Walk Backwards...

Greetings good citizen,

It’s been a while since I wrote a ‘free-form’ opinion piece on a topic not in the headlines, er, per se.

I watched National Geographic’s ‘Doomsday Preppers’ last night and it was quite a trip.

They took each ‘clan’ as a group and even provided what they were supposedly ‘prepping’ for.

From a ‘casting’ point of view it was a bonanza! From a credibility point of view, not so much.

Although I think one of the, er, ‘statistics’ they flashed in the second episode provides us with a hint as to why the exec’s at Nat’l Geo green lighted such an unlikely project.

More then fifty percent of US citizens (and probably even more ‘Americans’) fear a ‘financial collapse’ in the next twenty-five years!

Which is weird because anybody who has been paying attention already KNOWS the global financial system is totally ‘insolvent’ and has been to the last three years!

The ONLY thing keeping the lights on and the doors open is ‘creative accounting’!

Without those ‘off-balance sheet’ entries, we’d be fucked! (And guess who CAN’T get away with, er, ‘hiding’ their losses? That’s right…got a mirror?)

Did I mention that YOU are being ‘cheated’?

Just something to keep in the back of your mind as you stumble along, trying to get by here in ‘Wonderland’…

Um, to their credit, Nat’l Geo didn’t play ‘favorites’, they ‘dissed’ every prepper’s claims of pending disaster, regardless of, er, ‘plausibility’.

It was also curious to see that of the 8 ‘vignettes’ I watched last night, 5 of them were ‘fiscal mismanagement’ related.

So by ‘simple majority’ MOST ‘preppers’ are worried about the same thing!

(I find that ‘comforting’ because it indicates more people are ‘paying attention’ than the corporate owned media would have you believe!)

Which is neither here nor there. While many of these survivor groups doubled as ‘networks’, survival/personal is pretty much an ‘all you’ proposition. Some of the ‘well prepared’ (people with years of food for dozens of people) have figured the encounter with the occasional stranger into their ‘survival budget’ but most ‘preppers’ were hard pressed to lay enough aside to meet their own needs, even for a little while.

Only one of last night’s ‘preppers’ followed the, er, ‘correct’ path of survival, ‘don’t have anything worth getting killed for’ (just don’t do it!)

It would literally be a ‘waste of good lead’ to shoot this guy for what he had, (and that’s the way to do it!) He is ALREADY ‘living off the land’, surviving on wild edibles!

He’ll be living even better once the bureaucracy that prevents you from picking up nature’s bounty for yourself (without a license) goes away!

If you don’t have a license to fish, hunt or dig clams, you are legally ‘poaching’ and can be locked up for it!

Not that disputes over ‘whose’ (fill in the variety of wildlife) will, er, ‘end’ once civil order collapses…they’ll just be ‘settled’ in a more immediate and absolute manner.

Which is to advocate the ‘buddy system’, never go fishing, hunting, digging alone (unless you’re the stealthiest son of a bitch in the valley!) Always bring a guard/lookout!

Always ‘assume’ someone else thinks what you’ve found is ‘theirs’ and will be willing to kill you to protect it.

This extends, unreasonably enough, to game ‘on the hoof’. Let word get out that you bagged a deer and don’t be surprised when a group of, er, ‘collectors’ show up on your doorstep, looking for a fee (the balance of the meat and, at the very least, the hyde!)

You’ll be able to tell because they will arrive, loudly pronouncing ‘We don’t want any trouble’ which is code for, We came to make trouble for YOU! (PLEASE wait until we have dismounted our loud, rumbling bikes that are intended to scare the shit out of YOU before you start shooting!)

While we’re here it is a good idea to advise your guards to FIRE WITHOUT HESITATION on anyone STUPID enough to try intimidating you with a fucking motorcycle!

You cannot ride a motorcycle and shoot at the same time!

Here’s another tidbit, for the most part, handguns are USELESS if you aren’t literally on top of your target (within twenty feet.) At 75 feet, your just as well off throwing the fucking thing!

And the only weapon you can fire while riding a motorcycle…is a handgun!

Even then you’re still ‘shooting from the hip’ (meaning you’re not taking the time to ‘aim’.) If you hit somebody it is sheer luck!

But enough ‘nonsense’! (although what would one of my posts be if I DIDN’T digress wildly?)

In a word, boring!

Before we got carried away with defensive strategy we were discussing the, er, ‘likelihood’ of financial collapse.

Since all money is funny and our civilization is extremely poorly managed, the ‘trigger’ of a financial collapse will NOT be financial, it will be resource related!

So is it ‘all good’ until we run our of gypsum? (I’m ragging on you here, you know I‘m referring to oil!)

More importantly, will we really be ‘out’ when the managers of our society claim we are, er, ‘short’?

The answer here is NO.

We only just recently passed the estimated ‘half-way’ mark…there is, for now, plenty of oil.

The problem is there soon won’t be. The number of end users is growing exponentially!

How do they ‘fix’ runaway demand on a finite, dwindling resource?

Er, ‘reduce the number of end users?’

Simply enough this would mean pricing oil prohibitively!

But how can you do that without freezing two-thirds of the world’s population to death?

Our entire ‘social model’ is based on ‘cheap abundant energy’ when energy is neither cheap nor abundant, it falls apart, literally collapses!

Very much like the song that tells how the parts of the body are linked by the skeleton, our economy is inseparably linked via energy!

Without energy the entire supply chain literally falls apart.

Knowing this, how wise is/was it to eliminate ‘redundancy’ throughout the supply chain and move to ‘on demand, just in time’ production protocols?

Looks batshit insane if you ask me but unlike our highly compensated MBA’s, I’m looking at the situation from a ‘practical’ point of view and not from a ‘quarterly profit’ perspective.

Did I mention that our civilization is badly mismanaged?

I’ve said this multiple times before and I’ll say it a thousand more times, NONE of this is an ‘accident’! If I were a prosecuting attorney, a ‘murder one conviction’ would be a lead pipe cinch!

There’s ‘pre-meditation’ everywhere you look, so it will be laughable to see the billions of people who are ‘blindsided’ by the coming collapse!

Remember ‘globalization’ was NOT done FOR you, it has been done TO YOU!

We’re in ‘overtime’ here so I’ll try to wrap this up.

Returning to our energy problem and the inability to use ‘price’ to stretch out the energy supply we have another budget problem connected to energy, the cost of producing and harvesting/transporting food.

Since energy is literally ‘dollars’, the higher the cost of energy translates directly into the cost of food! Hyper-inflation results when the cost of living outstrips worker’s purchasing power!

Followed closely by the collapse of civil order…something they are narrowly avoiding in Greece at the moment…

Oh, and if Israel attacks Iran. AND the Iranians close the straits of Hormuz…instant ‘shit soup!

How’s JIT looking for ya now?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Can you say 'gridlock'?

Greetings good citizen,

It sort of ‘belabors the obvious’ that the word ‘gridlock’ is going to see a lot of use.

Which, naturally, is just the way the ‘infamous they’ like it.

I used to go round and round with my conservative brother in law about precisely ‘who’ these mysterious people were when we both knew we were talking about malicious conservative pundits (which he defended as being ‘maligned’ by the ‘liberul media’.)

Take a hard look around you good citizen, everywhere, the only thing you will hear or see are conservative talking points being ‘parroted’ by the fucking ‘corporate media’.

And there ain’t NOTHING ‘liberal’ about the corporate media.

Even NPR has a STRONG Republican bias.

All of these fuckers squawking about ‘socialism’ would be hard pressed to actually ‘define’ what they’re ranting about. Most of ‘em wouldn’t know socialism if they were drowning in it!

No irony at all should be lost on the fact that it is ‘socialism’ that makes America great!

EVERY worthwhile institution in this nation is the product of ‘socialism’. ALL of the ‘public utilities’ as well as the schools are, er, ‘socialist enterprises’. The interstate highway system, that’s ‘socialist’ too!

Understand good citizen, when two-thirds of those ‘lucky enough’ to be employed earn less than $40,000 per year, this fucking country isn’t nearly as ‘divided’ as the fucking lying media pretends it is.

Which brings us full circle with the ‘highly unlikely’ Republican victories of this past Tuesday.

How the hell does an organization that only one fifth of all voters subscribe to win even a single election?

The ‘true’ answer is THEY FUCKING DON’T! I’d posit it’s not possible but that would be ‘unrealistic’, it’s the old ‘birds of a feather’ thing.

You get enough of them in one geographic area and they will indeed ‘win’ but by rights, they should only win, at best, one fifth of all available posts.

Naturally, neither the R or the D is branded into their flesh…and a politician can even ‘switch parties’ (all by themselves) after they are elected.

Which is to point out the one thing ALL politicians have in common, they are, first and foremost ‘opportunists’!

Which leaves your vote where, precisely?

Why, it is sitting in the hands of somebody willing to sell what you have ‘entrusted’ them with to the highest bidder…they really don’t care!

Few of you seem to understand what this ‘public service’ stuff is all about. Maybe you get confused by the ‘public’ part…which has nothing to do with nothing.

But anyway, tonight’s first offering tells the tale of how:

The GOP Recipe for Keeping the Economy Down Until Election 2012

Um, there is more than a ‘minor flaw’ with this headline as it erroneously ‘assumes’ we will still have an economy in 2012 (Hell, it assumes we have one now!) Wrong…again.

Moving rapidly along we arrive at tonight’s second offering where Mr. Krugman does some ‘wondering aloud’.

Democrats, declared Evan Bayh in an Op-Ed article on Wednesday in The Times, “overreached by focusing on health care rather than job creation during a severe recession.” Many others have been saying the same thing: the notion that the Obama administration erred by not focusing on the economy is hardening into conventional wisdom.

But I have no idea what, if anything, people mean when they say that. The whole focus on “focus” is, as I see it, an act of intellectual cowardice — a way to criticize President Obama’s record without explaining what you would have done differently.

Doesn’t that last line sum up the entire ‘party of no’s’ line of reasoning nicely?

Doesn’t matter what ‘the opposition’ does, they’re doing it ‘wrong’ because it isn’t ‘our way’ (although don’t ask what ‘our way’ is, if you were one of us you’d know. We don’t want those damn libruls ‘stealing’ OUR ideas…)

You KNOW how I feel about this ‘elected official’ thing, it’s a damn waste as well as being the main stumbling block placed in the path of justice…which is why it persists.

But I digress…

The real question is how much longer we will be expected to stumble along while NOTHING is fixed?

One little ‘hiccup’ and the wheels are going to come flying off so fast your head will spin right off your neck…but that’s only if you’re lucky.

The unlucky will survive (at least briefly) the wheels falling off.

I was watching the Science channel the other night and the scientist there was saying we would probably have to nuke ourselves back into the Stone Age, not if but when the ‘singularity’ occurs.

Um, not to be mean but this guy is sort of a dope and most of his ideas have huge flaws in them…including the ‘solution’ to the ‘singularity’ issue.

He suggests we ‘merge’ with the computers (like the machines wouldn’t lock us up in a server farm somewhere then pull the plug.)

While I’d posit the solution resides in the ‘software’ this super fast computer gets to use.

You’d think it would write its own but it would have to use a language WE provide.

Okay, so the guy isn’t a ‘software engineer’ but neither am I…

On the other hand, it turns out he IS a conservative…which goes along way towards explaining his, er, ‘flawed logic’.

Like his ‘misstatement’ that we would return to the 1800’s if we were forced to use EMP weapons to combat a ‘rogue’ computer network.

Sadly, it is widespread ‘misconception’ that we could simply take a backwards step of only a century or so…the reality is we would lose a millennium! The ‘social clock’ would turn back not a hundred but a thousand years!

There are modern examples of precisely this phenomenon but people seem to think our system of government/commerce is ‘resilient’ enough to withstand the loss of efficiency only computers can provide.

For a ‘taste’ of just what this phenomenon would look like read the novel ‘Hard Reality’ by George Anderson (available on amazon.com) It captures what life would be like inside an ‘information void’ quite accurately.

It’s hard to say if we can avoid such a fate at this point in the game (although most of us would prefer to.) Sadly, it’s not up to us. This is a decision that rests with those currently driving civilization off a cliff (for their own financial gain, despite the fact that their very acts will serve to void the, er, ‘utility’ of currency.)
On and on it goes…

Here’s to hoping Superman gets to Lex Luthor in time…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

It All Makes...Sense...

Greetings good citizen,

I urge you all to pay close attention to tonight’s offering more so for the negative implications it has regarding future ‘social stability’ rather than the ‘vindication’ it provides for us ‘doomers’.

Left to your imagination good citizen is the haunting question “How long can they keep this up?”

You know and I know things are bad and they (so far) haven’t lifted a finger to straighten things out…nor does it seem like they are going to. They’ve got theirs, what’s in it for them (by helping you?)

Not only does tonight’s piece open your eyes to the ‘inexplicable’ nature of the ‘economic recovery’ but it also reveals that ‘increased consumer spending’ isn’t necessarily a ‘good thing’.

Bottom line good citizen, if you’re still paying your mortgage…you are some kind of a chump!

It All Makes Sense

I've been somewhat perplexed by how well consumer spending has held up, at least on a relative basis, given that 1) "underemployment" is above 20 percent and the number of long-term employed is at a record; 2) income has not kept pace with consumption; and, 3) the housing industry is nowhere near a recovery (and the foreclosures just keep on coming.)

No doubt the government has played an important role in underpinning demand, especially through its emergency unemployment benefits programs and certain other stimulus efforts. But that didn't seem to explain matters fully.

Then I read the following post, "How Obama's 'Extend & Pretend' Mortgage Policy Explains The Apparent Disconnect Between Housing And The Consumer," at Business Insider's The Money Game (citing the excellent HousingWire blog) and, suddenly, it all made sense. The reason why no small number of Americans can afford to keep on spending is because they've got one less (big) bill to pay:

Our screens are filled with signals that the ‘economy’ is recovering, and yet one area where there's no discernable improvement is housing. At best the bleeding has stopped. At worst there's plenty of room to fall.

This should stand in sharp contravention with news that the consumer is coming back, especially given the conventional wisdom that the home is (or was, anyway) the ultimate ATM, and that it was the so-called housing wealth effect that fueled years and years of American spending. [Understand good citizen, this is what people do when they’ve got ‘nothing left to lose!’]

What gives?

Paul Jackson at HousingWire reckons that what we're seeing is the twisted result of Obama's mortgage schemes. Basically, scads of troubled Americans are living in their homes, waiting for some type of modification, not paying their mortgages, and thus freeing up an unusual amount to spend on stuff.

Jackson's logic:

* There are 7.4 million non-current loans in this country (a ton of folks living in a home but not paying at the moment for said home.)
* Most Americans behind on their mortgages have now gone a year without paying a single bill.
* As we know, Americans are discontinuing their mortgage payments before other payments.

And he writes:

Consider the following individual as a case study — an actual ‘HAMPlicant’ at one of the nation’s larger servicing shops, as highlighted in a guest post at the Calculated Risk blog. They had an $1,880 monthly payment on their mortgage they’d defaulted on, yet their bank statements for the past 30 days included the following expenses:

* visits to the tanning salon
* visits to the nail spa
* some kind of gourmet produce market
* various liquor stores
* A DirecTV bill that involved some serious premium programming or pay-per-view events
* Over $1,700 in retail purchases, including: Best Buy, Baby Gap, Brookstone, Old Navy, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, Macy’s, Pac Sun, Urban Behavior, Sears, Staples, and Footlocker

His conclusion: If half the 7.4 million homeowners are skipping a $1,000 monthly mortgage payment, that provides a potential $3.7 billion boost to consumer spending. [This ‘estimate’ is low, real low.]

If Jackson's reasoning is correct, it suggests that critics of Obama's mortgage schemes are attacking them from a completely wrong angle.

It's not about, as the Santellis of the world might suggest, that it's some grave evil to be helping your neighbor who may or may not have gotten in over their head. It's more basic: the scheme is creating serious economic distortions, and are bound to unravel in ways that the market isn't properly anticipating. [Like some asshole might start calling people who pay their mortgages ‘chump’ and set off a chain reaction of defaults…]

For all the flaws of "crass Keynesianism" (see today's wankfest between The White House and Edmunds.com over cash-for-clunkers) characterized by charges of pulling demand forward is just as silly. The real economic violence comes from messing with economic signals, which appears to be what's going on here.

Jackson's point also jibes with what we heard when we talked to a Phoenix mortgage pro, who noted the violence to his market that mods were creating.

Until these really filter through the system, these, mortgage mods not only make the housing market suspect, but obviously other areas of the economy as well.

Do you understand what you have just read? Are you capable of ‘digesting’ the implications?

We’ve all been scratching our heads, wondering how the hell can the economy be getting better when nothing has changed…but, it looks like something has changed, as the fucktards in the MSM are turning a blind eye to the real story, using the aberrant data to tell you lies!

Do you know someone who is ‘living free?’ I do and that’s all the ‘proof’ I need.

More disturbing is this article A Pox on Both Their Houses: A Failed Presidency and a Country Adrift

An alternative title for this might be, "Of Rats and Sinking Ships."

After digesting this particular bit of ‘bad news’ we can only wonder if the ‘torpedoing’ of our economy/government (by our own people) is finally over and the rats are deserting the shattered, broken corpse, after having picked it clean.

Ironically, these ‘end runs’ by the self-important investor class only make mashing down the reset button that much easier…not that our ‘creditors’ will be particularly ‘pleased’ with this out come…but I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.

What remains to be seen is how long our civilization is capable of functioning after it has been torn free of its moorings?

Understand, everything we have been taught to cherish has been proven a lie…if you don’t think that’s ‘dangerous’, it boggles the mind to contemplate how much degradation you will endure just to maintain the ‘illusion’ of ‘normalcy’.

Think things are bad now, try doing nothing and watch how bad they get!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner