Saturday, June 30, 2012

Criminals

Greetings good citizen,

It’s been quite some time since I’ve had the chance to, er, ‘borrow’ an article from Ilargi

I have ‘mused aloud’ in the past about how our current circumstances closely resemble what it would look like if criminals hijacked the government.

Well, apparently Ilargi has gone one step better:
Over the past few days, Henry Blodget at Business Insider posted a number of graphs, here and here, which depict something about the US economy that everybody knows to some extent or another, but that most of us won't have let thoroughly sink in. For some because the consequences are too opaque, for others because they are too scary. But make no mistake: we can only continue to ignore or misinterpret them at our own peril. And even then it's terribly late in the game.

The essence of Blodget's argument is this:

"... over the past 30 years, we've generated about $1 of economic growth for every $3 we've borrowed."

So while real (inflation-adjusted) GDP growth looks sort of strong over the past 6 decades:

This, as you can see, cuts you off just when things are starting to get interesting.

I strongly recommend that you click through and read the whole article or you can stay here while I provide you with my own ‘take’ on what Ilargi is pointing at.

The first, er, sticking point I see is the question as to whether or not a criminal organization has the ‘sophistication’ necessary to, er, ‘capture’ the justice department, not just of its native country, but all over the globe!

Naturally, the ‘weak link’ is the legislators themselves. If the criminals could keep raising the bar for re-election they would own them in a very short time indeed. How could they ‘raise the bar’? By monopolistic control of the media and the pricing power that monopoly would provide them.

Now they have a ‘legislature’ packed with ‘their people’.

Who does the justice department ‘answer to’…the legislature!

Soon the Justice department is packed with ‘their people’ as well!

And understand, this ONLY works under a ‘for profit’ commerce model! If we had a ‘truly independent’ media, they would be unable to pull this off.

(Drives my brother-in-law crazy to read the pronoun ‘they’ in the press but in this case the offensive word refers to the criminals that have hijacked our nation, so when you see the word ‘they’, you can mentally insert the word ‘criminal’, ‘kay?)

Um, sophistication? Not so much. Daring? Well it’s pretty bold but again it falls short of genuine chutzpah. The clever part was dismantling legislation intended to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening…and NOBODY lifted a finger to stop it!

Part of the ‘charm’ (attractiveness, for want of a better term) of such a crime is the unbeleivability of pulling such a thing off.

Not that it can’t be done…no, no, there have been criminals and criminal minds involved from the very beginning as far as government is concerned.

In fact, by examining government operations, the genius lies in how deliberately the government systems AREN’T ‘self-policing’.

The ‘air tight’ compartmentalization lends itself perfectly to a criminal operation…a phenomenon that has often been pointed out but is commonly ‘mis-identified’ as ‘territorialism’ within a given department.

Then there is the ‘lack of prosecution’ (often for blatantly criminal behavior such as murder by drone with the resultant unnecessary loss of life.)

How does a ‘just’ government ‘overlook’ these serious breaches of the human social contract?

Ironically, it doesn’t.

You breach the ‘primary social contract’ at immense personal peril.

Eventually your own people will see how you roll and they’ll murder you for it! And if your criminal co-conspirators don’t get you, the voiceless masses will take the situation into their own hands.

Just as bad as murder by remote control is the practice of ‘disappearing’ people without judicial recourse.

Let me use my tiny soapbox to ask where are the so-called ‘progressives’ that have remained ‘mute’ on the subject of the suspension of Habeas Corpus?

Well, if the (stacked) Supreme Court is okay with it, I guess there’s nothing we can say about it.
Well fuck you!

Here is truly a situation where an injury to one is an injury to all.

But fear not, good citizen. The end of this reckless disregard for your fellow man is drawing to a close.

The criminals have shown themselves for who and what they are.

They have declared war upon us and they shall have it!

Let the bodies hit the floor!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Friday, June 29, 2012

Red Flag

Greetings good citizen,

Markets soared this morning, tacking on almost 2 percent on news that the Euro-crisis has finally been solved…for the 18th time.

I mean fool me once, shame on you! (Try to) fool me eighteen times and you’re flirting with being committed to an insane asylum.

Which is to ask, how sad is it that these 'fools' are the ones in charge of the bankrupt global economy?
Europeans Agree to Use Bailout Fund to Aid Banks
By STEVEN ERLANGER and PAUL GEITNER 7:49 AM ET

The agreement, reached early Friday after all-night talks, cheered financial markets, but analysts warned that crucial details needed to be worked out.

Global Markets Soar on European Breakthrough
By CHRISTINE HAUSER 35 minutes ago

Stocks on Wall Street surged after European leaders agreed to use bailout funds to recapitalize struggling banks directly.

What’s changed here, good citizen? This sudden deal to print their way out of bankruptcy has disaster written all over it.

What these banksters need is to be wiped out and shut down!

Paying for their ‘mistakes’ is counter-productive on all fronts. Paying for it with ‘funny money’ is even worse!

Then we have the downright freakish ‘stock market’, tacking on trillions of dollars of, er, ‘alleged value’ because of some disastrous decision-making.

So what are we ‘seeing’ here and now?

We may find ourselves looking back on this turning point as the day ‘hyper-inflation’ got its start.

Thus is this post titled ‘Red Flag’.

Remember this day for the ‘consequences’ it will trigger.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, June 28, 2012

Oopsie!

Greetings good citizen,

Well, one thousand plus one and it’s still the same old, same old…although today’s ‘main distraction’ is ‘all of a sudden’ JP Morgan may have lost not 2 billion dollars but 9 billion!

Little ‘oopsie’ there with the decimal point apparently.

Sadly, push come to shove, it’s a ‘thousand trillion’ (a.k.a. a quadrillion) they’re trying to fill in with an eye-dropper, a few billion at a time.

Er, more pathetically, the fucktards were betting on the ‘soundness of the banking system’ (and they LOST, how fucking sad is THAT?)

Anyway, here is today’s first snippet:
Wall Street Stocks Drop
By REUTERS 26 minutes ago

Financial shares were in focus, with JPMorgan losing ground on a report that recent trading losses could reach $9 billion and with Barclays down after a probe into interbank lending rates.

So what are we looking at here? Are investors ‘suddenly’ worried about the ‘soundness’ of JP Morgan? Or is it those screwy ‘credit derivatives’ that nobody understands?
JPMorgan Trading Loss May Reach $9 Billion
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and SUSANNE CRAIG

As JPMorgan has moved rapidly to unwind the position in credit derivatives, internal models at the bank have recently projected losses of as much as $9 billion.

Jeez, I don’t recall the corporate owned media mentioning that Sir Jamie told Congress last week they might be ‘a few BILLION off’ in their original projections when he testified before them last week… Maybe I missed it…(I’m going to bet that Congress did too!)

Again we are faced with the question of ‘what did they know and when did they know it?’

If you subscribe to my theory (and too few do) then NONE OF THIS is an ‘accident’.

Switch mental gears with me here as I explain yet another fundamental fact, every time you find yourself in 'Bizarro world' there is absolutely no guarantee that you’re going to find your way back.

And guess where you’re ‘stranded’ right now?

Let’s have a look at what’s going on ‘across the pond’:
European Summit to Test New Alliances Among Leaders
By STEPHEN CASTLE

As European Union leaders prepare for talks on Thursday, the traditional French-German power center is fraying, with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, more isolated than ever.

Er, speaking strictly from the ‘rules of evidence’ point of view, the arrow of guilt tends to point to the party that ‘benefits’ from a catastrophe.

Um, Germany’s market niche is luxury goods and it should surprise no one that since the ‘beneficiaries’ of the global race to the bottom are rabid consumers of luxury goods that the German economy has emerged relatively unscathed, comparatively speaking.

Whether or not this is a massive coincidence or not is another issue entirely.

A German’s company’s attempt to buy the NYSE casts a suspicious shadow but thanks to near impenetrable secrecy statutes surrounding the banking, er, ‘community’ we have no concrete evidence.

Our last tidbit is either the economy’s greatest conundrum or the umpteenth bottom call for the housing market (this month…pick one.)
After Years of False Hopes, Signs of a Turn in Housing
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Roughly six years after the housing market began its longest and deepest slide since the Great Depression, home sales and an increase in sales prices indicate that the market is recovering.

Left to our confused minds is the contradiction of falling salaries and rising prices…it is ‘counter-intuitive’ to say the least.

But, if we look to our example (the Banana Republic model) we would see that they indeed have a ‘robust’ housing market (albeit it a tiny one, indicative of the size of the pool of ‘qualified buyers’.)

So is the ‘bottom’ in for a much-diminished US housing market?

I think we’re still a long way away from any ‘concrete’ settlement of the housing issue.

It is my feeling that the currency markets will have to collapse first, perhaps several times before it is determined how many Yuan you can get for your stack of lumber.

For those of you who are a little slow on the uptake, the center of Western Civilization has been moved to Beijing (where capitalism at the point of a gun reigns supreme.)

Not that we aren’t inches away from the same thing over here.

It only stands to reason since the first buds of an ‘economic renaissance’ are starting to blossom on the borders of the economic desert, in US factories staffed (with some) US workers.

Whether or not this will be enough to stave off a revolt is totally academic at this point, It is my personal opinion that they have let the economic desert grow too large.

Could we ‘rebuild’ our lost manufacturing capacity?

Of course we could…standing athwart that goal is the intrepid capitalist who wouldn’t tolerate the ‘competition’. Companies like Wal-Mart can’t ‘compete’ with a direct manufacturer, they have to pay a middle man to obtain their imported bullshit.

And there is NOTHING cheaper than buying direct!

This is why the cheaper there doesn’t exist…and why all of these capitalist wankers are guilty of treason for throwing tens of millions of US workers out of their jobs (and stuffing their pockets with their pension funds!)

But that’s like closing the barn door after the horse has run off…not that these cretins shouldn’t be tracked down and punished to the full extent of the law!

But naturally, I digress.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, June 27, 2012

One Thousand!

Greetings good citizen,

Welcome to the one thousandth post of A Simple Plan! Truth be told I haven’t been keeping track. Blogger tells me when this one hits the net; it will be labeled as post number one thousand.

So whoop de do, good citizen!

And I suppose one thousand posts would be as good a time as any to restate the reason why this blog even exists.

Regular readers may remember me from the original blogger, which, back then, billed itself as a ‘get paid to write site’ based on the popularity of what you wrote. I didn’t go by my current handle then but I’m still pedaling the same ‘ideology’ I was then. So we’re talking the mid-nineties.

Which is to point out that there are a lot more than a thousand posts possibly triple that amount, maybe more.

Like I said, I’m not keeping track.

Posted on Daily Kos for a couple of years before the Libertarians chased me off in that heavily polluted pool, then I joined Conceptual Guerilla and stayed there for about three years.

For the record there is no ‘bad blood’ between Joe and me, he told me he wanted to take the site in a different direction and I respected his request, stopped posting there and started posting here, end of story.

Which brings us back to today and the 1,000th post here.

Same shit, different venue.

But, naturally, (and for me it appears to be consistent thing) I digress…

I was going to explain ‘why’ (my reason) this blog exists, what makes Gegner write?

Um, to say I was born ‘disadvantaged’ would be both an understatement and an exaggeration.

I was never hungry or naked. In this respect I am MUCH ‘luckier’ than my ‘third world’ counterparts who were born (and died) in war torn hellholes where they never stood a chance.

But I found myself at the bottom of the food chain, born to a crippled and uneducated father who had no ‘trade’ to pass on to me.
Ironically, since my ‘trade’ got off-shored, I have nothing to pass on to my son either, an outcome that I find, er, ‘worrisome’.

But it’s not just MY kid who will find himself behind the eight ball when he graduates High School in a couple of years, he’ll have plenty of company.

So this is not a ‘woe is me’ platform where I cry foul for the advantages I never enjoyed because that’s not the point.

This post (and the multitude before it) exists to prove the meme of ‘there’s nothing out there better than capitalism’ is a boldfaced lie!

But is it a lie if you can’t prove there IS a ‘better way?’

Some would say A Simple Plan is ‘unprecedented’ and therefore, ‘unproven’. I would counter that the Native Americans lived under something very close to A Simple Plan and their society flourished for centuries longer than any European civilization ever did!

Um, the more astute would ask how lucky I am to arrive on the scene just as Capitalism enters its death throes?

As you have seen repeated here countless times, nobody can survive in an ‘economic desert’ and capitalism has turn the whole world into a gigantic one with only sporadic oases of wealth scattered around the globe.

It really does boil down to the question of whether civilization exists to help all humans prosper or if it exists to make a few humans wildly prosperous?

We know how things have turned out but we also know this isn’t ‘as advertised’.

Worse, we continue to believe that ‘someday’ it will be ‘our turn’ to live in the big house and play with all of the ‘toys’ until we die…

As irrational as that ‘belief’ is.

Since this model is ‘unsustainable’ it will invariably collapse, and what is poised to replace it, so far, ain’t looking to, er, ‘equitable’.

Part of my ‘goal’ is to point the way to a more equitable future. The rest is centered on raising awareness of the eminent failure of the lifestyle we have all become accustomed to.

The ones who have buttered their bread on both sides are expecting a reasonably smooth transition from their self-destructing ‘free-state’ to the all-powerful slave state.

Which should explain why our bought and paid for politicians are sitting there ‘twiddling their thumbs’ as (what passes for) our justice system sits there, inert.

We all KNOW our civilization is rushing headlong off a cliff, NO ONE denies this, not even the corporate owned media but only a hand full know that this no accident.

That handful has only THEIR best interests in mind, you get what you get (and only after they have determined you deserve it.)

We MUST hunt them down and cast them out or our species is doomed, good citizen.

Some of you think it’s not possible and the simple minded think it’s not desirable but I tell you that the ‘parasites’ among us exist only at the top of our civilization!

Some of you recognize this and it is my intention to show you that you are not alone, others only suspect and it is my purpose is to show you that your suspicions are correct.

If we fail to identify the enemy, they WILL defeat us.

And that’s your ‘thought to ponder’ on this 1,000th post

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Hard Reality

Greetings good citizen,

In case any of you were worried, the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace, thanks largely to the efforts of the ‘free-market conservo-whackos.’

Like our first ‘snippet from today’s business section of the NY Times, the Dow was DOWN 15 points and pretty much ‘down’ around the world as of this writing:
Markets Edge Ahead
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 6 minutes ago

Stocks on Wall Street started out positively as investors awaited domestic economic reports.

Now the chart shows a positive start so the fuckers are not blind but the ‘ski slope’ that leads to the current negative reading is just short of straight down.

Who knows, it could turn right around and shoot up 200 points FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON…(it’s happened before.)

Now I need you to take a step out of time with me for a few moments while we examine another example of ‘belaboring the obvious’ that has been going on for the past decade.

The Zero Growth phenomenon also known as ‘wage stagnation’, the toxic by-product of the global race to the bottom.

Not only are workforces around the globe shrinking but so is the workers ‘purchasing power’.

For more than a decade it has been pointed out that the past THIRTY years have seen Zero Growth in personal income…in fact, in most cases the mean income has declined since the Seventies.

Defenders of the free markets counter that our ‘standards of living’ have increased but that is false, they have not because along with wage stagnation we have also seen a geometric rise in ‘personal indebtedness’…and not just for ‘toys’ (as the free-market happy talkers like to point out.)

Well Bubba, how many of you think, nay, BELIEVE this situation is going to ‘turn itself around?’

More succinctly, what do you suppose it is going to take to turn this long series of negative hits into even a short burst of positive action?

Can you say ‘revolution’?

Don’t say no, many people who see no value to the senseless killing that accompanies revolts will be right there, lopping off heads right beside you because NOT fighting will NOT be an option.

Although those of you who have survived this long on your knees will probably NOT stand up in time and you’ll be slaughtered where you grovel.

Them’s the breaks.

Join me in the present once again as we take a quick look at the future that is preparing to bowl most of us right out of our complacency…
With No Vote, Taxpayers Stuck With Tab on Bonds
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Surprised taxpayers are finding themselves obligated for parking garages, hockey arenas and other [civic necessities]

Yup, you voted for it and now you’re gonna have to pony up for it…NOW! As your tax starved city or town starts defaulting on its bonds (debts) the creditors are going to come after the townsfolk looking for their money.

What do you suppose is going to happen when this shit lands in court?

Will your town be forced to lay-off it’s teachers and firefighters to pay for the new traffic lights in the center of town? (the ones that automatically bag drivers who run red lights and cost twice as much as the regular ones?)

Yup, local businesses, on the edge of closing their doors (because, believe me, business is ‘drying up’ and they aren’t gonna be able to keep their doors open much longer.) are going to be asking towns for tax breaks so they can stay in business a while longer.

And if the town refuses, they’ll stay open anyway and close their doors when the tax lien hits the mailbox.

In yet another convenient bit of ‘foreshadowing’ we have this story which asks, ‘how much is enough?’:
Credit Suisse Said to Plan New Round of Layoffs in Europe
By MARK SCOTT 48 minutes ago

Credit Suisse, which announced a major restructuring effort last year, may reduce the work force of its European investment banking division by as much as 30 percent.
Good thing their US business is solid, we don’t need anymore lay-offs over here!

But it’s all connected, isn’t it?

And nobody can put a finger on the lynchpin that will make it all collapse in a heap (but there is little doubt that there is ‘monumental’ strain on that particular weak point.)

Just the other day someone was sounding the ‘cyber-warfare’ siren again.

In my novel it is an insider cyber attack that levels the world’s financial markets (while simultaneously destroying the evidence) that results in TEOTWAKI. ‘Unforeseen' wildfires that decimate the population thwart efforts to ‘restore order’…

But hey, it’s fiction. What makes for a good read isn’t how it’s going to go down, is it?

I’ll be the first to admit my central character is lucky beyond belief (being the ‘god of the book’ has it’s advantages.)

But that aside, we have to ask ourselves ‘would the guilty go as far as to crash the world’s financial markets to ‘muddy the waters’ surrounding their various crimes?

It’s not as ‘far-fetched’ as one might imagine…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Monday, June 25, 2012

Nightmare




(In yet another ‘book review’) Joe Stiglitz, in his newly released book, The Price of Inequality, returns to this theme of a divided society.
Lynn Parramore: An argument has been made, particularly since the end of the Cold War, that capitalism is great at producing things that can improve our lives, and so we ought to therefore tolerate some unfairness. What's wrong with that narrative?

Joseph Stiglitz: Well, capitalism does have a lot of strengths, including producing things that are very innovative. But what drives capitalism is the profit motive. You can profit not only by making good things, but also by exploiting people, by exploiting the environment, by doing things that are not so good. The narrative that you describe ignores the extent to which a lot of the inequalities in the United States are not the result of creative activity but of exploitive activity. And if you look at the people at the top, what is so striking is that the people who've made the most important creative contributions are not there.

By that I mean the really foundational things like the computer, the transistor, the laser. And how many people at the top are people who made their money out of monopoly -- exercising monopoly power? Like bankers who exploited through predatory lending practice and abusive credit card practices. Or CEOs who took advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance to get a larger share of the corporate revenues for themselves without any regard to the extent to which they have actually contributed to increasing the sustainable well-being of the firm.

While our Nobel laureate makes some interesting points, he offers no hints or strategies for dealing with this, er, ‘crisis’.

And that’s perfectly understandable, the system wasn’t designed to prevent usurpation (hijacking) by the ‘self-serving’ (the > One Percent.)

The system doesn’t have the tools necessary to shut it down and reallocate power to that rarest of commodities, ‘Men both ‘Good and True’.

Understand, one of the hottest debates during the constitutional convention centered on providing the people with some sort of mechanism to keep the newly formed government ‘in check’.

And the argument that won the day was, ‘It won’t be necessary so long as there are men both good and true in charge of government.

So tell me good citizen, when was the last time ANY candidate ran on the ‘good and true’ platform?

Whose campaign literature used You can trust Moe; he’s both Good AND True ?

The ONLY (post revolution) example of a ‘good and true’ politician happens to be Roosevelt (Franklin D.) and there’s still a mountain of ‘irregularities’ that get swept under the rug when discussing his unprecedented three terms in office.

Even Jefferson despaired over the notion that the ONLY thing protecting our new republic was ‘faith’ (in men both good and true.)

And Jefferson is one of the few who were permitted to attend the constitutional convention, so he knew there was NOBODY there that matched the description.

230 plus years later and we are seeing how prescient Mr. Jefferson actually was.

The ‘royalists’ won the day after all.

The ‘peons’ were not only muzzled but hog-tied. They had no voice and no representation in the government, leading the > One Percent to conclude that the ‘revolution’ had reached a ‘successful’ outcome.

And our failure to rein them in then has resulted in this latest disaster we are faced with today, one that threatens to end in the destruction of our species.

Ms. Parramore taunts us with Mr. Stiglitz’s ‘nightmarish vision’ for our future and Hollywood’s recent obsession with Zombies (who in real life are simply cannibals.) should be all the ‘hint’ we need for what ‘they’ (the > One percent) have in mind for the bulk of humanity.

And I just ‘re-combed’ the article and have determined Ms Parramore lied, Sadly Joltin’ Joe still has a 'sunny side up' attitude when it comes to (his personal) the future.

Sadly, his ‘prescription’ is to use capitalism to save capitalism…and that ain’t never gonna work because we arrive back at the ‘men, both good and true’ conundrum.

No such animal so there’s no point in even going there.

If we are to have even a tiny hope of turning this mess around we must put the levers of power beyond the reach of the self-interested.

Hanging as many of them as possible for treason wouldn’t be a ‘bad start’ as far as rescuing our species is concerned.

Because it is not just about ‘changing direction’, we also need facilitate communication that will allow us to grow together rather than this conservative focus on demonizing the phantom ‘other’.

If we can’t put our minute differences behind us we will never be able to move forward.

A Simple Plan lets us move forward, it provides you with ‘you space’ that is separate from the ‘we space’ necessary to conduct the business of life for all.

‘Birds of a Feather’ is no accident. People are different and if we don’t start off accommodating those differences, people will find their own way to accommodate them…usually with disastrous results.

I will say up front that the goal of the ‘Birds of a feather’ program is to, er, ‘spawn’ a ‘one people’ movement.

Wondering what this ‘Birds of a Feather’ bullshit is…go read A Simple Plan, it’s all there.

Maybe Mr. Stiglitz should read it too, he might learn something.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Sunday, June 24, 2012

Neutron Bombing

Greetings good citizen,

Today we are treated to a disaster in the making masquerading as a success story

Let’s take a look at our ‘fair use’ snippet to see what kind of Republican hit piece the so-called ‘liberal media’ can get away with:
Mr. Porter, a retired AT&T engineer, was an advocate of the town when it was a hopeless cause, during the many years when Democrats blocked efforts to let a largely Republican and white suburb cleave itself from Fulton County. One Democratic legislator vowed that Sandy Springs would incorporate “when pigs fly,” a phrase that Mayor Galambos has since adopted as the name of her blog.

After an election in 2004, both houses of Georgia’s legislature were controlled by Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction.

“It was like a dog that’s been chasing a train for years and finally catches it,” Mr. Porter says. “The question was, What do I do with it now?”

As a fan of Ronald Reagan and the economist Friedrich Hayek, Mr. Porter came naturally to the notion that Sandy Springs could push “the model” to its nth degree. His philosophical inclinations were formed by a life spent in private enterprise, and cemented by a visit to Weston, Fla., a town that had begun as a series of gated communities.

Mr. Porter tells this and other stories in “Creating the New City of Sandy Springs,” a book that will leave readers with one indelible lesson: incorporating a city is dull. Superduper dull. The book is composed mostly of the codicils, requests for proposals and definitions of duties that were required to jolt Sandy Springs to life. Without a love of minutiae and a very long attention span, forget it. But this is intended as a blueprint, not a gripping narrative. Mr. Porter regards the success of Sandy Springs as a way out of the financial morass that has engulfed so many cities in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Left unmentioned here was something else St. Ronnie [Reagan] was a big fan of, the fucking neutron bomb! [Kills the people but leaves the buildings intact…see the connection?]

Naturally this Libertarian pinhead wouldn’t ‘justify’ his work, he'd just tell you how to copy it; then it’s your bad when the downside of this idiotic idea slams you upside the head!

Immutable fact number one, you can’t do ANYTHING cheaper ‘second-hand’, adding a ‘middle-man’ adds cost.

So where do the ‘cost savings’ of privatizing government come from?

It sure isn’t cheaper for the municipality, the chiseling capitalist pockets most of the ‘savings’ for themselves.

And what ‘savings’ are these? First is the considerable reduction in wages paid then there is the near total elimination of ‘benefits’.

As you gaze drifts across the economic desert, caused by a decimated consumer base, you have to question the wisdom of slashing salaries and benefits further.

Benefits the, er, company (in our privatized example) don’t pay for have to be made up out of the private sector worker’s considerably lower salary.

This wasn’t ‘the right thing to do’ when the private sector exported our manufacturing capacity and it certainly isn’t the ‘right thing to do’ now…

Unless you really WANT YOUR CHILDREN to squander the rest of their lives in a banana republic!

Again I will remind you that this is not only mismanagement in the highest degree, it is also ‘treason’ of the highest order!

(Before you object, saying this is ‘only business’, placing your own selfish interests ahead of the interests of society IS and FOREVER will be TREASON!)

And you KNOW what the penalty for treason is…

And this is how we know our justice system is broken beyond repair!

(Sorry good citizen, I haven’t gone off the reservation like this in quite some time but seeing this Libertarian BULLSHIT being pedaled in the corporate owned media as a ‘good thing’ makes my blood boil!)

True, the public sector now makes the kind of salaries you can only dream about in the private sector (although that was NOT the case forty years ago.)

Worse, that should give you pause to consider just how badly beaten down the private sector in this nation has become.

And the > One Percent aren’t complaining…hell, they’re laughing all the way to the bank, the very same bank that is about to foreclose on your home!

Um, I am well aware that the conservo-whackos have been accusing the imaginary ‘libruls’ of treason for the past decade…but that accusation was only to cover their own treachery!

Again, truth be told, the conservo-whackos don’t know what treason really is!

Bizarrely, when they accuse someone of treason what they are usually doing is calling them ‘unpatriotic’ FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW…

And Treason has NOTHING to do with PATRIOTISM!

Nope, the ‘traitors’ among us don’t believe in ‘Nation States’ and thereby are convinced they are ‘incapable’ of treason.

While they sell out the future of every man woman and child in this country to enrich their ugly, selfish selves.

They are the ones who exported our jobs while elimination tarrifs around the globe.

And you won’t hear one of them ask, who cares if we unbalance the world’s economy as long as WE get rich!

Not their fucking problem, man…

But it sure as shit is gonna be yours…and fucking soon!

I am predicting they WON’T get away with it…but stopping them is up to YOU!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Saturday, June 23, 2012

Gravitas

Greetings good citizen,

By now it has been pointed out endlessly that ‘the media we pay for’ isn’t worth the price. Don’t you find it odd that there hasn’t been a poll lately indicating how little the public ‘trusts’ the media?

One would be tempted to rephrase that the other way around but only the ‘write whatever I’m paid to’ crowd would object to the original wording.

Worse, they actually have gone back and ‘erased’ (fudged past data) so the future can’t be accurately compared.

I’m sure that old data is lying around somewhere but nobody is threatening to bring it out into the light of day because the people who changed how the data was interpreted don’t want to look ‘stupid’.

The few people who were alive during the last Great Depression were small children and they don’t remember much about how things were through an adult’s eyes.

Ironically, they though what they were seeing was ‘normal’.

So the current ‘Great Recession’ is no big deal. They remember bread lines and tent cities…where today we have tens of millions of people on food stamps and living in homeless shelters.

Depression? The worthless media don’t see no depression!

SO we have not only a ‘positive’ performance out of yesterday’s stock markets but we also have stories like this:
“Definitely a bounce here, although it is simply a reaction to how sharp the sell-off was yesterday,” said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management in Bedford Hills, N.Y.

Bank shares rose after Moody’s Investors Service downgraded 15 of the world’s biggest banks on Thursday, lowering credit ratings by one to three notches to reflect their risk of losses from volatile capital market activities.

“The banking world is undergoing a major transformation and a lot of questions about the concept of ‘too big to fail’ and all of that,” Mr. Ghriskey said, “so I’m not surprised to see the new rating levels – ratings agencies are always backward-looking and that is what that reflects.”

Seriously, good citizen?

Don’t you find it curious that ‘insiders’ never question why the market is valued like it is?

My first observation to the press (you have my permission to use it too!) would be, “ Today’s Markets? These people are out of their minds by a good ten thousand points (and that’s being MIGHTY ‘charitable’! A less charitable individual would opine the markets are off the full twelve thousand.)

The question, quite literally, is one of ‘what’ are they measuring (and how many times is that same activity being measured (and attributed) globally?)

IF the public knew how the data was being manipulated, governments around the world would topple overnight.

Maybe you don’t have school aged children and maybe your school aged kids don’t talk about what goes on in school…but my kids tell me what their teachers tell them.

And this ‘rock’ was originally thrown by Fox media, the ‘posers’.

It turns out none of the broadcast media is truthful more than eighty percent of the print media is ‘unreliable’.

You’d fair best on the internet but that’s not ‘policed’ and mostly opinion.

So how sad is that?

And we circle back to something I haven’t brought up in a long time, the ‘impossibility’ of making critical decisions with incomplete/biased information.

Yet we do it all of the time.

What sucks is 99% of the time NOBODY admits the original information has been found invalid and the ‘crusaders’ march on with their mission of death needlessly.

Which brings us to an even more disturbing phenomenon.

The high suicide rate that has been the resulted from the oligarch’s latest ‘war of choice.’

The killing (murder) of the innocent usually comes at a high price.

Ten years and nobody knows why we’re there or what ‘victory’ looks like.

Actually that isn’t true…everybody knows we’re ‘there’ for the oil and victory will come once the pipelines are laid.

Regardless of how little oil there is or worse, how expensive it becomes.
The thing to remember good citizen is if you’re NOT one of them then you’re ‘expendable’.

The only way to (temporarily) make yourself valuable to them is to fight on their side (while the battle lasts, once it’s over, all bets are off.)

It’s Saturday, things to do and people to see…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

If this is a little ‘messy’ it is because it was not subjected to the normal ‘proofing’ scrutiny I normally do.

My apologies.


Friday, June 22, 2012

History

Greetings good citizen,

Markets opened ‘up’ on Wall Street despite disastrous news for the global banking system…but the ‘pocket stuffers’ don’t give a shit about reality. You can bet your boots the day the economy does a face-plant in the dust, the ‘traders’ will be busy bidding up the price of worthless stocks.

It’s what they do…how fucking pathetic is that?

Now, before you think I’m going schizo on you let me clarify the insidiousness of the Libertarian mind. They are more than willing to parrot popular memes if it helps to hide their true agenda from a very confused public.

I would also point out that Libby Central didn’t compose this particular article, they lifted it from the Booman Tribune:

What I Know About Our Corporate Overlords

To understand the last 40 years, and how we got to the place we are now is hard to understand on the macro level for many people. That's why a simplified lie - give more to the rich and all will benefit -- has worked so well, even though history has shown us again and again that this well worn myth is untrue. So why does it work on so many people? Well, Americans are peculiarly ignorant of history, their own and the history of other nations and cultures. Our own culture preaches self-reliance, independence and the rejection of charity. Follow these simple rules and you too can achieve your goals, you too can have the "American Dream" of wealth and comfort.

And that is why the lie is so appealing. We want to believe that in America there is this dream that anyone can make it rich. We feast on stories of hard working individuals who came out of poverty, who came literally from "nowhere" to become rich and famous. We live under the hazy mists of a cloud cuckoo land, one where the individual is all powerful and controls his or her own fate. A myth that has never been true for the vast majority of people. Yet even today, we here from the generations that benefited the most from government programs and subsidies that whatever they accomplished they did it all by their lonesome.

Yes, you will always find stories of individuals who made it up from the depths of poverty (though most of them these days seem to be sports stars), but more likely than not you, if you dig hard enough will find that those who allegedly "made it" on their own were actually the children of rich people who became even richer than their parents. And those who do become extremely rich typically do so with the support of governments and by exploiting the labor and health of others. In general, the rich as a class are more ruthless, less generous and more willing to act illegally and immorally than the poor. Just ask any one who works for a hedge fund manager or a major company's CEO and ask them how they got to the position they did. In general, most of them did it by stepping on other people (especially subordinates but also their peers), and by practicing the arts of lying, cheating, deceit, fraud and ruthlessness.

I recommend you click through and read the rest, it is seldom that you encounter such refreshing ‘directness’.

If the Libby’s didn’t throw you the occasional piece of ‘red meat’ like this, you would, as I have, begun to ask just who are these people?

And the answer would eventually come back as the ‘triangulating centrists’ that got us into this mess in the first place!

Because I have indeed come to the conclusion that the ‘thing’ that swallowed up the Democratic party and turned it spineless is in fact a branch of the Libertarian assault on humanity.

All of this ‘triangulating’ is intended to mis-direct you from the valid arguments you SHOULD BE MAKING by convincing you there is a ‘compromise’ in a situation where there really isn’t any acceptable ‘middle ground’.

They don’t need to be ‘right’; all they need to do is prevent YOU from acting!

Their whole goal is to get you out of action mode and into listening mode. If you ‘buy’ their bullshit, mission accomplished. If you don’t buy, then they start in on how ‘unreasonable’ YOU’RE being.

Again, they can be wronger than wrong but the problem is (as far as they’re concerned) YOU!

You’re not agreeing with them is ‘wrong’ and they simply won’t have it!

The second someone starts handing you the ‘let’s not be hasty’ line you have to shut ‘em down, immediately! (And in most cases forcefully.)

You may be forced to shoot them to get them to shut up!

I do NOT recommend you shoot anyone (if you can avoid it) but when push comes to shove, you do what you’ve gotta do.

In the end it all comes down to choices and anyone who interferes with your freedom to choose isn’t doing you any favors.

Which brings us full circle with the ‘free market’ assault on the workers of the world.

It comes down to the old split between producers and sellers.

The producer knows what it ‘cost’ him to produce a given thing in terms of time, inputs and sacrifice.

The seller doesn’t. He only knows he has to win the difference between what he pays and what his non-producing customer is willing to pay.

This ‘ignorance of cost’ produces some outlandish, er, ‘market fluctuations’.

Which in turn produces some pretty bizarre variances in the ‘value’ of money.

(It’s part of what makes ALL money ‘funny’.)

This ‘separation’ between producer and seller is decidedly ‘unhealthy’ for the rest of society.

You see, the (immensely) ‘ignorant’ seller concentrates his attention on the ‘ownership’ of the thing without regard of its true value (a matter of pure perspective even at the best of times!)

The producer is more mindful of the ‘demand’ for the item they produce as well as the overall benefit that item provides to society…(something the seller could care less about.)

What you should really ask yourself, good citizen is just how much do you buy ‘direct’ from the source?

You’ll be surprised at how little this actually is…and it should make you wonder why you are being subjected to the predations of the ‘middleman’.

The human anti-exploitation law, an idea whose time has come!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, June 21, 2012

Answers?

Greetings good citizen,

Temporarily on the back burner the mis-labeled ‘Greek debt crisis’ isn’t going anywhere.

Um, stock markets around the globe are tanking at the moment but I have little doubt the mysterious forces that defy all logic will push them back up to new highs (again)

And I will once again remind you that the >One Percent are, for the most part, only rich ‘on paper’, a really dodgy reason for share prices to rise ‘inexplicably’.

So what of the Euro-Zone? (Because we all know it’s not just the Greeks or the Mediterranean countries that are, er, ‘wiped out’.)

Take away Germany’s luxury cars and what’s left? Same thing as Japan…not much.

Worse, factor in that the US accounted for the bulk of BOTH nation’s sales and now where are you?

Ironically, building ‘luxury cars’ in China will only keep those who profited from the ‘desertification of the West’ in bad ass wheels. You’re left with a market too small to keep even a single manufacturer running.

But the ‘criminal class’ doesn’t care, if it keeps the ‘mud people’ clubbing each other over the head instead of prosecuting the people responsible for bankrupting the global economy, so much the better!

But the ‘progressives’ at Alternet keep their eye (and by extension, yours) on the ‘little picture,’ just like the Corporate Owned Media:

1. Pretend Politics. Prior to the June 17 vote, Greek voters were intimidated with a massive number of threats from Germany and elsewhere of what would happen if they didn't vote "the right way" (i.e. anybody but the "radical leftists" in Syriza who would have negotiated harder with the financiers). The conservatives barely led the vote count from their main anti-austerity rival. Yet New Democracy leader Antonis Samaris suggested in his victory speech that the results reflected a vote for "growth." There is more than a touch of Orwell at work when you can redefine the kinds of programs the Greeks will be forced to swallow as "growth policies." Germany's suggestion to cut the minimum wage, for example, will only take more money out of the pockets of regular people, which, as Keynes taught us, further weakens the economy.

But it looks like the Greek government will continue to plug away at austerity. And the "Troika" -- the three organizations that have the most power over Greece's financial future, namely the European Commission (EC), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) -- will continue to pretend that such policies will ultimately lead to a Greek economic recovery. There will be some fake advertising about Europe making it easier on the Greeks, but it will be a "something" without substance.

Have a gander at the (now old) Keynesian argument about removing income from a society.

What these fucktards fail to point out is ‘Keynesian stimulus’ only works in a ‘closed’ society! (Where those who are paid more CAN ONLY buy ‘locally made’ products.)

Take your typical US highway worker and give him an extra $100 to spend, it does the economy ZERO good if he goes out and buys a new Chinese big screen TV!

Do that and the Chinaman goes out and has steak for dinner, the people living in cardboard boxes down the street get nuthin.

Perhaps the question should be is it going to take YOU being moved into a cardboard box before YOU give a shit?

If the attitude of today’s youth is anything to go by that is precisely what its going to take…

And the Devil take the hindmost!

Um, did I mention that our civilization is crumbling right before our unbelieving eyes?

And yeah, when you move into a cardboard box it will only be a matter of days before they come to collect you to go to ‘the camp’. (This will be a place to hold you in case you entertain any ‘funny ideas’ like revenge or something equally as trite.)

Because you’re ending up in a cardboard box won’t be an ‘accident’ either…and you may even work that out for yourself…eventually.

You have become so used to being systematically cheated and robbed that you no longer find it ‘questionable’.

Well, I’ve got news for you little man. This is NOT your grandpa’s USA!

Take a good look around you and ask your Grandpa (if he’s still around) He’ll tell you straight up ‘Hell no!’

What nobody is talking about is how the ‘game of survival’ has turned into a game of ‘winners and losers’ with the self-styled ‘winners’ pushing the (sorry) ‘too stupid to live’ losers over the edge of the cliff!

What does this mean, good citizen?

The still ‘too few’ ‘winners’ are playing a desperate gamble, that they can dupe enough losers into following them so they can push the hapless but otherwise law abiding ordinary people literally to their death.

The law abiding must die if the cheats have any hope of pulling off their crime against society without being prosecuted!

So if things seem a little ‘out of whack’ to you, don’t dismiss it, you’re right!

The headlines tell you every day of the failure of the justice system on a global basis.

The unhinged (more for me!) conservo-whackos are actively blocking their own prosecution for crimes against humanity.

They have succeeded in creating a global monopoly that has ‘shattered’ the economies of the Western world while they themselves have waxed incredibly rich (on paper.)

We are left to ponder what we can do about this and the answer is:

As long as they retain control of the justice system, we can do NOTHING.

Which means we have to…what?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Reprehensible

Greetings good citizen,

The fact that I keep stumbling across news items that reinforce my assertions should be enough to demonstrate that I am not some unhinged nutter pulling wild-ass speculations out of my backside (like your typical conservative does.)

The difference is the conservative does it in an attempt to discredit the opposition, (including blaming the Democrats for the adverse outcomes caused by conservative policy!)

Not that there are any ‘real’ democrats anymore.

All that’s left are Libertarians pretending to be democrats…

Geez, how pathetic is that? I digress while I’m defending my sanity!

(And THAT’S pretty damn pathetic!)

Now, back to news articles that I can be accused of twisting out of proportions, we have this article that may be a bit too ‘optimistic’ in its assumption that we could have ‘dumped’ fossil fuels decades ago.
This story is not new. Today, solar energy is picking up momentum. But despite the current numbers and the recent raves, the solar saga, and that of renewable energy as a whole, has been going on for decades. It is a history of false starts and stutter steps.

First, the good news. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), 2011 showed record-breaking numbers for U.S. solar installations. The industry's best year ever saw demand rise by 109 percent over the previous year. With tremendous incentives and benefits for homeowners, and as prices continue to decline, the future looks bright for this alternative energy source.

However a quick glance to the past throws harsh light on the fact that we've been at this precipice before. In 1978, the White House Council on Environmental Quality issued this glowing statement: "Our conclusion is that with a strong national commitment to accelerated solar development and use, it should be possible to derive a quarter of U.S. energy from solar by the year 2000. For the year 2020 and beyond, it is now possible to speak hopefully, and unblushingly, of the United States becoming a solar society."

Um, if the population remained ‘static’ we have enough energy resources to keep the lights and the TV burning.

But that never has been the problem. The problem is getting shit where it needs to be when it needs to be there!

Neither ‘manyana’ or it’s evil twin ‘manyana-ish’ works.

This is the principle cause of ‘cascading systemic failure’, When JIT turns into days and weeks late and there’s no way (or sense) in ‘expediting’ anything.

Remember, one ‘sub-standard’ part is enough to destroy an entire complex mechanism.

Worse, after it fails you have to restart the ENTIRE production cycle over again, this time INSURING the ‘sub’ delivers product that is ‘up to spec’.

The scariest thing I’ve ever heard from a buyer is ‘quality is assumed’.

In a world where quality sources are dropping like flies sprayed with bug killer, you quickly exhaust a very shallow pool of ‘alternatives’.

And remember where ‘profits’ come from under capitalism, good citizen…they come from ‘cutting corners’!

Okay, they also come from overcharging…but the two are NOT mutually exclusive.

In fact it is rather common to be overcharged for junk (like NASA was for the recent failed launch of the private sector rocket!)

But again I digress!

Worse, it is difficult to drive home the urgency you should be feeling about this perilous state of affairs.

Which is to opine that the ‘bean-counters’ should all be shot!

Back-up, there is NO SUBSTITUTE!

But our (even back then) bought and paid for legislators took it into their heads to ‘tax’ inventory if it could be considered a ‘finished good’.

Now if we back up a little, we would find that all money is funny and the purpose of commerce is not to create an ‘artificially rich’ class but to meet the needs of ALL society!

So what ‘good’ came from JIT?

Nada (besides an artificially reduced tax burden…which itself was artificial!)

Worse, food stores, held in reserves after century’s of famine have also been reduced to JIT levels…to promote ‘demand’. (WTF!)

Which is to ask (again) what kind of MORONS do we have running things around here?

Sadly, good citizen, we are about to find out.

Back to our ‘energy independence’ article (and my original point.)

We ‘could have’ weaned ourselves off of our oil dependency decades ago, to the point of having a thriving ‘alternative energy’ sector in our society instead of the ‘stillborn’ rarity we are saddled with today.

Why aren’t we working to ‘stretch out’ our dwindling fossil fuel reserves?

Because of the few who derive their power from the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Who would pay exorbitant rates if there were a cheap and renewable alternative?

Short answer is YOU will because that cheap, renewable alternative has been withheld from you.

I said it yesterday and I’ll repeat it again today, they don’t want you to PAY, they want you to DIE!

The dead don’t vote…nor do they firebomb your factories or your banks…

Just because it is reprehensible doesn’t mean the wouldn’t actually DO it…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Thieves

Greetings good citizen,

Half hour into today’s trading session and you can’ make heads nor tails out of the Dow. The number says it’s up but the chart looks like it’s dropping like a rock…probably have to wait a while to get a grip on its direction.

Um, I am always disturbed when I encounter the day’s offering on my mail server’s homepage such as stories like this one which jump out at you when you arrive.
Police have added the patrolling of farmland — sometimes on horseback — to their list of daily tasks. Farmers in some areas are teaming up to carry out nighttime patrols on their own. In villages near farming areas, several thousand paramilitary Civil Guards, regional and local police are even setting up checkpoints to sniff out not drugs or drunken drivers but stolen fruit or farming equipment, like copper wire used in irrigation systems. The Civil Guard says sometimes its officers mount "cage operations" — sealing off whole villages to check cars and trucks for, say, pilfered pears.

The stolen goods are mainly for resale: The food ends up in small roving street markets and the metal goes to scrap dealers. Last year alone more than 20,000 thefts were reported at Spanish farms. The Interior Ministry says it has no comparative figures from other years, or for so far in 2012. But authorities and farm groups blame the thefts on Spain's economic crisis and say they are a big enough problem for the patrols, which began last season, to stay in force this year.

Here in Sant Climent, a village of 4,000 just outside Barcelona in the northeastern Catalonia region, the loot this time of year is cherries — dark red, shiny and sweet — dangling like ornaments from stubby trees in orchards rising up the slopes of a river valley. They're everywhere, with people selling them from their front doorsteps and on stands inside bars for €8 a kilo ($4.50 a pound). A drawing of a cherry adorns the mayor's business card.

Again, it’s difficult to tell which is more disturbing, the economic forces behind the rising thefts from farms or the media taking pains to make it clear that the ‘theft’ is NOT for ‘personal consumption’ but for ‘personal enrichment’!

Left to your imagination is why people are stealing shit in the first place?

Do YOU know the answer, good citizen?

Why are people stealing what they would ‘normally’ buy?

Could it be because our commercial model is broken?

Bizarrely, it’s been broken from the outset…but the freakazoid capitalist will never admit that. They prefer to call this failure ‘structural unemployment’, that the system, out of necessity, fucks a certain percentage of the population.

And their explanation of this phenomenon is just as lame, the old, ‘it’s that way because that’s the way it is!’ Or the wheel-out the old standby, ‘full employment is impossible’.

Again, wrong by dint of the missing phrase/word. Full employment is not ‘profitably’ possible.

Hire ‘everyone’ and the profit margin for the owner falls to near zero.

So what happens when that couple of percent ‘structural unemployment becomes/accounts for tens of millions of people?

It is what it is, right?

Nope, there’s no need to fear; the endless sunshine of the spotless mind will save us all!
"We are united in our resolve to promote growth and jobs," the draft says, declaring that the leaders will announce the "coordinated Los Cabos Growth and Jobs Action Plan" to achieve those goals, although the draft does not provide details of the plan.

"Strong sustainable and balanced growth remains the top priority of the G20, as it leads to higher job creation and increases the welfare of people across the world," the statement reads. It throws its support specifically behind greater government spending as a response to a worsening global economy, saying that countries with the resources "stand ready" to take fiscal action.

The plan says the Obama administration pledged to prevent sharp tax increases and government spending cuts from kicking in at the end of the year, as scheduled under current law, to avoid sending the U.S. into another recession.

Here’s a curious mental puzzle for you good citizen, how many of you think President Obama WANTS TO BE ‘re-elected’?

Were I standing in his shoes, I’d take the money and run.

Hell, I’d vote for Mitt! Let him fulfill his father’s dream/ambitions.

What do you think the ‘probability’ is of the G-20 nations returning to unbridled growth?

How about slim to nil. They COULD pull it off for a few months but once the heating season returns in earnest that ‘pipe dream’ goes ‘poof’!

That’s what’s driving the whole collapse, we no longer have enough energy to support a growing global population…

So the people whose power relies on the control of our energy supply have decided to extend their reign by ‘right-sizing’ the population.

How fucked up is it that ‘right-sizing’ is estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of a single billion, give or take a billion…

Killing off the other six billion is an ‘ambitious’ undertaking to put it lightly.

I propose all we need do is, er, ‘eliminate’ the >One percent and re-shuffle the deck so I is more equitable.

Sacrificing all of that labor is terribly wasteful but those in power now have never cared about how wasteful they have been.

They murder freely whenever it is ‘in their interest’ to do so.

And that’s who is ‘yanking your chain’ this very minute, good citizen.

Don’t forget to get out and vote! (They rely on YOU buying the lie!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Monday, June 18, 2012

We're All Greek

Greetings good citizen,

Um, Mr. Market is torn between diving for cover and hovering this morning, hoping nobody notices it is just hanging around, slacking off.

Naturally, today’s ‘Big Story’ is the Greek elections which, (surprise, surprise!) held victory for the supporters of ‘bailing out the banks’ and further ‘austerity’ measures for an already crumbling economy.

(Can you say ‘stick em up?)

It seems whoever is pulling the strings of the Grecian media has no problem with it…but maybe he’s paying attention to the richest MEXICAN in the world, who says we should all work longer/retire later!

[This, from an asshole who interprets the minimum wage as also being the maximum wage!]

But I digress (although not as far as the lying media is concerned.)

Um, in case you don’t see the ‘pattern’ that is developing here, look a little closer at how the ‘ballot box’ is performing ‘worldwide’.

Let’s start with Michigan’s ‘recall election’. Apparently while they had no problem collecting enough signatures to put the recall into action, they didn’t have the necessary spark to push the voters into the voting booth!

People wanted to change governors but didn’t like the alternative well enough to drag themselves to the polls for.

And why do you suppose that is?

Because one asshole voting for you without ever consulting you is pretty much like any other asshole.

There’s no ‘win’ there.

And (as the progressives are slowly realizing) there is no win in championing the survival of the ONLY successful unions left in the nation…they are the unions of our oppressors.

These are the unions that back up the demands of the men who come and throw you out of your house when the bank evicts you!

Yeah, there’s a part of all of us who take a measure of satisfaction from watching these guys get clothes-lined by the same greedy fuckers who ordered them to keep the plant entrances clear when we striking for our jobs!

How sad is it that this particular dish has grown very ‘cold’ indeed?

Worse, it demonstrates perfectly the strategy of ‘divided we fall’.

The policeman’s UNION should have ‘backed’ the striking workers when they were struggling against the global race to the bottom, because if they had, (instead of defending the company’s interests) we wouldn’t be in the crisis we’re in now!

I never understood the union’s refusal to engage in ‘sympathy strikes’…although as time goes on it becomes clear that SOME people were well paid to keep their noses out of it.

Yet another crime that will be vigorously prosecuted when the time comes…treachery is treachery, after all.

How sad is it good citizen that the failure to stand up to the over-reaching resulted in the collapse of civilization itself.

And do you know what the greed-heads have to say about that?

They say ‘Oh, fucking well!’

But shamelessness is its own reward…as pathetic as that may be.

Talk about ‘digress’ I’m on the second page and I haven’t introduced today’s snippets!
Market Relief Fades at Greek Election Results
By STEPHEN CASTLE 8:04 AM ET

Market relief at the future of the euro zone began to fade by midmorning Monday, as stocks and the euro retreated and Spain’s borrowing costs reached a level seen by many as unsustainably high.


Aftermath of the Greek Vote
By VICTORIA SHANNON 40 minutes ago

Dow futures are down, Germany continues to oppose euro bonds and bank analysts see reasons for continued pessimism.


Worried Banks Resist Fiscal Union
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.

European banks oppose a union, which is meant to encourage the free flow of money in Europe and halt the lending cycle between sick banks and debt-laden governments.

Greek Election Defuses One Crisis, but More Lurk
By NATHANIEL POPPER

Greece is expected to continue receiving the international aid it needs to stay afloat, but problems in Spain, Italy and the rest of Europe still need to be addressed.

I think the first story is the most ‘telling’…the ‘last minute’ conservative party is probably held together with spit and barbed wire and has a decidedly nasty agenda hidden up its sleeve for the Greek people.

Thus does its election not bode well for political harmony in the ‘cradle of Democracy.’

Which is to say the banks themselves cobbled up this new party with a wing and a prayer and lured voters to it by dangling the fate of the Euro over its snapping jaws.

And the ‘suckers’ fell for it…for now.

When the bloom falls away we shall see how ‘popular’ last chance, spur of the moment political parties remain.

Which returns us to our original diagnosis…there is NO (nada, zip, zero) ‘cure’ for the cripple banking system via capitalism.

The solution to our broken economy lies in ABANDONING CAPITALISM!

You can find a detailed replacement among the pages of this blog.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Sunday, June 17, 2012

Monsters

I have made a lot of predictions over the years and one of them has been the ‘void of power’ play.

When a government is paralyzed into ineffectiveness, the threat of a coup looms eminent.

So it is that we are witnessing the impossible choices of an elected governing body.

Mr. Schäuble told the magazine Stern that he had sympathy for the Greeks, but added: “The Greek minimum wage is just dropping to the level of Spain. If the country wants to become competitive again, it has to sink.”

It has been sinking, Greeks say, as they cut their budgets and think about making Mr. Tsipras, only 37, their new prime minister, to shake up what everyone agrees has been a political system rotten with cronyism and corruption. While New Democracy appears to be running neck-and-neck with Syriza, many say they believe that Europe’s best chance to negotiate a lasting deal with Athens — and to keep down social unrest at home — would be if Syriza is in the government and part of whatever emerges.

“We have a brand new political landscape and it will change a lot more in the years to come, because the austerity collapsed the center,” said Nikos Xydakis, a political analyst and an editor at the daily newspaper Kathimerini. He added that the next Greek government would not have much staying power.

Geez, the things you see when you don’t have a gun! Here we have a crippled global economy and there is dipstick calling for ‘more of the same’!

These idiots are relentless!

We can truly ask if the return of slavery will put an end to the ruinous global ‘race to the bottom’?

What kind of MONSTERS are they? Just look at the question above! What else do you need to know?

While my excerpt comes from the end of the article, the beginning asks the question of whether or not the Greeks will be able to form a government under such impossible conditions.

We hear ‘Progressives’ complaining that ‘austerity’ doesn’t work and they’re right, austerity does NOT lay the groundwork for ‘prosperity’, it only provides the few that have with an excuse to withhold it from everyone else.

‘We’re promoting austerity!’ they cluck happily while their yacht pulls out of the harbor so they can feast like pigs unobserved.

The part that should amaze you good citizen is how nobody (in the media) points to this unbalance and states it is ‘unhealthy’.

Because the ‘propaganda machine’ tells us we all secretly aspire to be just like them (that has more than they can use!)

Oh can you wait until it’s YOUR TURN?

Some one of these days that lucky lottery ticket is going to justify your ongoing support of the ‘selfish assholes’ club.

How sad is it that it is the ONLY reason to vote Republican (not that who you vote for matters, they are ALL corrupt beyond belief.)

And once you join that other club, the one nobody prepare you for (Bankrupt lottery winners club) you might realize you’ve been rooting for the wrong team your whole life.

But ‘hope’ springs eternal an you just know if you did it once that you can do it again.

Although the odds are roughly the same as seeing God, for real, in person…with witnesses!

And still being unable to prove it but watcha gonna do?

Sadly, a full 20 percent of the human population falls into this ‘deluded’ category and gets played expertly by those who have a stake in maintaining the ‘status quo’.

To be a conservative is to support the status quo, wholeheartedly.

Even though the structure underlying the status quo (cheap, abundant energy) is about to collapse.

Now we return to the issue at hand, ‘will the global race to the bottom ‘end’ with the return of slavery?’

Sadly, I predict the answer will be ‘no’.

Because the slavers are NEVER satisfied, there will be minute, quantitative differences between slaves from here and slaves from there that will drive them to work the slaves they have to death in vain attempts to ‘outperform’ the slave holders from elsewhere.

Is a short, brutal life ‘as good as it gets’ for you and yours?

Keep voting Republican chuckle head and that will be what you will get…again, not that it matters who you vote for.

What matters, good citizen, are what you get to vote on!

If you don’t get to vote DIRECTLY on the laws you must live on then others will use those laws to enslave YOU!

Wake the fuck up, damn it!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Saturday, June 16, 2012

Acceleration

Greetings good citizen,

As is my custom from time to time I will lift the data from Mr. Williams SGS site for a less biased look at the, er, ‘State of the Nation’…

Below you will find just the posts for the month of June…maybe it’s me but if I’m not mistaken the volume of alarming data is increasing.

No. 448: May Industrial Production Subscription required June 15th, 2012
• Manufacturers Cut Production, Trying to Reduce Excess Inventories Versus Slack Demand More ...

No. 447: May CPI, Real Retail Sales, Real Earnings Subscription required June 14th, 2012
• Softening Inflation Pattern Is About to Reverse
• May Year-to-Year Inflation: 1.7% (CPI-U), 1.6% (CPI-W), 9.3% (SGS)
• Real Retail Sales and Real Earnings Revise Lower More ...

No. 446: May Retail Sales, PPI Subscription required June 13th, 2012
• Revisions Eviscerated Recent Retail Strength
• May Sales Fell 0.8% Against Initial April Reporting
• PPI Decline Reflected Oil Price Drop Compounded by Adverse Seasonal Factors More

No. 445: SPECIAL COMMENTARY - Review of Economic, Systemic-Solvency, Inflation, U.S. Dollar and Gold Circumstances Subscription required June 12th, 2012
• Economic and Systemic Crises of 2007/2008 Continue
• Don’t Blame the Economy on Europe
• Global Markets to Turn Against U.S. Dollar
• Hyperinflation Outlook Updated
• Gold Remains the Ultimate Hedge More ...

No. 444: April Trade Balance Subscription required June 11th, 2012
• Trade Data Suggest Negative Contribution to Second-Quarter GDP More ...

No. 443: Employment and Unemployment, Construction, M3, PCE Deflator Subscription required June 1st, 2012
• May Payrolls Up Just 20,000 versus Initial April Estimate
• May Unemployment: 8.2% (U.3), 14.8% (U.6), 22.7% (SGS)
• Annual M3 Money Supply Growth Slowed Further in May
• Construction Spending Stagnation Continued in April
• April PCE Deflator Dropped Below Fed’s Target More ...

Probably just a lot of activity slated to occur mid-month but of the 6 posts displayed, five of them were posted in the past 5 days…
Almost five years after the original crisis the global banking system is still crumbling…because nobody is forcing the bankers to take their losses.

Naturally we have ourselves a fine little ‘catch 22’ going on here. The banks can’t liquidate because there’s nobody to sell to…actually there be a bunch of deep-pocketed rentiers just itching to get their hands on the ‘overstock’ in the housing market.

They’d snap it all up in a heartbeat IF they could get the government to ‘guarantee’ them that they wouldn’t be forced to sell their holdings later on (to break up ‘monopolies’)…or to insure that they wouldn’t be forced to renovate a property before it was ‘absolutely necessary’.

(They’d also ‘hold out’ for favorable tax treatment like not having to pay taxes on properties that weren’t fully rented.)

and then there’s the ‘making it worthwhile’ part of the puzzle. What good is being a ‘slumlord’ if you can’t charge your tenants dearly? You don’t want them saving their money and moving out, you need them to keep paying YOU every spare nickel they get!

Because you see good citizen, in a world that no longer needs workers, collecting rent is going to be the ‘only game in town.’

How much of a ‘game’ it will be depends on how much inequity the future society will tolerate.

We have already turned a blind eye to quite a bit (falsely believing our turn would soon come.)

Now that it is becoming apparent our turn will NEVER come our patience is wearing thin.

Our kids are pauperized while we patiently wait for raises that are decades overdue.

Go ahead and tell me you aren’t still waiting…no, I guess you’re not. Instead your sitting as quietly as you can, not drawing any attention to yourself because you know you’re LUCKY to still HAVE a job!

How the fuck did we come to this good citizen?

How long will we continue to ‘live on our knees’ while our future and the future of our children is sold off piecemeal to foreigners?

How long are you going to let them get away with it?

All economies are LOCAL good citizen! If the local economy can’t support YOU, YOU can’t afford to live there!
And if the local ‘rent collector’ won’t let you get our head above water, you should kill them in ‘self-defense’…it is YOUR RIGHT!

Funny how all of these posts dance/end up with violent endings.

But if you don’t stand up for yourself and more importantly, your defenseless children, they (and you) will become the ‘victims’ of violence.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Friday, June 15, 2012

Compasses

Greetings good citizen,

In what can only be described as massive case of cognitive dissonance (although there is the 'only game in town factor’ also in play) markets are generally ‘up’, again, for no apparent or rational reason.

The pending Greek vote, like the upcoming Egyptian elections both appear to be just like the upcoming US elections, already stacked with ‘non-choices’ pretending to be ‘alternatives.’

Because no matter how you choose, the outcome remains the same.

And how friggin’ sad is THAT, good citizen?

In my mind it conjures the image of a captive being prepared for slaughter by cannibals. It doesn’t matter that the captives out number the cannibals by a factor of a million to one, the cannibals have them all hobbled, hand and foot so they can’t resist.

You should seriously take a moment to marvel at how effective just a handful of men with guns can be.

Which raises some other, disturbing social problems and the raging debate over ‘how’ these problems should be ‘handled’:
In his June 11, 2012 op-ed in the NY Times, Paul Krugman goes beyond economic analysis to bring up the morality and the conceptual framing that determines economic policy. He speaks of “the people the economy is supposed to serve” — “the unemployed,” and “workers”— and “the mentality that sees economic pain as somehow redeeming.”

Krugman is right to bring these matters up. Markets are not provided by nature. They are constructed — by laws, rules, and institutions. All of these have moral bases of one sort or another. Hence, all markets are moral, according to someone’s sense of morality. The only question is, Whose morality? In contemporary America, it is conservative versus progressive morality that governs forms of economic policy. The systems of morality behind economic policies need to be discussed.

Most Democrats, consciously or mostly unconsciously, use a moral view deriving from an idealized notion of nurturing parenting, a morality based on caring about their fellow citizens, and acting responsibly both for themselves and others with what President Obama has called “an ethic of excellence” — doing one’s best not just for oneself, but for one’s family, community, and country, and for the world. Government on this view has two moral missions: to protect and empower everyone equally.
In a debate totally void of reason the conservative ‘argument’ over ‘the natural order of things’ smacks so loudly of religious dogma as to be indistinguishable from it.

‘It’s that way because that’s the way it is’ is a mighty ‘feeble’ argument that is only a half a degree removed from the truth, it’s that way because that is how I want it to be!

Which the meat-headed conservative will vehemently deny (if he is not surrounded by his criminal cohorts.)

How fucked up is it that the phrase ‘the poor deserve what they get’ serves as the ‘secret handshake’ for a club any self-respecting human doesn’t want anything to do with?

Funny thing about that particular ‘handshake’, you know what it will buy you under A Simple Plan? It gets you an all expenses paid trip to ‘liberty-land’, that place where you’re ‘free’ to do whatever you like, you can lay claim to the whole place because it will be the only place in our new society where you will be allowed to ‘own’ things.

Sounds like a ‘good deal’ right?

There are a couple of little ‘hitches’…and ‘how little’ are matters of ‘perspective’.

First, we send you on your ‘permanent holiday’ in your ‘birthday suit’ [regardless of time of year.] Since you don’t appreciate the cooperative nature of society/civilization, you will not be permitted to bring anything you didn’t make yourself out of natural materials. Um, there are also ‘size restrictions’, you won’t be allowed to bring the Hogan you built with you either.

For safety reasons, if your only handmade possession is a ‘sharp rock’, you won’t be able to bring it with you because there will be no shortage of ‘sharp rocks’ where you’re going.

You won’t be permitted to bring food with you, part of your, er, ‘rehabilitation’ will be the sharpening of those self-sufficiency skills that you folks prize so highly.

You’re free to hunt, prep and eat whatever comes along…and ‘whatever’ is a literal term.

The people who have been there longer may well include you as part of the day’s menu, so choose your ‘allies’ carefully…

Those who befriend you may have other motives (like not wanting to drag your dead ass to the cook fire.)

Now it sounds a bit ‘harsh’, doesn’t it?

Shouldn’t we show these misguided souls some ‘mercy’?

In answer to that we have to reverse the situation and ask where was THEIR mercy when it came to the destitute?

Who were they to decide who did and didn’t deserve succor in a situation THEY created?

An employer ‘picks’ their employees, hiring no more (and usually less) than they need.

So it comes down to cases…do the poor ‘deserve’ what they get?

Are they truly ‘undeserving’ of respite from their misery because they are ‘immoral’ or is the pig who would pocket the poor’s share for himself the one with the broken moral compass?

Circle logic is often employed to cover self-serving behavior.

The disturbing aspect of this whole line of questioning is why nothing is done when we see these feeble excuses being used to defend inequity?

Why aren’t the defrauders of the destitute prosecuted?

Why aren’t the employers who don’t pay a living wage fined?

Where is the Justice, good citizen?

And ‘I don’t know’ isn’t the right (or enough of) an answer.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Thursday, June 14, 2012

Retrograde

Greetings good citizen,

Personally I find it difficult to figure out how they’ve kept it glued together over the past four years…not that there have been any overt reasons to revolt.

Well, the ‘foreclosure crisis’ was kind of a self-inflicted wound. Most of the borrowers KNEW it was ‘too good to be true’ so few were honestly surprised when irresistible force smashed head on into rock solid reality.

Home values can only climb as high as a buyer’s salary. And the past three decades of the global race to the bottom found salaries pretty much ‘stagnant’.

You can hang any stupid price you want on your ‘stack of lumber’ but that doesn’t mean the greater fool is going to come along and pay you that amount!

(Although it was not uncommon during the run-up to the crisis for herds of them to come along and bid up the asking price to get their foot in the door of the next big thing.)

How ironic is it that this is the sort of shit banks are supposed to prevent?

Worse, now banks are borrowing money from the public just to keep their doors open!

(Seriously, how ‘insane’ is that? Isn’t this what ‘bankruptcy’ is all about…but what can we expect from people who are obviously ‘unclear’ on what a bonus ‘is’, never mind when you should be awarded one…)

More interesting is ongoing disaster created by the business owner’s alliance:
Claims for Jobless Benefits Rise
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 41 minutes ago

The Labor Department said weekly applications for unemployment benefits were up last week, while the Consumer Price Index dropped 0.3 percent in May.
Now wait a minute Slim, you know this is being done just to ‘sour’ Obama’s chances of re-election this November.

Although I personally believe the fact that he has run ‘unopposed’ speaks volumes about the current state of the Libertarian dominated Democratic Party.

Sort of makes you curious as to what they’ll do if Mitt doesn’t get elected…although I suspect we’ll be just as fucked either way.

Let’s suppose we put all of the doom and gloom aside and look to the ‘bright side’.

As you WILL note, the economy ISN’T getting any better…and that’s unlikely to change if the status quo remains unchallenged.

In fact, in case you didn’t notice, the economy is actually (albeit slowly) getting worse.

This is how you ‘slip’ into Banana Republicdom.

And remember good citizen, this IS looking at the ‘best case’ scenario here.

More ‘chicken scratching on the wall’, energy prices…they haven’t been discovering any ‘new’ energy reserves so the ones we’ve got continue to be depleted at an alarming rate.

Someone recently observed that we are already on a ‘see-saw’ where energy prices climb and the economy tanks, causing energy prices to drop which results in a ‘faux recovery’ where energy prices start to climb again!

Suspect this coming winter we will see energy prices rise and stay there.

The unspoken question is how much will they rise and what will we do when people start freezing to death in large numbers?

Will it be ‘too late’ to riot then?

I know, let’s wait and see what happens…who knows maybe next winter will be milder than last winter (although that’s not how it went in Europe…)

Do any of you actually BELIEVE things are going to get better?

I’ll bet you DON’T, you just (mistakenly) don’t think they will get ‘much’ worse.

And that’s where you’ll be proven, er, optimistic.

(Not to put too fine a point on it but the Donner Party started off as ‘optimists’.)

More disturbing is Hollywood’s recent obsession with Zombies…a creature that is only a half a step removed from a (very real) cannibal.

Don’t think there are cannibals around? You haven’t seen ‘hungry’ yet!

But I digress, we are SUPPOSED TO BE looking at the ‘bright side’ here.

How fucking sad is it that capitalism doesn’t offer us a ‘bright side’ once resources are reset to ‘finite’ (and I’ll kill you if you touch mine!)

Because we all know how the game is going to play out if the adults don’t return, pronto.

Which is to make another plea to remove the criminals from power and bring them to justice before they abandon ship, taking the ‘keys’ with them.

Naturally, this is where ‘be careful of what you wish for’ comes into play. One of the things that keeps us watchdogs up at night is the likelihood of a ‘witch hunt’ where ‘semi-innocent’ people are thrown under the bus while the guilty make their escape.

We can look at things like the Forbes 400 list but what we don’t know is how ‘complete’ that sort of list is…especially during a time like now, where ‘class animosity’ is out in the open.

You can bet a lot of ‘truly wealthy’ people have ‘done what it takes’ to keep their names off of those lists.

The top ten probably have contracts with Blackwater to ‘spirit them away’ if the shit hits the fan, the rest are rolling the dice.

So, will the social clock turn back a hundred years or a thousand when the energy crisis hits full stride?

Sadly, good citizen, a hundred years is only going to happen if the adults return in time, if not…it’s ‘barbarian time’ all over again!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner


Wednesday, June 13, 2012