Monday, October 31, 2011

Legality

Greetings good citizen,

I have been ‘out of town’ over the weekend and had a rather long commute home on Sunday. I spent today ‘in the office’ thus I have not had the opportunity to post until tonight, Halloween…and we haven’t had a single trick or treater!

This isn’t unusual for the rural area we live in, it’s a long walk between houses around here and we’re the only house on our street (the condo’s across the road are in a ‘security building’ so the kids have to be ‘buzzed in’, anyway, suffice to say the kids usually ‘blow off’ our side street in favor of the ‘richer pickings’ to be had on the next street over.

Ironically, I am mindful of how few kids we normally get (it varies wildly, we’ve had as many as 50 and as few as 9, although this year’s zero is a first…probably due to the snow.) So I only buy candy my kids (and my humble self) will enjoy!

Harder to puzzle out is what happened on Wall Street today? Trick or Treat?

In Europe, the Euro Stoxx 50 index of euro zone blue chips closed down 3.1 percent, while markets in Germany and Paris lost about 3.2 percent. The FTSE 100 in London was down 2.8 percent. Asian markets were down around 1 percent or less.

“I think it is a big sell-off — profit-taking after an enormous, ferocious, violent run upward,” said James W. Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management, speaking about the declines in stocks.

But he also forecast that some of the data to be released this week could restore market attention to the economy in the United States.

“I think Europe is certainly part of the reason” for the down day, he said. “Where we end this week is going to have more to do with the data coming from Main Street, U.S.A.”

Seriously good citizen, what the HELL is WRONG with these people? Why does ‘bonehead’ think the collapse of the Euro Zone will leave the rest of the global economy unscathed?

He doesn’t even acknowledge that the recent (totally irrational) run up in stock prices displayed more than a little ‘cognitive dissonance’, does he?

Naturally, I’m being ‘kind’. Pretending the Euro crisis was solved (the purported reason behind the recent run up) or that it wasn’t an exercise in ‘wishful thinking’ borders on delusional!
But then again that’s the stock market for you (since the criminals took over.)

In reality good citizen, all of our ‘troubles’ (starting with the ‘fake prosperity‘) can be traced back to the breakdown in ‘the rule of law.’

We’ve been ‘told’ (rather than seen for ourselves) how ‘fabulous’ we’ve been doing…but in truth, only the criminals have been doing ‘fabulous’, everybody else has been sucking pond water!

Now there is a movement afoot to restore our failed Justice system but it has zero ‘guidance.’

So-called ‘legal professionals’ have let this situation get out of hand so they CAN’T BE TRUSTED to either rebuild or restore that which is broken.

Where do we turn in a situation like this?

We will have to ‘trust’ ourselves, good citizen.

A Simple Plan has an initial set of laws prescribed within it that can be used as a foundation we can use to re-establish the justice system.

I used the principle of those who must live under the laws should be the sole arbiters of what should or should not be ‘illegal’.

Full Time Law-makers are neither necessary or desirable.

In fact, providing anyone with the, er, ‘privilege’ of interpreting the laws will be prohibited!

For too long we have suffered the, er, ‘machinations of the self-serving’ who claimed only they ‘understood’ the law…

Which flies in the face of one of the most basic premises of law itself, that for law to be effective, it must be easy to understand!

You wouldn’t think you’d need a law that states that premise but indeed we do!

You wouldn’t think it would be necessary to prohibit the ‘practice’ of law but indeed we do!

Most people (until they find themselves on the ‘wrong side’ of an arbitrary legal decision) fail to see the necessity of prohibiting judges!

It is and has been a stupendous failure to let an entire class of self-important twits to make our laws while exempting themselves from them!

This is what happens when you let a certain ‘class of individuals’ claim exclusive provenance over what we all must live by!

So what will it be good citizen,

TRICK

Or

TREAT?

The law is no joking matter…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, October 28, 2011

Creative Accounting...

Greetings good citizen,

As usual markets are tanking now that it has become apparent the proposed ‘rescue plan’ for the Euro Zone is a day late and a dollar short…

But that didn’t stop the Dow from breaching 12,000 again!

Think about the abysmal state of the economy, good citizen and ask yourself by what ‘logic’ could the Dow, er, ‘Financials’ be over 12,000 points?

Perhaps we could reflect on how pathetic it is the only remaining industry in the US today IS the financial sector.

As I have opined repeatedly, if not for creative accounting we’d be bankrupt.

Here, Mr. Williams shares his analysis of the latest (captive) government figures:

No. 396: 3rd-Quarter GDP, October Confidence, September Durables Orders and Home Sales October 27th, 2011

Consumer Confidence and Sentiment Sink to Levels Never Seen Outside of the Worst Recessions

No Economic Recovery Is in Place or in the Works

Third-Quarter GDP Gain Not Statistically Meaningful

GDP Nonsense:  Consumption Surged 1.7% While Disposable Income Collapsed 1.7%?

Consumption up, income down…somewhat ‘counter-intuitive’ but Mr. Panzer supplies us with this informative graph

As I have pointed out repeatedly, the ceaseless off-shoring of our jobs has been creating an economic desert so large that the ‘safety net’ is collapsing under its own weight.

When government ‘transfer payments’ make up 25% of GDP, you got problems.

Mind you, this problem is, in the short term, ‘self-correcting’.

Unfortunately, this situation WILL NOT take care of itself, at least not in a good way.
A massive rally in US equities today led by financials as there was relief that Europe will be bailing out the sovereign debt of some of their members, and most importantly of all, the large European and US banks.

The US GDP came in well. Intraday commentary was provided, and it was a hollow victory as household income continued to decline.

I think the stock rally may have more to go, but it might take QE3 to take it much higher into year end. And if we do get QE3, we then go into bubble watch as financial assets inflate at the expense of the real economy.

This is what happens when one applies monetary stimulus to a broken economy.

It is no surprise that Jesse agrees with the sentiment that the stock markets are, er, ‘divorced from reality’.

Don’t you wish you could ignore reality too? (And get rich doing it!)

Ah, to be an investor in capitalist utopia, especially these days where if you make a bad bet, the public is right there to ‘bail YOU out!’

It must be frightening to suddenly become aware that you’ve been played for a chump all of these years. The only thing worse is suddenly waking up from the ‘conservative dream’
Where a non-existent ’benevolent’ corporation rewards you handsomely for spending your entire life as their vassal…

Where reality is if you don’t own the company, you’ve been pitched over the side long before you can collect your (full) pension.

And when you DO go to ‘draw your reward’ you find the fund didn’t perform as well as, er, ‘advertised/anticipated’, so now you are faced with managing on a whole lot less than you originally expected.

Who knew EVERYBODY would invest in Enron?

That’s the problem with ‘creative accounting’. You’re assured that everything is all right until you go to collect, then all of a sudden all you have is a pocket full of IOU’s!

And there isn’t a fucking thing you can do about it…

(Which is why I advocate stringing the bastards up now, Before they make us track them to the ends of the earth!)

A ‘promise’ is a powerful thing…it is what keeps cops on the job and teachers in the classroom.

It even keeps you returning to your worthless job, day after day, to catch a fresh bucket of shit to take home with you. (Because that’s how your boss thinks it needs to be…which is WHY he’s the boss and you’re not!)

Well good citizen, what do you do when that promise is broken?

They have NO INTENTION of providing you with even a fraction of all of the things you were promised in exchange for busting your ass every day of your adult life.

How does that make you feel?

Now ask yourself how long you’re gonna let them play you for a chump?

There IS a better way!

A Simple Plan, an idea whose time has come!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Don't worry, be happy!

Greetings good citizen,

I can begin by belaboring the obvious, that there are several more disturbing developments in the news or I can summarize by announcing (once again) that the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace, which is to say ‘unimpeded’.

Does anyone else find the sheer lack of anyone willing to champion the cause of the ‘average/common’ people disturbing?

Apparently not, all mention of the ‘working class’ has vanished from the vocabulary of the Corporate Owned media.

Speaking of ‘wage slavery’, our first offering of today is a propaganda piece that flies in the face of all of the evidence…

“I was earning $50,000 a year, and now I get $200 a week,” said Jan Thomas, 62, an unemployed marketing executive from Sarasota, Fla., who has been laid off from two jobs in the last three years. Ms. Thomas said in a follow-up interview to the poll that she recently dropped her health insurance “just hoping all will be well” and that she would soon lose her unemployment benefits, leading her to think about applying early for Social Security. “And I’m giving up my apartment and moving in with my mom because my unemployment will be running out,” she said.

The toll that unemployment is taking on families is not just financial, according to the telephone poll, which surveyed 445 unemployed adults from Oct. 19 to Oct. 25 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points. More than half of those polled said that they had experienced emotional or mental health problems like anxiety or depression because of their lack of work, and nearly half said that they had felt embarrassed or ashamed not to have jobs. More than a third said that they had had more conflicts or arguments with family and friends because of being jobless. The top reason people cited for not getting work: Too many applicants. [snip]

But the unemployed continue to believe in the American dream. Two-thirds of those surveyed said that they still believed it was possible to start out poor in this country, work hard and become rich — only a little lower than the three-quarters of all Americans who said that they believed that, according to a New York Times/CBS News nationwide poll that was conducted at the same time as the poll of the unemployed adults.

Um, it’s that last paragraph that has me scratching my head. Where is this ‘fantasyland’ that full grown adults claim to still believe in ‘upward social mobility’ despite the last living example of such a phenomenon is now in his sixties…

Truth be told, Mr. Gates isn’t exactly a ‘rags to riches story’, he had some ‘advantages’ your average person didn’t have…just as our ‘he came from nowhere’ president was better connected than his vagabond childhood would lead one to believe…

Which is to point out what most of us already know, the list of ‘self-made’ men is longer on the criminal side of the ledger than it is on the business side.

Which is NOT to say that those who ‘make it’ in business do so, er, ‘honestly’.

But I digress…

Let us move on to a related subject, that of politician directed policing

Long before any act of violence occurs on the streets, a series of command decisions are made, and it is those decisions that ultimately determine whether a protest will be largely peaceful or descend into chaos. Smart crowd control requires letting protesters protest – giving them an outlet. In Oakland on Tuesday evening, long before anything bad happened, police decided to deny Occupy Oakland that outlet. A peaceful, if rowdy march was headed from the main library toward Frank Ogawa Plaza – the location from which they'd been forcefully evicted the night before. They were headed off by a hastily assembled line of police clad in riot gear. The protesters decided to change course and head toward the jail where, according to a National Lawyers' Guild observer on the scene, 105 protesters were being detained.

Again, the police blocked their route. They made another turn (I don't know what the objective was at that point) and were again blocked. The police did not have the manpower to actually block the many cross-streets we crossed, but somewhere a commander decided to put five or six cops on every side street. This was a stupid move, as five officers cannot keep 500 protesters, now angrier than they had been at the onset, at bay.

It was only then that I witnessed the first violence. Protesters swarmed around these five officers, they started swinging batons, made two arrests and then found themselves completely surrounded. I am certain it was a scary moment for those officers. There was another, thicker line of riot police a block away. At some point they realized their comrades were in a jam, and maybe two dozen came running and responded with extreme force. (It was at this point that a flash-bang grenade came flying toward me, going off about three feet away and leaving me shaking for about an hour.) One officer, at the front, was firing less-than-lethal projectiles at the crowd – which, at that point, was in full retreat --

This particular article was written from a position in sympathy with the protesters. Those of the now downright hostile ‘right wing’ (really Libertarians!) are considerably less understanding in their point of view…

A large majority of our population believes our political system is FUBAR and the ‘bar’ part of that acronym means ‘beyond all repair’.

At what point, good citizen, do the police ‘lose their legitimacy’?

When do they stop being ‘lawmen’ and turn into armed thugs?

I submit that the above story provides evidence that this particular police force fit’s the ‘armed thug’ category.

Compound this with the current ‘accepted wisdom’ that ‘the police ARE NOT your friend’ and you have an extremely hostile set of working conditions, fostered by the emerging ‘security state’.

I will never tell you what to do good citizen.

Unlike empty-headed conservatives, my readers don’t need to be told what to think, they merely need something to think about!

So I will share my opinion that these situations (Out of control cops/politicians) are EXACTLY why the constitution provides us with our 2nd amendment rights.

An amendment that our ‘freedom loving’ conservatives will repeal in a heartbeat when the time comes.

The ‘end’ draws near, not that you will see it on the TV or read about it in the corporate owned press but it’s there if you know what you’re looking at.

The ‘showdown’ is coming…prepare!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Masquerade

Greetings good citizen,

Um, since the truth matters little to the corporate owned media I always find it worrisome when the media ‘voluntarily’ prints what is commonly accepted to be ‘the truth’.

With Election Day just over a year away, a deep sense of economic anxiety and doubt about the future hangs over the nation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, with Americans’ distrust of government at its highest level ever.

The combustible climate helps explain the volatility of the presidential race and has provided an opening for protest movements like Occupy Wall Street, to highlight grievances about banks, income inequality and a sense that the poor and middle class have been disenfranchised.

Almost half of the public thinks the sentiment at the root of the Occupy movement generally reflects the views of most Americans.

Er, that last bit of only ‘half’ of Americans, er, ‘supporting’ the 99% movement is typical Corporate Owned Media ‘propaganda’. The ONLY thing/factor ‘keeping the peace’ right now is the media induced psychosis that we are still ‘evenly divided’.

If you AREN’T one of the richest 1% then guess whose ‘side’ you’re on?

You may ‘Want to be’ one of the 1% but the bad news is membership in that club is restricted to ‘by birth only’ these days. If you weren’t BORN a Gates or a Koch or a Buffett, fer-ged-a-boud-it!

But seriously good citizen, WHO are you going to vote for in the next election cycle?

I told you after the last election cycle the, er, ‘betrayal’ of Obama was ‘proof positive’ that the ballot box no longer works…and four years is far too long to wait for a chance to rectify a ‘mistake’.

Can we ‘survive’ another four years of the current spineless wonder?

Perhaps more damning is the fact that the incumbent is still running ‘unopposed’ by the alleged ‘good guys’…what does that tell you good citizen?

Not that the party of the, er, ‘working class’ had a deep bench to draw from.

Who, besides Elizabeth Warren, would you run for the Oval Office?

I suspect Liz is too smart to run, considering what she’d be inheriting

Attacked by 500 cops in a surprise assault. Tear gas, rubber bullets, shotguns, flash bang grenades. Many injured.

The Oakland occupation's website goes into some more detail, saying over 70 (some reports now say 85) were arrested:
 
This morning at 5am over 500 police in riot gear from cities all over central California brutally attacked the Occupy Oakland encampment at 14th & Broadway. The police attacked the peaceful protest with flash grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets after moving in with armored vehicles. Apparently the media was not allowed in to document this repression, and the police established barricades as far apart as 11th and 17th. Over 70 people were arrested and the camp gear was destroyed and/or stolen by the riot police.

We see several conservatives lined up and chomping at the bit to take control of our burgeoning police state. I’d like to think that’s why the Democratic side of the field is empty, that our now spineless defenders at least don’t have the stomach for becoming our tormentors.

Well, most of ’em anyway.

So, what’s up with the media suddenly beating the drum on the ’disappointed public’ theme? 

Are they ‘prepping’ us for the next phase of the eminent collapse?

Looks that way to me but ‘doom and gloom’ is my stock in trade.

If I were all about the ‘happy’ these pages would be notoriously blank.

In fact I do write a ‘happy blog’ but don’t bother looking for it; it has zero entries.

The decidedly ‘unhappy’ real world tends to dominate the news cycle.

This, ironically, would not be so in a world managed by rational people.

Unlike the the media circus the Euro-Zone has become.

Stocks in the United States and Europe sank Tuesday as the markets got another jolt from the European Union — this time the abrupt cancellation of a meeting of finance ministers that was meant to precede a leaders’ summit meeting on Wednesday.

The sovereign debt problems in European nations that share the euro have loomed over the markets for more than a year, with investors able to price in some of the twists and turns in the efforts to resolve them. But on Tuesday, stocks that had opened lower dipped further on concern about what the cancellation of the meeting might portend.

Financial stocks in particular declined steeply, more than 3 percent. Europe’s leaders said they had made some progress over the weekend on measures aimed at addressing their financial and economic problems, but a big issue that analysts had expected to be tackled on Wednesday was how to expand the stability fund of 440 billion euros, or $611 billion, so that it would cover Spain and Italy, if necessary.

If you haven’t been paying attention due to being faced with larger problems in your personal domain, the ’debt’ this proposed ’stability fund’ is supposed to be protecting from default is 5 times larger than the fund…and there’s no place to get more without, er, ‘diluting’ what’s already there.

But that shouldn’t be a problem for the people in charge!

Reality be damned, we’ll make it work!

Large-scale twin studies have shown that these traits are highly heritable – identical twins, who share 100% of their genes, are much more similar to each other in this trait than fraternal twins, who share only 50% of their genes. In one study, over 80% of the variation in the callous-unemotional trait across the population was due to genetic differences. In contrast, the effect of a shared family environment was almost nil.

Psychopathy seems to be a lifelong trait, or combination of traits, which are heavily influenced by genes and hardly at all by social upbringing.

The two defining characteristics of psychopaths, blunted emotional response to negative stimuli, coupled with poor impulse control, can both be measured in psychological and neuroimaging experiments...They do not seem to process heavily loaded emotional words, like “rape”, for example, any differently from how they process neutral words, like “table”.

In a nutshell, good citizen, these people don’t know the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes its mild and sometimes its severe but left unchecked, it proves to always be disastrous!

This is why I propose to end ‘incarceration’ as a form of punishment and replace it with exile.

If we don’t ‘weed out’ this genetic trait we will keep returning to the point we are at today, with civilization itself on the verge of collapse.

Understand, the ONLY thing capable of ‘repairing’ our badly broken ‘global economy’ is a massive Jubilee, debt forgiveness on a scale not seen since biblical times!

Once forgiven the placing of another into debt must be criminalized. It is the first step towards sharing the planet’s bounty ‘equitably’.

And if that’s NOT a Desirable Goal, good citizen then I do not wish to remain a member of this species!

Remember the Golden Rule (which doesn’t go ‘those with the gold make the rules’.)

Look to your conscience and act accordingly.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Evidence under the radar

Greetings good citizen,

As constant reader knows I frequently warn of the dangers of social collapse.

No irony should be lost on the fact that the surest signs of eminent danger are indistinguishable from, er, ‘criminal activity’.

Which is to say evidence of collapse is omnipresent but it is being reported as ‘criminal activity’ rather than ‘social desperation’.

Here are just a few examples:

"Rustling Costs Ranchers Millions in Poor Economy"

checked on his livestock and found a ghoulish scene: Piles of entrails from two Black angus calves he says thieves gutted "like they were deer." They made off with the meat and another 400-pound calf in a heist he estimated cost him $1,800.

"Gosh, times are tough, and maybe people are truly starving and just need the meat," he said. "But it's shocking. I can't believe people can stoop that low."

"Pharmacy Robberies on Rise as Addicts Turn to Guns"

Two armed robberies were enough. So he stopped stocking the drug. And he posted signs to tell everyone -- especially desperate addicts -- "We don't carry OxyContin!"

He thought the signs were helping -- until last month, when a man wearing a mask entered the pharmacy with a sawed-off shotgun.

He jumped over the counter, told three employees and a customer to get on the floor, and tied their hands. Then he left with money and more than $12,000 worth of prescription drugs, including other narcotic painkillers.

"Thieves Stealing Pickup Truck Tailgates"

reports that six times in six months crooks have taken the tailgates off pickup trucks in parking lots in Oswego. They can actually go for a decent chunk of cash. They sell for $4,000 new but the "hot" tailgates can go for $600-$700 and the crooks are still making decent change.

Most of these are real yawners compared to other events lurking at the edges of civilization…until you insert yourself and your stuff/personal safety into the picture.

YOU ‘could have been one of the customers tied up on the floor in that drug store heist…it could also be YOU as the one who discovers the family pet’s gutted remains on the edge of your property. (Today it’s cows but tomorrow, ‘meat is meat’..and as the author of ‘The Road’ points out, some humans aren’t that ‘fussy’ as to where their meat comes from.)

Which is to say it’s only a matter of time before ‘monsters’ make the news.

The distinguishing factor is that these ‘zombies’ won’t just be ‘undead’, they’ll be downright certifiable too!

So slaughtering one of these ‘opportunists’ won’t be ‘murder’, considering what they had planned for you…

But I digress, and rather morbidly at that.

Let us return to the signs that our economy is on the verge of collapse

Bankers have an odd-sounding problem these days: they are awash in cash.

Droves of consumers and businesses unnerved by the lurching markets have been taking their money out of risky investments and socking it away in bank accounts, where it does little to stimulate the economy.

Though financial institutions are not yet turning away customers at the door, they are trying to discourage some depositors from parking that cash with them. With fewer attractive lending and investment options for that money, it is harder for the banks to turn it around for a healthy profit.

During the ‘alleged recovery’ it was the vaults full of cash that were used as ‘proof’ the economy was on the mend.

In fact, the banks have been ‘sitting’ on heaps of…money since BEFORE the crisis struck!

If we roll the clock back to the 1970’s we’d see the exact same phenomenon. Too much money chasing too little opportunity.

What do you suppose was the cause of that?

Too much capacity (like right now?)

Capitalism is RETARDED because it puts the focus on growth rather than sustainability.

But the short term needs of the few have long outweighed the long term needs of the many. And when the two factors collided, the few steamrolled the many with stolen money.

It really is as simple as that.

Worse, the solution set is just as simple…although it involves invoking our 2nd amendment rights rather than our first.

Why are the banks loaded with cash while the streets are filled with the homeless?

Obvious answer = mismanagement.

Second question: Which of our, er, ‘constitutional rights’ will allow us with the surest method of correcting said mismanagement?

The ballot box or the weapons locker?

It’s time to decide just whose hand is going to be on the trigger…

Will it be yours or will it belong to those who created this untenable situation?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Monday, October 24, 2011

Beggars Banquet

Greetings good citizen,

After Friday’s ‘fantastic’ (as in fantasy) performance we are once again ‘treated’ to soaring market numbers for, as usual, no discernable reason.

Not a reason a sane person would accept anyway, here we have the ‘cook the books’ version…

Stocks Rise on Upbeat Earnings

Stocks in the United States rose Monday, extending the trend in global markets on strong corporate results and mergers, as well as hope for agreement on resolving Europe’s debt problems. [snip]

the financial sector was up 2 percent, and the materials and industrial sectors were each up by more than 1 percent. [snip]

But we still doubt that the new plan, which is likely to be finalized on Wednesday, will be enough to bring the crisis to an end,” said economists from Capital Economics.

After tanking the markets repeatedly for more than a year, the latest ‘fantasy’ bailout (of the already bailed out PIIGS) does NOT do anything to solve the problem of why the Euro-zone keeps slipping deeper into debt.

Nothing, nada, zip.

Not that the math actually helps…why do they expect anyone to believe that roughly 500 BILLION Euros will cover two and a half TRILLION dollars in debt?

They are ‘investors’ but seriously, who besides that fatally optimistic crowd believes it?

Truth be told good citizen, I’m pretty sure the investors the credibility challenged media keeps referring to are largely imaginary.

NOBODY is that stupid.

But anyway…

After the initial surge the markets traded sideways for the remainder of the day, finishing pretty much where they started…which wasn’t a particularly encouraging sign.

In local news, one of the members of the conservative piss and moan committee was spelling out the ‘demands’ of the Occupy Wall Street movement in typical conservative style.

His list was a complete work of fiction but that never bothers a conservative.

Which got me thinking about the vitriol that I (regularly) heap upon conservatives.

I frequently make allusions to the fact that most conservatives are traitors undeserving of the benefits of civil society and that they should suffer a traitor’s fate.

Well, for the record, I’m not joking.

When the tide turns and the 99% boots the conservatives to the curb, I’ll be one of the many pushing to see that justice is served.

We cannot, as a species, move forward while the self-interested dominate our civilization.

And until steps are taken to, er, remove the self-serving from our midst we will remain a crippled race.

This is why I designed A Simple Plan the way I did. It is intended to place the law beyond the reach of the self-serving.

And since all money is funny, the only thing left is the justice system as far as what’s broken goes.

So no irony should be lost on all of the pointing and wailing over the collapsing financial system, it’s all an act.

The real problem is the justice system, which could (and eventually WILL) snap back into place with a vengeance.

THAT is what has the self-serving liars worried.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Telltales

Greetings good citizen,

I don’t usually follow the, er, ‘specific’ trials of the Euro-Zone because it is commonly acknowledged that the banking system is global, so pointing to problems of a particular geographic region is really a media attempt at deliberate ‘mis-direction’.

But when one is handed Lemons, one strives to turn them into something more palatable.

Under the headline of ‘Euro crisis’ we have this tale of, what else but ‘contagion’…

Dexia’s problems are not entirely caused by Europe’s debt crisis, but some issues in its case are a matter of broader debate. Among them are how much of a bailout banks should get, and the size of the losses they should take on loans that governments cannot repay.

Among Dexia’s biggest trading partners are several large United States institutions, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

To limit damage from Dexia’s collapse, the bailout fashioned by the French and Belgian governments may make these banks and other creditors whole — that is, paid in full for potentially tens of billions of euros they are owed. This would enable Dexia’s creditors and trading partners to avoid losses they might otherwise suffer without the taxpayer rescue.

Whether this sets a precedent if Europe needs to bail out other banks will be closely watched. The debate centers on how much of a burden taxpayers should bear to support banks that made ill-advised loans or trades.

Let us spend a moment and digest what this means to the average individual.

First off is how the government HAS NOT reached into YOUR pocket to make these shiftless bastards ‘whole’. They waved their ’magic wands’ and conjured a bunch of brand new debt into existence…debt that YOU’RE NOT ‘technically’ on the hook for…today.

All of this is being done in the realm of ‘creative accounting’, the, er, bondholders/creditors don’t actually NEED the money, it is all the ‘principle of the thing’ involved.

No irony should be lost on the fact that this is being done to satisfy ‘the rules’ (at the expense of even more important rules…which cannot and will not be, er, ‘avoided’.

This perhaps is one of the most disturbing facets of the current economic environment, the ‘wrong’ principles are being enforced while more basic functions are being ignored.

In the end the, er, ‘historians’ will point to greed and they will be correct.

The real question good citizen is when will we break the boom-bust chain?

Since the question is, at this point, rhetorical we don’t have a definite answer but we do have this curious graphic that is useful more so as a teaching tool than a graphic representation of ‘global fiscal interconnectedness.’

To begin, let’s look at who is being depicted as the ‘Fat Man’ in the room, are any of you wondering why?

In fact the real question is why certain circles are ‘gray’ and why others are ‘red’ for they certainly aren’t representative of the economic well being of the labeled nation’s populace…although the labels start to make more sense when viewed by the ‘percentage of whales/fat cats’ residing in a given nation.

How disturbing is that, good citizen?

Naturally, the thickness of the arrows shows us how much each, er, ‘group of taxpayer supported fat cats’ are on the hook for.

Looks like the US is on the hook for some serious dinero!

How big are those fat cat banker’s balls now?

Let me direct your attention to to a site that has been all over this Euro mess

I leave the choice to visit up to you.

I feel compelled to return to the issue of ‘principles’ and of being ‘on the hook’.

I have frequently asked the (rhetorical) question of ‘what is the PURPOSE of commerce?’

If there is a single issue that defines the ‘political divide’ in this nation, that issue is it.

Since commerce is, by definition, the endeavor established to ‘supply’ society with the essentials of life, we have to ponder where ‘credit scores’ come from?

Worse is being forced into debt to obtain life’s essentials (which are ‘free to the owner’.)

Conservatives (those who wish to preserve the ‘status quo’) are quick to re-direct you to the somewhat insane concept of ‘ownership IS freedom’.

This, somehow, begins with the concept of the ownership of ones’ self…sort of totally missing the whole point of civilization (but it does clearly explain their complete lack of appreciation for the efforts of others, which is brushed off as the ‘stupidity‘ of others, which appears to be the ONLY thing they are genuinely grateful for!)

Well, all of this, er, ‘ill conceived’ debt is exactly that. The ‘investor class’ ran out of opportunity so they ‘created’ one out of the last possible resort, the full faith and credit of the nation!

Take the full faith and credit of the nation and hand it over to people who don’t give a fuck for anything or anybody besides themselves and what do you get?

In a word, Chaos!

Again we return to the initial question, what is the purpose of commerce? Understand, without civilization, commerce doesn’t exist!

Only uncivilized savages exist outside civilization so how do these self-centered conservatives (specifically Libertarians) justify their place in society?

Well, the ‘own’.

Not that ONE of them has a legitimate title to ANYTHING…

But, lo and behold, WHO is a big supporter of ‘government’ now?

Why it is the same assholes that want to abolish ‘government oversight’.

They’re all for ‘starving the government’ until their property rights are jeopardized!

Anyway, in the end what we’re seeing is the cooking of the books at YOUR expense.

When we slip back into a Stone Age level of existence the excuse will be ‘we don’t have the money to pay teachers or maintain the roads’ (or to feed all of you useless bastards!)

We ‘spent’ that money ‘rescuing’ the now defunct banks!

I don’t need to remind anyone that ALL MONEY is FUNNY, do I?

It isn’t the entry on the ledger that dried up the goods in the marketplace, it was the entry in the bank account of those with more than they could spend, who didn’t ‘re-invest’ their income and voted against ‘re-distribution’ of ‘their’ money.

I have opined before that the conventions that prevent us from killing one another on sight are wearing thin…pretty soon it will become the only logical outcome.

I don’t know about you but I didn’t raise my kids to be murderers…

The question here is, did they?

And the answer, at least partially, is they aren’t raising their kids at all!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Deeper than it looks

Greetings good citizen,

As I recently commented, the more you reflect, the harder it is to escape the circus-like atmosphere surrounding the major events unfolding around the world.

Those perpetrating the crimes/events are the first to defend their actions with comments like, “It’s a crazy world where crazy things happen all of the time.”

Which isn’t entirely true and we all know it.

The ‘bizarre’ doesn’t smack you in the face until somebody tries to pull the rug over something…that is usually why the ‘explanation’ doesn’t quite fit what you’re witnessing.

What should be dawning on most of you by now is the, er, ‘cover-ups’ are getting lamer mostly because of the undeniably criminal nature of what’s being covered up.

Usually it is violations of your constitutional rights that are being ‘tread’ upon…by, of all people, those flag waving patriots, the Tea Partiers!

At a Republican candidate forum outside Fort Worth last week, a Tea Party activist turned Senate candidate proclaimed the Occupy Wall Street protesters “unemployed, uneducated and uninformed.” To which the conservative radio host moderating the panel added, mirthfully, “This is the first occupation many of these people have seen in years.”

I will once again draw your attention to the decidedly ‘Libertarian’ quality of the Cato Institute spawned Tea Party. Somewhere down the line what formerly passed for ’political opposition’ morphed into a totally illogical movement to abolish government altogether…

And Tea Partiers don’t see anything ’wrong’ with this.

Probably because Tea Partiers DON’T KNOW what ‘the purpose of government’ is.

But let us digress a bit for a moment.

Doesn’t it strike you as ‘ballsy’ that the mostly retirement aged (and SENILE) Tea Partiers are calling the youthful “Occupy Wall Street” crowd ‘out of touch?’

There is also another glaring difference between the Tea Partiers and the Occupy Wall Street crowd. The Tea Partiers (again due to their stunning display of ignorance, although it COULD BE ‘stupidity’) DON’T blame those running the FIRE economy for bringing our civilization down around our ears.

No irony should be lost on the fact that Tea Partiers value freedom higher than civilization, worse, most think the two are 'unrelated'!

Um, the bad news is ‘the kids’ of OWS are tarring ALL, er, ‘seniors’ with the same brush.

A factor the largely aged and senile Tea Partiers aren’t helping with.

Let us take a mental step backwards and refocus on the Big Picture for a moment.

It seems Mr. Obama isn’t ‘weaseling’ when he says they’re pulling ‘everybody’ out of Iraq…(although Sec. Of State Clinton says we won’t ‘abandon’ Iraq, whatever that’s supposed to mean.)

Ironically, let’s take a peek at why ‘negotiations’ broke down:

Pentagon lawyers insisted that the Iraqi Parliament grant soldiers immunity from legal prosecution. In recent weeks, American negotiators in Baghdad concluded that it would be impossible to obtain that protection, essentially scuttling any chance of a substantial troop presence there next year.

Um, aren’t we right back where we started good citizen with legal ‘wrangling’ over what was, up to this point, settled law?

Worse, good citizen, now other criminal organizations are taking advantage of the gaping holes left in the justice system by those who DON’T want ‘financial crime’ prosecuted.

Gangs like the Bloods and the Crips are engaging in crimes, such as identity theft, counterfeiting, selling stolen goods and even bank, credit card and mortgage fraud, said a new FBI gangs threat assessment.

“We’ve seen it, but we’ve seen them doing it even more now and we attribute to the fact that the likelihood of being caught is less, the sentences once you are caught are less, and the actual monetary gain is much higher,” said Diedre Butler, a unit chief at the National Gang Intelligence Center.

Did you see that/ the crimes are more lucrative, harder to prosecute AND it is less likely you’ll do time IF they catch you.

Why do you suppose THAT is?

Do you think it has a connection to our ‘anti-government’ Tea Baggers?

Ask yourself; how demented ARE these people?

They make no secret of it:

Obama and Dems have seized on other reactions from audience members — the “let him die” moment, the booing of the gay soldier — to build a larger case about the clash of visions and values the 2012 election campaign will embody. Obama has taken to claiming that “we’re all in this together,” and has framed his call for tax hikes on the rich as an argument over national unity and the social contract, while deriding GOP opposition to shared sacrifice as a Darwinian “you’re on your own” worldview.

I end today’s…‘puzzle’ with the mental image of the world that the Tea Partiers would saddle you with is IDENTICAL to the place I would ‘exile’ criminals to…

Chew that one over as you ponder who to vote for.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, October 21, 2011

Unchained...and more than a little unhinged too!

Greetings good citizen,

Once again the East bleeds while the West (miraculously) watches its profits soar!

There is no rational explanation, nobody is buying stocks except traders themselves (and they don’t intend to hold them, which should scare the shit out of all of you!)

We could ask what is behind this irrational behavior but the answer is obvious, it is all part of the ‘everything’s fine’ Kabuki Dance.

Like the actions of a group of overpaid morons has anything to do with reality…

Yet it does…but not in the way most of you think.

As I have stated before, the only thing the stock market tells us is how rich the already rich have made themselves…the part I keep leaving out is the ‘at the expense of the rest of us’.

As long as you keep buying this bullshit you will continue to get ripped off.

Purely because they say so.

And THAT (to me) is the most fucked up thing about the whole situation…

Let’s have a look at how the corporate owned media spins this unlikely tale

Stocks were lifted earlier this week by modestly better news about the U.S. economy. The number of people claiming unemployment benefits declined this week. Housing construction picked up last month, at least for apartment buildings. Inflation remains low.
Among the companies reporting earnings late Thursday or Friday:

— General Electric Co.'s income rose 18 percent as its lending business recovered, but profit margins shrank in key business. The stock fell 1.5 percent.

— Microsoft Corp.'s income rose 6 percent and its revenue beat Wall Street estimates. The stock rose by a penny.

— Verizon Communications Inc.'s income doubled from last year, mainly because of pension adjustments. Its adjusted earnings beat expectations. But Verizon's bottom-line result masked a weak quarter for its local phone business, which faced a major worker strike and post-hurricane repairs. The stock rose 1.9 percent.

How does that grab you good citizen?

Commerce is BASED on the concept that companies PROFIT from performing/providing goods and services to society.

Did you catch the explanations for the three cited companies’ rise in profits?

The FORMER largest manufacturer in the world (GE) saw a recovery in its BANKING business! Which is actually a bit of ‘misdirection' on the media’s part.

You see, it says right on the back of the stock certificates that GE is a wholly owned subsidiary of the J.P. Morgan guaranty trust.

Oddly, being a profitable ‘bank’ isn't as good a PR message as ‘pretending’ your manufacturing arm returned to profitability…which it DID NOT!

Then Microsoft ‘beat expectations’…talk about your ‘captive audience’! If you’re not a PC then you’re a Mac (and there isn’t a REAL difference between the two!)

Worse, Microsoft being ‘more profitable’ only means their ‘forced migration’ actions are working…big whoop!

And our last ‘example’ of strong profitability is attributed to Verizon screwing its pensioners!

Capitalism at it’s finest!

THIS caused the Dow to climb almost 200 points…WTF!

Let’s have a closer look at GE as it warranted its own article in today’s NY Times business section…

General Electric, the nation’s largest industrial company, on Friday reported net earnings for the third quarter of $3.2 billion, up 57 percent from the same period in 2010 despite what the chief executive called a “volatile” economic environment. [sidebar, GE USED TO BE the largest mfr IN THE WORLD!]

The company said it had operating earnings per share of 31 cents, exactly in line with expectations of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. That excluded the $0.08 per share impact of its redemption of Berkshire Hathaway shares, which it subsequently redeemed this month for $3.3 billion. But the company said it expected that retiring the stock would improve annualized earnings per share by $0.03 in future quarters.

Revenue for the period from July through September, 2011, was $35.4 billion, which the company described as flat when compared with the third quarter of 2010. When the impact of the sale of NBC Universal to Comcast was excluded, the revenue for the quarter was up 12 percent.

Which returns us to a very serious issue, good citizen.

Have you noticed how much of our economy can be attributed to ‘creative accounting’?

Worse, creative accounting has nothing to do with economic performance…but you knew that.

IF we let them continue to ‘whitewash’ true economic performance we will soon be faced with a very real supply problem that the meaningless data helped conceal.

When you’re being told that what’s on hand today is all of the bread you will have UNTIL NEXT YEAR it will be too little, too late to execute the people who ‘cooked the books’.

IF you can find them at all.

As bad as this sounds, once the dam breaks we will (suddenly) be faced with problems that should have been seen months ago…

And the ‘witch hunt’ will begin…after the damage is done!

Don’t let them get away with it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Heads Up!

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we witness the ‘miracle of Wall Street’ in action. Overnight, exchanges around the world were bleeding red ink…and then the sun rose over Lower Manhattan and all of a sudden the Dow is in POSITIVE territory!

The ONLY place on the fucking planet, how about that?

The truly frightening part good citizen is we use this, er, information to plan how we are going to proceed with our lives.

Bad information only makes the situation exponentially worse!

First up is Bobby Reich with another rant about the nonsensical policies being pursued by the ‘government haters’ and their corporate media 'back-up singers…'

Paul’s newly-unveiled economic plan – promising to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget in year one (presumably that means 2013) – is only slightly more ambitious than what we’re hearing from other Republican candidates. They’re all calling for major spending cuts starting as soon as possible.
 
What are they smoking?

Can we just put ideology aside for a moment and be clear about the facts? Consumer spending (70 percent of the economy) is flat or dropping because consumers are losing their jobs and wages, and don’t have the dough. And businesses aren’t hiring because they don’t have enough customers.

Exactly correct sir! The business community (with global connections) is flush with cash. It’s their customer base that doesn’t (in increasingly larger numbers) have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of…

What is the number one killer of ‘private enterprise’?

Lack of customers!

Bizarrely, it isn’t just capitalists who are, er, ‘ignorant’ of this fact, it appears our new ‘one size fits all’ politicians are also, er, ‘clueless’ regarding this bit of capitalist trivia…

The only thing stupider than attempting to solve a debt crisis with more debt is attempting to cure a solvency crisis by drying up income sources, in effect, tightening the noose they have helped the greedy few to slip over our heads.

The ‘austerity’ will NOT be universal, it never is. Worse, those responsible for this train wreck will enjoy the protection of both the police and the courts while the victims languish in a world that no longer needs them.

Tortured for their ‘failure’ in a stratified world that has no use for them…or worse, regards them as parasites to be exterminated!

These one way, dead end social Darwinists have only one goal and that goal is to insure they aren’t on the ‘losing’ side.

So don’t take it personal if they throw you and yours under the bus, for all of their rhetoric, they subscribe to the philosophy of ‘better you than me!’

You are routinely being enlisted to help dig your own grave…if you’re ‘too smart’ for that old trick then you’re invited to sit on your hands while they slowly strangle you to death.

And the bad news is you’re doing it!

We are long past the time for talk, it’s blood in the streets time!

As evidenced by this lucid argument

What worries me is that we’re… starting to see fault lines develop, where one side blames the government while another side blames Wall Street for the messes of the last two decades…

Everyone was involved in the mortgage scam. At the lender level the deceptions were myriad; liar’s loans, fraudulent income documentation, negative amortization loans, HELOCs, etc. The rush to get as many loans written as possible and then get those hot potatoes moved to the next sucker in the line was furious and extended from coast to coast, sinking one lender after another in Ponzoid debt and indictments….

Everyone had a hand in the bubble, from the congressmen who killed regulatory initiatives to the regulators who snoozed at the wheel to the GSEs to the Fed to the banks to the ratings agencies to the lenders. I don’t think it’s really controversial to say that, but it does seem like there’s an argument brewing about what that across-the-board complicity means.

Did our ‘friend’ Flipper fall for the bait hook, line and sinker? He sure did but who is responsible for that if not Tom Vu?

AND the dire lack of critical reasoning skills the ‘fuck you, pay me system’ prevents our children from being educated in.

Why did no one wonder if there was so much money to be made in Real Estate why was this asshole peddling ‘get rich quick’ schemes?

At $600 a clip?

For all of my ragging I have never forked over a single cent to a ‘snake oil’ salesman like Tom Vu but I have friends who did…

And other friends who bought into EST and a whole slew of other ‘fads and trends’ mostly famous for being a flash in the pan/ hit and run event…

I did get clipped for a hundred dollars in a ‘circle of gold’ letter once…

But I digress, it’s not the scam itself that is worrying, it is the flipside…where have the, er, ‘Good Guys’ been during all of this or more importantly, where are they now?

You STILL don’t see anybody getting prosecuted for their, er, ‘treachery’…

Which leads us to this ‘you’ll know it when you see it’ question.

Like children sitting anxiously in the back of the car on a long journey, many people -- especially those "experts" who failed to see financial Armageddon coming or how bad it would be -- keep asking if we are there yet -- with "there" being the long-awaited economic recovery.

Well, if history is any guide, they might want to get their blankies out, because odds are that we still have a long (and depressing) ride ahead of us. According to a new paper, summarized by Globe and Mail columnist Michael Babad in "Great Recession May Not Yet Be Even Half Over, Study Says," "the Great Recession may not even be half over yet."

"The preponderance of evidence for episodes comparable with the current U.S. slump is that, while potential GDP is eventually restored, the slumps last an average of nine years," they write. "If this historical pattern holds, the Great Recession that started in 2007:4 will not ultimately affect potential GDP, but the Great Slump is not yet half over."

I’d follow the first question with a second one (being one of the few blessed with ‘critical thinking skills‘) and that second question would be, “Does anyone think the economy/social model is capable of correcting itself?

That’s what the ‘anti-government’ crowd thinks.

Must make your head explode to see an ‘Anarchist’ preaching in favor of government but every right minded anarchist knows that without ‘enforceable rules’ civilization itself is not possible! (And I do LOVE civilization!)

And make no mistake about it good citizen, those who would abolish YOUR protection from the greedy and the selfish have no intention of being caught unprotected!

Sadly, this means exactly what you think it means…what it has ALWAYS meant.

It means, “do as I say and not as I do.”

Not that I’m convinced the majority has been hoodwinked into supporting their own assassins, that is the media’s fault for creating that, er, ‘impression’.

And when the gloves come (completely) off, the worthless media will be the first to feel the wrath of a mislead public…

But I, once again, digress…

Thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Crazy Train

Greetings good citizen,

Once again the global stock markets were bleeding from the eye-sockets UNTIL the sun rose on the NYSE, then, ‘magically’ stocks reversed direction.

I need remind no one that there is no ‘logical’ reason for this, nor do I need to point out that market performance has zero relationship with economic stability or the personal prosperity of those not on the ‘inside’ of a decidedly rigged game.

So how do you interpret this load of bull shit?

Isn’t this the exact same CRAP they pulled with the totally doctored retail sales figures last week?

Investors will be closely monitoring all commentary from key players in the summit, especially if anything emerges later from a telephone call between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A French government spokeswoman said Sarkozy emphasized to cabinet members earlier Wednesday that "Europe has a rendezvous with its history."

While stocks have advanced, the euro has perked up and appears headed back towards the $1.40 mark for the first time in six weeks — when investors are willing to take on more risk the euro usually rises.

By late morning, it was 0.9 percent higher at $1.3862.

Oil prices have also recovered ground on optimism of a comprehensive solution in Europe. The benchmark rate for November delivery was up another 10 cents at $88.44 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

A lie is only ‘useful’ if you know about it ahead of time…

Which is to point out that there is no ‘fix’ for the (poorly designed) Euro…so rumors of a ‘deal’ should have zero effect on share prices…unless the rumors are the ‘useful lie’ of the day!

While we’re on the subject, Mr. ‘Flat-Earth’ has sprung out of the closet to sound the alarm against ‘Trade Protectionism’!

After spending last week talking with Hong Kong entrepreneurs about a bill, just passed by the U.S. Senate, to clear the way for tariffs on Chinese exports to America if China doesn’t revalue its currency, there are three things I have to say. One, I really hope the people pushing this bill do not give up. Two, I really hope the people pushing this bill do not succeed. And, three, I really hope no one thinks this legislation will make any sustainable dent in our unemployment problem, which requires much more radical rethinking.

I support this legislation in theory because China needs a wake-up call. I know, China never responds to in-your-face pressure — not immediately. But it began revaluing its currency upward in 2005, the last time the Senate brandished a big stick. The fact is, China’s strategy of using low wages and a cheap currency to build up an enormous export-led growth engine — while using its huge market to lure and compel companies to transfer their next-generation technology to China as well — is now hurting both sides.

Geez, Chicken Little was singing a very different tune when China was eating our lunch!

The fact that automation and over production along with the financial ‘hyper-extention’ of the consumer base combined to destroy ‘competitive advantage’ around the world is the primary reason China is ‘all revved up with no place to go.’

A sadly ‘self-inflicted’ wound indeed!

Or was the wound caused by:

I am typing this column on a Dell laptop that says “Made in China” on the bottom. In fact, it was assembled in China — but the design, memory board, screen, casing and dozens of other parts were all made in other countries. And while the machine says “Made in China,” the lion’s share of its value and profit goes to the firm that conceived the idea and orchestrated that supply chain — Dell Inc. in Texas.

The very same crowd that ‘imagines’ all sorts of benefits but totally FAILED to think things through to their ‘logical conclusion’?

Because the collapsing world you see, the one the ‘imagineers’ keep re-imagining for us on a daily basis, was brought to us by people with a decidedly fatal case of ‘myopia’…more commonly known as ‘short-sightedness’.

Which is why there is ZERO truth behind the ‘genius’ of Steven Jobs, he did what EVERY OTHER pinheaded capitalist did. The movement to build a ‘legend’ around him sickens me.

Which is more so an extremely sad indictment of what our, er, ‘leaders’ supposedly ‘value’…

Mr. Friedman owes his position/popularity to his passion for ‘cheerleading’ the extremely destructive movement we now call ‘Globalization’.

He sort of lost some of his ‘cred’ when it became common knowledge he is ‘married to it’ (billionaires that is.)

It doesn’t quite come off the same way when others learn that you will NEVER suffer the ‘downside’ of the theory you so boldly champion.

Why do the super rich ‘love’ globalization?

Because their employees provide them with their largest ‘income stream!’ (the cheaper it is to produce, the more profitable it is for the ‘owner’…)

How sad is it that employees are also customers?

Which is to say capitalism SUCKS…but you don’t have any alternative…yet.

Sadly good citizen, things will get a lot worse before they get any better.

Next stop on this Crazy Train is Barterville. If you’ve got nothing to trade that’s your tough luck!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Do you 'Know it when you see it?'

Greetings good citizen,

As, er, ‘usual’, markets around the world are ‘tumbling’ as, er, ‘uncertainty’ grows over France’s ability to keep its economy from sinking…

Naturally, only the most paranoid of sycophants would actually ‘worry’ about the stability of the French economy as opposed to the rest of the globalized world that remains, er, ‘afloat’ solely by the graces of ‘creative accounting’.

But more disturbingly we have this insane situation residing at the heart of our legal system.

Which is to ask do ANY of these ASSHOLES know what CORRUPTION is?

Apparently not:

The parties' efforts to emulate Best Buy, in short, create true Legislative Leviathans. They turn Congress into a jungle where individual members compete frantically for donations. The system also produces top-heavy, cash-rich leadership structures within each party. It ensures that national party campaigns rest heavily on slogan-filled, fabulously expensive lowest-common-denominator appeals to collections of affluent special interests. The Congress of our New Gilded Age is far from the best Congress money can buy; it may well be the worst. It is a coin-operated stalemate machine that is now so dysfunctional that it threatens the good name of representative democracy itself.  [Ha!]

But democratic legitimacy is far from the only value at risk as the 2012 election approaches. Over the long run, the bonfire of inanities fueled by gridlock has encouraged more and more investors and interest groups on the right to keep raising the stakes. Groups like the Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute have become ever bolder in challenging Republicans whose conservative credentials they deem suspect. Establishment Republican leaders in Congress, even with all their advantages, have a harder and harder time containing these groups. The leadership only just prevailed in the battle over the debt ceiling this summer. In a globalized world that is increasingly nervous, however irrationally, about budget deficits and sovereign debt repayments, it would be a mistake to underestimate how much havoc a small group of zealots could wreak in the next few months, as taxes and the budget promise to redefine American politics.

The land of ‘many kings’ (that IS capitalism) has proven no improvement over the ’one king’ system, especially after the ’one king’ loses control over the clamoring nobles…

It serves no purpose to launch into another rant about the ‘scam’ we call ‘representative democracy’.

You already know it serves the singular purpose of stripping you of your vote!

NOW, our alleged ‘elected representatives’ are ‘auctioning off’ governmental seats of power!

THIS is done in ‘the best interests of the people‘? WTF!

Let me try one more time (and maybe some of you will get it this time!)

Those elected to public office who then sell that trust for their own personal benefit are guilty of what good citizen? Do any of you know?

There was a while there I’m sure some of you thought I would never shut up about this, er, legal technicality but like pointing out stupidity, I have refrained from screaming it every time it rears its ugly head as of late.

That word I’m searching for (naturally) is TREASON!

Why EVERY elected/appointed official in this nation ISN’T swinging by their necks from the end of a slip knotted rope remains a mystery, good citizen?

I will, once again, add that NOTHING will change ANYWHERE in the world until JUSTICE is restored!

Without justice, ‘hopes’ for better days/times will remain precisely that, hopes.

We need to recognize that corruption is OMNIPRESENT!

And until we root it out, all else will be futile!

Sure. That might makes sense, except it's hard to see with the naked eye. It's even harder to prove. Few would argue unregulated Wall St. greed and excess aren't a problem. But when was the last time you got mugged by banker or came home to find a stockbroker stealing your stuff ? How do we know we're not making Wall St. a convenient scapegoat for our problems?

Here's how. It was laid out in the 2010 Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job.
The film carefully revealed how the U.S. subprime-mortgage fiasco really was a criminal racket engineered by key players in the financial industry for which the regular people of the world paid, and paid dearly. Due to the abstract and confusing nature of the crime, the guilty were largely rewarded with bonuses and their institutions with bailouts. But eclipsed in the film was a more disturbing and perhaps profound fact. Only 60 years ago, the financial industry was a much smaller part of the North American economy. It has since exploded. While necessary for business, finance generally doesn't make anything except for bland glossy brochures. There's a revealing chart based on statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis that suggests a stunning transformation. The corporate profits of the financial industry ballooned from eight per cent of the U.S. economy in 1948 to 45 per cent in 2002. In short, the financial industry is suddenly dominating the North American economy.

If you have eyes to see then you know the ruthless few have corrupted the government so that they may enrich themselves.

The evidence is right before your eyes!

What is 45% of the, er, ‘shadow economy’ doing working in Finance?

Someone has to play the role of ‘customer’, without customers all commerce is pointless!

The REALLY ‘bad news’ is the longer this charade goes on the more the ‘phantom economy’ shrinks…

Because fewer goods are produced and prices rise as a result…

This is ‘the new normal’.

The economy keeps shrinking and the ‘casualties’ keep piling up on the sidelines…until civilization collapses.

Tick, tock good citizen, how much more time do you think YOU have (because local conditions will vary wildly!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Circus

Greetings good citizen,

The corporate owned media is often, er, ‘forced’ into the realm of the surreal precisely because editors know they will get fired if they reveal the truth.

Take this morning’s headline for example : Romney Beating Obama in a Fight for Wall St. Cash

Are we, the voting public, supposed to be, what, ‘worried’ for Obama? They certainly aren’t doing Mitt any favors, considering the current ‘mood of the nation’…

It is no secret that the relationship between President Obama and Wall Street has chilled. A striking measure of that is the latest campaign finance reports.

Mitt Romney has raised far more money than Mr. Obama this year from the firms that have been among Wall Street’s top sources of donations for the two candidates.

That gap underscores the growing alienation from Mr. Obama among many rank-and-file financial professionals and Mr. Romney’s aggressive and successful efforts to woo them.

What is fucktard trying to say here, that Wall Street is PUNISHING the president for NOT DEFENDING them from the OWS crowd?

Should we ’sympathize’?

What part of ‘the 99%’ doesn’t the Corporate owned media get?

They have gotten so used to telling us what to think that they sometimes ’forget’ they are telling us two different things.

Oops! We ‘forgot’ the whole world is PISSED at Wall Street or that very few people these days think being ‘supported’ by Wall Street is a ‘good thing’.

I’m sure the handful of the 1% that actually reads sympathized…

Which leads us to today’s ’second act’, where we once again test the axiom, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and have people THINK you’re an idiot than to open it and PROVE THEM RIGHT!

ON a traditional farm, when winter comes and there’s no need for planting, fertilizing or harvesting, it’s time for infrastructure projects. Farmers fix their barns, build fences or dig wells — important tasks that could be done in any season if there weren’t more pressing jobs to do.

If the winter is unusually long and cold, planting time is delayed and additional projects are undertaken. It’s all very simple and sensible: the idea is not to let people sit around idle, and to use down time to get important things done.

The farm needn’t go into debt to do this. All able-bodied people on the farm are expected to contribute their labor, an imposition we can view as an informal tax. Later, everyone on the farm enjoys the benefits of all that work, by participating in the various benefits — the economic growth — it helps to create.

Um, this is just WRONG on so many levels I have a tough time picking a starting point so let’s begin with the premise itself…‘ASSUME a Farm.’

Do you have any idea how far we’d have to roll back the social clock to arrive at a time when the majority of us were farmers?

Try the Civil War!

Um, sans ‘the farm’ Mr. Schiller’s advice is more than a little ‘bankrupt’, wouldn’t you say?

Let’s give the man some credit and back away from the ‘analogy’.

That done, a vast majority of the general public AREN’T QUALIFIED to be heavy equipment operators! (Just as the national ‘repaving project’ undertaken when Obama took office turned into nothing more than a ‘job security program’ for people ALREADY EMPLOYED in the road maintenance industry!)

Does our ‘infrastructure’ need replacing?

Desperately…but the ‘fuck you, pay me’ system doesn’t make this an ‘economical proposition’.

But let’s suppose that the 455 BILLION dollar ‘infrastructure replacement’ program DOES provide 1.9 million jobs, um…they aren’t paying ANY of these workers a million bucks a year to direct traffic…so WHO do you think is getting ‘the lion’s share’ of this public money?

It goes to the ‘contractors’ (and their consultants) for ‘intangibles’.

Did the ‘Big Dig’ REALLY cost 14 billion dollars? Not in materials and labor (although it took plenty long enough!)

It is, however, a perfect example of how ANY given project sees its cost ‘escalate’ when it is done on a ‘cost plus’ basis.

So, what of the ‘infrastructure projects’ that get started but don’t get completed before Obama’s term expires?

They will likely ‘stop in their tracks’.

(Worse, more than half of the money will ‘disappear’ without so much as a shovel full of dirt being moved on over half of the projects…the other half will be paid in ‘forfeiture fees’ for canceling the projects.)

And the projects themselves? Should the contractor leave a gaping hole in the ground, that’s the way it will stay. The contractor will claim they weren’t ‘paid’ to fill the hole back in or restore the worksite to its original condition…

And somehow THAT violates no laws!

Naturally, the ‘elephant in the room’ is the only 2 million jobs this huge public expenditure is expected to create…how does this help the other 6 MILLION PEOPLE (8 million total) that lost their jobs in the waning months of Bush‘s second term?

Why doesn’t bone-head pull the plug on the ‘free trade agreements’, nationalize the housing market (bum-blast the banks!) and cut the workweek in half?

Only the public should ‘profit’ from commerce, not the self-serving assholes that claim to own it!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Saturday, October 15, 2011

'Massaged' Reality

Greetings good citizen,

The Dow tacked on nearly 200 points yesterday on, er, ‘encouraging’ news from the retail sector.

Once again I’m uncertain which is worse, the lie itself or them believing (acting upon) their own lies?

Considering how upward moves in stock values only serve to make the rich, richer, this little ‘slight of hand’ should come as a shock to no one.

What SHOULD piss you off is the effect this underhandedness has on YOUR purchasing power!

These days you show up in the market place with a pop-gun while the thieves are toting a bazooka!

You have to bust your butt (never mind jump through hoops) to get your's but old smarmy there, his is a ‘gimme’! (As can easily be seen by the irrational rising of the stock market.)

Worse, like ‘milking a cow’ corporate insiders have been unloading their shares as fast as they can arrange to have them ‘bonus’d’ to themselves!

What really happened with the retail sector?

Fortunately for the rest of us, Mr Panzer knows where the bodies are buried:

Let's find our great increases!  Ok, motor vehicle sales were up, right?  Uh, no.

Electronics?  Nope.

Nobody expects building materials to be up (and they weren't) but food and beverages must have been, since we had an actual increase, right?  Nope.

Health?  Nope.

Gasoline!  I know, gasoline!  Uh, no.

Clothing!  Certainly kids needed new clothes going back to school!  That's where the increase was.  Oops.... that was down too.

Sporting goods?  Collapsed - down some 18% m/o/m.

General merchandise!  That's the ticket!  Well, no - it was down about 7%.

I know I know I got it!  The Internet saved us!

Actually, the Internet (non-store retailers) were down slightly too.

Oh, so we have one place left that must have been up - bars.  After all, with the economy sucking this badly we all went out and get drunk (and put it on our credit cards), right?

Actually, we didn't - September saw a ~2.5% decline there too.

The truth?  The entire gain was "seasonal adjustment." All of it.  In other words, in actual dollars there was not only no increase, there was a net decrease in sales of approximately five percent - not annualized either, month-over-month!

Put that in your economic pipe and smoke it.

Another possible reason for an ‘uptick’ in seasonal figures is that the Christmas time ordering season is upon us…but the (still) broke consumer has retailers reluctant to boost inventories as yet another gift giving season comes and goes with no ‘must have’ item to flog.

As I indicated a couple of posts ago, we are drifting dangerously towards a catastrophic systemic collapse. There will be massive shortages of things you need combined with an abundance of shit you don’t!

Which is to point out how marvelous your CORPSE will look all decked out with colored lights and tinsel!

You couldn’t buy food for love or money but they were practically GIVING Christmas Decorations away!

Mis-management that lead to mis-allocation which resulted in famine and culminated in massive riots, causing huge loss of life.

Not exactly the most ‘effective’ method of dealing with unemployment/overpopulation but the sick social Darwinist bastards wanted to see how it worked out…

And guess who gets to be the Guinea Pig?

That’s right…YOU!

Once the ‘pretense of order’ collapses you’re gonna be amazed at how many shoes start to drop, you’ll think it’s raining feet!

(Comedy, please…I’m exercising a little license here! I definitely don‘t mean literally!)

Left to our imaginations is the ‘trigger event’?

How are they going to push us over the edge now that they’ve gone through all of this trouble to drag us here?

Will it be a ‘surprise’ nuclear exchange, that GOP closet monster of a ‘dirty bomb’ successfully smuggled into a major US city making a large swath of downtown radioactive for an unknown period of time?

More intriguingly, will they spring this one on us during Obama’s watch?

He’s already proven he’s their boy. What better way to demolish the ‘weak on defense’ Democrats than to have a terrorist attack more deadly than 9/11 succeed during his presidency?

What better way to counter the ‘we are the 99%’ movement that threatens to destroy the carefully constructed media image of a neatly divided society?

These are ‘History’s actors’ good citizen. While you contemplate the meaning of what they have just done they are busy executing their next action, always one step ahead because it doesn’t have to make sense.

The goal is to keep you too confused to act.

Once you realize that you can begin to dismantle the disinformation system that makes it possible for them to pull this shit off!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Irrelavant

Greetings good citizen,

After closing mixed yesterday the markets finished with a flourish today to put a cap on a fairly positive week of unrelentingly negative economic data.

Perhaps more interestingly is the buzz surrounding the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Not only has it not impacted share prices (meaning ‘investors/thieves’ aren’t ‘worried’) but are in fact quite the opposite.

The banksters can barely conceal their contempt for the OWS demonstrators, on the other hand they seem unable to find the right word to describe the protestors although Irrelevant seems to be the word they’re searching for

Some on Wall Street viewed the protesters with disdain, and a degree of caution, as hundreds marched through the financial district on Friday. Others say they feel their pain, but are befuddled about what they are supposed to do to ease it. A few even feel personally attacked, and say the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have been in Zuccotti Park for weeks are just bitter about their own economic fate and looking for an easy target. If anything, they say, people should show some gratitude.

“Who do you think pays the taxes?” said one longtime money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.”

He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

Later in the same article they go on to opine that the movement will soon be a ‘distant memory’ that the cold weather will drive the protesters away…

And you know what? They’re right!

To a degree.

Only the most desperate and destitute would persist in ‘symbolically’ occupying (a block from) Wall Street in the dead of winter.

Although we could draw parallels to Washington’s winter in Valley Forge.

Which would REALLY make the shallow and clueless Wall Street types, er, ‘nervous’.

I am stricken by how both the members of the media and the privileged few really don’t ‘get it’.

The protesters are there looking for the same thing the Egyptians were looking for, jobs!

And the fuckers who are preventing these kids from getting on with their lives seem unable to comprehend their part in why these kids have singled them out.

Which isn’t 100% true, they have a vague sense of why the kids are pissed at them…they read the papers, they know what’s going on.

Hell, some of the protesters are their kids (or their kids friends.)

They know these kids did everything ‘right’, took on a whole boatload of student debt and now a minimum wage job is as good as it gets, (IF they are patient!)

Many of them are in their second year of unemployment and the collectors are calling them daily looking for student loan payments.

Funny thing about unemployment, you have to have had a job before you can collect anything…which sort of makes it all suck that much more.

And these Wall Street types are the first ones to take the position of ‘if you don’t have a job it’s YOUR FAULT!’

Which is to point out that those fucking Libertarians are EVERYWHERE!

What you need to understand is who ISN’T a Libertarian. There aren’t any ‘poor’ Libertarians, Libbies are ‘boots strappers’ who make their own way! You will find the occasional fool who isn’t exactly ‘well off’ (but likes to pretend they are) that profess as well as spout Libertarian viewpoints but they’re pretty rare, although they do have one thing in common with the ‘real deal’, they’re just as stupid as real Libbies are!

It takes a mighty special kind of asshole to turn into someone who fails to appreciate the privileges they were born to.

These, unsurprisingly, are more common than you’d imagine…a ‘side effect’ of the post WWII prosperity brought on by the devastation of Europe.

If ‘American Exceptionalism’ flows from anywhere it comes from this twisted variety of superiority born out of NOT being bombed back to the stone age!

Did I mention the ‘stupid part’?

So what do you think good citizen?

Will the OWS movement, er, ‘unexpectedly’ morph into ‘class war’ or will the kids blow away with the autumn leaves?

One thing is for certain, their student debts aren’t going anywhere, just as nobody else’s is either…leaving us to wonder just how ‘massaged’ those retail numbers really are?

Are the top one percent spending their asses off just to maintain the ‘illusion’ that the economy is ‘recovering’?

Because that has, thus far, proven to be precisely the case good citizen. Almost ALL of the, er, ‘increase’ in retail sales has been coming from the ’top tier’ stores, the rest is inflation.

Seriously good citizen, it is a good thing they didn’t ’attribute’ any of the comments in this article because these guy’s houses would be a pile of cinders tomorrow morning.

What the fuck was he thinking, berating his state Senators for not coming to the rescue…because that’s PRECISELY the sort of shit the 99% are pissed off about!

In a related ‘road to hell’ article in AlterNet, a fellow tried to explain ‘why’ OWS was three years late to the party.

He, (I’m sure) was all ‘good intentions’ of sharing his reason why it took these kids so long to get organized…but it looks like he got lost in the ‘backstory’ of why the 99% is pissed at Wall Street.

He never gets around to explaining the 3 year delay.

Which means he probably didn’t have a firm grip on why the protestors have held back so long.

Oddly, my theory is it circles back to the student loans they can’t pay!

The kids want relief and they don’t know where to find it so…

Here we are.

The danger in this thing going global is that different regions have different levels of tolerance for, er, ‘civil disobedience’.

Some places have a reputation for downright ’heavy-handed’ policing, especially when it comes to ‘peaceful protesters’.

Normally a little bloodshed is both expected and tolerated on both sides…but this tinderbox is a lot hotter than your typical anti-war protest.

These people feel like they’re getting screwed and the people on the other side of the picket line are protecting the people that screwed them.

We literally have a ’just doing my job’ attitude isn’t going to cut it, good citizen.

There is already a general perception that the justice system is broken…meaning that the cops have lost their authority because they’re part of that broken system.

Can’t you just hear the cries of the angry mob?

What are you hassling US for? Where were YOU when these assholes were ripping the country off?

If you’re not going to do anything about it, stand aside or we’ll take you down too!

Like I said, it becomes one of those ‘fine line’ issues that puts the average officer in a bad place of having to decide WHO, precisely, they really work for, the public or the politicians?

Choose the politicians and you’d best hope the Chief lets you move your family into the Police Station because it won’t be safe for you among the general population…

Just saying, ya know?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Friday, October 14, 2011

Short and Sweet

Greetings good citizen,

Let us begin with the AM rally being enjoyed by the stock markets. The official cause of the rally is said to be due to the ‘superior performance’ of the retail sector.

Just look at this load of BS:

Analysts noted that the retail sales numbers had beaten expectations. Sales rose 1.1 percent in September from August, and 7.9 percent from the previous year — the fastest monthly growth since February. Total retail sales were $395.5 billion.

The report was another sign that the United States economy may be in better shape than many economists thought, said Dan Greenhaus, the chief global strategist at BTIG. The recent rise in stock prices reflects the change in the prevailing outlook, he added.

You know as well as I that the above figures were subjected to some rather serious massaging to produce the, er, ‘desired results’.

Unsurprisingly, data from the nation’s largest retailer casts this data in an entirely different light:

It seems that cash-strapped consumers are not only trading down to stores like Walmart. They are also trading down at stores like Walmart, choosing cheaper brands and smaller sizes.

Of course, the Wall Street crowd sees a silver lining in there somewhere. Otherwise, why else would they be so upbeat on the retailing sector?

How’s that for a ‘reality check’ good citizen? I’m thinking the second story runs a lot closer to actual experiences of the majority of us.

While the NY Times may be the nation’s ‘paper of record’ it is obviously written for a considerably, er, ‘smaller’ audience. (and I’d dare say a more ‘elite’ one than I write for, no disrespect intended, gentle reader.)

Which brings us to the ‘bear trap’ we find ourselves caught in.

We are roughly a year away from the next presidential elections and we find ourselves saddled with an, er, ‘ineffective’ incumbent that is running ‘unopposed’.

How fucking sad is it that we are powerless to do anything about this? (Which is to ask how the hell the ragtag 99% of us is going to cough up the nearly billion dollars it takes to mount a presidential run?

Worse, who the hell are we going to run against the (Libertarian) ‘stacked deck’ entrenched in Washington?

We can all pretty much surmise how we ended up with a Congress filled to the brim with ‘representatives’ who aren’t who they say they are…

Come election day you only have two choices. Half of the time, after you scrape away the paint job, you end up with none.

Of course, we got to this sad state of affairs through the ‘Party System’, where if you want to run as a candidate for either party you must first pass a ‘sniff test’.

The people who perform this process get to decide who gets to run (with Party funding) and who doesn’t.

Politicians are no longer free to respond to the public mood, in fact, so fearful are they of deviating from the ‘Party Line’ that one would suspect they have all been threatened with assassination!

Maybe they’ve been, er, ‘assured’ that straying from the script will result in an unfortunate and unforeseen ‘accident’.

But this crap isn’t pulled until AFTER they win the election…which is why most challengers can still talk a good game.

IF, as the evidence suggests, our political process has been ‘hijacked’ by the self-interested, what, pray tell, should we do about it?

(Here’s were we get our ‘in a nutshell’ version of A Simple Plan.)

As you can see, the problem of ‘captive government’ is a legal one and not a fiscal one. (Although seizing control of the government by default gives you ‘control’ of the monetary system since money is nothing but a ‘legal construct’.)

But I still haven’t answered the question, have I? What the hell are we gonna do about it?

We can’t ‘talk about it’, the captors own the ‘public square’.

The only viable option is to use the ‘power of numbers’…

It will take twenty or thirty MILLION of us ‘parking’ in Washington DC, demanding the elected government ‘stand down’…just like the Egyptians ousted Hosni Mumbarak.

Let’s indulge our fantasies for a moment and suppose like a dog chasing a car, we get what we’re after, the media arranged elected government indeed stands down…

What next?

We make a ‘Leap of Faith’, the ONLY way an equitable system will EVER be established is over the still kicking and screaming corpses of the privileged.

While it would be ‘nice’ to think A Simple Plan would enjoy near universal support, it doesn’t have a prayer of being ‘voted in’, the ‘entrenched interests are too powerful.

We have been played for dupes for so long that there is no reason in the world ANYONE should trust the ‘level playing field’ promised by A Simple Plan.

So, like EVERY OTHER ‘alternative’ out there, A Simple Plan would have to be enacted ‘by decree’.

Just like the founders of the deeply flawed system we are currently saddled with did to us.

Understand, the, er, ‘survivors’ of the Revolutionary War fully expected ‘somebody’ to declare themselves King.

But our founders had been thinking of the ‘bulls-eye’ royalty traditionally hung on the nobility and opted for a ‘different’ solution. A ‘half-measure’ if you will.

The fear being that a government truly run ‘by the people’ would vote itself ‘free food’ (a sentiment that persists to this very day) was avoided by allowing the public to elect ‘representatives’ that would vote for them…

Which was a sham from the start considering the total lack of accountability the current system has.

Worse, they dare to call it an ‘oversight’ (with nothing being done about it for more than two hundred years! That’s some ‘oversight’!)

No-no, you were distracted with the wonderful (although imaginary) Balance the new ‘trilateral’ system possessed!

How do you like that ‘balance’ now?

I could spend hours tearing the current system apart but it doesn’t answer the problem of replacing it so back to the matter at hand.

We ‘establish’ A Simple Plan by fiat/decree with MORE PROTECTION than our humble forefathers had when ‘mock democracy’ was sprung on them.

What protection is that you might ask?

It is the protection of large numbers knowing how things are supposed to work.

In the beginning there will be a minimal number of laws as laid out in A Simple Plan.

Once you familiarize yourself with the plan you will note that few activities are ‘illegal’, because Anarchy is one of the ‘freest’ forms of government possible.

Protection number one is the law itself is beyond the reach of the ‘self-interested’ Beyond the basic precepts that establish Division Society, no one has the authority to decide either what is or isn’t a law or when a law will be enforced and when a law will be ignored.

So we have this ‘blueprint’ that explains how our new civilization operates but we have no new ‘chiefs’…yet.

Life as we know it can be ‘divided’ into 12 broad ‘fields of endeavor’ All of the jobs necessary to maintain a happy, healthy human civilization come from these 12 fields.

Which is to explain that ‘rich people’ ARE NOT ‘job creators’ (given their preference they are in fact ‘job destroyers’!) Only Mother Nature can create a job, wealth has nothing to do with it!

In fact, wealth is EVER and ALWAYS the end result of CRIMINAL ACTIVITY!

In our, ‘reformed’ world EVERYBODY gets a paycheck and NOTHING more, the very act of ‘buying and selling’ [for personal profit] is prohibited/criminal!)

You don’t need to set aside funds for ‘retirement’ (that most of us won’t live to enjoy.) Our new society provides cradle to the grave security at zero ‘cost’ to you!

But that’s an extra.

What about our currently ‘saturated’ markets that are being choked off due to excess profit-taking by the financial sector?

Jubilee, Baby!

All personal debt ‘disappears’ along with ‘unemployment’.

Thanks to the highly predatory capitalist system, some people have NEVER had a job and probably CAN’T adapt to becoming a ‘worker’ at this late stage of the game.

HOWEVER, there is absolutely NO LACK OF THINGS THAT NEED DOING!

And EVERY job will pay ‘a living wage’! (Mostly because your expense picture will shrivel to almost nothing!)

So, everybody works with the work day/week being adjusted to accommodate ‘full employment’. You aren’t going to get ‘rich’ working for the common good but you will enjoy a better life than your parents did. (Unless you’re one of those twisted bastards who gets off on making everyone else miserable…then you’re out of luck!)

No credit and no property ownership so the two biggest drains on your income disappear.

Um, one of the final ‘wrinkles’ of the new system will be the responsibility to vote (directly) on the laws you will live under since ‘legislators’ no longer exist.

Yes, good citizen, we will have ‘leadership’ but they will NOT have the ability to create or alter the law. (Much less exempt themselves from them like they currently do!)

The law belongs to those who must live under it and all laws MUST pass ‘The Golden Rule’ to be a law to be enforceable.

Sounds ‘dumb’ doesn’t it? A rule we all learned as children governing our society but think, good citizen, would we be in the trouble we’re in today if we paid heed to this very basic premise?

I didn’t name it ‘A Simple Plan’ because I thought the phrase was catchy. It really is based on some very simple premises.

One is it is impossible to build a ‘sustainable’ social model if we permit even one person to claim they own ANYTHING we all must share!

(The first fucktard who insists on ‘sharing’ their dirty underwear will be strangled with them!)

(Learn to LOVE that Golden Rule Bucky or you’ll find yourself exiled before you know what hit you!)

Two, the purpose of civilization is to provide its MEMBERS with the bounty of nature, commerce DOES NOT exist to make a few rich!

IF we fail to adopt a system that levels the playing field, we WILL NOT survive as a species.

And if you doubt that just keep on doing what you’re doing.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner