For Dummies

Greetings good citizen,

This night shift thing is kicking the crap out of me and posting is suffering. Again I apologize for slacking but at the end of the day health comes first (and I’ve gotta sleep!)

Anyway, one of the seldom touched upon topics…I don’t point to it often because if YOU visit THIS site (regularly and habitually) it doesn’t apply to YOU.

What doesn’t apply to you? The fact that a shockingly large percent of the adult population is STUPID.

Not just here in that ‘Awesome bastion of freedom and liberty, the good ol’ USA but around the globe, the hopelessly gullible are the rule rather than the exception.

As This article from Alternet points out:

In sum and all averaged out, it’s safe to say about 37 percent of Americans are just are not very bright. Or rather, quite shockingly dumb. Perhaps beyond reach. Perhaps beyond hope or redemption. Perhaps beyond caring about anything they have to say in the public sphere ever again. Sorry, Kansas.

Did you frown at that last paragraph? Was it a terribly elitist and unkind thing to say? Sort of. Probably. But I’m not sure it matters, because none of those people are reading this column right now, or any column for that matter, because reading anything even remotely complex or analytical is something only 42 percent of the population enjoy doing on a regular basis, which is why most TV shows, all reality shows, many major media blogs and all of Fox News is scripted for a 5th-grade education/attention span.

OMG LOL kittens! 19 babies having a worse day than you. WTF is up with Justin Timberlake’s hair?!?

It is this bizarre, circular, catch-22 kind of question, asked almost exclusively by intellectual liberals because intellectual conservatives don’t actually exist, given how higher education leads to more developed critical thinking (you already know the vast majority of university professors and scientists identify as Democrat/progressive, right?) which leads straight to a more nimble, open-minded perspective. In short: The smarter you are, the less rigid/more liberal you become.

And if you aren’t a meat puppet of the bloviating right wing noise machine, you already knew this…which is why you’re here, reading my blog.

The typical conservative can’t get through two paragraphs here without their heads exploding.
Seriously.

If we were to seek out this massive cognitive dissonance we’d need look no further than the invisible economic recovery that only exists in the corporate owned media.

We usually assume that economically distressed areas exist only in inner-city slums or rural backwaters. But areas plagued by persistent high unemployment almost never fit into conventional categories. Distressed areas share characteristics that make them unlikely to recover if the remedies offered rely only on the standard approaches to boosting the economy.

In distressed areas , government aid provides nearly one-third of residents’ incomes, compared to 17 percent nationwide. Upwards of 40 percent of the population in these areas lives on $30,000 a year or less, and the workforces there have low educational-achievement rates, with more than half possessing just a high-school degree or less. Most jobs are in low-end service industries, especially prisons, casinos, nursing homes, and retail. Such jobs offer few chances for upward mobility or skill enhancement.

For instance, unemployment in Yakima, Washington, has averaged 4 percentage points above the national average over the past 20 years—57 percent of its adult residents have only a high school degree or less. Similarly, in Rockford, Illinois, where the average unemployment rate has been 2.4 percentage points above the national standard for over 10 years, 53 percent of the population has no education past high school. To take one more example, a staggering 62 percent of the population in Danville, Virginia, has only a high school degree or less, and its unemployment rate has hovered 2.1 percentage points above the national average over the past five-plus years. In the country as a whole, by comparison, 43.3 percent of the adult population has no post-secondary education; in some thriving areas, the figure is much lower—for instance, Cambridge, MA (22.7 percent) and Seattle, WA (25.8 percent).

Oddly today’s headlines were crowing about a ‘building boom’ that has taken contractors ‘by surprise’.

This is (once again) a total ‘mis-reading’ of the housing situation. The few who can afford it want to buy ‘new’ houses, which has absolutely nothing to do with economic recovery and everything to do with economic outliers!

Time presses good citizen so I have to wrap this up, as disjointed as it may read.

I promise to do better come the weekend (although I have another ‘mandatory Saturday’ this week so my weekend is (virtually) non-existent.

I (once again) laud my readers mental alacrity and ability to read between the lines…if you couldn’t do that you wouldn’t be here (nor would you keep returning.)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Impasse

Greetings good citizen,

The Kabuki dance that passes for our government is being presented to convince you that the BAD (non-existent) LIBERALS are responsible for the ‘automatic austerity’ that somehow found its way into law.

Naturally, to that end, we have this headline:

Boehner Halts Talks on Cuts; G.O.P. Cheers
By ASHLEY PARKER

Speaker John A. Boehner seems to have decided that he may have more to lose by negotiation over the impending spending cuts than letting them happen.

Just to provide a clear starting point you must be aware that the ONLY reason the Republicans have retained control of one branch of Congress is to provide the ‘illusion of conflict’.

The voters of this nation aren’t that stupid…but they are powerless, thanks to the mis-steps of the founders.

Conservative rhetoric aside, we all KNOW who is responsible for the economic devastation being visited upon us.

The conservo-whackos keep pointing to the liberals (who no longer exist) claiming they are responsible for policies that passed during conservative administrations!

Why is there A SINGLE conservative in government today? Because the electoral process is rigged!

Hanging chads and all…(like we need to go there.)

The >One Percent tells their very willing puppets what to do and they do it.

Is this eventually going to get those puppets lynched? Undoubtedly! But that day has yet to come.

I remind you good citizen that the only people who need secrecy are people who are up to no good as we see in this headline from today’s front page:

Soldier Admits Providing Files to WikiLeaks
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Pfc. Bradley Manning confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.

Even more tragic than his arrest is the track record of the current administration towards ‘whistle blowers’.

And naturally, the, er, suspension of the young Pfc.’s rights makes the whole situation reek of justice being steam-rolled.

But that’s the funny thing about coups…they don’t give a fig about justice! They exist to PROTECT THE GUILTY!

Once you start doing that your whole justice system falls apart.

World’s largest inmate population…broken justice system, guess what? They’re related!

Record income inequality and a corrupt banking sector…related again!

You don’t have to look very far to find links that stretch right down to the local level.

The ‘rot’ goes right to the core!

Here you sit, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Miraculously things haven’t come unraveled (yet) but tick-tock good citizen, that old clock just keeps ticking off the seconds to zero (and you know it's going to happen soon because nothing is being done to head it off.)

(Ironically, acting to prevent derailment will be the most likely cause of one!)

Hmmn…maybe that’s what’s behind the latest Republican strategy!

Hanging in the balance here good citizen are school systems across the nation.

However, this situation is not unprecedented, across the south school systems closed during the (former) Great Depression due to ‘lack of funds’.

Given our inevitable conversion to a Banana Republic, this will be viewed as ‘no big loss’.

Thanks to ‘financial manipulation’ we have already been rendered ‘uncompetitive’ by those (union busting) conservative ‘haters of freedom’!

You either cut the schools or you cut fire and police…and you know the only reason Fire and Police protection exist is to protect the >One Percent…

YOUR tax dollars at work…protecting those who oppress you!

Same as it ever was.

So…what do we do about our ‘runaway government’?

Short answer, replace it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pillar 2

Greetings good citizen,

There were too many competing items for yesterday’s spot and I did what I do ‘best’ (because I do it so often!) I digressed.

So it’s back to our primer on the pillars of A Simple Plan.

The second pillar is Justice, as many of you know (more interestingly, many of you would be content if this single pillar was all there was.

But, and it may be my twisted mind that thinks this way, I don’t think Justice is possible without Equality. Part of the reason I rank Equality number one is everything starts with it.

Seems a bit priggish to talk about equality and justice in a society that has abandoned both but that sinking feeling in your gut is due to angst…

It’s your angst as you watch the society you live in sink into barbarism.

A Simple Plan lays out how to restore the kind of ‘equality’ necessary to get the economy functioning…‘normally’.

It also lays out how to restore the Justice system.

Put on your galoshes good citizen, it’s time to jump down the rabbit hole we call ‘Justice’.

Let’s start with a ‘blanket approach’ and theorize that most of us have an ‘inner sense’ of what justice is and when it is achieved.

Sadly, most of us confuse justice with revenge.

This is where our current justice system has been sabotaged. The jury is ignored and the judge decides guilt, innocence and punishment.

Why does nobody get prosecuted for ‘White Collar Crime’? Because the judge won’t issue a warrant or even an investigation.

Why won’t the judge do this? Because it’s not what they’re paid to do…by their capitalist benefactors that is.

Judgy plays the same game he sees/believes everybody else in his position plays, he does what’s ‘good’ for HIM.

If he fails to investigate (but ‘comes into’ a ‘lucky’ stock pick by turning a ‘blind eye) fair dinkum!
Under A Simple Plan there are no judges. (Besides being nothing to bribe them with, sort of a ‘redundant solution’…)

Does our ‘lack of judges’ automatically fix our justice system?

Of course not…we have the daunting task of redefining the term ‘criminal’ ahead of us.’

Understand good citizen crimes under capitalism are quite different that crime under A Simple Plan.

The capitalist didn’t give a fig for ‘human rights’ where we ‘humanists’ care about them more than we care about MONEY!

Which is to point out another major difference between capitalism and its alternatives. In capitalism almost all crime is money centered, under A Simple Plan most crime will be people centered.

Ironically, theft will remain a huge problem after cash becomes a historic relic.

Then there’s the issue of punishment.

We have witnessed, under capitalism, the escalation of punishment (mostly the elimination of due process and legal protections against torture, preformed ‘unilaterally’ by the One Percent…or as the founders liked to call them the ‘owners’ of the land!

Which is to belabor the obvious, anyone who ‘idolizes’ the ‘founding principles’ of this nation is an elitist pig!

As I have pointed out repeatedly in the past, the central pillar of the US government is this: Let those who OWN the land, RULE the land!

Since you and I weren’t here when these predators were dividing up the nation among themselves, we missed out on our chance to own a ‘voting share’.

Those shares were all gone shortly after the revolution ended. (And continued to be gobbled up by the same people who had helped themselves to the original ‘pie’ when new regions ‘joined’ the Union…)

But I digress.

Which is to point out that the History books tell us one thing while history itself tells us an entirely different story.

SO how do we become the just and humane society we hope to evolve into if we don’t adopt a ‘humane’ system of punishment?

Yes, good citizen Exile was developed as that ‘humane’ system. Often the most fitting punishment is to let the criminal who doesn’t appreciate the rules to live as they wish without those rules.

But we need not let these selfish people disrupt social cohesion with their blatant disregard for the most basic courtesy. Want to behave ‘like an animal’? Then go live with the animals!

Which, unfortunately for you, will be others just like you!

So what will get you exiled? Mostly theft and coercion…although theft is pretty stupid in a society where you can’t sell anything to anybody (because nobody has money they can give YOU…but that doesn’t mean they won’t try!)

The other thing that will get you ‘barred’ from society (and the gene pool) is treason.

Of course, treachery, which is commonplace today, will be illegal under A Simple Plan because treason will be ‘redefined’.

It is common today to ‘mis-represent’ things or situations only to later claim you were ‘mis-understood’.

While sometimes the ‘mis-understanding’ is genuine, other times the ‘fraud’ is intentional.

This willingness to harm others for personal gain is a nasty trait

Will your kids get exiled for YOUR crimes?

Only if they do as you did.

No one would be punished out of hand (or through ‘association’) under a ‘just society’…but if your tend to be ‘twisted’ a certain way then the odds start to tip against you.

Honestly, I think we are all the ‘product’ of the society we were raised in. Raise a child with tolerance and forbearance and you will produce a solid citizen who appreciates AND values the benefits of civil society, not just some of them but ALL of them.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Overdue

Greetings good citizen,

What does it say about our society when the headlines make more interesting reading than the BS stories that follow?

Which is to ask just how much ‘spin’ is too much?

You decide:

Fed Is Likely to Sustain Its Stimulus Program
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The Federal Reserve must still determine what to buy and how much to spend, and officials continue to debate the best way to describe when the agency is likely to stop buying.

Who do you suppose is ‘surprised’ to read that headline? Even a conservo-whacko would cluck their tongue and mutter ‘what did they expect?’ under their breath.

The disturbing part of this little ‘fluffball’ is what would happen to our badly broken economy if the Fed stopped pumping the banks full of free cash?

It’s almost as disturbing as what’s going to happen as a result of the Feds pumping the economy full of ‘funny money’…can you say ‘Zimbabwe’?

Not to mention that the fuckers have been at this for the past FIVE YEARS…yet it’s going to ‘sneak up on us’ overnight…that’s what ‘spin’ and failure to report the truth does to you!

But wait, there’s more!

Mortgage Crisis Presents a New Reckoning to Banks
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

A torrent of lawsuits could add significantly to billions of dollars of settlements in mortgage securities cases.

Um, geez…isn’t the real estate market making a 180 (according to the National board of Realtors?)

Oh, that’s right! Labor force participation is off 5% (which sort of spells doom for civilization itself, you can only carry so many unemployed before the wheels come flying off.)

More succinctly, who do we tell their ‘dreams’ (and any prospects for a better life) are ‘over’? We’ve been doing it to the ‘graying’ population (while enacting toothless anti-discrimination legislation…just try to get an attorney to take one of those cases!)

But now our kids are being told their race is already run and they’ve got no place to go…and no prospects either.

This most definitely won’t end well and is the result of piss poor management!

(Fortunately, A Simple Plan fixes this, providing that perfect ‘Happily Ever after ending’ we all come to expect.)

Um, there is nothing I can say that will mentally prepare you for this next piece of tripe so here goes…

Chinese Exports Slow, Even as Economy Recovers
By BETTINA WASSENER 1 minute ago

The 2.9 percent annual expansion in exports fell far short of the average of 9 percent that economists had expected, but analysts say that China avoided an economic hard landing.

Does anyone else suspect that these assholes wouldn’t recognize an ‘economic recovery’ if it were dancing naked in front of them?

Has the US press become so ‘jaded’ to economic bad news that they can no longer tell the difference…or is ‘down’ the new ‘up’?

We all know our corporate owned media has zero interest in the truth and (worse) those in public office are more interested in protecting their own backside than protecting the public from predation even THEY WILL SUFFER FROM!

Not that the media has treated ‘truth tellers’ with the respect and admiration they deserve…which brings us to the conservo-loonies and their version of the ‘truth’…which turns this whole argument on its ear!

Take a gander at the next article and tell me the global economy isn’t on life support…

Italian Political Turmoil Weighs on Markets
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO and DAVID JOLLY 6:37 AM ET

European stocks fell and borrowing costs in Italy and Spain rose Monday on fears that Italy was headed for another period of instability.

Next Steps for Italy Uncertain After Departure of Monti
Greece Extends Buyback Offer to Reach 30 Billion Euro Target 8:44 AM ET

For reasons unknown, the typical US citizen thinks the US economy will keep humming along despite what happens in Europe…which speaks volumes regarding the depth of economic ignorance among the general population…

I’m not qualified to say what the average European thinks about the tightrope their nation is walking (again due to gross mismanagement and extremes in economic imbalances.) But if I were a European I’d be shitting Twinkies…if only because we keep getting hit with the evidence that our old commerce model is FUBAR…(and you know what FUBAR means don’t you? [Fucked Up Beyond All Repair…])

Like most newspapers, The Financial Times is struggling with an industry-wide decline in print advertising revenue.

Bloomberg Weighs Making Bid for The Financial Times
By AMY CHOZICK and MICHAEL BARBARO

Michael R. Bloomberg, who has an affinity for The Financial Times, is said to be weighing the wisdom of buying the newspaper if it is put up for sale by Pearson.

The music industry is scroomed, the telecom industry is fooked, even the damned post office is threatened with extinction…

YET none of our so-called ‘leaders’ sees the need to change how we do things…so we are faced with changing even that aspect of our society!

What do we get instead? More fucking ‘reality programming’…has even one of these idiotic shows produced a single ‘star’?

Short answer…NO!

Blake Shelton, left, Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green and Adam Levine judging a contestant on
NBC Rides ‘The Voice’ From Worst to First Place
By BILL CARTER

With its prime-time schedule in tatters, NBC bet on the singing competition show “The Voice” by adding a second weekly edition. The gamble paid off.

Yes good citizen and the next step is to proclaim a day of national mourning for our lost ‘entertainment industry’ (which seems to be going to Bollywood in case you haven’t noticed! Take a close look at the actors in the commercials.)

How fucking pathetic is it that ‘scarioke’ has become the primary source of new programming for the over-worked and underpaid housefrau?

(You see, she thinks she can sing too!)

More disturbingly we have this headline, which casts the future in a very dim light indeed…

Sundar Pichai of Google, which is hoping that its mobile Chrome browser can continue Chrome’s personal-computer success.
Browser Wars Flare Again, on Little Screens
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Shaping the browsers of the future has become a spirited struggle among the big tech companies that see the mobile world as a make-or-break business.

And that, good citizen, is news from the cutting edge of the manufacturing industry…whose browser will more people adopt (qualifying that system’s creator to receive lucrative contracts from the governments of the world to spy on its citizens?)

Is anyone STUPID enough see the millions of JOBS this relentless pursuit of, er, ‘technology’ (isn’t) going to create?

Why have you got your thumb up your ass? Because THIS is ‘state of the art’!

We went from building cars to ‘consuming’ electronics.

We are SO overdue to change operating systems but the keepers of the status quo don’t want to hear it…

So we’re going to have to ‘make them listen.’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Bug Out

Greetings good citizen,

Markets are cliff diving this morning although they are not currently at serious negative levels…but the average person stopped caring about what happens on Wall Street years ago. They abandoned it along with the hope of ever seeing their retirement money again…fucking thieves!

But that is not the topic of the day, today I want to address a bizarre practice that the media has turned into a ‘reality show’ and that practice is known as ‘prepping’.

You can see the potential for comic relief when you listen to the disasters these ‘seemingly ordinary’ people are preparing for (provided complete with ‘expert rebuttal’ by the show’s producers…who call themselves ‘Practical Preppers’.

Um, perhaps the point is the show is produced as ‘entertainment’ but the people highlighted in each episode are deadly serious…

And, in a highly litigious world you have to wonder who bears the liability of someone imitating what they see on these shows and killing a lot of innocent people because of it?

Never once do they mention the NEED to ‘rotate’ the food they are stockpiling, instead they feed the ‘it’ll keep’ mentality by not brining up the issues of perishability and contamination at all. (Probably because they are unqualified to speak ‘authoritatively’ on the subject.)

So who’s libel if a bunch of people get poisoned due to the, er, ‘incomplete’ information they get from the show?

Well, if the world goes to pot the answer is simple, nobody…because there won’t be anyone around to hold court.

We’ll all be too busy keeping our sorry asses alive to be bothering with jury trials…besides, under ‘gun rules’ things are intensely ‘simplified’, the one with the gun makes the rules.

(If both parties are armed, the one who deals a fatal wound to his target first wins! However, USUALLY both parties will succeed in wounding one another and they will both die due to the lack of medical attention societal collapse will precipitate…(written in the interests of ‘full disclosure’.)

We won’t go into strategies to avoid being critically injured in a gunfight here, let it suffice to say I am trying to be more ‘responsible’ than the Fox News owned TV channel that produces the, er, ‘entertainment’.

(Talk about your fucking ‘legal fig leafs’ because that’s the one they’re hiding behind!)

As you might suspect, most of these ‘doomers’ fear social collapse brought on by a collapse of the monetary system…which is always ‘pooh-poohed’ by the producers/self-appointed ‘experts’.

Worse, they cite ‘economists’ as their source for their denial…like economists saw the collapse of the banking system coming! They’ve been in denial for five years that it has already happened, what would you expect them to say?

ONE MORE TIME for those of you too thick to ‘get it’ the first time or to figure it out for yourself…

THE GLOBAL BANKING SYSTEM COLLAPSED FIVE YEARS AGO AND NOBODY HAS DONE ANYTHING TO FIX IT!

That’s why the banks need perpetual ‘taxpayer bailouts’…they will eventually bankrupt the treasury and the whole shooting match will collapse, virtually ‘instantly’ (in a matter of hours.)

IF the current, er, failed system remains in place.

But you don’t care about that, do you good citizen?

More importantly, you’ve only watched one episode of ‘Doomsday Preppers’ and you were drunk so you thought it was funny as hell…and you haven’t thought about it since.

Despite being aware that the ‘bug-out’ movement has been around for a long time, people have been ‘preparing’ for a nuclear war since 1945 so ‘prepping’ isn’t ‘new’.

The thing that’s disturbing about our modern preppers is they somehow think they stand a chance against hoards of ‘disenfranchised’ fellow citizens who aren’t as well ‘prepared’ but stand a mighty good chance of being ‘equally’ (if not better) armed.

My ‘advice’ regarding being ‘prepared’ is to know where to find wild edibles, stockpiles of ANYTHING will only make you a ‘high value target’ and groups of well-armed and probably somewhat well trained individuals will make short work of you and your puny defenses.

Best not to have anything they can take…simple as that (if not particularly ‘entertaining’…funny, when the show first aired, they had ONE GUY in California on who was ‘doing it right’ and they haven’t had another since…what does that tell you?

Brings us back to our ‘fig leaf’, doesn’t it?

It’s just ‘entertainment’ (that some people choose to take VERY seriously, albeit, this doesn’t prevent them from doing all of the ‘wrong things’.)

Don’t know what to tell you good citizen. It disturbs me that the corporate owned media would use such a phenomenon for its ‘entertainment value’ (although they are careful not to, er, ‘discredit’ any of the preppers.)

It’s the piss poor advice their ‘experts’ hand out at the end of each episode (and I’ve only seen a handful because the show is painful to watch.) that really gets my goat.

I’m waiting for them to come right out and say ‘Hey, why don’t you all paint bulls-eyes on your backs and go running through that open field over there and let the audience see what happens next?

Well good citizen, what do YOU think will happen next?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Big Hole

Greetings good citizen,

There was no joy in Mudville today as all three major indexes bled profusely…although in a somewhat familiar move, the European exchanges shot up vertically just before the NYSE opened for business.

Um, ironically the news out of the Eurozone isn’t, er, ‘encouraging’, making the irrational upswing look that much more suspicious.

Protesters Encircle Spanish Parliament
By RAPHAEL MINDER 4:04 PM ET

As thousands besieged Parliament, Spain’s two largest regions took steps that underscored their deepening economic troubles and displeasure with the government’s austerity plans.

This, as we can see, was followed by a long cherished US tradition:

Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal
By SUZANNE DALEY

As the economy worsens, some residents of Spain are turning to garbage bins in search of discarded food.

And some of you think capitalism is broken…where else do they throw away perfectly good food that you can take for free (if you can get into the dumpster…some capitalist bastards lock ‘em now. It’s THEIR trash until the garbage man hauls it away!)

Talk about ‘hard hearted’.

Wonder what would happen to the Spaniard who padlocked his garbage?

Probably don’t want to know…

And speaking of ‘not knowing’…what do you suppose ol’ clueless here is trying to accomplish?

Mayor of an Ailing Indiana Mill Town Turns to a Chicago Veteran for Advice
By MONICA DAVEY

Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, struggling to revive Gary, Ind., has sought advice from many quarters, including from former Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago and his graduate students.

Gary Indiana was a big GM town…when GM went belly up, it shed it’s…er, ‘affluent’ workforce as GM folded up shop and headed East…(all the way to China.)

How many times do I need to explain the economic desert? If the douches in charge are ‘allowed’ to abandon ship for the cheaper there, there is NO HOPE.

You can’t punch holes in the bottom of your boat and expect it to still float.

But the greedy few don’t care. They plan on abandoning the boat and building themselves a new one once they get to China.

Because of THIS Bullshit:

Riot at Foxconn Factory Underscores Rift in China
By DAVID BARBOZA and KEITH BRADSHER

Analysts say the nation's workers have become more aware of their rights but have few outlets to challenge or negotiate with employers.

You know the old saying good citizen, scratch a communist and you’ll find an ‘aristocrat’ (a creature not too far removed from a bureaucrat.)

Aristocrats are the administrators of bureaucracy. The live to ensure the rules are followed, meticulously, in the way THEY see fit.

Even the communists divide themselves into the ‘good people’ and the unwashed riff-raff who need to be told ‘everything’ (because they aren’t smart enough to think for themselves…just like the paper pushers under capitalism. If not for them nothing would get done!

Which is how we end up with this nonsense:

I.M.F.'s Call for More Cuts Irks Greece
By LIZ ALDERMAN and LANDON THOMAS Jr.

Greeks are increasingly angry over the prospect that public salaries and pensions will be sharply cut again in a last-ditch bid to secure a 31.5-billion-euro loan installment.

Geez…you have to wonder, after all of this time, what CAN the Greeks cut back on that they haven’t cut back on already?

Worse, WHO is going to get that 31.5 billion euros and what are they going to do with it?

I mean is this still ‘bailing out’ the Greek banks?
Eventually they are going to go all ‘Iceland’ on ‘em and burn the fuckers down!

Just like QE3…who the hell does Bernanke think he’s fooling?

It certainly isn’t the general public. We all KNOW the banks are fried. They’re broke and they’re being kept open solely to collect what WE owe them!

We can only wonder who thinks this is a good idea?

Time for a change good citizen…

And neither Obama nor Romney can fix this…because they part of ‘the problem’.

How long are we going to let these thieves ‘extend and pretend’?

Just asking…because when they pull the rug out from under us we are going to find a huge hole.

But it will be rapidly dealt with.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

MSM vs. The Blogosphere

Greetings good citizen,

I have speculated rather extensively on the subject of whether or not ‘elected officialdom’ would feel obliged to tell us if the mooring for ‘life as we have come to know it’ were about to shatter into a jillion pieces…

I also believe that I have made it quite clear it is my opinion that our ‘public spirited’ representatives would, er, ‘decline’ to share (much less admit) that things were less than absolutely wonderful, a ‘phenomenon’ we are provided with ample evidence of whenever we are subjected to ‘government statistics’.

Um, naturally, the operative word here is ‘opinion’…although it does dovetail nicely with the huge and growing gap in what passes for reporting between the MSM and the Blogosphere.

One would seriously question if the reports are being submitted from the same planet, so widely do the two diverge from one another…

Tonight’s first offering is an example of reportage from the blogosphere, where it is easy to observe the level of detail and intellectual totally absent form most MSM reporting…

The topic (also rarely covered in the MSM) is our own monetary system… [Purloined from today’s Asia Times]

China in Treasuries cul-de-sac
By Henry CK Liu

[We join this offering ‘mid-stream’, please click the link for the entire article.]

Monetary economists view government-issued money as a sovereign debt instrument with zero maturity, historically derived from the bill of exchange in free banking. This view is valid only for specie money, which is a debt certificate that can claim on demand a prescribed amount of gold or other specie of intrinsic value. But fiat money issued by a sovereign government is not a sovereign debt but a sovereign credit instrument.

Sovereign government bonds are sovereign debt while local government bonds are agency debt but not sovereign debt, because local governments, while they possess limited power to tax, cannot print money, which is the exclusive authority of the Federal government or a central government. When money buys bonds, the transaction represents sovereign credit canceling public or corporate debt. This relationship is rather straightforward but is of fundamental importance.

Money issued by government fiat is now exclusive legal tender in all modern national economies. The State Theory of Money (Chartalism) holds that the general acceptance of government-issued fiat currency rests fundamentally on government's authority to tax. Government's willingness to accept the fiat currency it issues for payment of taxes gives such issuance currency within a national economy. That currency is sovereign credit for tax liabilities, which are dischargeable by credit instruments issued by government in the form of fiat money.

When issuing fiat money, the government owes no one anything except to make good a promise to accept its money for tax payment. A central banking regime operates on the notion of government-issued fiat money as sovereign credit. A central bank operates essentially as a lender of last resort to a nation's banking system, drawing on sovereign credit. A lender's position is a creditor position.

Thomas Jefferson famously prophesied: "If the American people allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied ... The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs." This warning applies to all other peoples in the world as well.

Government levies taxes not to finance its operations, but to give value to its fiat money as sovereign credit instruments. If it chooses to, government can finance its operation entirely through user fees, as some fiscal conservatives suggest. A government does not need to be indebted to the public. It creates a government debt component to provide a benchmark interest rate to anchor the private debt market, not because it needs money. Technically, a sovereign government need never borrow. It can issue tax credit in the form of fiat money to meet all its liabilities. And only a sovereign government can issue fiat money as sovereign credit.

If fiat money is not sovereign debt, then the entire conceptual structure of finance capitalism is subject to reordering, just as physics was subject to reordering when man's worldview changed with the realization that the earth is not stationary nor is it the center of the universe. The need for capital formation to finance socially useful development will be exposed as a cruel hoax, as sovereign credit can finance all socially useful development without problem. Private savings are not necessary to finance public socio-economic development, since private savings are not required for the supply of sovereign credit. Thus the relationship between the national private savings rate and public finance is at best indirect.

Sovereign credit can finance an economy in which unemployment is unknown, with wages constantly rising to provide consumer buying power to prevent production overcapacity. A vibrant economy is one in which there is persistent labor shortages that push up wages to reduce overcapacity. Private savings are needed only for private investment that has no intrinsic social purpose or value. Savings without full employment are deflationary, as savings reduces current consumption to provide investment to increase future supply, which is not needed in an economy with overcapacity created by lack of demand, which in turn has been created by low wages and unemployment.

Um, ‘fair warning’, the rest of the article is just as ‘dense’ and assumes that you already have a firm grasp of basic monetary principles…which only makes it that much more mysterious as to why ‘economists’, supposed ‘experts’ in money and it’s management, get it so wrong, so frequently?

As further proof, we arrive at tonight’s second offering with the foreword of caution being that I howled when I first read this. Not because the situation is humorous in itself, but because it struck me as, er, ‘ludicrous’ the way it is so accurately presented.

[Purloined from: The Automatic Earth]

January 6 2010: Iceland, or Size matters

Ilargi: The case of Iceland and its financial shenanigans is, if nothing else, intriguing and amusing. Not for some of the people involved, I know, and I mean no disrespect. But it is in the way the situation is dealt with and in how various parties try to come out on top.

A short background: Iceland had 3 main banks who all, albeit to various degrees, made unrealistic profits for investors and depositors in early 21st century times, and then went bust. One bank, Icesave, which had many clients in England and Holland, owes these clients some $6 billion, a sum the Iceland government is held responsible for and initially seems to have agreed to pay. The people of Iceland, all 320,000 of them as it were, have started questioning why they should pay for foreign investors' losses with banks with whom they have no connection other than that they happen to be located in their country.

Britain's decision to put Iceland on some terror alert list because of the banking affair is likely a big factor in this, as well as in the decision by the president to let the people decide in a referendum on February 20 whether they want to pay back the losses of foreign investors who had accounts with Icesave only so they could get a few basis points more interest on their funds. It doesn't look like they will.

Which may put Iceland on some black list, with the IMF threatening to withdraw emergency funds and Scandinavian loans in peril. The Dutch threat to block Iceland's entry into the EU is seen in Reykjavik as similar to Britain's terror list boondoggle. The prevailing sentiment these days among the geysers can best be summarized like this: "We may be small, but we ain't your bitch". And that is a sentiment that may provoke a lot of sympathy, provided the Icelanders play their cards right.

In the next 6 weeks they will come under huge international pressure to pay up or else, for there's nothing the international community fears more than members who don’t play by the rules, no matter how inane and insane they are. Plus, of course, Iceland is not some small African nation full of poor black people, it’s a small European nation full of the kind of people that wealthy US and EU citizens can identify with: white and relatively affluent. They could be your neighbors. They could be your family. They could be you.

So how reasonable is it for Britain and the Netherlands to demand restitution of losses suffered? Interesting question. The answer is not that easy, since it begs the next question. Who is to blame for the losses? There's the bankers, who went megalomaniacal, and got much bigger than banks based in what is population-wise not more than a mid-size town ought to be. But Iceland is a member of the EEA, the European Economic Area, which gives its banks the right to expand to the rest of the EU.

So alright, let's see. First to blame: the bankers. Second: The Icelandic government, who should have regulated its banks much closer. Third, the governments of Holland and England, who should have done due diligence and demanded far more strict guarantees from the banks. Fourth, the Dutch and British investors, individuals, local governments and companies, who all should have read the fine print. Fifth, the people of Iceland, who were living it up with the cash floating in freely. [Um, naturally, not ALL Icelanders. It really pisses me off when people make blanket assertions like that…]

But we all know how blame moves. The investors point to their own governments, who didn't warn them. These governments point to the government of Iceland, which didn’t warn them. That government points to the bankers, who went nuts, but who they still have to cover for. And last, the people of Iceland point to all of the above and say they should all have been wiser, and the fact that they were not doesn’t mean Icelanders now have to fork over, no matter how certain parties like to interpret laws and regulations. Some things just don't feel right.

And what do we feel about this, who are not directly affected by any of it? Well, try this one on for size. If you allow me to numb and dumb down the numbers a bit, the US at 308 million citizens is about 1000 times bigger than Iceland (320,000). Which means that the US equivalent of what the British and Dutch are demanding from Icelanders would be, loosely, $6 trillion. Now what would you say the odds are that the American people would agree to pay that kind of money, if it were payment for what their banks have (mis-)done in the past, to a group of foreign investors? Let's say Chinese and Japanese? [Which, without putting too fine a point on things, is indeed the case…]

I may be wrong, of course, but I have the feeling that I know what Americans would think of that. They'd be marching in the streets, on their way to embassies and consulates, if not private businesses. They'd say: we have a hard enough time ourselves as it is, and we ain't paying no foreigners who weren't making sure they knew what they were doing.

The same reaction would come in London and Amsterdam as well, naturally. Funny thing is that the governments there were very quick to guarantee their citizens' losses, and only after that claimed them back from Reykjavik. There doesn't seem to be any legal obligation for them to do so, it looks more like an election-related issue. There are all sorts of depositor protection schemes in place, that's true enough, but everyone could have known that the established $30,000 guarantee from Iceland for every depositor account wasn't worth much, given that it’s backed only by the full faith and credit of 320,000 people. Britain is what, 200 times bigger than that?

But in the end, as I'm pondering all this, what is probably the most interesting part of it is that the American people ARE in fact in the same boat as the Icelanders. The main difference between them may well be that the latter stand up for themselves, where the former don’t understand what's going on. The US government has indeed already pledged $14 trillion in public funds (with a total risk of up to $24 trillion) for US bank losses. It's just that American banks are covered by the ability of the US to borrow enough money in international markets to cover their losses, something for which Iceland is simply too small. And also, the US gets to bleep around with accounting rules, so bank losses can remain hidden for a long time (though not forever).

So while it may look like the situations are entirely different, they’re not really. On the ground level, it's the citizens who are being forced to pay for institutional gambling debts, the old adage of keep profits private and make losses public. China doesn't go to Obama to demand payment guarantees tomorrow morning, but it's all just a matter of size. That size determines that the Icelandic situation is far more transparent, since smaller make simpler. But down the line, the Iceland banks weren't the greatest gamblers, it was Wall Street and the City of London. And the $20,000 that Icelanders "owe" per capita (in the eyes of others) isn't really the issue, it won’t kill them. They just take a stand against what they see as bullies.

The amount Americans "owe", though, is already more than twice as much per capita at $14 trillion. And there's no end in sight, since none of that money has been used to actively solve problems, it's all merely hiding them for a while longer.

In other words, here's waiting for the moment Americans become more like Icelanders, and stand up against bullies (I'm sure Oprah has advice to provide on the topic). But also, here's not holding any breath, and here's expecting that by the time any sizeable group stands up, the amounts owed will be a multiple of $20,000 and enough to generate debt and poverty for years, if not decades, to come.

And you know what the funniest thing about it all is? In America it wouldn't even take 320,000 people standing up, for real, to change policies and history in a heartbeat.

But they're not there. They’re in Iceland.

Size matters. But so does courage.

Um, Alternet ran a piece today mourning the ‘reluctance’ of the citizens of the US to ‘protest’ the crimes committed in their name by their alleged ‘elected officials’.

Um, we might even wonder ‘why’ the populace of ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’ doesn’t stand up to the brazen criminals who have usurped our nation.

Why won’t we fight is exactly the wrong question, and the fact that it is being asked, both loudly and repeatedly says something else, it tells us that the perps are afraid. Afraid that they’ve pushed us too far…that when all hell finally does break loose, there won’t be any mercy…no mercy and no quarter.

The time for ‘gentile protest’ and political solutions has passed, it’s too late for that now. The giant has been awoken and it won’t slumber again until it is sure that it is safe to go back to sleep.

Understand that the giant isn’t a rational creature, it can’t be reasoned with. It’s head is filled with nonsense, it is unable to recognize right from wrong, the only thing it knows is what threatens it…and right now a very large and very poor giant sees a very small but very wealthy threat, that ‘class war’ thing I was babbling about yesterday…

Strange when push comes to shove, how money don’t count for a whole lot.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Forked tongues

Greetings good citizen,

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend, we experienced the first snowfall of the season (just a dusting) here North of Boston and it snowed a little more earlier this evening. I guess that’s the ugly reality of winter, once it starts snowing it doesn’t stop and if it rains on top of the snow it only makes things worse.

While many fret over ‘global warming’ we only had one ‘heat wave’ in Boston this summer and I was, er, restricted to my (hospital) bed (freezing my ass off) for the entire time. Add that to a spring that was so wet most crops rotted in the fields due to lack of sunshine and you’ve captured the general mood of the nation good citizen.

Things are grim and getting grimmer…except for the damn ‘Stupidity Index’ and I suspect that is frightening more people than it’s providing ‘cover’ for.

Anyway, tonight’s offering is yet another example of a corporate owned media spewing ‘happy talk’ that has zero basis in fact.

U.S. Forecasts Smaller Loss From Bailout of Banks

By JACKIE CALMES
Published: December 6, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department expects to recover all but $42 billion of the $370 billion it has lent to ailing companies since the financial crisis began last year, with the portion lent to banks actually showing a slight profit, according to a new Treasury report. [What $370 billion was this? The Tarp was $700 billion and the ‘total’ tally of funds either lent or guaranteed by the ‘Treasury/Taxpayer’ is roughly $24 Trillion, so what’s this psycho-babble about only losing $42 billion? This thing is only just getting started so it’s a little early to be estimating losses…]

[The caption beneath an accompanying photo of GW Bush said:]

The bank bailout has been unpopular since it was created in October 2008 by former President George W. Bush and (the, by that time, Democratically controlled) Congress. [WTF! Clarification: Gegner is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, Gegner is an Anarchist who believes in ‘rules without rulers!’ The elimination of the individual from the decision making process IS tyranny!]

Treasury officials said the government had lost roughly $30 billion to the insurance giant American International Group. The new assessment of the $700 billion bailout program, provided by two Treasury officials on Sunday ahead of a report to Congress on Monday, is vastly improved from the Obama administration’s estimates last summer of $341 billion in potential losses from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. That figure anticipated more financial troubles requiring intervention. [Um, wait a minute Slim, Obama didn’t take office until January of this year…yes Summer is over but it looks like they are talking about the year before the administration came to power…which would be pretty freaky.]

The [unidentified] officials said the government could ultimately lose $100 billion more from the bailout program in new loans to banks, aid to troubled homeowners and credit to small businesses. [Which is really bad news considering ‘the government’ when framed this way, means you and me…not Biff & Buffy Fatcat.]

Still, the new estimates would lower the administration’s deficit forecast for this fiscal year, which began in October, to about $1.3 trillion, from $1.5 trillion. [The ‘qualifier’ here is ‘optimistically speaking’…a lot of things have to go exceedingly well to achieve that $200 billion dollar savings…and it looks a lot tougher to hit when phrased that way, doesn’t it?]

The report could tamp down some of the public anger directed against both parties over the bailouts. [More unwarranted optimism] Congressional leaders are already planning to use some of the program’s money for economic stimulus and job creation. [Although not one of them has a clue how to go about it.]

Of course, the government’s potential losses extend beyond the Treasury program. The Federal Reserve, for example, still holds a trillion-dollar portfolio of mortgage-backed securities whose market value is unknown.

The improved picture of the Treasury program is the result of higher-than-expected returns on the loans and the fact that, as the financial sector has recovered from its free fall last year, the government has not had to use much more of its $700 billion in lending authority this year, according to the Treasury officials, who declined to be identified as discussing the report before it was presented to Congress. [I don’t know about you but the whole damn thing looks like a ‘strategic leak’ (read ‘intentional misdirection’) to me.]

Last week, Bank of America became the latest big bank to say that it was raising private capital and would soon repay its $45 billion bailout loan. Once that payment is made, Citigroup will be the last big bank tethered to the state. [Um, notice how there is zero mention of the ‘shellac’ing’ the taxpayer took on these so-call ‘preferred stocks’ the got in exchange for ‘interest free’ loans from John & Jane Q Public…]

The estimated $42 billion in losses is a net figure that accounts for some profits to offset the losses. The Treasury officials said the government had lost about $60 billion, roughly half to Chrysler and General Motors and the other half to the insurance giant American International Group. [Some of you will remember how AIG was going to sell itself to a private equity firm for $40 billion…right before the government (Hank Paulson) stepped in with $80 Billion from you and me…and now they’re into us for what…$120 billion? Probably more…]

But the government is projecting a $19 billion profit and perhaps more on the $245 billion lent to banks, through interest, dividends and the sale of warrants the government received as collateral. [Wait a minute Slim…here they go again, we, the taxpayers, are on the hook for $24 Trillion dollars…so a $19 billion ‘profit’ is actually ‘chickenfeed’ and more like chicken shit.]

Aside from the rare good news for the federal deficit, the latest bailout accounting could have political and legislative ramifications.

Politically, the Treasury program has been unpopular ever since it was created in October 2008 by former President George W. Bush and a Congress controlled by Democrats. It has grown only more reviled over time as a symbol for many Americans of the government’s perceived favoritism toward Wall Street, which is making money, over Main Street, which continues to struggle and shed jobs. [Only ‘perceived’ good citizen? You don’t suppose Mr. Calmes’ job is hanging in the balance here, do you?]

An anti-Washington anger is disturbing both parties as they approach a midterm election year, and some Republican lawmakers have drawn primary opponents largely because of their votes last year in favor of the bailout program. [Wouldn’t possibly have anything to do with their persistent obstructionism and their complete failure to act in the public’s interest, would it?]

It was unclear how that climate might be altered as taxpayers realize they did not actually lose $700 billion to help big banks. At most, the Treasury officials said, the ultimate losses will be one-fifth of that amount and probably less. [This is ‘moving the goal posts’ big time! The public got screwed on both sides of the bailout and now they’re back to using ‘creative accounting’ in a feeble attempt to turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse! Again, good citizen, I remind you that this is nowhere near being over…if anything, it’s only getting started!]

Democrats in Congress have already decided to divert about $70 billion from what is left in the bailout fund to the cost of additional road-building and other construction projects, credit to small businesses and further aid to state and local governments. [A much larger problem than this exercise in wishful thinking acknowledges…]

The administration had wanted to dedicate unspent bailout money to the deficit but signaled to Congressional leaders late last week that it would not oppose their plans. President Obama is expected to touch on those ideas and others in an economic speech on Tuesday. [Just one more ‘dangerous’ (and reckless) ‘about face’ for the Obama Administration.]

The bailout program is due to expire at the end of the year, but the Treasury has indicated it will use the authority it was granted by Congress to extend it into 2010. [Um, is anyone else wondering why we bother to elect a ‘president’?]

The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, testified last week to a Senate committee that “nothing would make me happier than to end this as quickly as possible,” but he added, “we’re not quite there yet.” [What Timmy is really waiting for is the day he steps out of the limelight and into the Shadows known as Goldman Sachs, never to be heard from again.]

Mr. Geithner, who has become the administration’s lightning rod for anger among both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, said “there are parts of the system that are still very damaged” — in banking, housing, commercial real estate and credit-starved small businesses. [So why aren’t you and Ben doing anything to help these crucial sectors of the economy? Is it because the only place where the US remains ‘competitive’ is in ‘financial products’…even if they do blow up?]

He said the administration would propose within weeks when and how to end the program safely. [You know and I know that HE KNOWS this isn’t over, they aren’t ‘ending’ anything, they’ve simply run out the clock, the crap is about to hit the rotational device and the only thing left to do is stand clear!]

At that hearing, he hinted at the Treasury’s improved forecast for the program, saying “we’re going to be able to return very, very substantial amounts of money to address the critical economic needs, long-term fiscal needs, of this country.” [What is this retard babbling about? Isn’t he supposed to say ‘Hocus Pocus’ either before or after making these wildass claims?]

That prediction contrasts with the administration’s planning soon after Mr. Obama took office in January. Fearing that additional bank failures could exhaust the entire $700 billion fund, they proposed up to $500 billion more in federal lending authority in the administration’s first budget in February.

Instead, just $7 billion more in bailout money has gone out to banks since Mr. Obama became president, making a second loan authorization unnecessary. Meanwhile, banks have raised 16 times as much, $114 billion, in private capital, according to the Treasury. {Um, again, I didn’t see no ‘hocus pocus’…nor should there be as there was no magic involved…the gun and the mask have even become optional in case you’re wondering where that $114 billion came from.]

Since the Treasury subjected big banks to “stress tests” last winter to determine how much private capital they must raise to withstand future financial shocks, the financial institutions have been eager to do so, in order to repay the government and thereby exit the Treasury’s rescue program — not least to escape the restrictions on executive compensation that come with it.

Mr. Geithner now says that banks will repay $175 billion by the end of next year. To date, counting Bank of America’s promised payment, banks have repaid $116 billion, according to the Treasury. Also, in coming weeks the Treasury will sell more of the government’s bank warrants to investors.

At last look the Dow was up but the S&P and the Nasdaq were down…and that was a couple of hours before the close. All three European exchanges closed in negative territory…I could go look but it wouldn’t matter. Market performance tells as much as the ‘happy talk’ in this article does, would that it were!

Perhaps more disturbing is the growing reliance on ‘happy talk’ and ‘positive thinking’ while both fly in the face of actual conditions.

In fact, if you want to see some grim realities you can visit this link over at Financial Armageddon or this story over at Jesse’s Crossroads Café.

Me…this crisis is still very ‘fixable’ but the first step towards putting our species back on the right track is to wrest control of our nations from the self-interested bootlickers who have sold us out for their own enrichment…a la ‘Adam Smith’.

Personal greed seldom ends well for anyone, especially the society that fails to stop it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Flipper (and friends)

Greetings good citizen,

It all had to start somewhere and that somewhere is now nearly 40 years in the past, when the Masters of the Universe suddenly realized their markets were saturated. But that’s a different (albeit related) story.

When viewed as individual pieces the main segments of this long downward spiral appear to be unrelated and so it is with our friend ‘flipper’.

Tonight’s offering , taken at face value, looks like a simple conspiracy to commit fraud. What was done here isn’t ‘new’; it is merely a ‘repeat’ of what happened during the ‘condo craze’ back in the mid-eighties, which ended with millions ‘trapped’ in condos they had foolishly paid far too much for.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time and hell, ‘everybody’ was doing it, only not so much. Condos are a ‘landlord’s dream’ (and still are, as long as there isn’t a shortage of ‘stupid people’.) You retain ownership of the land and still collect a monthly ‘rent’ called the condo fee. Once the building aged to the point where it needed major repairs, it was time to bail. You’d sell off the rental units that made you the defacto head of the condo association and left the suckers to fend for themselves…but I digress, there is a different part of the condo story that has parallels to the current crisis.

When condos first ‘caught on’ they were relatively cheap. You could pick up the average ‘conversion unit’ for twenty to thirty thousand at a time when your average house was priced in the eighty to hundred thousand dollar price range.

The average shmoe has a hard time scraping up the 20% down payment needed for the average house but almost anyone could scrape up the down payment for a condo.

This is where our pal ‘flipper’ comes in. He already has two or three condos and he’s willing to make you a ‘sweet deal’ that requires no down payment. He sells you one of his units and folds the down payment (and a little more, for his ‘trouble’) into the sale price.

Understand, Reagan was president, the country was in a deep recession and unemployment is as bad as it is today while interest rates were sky high! Well, the next thing you know, the twenty thousand-dollar condo unit is a thing of the past. But you can still get the same ‘sweet deal’ if you go to a ‘condo party’, where some units change hands a dozen times in the course of a single evening, each one getting the same ‘sweet deal’ from the ‘previous owner’.

Sadly, if you turned out to be the ‘greater fool’ you were stuck with a property you owed far more on than you could sell it for.

By the time all was said and done there were thousands of vacant condos and pages of foreclosure notices. Hundreds of banks went out of business and our pal ‘flipper’…he took the money he made flipping condos and bought a nice million-dollar house.

Herald Tribune: Flipping Fraud Ignored
by CalculatedRisk on 7/22/2009 10:24:00 AM

From the Herald Tribune series on mortgage fraud in Florida: Flipping fraud ignored by police and prosecutors

In November 2005, when the real estate market in Florida had just begun to slow, the state’s top law enforcement agency issued a warning that mortgage fraud was about to wreak financial havoc.

In sober language, a 36-page Florida Department of Law Enforcement report explained that banks would collapse and losses would be counted in “hundreds of billions of dollars.”
...
The report, which was not released to the public but was sent to prosecutors and law enforcement officials across the state, laid out a series of responses to help prevent or lessen the disaster.

But instead of heeding the warning, most law enforcement officials ... did nothing.

Even the most basic recommendation in the FDLE assessment — posting a notice at the county courthouse warning that mortgage fraud is a criminal offense — was ignored in Sarasota County.

Today ... the scope of fraud has overwhelmed state and federal law enforcement agencies to the point that only the most egregious cases are likely to be prosecuted.

In addition to the FBI’s 2,500 cases, state agencies, including the Attorney General and FDLE, have pursued a few hundred more dating back to 2000.

But the amount of fraud dwarfs the number of cases being pursued, the Herald-Tribune found. The Herald-Tribune analyzed nearly 19 million property transactions looking for one type of housing fraud — illegal property flipping. The newspaper found more than 50,000 transactions in which prices increased so much, so quickly, that fraud experts interviewed by the newspaper deemed them highly suspicious.

If you follow the link there are three stories there that outline specific cases where ‘flipper’ (and his confederates) er, ‘defrauded’ banks out of millions of dollars.

But there’s a missing piece to this puzzle, just as there was a missing piece to the condo explosion…why did the banks fail to question these obviously outrageous sale prices?

If we look at the condo craze, prices went from twenty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand in a matter of months…and nobody thought something was ‘fishy’? Heck, towards the end, ‘new’ condos were selling for more than new single family homes!

It might be nice not to have to do yard work but the downside to this is you have to get ‘permission’ to use the common areas if you’re having guests over. If you have a large clan, you stand a very good chance of being told no!

Sadly, many ‘unsophisticated’ buyers found this out the hard way AFTER they had committed to purchase. These days, condo associations are very up front about what is and is not permitted.

I slid off track there (as there are many ‘horror stories’ related to the early days of the now fabled ‘condo’.) let’s return to the issue of why banks didn’t see what are, in hindsight, some pretty glaring ‘red flags’.

The first issue to hit us in the eye is that banks exist to lend money…albeit, ‘responsibly’. A good credit score and the ability to pay are only two of the three legs of the lending stool.

Banks ‘know’ what properties in pretty much every location ‘should be’ selling for. So when a deal comes in for significantly more than what it should be, whose responsibility is it to verify the ‘legitimacy’ of the deal?

The bank is obliged to protect their depositor’s funds…but apparently mortgage companies are a different animal. The condo craze pretty much burned down the S&L industry but ‘mortgage companies’ didn’t exist until after Glass-Steagal was repealed.

Is it just coincidence that the housing bubble took off pretty much within weeks of the repeal of legislation that prohibited ‘dark pools’ (a.k.a. mortgage companies?)

The banks are being blamed for the housing disaster but the evidence points to the mortgage companies, that dried up and blew away virtually hours after the bottom fell out from under the housing market.

Leaving the Investment banks holding an empty bag…which was promptly dumped onto the taxpayer.

One last piece of the puzzle, the ‘mortgage companies’ were funded by ‘investors’, the primary customers of the Investment banks…

If you recall, the dot.com bust was pretty much a situation of too much money chasing too little ‘return’…
When the Internets ‘failed to launch’, there was still too much money seeking high returns.

I probably should have mentioned up front that tonight’s offering is ‘food for thought’ but if you follow the money it begins to look quite sinister, no?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Traded Away

Greetings good citizen,

The trading day is far from over, that said the markets have, using their own parlance, ‘failed to retain earlier gains’. From the looks of the charts they haven’t fallen far, the Dow was down 5 points around noon and the down line looks pretty equal to the ‘up’ line, why so much drama over ten points? Who knows…

There is a multitude of issues clamoring for our attention today but I’d like to focus your attention on just two of them.

You may recall from last night’s post the, er, ‘upbeat’ tone used to describe what would normally be considered a turn for the worse.

When the dollar tanks and commodities rise it usually indicates a ‘run for the exits’, otherwise know as a ‘flight to safety’.

The anonymous writer of last night’s post (neither AP nor Reuters ‘attributes’ their sources) didn’t make this rather obvious connection for readers…but it is also absent from the rest of the MSM/blogosphere.

Well, it didn’t go completely ‘unnoticed’ as we an see at the bottom of this piece

Which begs the question as to whether or not the ‘smart money’ was indeed ‘headed for the exits’ yesterday?

There have been a lot of pixels spilled by the MSM in an attempt to convince the public that circumstances are far better than what they witness for themselves every day. The ‘recovery is all around you, you just can’t see it from where you are standing…’

Naturally, not everyone is on board this bandwagon and so we arrive at tonight’s offering

[Hat tip: Loose cannon]

Tonight’s commentator is not new to these pages…and I still have a hard time believing he’s a Republican!

Traded away for a make-believe economy, the real US economy is dead

By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jul 17, 2009, 00:16

There is no economy left to recover. The US manufacturing economy was lost to offshoring and free trade ideology. It was replaced by a mythical “New Economy.”

The “New Economy” was based on services. Its artificial life was fed by the Federal Reserve’s artificially low interest rates, which produced a real estate bubble, and by “free market” financial deregulation, which unleashed financial gangsters to new heights of debt leverage and fraudulent financial products. [Simply put, they created tons of money from existing ‘wealth’, effectively destroying both.]

The real economy was traded away for a make-believe economy. When the make-believe economy collapsed, Americans’ wealth in their real estate, pensions, and savings collapsed dramatically while their jobs disappeared.

The debt economy caused Americans to leverage their assets. They refinanced their homes and spent the equity. They maxed out numerous credit cards. They worked as many jobs as they could find. Debt expansion and multiple family incomes kept the economy going.

And now, suddenly, Americans can’t borrow in order to spend. They are over their heads in debt. Jobs are disappearing. America’s consumer economy, approximately 70 percent of GDP, is dead. Those Americans who still have jobs are saving against the prospect of job loss. Millions are homeless. Some have moved in with family and friends; others are living in tent cities.

Meanwhile the US government’s budget deficit has jumped from $455 billion in 2008 to $2,000 billion this year, with another $2,000 billion on the books for 2010. And President Obama has intensified America’s expensive war of aggression in Afghanistan and initiated a new war in Pakistan. [Understand that Iraq is far from ‘over’.]

There is no way for these deficits to be financed except by printing money or by further collapse in stock markets that would drive people out of equity into bonds.

The US government’s budget is 50 percent in the red. That means half of every dollar the federal government spends must be borrowed or printed. Because of the worldwide debacle caused by Wall Street’s financial gangsterism, the world needs its own money and [doesn’t have]hasn’t $2 trillion annually to lend to Washington. [which means the funds will be ‘printed’ by us instead of them.]

As dollars are printed, the growing supply adds to the pressure on the dollar’s role as reserve currency. Already America’s largest creditor, China, is admonishing Washington to protect China’s investment in US debt and is lobbying for a new reserve currency to replace the dollar before it collapses. According to various reports, China is spending down its holdings of US dollars by acquiring gold and stocks of raw materials and energy.

The price of one-ounce gold coins is $1,000 despite efforts of the US government to hold down the gold price. How high will this price jump when the rest of the world decides that the bankruptcy of “the world’s only superpower” is at hand?

And what will happen to America’s ability to import not only oil, but also the manufactured goods on which it is import-dependent?

When the oversupplied US dollar loses the reserve currency role, the US will no longer be able to pay for its massive imports of real goods and services with pieces of paper. Overnight, shortages will appear and Americans will be poorer. [Followed twenty minutes later by widespread rioting…]

Nothing in Presidents Bush and Obama’s economic policy addresses the real issues. Instead, Goldman Sachs was bailed out, more than once. As Eliot Spitzer said, the banks made a “bloody fortune” with US aid.

It was not the millions of now homeless homeowners who were bailed out. It was not the scant remains of American manufacturing -- General Motors and Chrysler -- that were bailed out. It was the Wall Street banks.

According to Bloomberg.com, Goldman Sachs’ current record earnings from their free or low cost capital supplied by broke American taxpayers has led the firm to decide to boost compensation and benefits by 33 percent. On an annual basis, this comes to compensation of $773,000 per employee.

This should tell even the most dimwitted patriot who “their” government represents.

The worst of the economic crisis has not yet hit. I don’t mean the rest of the real estate crisis that is waiting in the wings. Home prices will fall further when the foreclosed properties currently held off the market are dumped. Store and office closings are adversely impacting the ability of owners of shopping malls and office buildings to make their mortgage payments. Commercial real estate loans were also securitized and turned into derivatives.

The real crisis awaits us. It is the crisis of high unemployment, of stagnant and declining real wages confronted with rising prices from the printing of money to pay the government’s bills and from the dollar’s loss of exchange value. Suddenly, Wal-Mart prices will look like Nieman Marcus prices.

Retirees dependent on state pension systems, which cannot print money, might not be paid, or might be paid with IOUs. They will not even have depreciating money with which to try to pay their bills. Desperate tax authorities will squeeze the remaining life out of the middle class.

Nothing in Obama’s economic policy is directed at saving the US dollar as reserve currency or the livelihoods of the American people. Obama’s policy, like Bush’s before him, is keyed to the enrichment of Goldman Sachs and the armament industries.

Matt Taibbi describes Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentless jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Look at the Goldman Sachs representatives in the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. This bankster firm controls the economic policy of the United States.

Little wonder that Goldman Sachs has record earnings while the rest of us grow poorer by the day.

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

Okay, he’s a Republican, even I’m not that gloomy.

That aside, it’s difficult to argue with the facts as they are laid out here. The US economy is indeed hollow, to the point where we no longer have an ‘engine’ to pull us out of the quagmire created for us by the ‘banksters’.

And if ‘financialization’ somehow makes a comeback, we’re really scroomed! (Worse, they’re already ‘re-securitizing’ toxic assets and the moronic ratings agencies are blessing them with AAA ratings, again!)

I’m sure you’re wondering who, given the current state of the financial markets, is STUPID enough to buy this crap? Sadly the answer is the same people who bought up this dreck the last time, ‘institutional investors’, will buy it.

Which means this toxic garbage is headed straight for your pension fund!

This begs the question of whether it would be more effective to make rating this crap AAA or buying it with ‘other people’s money’ a hanging offense?

Just to be safe, we probably need to do both.

I’d also beg to differ from Mr. Roberts on another point…nobody ‘has’ the funds needed to paper over this fiasco so suggesting we ‘borrow’ this money is yet more ‘misdirection’.

Not to accuse Mr. Roberts of making such a suggestion, this ludicrous idea can also be laid at the feet of the banking community.

Pretending to borrow non-existent money is just another way of collecting interest on what might best be described as counterfeit financial instruments. Neither the money nor the debt it represents is ‘real’. This is just an attempt by the banksters to make the massive amounts of funny money ‘real’.

Did I mention the government (or what passes for it these days) is being operated by criminals?

Combined, these two news items paint a fairly grim picture of the future, a future that is not nearly as bright as the image being projected by today’s corporate owned (and currently tanking) MSM.

Which begs another interesting question…when the corporate-owned media collapses due to lack of funds, will the government take it over?

Oh, and will the government advertise their products for free?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The banks will lead us to prosperity!

Greetings good citizen,

How about those markets? Here in the wake of reports that investment banks are screwing the public with software designed to ‘front run’ the markets…oh, wait a minute! It’s not the investors who are acting like idiots, it’s the flippin’ investment banks demonstrating what their software can do!

I mean, who else is ‘soft’ enough to buy financials when foreclosures and loan/credit card defaults are going through the roof at a higher rate than ever?

Worse, guess whose money they’re using to do it?

This is almost as bad as the ‘unemployment numbers, where we have 650,000 a WEEK being laid off and yet the ‘MONTHLY’ number comes in at around 400,000…what the hell do you suppose happened to the 2.5 million people that didn’t show up in the report?

Did they all start their own businesses? Because that’s what the BLS expects you to believe!

That or they all succeeded in landing other jobs. The ‘local rag’ has a circulation of roughly a half a million and they run, on average, nine, yes, nine freaking jobs a day…which may add up to fifteen ‘unique’ jobs over the course of a week.

Is this just me or does anyone else notice that these numbers don’t add up?
[pause]

Okay, I’m back, it’s after midnight and I learned on my ride home that it is now official, today’s big winner was…Goldman Sachs, what a surprise!

I’ll try to rein it in a couple of notches and proceed directly to tonight’s offering

Stocks Move Higher Ahead of Bank Earnings

By GERRY SHIH and DAVID JOLLY
Published: July 13, 2009

Investors drove stocks higher on Monday as optimism over the coming bank earnings reports spread through the wider market.

Shares of Goldman Sachs rose more than 7 percent and Bank of America posted a similar gain to lift the market despite some weakness in the energy sector. Investors were encouraged after the prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney gave Goldman a “buy” recommendation. The New York Times reported over the weekend that the firm recorded more than $2 billion in trading profits in the second quarter, a stunning rebound just half a year after the financial crisis crippled Wall Street.

After an early dip, the stock market moved ahead briskly as confidence spread from financial stocks to just nearly everything else. Hedge funds and institutional investors, not wanting to be caught on the wrong side of a bet, quickly covered their short positions after hearing the news from the financial sector.

By Monday afternoon, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 148 points, or 1.8 percent, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 2 percent. [The Dow ‘closed’ at 185.]

The market’s rally came as welcome news after several weeks of losses threatened to dash Wall Street’s hopes that the Obama administration’s $787 million stimulus plan would be adequate to revive the economy. A slew of strong earnings reported in the coming days would deflect some of those doubts. [Yes they would…but it ain’t gonna happen.]

Among the companies announcing their results this week, Goldman Sachs is set to report on Tuesday and JPMorgan Chase on Thursday. Bank of America and Citigroup wrap up the week on Friday.

Investors will also look to results from blue chips Johnson & Johnson, I.B.M., Intel and General Electric for clues on the economy’s direction. [What do these four companies have in common? That all do a bulk of their business overseas…not that this will ‘save’ them.]

And while Goldman may clearly emerge to be Wall Street’s best performer in the last quarter, analysts sense a good week ahead for financial companies. [If you set aside the landslide of losses that are due to hit them very soon.]

“The bar has been set pretty low so it would seem there’s a better chance of an upside surprise,” said Alan Gayle of Ridgeworth Capital Management. “But a lot of focus is going to be in the details.”

Investors will be paying attention to how efficiently lenders are generating profit while covering for potential losses.

“They want to know who can generate sales in a tough environment,” Mr. Gayle said. “That’s where you’re going to see the separation of the wheat from the chaff.”

Meanwhile, shares of the CIT Group was down about 7 percent, after falling more than 20 percent earlier in the day. The New York-based lender urged regulators over the weekend to allow it to issue F.D.I.C.-backed debt to stave off a looming liquidity crisis, but the government appears unconvinced that CIT’s collapse would widely damage the economy. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told reporters in London that he was monitoring the situation and that the federal government had “the authority and the ability” to confront the issue.

Gold surged briefly in late-day trading after investors emboldened in the equities market pulled out of dollar-denominated bonds. The dollar often moves inversely with the precious metal. Gold for August delivery rose $10, to $922.50 an ounce, on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Comex division.

However, “conditions were a bit thin,” noted James Steel, a commodities analyst at HSBC.

Trading volume in European equities was similarly slow on Monday, with many investors taking a long weekend before the French national holiday of Bastille Day on Tuesday. [Sell in May then go away…]

The DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index, a barometer of European blue chips, gained 2.8 percent, while the FTSE 100 index in London rose 1.8 percent. The CAC-40 in Paris rose 2.3 percent, and the DAX in Frankfurt gained 3.2 percent.

Philips, the Dutch electronics and lighting manufacturer, was among the notable gainers after the company posted a stronger-than-expected profit and said it saw signs of improvement in its business. Its shares rose 7.3 percent in European trading.

Asian shares were sharply lower. In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 stock average dropped 2.6 percent. The decline left the Japanese market benchmark up just 2.2 percent for the year, after it had been up as much as 12 percent in June.

The main Sydney market index, the S.&P./ASX 200, fell 1.5 percent. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index dropped 2.6 percent, and the composite index in Shanghai was off 1.1 percent. Taiwan’s benchmark index and the Kospi in South Korea fell 3.5 percent each.


Bond prices fell on Monday afternoon. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves in the opposite direction of the price, rose to 3.35 percent, from 3.30 percent late Friday.

In the commodity markets, crude oil futures for August delivery fell 19 cents, to $59.70 a barrel.

The dollar was mixed against other major currencies. The euro rose to $1.3987 from $1.3936 late Friday in New York, while the British pound edged up to $1.6218 from $1.6212. The dollar rose to 92.76 yen from 92.54 yen, and it fell to 1.0830 Swiss francs from 1.0865 francs.

A real revival in global financial markets could take some time to unfold, analysts said.

“We are fairly confident on balance that we are on the brink of a cyclical upswing which should boost the global economy through to 2010,” Jan Amrit Poser, chief economist at Bank Sarasin in Zurich, wrote in a note. [A note to whom, we can only wonder?]

“Whether this will develop into a self-sustaining recovery will only become clear in 2010,” he wrote. “The return to positive growth from the second half of 2009 onwards should not, however, be misinterpreted as a sign that the worst economic crisis in 80 years is finally over. For the inventory cycle to revive, end-consumer demand must stabilize first.”

Sentiment was damped by a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showing that the unemployment rate in its 30 member countries averaged 8.3 percent in May 2009, up 0.3 percentage point from April and 2.4 points higher than in May 2008. The jobless rate in both the United States and in the 16 countries of the euro zone stood at 9.5 percent in May 2009.

This is a pretty bizarre turn around here good citizen as most so-called experts are forecasting unemployment to keep increasing until the end of 2010. I think a more ‘telling’ sign is the lack of ‘capitulation’ in the stock markets.

Stocks won’t ‘bottom’ until you can’t give them away. While we should already be there by now there is another factor to consider, too many billionaires have their fortunes tied up in…you guessed it, stocks.

Until the major players succeed in converting their stocks into hard assets the markets will continue to ‘defy gravity’.

Woe be unto them who fail to find a safe place to hide. They can’t stuff it in Real Estate because they may not live long enough to see prices return. They can’t put it in gold because there isn’t enough ‘real’ gold to go around and even a modest buy would push up the price significantly.

They ‘tried’ to put it into oil futures but demand fell through the floor. Alternative energy has tons of potential but too few customers.

Honestly good citizen, where do you park a billion bucks where you stand even half a chance of getting half of it back?

Dangerous times indeed…yet they media is ready to launch into another round of ‘cheerleading’ intended to inspire the public into believing the economy has bottomed, it's all ‘up’ from here.

I sincerely hope most of you have planted a large garden or have at least been stockpiling non-perishable food against the day when you won’t be able to buy any.

Re-read my commentary at the beginning of this piece and ask yourself if you honestly believe the banks are poised to lead us to prosperity?

If you do believe this twaddle then you must ask yourself when the banks have ever lead us to prosperity before, because this will be a ‘first’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Show Me the Money!

Greetings good citizen,

The banks (after having been injected with 700 Billion dollars worth of government funds) are now being required to raise nearly 70 Billion more on their own.

And so far, the banks that have offered billions of dollars worth of new debt (shares, bonds or whatever) have had no problem finding subscribers.

Naturally, what has me scratching my head is ‘where is this money coming from?’

After being soaked big time in the derivatives scam, do pension funds and the money markets still have enough ‘liquidity’ to make such risky bets?

Interestingly enough, pensions and other ‘institutional investors’ are prohibited by law from investing in anything less than AAA rated securities (not that this means much anymore.) Understand good citizen there ‘were’ only seven US companies that had AAA ratings and I’m guessing we’re down to five since GE and Berkshire Hathaway both lost theirs…

So, Show Me the Money!

To get an idea of how many folks have what in their bank accounts, we have this article from Michael Panzer’s site, Financial Armageddon.

He begins this piece with a rather curious choice of titles:

Not So Different


Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

The current crisis has proven many apparent truisms wrong.

Among other things, we've learned that there are few, if any, industries, including health care and consumer staples, that are truly recession-proof.

We've seen how closely tied the rest of the world is -- up until now, at least -- to economic circumstances in the United States, despite the assertions of the decoupling-ists.

We've also discovered that, contrary to popular belief, the rich are not immune to the pressures of a broad-based economic downturn.

Indeed, in "How the Wealthy are Spending Their Money This Year," the Luxist blog reveals just how much the attitudes of those who still have the cash and those who don't have converged.

[Original article begins:]

Last week, I sat down with representatives from American Express Publishing and Harrison Group to see a presentation and discuss a question which is on many of our minds: How are the wealthy reacting to the recession?

Well, to start with, more than half (53%) are worried they could run out of money. Dr. Jim Taylor, vice chairman of Harrison Group, and Cara David, senior vice president of corporate marketing and integrated media of American Express Publishing spent approximately an hour display charts that showed the results of countless hours spent crunching the first-quarter responses of 1,300 Americans with discretionary incomes over $100,000 (that means income after tax, mortgage, home maintenance, and child education costs are subtracted.)

This year there are 120,000 fewer households that fit in that range. The number of households with a discretionary income over $500,000 went from approximately 118,000 to 92,000 -- the first drop since 1997. [You will note that the number of $100k households is missing the ‘total’ number so we have no clue what the 120,000 household drop is subtracted from. The $500k ‘discretionary’ figure is complete at 92,000.]

Of these 1,300 moderately-to-very wealthy Americans, 70% believe that the recession will last longer than a year, and 35% think this could be a long term depression. 78% report that the crisis has affected their sense of financial security.

So how does their spending look? "Luxury is not dead, there's simply a filter on risk," says Taylor. 77% said they are buying fewer "big ticket items" this year -- so it's a safe bet that they're buying brands they trust. There seems to be a trend among the wealthy of pride in their willingness to not buy things. This goes beyond the usual chatter of talking about great bargains you got; people are actually feeling an increase in their self-esteem related to their ability to take control of their own lives. Believe it or not, spending less is making people happier. People checking the "Very Happy" box went from 58% last year to 66% this year -- women up 10%, men up 4%.[snip]

All right, I cut off the last couple of paragraphs because the rest isn’t germane to the topic at hand, Show Me the Money.

While we remain ignorant of how many households currently enjoy ‘excess income’ of $100,000 per year, we do know that 92,000 of them enjoy $500,000 a year worth of ‘mad money’.

So, less than a hundred thousand households and we will also assume that this number considers only US residents.

You know that a handful of this 92,000 has $500,000 a MONTH in ‘discretionary income’ but at that point we’re really in ‘rarified air’.

I believe the statistics shake down like this, one percent of US households control 55% of all the wealth in the US, and one percent of those people control 80% of that figure!

Working with the one-percent and the hundredth of a percent figures, our 92,000 is only a third of the ‘top’ income households. The top third, but still only a third.

For more ‘math fun’ our 92,000 that had in excess of $500,000 in ‘free cash’ only totals $46 billion. At last look, total US ‘payroll’ was $17 trillion…which is a pretty neat trick considering GDP only weighed in at $13 trillion (no wonder we’re in hock!)

I believe the $17 trillion figure was from 2006, so it probably doesn’t apply today.

Worse, the damn BLS keeps ‘updating’ its charts as well as its metrics so it has become impossible to track down old data. Any link more than a month old is likely to produce a ‘page not found’ message.

But this is an entirely different issue.

I read somewhere recently that (slightly) more than a million households filed returns on income in excess of $5 million dollars. This contrasts rather curiously with a tidbit from a couple of years ago where it was reported that 7 million households filed returns in excess of a single million dollars.

Considering this latest incarnation of the (ongoing) global financial crisis has left no nation and no sector unscathed, it really is a mystery where this money is going to come from.

But not to worry, Timmy has promised that no ‘major’ financial institution will be allowed to fail.

So it looks like when all else fails, we’re going to see some more ‘hocus pocus’!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner