First day back and the markets are up 250 points at the open! How’s that for ‘reckless, baseless optimism?’
Um, because something more disturbing caught my eye first we are going to have to execute a sharp left here and return to the nonsense markets later.
What caught my eye this morning is neither new or news yet it is another disturbing example of the mismanagement regularly displayed by the politically powerful (Ironically proving how ‘unfit’ for power they truly are.)
There is broad agreement on the left, right and center that $450 billion in cuts over a decade — the amount that the White House and Pentagon agreed to last summer — is acceptable. That is about 8 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget. But there is intense debate about an additional $500 billion in cuts that may have to be made if Congress follows through with deeper reductions.
Mr. Panetta and defense hawks say a reduction of $1 trillion, about 17 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget, would be ruinous to national security. Democrats and a few Republicans say that it would be painful but manageable; they add that there were steeper military cuts after the Cold War and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
“Even at a trillion dollars, this is a shallower build-down than any of the last three we’ve done,” said Gordon Adams, who oversaw military budgets in the Clinton White House and is now a fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonprofit research group in Washington. “It would still be the world’s most dominant military. We would be in an arms race with ourselves.”
It is this last paragraph I find most disturbing…we have indeed slashed military ‘infrastructure’ across the nation. To the point where the word most commonly associated with military base these days is ‘abandoned’.
It’s like living in the sickest of the industrialized nations and learning we spend the most on medicine (which is obviously doing us no good.)
We spend more than the rest of the world COMBINED on our military and it took ten years to, er…I dunno, we can hardly call it a ‘win’ and the ‘bad guys’ are still there so what was the point of being over there again?
Ten years and a trillion dollars for ‘nothing’…well, not exactly nothing. They did mange to cripple a hundred thousand or so of our volunteers while they were playing invade the peaceful brown people and slaughter ‘em!
But, naturally I digress.
Why we spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on our global military is a mystery.
Who is going to ‘invade’ a nuclear superpower, one capable of wiping any foreign power completely off the map at the push of a button?
Only the chimera that haunt the fevered minds of the conservative hawks…who stand ever vigilant, ready to defend us against non-existent threats anytime or anywhere!
So damaging were the relentless raids of the marauders that our psyches have never recovered…and the fuckers play us by pretending the next attack could come at any moment!
That attack, good citizen, is never coming again…the marauders no longer exist.
Oh, but they’ll be back…once conditions favor them again! (Like when defense budgets are limited to what an individual can afford…)
How sad is it good citizen that we currently have a handful of people that can ,er, ‘afford’ personal protection of a higher caliber than that provided to the average individual?
Which is to say once the Banana Republic is firmly entrenched, your only ally will be the gun in your hands.
Anyway, it’s time to say ‘right face’ and return to the first disturbing development I dropped at the open.
On Wall Street, Renewed Optimism for Deal-Making
By EVELYN M. RUSLI
[Jim Wilson/The New York TimesKinder Morgan’s Rockies Express pipeline runs from Colorado to Ohio. The company’s $36.2 billion deal for the El Paso Corporation was one of the largest in 2011.]
Before Europe’s debt crisis flared anew last summer, rattling markets and choking off a revival in mergers and acquisitions, huge corporate cash piles and cheap debt had fostered hopes that deal-making would recover strongly last year.
In the first half of 2011, the dollar volume of announced mergers worldwide neared its highest levels since the financial crisis. But that momentum proved fragile as deal volume tumbled 19 percent, to about $1.1 trillion, in the second half of 2011, compared with the same period the year before, according to according to Thomson Reuters data.
Now, with stock and credit markets steadier, deal makers are growing confident that 2012 will be better for business. Not only do they point to cheap financing and the large amounts of cash on corporate balance sheets, but they say that companies that have already cut costs may decide that they need to make acquisitions to drive growth in the face of a tepid economy.
Notice how nobody is interested in solving the ‘tepid economy’ problem?
What is their response to the mismanagement that is ‘globalization’?
Buy up more ‘market share!’ that’s how you ‘grow’ in a shrinking economy!
Okay, time to go ‘screaming off the Reservation’ (again!)
This is the THIRD ‘jobless recovery’ good citizen, the labor force today is SMALLER than it was in 2000 AND THEIR RESPONSE IS TO BUY MORE MARKET SHARE!!!
Guess who’s the ‘fuckee’ in this decidedly shitty deal?
Do you THINK you can fix this with the BALLOT BOX (that you obviously have zero control over)?
AAAaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh! (the scream of mental anguish!)
What puzzles me is what your reaction will be when the totally contrived ‘famine’ hits?
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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