Thursday, March 31, 2011

Worse than it appears

Greetings good citizen,

The, er, ‘near collapse’ of the world’s financial markets is purported to have been caused by reckless lending/investment, of course, the official version is ‘speculative’ rather than ‘reckless’ but it turns into the same difference.

Is it really ‘reckless’ to, er, ‘lend’ money to people you ordinarily wouldn’t GIVE a dollar to for a cup of coffee?

Worse, of course is the ‘unsubstantiated income’ part of the puzzle. For CENTURIES banks have DEMANDED absolutely rock solid proof of both income and employment before approving even a modest loan.

So what the fuck happened? Did bankers suddenly ‘lose it’ and start handing money out to anybody that asked, because they asked?

Um, no…in fact something much more sinister was going on behind the scenes.

First and foremost the, er (now global) ‘economy’ had arrived back to the same place the US economy had been thirty years ago, that forbidding place they call ‘saturated markets’.

And the only way to shake more business out of chronically ‘underpaid’ consumers was to ‘loosen credit’.

And the only ‘safe’ way to lend to, er, ‘marginal’ borrowers was to have the government ‘guarantee’ the loan.

Anyway, push come to shove and pretty soon we’re talking a quadrillion dollars here!

Seriously good citizen, is the WHOLE FUCKING WORLD worth a QUADRILLION DOLLARS?

Because if it is, then we have a Zimbabwe situation on our hands where the problem folds in on itself, how much can a dollar be worth?

The answer, as we are finding out, isn’t much at all.

Like that weren’t bad enough, ‘throwing good money after bad’ is only making the whole situation worse.

The entire US housing market is (very generously) estimated to be worth 7 trillion dollars.

Our current ‘dearth of buyers’ situation probably drops that generous estimate by more than half, you’d be lucky to get 2 trillion for the whole US market (considering how much of it lies in an ‘economic desert’ now.)

So where does this ‘thousand trillion dollar’ figure come from?

Why, the same place all values come from, the greedy heart of the investor (coupled with the ‘bottomless’ pockets of the government.)

But that’s not the problem is it? The problem is how much of this ‘imaginary value’ is going to ‘leak’ into the real economy?

This is the shit ‘hyper-inflation’ is made of. It is the same thing that leads to 2 bottles of spring water and a pair of watercress sandwiches ‘fetching’ nine figures.

At which point the ‘money’ has gone ‘beyond funny’.

When the ‘scrap value’ of the paper exceeds a note’s ‘face value’, you know you’re in trouble.

This is precisely why bankers are being rewarded with million dollar bonuses.

If you or I had fucked up this bad we’d be staring at prison time!

Anyway, more than three years into this monumental cluster fuck and things STILL aren’t on an even keel.

Naturally, some of that is due to NOBODY BEING PROSECUTED for the original crimes, (which is a crime in itself) and the fact that nobody has enacted legislation to curb these destructive practices from continuing. Another crime but hey, we can just keep stacking ‘em up because ‘rich men don’t go to jail’…

Something that is likely to remain true…although if I remember correctly, the elite of King Louis’s court spent their brief last days in the Bastille before they were beheaded.

I’m thinking most of today’s elite will never see the inside of a courtroom, most of them will be tried and executed on the streets.

We’re even seeing some of the same behavior on display that was seen during those perilous times.

Which is to ask ‘do the poor even exist if we do not see them?’

My own sister was living out of her car…but I’m a lot ‘closer to the ground’ than your average resident of a ‘gated community’ is.

My job, as I keep pointing out, is to bring the big picture into focus for you. If you cannot see the ‘treachery’ of those who would cheat you out of everything they can get away with, It’s not because ‘nobody’ was pointing it out…although I am as close to ‘nobody’ as you’re ever going to get!

How sad is it good citizen that in the space of fifty years we find ourselves stranded aground on the exact same shoals we wrecked on in the late 60’s?

And until we alter how and why things get done we will keep on, er, ‘crashing’ here.

Just another tidbit for you to chew on.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Like your life depended on it...

Greetings good citizen,

Here’s a piece of ‘sage advice’ that large numbers of us are incapable of following because a majority of us DOES NOT OWN LAND!

That’s one of the ‘funky’ things about farming, if you farm land you don’t own, guess who can claim the ‘fruits of your labor’?

This is more than a little fucked up because the ‘name of the game’ is survival.

Worse, ‘property taxes’ were instituted to separate people from arable land and food sources that let them escape performing ‘forced labor’ (often for less than sustenance wages.)

So while I am in complete agreement with the notion that in the not too distant future your life (specifically the quality of it) will depend on your ability to, er, provide for yourself. I would add that few of us, at this time, are, er, ‘blessed with sufficient acreage’ to meet our nutritional needs.

This adds insult to injury, being separated from the means of supporting ourselves while, er, ‘commerce’ no longer requires our ‘forced labor’.

You wanna boil this down to its LCD, it’s as simple as asking yourself ‘what’s in it for me?’

Not ‘pie in the sky’ or maybe someday…what the fuck DO you GET (for your considerable ‘pain and suffering’?

Does your ‘get’ amount to having the rug pulled out from under you the minute you get too old to keep up with the kids?

Are you expected to, alternately, stay late to get work out the door and leave early when there isn’t any work? And this helps YOU how?

While I am seriously down of the Libertarian ‘self-centered’ attitude, you DO have certain ‘rights’ as well as certain ‘expectations’ that stem from your membership in society…something the Libbies are fond of ‘revoking’ the moment it becomes ‘inconvenient’.

A land governed by ‘ownership’ is more than a little too cruel for my tastes…just take a good look around.

Sad how this sort of bullshit brings us full circle with the ‘mystery’ of why you will find human outposts even in the most inhospitable parts of the planet. Why do you suppose people live in these barren, burning deserts or these frigid, barren wastelands?

It is testament of man’s ‘inhumanity’ to his fellow man as well as a ‘tribute’ to the value of freedom.

Well Bubba, speaking of ‘wastelands’, I’ve got some bad news for you. Due to ‘gross mismanagement’ the place you now call ‘home’ is about to become part of a growing ‘global economic desert’.

If you draw a paycheck as your, er, ‘primary means of support’, you can kiss your ass good-bye!

What, you’re ‘too valuable’ for that? Well, let’s get that stupid idea right out of your head!

You either join the ‘will work for food’ club or hit the streets!

Think you’re too valuable, think again.

In the coming ‘Age of austerity’ there will be too many people and not enough food. If you want to be one of the people with food, you will have to, er, ‘surrender’ a little something for it.

How much is a ‘little’…what’s a trifle to them will likely be ‘dear’ to you. Let’s start with a 16hour day, seven days a week and see where that takes us?

Want ‘easier duty’? You might get ‘preferential treatment’ if ‘Massa’ finds you attractive…

What’s this Massa bullshit? You want the food? Massa comes with the ‘bargain’!

Oh, and don’t be naïve, we’re only talking two meals a day here, gotta make that stuff last! (If you should piss Massa off anytime during the day your ‘second meal’ could be forfeit!)

You don’t call him/her ‘Massa’ for nuthin!

Although you know the drill, chances are excellent you will seldom lay eyes on Massa personally. It’s Massa’s ‘foreman’, a slave just like you that will make your life miserable.

The scary part is you can see this one coming even now. Money is getting so ‘abused’ that people will readily abandon it in favor of ‘real assets’.

Your ‘purchasing power can be reduced to nothing but they can’t reduce ‘real goods’. If you get paid in chickens, the chickens will always be chickens as there’s no way to ‘dilute’ them.

Not that Massa will be the slightest bit hesitant to short you the number of chickens you have coming to you. The prick will probably even dare you to say something to him about it.

Yeah good citizen, think you have a ‘raw deal’ now? Wait until the ‘new normal’ gets rolling!

There are many ways to be beaten into submission and none of them are particularly pleasant…

Just another little tidbit for you to chew on while you’re wondering how this whole shit-storm thing is gonna play out.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Intelligent vs Educated

Greetings good citizen,

Like a train wreck, it depends on which car you were riding in as to whether or not your world has already ‘crashed and burned’.

The part that sucks is the people who could least afford it were seated in the figurative ‘front’ of the train, so they continue to get bombarded by the cars crashing in from behind them.

Which is to say the ‘hits’ just keep on coming.

To give you an idea just how ‘slow’ this slow-motion train wreck is, my ‘car’ hit the proverbial wall in 2001 and I’m still ‘standing’ (in a manner of speaking.)

I am fortunate to have a spouse capable of ‘picking up the slack’…not that she’s particularly ‘happy’ about this turn of events.

But as you can see here, I am far from being ‘alone’ in having the ability to support my family stripped away from me. [Hat tip: Some Assembly Required]

Which returns me to the topic of what was on my mind when I awoke this morning to what sounded like a thunderclap.

Which is too point out that not all trips to ‘dreamland’ take us to the land of make believe.

And that perhaps is what was so unsettling about where my head happened to be at when I was so rudely awakened.

Dunno what I was, er, ‘dreaming’ about but I woke up thinking, “what use is intelligence (sic education) if you can’t use it?”

Take a good look at the ‘mess’ our civilization is and understand that there isn’t ONE, not one ‘decision-maker’ who doesn’t have a first rate education (which is to say a ‘sheepskin’ from a top notch school.)

What the fuck was the point? I’d dare say we’d have done, er, (figure of speech here) ‘just as well’ with a bunch of dropouts running things.

In fact, since the implication is that most people who can afford to go to Ivy League schools pretty much ‘buy’ their degrees, I’m probably not too far off the mark, don’t you think?

Worse, if you aren’t going to become a CIA/FBI/NSA ‘spook’ then you can attend a ‘technical college’ and train for what is basically an ‘entry level’ position in some of the lowest paying fields the ‘service economy’ has to offer.

‘One of’ being the operative words here. I’ll remind you again that if you work for a paycheck, regardless of how large it may be, you’re still A FUCKING PEASANT!

And since 99% of us fit that description, the idea is to make it ‘universal’.

Better for us all to be Indians than for half of us to be content to ‘pretend’ to be Chief.

More importantly, as society becomes more complex, ‘competency’ will start to be a real issue, (it already is!) We can no longer afford to hire ‘minders’ for overpaid incompetents.

Worse, the minders have to ‘work around’ their incompetent ‘superiors’, making them mostly ineffective…leading to the mess you wake up to EVERY FUCKING DAY!

The truly disturbing part of this whole situation is how the incompetent like nothing better than for you to remain as ignorant as possible of their bungling or that the situation could be considerably better managed!

How unfortunate is it that what you see is ‘as good as it gets’?

The job is theirs, they bought it fair and square!

If that’s not bad enough then we have this piece which makes us wonder if they are, er, eating their words?

Looks like ‘hyper-inflation’ is back on the menu, not that it was ever really off, it was merely ‘misinterpreted’ as ‘deflation’.

As Mr. Williams explains it, if the economy shrinks faster than the money supply, the end result is ‘hyper-inflation’.

Although we are once again confronted with potatoe/potato debate, if you end up in the same place does it matter what you call it?

With ‘the same place’ being defined as a situation where money becomes ‘virtually worthless’ because nobody has any. Which is another disturbing property of ‘a legal construct’.

Unlike money, resources are a ‘constant’.

Which is to point out that when ‘barter’ re-emerges it will be wildly popular with the ‘self-sufficient’ crowd, which is to say those ‘self-reliant, Libertarian types’.

Yes, the ‘not so intelligent’ crowd will once again fail to consider what they are giving up by abandoning a ‘medium of exchange’.

Can you say ‘healthcare’?

Who would have the time to pursue medical training if they also had to hunt and farm? You can’t barter from an empty cart…

Worse, who could afford medical treatment if all you had were a few animals and a small vegetable patch?

It’s a two edged sword, isn’t it? On one hand the ‘ability to pay’ isn’t there and on the other, the necessary support (drugs and medical tools such as tests and diagnostics) would also cease to exist if ‘money’ were abandoned.

How disturbing is it that without ‘abandoning money’ we are already facing a crisis centered on the ‘general inability’ to pay?

Which is our cue to don our double thick, screw down tin-foil hats as we zip across to examine the other side of the deeply disturbing ‘competence’ coin.

As I have pointed out numerous times, the ‘trend’ we are following is far too, er, mercenary to be mistaken for ‘incompetence’.

It certainly appears that our ‘best and brightest’ indeed know precisely what they are doing…they only want it to LOOK LIKE ‘incompetence’ so to better deflect suspicion from their decidedly disturbing goals.

There are a few ways to address the twin crises of Peak Oil/Peak resources but only ONE WAY to kick the can further down the road and that is to eliminate the, er, ‘surplus population’.

Let the supply lines collapse and BILLIONS will die in the ensuing, er, ‘confusion’.

Left to your imagination good citizen is whether or not YOU are considered part of the ‘surplus population’?

The answer lies in the paycheck, if you don’t ‘own’ an income stream, you’re ‘expendable’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, March 28, 2011

Fallacious Generalizations

Greetings good citizen,

Despite happy talk to the contrary, our civilization’s ‘Death Plunge’ proceeds apace. Most conspicuous is the ongoing lack of leadership being displayed by our elected but seemingly ‘clueless’ legislators.

Which is to ask if you’ve ever seen such a ‘tone-deaf’ bunch?

Naturally, their ‘cover’ is the media’s continued insistence that we are so ‘evenly divided’ on just about every topic that our politicians don’t know what to do.

And the ‘rational’ explanation for this is the conflict that exists between what ‘the represented’ want and what the ‘campaign contributors’ want.

The part that disturbs most voters is how the ‘campaign contributors’ keep getting their way.

This is going to lead to frustration, and that frustration will likely result in ‘direct action’.

Most States don’t have ‘recall provisions’ that allow the electorate to, er, ‘correct’ mistakes at the ballot box…and it is debatable if such measures are necessary, after all, you couldn't ‘recall’ a king either.

I think you can see where this is headed. Some of it might be on display right now considering how thin the field of candidates for President is at the moment.

I, er, ‘predict’ (if we even have elections in 2012) that there will be far fewer candidates then there have been in the recent past.

Worse, we will most likely be confronted with a repeat of the ‘is THIS the best we can do?’ issue.

But that’s provided there are elections next fall, a lot can happen between now and then.

Which is to ask how fucked up is it that most of you are willing to believe in ‘divine intervention’ at the same time you’d relegate something as commonplace as a ‘coup’ to ‘tin-foil hat territory?’

Because that’s where we’re at, good citizen.

Or at least that’s the impression the corporate owned media has created for us. “All is well with the world, at least until December 21, 2012.”

How frightening is it good citizen that the fate of our entire species currently resides in the hands of certifiable lunatics and there isn’t a fucking thing we can (legally) do about it?

Legality aside, we’d be pretty hard-pressed to ‘successfully’ save our collective asses from impending doom, largely due to lack of organization (complicated further by a severe lack of cohesion.)

There are probably countless plans to rescue the nutjobs from the violent revolution they so richly deserve but not one provision to save the rest of us from the nutjobs themselves!

Because guess who made the plans?

Sad, isn’t it?

That said, today’s offering provides us a brief glimpse into the very quagmire of which I speak:

It is a tautology to say that a state that controls its own fiat currency cannot become insolvent in that currency, since they can never lack that which they can create from nothing. The state does not run out of its currency, rather, it runs out of people who will accept it at the official face value.

I would stipulate that central currency issuers can attempt to set arbitrary values, and to enforce them through things like official valuation and wage and price controls. Indeed, practical experience seems to indicate they inevitably must and will become increasingly draconian in their central planning. Dictatorships generally embrace fiat monetary systems without external discipline as policy, but rarely is this a sign of a vibrant economy or a government that respects the individual's rights to just recompense for goods and labor. [FULL STOP! The man makes an important observation that provides a ‘teaching moment’. The ‘goods’ are always and forever ‘free’ it is only their ‘scarcity’ that gives them ‘value’. What is deserving of ‘recompense’ is ‘labor’, time you could have devoted to other (presumably life sustaining) activities! (And it is my ‘opinion’ that in this there should be no ‘middle men’, everyone should be compensated DIRECTLY for their efforts!) All your money won’t another minute buy…back to the article.]

The problem with limitless issuance would first appear with necessities that the state must acquire externally, that is, outside their direct sphere of political control. In the case of the United States, for example, oil comes to mind. [While it is an excellent ‘example’, it also gives a ‘false impression’. The US is far from ‘out of oil’. Most of the low hanging fruit has been picked. The stuff that is harder to get at and needs more refinement is still in the ground so it is misleading to point to our ‘reliance’ on foreign energy reserves. What SHOULD blow your mind is how we currently get most of our oil from right here the Western Hemisphere so WTF are our troops (and nearly a trillion of our dollars) doing in the Middle East?]

I am not suggesting a return to a gold or silver monetary standard, for that too has its weaknesses and is no panacea. But rather, I am addressing the particular overstatements being made by those who promote the Fed, and those who promote the Treasury, as infallible arbiters of monetary value.

I’m probably just as ‘guilty’ of using/failing to point out ‘fallacious generalizations’ so don’t think I’m beating Jesse up. Perhaps I’m just more sensitive to them today.

So, some ‘quagmire’ eh?

Leads us back to the original proposition of how we can be expected to make ‘rational decisions’ if we don’t have accurate, up to date information.

Which, sadly, we aren’t…expected to make decisions that is. We are expected to take what comes and like it…even if it kills us.

I’ll leave you to ponder that as we await tomorrow’s, er, ‘progress report’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Memory Lane

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while you encounter a piece the addresses something that’s always bothered you.

You brush it off at first thinking it’s ‘poetic license’ or, as Hollywood often does, ‘romanticizing the past’…

But the past depicted is NOTHING like the past as YOU experienced it. Then you encounter kids, who haven’t lived through what you lived through telling you totally fabricated stuff and calling it history.

Well, Mr. Sirota, (a relative ‘spring chicken’ compared to those of my generation) has nailed this ‘angst’ many of us (who routinely call the media liars) carry with us.

Angst that starts when someone too young to remember starts regurgitating the ‘Hollywood version’ of events YOU lived through…and you suddenly realize the ‘inaccuracies’ you originally laughed at were more sinister than you originally thought.

Anybody who actually LIVED through the Reagan presidency KNEW ‘Morning in America’ was a total fabrication, a load of bull shit. Those were terrible times, filled with hardship and loss.

I was totally amazed when Reagan got re-elected…he was NOT the popular president the lying media continues to paint him as…I mean shit jack, someone tried to assassinate the jerk! Not exactly ‘Mr. Wonderful’ if you get what I’m saying…

It is a small wonder nobody tried to ‘whack’ W…but I think he was kept under ‘close guard’. The opportunity never presented itself…and he sure as hell wasn’t a ‘man of the people’.

I suspect he still is…closely guarded that is.

The thing that amazes people like me, people of a certain age, is that we could have, er, ‘produced’ two of the worst presidents EVER, almost ‘back to back’!

Naturally, it is the ‘too bizarre to be a coincidence’ nature of this phenomenon that gave birth to the ‘captive government’ idea.

That and the fact that the ‘interim’ presidents have been ‘do nothings’, like the current tone-deaf ‘meat puppet’.

The odds against electing two total incompetents, ‘back to back’ like that are astronomical…almost as astronomical as the odds are against such bone heads being ‘re-elected’; but it happened, twice!

It will be a total miracle if the current incumbent gets re-elected…that’s gonna be an ‘in your face’ moment because, despite what the pundits say, Mr. Obama is already as ‘unpopular’ as Mr. Bush, which should tell you something right there.

Not that I think it is likely we’ll see another, er, ‘exercise in futility.’ (But I’ve predicted that before, haven’t I.)

Nope, I’m betting (I got nothing to bet so it will have to be a ‘gentleman’s wager’…and I’m pushing it there too!) what passes for ‘our government’ will collapse sometime this spring after the Republican’s, ‘walk away’, saying they can’t ‘negotiate’ with the other side, that the Democrats are being ‘unreasonable’.

Not that anybody besides the Plutocrats and their Republican operatives will favor the draconian measures the conservatives will use as ‘openers’.

Bizarrely, the Conservatives will claim that all they’re try to do is ‘return’ to the ‘good old days’. Days that never existed except in the most fevered of their pubescent dreams.

And this is the ‘downside’ of letting the self-interested be the arbiters/interpreters of the past. It is doubly disturbing that to be a conservative in the first place one must possess a propensity for twisting the facts to fit a decidedly warped worldview.

Worse, if you disagree with this twisted outlook then it is YOU who are ‘screwed up’.

Just ask El Rushbo…

The part that really SUCKS good citizen is we got where we are sitting today in a nationwide, coast to coast ‘economic desert’ BECAUSE WE FOLLOWED ‘conservative principles’ (which the ASSHOLES NOW CLAIM weren’t done ‘properly’, which is why the global economy is falling apart!)

Sadly, like the largely ‘imaginary past’ they have fabricated for us, we also suffer from the gross mismanagement of our collective economy because of their efforts to direct our attention away from the real crisis facing the current ‘social model’.

Like things weren’t bad enough, now we have shit like this to contend with.

Sidebar: not for nothing but it has occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, the earthquakes are a ‘side-effect’ of using this variety of ‘weather control’ technology. A ‘wrinkle’ they have been unable to iron out.
Perhaps it is just an ironic coincidence but weather here in New England has been ‘fucked up’ since the Blizzard of ’78.

The ‘coincidence’ is that the HAARP satellite was built by Lexington, Massachusetts based Raytheon company. Where do you suppose the controls were for such a unit?

Again, can’t prove nothing so you’ll have to keep your tin-foil hat screwed down nice and tight.

Just saying, ya know?

So, let’s conclude this bad boy with the observation that ‘game over’ is a fairly universally agreed conclusion. Nobody (except the clueless ‘perma-bulls’) is even pretending that things are (ever) going to get ‘better’.

More importantly, we are already in the ‘end game’. What nobody is talking about is how they’re going to pull this off.

There are numerous avenues open to them where they will encounter only limited, if any, resistance.

So even if the government ‘shuts down’, once civil order starts to ‘fray’, the government, such as it is, will be, er, ‘restored’.

The important thing to understand is we are already thirty years too late to prevent the government from being taken over, that’s a ‘done deal’. We WILL NOT regain control without a vicious fight.

Literally an ‘over their dead bodies’ thing.

So be it.

But I digress…

What I’m trying to say is…and if you’re honest with yourself, we’re already there, is that ‘normal’ will continue to get more and more ‘goofy’.

You’ll wake up one morning with a tank parked in your driveway and you won’t even blink…there will even be a good probability that you invited the tank crew to park there!

For some FUCKED UP reason, your brain WILL NOT think anything is wrong BECAUSE OF THE LIES THEY KEEP FEEDING YOU!

It will (because it doesn’t today) never occur to you that their fucked up policies and gross mismanagement is the cause of all of the violence that led to a tank being parked in your yard in the first place!
Reminds me of a famous one attributed to a particular despot but I suspect they all are guilty of this kind of flawed ‘reasoning’.

It goes: “How fortunate is it for the governments of the world that their people don’t think?”

This is a lie and should read, “how fortunate is it for the governments of the world that their people are powerless to restrain them?”

A statement that is more ‘generally true’ than being completely true.

But I run over so I’ll leave you to ponder that thought,

Until next time, Thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, March 25, 2011

Fog of War

Greetings good citizen,

It really is quite a show to watch as our nation is dismantled by the self-interested into little ‘fiefdoms’ that the perps will be both unwilling and unable to control.

Perhaps most curious is the failure to put an end to the blatant ‘pillaging’ of our economy.

The reason is even more disturbing…’we’ aren’t equipped to handle this kind of crisis. Our government was established on the premise that commerce would desire to flourish in the local marketplace.

We don’t have the tools (nor will we get them in time) to restore balance to our economy.

Left to our imaginations is whether or not our elected leaders are too stupid or if they are in fact too corrupt to perform the job they were elected to do? (Or is it a simple case of being ‘rudderless’, that they have been, er, ‘neutered’ by the self-interested and are therefore ‘unable’ to act?)

As I have opined previously, what is the point of even having ‘elections’ if the winner is forced to take their marching orders from the same, er, (corporate) ‘gatekeepers’?

How long do you suppose we can keep stealing from Peter to pay Paul?

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Republican governors are taking it upon themselves to reduce unemployment benefits (how long you can collect) to ‘save’ businesses from being ‘overtaxed’ (for throwing their workforce into the streets!)

Who are these psychopaths and how do they get elected to public office?

Sadly, only the owners of ‘the printing press’ (media) know who really ‘won’ a given election.

This is why I advocate the we abandon the practice of ‘electing’ legislators and vote directly on the law ourselves!

Of course, things would be ‘different’ under A Simple Plan.

Nobody would ‘own’ the media or any other avenue of commerce, they wouldn’t be ‘for sale’ (so they couldn’t be ‘held hostage’.)

NOBODY would be able to ‘sell’ anything to anybody because the ONLY way to get money would be to work for it (put in your time and collect a paycheck!)

It is essential to understand that the reason things are so screwed up right now is because money is being ‘abused’ in the worst possible way!

It is just as essential to understand that money is nothing more than a legal construct intended to RESTRICT ACCESS to high demand/perishable goods or services.

AND THAT’S ALL it’s good for!

The practice of putting a dollar figure on EVERYTHING (for the purpose of creating as many ‘income streams’ as possible) has produced some pretty tragic consequences/ outcomes.

That’s the ‘context’ in which you should read Mr. Krugman’s offering for today.

NONE of this should be happening, none of it!

But… sadly, it is.

When the Wall Street liquidity addicts get their daily fix from Bernanke, they can ignore the news from Portugal on sovereign debt default, and the other ominous warning signs in the financial and political systems.

It's a cynical game, in the vein of the financial fraud that has replaced an efficient capital allocation system in the US.

You will not hear economists talk about this problem, just as they did not discuss the pervasive fraud in the mortgage backed securities market before it caused a financial collapse. It is safer to explain what just happened after it is completely obvious to everyone, over and done. And yet they still call for the same old remedies, of either stimulus or tax cuts for trickle down effects, both pointless options when the system is broken.

The Fed and the Treasury think they can support the economy by keeping the stock market up. The wiseguys on Wall Street will continue to encourage and take advantage this policy error, transferring the wealth generated by debasing the public money into their own pockets, while the regulators are paid to look the other way. It is very remniscent of the failing Soviet empire and the rise of the oligarchs.

That is what is happening now. This is why gold and silver continue to rise despite the best efforts of the financial engineers to halt this 'alarm system.'

There is a day coming in the not too distant future when many will realize the situation as it really is, and then there will be a panic.

I take small comfort to see that I’m not the only one walking around with a bowl of vinegar under my nose…(figuratively speaking, I’m not nearly graceful enough to literally accomplish such a thing…)

It’s ALL relative…even though the following comes with a ‘shift mental gears with me’ warning…

NONE of the problems facing our civilization can be solved if we fail to restore ‘justice’, that ‘equal treatment under the law’ doctrine we’ve been trying to achieve for centuries now.

No irony should be lost on the fact we have failed repeatedly to even come close…nor should an be lost on how severely things have degraded since they stopped even pretending to care.

To which I’d add, where is your ‘God’ now you slimy cockroaches?

Bizarrely, the Bible Thumpers will point to today’s levels of, er, depravity and bemoan the lack of ‘piousness’ in our society (which is really a complaint that the ‘take’ from the collection plate is falling.)

I mention this because of the high likelihood that ‘fundamentalism’ will play a strong role in persecuting (read ‘execute’) anyone who doesn’t, er, ‘worship’ properly…

Like I said previously, anyone who claims to ‘speak for God’, put a bullet in ‘em!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, March 24, 2011

This can't go on much longer...

Greetings good citizen,

As one might expect, the 6 unemployed workers for every job opening is now 8. This, as the poor bastards that have exhausted their unemployment benefits take any available job in an effort to keep their families together.

Not all of these efforts succeed…resulting in a certain amount of ‘resentment’.

If we are to believe the capitalists, this is their own fault. If they had only taken the necessary steps to make themselves ‘valuable’ they’d still have jobs!

Somehow, that 8 to 1 ratio indicates to me that something else is amiss.

Could this Congress Making Themselves and Friends Richer, While Everyone Else Struggles to Make Ends Meet have anything to do with it?

You know, we elect these, er, idiots to protect and preserve our society/civilization. How unfortunate is it that ‘society’ like anarchy, has been ‘bastardized’ by the self-interested?

Nothing scares the elite like direct democracy, it is the most frightening thing in the world to our self-professed ‘betters’. It is the clueless elite who have perverted the meaning of anarchy (which means rules WITHOUT ‘rulers’) into a synonym for chaos.

The twisted the ‘no rulers’ concept into ‘no rules’.

But wait, we aren’t finished (and neither were they.) They also twisted the word ‘society’ from it’s original ‘all inclusive’ meaning to it’s modern interpretation where the word ‘high’ is implied whenever ‘society’ is invoked…which is to say if you aren’t rich/elite then you don’t count as a member of ‘society’.

This is the same spooky/creepy implication you get when the Anglo-centric media announces ‘the world’ condemns this or that.

It is the same ‘conceit’ of conducting a sporting event where only a couple of dozen (predominantly US teams) play in a ‘world series’.

But they aren’t done good citizen, not by a long shot!

Not only has our captive government gone completely tone deaf but they have taken it upon themselves to to draft legislation like this which is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what they were elected to do!

Sadly, this is far beyond the ‘few bad apples’ stage. Nonsense like this is sweeping the nation!

While NOTHING is being done about the multiple crises that threaten…nay, WILL collapse our civilization.

While today’s other articles are disturbing enough, if you want to read something really disturbing click the link!

And if you want to make sense of it all you could do worse than paying a visit to my favorite news aggregator.

One of the things I strive to do here is keep it to a ‘dull roar’ but if you want to keep up…well.

Anyway, I’ll end today’s offering here, there’s more than enough here to absorb in one sitting.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Unsurprising...

Greetings good citizen,

Japan continues to wrestle with the Middle East for headline dominance and in the meantime nothing is being done about our collapsing global economy.

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times…All economies are local

Need proof? What do you think caused this?

Detroit Census Confirms a Desertion Like No Other

I’m sure it was not intentional but ‘desertion’ is mighty close to the actual situation, a phenomenon I call ‘desertification’, the process of converting a once economically viable region into an economic desert, so the owner can be rich.

It really busts my balls to see Mr. ‘Flat Earth’ doing his damnedest from his bully pulpit on the NY Time editorial board to distance his beloved ‘globalization’ from the devastating economic outcomes the global race to the bottom has resulted in.

You can be sure he’d heartily agree with the opinion expressed here by, of all things, a damn investment banker (ironically, the ONLY real ‘winners’ of economic globalization!)

Left to your imagination, good citizen, is what this ‘work harder for less’ scheme has in it for you? Why would you be willing to take a giant step backwards?

If we are to comprehend his ‘idiot logic’ it is the only way they will ‘temporarily’ extract enough profits to pay the juice on the huge mountain of debt they have created.

The new ‘work ‘til you drop’ paradigm only benefits…you got it, the fucking bankers, who recklessly hold YOU hostage to your own basic needs…

It’s going to be funny as hell to watch them try to hide behind their bought and paid for but paper thin laws they make on the fly!

Disturbing as it seems we appear to have arrived at that place where we would all be better off killing these self-centered weasels on sight than to submit to further ‘economic blackmail’.

The ‘fair day’s wages’ for an honest day’s work bar just keeps getting set a little bit higher with each passing day, until the day arrives that you’re expected to do it all for nothing.

Remember, the primary rule of employment is as follows, if you can’t pay me enough to live on then I can’t afford to work for you.

No irony should be lost on the fact that many of the ‘working poor’ collect government food assistance, in violation of employment rule number one.

What causes this good citizen, do you know the answer?

Private ownership and the focus on the ‘protection of private property’ ABOVE ALL ELSE!

This is the ‘fuck job’ perpetrated upon the majority of us by the same people who thought meeting in secret with armed guards to keep the ‘uninvited’ away was a good idea.

Just because nobody has a bill of sale with your name on it doesn’t make you ‘free’.

You (and everybody you love) are ‘hostages’ to an economic system you have NO control over.

Worse, you ONLY choices are ‘play’ (go along to get along) or STARVE! And the ‘law’ lets them get away with this!

No irony should be lost on the fact that THE PEOPLE ARE THE LAW! I don’t think ‘most’ people would support this variety of cold hearted cruelty that has become commonplace today. (Being only 1 in 5 makes the ‘conservatives’ a decided minority.)

See what the ‘private ownership’ of the media has done for us?

Worse, we have this as evidence of how being a capitalist can warp your mind!

"Buffett Says U.S. Economy Improves by the Month, Can Withstand Japan Quake" (Bloomberg)

Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) posted its biggest profit since 2007 last year, said the U.S. economy is “getting better month by month,” aided by government stimulus and the strength of capitalism. [Sort of a contradiction, don’t you think?]

“The most important factor is the really underlying resilience of capitalism,” Buffett said today at a press conference in Bangalore. There are more than 300 million Americans “thinking about how to do something better tomorrow than they’ve done today.”

Ha-ha?

The ‘Ha-ha’ belongs to Mr. Panzer although I’d second it with a sardonic chuckle of my own.

Not that it’s necessary but every time one of these ass-hats opens their mouth it proves that wealth has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence!

And there is no such thing as a ‘nice’ rich guy…The Donald revels in being an asshole, he loves it!

So, Mr. Buffet THINKS the US economy can ‘withstand’ the Japanese earthquake? You don’t suppose he is ‘excepting’ certain segments of the economy like the entire electronics sector or the largely Japanese dominated (until now) automotive sector, do you?

Talk about ‘connecting the dots’, how ‘fortuitous’ is it that Japan takes a major hit (likely due to HAARP) right about the same time that Detroit implodes and China readies to enter the US market?

I mean hell, most GM products are made in China these days…

Just saying, ya know?

There are some real disgusting pigs running things over here and if we don’t flush ‘em out their going to choke us all to death.

Again, just saying…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Three too many....

Greetings good citizen,

It’s been a while since I’ve used my old spring loaded IBM keyboard and it’s taking some getting used to!

Sadly good citizen my $99, U-build’em special croaked a couple of weeks ago when I attempted to upgrade the Ram… turns out it wasn’t DDR2 after all. I can’t cry, the original ‘barebones’ lasted 7 long years before giving up the ghost.

The good news, while smoking my old Soyo motherboard, the memory stick itself survived…the bad news is I was unable to duplicate my original $99 deal.

Although, as you might expect, the replacement is much, er, ‘more powerful’ than its predecessor and more ‘sophisticated’ by a considerable degree…which, naturally, had me scratching my head as to why the finished unit wouldn’t (at first) co-operate.

As Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying, after you’ve eliminated everything else, it must be whatever’s left. I couldn’t get to the DOS prompt (literally) nor would windows start.

SO, I disconnected the IDE cable and rebooted…and sure as shit didn’t the damn thing finally detect my windows disk in the DVD drive (which uses the ‘new’ SATA cables.)

Anybody who is ‘up’ on the latest and the greatest would have figured it out much sooner than my humble (and more than a little ignorant) self but it was quite a leap for an old dog like me to arrive at such a counter-intuitive conclusion.

What helped considerably was that the unlikely solution was also the ‘path of least resistance’. Undo two thumb screws and unplug one cable…unnecessary ‘plan B’ was considerably more involved and would have consumed most of the morning…it is also likely, given how things worked out, that Plan B wouldn’t have worked.

But you don’t care about my fine, spring loaded, IBM keyboard!

Gotta keep the anecdotal stuff down to a dull roar, wouldn’t do to bore you to death.

Even if I do sometimes sound like a broken record.

We’re doomed! We’re doomed! We’re doomed! We’re doomed! We’re doomed!

Okay, enough of that too!

Today was another one of those days where most bloggers were beating the same issue to death, the, er, ‘hypocrisy’ of bombing Libya while turning a blind eye to Yemen and Bahrain.

Worse, most of them are parroting the MSM line, that the unrest in the Middle East is the birth pangs of democracy rather than the desperate struggle to throw off an oppressor who is doing nothing while Western oppressors blow up local markets.

Why is Gadaffi in trouble? He’s in the soup for playing pat-a-cake with the Western Elite while his people starve.

In case you haven’t noticed, the same thing is happening right here, we just aren’t rioting in the streets (yet.)

SO if I were to be casting a scornful eye on the obviously hypocritical behavior of our own political elite, I wouldn’t be asking why this one and not that one?

The problems the general populace faces in the resource poor deserts of the Middle East are identical to the crisis we face right here in our own growing economic desert.

Worse, JIT has finally ‘bit us in the ass’ just as we always knew it would. For Centuries, we had multiple redundancies built into pretty much everything we did to prevent catastrophic breakdowns in the supply chain.

Which is why I have said repeatedly that the greatest danger facing civilization is the sudden collapse of now ‘global’ supply lines.

Worse, this shit has a tendency to ‘cascade’ just as they do in that old ditty ‘for want of a nail’.

So when global supply lines suddenly start to ‘snap’ because too much ‘redundancy’ was eliminated, nothing will stop an irretrievable breakdown because there is no ‘back-up!’

Worse is the ‘identical’ part of the crisis, too many in EVERY nation has been made ‘redundant’, for all of China’s millions, they still have a huge unemployment problem. If you’re over 30 and not a farmer in China, you’re useless!

Same thing in India, the ‘competition’ for what few jobs that remain is absolutely incredible.

We don’t have too many workers, the problem is we have too many capitalists!

How many is ‘too many’?

I’m a bad one to ask…in my opinion one is three too many.

The problem has a solution, it is just that the spineless bastards in charge lack the backbone to make the necessary changes…and millions will die because of it.

What sickens me is how, after the fact, SOME of these spineless jackasses will ‘try’ to do the right thing and become ‘martyrs’ for it (after millions die because these same shit heads did nothing!)

Um, understand that I believe the ‘survivors’ of the upcoming shit-storm will be a damn cynical bunch that is not easily fooled.

So, anyone who thinks they are going to get away with playing both ends against the middle had better think again.

Your deeds will prove who you are, not your words.

Just something to think about before you start pointing fingers at others.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, March 21, 2011

What's going on?

Greetings good citizen,

‘Twas a busy weekend as we celebrated a birthday and a new (canine) addition to the family.

The pup has discovered its own reflection in the (lacquered) china cabinet and is fascinated by it. So far he’s only growled at the ‘dog in the mirror’, it is uncertain if he’ll ever realize it’s his own reflection.

Anyway, ‘rescuing’ a dog from the shelter ain’t what it used to be as the little furball set us back almost $500 (Suddenly I see the logic behind ‘puppy mills’ although I fear ‘A’ [the high cost of dogs from shelters] is driving ‘B‘) Don’t get the wrong impression, dogs from a shelter are (generally) cheaper than what ‘puppy farmers’ are asking.

In case you haven’t made the connection, yes, the new pup was for the birthday girl!

Which is to say good citizen that despite the gloomy outlook for the future, life, indeed, goes on. Birthdays keep coming and puppies still need loving homes.

The question that always remains unanswered is how many birthdays will be sacrificed for the ‘more for me’ crowd?

Is one billion enough or will it (eventually) take the whole six?

Which is to ask good citizen, which is more damning, the arrogance of ‘privileged’ or the notion that they believe they’re ‘worth it’?

More perplexing is the corporate owned media’s attempts to spin the ever expanding economic desert into the twin ‘crises’ of climate change and the democracy deficit.

Which leads to the interesting question asked by Jesse of the Crossroads Café fame.


They are struggling to take the equity markets higher, but the short term downtrend is still intact.

There was an air of disassociation with reality in the markets today in honor of options expiration.

The Fed announced the results of their stress tests, and began to allow the banks to increase their dividends and buy back their stocks. This is a windfall for wealthy shareholders and corporate insiders, supplied by the Fed using what are essentially public funds, as subsidies to the monied interests. 

But it does not help to revitalize the real economy, even while it continue to debase the currency. This is the root cause of a future inflationary episode that will rock the status quo to its foundations.


Increasingly, good citizen it becomes a question of what they can possibly hope to gain by continuing to, er, ‘misrepresenting’ the situation?

The ones ‘digging the hole’ are obviously convinced they won’t be dragged into it or they wouldn’t keep digging it deeper.

Is this the kind of arrogance you get from mistakenly equating loyalty with money?

The “I’m cutting your paycheck so you will do what I say” paradigm only goes just so far.

If you are ‘distinctive’ enough looking, there is no place to hide from your crimes…and it only takes one who can put you at the scene of the crime to seal your fate.

How much are you willing to lay on the line for a few lousy pieces of funny money?

This is the ugliest manifestation of ‘guilt by association’, that your loved ones will be made to suffer for your crimes.

Yes good citizen, it is deeply troubling that the ‘perps’ continue to dig the hole deeper, knowing full well the consequences of their actions.

Are they planning on ‘turning the earth to glass’ (Given the high silica content in most soil types and the intense heat generated by a thermo nuclear explosion…thus the phrase.)

Have they already built their shelters and stocked them for the next two hundred years? (If ‘nuclear winter’ results in another ice age then our species is probably scroomed anyway.) It’s anyone’s guess as to how long it would take for the Earth to heal the damage from an all-out nuclear war, launched by the elite to ‘exterminate’ the rest of us.

Or, climate aside, do they think they can survive a plague intended to wipe most of us out? Who is going to do their dirty work when Toby isn’t around anymore?

Will it be you?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, March 18, 2011

How Fucked up is This?

Seriously good citizen, How fucked up is this?




DETROIT — General Motors said Thursday that it would temporarily shut a truck plant in Louisiana because it could not get enough Japanese-made parts, the first in what analysts say could be widespread disruptions at auto plants in North America because of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis half a world away.

A Toyota plant in northern Japan. Toyota and Honda have shut their plants in Japan until next week.

Mark Fields of Ford said the company was assessing production on a day-to-day basis.
That it was G.M. — rather than one of the Japanese automakers, which depend on many parts from their home country — that succumbed first to the shortage shows how much the industry depends on far-flung suppliers. But Toyota and Honda have shut their plants in Japan until next week as they try to repair damaged facilities, assess the state of their suppliers and determine how to restart production safely.

Do any of you wonder why our workforce has shrunk by 2 million over the past decade?

What should you do the next time you see a ‘tax slashing tea partier’?

It is their opinion that you’re being unemployed is YOUR FAULT.

Did you notice WHOSE taxes keep getting cut? (Hint: they sure as shit aren’t YOURS!)

As you were…sorry for the interruption but I read this and my head exploded!

Gegner

The Road to Recovery

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while the stars align and the hive mind kicks in to inspire the blogosphere into producing the following trio of articles.

If we were to use their conservative ‘labels’ we would start off with The Shrill One followed by Mr. Tinfoil Hat with the The Perma bear wrapping things up nicely.

Yesterday I pointed to the greatly diminished labor force figure. (Our current labor force is two million workers smaller than it was 10 years ago.) But I didn’t mention that we currently have nearly TWICE THAT NUMBER of ’working aged’ individuals, putting a considerable damper on the prospects of achieving anything approaching economic prosperity here in the rapidly expanding economic desert.

Okay, that aside, we arrive at the second article which tells us in no uncertain terms that the COST OF LIVING HIT AN ALL TIME HIGH!

Which is to say there is no ‘escape’ from the collapse of our badly corrupted commerce system. It’s going down and all of the ‘bailouts’ in the world won’t save it!

Article one and article two have a common thread…do you know what it is?

Both are ‘symptoms’ of mismanagement/government failure. Until the labor laws are changed the unemployment problem will persist, ditto for the ‘deterioration’ of our currency (which is causing the ‘inflation‘ they claim is insignificant.)

The final article tells us what our ‘elected representatives’ intend to ‘do’ about the mess their collective inaction has created.

Instead of raising taxes they would rather slash benefits. This is decidedly ‘anti-social’ behavior.

This also defines the longstanding ‘divide’ between conservatives and ‘liberals’.

Worse, guess which ‘segment’ created this ‘division’ in the first place?

Liberals would be better described as ‘normal’ people but that doesn’t provide a solid platform for debate…

‘Normal people’ strive for social harmony while we conservatives say to hell with that!

See, not nearly as effective as calling their opponents ‘liberal’.

I’ll end this little digression with Liberal = normal and Conservative = anti-social.

Sadly, I’ll pick up the original thread by pointing out that we are on a decidedly conservative path going forward…if we can call it that. The reality is it’s simply more of the same (bullshit) we‘ve been getting from the so-called ‘compassionate conservatives‘.

As this post is titled ‘the road to recovery’ we would do well to at least point to what has to happen to put this nation and the world on a sustainable path.

You see, good citizen, the conservative corporatocracy isn’t concerned with sustainability. The ones with the most funny money will get their pick of what’s left er, remains and the rest can go hang!

You see good citizen sustainability SHOULD HAVE BEEN the ‘target’ all along BUT we have allowed ‘pirates’ to manage our affairs since the beginning, thus have we always suffered under their decidedly poor management skills.

Now the wheels are coming off of our social construct and we are faced with yet another ‘civil war’.

This time its the pirates vs. the ‘rabble’ (formerly known as the ‘useful idiots‘)

Have I ‘sidetracked’ again good citizen?

Sadly no, step one is the war we are having rammed down our throats, whether we want it or not.

I would be remiss if I didn’t use this as the ‘starting point’ because whatever comes next is predicated on sweeping the ‘old’ away.

Yes good citizen, your ‘rights’ are once again going to be stripped from you and you will be forced to ‘fight’ for them all over again!

This, as Vonnegut classically described it, is ‘idiot’s delight’ writ large!

If you fail to stand up for your selves, your ‘rights’ will be determined for you, just as they were in the secret, invitation only, armed guard enforced meeting held after the original ‘revolution’.

A pox on the ‘founders’ who conspired to but chickened out of making themselves ‘Royalty’.

The principle reason these ‘royal wannabes’ DIDN’T make themselves royalty is the lack of legitimacy’ of their claims. Prior Kings and Queens could point to religious decrees that God had ’blessed’ their elevation over the common man.

After a while there were a bunch of people who could claim ‘divine lineage’, being the offspring of royal parents and this formed (still does) the basis for their, er, ’legal/legitimate’ claim.

How unfortunate was it that the wannabes couldn’t convince the religious separatists to cave on their demands for a secular State…all it would have taken was an ’official religion’ and the royalists would have been in!

Do you see where we’re going here?

This simple exercise illustrates the problem with letting the ‘self-interested’ make up the laws as they go along.

We came within a push and a shove from perpetuating a nasty system ourselves. A couple more royalists and it wouldn’t have mattered what Washington wanted or was willing to go along with.

The ‘answer’ good citizen lies within the law. If we come out of the other side of this conflict as the victors then our goal must be to level the playing field and to institute a new social contract that provides citizenship/membership for ALL (and not just the useful idiots who suck up to the corrupt and the unjust!)

If we win…if we don’t…well, slaves are property, to be disposed of as their master sees fit.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, March 17, 2011

A Decade (+) of Pain...

Greetings good citizen,

Let’s begin with the stock market, shall we?

What’s that? You don’t give a rat’s ass about the stupid stock market?

As well YOU shouldn’t. It is still deeply disturbing to consider that most of the Dow is now comprised of (bankrupt) financial companies.

Yet the Dow is up 140+ points at the moment (after shedding more than 200 yesterday.)

Which tells you what, good citizen?

It tells you that whoever controls the ‘value’ of shit will never go broke. It tells you that ‘their paper’ (as long as they remain in power) will always appreciate in value even when everything else (like the dollar in your pocket) sinks like a rock.

Well good citizen that ain’t the only thing that has ‘stagnated’ over the past decade

"A Decade of Labor Market Pain" (Mandel on Innovation and Growth)
In February 2001, nonfarm payrolls hit their business cycle peak of  132.5 million. Ten years later, the latest data pegs February 2011 payrolls at 130.5 million, a 1.5% decline. To put this in perspective, the ten-year period of the Great Depression, 1929-39 saw a 2.3% decline in nonfarm employment, roughly the same magnitude. [snip]


Although unemployment remains very high, at this point that’s mainly due to lack of hiring; layoffs are quite low. This means that people who still have decent jobs aren’t feeling much at risk of losing them. So any urgency would have to come from concern about those who don’t have jobs — those who lost them in the slump, and of course young people trying to get started on their working lives.

And those people — at least one in six workers, judging by U6 — don’t seem to have much political or psychological visibility. In effect, they’re being written off.

What’s wrong with this picture good citizen?

To the extent that the market for goods expands in tandem with the population, the labor market must expand by 150,000 jobs A MONTH just to stay even.

Now, thanks to globalization, our labor force has actually shrunk by 2million over the past ten years…not counting the 120 months of 150,000 per month the labor force should have grown by.

Understand, the people were added, we made ‘em right on schedule. What’s missing is their ‘income/input’.

Yes good citizen, contrary to conservative rhetoric, people who can participate in society pull their own weight.

No jobs (because they were farmed out/eliminated) means no contribution.

Worse is the ‘captive audience’ this turns domestic consumers into.

We keep hearing about how our economy is being hollowed out yet nothing is done about it…because trade protectionism is ‘bad’. We’d lose all of the jobs making the stuff we export!

Hello, anybody home? What jobs do you think the shiftless bastards are farming out?

Worse, guess who controls the purchasing power OF YOUR FUCKING MONEY?

Yes, good citizen, food (here in the US) is jumping by leaps and bounds as energy prices (like stocks) approach their historic highs…and guess what our financial overlords are saying?

That’s right, ’inflation’ is ’tame’.

Um, it’s hard to say which we’ll run out of first, rope or light poles?

Which is to say if the ’solution’ lies in culling the population, the only ones we need to ’lose’ are the unproductive rich.

Just saying, ya know?

Anyway, thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Eyes front!

Greetings good citizen,

I have touched on the topic of ‘media headlines’ in the past. What’s news to the newsmakers isn’t necessarily what you want to be informed of…which is to ask how unfortunate is it that your ‘need to know’ isn’t even a consideration when the people who make their money, er, ‘distributing’ news sit down to decide how they’re going to ‘spin’ what they want you to know?

What there can be no mistaking is how the contents of the front page is information they want you to know…

The question (if you still have two brain cells in communication with one another) is ‘why’?

Naturally, the ongoing crisis in Japan continues to dominate the headlines, particularly, the ‘cliffhangers’ regarding Japan’s ‘robust’ nuclear power infrastructure. Nothing like a couple of potential meltdowns to throw a wet towel on ‘alternative energy’!

It’s a little tragic that aside from its destructive potential the only ‘peaceful’ application of atomic power is boiling water…but figuring out other ways to harness nuclear energy is ‘politically unpopular’ especially with those invested in the fossil fuel industry.)

Which is to say it’s little ‘(un) natural disasters’ like this that provide the media with a respite from their regular duty of putting a positive spin on some decidedly negative economic data.

Thankfully, we have sources other than the corporate owned media which provide us with a, er, ‘contrasting’ view of the Big Picture…

Hyperinflation Special Report (2011) March 15th, 2011

United States Nears Hyperinflationary Great Depression

Federal Reserve and Government Have Exploded the U.S. Fiscal Crisis, Shattered Global Confidence in the U.S. Dollar but Not Resolved Ongoing Economic and Systemic-Solvency Crises.

High Risk of Ultimate Dollar Disaster Beginning to Unfold in Months Ahead,

2014 Remains the Outside Timing for Same. [Meaning it should happen BEFORE then.]

Contracting Money Supply Can Be Inflationary When Real Economy Contracts Even Faster

Major Economic Series Suggests Formal Depression in Place.

You already know what my assessment of the situation is good citizen so I won’t bore you with a rehash.

In brief we’re ‘scroomed’!

There’s no way to use the system to fix the system short of hitting the ‘reset’ button AND THAT WOULD BE A DISASTER!

Letting the same fuckers who screwed up the current system use the reset button to ‘erase’ their mistakes (crimes) would only buy a little (precious little) more time.

I posit that the, er, ‘temptation’ to, er, ‘repeat past transgressions’ would be too great, making an already lopsided situation even worse.

Thereby defeating the purpose of the whole exercise.

We MUST follow the formula! We must first change how we do things THEN we can hit the reset button!

But no, that’s not how things get done here in ‘special interest land’. If there’s something to be had by hoodwinking the public then by all means (and against all reason or logic) the reset button will be tripped by the same fuckers who got us here in the first place!

No irony should be lost on the fact that the pundits are wondering out loud about precisely who the so called conservatives ‘think’ their base is.

Since their current position is mathematically impossible the answer is both simple and obvious, their ‘base’ is that tiny fraction of society that owns just about everything!

This is not democracy any more than it is either freedom or liberty…and justice has been gone so long that nobody remembers what it looks like!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The importance of PR...

Greetings good citizen,

The earthquake/tsunami in Japan still dominates the headlines. We can only wonder if the Japanese, who have been in their own economic ‘depression’ since 1990, will ‘bounce back’ from this natural disaster or if they will suffer the same fate as most of the victims of hurricane Katrina?

The Haitians are still suffering the after effects of the quake that hit them over a year ago but the Chileans seem to have bounced back already…

See what a difference having natural resources can make?

Which brings us back to Japan…with virtually no natural resources to speak of. However, thanks to the ‘industriousness’ of the Japanese people, Japan, a tiny island, is the third most prosperous economy on the planet!

Should be little doubt about this, you can’t swing a cat without hitting a dozen Japanese cars. BUT, when you go strolling down the aisles of the local retailer there isn’t much with a ‘MADE IN JAPAN’ sticker on it that isn’t electronic...and increasingly the number of Japanese electronic exports continues to, er, dwindle.

The US, which makes absolutely nothing, is still, so we’re told, the world’s largest, er, ‘producer’…(of increasingly worthless financial products but hey, nobody makes more of them than we do!)

We have also been told that we are the largest ‘consumer’ nation in the world…despite the fact that 20% of the population is responsible for 80% of the spending.

(or that 80% of our economy is based on ‘consumer spending!’)

It was curious indeed to hear the other day that China has finally surpassed the US in its exports of, er, ‘stuff’. We can only wonder if this is a ‘labeling’ phenomenon or an accounting gimmick because the US ‘produces’ nothing you can hold in your hand (except food, we are still the world’s ‘breadbasket’.)

Which brings us to another ‘value conundrum’ that we won’t go into just now save to point out how much leverage do you suppose holding the keys to the larder has?

The nations of the world are NOT able to feed their populations without the food they import from the US, and as we all know, food = peace.

Which is to point out that it doesn’t matter how much money you have, hell, it doesn’t even matter how much oil you have because without food and water, you’re FUCKED!

Which brings us to the issue of hunger right here in the USA. It’s not a lack of food that is pushing our population into food assistance programs, it is the ‘affordability’ of that food, food that is being exported, primarily to ‘the cheaper there!’ (To our so-called economic ‘rivals’.)

Did I mention that in the future there will be a bounty on capitalists?

This is a two-edged sword, the socialists won’t tolerate ‘em and the slavers won’t stand for the competition!

The truly sad part of this good citizen is our so-called civilization is chock full of these little, er, ‘inconsistencies’…most of which we have, er, ‘tolerated’ for the past couple of centuries (if only because they were [relatively] not as bad as feudalism…)

Left for your consideration is the fate of the next self-important asshole who decides he wants to play by ‘gun rules’.

How fucked up is it that when civilization collapses, the criminals among us become the self appointed ‘spokespeople’ for God?

No irony at all should be lost on the fact that the death toll of the criminals is fairly even with the deaths caused by the religious persecution of the ‘unbelievers’.

Just a little reminder that you shouldn’t ’discriminate’ between the thug who threatens you with violence or anyone who claims to speak for god.

Which is to say you should kill them both on sight.

If you value your freedom and your children’s prosperity.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, March 14, 2011

Death from Above

Greetings good citizen,

Um, okay, is it just me or have there been a lot of earthquakes popping up all over the planet?

I know this is supposed to be a sign of the end of days but the ‘end of days’ is a bit problematic for we atheists…that and the knowledge that the technology exists to, er, ‘incite’ these and other ‘natural phenomenon’ (including what’s being called ‘global warming’.)

On an unrelated but no less disturbing note, Mr. Rich bidding farewell to the editorial pages of the NY Times…er, abruptly only serves to amplify these dark suspicions.

Because he takes great pains to state that he wasn’t either censured or chased off (why bring it up at all if it isn’t a factor?) makes his sudden departure that much more, er, suspect.

Not that it matters.

Its dangerous enough to have a media you can’t trust. Put those lying bastards in charge of, er, ‘fabricating’ evidence that the ‘greatest story/fairy tale ever told’ is drawing to its grisly conclusion.

Considering all the ‘criminal activity’ we have witnessed recently, the ‘end of days’ would make a mighty convenient cover story while the criminals made good their escape.

Naturally, not everyone believes in the ‘Second Coming’, Hell, the Jews are still waiting for the first one!

Not that this bothers the criminals any, they have the cops in their pocket so nobody is going to be in hot pursuit…not at first anyway. When the magnitude of their crimes becomes widely known, pursuit is inevitable. We cannot re-establish the rule of law while these criminals walk free.

But let’s back up a step…just who is in control of this extremely dangerous technology? Why the criminals, of course!

How do we prosecute people who can trigger earthquakes and/or tsunami’s at the flip of a switch? Hell, if I’m correct these criminals can even turn an ordinary tropical depression (your typical thunderstorm) into a category 5 hurricane!

It’s gonna make ‘em a little hard to take alive if they can reach into the most closely guarded and (supposedly) secure sections of our military and orchestrate attacks on our own citizens.

I can’t ‘prove’ any of this BUT all you need to do is plug the word HAARP into your search engine for a genuine eyeful.

The part that really sucks is how all of this technology came into being under the pentagon’s infamous ‘black budgets’.

Who knows what else has been developed that is being hidden from the people who funded the research?

Remember, only rogues and scoundrels require ‘the cloak of secrecy’.

While lip service is paid to ‘transparency’.

So, who’s next?

Or more specifically, where will the next ‘(un)natural disaster’ strike?

Brings us full circle to our original conundrum, WE are the, er, ‘captives’ of self-interested criminals who ‘control’ us via the media.

And they are none too subtle about it either…because there isn’t a frigging thing you or I can do about it…short of declaring war upon them.

Which is coming. Not that our declaring war on them will mean anything considering THEY have already declared war on us.

If you wonder why nobody is doing anything about this it is because it all seems ‘crazy’. How could anyone pull such a thing off…and the answer is ‘it’s much easier than you would think’ (especially when you consider how much of our government is ‘appointed’.)

YOU can readily see that things aren’t what they should be, hell, most of the country agrees that we as a nation are ‘off course’.

So why isn’t anybody doing anything about it?

We’re back to the criminals and they sure as hell aren’t going to put a stop to it!

Like I’ve been saying right along, there isn’t a way to fix the system using the system because the tools don’t exist (and were we to fabricate the necessary tools, the criminal element would block their passage!)

If calls for a new constitutional convention were to succeed the end result would be an incredible clusterfuck! Worse, we’d probably end up with even less control that we currently have. (Which is a little hard to do since we currently have none.)

I know it must look like I’ve knocked back a few before I started writing this but, sadly, that is not the case.

As always, I do not ask for your blind trust. I merely present the situation the way I see it and leave it for you to decide for yourself.

If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Uncharted Waters

Greetings good citizen,

As some of you may have observed, the ‘warning’ phase is over. There seems to be a consensus that for good or for ill, events are already underway and will play out as they may.

Fairly vague terms to be sure but even the corporate owned media has stopped dismissing ’peak oil’ and all that such an event portends for life as we have come to know it.

How ironic is it that future scientists will point to the end of cheap and abundant fossil fuel as Mother Nature’s ‘answer’ for human overpopulation?

The question that remains open is whether or not that day is here?

I’d opine that it is NOT. The ‘problem’ we will soon be faced with has more to do with increased demand rather than dwindling supply.

Which is not to say supply isn’t dwindling, it more a case of having used up most of the easy to get at stuff, making the remainder less ‘cost effective’ to bring to market.

Think ‘price war’ good citizen. The capitalists are going to ‘squeeze’ the market and the pressure this will put on society will result in widespread, er , ‘unrest’.

As I have stated multiple times, mismanagement.

How frightening is it that our captive government is incapable of taking the lead here and removing control of this vital commodity from the grasp of the self-interested?

Because, ultimately, that’s how it’s going to go down.

Watch how quick a rationing scheme is put in place once gas stations and banks start burning!

Although this didn’t happen in the past…(but in the past most people didn’t feel like they were being played for chumps either.)

Which is to say I think the public is pretty disillusioned with the way things have played out. Worse, they’re getting sick of having to watch their back every second for every little friggin’ thing they do.

‘Constant vigilance’ can be VERY taxing.

Which is to point out that life would be a whole lot simpler if we removed the income streams that only benefit a few from private hands.

It’s yet another ‘symptom’ of our badly broken society. They didn’t used to be able to get away with this ‘gotcha’ bullshit they regularly pull now.

It was considered ‘bad business’. You’d think more enterprises would be concerned with how the public perceives them in these days of social networking but no!

Why do you suppose that is good citizen?

Can you say, ‘captive audience’?

When everybody is sticking it to you, you have no choice but to put up with it…until you don’t anymore…and that day is coming.

If there is ONE lesson to be learned from ‘globalization’ it is that private interests are incapable of being ‘honest operators’ in the marketplace…especially when they have a ‘corporate shield’ to hide behind!

In a world of increasingly scarce resources, paychecks all around is the way of the future…fuck you, pay me is out the window!

In the future nobody will be ABLE to pay you because there will only be one way to get money and that will be to work for it!

Doesn’t matter what you have ‘for sale’ because nobody has any cash to hand you!

Think what kind of a dent this will put in crime! It all (pretty much) disappears (violent crimes are another story but even they will diminish significantly because most murders are committed over money.

Think about it…

Once we start doing it you will wonder why we didn’t do it this way right along! (although it would have been cumbersome as well as tedious to facilitate a cashless system before computers came into widespread use.)

More important is the resource management tool this creates. You no longer have greedy bastards putting as much as they can get their hands on into the marketplace just because they can!

No more clear cutting and no more over-fishing because YOU no longer get to personally pocket the cash!

Better still, no more making your crew go out in dangerous conditions because YOU tried to draw to an inside straight and lost (and if you don’t go, you’re gonna lose the damn business!)

Did I mention that private industry tends to be irresponsible? (And not just the little guys either!)

Um, just to clear up what might look like a contradiction…how would we implement a totally electronic banking system when we’re running out of fossil fuels?

There’s plenty of hydro-electric, when oil becomes cost prohibitive the lights aren’t going to go out…well, not all of them.

Renewable energy will lend itself handily to our electronic demands. While getting stuff from point A to point B will become challenging, you (if we can fix management in time) probably won’t be wandering around in the dark, humming to yourself.

But then there’s that ‘end of civilization’ stuff to deal with.

Nobody ‘thinks’ the right wingers are going to start lobbing nukes around just because they can…but…they offered 120% financing on some class A dumps just because they could…so, I wouldn’t be to quick with the ‘never’ stuff.

There is little I would put beyond those who think they can exterminate us.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, March 11, 2011

What a fool believes...

Greetings good citizen,

By now most of you have heard that the corporate lapdogs who have taken over the Republican party have ‘finagled’ a way to bust the public employee unions without a ‘quorum’ in the (state) Senate.

More disturbing is how the measure includes some very, er, ‘undemocratic’ provisions like the ability to ‘liquidate’ the elected government of, er, ‘troublesome’ municipalities and replacing it with a more, er ‘agreeable’ manager.

What does that remind you of good citizen…smacks of ‘dictatorship’ from where I’m sitting.

Worse, this is not the first time the law has been 'twisted' to achieve a desired outcome. (Which is why most people don't believe they would get a fair hearing in the courts.)

On the same general idea there is also a proviso that allows the state to terminate any employee for merely protesting this kind of treatment.

Just how serious is this situation? In a totally related story this is where unbridled capitalism has taken us.

[Slavery only exists when there are 'profits' to be had.]

While the report tells us this situation is mainly confined to the ‘emerging economies’ of the world…just where the hell do you think ‘the capitalists’ sent your job before you dismiss this report as being ‘irrelevant‘?

Did I not state a mere couple of months ago that we would experience an event that would show us in no uncertain terms just what we are up against?

Is this not the foretold event?

You may still be in ‘denial’ but I’m calling it…and no, I am not ‘psychic’…it was always just a matter of time.

In a somewhat related article Mr. Krugman asks a question often seen right here How sad is it good citizen that the only time that question’s logical answer has ever been seen is also right here?

What question is that, you ask?

This one here :
After all, if I got upset every time powerful people were illogical and/or dishonest, I’d spend every waking hour in a state of raging despair.

Yet there are still moments when I find myself saying, “They can’t really be that stupid,” or maybe, “They can’t really think the rest of us are that stupid.

Um, how ’dense’ do you have to be not to see this ISN’T a case of playing people for stupid?

The part nobody wants to believe is that all of this is a plot to kill off the ‘surplus population’ (theoretically) before things get out of hand…

Which is to say that ‘some people’ have no problem with using absolutely useless ‘funny money’ as the yardstick with which to sort the ‘worthy’ from the ‘surplus’…

Just saying, ya know?

If we fail to adopt a more equitable way of doing things we’re doomed as a species.

How ironic is it that elite think inequality will ‘work’ if only there weren’t so many of us?

Sort of brings us full circle to the question of if a whole planet is enough for two ‘immortals?’

But that’s the other ‘wildcard’ nobody is talking about either.

It’s all about perception management and keeping as many of you as possible chasing your own tail.

For most of you 'the top is still spinning…'

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Starting Over

Greetings good citizen,

Could this be ‘D-Day‘?

Naturally it’s poor reporting to open an article with such a vague question. Most of my readers ask the opposite question, is this NOT D-Day considering my generally grim outlook.

So we need to ‘spell out’ the conditions that ‘legitimize’ the asking of this question.

Where to begin? Do we start with the (still ongoing) ‘hollowing out’ of this nation’s economy (while letting the ‘ongoing’ part speak for itself, which is to point out that the situation remains ‘unaltered and unaddressed.’)

Or do we cast our gaze upon the, er, ‘wobbly’ financial sector which, despite trillions of dollars worth of bailouts and accounting ‘gimmes’, is still poised to collapse at the first breath of fresh air and sunlight?

Which, naturally, belabors another obvious fact, that absolutely NOTHING has been done to actually…‘repair’ the global economy.

The riots in the Middle East ARE NOT a ‘cry for freedom’ as the corporate owned media would have you believe. It is the anger of nations, frustrated and fed up with ineffective government.

While the, er, ‘revolts’ have, in some cases, brought ‘regime change’, switching who wears the big hat does nothing to address the real problem…as the Egyptians are now learning.

How unfortunate is it that the only people who will be allowed to run for the post with the big hat must first promise not to change anything?

So their only option will be the violent suppression of their own people.

Governments that don’t protect you coupled with rampant fraud and deceit

What does that spell to you?

Well, today’s headlines aren’t particularly surprising to the informed observer.

Disappointing Economic News Pushes Wall Street Lower

Geez good citizen, just when you thought the only thing that could derail Wall Street’s irrational rise to its historic highs was to have the NYSE actually burn to the ground we get this!

Not that today’s ‘dip’ actually means anything. If history is any indicator, today’s ‘dip’ will create tomorrow’s ‘bargains’ (just don’t look too closely at who is buying what…)

Which is to ask that despite the horrific state of the (real) economy, are we really just seeing some ‘profit taking’ by the big trading desks?

What’s real and what’s an illusion?

If you find yourself asking that question good citizen the chances are excellent that the only thing you can be sure of is that YOU’RE getting FUCKED!

If you find yourself among that ‘bottom 40%’ of the country’s population that has ‘combined’ a .02% share of the nation’s annual income, you know something is radically wrong.

This is one of the dangers I’ve been pointing to for quite a while now. If you can’t trust the people in charge, you have no place to turn.

You literally have to start all over again from scratch, one person at a time.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Price vs Cost

Greetings good citizen,

It is difficult to cobble together the many multifaceted aspects of life into a single stream of consciousness, thus is it necessary to back away and simplify…which often leads to this kind of incredible bullshit

Oil is over $105 a barrel BUT the so-called ‘experts’ say the public is ‘better prepared’ to handle budget busting increases in both food and fuel prices (probably because we’ve all gotten so much better at ‘magic’!)

Talk about ‘confused’, we have the above article which is essentially ‘happy talk’, making light of a disastrous situation and then we have articles like this which contradict the ‘happy talk’ but are apparently (as far as the stock markets are concerned) ‘irrelevant.’

Oil WAS $104 a barrel yesterday…and the market opened DOWN more than 60 points but finished UP more than 124 points...go fucking figure, eh?

So, do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?

Not if it’s in cans…

In a similarly disturbing development Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages Once again we have an ‘interpretational barrier’ to contend with.

Define ‘a third of wages’? If we ASKED our self-important employer class if they thought what they paid their employees was a ‘gift’ we’d be talking about how 200% of wages are ‘handouts‘, wouldn’t we?

So it is obvious that the ‘third’ mentioned in the article isn’t based on what employers are ‘overpaying’ us.

Which leaves ‘government disbursements’ as a portion of the total payroll picture.

As we have repeatedly pointed out here, the 40 MILLION ‘recipients’ of various forms of ‘food assistance’ are NOT individuals but FAMILY UNITS!

Which leaves us to ponder just how desperate things are getting when one third of total payroll is made up of ‘government assistance’ that the Republican ’deficit hawks’ are trying to eliminate?

Does anyone else see ‘Trouble’ on the near horizon? (note the capital ‘T’)

I appreciate how psychologically unsettling this must appear good citizen. One day we are tramping down the off ramp to Hell and the next we are dealing with seemingly ‘mundane’ economic issues (not that any of this could even be charitably considered as mundane by any rational individual.)

The question begged by this article is not how much more can we spend but how much longer we can maintain this level of support considering how the economy has shrunk below the number of people it needs to support…

This is the shit wars are made of…in case any of you were wondering.

Worse, ‘wars’ waged against unarmed civilians are more accurately described as ‘genocide’.

Just saying…ya know?

In keeping with our ‘open to interpretation’ theme this last piece takes on a decidedly ‘Libertarian’ slant

Working for the Greater Share

Hard to say where Mr. Panzers sympathies lie. This could be a simple case of failing to make oneself clear. The water gets pretty muddy when you stray off of the ‘All economies are local’ path.

Is he criticizing or supporting the decision by local governments to support local commerce?

Hard to say…

There are still people out there who think globalization is a net positive.

This doesn’t make any less an idiot, they can think what they like…they just need to be kept a safe distance from the decision making processes.

No irony should be lost on the fact that they think the same way, that those who don’t agree with them should be ‘removed’ from the decision making process.

They only see one side of the puzzle, that globalization results in ‘lower prices’.

They remain to this day blissfully ignorant of the ‘captive audience’ aspect the elimination of domestic sources results in.

Those lower prices come at a cost that is much too dear for any society to pay.

And we are witnessing that bill ‘coming due’ right here and now.

You know my feelings on the subject. No matter how much they protest, this was no ‘accident’ nor was it due to incompetence…except maybe in the Justice Department.

One thing is certain good citizen, we have one fuck of a mess on our hands and there will be buckets of blood before it is all said and done.

The great ‘mis-underestimation’ the political right has made is mistakenly believing that the left will jump on ‘peace at any price’ as soon as it is offered.

How unfortunate is it for the rest of us to find ourselves pitted against such a stupid adversary?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Timeline

Greetings good citizen,

Sort of ‘winging it’ today as all of the little brush fires continue to burn relentlessly in the background.

Kind of makes you realize that these stories are seldom ‘resolved’ after the news cycle decides they’ve wasted enough time on them. What do you think will be the ‘ultimate outcome’ in Wisconsin after the media directs your attention elsewhere?

Not only will public employees lose their bargaining rights but they’ll be ‘muzzled’ as well. The only question remaining is if this will happen before of after they rewrite the law to allow states to go ‘bankrupt’…which is actually a pretty fucked up proposition considering ALL money is ‘funny’ in the first place!

Put in that perspective this ‘balance the budget’ kabuki dance takes on a more sinister flavor. This isn’t about money (it seldom is) this is about control!

They’re pushing the public sector employees back because they can. (Thanks to astronomical unemployment across what remains of the economy.)

How scary is the bimbo on TV that attends college in her PJ’s, who breathlessly tells us that people with college degrees earn on average a million dollars more than non degreed people now?

Which is another way of asking how soon we will see $500 for a loaf of bread or $100 a gallon gasoline? (Because that will be when people working at convenience stores earn annual salaries of a million dollars…)

Speaking of off radar, how many of you remember the quandary faced by the poor Zimbabwean at the checkout counter. The smallest bill (official currency) was a $500 note…and the dudes at the store wanted $499 for A SINGLE FUCKING SHEET of toilet paper!

Oh, what to do?

Wake up and smell the coffee people, this isn’t ‘could happen’, it DID happen!

If you take ‘money’ out of the equation you’re left with a ‘power trip’

How much bullshit will you swallow?

Sadly, as history shows us, quite a bit.

But that’s okay, ask any capitalist…we ALL eat shit (largely thanks to Mr. Fuck You, Pay Me!)

Oh what a savage world we live in!

If you think things couldn’t get much worse, think again because you ain’t seem nothing yet!

We don’t even need to flip back through the pages of history for evidence of, er, ‘abuse’, our neighbors near and far are much less ‘civilized’ than you have been led to believe.

How worrisome is it that this ‘behind closed doors’ behavior made it on to the front pages of the bought and paid for corporate media?

Which is another way of saying THEY WANT YOU TO KNOW!

They want you shaking in your shoes…they want you too fearful to object!

Truth and honesty time good citizen, how many of you have ever wondered/feared that if YOU got snatched and disappeared ‘without a trace’, you’d be done for?

How scary is it that there is NO DISCERNABLE DIFFERENCE between being victimized by A FUCKING SERIAL KILLER and being ‘disappeared’ by your OWN FUCKING GOVERNMENT?

Worse, this isn’t ‘hypothetical’, this is happening right here and now!

How fucking sad is that?

How ‘happy’ are you to be an American now?

This is the cesspool we are being pushed into.

If that isn’t bad enough, most of us aren’t expected to survive it.

I’ll be very surprised (and more than a little disappointed) if riots and gun battles don’t dominate the headlines THIS SUMMER (alongside stories of astronomical commodity prices, with ‘A’ driving ‘B’.)

It will start as food riots and ‘morph’ into the collapse of the existing government, followed by martial law, followed by civil war.

And since there has been zero discussion about how to ‘repair’ our badly broken civilization, you can rightly expect to be, er, ‘omitted’ from that discussion.

Which is okay, you’re going to have you hands full just trying to stay alive while our ‘betters’ attempt to ’right size’ our population with a baseball bat.

Understand that the ‘plan’ is for ’quick and dirty’…there will be A LOT of dead but it will be all over in a few months.

It is also part of the plan that there won’t be any rebuilding after they reassert control. They will leave the damage as a ‘reminder’ of the price of defiance.

In case you didn’t notice, our betters have already decided that we will become the world’s second largest ’Banana Republic’, behind the former Soviet Union.

It will truly be a tragedy if we (once again) squander the opportunity to throw off the yoke of Mr. Fuck You, Pay Me!

So, when peace is declared and ’jobs’ become available again, the tell tale is going to be who ’owns’ the store…the people or some relative of fearless leader?

Commerce exists to serve society, not the owners of commerce!

Thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner