‘duh’!]

"In this current recession, more people are going without a jobs for a longer period of time," Johnson points out.

While the report indicates the number of "food insecure homes" remained roughly the same as in 2008, that number has more than tripled since 2006.

Concannon says USDA-funded food programs have helped to stabilize the number of America's "food-insecure" families. [Sadly good citizen, for large portions of the US, food isn’t the only ‘crisis’ unemployed families are forced to deal with. If you can’t buy food you can’t afford heat…or hot water, creating a world of problems of its own…]

"We're seeing record numbers of Americans turning to programs like the SNAP or what used to be called the Food Stamp Program, the supplemental nutrition program," he says.


Okay good citizen, what’s the problem here? That people are, er, ‘temporarily’ unable to put food on their table or is the problem much more severe because most of them have a better chance of seeing god than of ever becoming ‘gainfully employed’ again?

Beyond the occasional mention of government statistics, the CO media pretends this crisis doesn’t exist.

Why there is still a CO media outlet still standing is something that should trouble you too good citizen…but hey, we’ve all got our own troubles to deal with, don’t we?

Food Insecurity is the first rung on the ladder to both becoming a Banana Republic and of becoming a ‘Failed State’.

It’s a toss of the coin as to which will turn up first.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

CEO pay rises despite lay-offs and grab backs...

Greetings good citizen,

Most of you don’t own stock so most of you don’t follow the stock market. That said, the stock market has traditionally been held up for all to see as the, er, ‘barometer’ of the nation’s economic health.

Back during the first ‘crash’ of the stock market, many people had ‘blindly’ jumped into the stock markets to get a piece of the ‘easy money’ rising share prices generated.

While the story of those times SAYS few people owned stock, the opposite was true. Anybody who had two nickels to rub together had a few shares of some ‘up and coming’ company in their hip pocket as well.

While it is true that the average individual didn’t own a LOT of stock, almost everybody owned some…which is how the stock markets became the most widely watched indicator of economic health.

This brings us back to today where if you own stock chances are good that stock is in a mutual fund as part of your ‘retirement savings account’.

YOU don’t PERSONALLY own enough stock to fill a thimble, which is just as well as it is unlikely you will ever live long enough to retire…

The more likely prospect is not ‘work ‘til you drop’ but work until you’re discarded, then starve to death.

ANYWAY…What does the stock market have to do with either you or the economy?

Essentially nothing…BUT it will be used to, er, ‘convince’ you that the economy is circling the drain.

Take today’s action as a for instance:

Stocks Lower on Wall Street on Global Worries

After 23 Trillion in taxpayer handouts bailouts to the ‘financial industry’ it seems the ‘global economy’ still isn’t on ‘sound footing’.

What you need to wrap you head around is that 23 Trillion is 23 THOUSAND BILLION!

I think that needed to be pointed out for everyone who is making a ‘big deal’ out of the pithy 750 billion stimulus.

And if that’s not bad enough we need only look as far as Mr. Williams SGS site to learn that it would take ONE HUNDRED YEARS at a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT TAX RATE to pay off the deficit as it existed PRIOR TO the Gulf War and subsequent ‘financial crisis’.

I don’t know about you good citizen but I sure couldn’t go a hundred years without eating…nor would I be real comfortable with the idea of spending my entire life at the plant. (Since you wouldn’t have any money to commute with or to live off site your ONLY choice would be to live ‘on the job’.)

But wait a minute Slim! what’s this bullshit?

CEO Pay on the Rise


The chief executives of the largest U.S. public companies enjoyed bigger paydays in their latest fiscal year, as share prices recovered and profits soared amid the country's slow emergence from recession.

At these 456 companies, the median pretax value of CEO salaries, bonuses and long-term incentives, such as grants of stock and stock options, rose by 3% to $7.23 million, according to an analysis of their latest proxy filings for The Wall Street Journal by consulting firm Hay Group.

Investors made out well, too, with total shareholder return (based on the change in stock price plus reinvested dividends), coming in at 29%. The companies' total net income doubled from a year earlier to $510.9 billion.


Here’s your ‘puzzle’ good citizen. Why are the rich, rich? You guessed it, it is tied directly to their ‘stock holdings’. Why do stock prices keep going up? Because they keep bidding them higher!

How great is that? You can ‘bid’ yourself more money!

Like money itself, this is ALL bullshit!

Share price has no basis in reality (just as money has no ‘objective value’. There is NOTHING to compare it to! Before you say ‘gold’ keep in mind that it suffers from the exact same problem! You can’t compare gold to god; thereby proving it is worth a buck- three-eighty.) It is all SOME ASSHOLE’S OPINION…and what an asshole it is turning out to be!

We are being asked to suffer widespread poverty, nay, ‘destitution’ so that the conservative assholes can accumulate more than they need. (This is done mostly to keep their ranks…er, ‘exclusive’.)

Which is to say if ‘anybody’ could do it, what would be the point?

That’s the ‘mindset’ of the people in charge of this nation. It isn’t about ‘us’ it’s all about them!

(Which is again justified using the same ‘circular logic’ that ‘everybody’ thinks the same way!)

Perhaps this is the ‘root’ of ‘conservative disease’…it starts with thinking the worst of everyone, then with convincing yourself that everyone is like that!

Sadly, like the ‘talking to god’ shit, if you believe you know how others think, you’re more ‘psycho than psychic’!

Um, not to ‘alarm’ anyone but I do believe the time has come for the ‘crash’ that I predicted six months ago.

Like the relentless upward climb of the markets, the long overdue correction is about to commence.

Again, it is never a ‘straight line’ to the bottom (although there will be some ‘breathtaking’ dives for your viewing pleasure!

We will experience a period where stock prices will be ‘very appealing’ BUT, with no discernable economy at all on the horizon, only fools will buy.

I AM NOT a financial advisor nor do I own ANY stock. What I state above is my ‘opinion’ and it should be taken as such.

A ‘major correction’ was predicted within three months of August…and here we are.

Que sera, sera good citizen,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, November 15, 2010

Who's next?

Greetings good citizen,

What’s the word? After this morning’s browsing session I have determined that today’s word is ‘guts’, otherwise known as ‘intestinal fortitude’ or ‘backbone’.

Perhaps more disturbing is the continued display of ‘towering ignorance’ still being promoted by the ‘deflationistas’ who pointlessly continue to argue that deflation is somehow ‘different’ from inflation while both ‘effects’ result in the exact same thing!

Potato, potatoe, same fucking thing!

But wait good citizen, they’re right and they have proof! (The dollar fell against the Euro which tells us precisely squat! As neither one has ANY measurable value.)

I guess I’d better explain what I’m talking about here because it is, intentionally, if I’m not mistaken, confusing.

Simply put ‘inflation’ is the practice of spending money as fast as you can to maximize its purchasing power. Deflation, the falling ‘value/purchasing power’ of a currency is what drives this psychological phenomenon. [Remember: price is ever and always ‘arbitrary’ because the ‘real price’ of everything is zero. Yes Virginia, this is true even for works of art!]

You can chase your tail forever arguing that deflation is the (temporary) drop in demand, which is curiously related to the item in question being overpriced. How is that ‘deflated’ oil price working out for you (now that the fucking ‘sham’ elections are over?)

Isn’t the actual ‘algebra’ involved here related to how many people no longer have to commute now that their job has been exported? Now that that particular ‘bubble’ has been ‘absorbed’, the price of gasoline is going up again, isn’t it?

Which is to point out that ‘deflation’ is a ‘highly artificial distinction’ used to distract you from the real issue (which is your purchasing power that is falling off a cliff!)

Like we aren’t distracted enough…

Here you are nose to the grindstone; either busting your hump (to keep your worthless job) or searching high and low for something, ANYTHING that pays more than minimum wage and will (hopefully) last beyond Christmas.

Well search no longer good citizen, Fushigi is here!

Nope, wait a minute, gotta stop watching so much late night television!

Where were we? Oh yeah! We were talking about ‘perception management’, weren’t we…

Well, deflation isn’t the only ‘false flag’ flying around out there.

What do you suppose is ‘wrong’ with this article? Don’t want to go there? Okay, I’ll tell you. Germany was indeed correct when it labeled our financial policy ‘clueless’ (although that last word is the one I take issue with!)

Once again the Corporate Owned media is leaving the door wide open for ‘plausible denial’ when the truth is far more sinister.

What happened to tens of millions of US jobs, the exporting of which created the ‘financial crisis’ of ‘too much money with no place to go’?

No irony should be lost on the delicious ‘richness’ of this disaster or that the stupid fuckheads brought it upon themselves!

But we digress because by now it has become obvious (even to the stupid fuckheads) the magnitude of this screw up…it’s how they are proposing to ‘fix it’ that should have you shaking in your socks!

Oh yeah, it’s ‘reset button’ time!

And guess who’s paving the way? Bringing us full circle to the beginning and the subject of 'lacking a backbone…'

Worse good citizen, it seems the whole Democratic Party (which is actually loaded with ‘switch hitters’) is completely comprised of ‘jellyfish’!

Which is to ask a different question, since re-electing the current buffoon is a non-starter, precisely ‘who’ in the Democratic Party would you support for the 2012 ticket…Hillary?

After the ‘media freeze-out’ during the last election cycle you’d think Dennis Kucinich would be too smart to ‘try again’.

Well, ‘tis the season good citizen, we shall soon know just who will be a contender for the 2012 Democratic nomination…

Or has the media already convinced you that they can put another candidate from the ‘one in five crowd’ in the White House…
Or will we have (another) ‘media wet dream’ landmark election, a run off between Sarah and Hillary?

I think when that happens they’re gonna have to start watching the transmitter towers real careful like because the proverbial ‘jig’ will be up. If we have a Hillary vs. Sarah match up you will KNOW the media is playing ‘king maker’ and your vote is meaningless!

Disclaimer: I have nothing against two females competing for the nation’s top job, it’s THOSE TWO I have a problem with…neither is qualified! And you can count on one hand how many Secretaries of State then became president and have more than a few fingers left over!

WE COULD ‘force’ the current bought and paid for regime from office, it is preferable to the coming ‘abdication’ of our government and the subsequent ‘takeover’ by the ‘radical right’ (who have been waiting in the wings, licking their chops for this moment!)

BUT that would take more ‘organization’ than currently exists. I strongly believe the ‘silent majority’ will rally quite quickly once the radical right moves to seize power.

Church is church and something to be dealt with on Sunday, NOT everyday! There might be a few ‘religious fruitcakes’ out there, but not enough to hold onto power.

As studies have shown, ‘hard times’ actually diminishes attendance at religious services…probably because of the ‘collection plate’.

When times are tough ‘charity’ truly does begin at home.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Let the Royal Rumpus begin!

Greetings good citizen,

I find it somewhat disturbing that the media has announced the return of the freshly minted ‘lame duck’ congress…on a freaking Sunday!

I didn’t read the whole article but the ‘header’ I read used the present tense, implying they were already ‘hard at it’.

I know better and so do most of you, you’d be hard pressed to find better, more ‘accommodating’ working hours/conditions than those of our elected representatives.

The part that has me puzzled is how the CO media is going to gloss over the Republican’s continued refusal to do anything about the mess they made?

(Um, ‘CO’ is short for ‘corporate owned’ and is a far more accurate descriptor than the currently popular ‘MSM’ designation.)

Even the fringe ‘alternate’ media can be shoehorned into the MSM box, only the ‘corporate owned’ designation accurately divides the two.

In fact in this week’s OP/ED piece by the peerless Frank Rich there is mention of a book which traces the origins of the ‘hijacking’ of our political system to the shameless wooing of deep pocketed investors by both political parties…

Nowhere is it even mentioned that this became necessary BECAUSE of the outrageous price of television ads!

It is simple ‘cause and effect’, good citizen.

The media itself is responsible for pricing the ‘average citizen’ out of the political arena.

As we have often lamented, the people running for public office don’t have ANYTHING in common with the rest of us…which is perfectly O.K. because the laws they pass don’t apply to them, they only apply to US!

Few would dispute that what we have today is indistinguishable from Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ propaganda machine.

They have even gone as far as ‘updating’ historical data to ‘hide’ the huge economic deviations brought on by globalization.

Both the total size of the workforce as well as the number of people employed in ‘manufacturing’ have been completely ‘revised’ and ‘redefined’.

Worse, the ‘labor force participation rates’ are total fiction.

Why can’t you see the truth? Because the truth would prove what you already know, that you’re being cheated, big time!

You must do without so they can have more than they will ever need!

Did I mention gross mismanagement?

Naturally, you put up with this situation because there isn’t anything you can do about it.

But soon the ‘old laws’ will return and the royal fuckaree will begin.

Er, yeah, ‘Rumpus’ doesn’t quite capture the animus that will be involved here.

The media has lately become obsessed with pointing out that the ‘general public’ doesn’t ‘despise’ the wealthy…but what does the lying corporate media know?

There are plenty of people who would throw the cash in their pockets onto a fire that was lit underneath the selfish pricks that have pauperized the public for their personal benefit!

The exact ratio of resentful people to wannabes is not necessarily an ‘unknown’ either.

Yeah, I’d suspect the split between the number of people who would be satisfied with their fair share and the number where the whole shebang wouldn’t be enough for them runs eerily close to the ‘one in five’ conservative-normal person split.

But we currently have no way to verify this, er, suspicion…

The bad news here is the ‘conservative minded’ justify their greed by accusing everyone of being just as greedy as they are.

This is not true and we have numerous examples to prove it.

Hell, you don’t need my examples. You have witnessed for yourself people who have set their personal greed aside to do the right thing.

Odd how easily we believe the worst about our fellow citizens despite strong evidence to the contrary…

This brings us full circle to the cynic’s view that people in general suck!

Well, we all have our ‘moments’ and I don’t think I need to convince anyone that I can be a dickhead from time to time.

Do we conclude from our occasional behavior that people in general are shallow and self-centered?

In a world where we are all lied to repeatedly, it’s actually pretty remarkable that we aren’t more screwed up than we are!

While I am fond of pointing out how thin the conventions that prevent us from killing one another on sight are becoming, they remain intact.

Why do they remain intact? Because people need people and you’ve GOT TO trust someone. It’s in our nature.

So when I predict that the ‘old laws’ will be making a comeback, I’m talking about the ‘original’ human social contract.

The one that starts with ‘You don’t fuck with me and I won’t kill you…’

Don’t give me a reason (to kill you) and I’ll let you live…it really is that easy.

At the very center of this ancient social contract lies the exact same premise that lies behind the human anti-exploitation law and the golden rule…

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Easy.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, November 12, 2010

No matter how you slice it...

Greetings good citizen,

Stayed up until 5:00 AM this morning watching Michael Moore’s latest ‘Capitalism: A love story…’

Bad enough they aired it when only insomniacs (and night workers like myself) could watch it but they also stuck an R rating to it so my kids wouldn’t accidentally get a dose of, er, ‘anti-propaganda’!

There’s your ‘no child left behind’ for you. There are no jobs to educate your kids for so the most important task teachers are charged with today is brainwashing your kids into believing the USA is the greatest, freest nation on the planet!

How ‘shaky’ is the situation good citizen?

Is this shaky enough for you?


No. 333: Updated Outlook: U.S. Economy, Inflation, Markets, Liquidity and Systemic Stability

Subscription required
November 10th, 2010

• Economic and Systemic-Stability Crises Continues
• Promised Fed Actions Pummel Dollar versus Major Currencies and Precious Metals, as Global Markets Anticipate Higher U.S. Inflation
• Fed Policies Will Trigger Inflation but Not Recovery
• Hyperinflationary Great Depression Looms, Irrespective of Shifting Political Environment
• September Trade Deficit Should Have Little Impact on GDP Revision


As I asked yesterday, how much ‘mayhem’ are you prepared for?

Is the short answer ‘none’?

Heading into its third year (and absolutely NOTHING has been done about it) the fiscal crisis continues to erode the, er, ‘integrity’ of our economic system.

We are already in ‘heat or eat’ season, what will a good bout of inflation do to your ability to put food on your family’s table?

As I have stated repeatedly, if your paycheck does NOT crack your nut, it is not your fucking employer’s problem, IT’S YOURS!


Again, a ‘lack of organization’ will prevent general uprisings from turning into full-scale revolt.

However, the brutality with which the uprisings are put down with WILL provide the catalyst the leaders need to attract like-minded guerillas.

Tick-tock, good citizen; this isn’t a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’?

People are plenty pissed off by the ‘uneven’ way the crisis has been handled…and pissed off people tend to ‘over-react’…

How many deaths are too many good citizen?

The smart answer is one.

Sadly, the ultimate outcome may turn out to be that millions are not enough!

It is not sufficient to eliminate the ‘slavers’; we must also eliminate the ‘wannabe’s’.

I’m not saying kill them but we do need to ‘separate’ them from the rest of us.

The ‘cruelest’ part of this proposal rests in separating them even further. The slavers can’t be allowed to breed.

As I have asked (again) repeatedly, if we’re all in this together then who the fuck is the ‘opposition’?

And sadly, it turns out they are indeed ‘the slavers’.

It’s all about them and their needs; everybody else can go fuck themselves!

Well, the ‘bad news’ is that if you aren’t prepared to share the planet then you aren’t entitled to one!

How do we tell?

Well, there is one ‘dead giveaway’ that’s pretty hard to erase and that’s the R from your voter registration.

People who are well known for judging others who do not share their twisted worldview as ‘wastes of butt wipe’ pretty much punches your one way ticket to exile!

What, YOU’RE not like that? You’d better hope your non-Republican friends (and most of you don’t have any) are willing to vouch for you…

‘Birds of a Feather’ will swing together…

We need only provide the rope.

And that rope will come in the form of putting all of you ‘like-minded’ individuals together!

Because you know what’s going to happen the moment you walk into ‘Republican central’…you’re gonna be ‘judged’.

If you ain’t a Rockefeller, you’re a peasant and your betters won’t be obliged to give you a thing (including respect!)

But I digress…

But not by much because this is how you’ll be able to tell the revolution is ‘on track’. If the rebels fail to exile the self-styled elite, pick up your gun, there is still more fighting to do!

Sad to say the picture is grim even in victory, but it will only be painful for the enemies of civil society.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Currency Wars

Greetings good citizen,

Asshole central (better known as the ‘corporate media’) expects you to believe the next downward leg in the completely fabricated ‘financial crisis’ (which is pushing what passes for our economy into the abyss) is that we are on the verge of a ‘currency war’. (Read 'class war.')

Left to our imaginations is whether or not the powers that be are prepared to admit that there is no such place as ‘the cheaper there’.

BUT, to admit such a thing is to admit to ‘currency manipulation’, the only vehicle capable of creating such a place.

IF they admit to currency manipulation, they are admitting that they screwed tens of millions of workers out of their jobs and their pensions.

We don’t live in the middle of a huge ‘economic desert’ for nothing…

Cui bono? [Who benefited?] The fuckers who ‘own’ commerce [and to a lesser degree their ‘subordinates’ along with their bought and paid for politicians, who negotiated their ‘trade agreements’ for them] the rest of us took a sharp stick in the eye!

I can’t ‘paint the target’ any clearer than that…while the bought and paid for media still feigns ignorance as to ‘who’ is responsible for the collapse of…

It’s a two-edged sword. On one side we have the financial system and on the other is civilization itself.

Because of the way the current (predatory) system is set up, you can’t have one without the other.

Whereas, EVERY (viable) replacement system has finance as an internal function of commerce (If we are to correct the imbalances created by the debt driven system.)

There’s your ‘acid test’ good citizen, if a proposed alternative operating system is based on credit at all, it is NOT viable.

Credit is how the ‘fuckers’ get something for nothing. It’s also how YOU get fucked. THEY buy on credit and NEVER pay it back but YOU can’t pull off the same deal!

Isn’t it nice to have ‘friends’ [read: lackeys] who not only interpret the law but also get to decide when the law has been broken?

Welcome to hell good citizen! (Well, hell for YOU anyway! The ‘do as I say and not as I do’ crowd readily acknowledges that this is {for them, for now} ‘Heaven’)

Since there is nothing we can do about the FED HEAD turning our currency into confetti in a brazen plan to enrich the already wealthy at our expense. What should we be watching for?

[If you’ve been paying attention you will have noticed that the principle effect of QE2 is to elevate ‘stock prices’.]

Understand, the problem with the global economy is that most of the money is, er, ‘trapped’ in the upper reaches of the income distribution, leaving the debt enslaved working class without enough money to purchase necessities.

So why does ‘Bonehead Ben’ think making the rich richer is going to ‘cure’ this ‘problem’?

Since YOU aren’t going to get ‘fat, stupid and happy’ from your stock portfolio, the ‘heads up’ implied here is to prepare for a massive surge in the price of EVERYTHING.

Imagine having to chase your next meal down with a stick and killing it…

AND if you’re lucky enough to already have matches, you can probably scrounge up enough wood to build a cook fire…for now. (Because you won’t be the ONLY ONE who will be ‘economizing’.

Given that it is now late fall across much of the Northern Hemisphere, you’ll need wood for more than just cooking…but so will a lot of other people!

You’d better plan on hooking up with a few of your more violent neighbors so you can get a piece of the truck hijacking action (while it lasts.)

There’s nothing like a sudden increase in the probability of getting killed to reduce the number of bastards crazy enough to drive a rig over the largely unprotected roads.

The last loads to be driven over the roads will be driven by cops, escorted by dozens of their ‘peers’…not that this will save them.

Starving people are VERY resourceful! (Even more so when their families are starving too.)

(It’s always sooo ‘cheery’ to read my constant grim predictions. Understand, once the killing starts, there won’t be a ‘lot’ of supply convoys. The ‘shortages’ in the destination communities will keep what remains of the police force busy until they stop reporting for duty…which will be sooner than anyone thinks.

Naturally, once supplies stop coming to you, your need for them doesn’t cease…So, you’ll be forced to go after ‘what you need’ from wherever it can be found!

Funny how the ‘marauder’ game is also a two edged sword, some days you are the marauder and other days you are the marauder’s victim!

Thus do we once again see the significance of ‘strength through numbers’.

Naturally you must be wondering if there is any situation that DOESN’T lead to the collapse of civilization and I’d say ‘yes’, BUT, the path that leads to salvation is ‘narrow’ indeed.

And, as I pointed out yesterday, it is usually ‘sabotaged’ before it gets off the ground.

Why do the ‘self-interested’ make such good leaders? Because they KNOW what they want and they are RELENTLESS in their pursuit of it!

You could even point out that they are more than a little ‘reckless’ (considering where we are today and WHO is responsible for it…)

Finding a leader who can see beyond the end of their own nose is a difficult challenge indeed, but it can be done.

The problem is the ones who can’t have a habit of killing anyone who stands in the way of what they want…and that is usually the one who can see the consequences of their actions.

Thus do most revolutions fail.

But not to worry good citizen because in this case we are going to have no choice but to revolt!

I mention the ‘doomed’ aspect of most revolutions to make you aware that there are wolves among you, don’t trust them.

Um, and by the way, this QE thing isn’t going to end well.

Hyper-inflation, here we come!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner