2013

Greetings good citizen,

It appears I have a lot of competition for your attention this New Years Eve…although I suspect the boys and girls on Wall Street hope nobody notices that the markets have tacked on 150 points for nothing (again.)

2012 is over and it turns out the dire predictions that started the year didn’t come to pass…as advertised.

Which is to opine that we are NOT ‘out of the woods’ yet. It’s probably more than a little disturbing to still be sitting right where the financial sector dumped us five years ago.

But you’re not supposed to notice that. You’re supposed to believe we’ve put all that nastiness behind us, the ‘recovery’ (that only the pundits and certain rare breeds of parrots can see) is ‘well underway’ and the future looks bright…(or is that a fire on the distant horizon?)

If it gets much darker (socially speaking) we are going to have to re-define ‘black’.

Funny how hopelessness has a way of intensifying the dark. There was a brief and somewhat blinding flash of illumination five years ago, a fleeting moment when a brilliant flash showed us that our economy was hollow…to the point of being non-existent.

Once the market for ‘faux’ financial services collapsed, nothing remained.

Sure, it still looks like we do stuff here but that is the satellite offices of foreign manufacturers, the rest is just what you'’ find in any other Banana Republic, ‘extractive industries.’

Oh and when the rest of the world runs out of oil and the One percent decides to cash in its US shale reserves, guess who won’t get any? (Because our currency will be worthless.)

But you’re reading that literally when in fact nobody will openly ‘deny’ you access to US produced energy…they will just charge you through the nose for it AND OUR TRAITOROUS POLITICIANS WILL SAY THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT!

I’m telling you right now good citizen, every damn one of them is a traitor (and should therefore pay ‘the traitor’s price.’

How unfortunate is it good citizen that treason, like sanity, is determined by the mindset of the ‘people who matter’.

Even more unfortunate to know that YOU are not among them. (Because YOU KNOW they’re bat-shit crazy!)

Bizarrely, like turning on a light switch, you’ll go from being ‘insignificant’ to being the arbiter of sanity, right after civilization falls off the proverbial cliff.

The question for 2013 is whether or not that cliff is nearby?

And I’d opine yes, good citizen, it’s a lot closer than you’d think. The as yet ‘unresolved’ fiscal cliff that the buttlicking corporate owned media mistakenly characterizes as a ‘failure to compromise’ threatens to push an already fragile economy over the edge.

Implying the (still spineless) Dems won’t give in when we all KNOW it is the conservo-whackos who won’t do what needs to be done. This could be the trigger the robbers have been waiting since ‘Morning in America’ to pull.

Which is to opine that the conservo-whackos are patient if nothing else…

But it’s the ‘persistent’ part that has the rest of us worried (to the point of questioning their sanity.)

That and their ‘no compromise’ attitude. Here they are, begging for compromise just like their capitalist heroes do (my way or the highway!)

We, as a society, can no longer afford (read tolerate) this variety of myopia.

It literally leads to an ‘us vs. them’ mentality that is toxic to social creatures like ourselves.

While this seems like little more than ‘sound advice’ we seriously need to take the matter to heart and literally ‘weed out’ those unfit to lead because THAT is where the problem is rooted.

Those who lead DO NOT have the best interests of society in their minds when they pass judgement…often on topics they have no right deciding and they are the same people who are ‘leading’ our society over a cliff we will not recover from.

The breakdown in trust alone may become insurmountable. We are already in danger of that happening with the financial system.

One of today’s headlines was on precisely this topic. As the ‘government guarantees’ expire on certain classes of securities, bankers are slicing the funds up into FDIC insurable amounts to protect themselves.

From what remains uncertain.

I don’t need to remind you that ALL money is FUNNY (regardless of who backs it!)

Which is why these gyrations to recover ‘government protection’ are actually amusing.

Our government is as broke as the rest of us…and that’s the doing of the One Percent!

The thing YOU need to remember is whosoever controls YOUR money, controls YOU!

Do you think a bunch of self-centered opportunists should be in charge of YOUR cash?

Let’s ring in 2013 as we ponder what to do about this pickle…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Mad World

Greetings good citizen,

Just as yesterday’s story about the ‘ascendancy’ of US energy reserves warned me that Saudi (real and easy to extract) supplies were approaching exhaustion, today’s headlines regarding the Soviet’s ‘redefinition’ of the term ‘treason’ speaks to me of the global assault on civil liberties.

First we must ask ourselves how unfortunate it is that the most famous Vladimir in modern history is ‘Vlad the Impaler’ and then we need to wonder if there’s a dubious connection in there somewhere.

Let’s have a look!

The law, which was drafted by the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency known under its Russian acronym of FSB, also introduced a punishment of up to eight years for simply getting hold of state secrets illegally even if they aren't passed to foreign hands.

The FSB explained in a statement run by the ITAR-Tass news agency that the new clause better protects confidential information. It said the previous law, which dated back to the 1960s, failed to provide an efficient deterrence against foreign spies.

"Tactics and methods of foreign special services have changed, becoming more subtle and disguised as legitimate actions," the spy agency said. "Claims about a possible twist of spy mania in connection with the law's passage are ungrounded and based exclusively on emotions."

It may be helpful to first settle on a ‘true definition’ of what constitutes ‘treason’…often restricted, politically at least, to aiding ‘foreign enemies’ in ‘undermining’ the state.

Ironically, the rest of us have a simpler definition…one that makes the politicians among us, er, ‘uncomfortable’.

To the average citizen, treason is (and always has been) another word for betrayal. Our politicians are uncomfortable with this because much of what they do could easily be interpreted as ‘betrayal’…and we all know the penalty for treason is death.

So, somewhat bizarrely, few people have ever been, er, ‘officially’ prosecuted for betrayal because the people prosecuting them are as guilty as criminals they are judging.

I suspect most of you will agree that it is our failure to hold people in positions of public trust accountable for their action that has resulted in the, er, ‘dismantling’ of our civilization (by those who falsely claim to ‘own it’…a false claim their attorney’s placed in their heads!

Which is how these cretins will defend their actions…but we digress.

The ‘situation’ is disintegrating once the ‘traitors’ start redefining treason to cover their treachery!

This isn’t about betrayal, it is all about ‘discovery’ and keeping ‘treason’ hidden!

Would the revelation that Russia had a ‘stolen election’ on their hands lead to the ‘suspicion’ that it had also occurred in other countries as part of a global conspiracy to manipulate currencies and strip Western cultures of their hard won civil rights?

All for ‘the greater good’ (of the criminals?)

In case you haven’t noticed good citizen, this ‘national security state’ is a global phenomenon and it is omnipresent.

The question we must ask is who is being protected from whom? And the answer is disturbing because there is a whole boatload of criminal activity that isn’t being prosecuted, never mind reported while whistleblowers across the spectrum are being jailed without recourse!

Because that’s the ‘new reality’ good citizen.

You go along with the ‘big rip off’ or YOU get put away and they throw away the key because they don’t need a reason to lock you up.

If you make waves, they silence you.

Which brings us full circle to the question of ‘what kind of world do YOU want to live in?

One where criminals run roughshod over your life with impunity or one with ‘Justice for all’?

Because the ‘choice’ is YOURS!

Justice for all starts with YOU…but we digress, the real issue here is WHY treason is generally understood to mean one thing but isn’t actually defined that way…something it has in common with another ‘popular’ commodity…money.

How fucking odd is it that we all ‘think we know’ what money is but if you ask ten different people to define it, you will get ten different answers (and some of them considerably freaky!)

Well we have the same problem when it comes to ‘betrayal’…(which also gets bizarre treatment under the law.)

Which is to point out that our legislators have no problem with betraying the general public…worse, it is considered ‘common knowledge’ that anyone running for public office is in the ‘betrayal business’.

Which ISN’T what anybody is thinking when they mark their ballots. They expect the politician to be, at least generally, ‘true to their word’.

And most politicians would quibble that they are…generally…in the broadest sense of the term, and that they at least agree whole heartedly that they spoke words…albeit some of them ‘truer’ than others…

How do you try a weasel like that for treason?

Not by their words but by their actions, of course!

Since much of politics is ‘quid pro quo’ the ‘corresponding’ campaign donations and subsequent voting record tells the story.

But nobody is prosecuted for this easily traceable treason and we can only wonder why?

Would politicians suddenly abandon public service if they were held accountable for their voting record…or would the one percenter’s who regularly ‘purchase’ favorable legislation dislike the, er, ‘scrutiny’?

It’s a mad world good citizen and it will only get madder if you continue to do nothing.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Drain Bamaged...

Greetings good citizen,

As I have pointed out in many posts, I live in the red portion of a blue state and because of that I have found myself surrounded by Conservo-loonies.

Worse…and this is probably a function of that ‘one in five’ thing I keep pointing, to is one of my five siblings is married to, and has thereby converted to ‘conservo-whacko-ism’.

To get an idea of how this ‘disease’ affects the afflicted, observe the following, which was e-mailed to me this morning:

One should always be prepared. So, if someone asks you what the main difference is between most of the Obama supporters, and Romney supporters, instead of stammering, and stuttering, and looking for an answer, just tell them that the Romney supporters sign their checks on the front, and the Obama supporters sign their checks on the back.

You want to start off with ‘who, in their right mind would point out something stupid like this? But we have established at the beginning that these people are NOT ‘in their right mind’.

Worse good citizen, nobody from the >One Percent signs paychecks, they have ‘lackeys and underlings’ who handle such menial tasks.

So pointing out that the ‘minions’ of the uber rich are Romney supporters tells us what exactly?

It tells us that he has no chance of winning…legitimately. (Of course, neither did Reagan, Bush or anyone else elected after LBJ.)

The number of people who sign the front of paychecks couldn’t fill a thimble much less swing a national election in a nation where 50 percent of the population has been made ‘redundant’!

The people who threw you and others like you out on the street support the party responsible for the destruction of the global economy.

And now they’re STUPID enough to BRAG ABOUT IT?

In fact, when you stop for a moment and consider it, it’s pretty disturbing to consider the implications of signing the front of anyone’s paycheck.

It ‘infers’ that the signer ‘has the right’ to decide if the ‘payee’ is worthy of payment (and not the other side, that the signer ‘owes’ the payee for services rendered!)

This is how politicians call programs that you pay your entire working career into ‘entitlements’.

Even the jackass running for re-election calls programs YOU PAY FOR, entitlements! WTF!

But I digress…we were discussing debtors and the indebted.

Weirdly, the> One Percent LOVES (having their minions) sign(ing) paychecks…because they make money on each one!

In fact their whole ‘income stream’ is based on the difference between what they get for your labor and they buy it from you for.

Notice how YOU can’t get a raise but the ‘owner’ of the company keeps getting ALL of his ‘expenses’ picked up by the company, so he never runs short of money.

Worse, a lot of these ‘owners’ are the biggest deadbeats on two feet, they know the money is all funny so they don’t feel compelled to pay…ever.

But THAT little factoid is not for ‘general consumption’.

So who do you suppose is going to ‘benefit’ from this headline in a world where it is all the average citizen can do to keep wheels under their ass, a roof over their head and food in their bellies?

Potential for a Mining Boom Splits Factions in Afghanistan
By GRAHAM BOWLEY

With a trillion-dollar cache of oil, gold and other resources underground, hopes of self-sufficiency in Afghanistan are tempered by worries about corruption and security.

Who do you suppose is ‘worrying out loud’ for the Afghan peasants who are and will remain ignorant of this arrangement (unless and until they are forced off of their ancestral lands by miners and developers (posing as the Taliban?)

Why put it in the media at all, given our generally acknowledged powerlessness to put a stop to that which is sure to come?

Sadly the logic of advertising these ‘thefts’ is to provide the ‘pretense’ that somebody, somewhere, is keeping tabs on the activities of these thieves and this unnamed authority will insure the Afghan public receives their due. Just as future generations of Americans are coming into theirs, thanks to the ‘vigilance’ of our (bought and paid for) government.

How sad is it good citizen that?

That the ‘tracking’ of global exploitation serves as the illusion of propriety just as voting serves as the illusion of participation.

Which is to ask, point blank, HOW STUPID ARE YOU?

If you’ve already forwarded the above conservo-loonie message I received this morning to all of your contacts, the answer doesn’t matter. You’ve landed here in error and haven’t read down this far because your teeny, conservo-loonie head would have exploded!

Cruel bastard that I am, I WOULD bounce the following category of hapless victims off the wall a few times BUT it’s the ‘Only Game in Town’ and they WERE just following ‘instructions’…

How could they have known the final instructions would read ‘Here is your degree, now place the barrel of this pistol in your mouth, point it toward your braincase and squeeze (or jerk) the trigger?

Debt Collectors Cashing In on Student Loan Roundup
By ANDREW MARTIN 9:24 AM ET

The Department of Education last year paid $1.4 billion to collection agencies to hunt down defaulters, a group that includes nearly one in six borrowers with a loan balance.

A Big Default Problem, but How Big?

This ‘latest development’ of predatory capitalism is perhaps the most disturbing.

Swindle children out of their future by grossly overcharging them for a shot at jobs that don’t exist, then make the loans irrevokable…WTF!

And again the bankers are NOT held responsible for their cupidity…

So I ask you again, good citizen, do we have a money problem here or one pisser of a legal one?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Economics or Law?

Greetings good citizen,

Watched Doomsday Preppers on National Geographic last night, contemplating the whole time how much of this (nonsense) was due to the channel being owned by Newscorp?

More interestingly, the preppers themselves were revealed to be conservo-whackos (by dint of their bumperstickers, never mind being STUPID enough to go on national TV with their so-called ‘secret stashes’ of weapons, food and cash.)

And these people did the term ‘conservo-loonie’ proud! They were doing it all wrong and were being praised for their efforts by the show’s ‘independent judges’.

Actually, I am personally thankful for the preppers efforts, they will become the supermarkets that will provide temporary relief from eating whatever you can chase down with a stick and beat to death after the collapse.

For people obsessed with cop shows they appear to be completely ignorant of just how easy it is to get ‘the drop’ on somebody.

And after they tear that gun out of your surprised hands you only have moments left to live…and those will be the moments it takes for you to give up the location and how to disable the booby traps protecting your stash.

And you WILL tell them because YOU want to live.

Heck, comply quickly enough and they just might decide to spare your life…if only to have you take some of the risk out of hunting down future supplies.

Not all ‘hoarders’ will be ‘pushovers’ and as time goes on the job will only get more difficult.

But that is not the topic of today’s post.

Like the headline says, it’s still about the economy…

“This is one of the reasons wages haven’t been growing,” he said. “People are taking jobs they didn’t take in the past, moving from sectors like construction into jobs at lower-paying, big-box retailers.”

There were a few slivers of encouragement in Friday’s report. Using the broadest measure of unemployment, which includes part-time workers who want to work full time as well as individuals who are not looking for jobs but indicate they want to work, the unemployment rate fell to 14.7 percent from 15 percent.

The pace of government layoffs seems to be slowing, said Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the Wharton School and director of the school’s Center for Human Resources. As the private sector added 103,000 jobs in August, governments cut just 7,000. That is down from 21,000 in July, and well below the average of 16,000 reductions a month since March. Federal employment actually increased by 3,000 in August, to 2.8 million, the first monthly increase since February 2011.

There was only slight relief for the long-term unemployed, defined as workers out of a job for at least 27 weeks. Their ranks fell by 152,000 to just over five million in August, and they account for 40 percent of all unemployed people. Among workers with less than a high school education, the unemployment rate fell to 12 percent from 12.7 percent, but that remains far above the 4.1 percent unemployment level for workers with a college degree or more.

Still, there were plenty of other signs the economy was still treading water. Average hourly earnings paid by private employers ticked downward by 1 cent in August, to $23.52, while the length of the typical private sector workweek remained flat at 34.4 hours. Both measures have barely budged from where they were six months ago.

This slightly longer than generally permissible snippet was taken from the tail end of the article.

Funny to see all of the ‘hands in motion' here as they examine the public sector side by side with the private.

The Feds can ‘shazaam’ money and hire as many people as they want…below this and government is totally dependent on tax revenue and ‘grants’ for specific purposes.

City and states are laying off because their tax base has been gutted by the global race to the bottom.

No employers means no employees living in their once prosperous communities.

You’d think politicians would want to avoid that sort of thing but apparently we have a new breed running for office…

A breed that knows there is a lot to be had for those willing to do as their told without asking any questions.

Sadly, this new breed thinks their new masters will protect them from having their necks stretched for treason…and this is totally untrue!

If it suits these masters purposes, they will have them strung up themselves! (if only to buy themselves a few more precious minutes of ‘run time’.)

But I digress…it’s not about being ‘sold out’ (although in the end it is ALL about that!) It is about the badly broken economy the massive unemployment problem the idiot capitalists have created!

Here’s a simple proposition I’m sure everybody can understand. When your commerce system excludes ‘too many’ people, your civilization collapses.

For all of this 8%, 12%, hell, 5% unemployment, the REAL rate is closer to 50%!

Worse, you can’t tolerate a 50% unemployment rate and expect your society to remain cohesive.

For too long the working have been taught to despise the unemployed as lazy freeloaders despite being the victims of predatory capitalism.

So when non-workers achieve parity with workers a conflict erupts.

And guess what else has been bubbling right under the surface of this cauldron? The ‘I can get any one of those people out there to do YOUR job!’ threat.

Coupled with the other famous taunt: Be happy YOU even HAVE a job!

Now the unthinking conservo-whacko worker doesn’t realize the guy in the street doesn’t want HIS job…well, I think you can see where this whole thing is headed.

[He wants something that doesn’t exist, a job of his own!]

They don’t say ‘blood in the streets’ for nothing…although, supposedly, we have a robust ‘justice system’ to prevent things like this from ‘getting out of hand’.

Boy, are they gonna be surprised!

As I have stated repeatedly, we don’t have a ‘money problem’ (because money is fiction, albeit a very dangerous one) we have one pisser of a legal problem! (with criminals in charge of the justice system.)

Thanks for letting me inside our head,

Gegner

Captives

Greetings good citizen,

Pinhead that I am, I watch the Science channel (a lot.) And even if you’re only half paying attention to shows like ‘How the Universe works’, you pick up a few things.

Like the story behind the modest sized fusion generator in the sky.

Like the reason why this sensationalist bullshit has next to nothing to do with us:

Warming causes greater evaporation and, once the ground is dry, the Sun’s energy goes into baking the soil, leading to a further increase in air temperature. That is why, for instance, so many temperature records were set for the United States in the 1930s Dust Bowl; and why, in 2011, drought-stricken Texas saw the hottest summer ever recorded for a US state.

Why is this bad news? Because the Earth has warmed only a bit more than 1°F since the catastrophic Dust Bowl — and we are poised to warm an astounding 9-11°F this century if we stay anywhere near our current greenhouse gas emissions path.

While the ‘big ball of fire in the sky’ ages, it makes heavier elements and these ‘heavier elements’ retain heat, causing the ball of fire in the sky to burn hotter.

Left to our imaginations is whether or not this process is more advanced than we’ve been led to believe. (It is generally acknowledged that our planet will, in four or five billion years, be swallowed by the sun.)

So this twaddle about escalating ten degrees by the end of the century is nothing but alarmist bullshit! It may well get ten degrees hotter but it is utter nonsense to preach that there is something we can do about it!

Will it cause environmental damage? Undoubtedly.

Is there anything we can ‘do’ about it? Short of ‘leave’, no.

The real challenge here is re-balancing the Earth’s carrying capacity with its exploding (human) population problem.

A hotter, drier environment will be incapable of supporting as much life as it once did.

And, naturally, capitalism’s constant need to expand is destroying record amounts of habitat at a time when we can no longer, er, ‘afford’ ‘endless expansion’.


In fact, the Real Estate market is going to go absolutely haywire because rising oceans are going to start, er, ‘reclaiming’ low lying areas around the globe, creating a dearth of ‘dry, arable land.’

And if anybody thinks they can ‘own’ the property that remains, I’d opine they have rocks (soon to be joined by bullet-sized chunks of lead) in their head!

The most we can hope for is to ‘mitigate’ the negative effects of warming as best we can, striving to adapt to our new circumstances while working together to avoiding extinction.

How ironic is it that eventually ‘land’ will become so valuable that the, er, ‘survivors’ will live on barges in the water (with some lucky stiffs living under the ocean) so the land that remains can be ‘cultivated’?

Yes good citizen, we mustn’t discount the violence of the storms that will rage across a largely ‘water world’.

Wind obstructed by…nothing.

That and the elevated water temperatures.

This isn’t supposed to happen for, if our scientists can be believed, millions of years.

BUT, the sun could very well warm the earth to create the conditions I’m describing in a relatively short period of time.

By the end of this century it is entirely conceivable that both ice caps will have melted (or will be submerged) each summer. (Regionally relative.)

This may go on for centuries…and it will have had nothing to do with us. The Sun is getting hotter, simple as that.

No, our ‘problems’ are much closer to home:

As They Lose Traffic, Once Bustling Airports Have Space to Rent
By JANE L. LEVERE

Airports in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and other secondary cities are having to address vacant terminals and hangars as they lose business to bigger destinations.

Okay good citizen, what are we to make of this?

If we begin with the idea that transportation facilities are ‘overbuilt’ in the first place the misleading word in this headline is ‘Bustling’.

Chances are good that none of these minor airports located in, er, ‘Fly-over states’ was ever ‘bustling.’

Back in their hey days they might have been ‘busy’ as airlines squeezed the hinterlands for everything they were worth, attempting to build their customer bases for Wall Street speculators.

But now it has become obvious that the once mighty United States is headed the way of the United Kingdom, to ‘was-been’ status.

We are rapidly becoming a pauperized nation where the rich and the powerful no longer live.

How ironic is it that our ‘mistake’ was letting our natives wax ‘rich and powerful’ in the first place?

Although it could be argued that ‘the rich and powerful’ actually ‘migrated’ here.

We weren’t in peril from ‘homegrown’ millionaires, we got in trouble when the Friedman’s and the Rands of the world set us on the path of Globalization…

Which was nothing less than that ancient quest for global domination!

Something our (or should we say ‘their’) politicians did NOTHING to stop!

And whose to say a ‘united’ world wouldn’t be a happier, more productive place?

Sadly, those of us who are NOT members of the > One Percent.

We are THEIR hostages (or perhaps ‘captives’ is a better descriptor?)

Regardless, no matter how you look at the future, a happy ending just doesn’t appear to be in the cards.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Nightmare

(In yet another ‘book review’) Joe Stiglitz, in his newly released book, The Price of Inequality, returns to this theme of a divided society.

Lynn Parramore: An argument has been made, particularly since the end of the Cold War, that capitalism is great at producing things that can improve our lives, and so we ought to therefore tolerate some unfairness. What's wrong with that narrative?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ‘royalists’ won the day after all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Neutron Bombing

Greetings good citizen,

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

Let’s take a look at our ‘fair use’ snippet to see what kind of Republican hit piece the so-called ‘liberal media’ can get away with:

Mr. Porter, a retired AT&T engineer, was an advocate of the town when it was a hopeless cause, during the many years when Democrats blocked efforts to let a largely Republican and white suburb cleave itself from Fulton County. One Democratic legislator vowed that Sandy Springs would incorporate “when pigs fly,” a phrase that Mayor Galambos has since adopted as the name of her blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you KNOW what the penalty for treason is…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Treason has NOTHING to do with PATRIOTISM!

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

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

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

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

Not their fucking problem, man…

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

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Nanny State

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets around the globe are bleeding from the eye-sockets for the second straight day but THIS is today’s top story:

TOP NEWS
New York Plans to Ban Sale of Big Sizes of Sugary Drinks
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

A proposal that would take effect as soon as next March is the most ambitious effort yet by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's administration to combat rising obesity.

Isn’t it comforting to see that the > One Percent’s Mayor has his eye what’s important?

Could this latest incarnation of the Nanny State be any less intrusive? How long before ‘robo-conservatives’ start decrying this move as another ‘Liberal attack’ on liberty?

How much worse is it that this asshole is able to claim he’s an ‘Independent’?

By distancing himself from his decidedly conservative roots he is able to blame the much abused but no longer existent Liberals for his unpopular social decisions.

And the editor chose this story as what is ‘important’ to New Yorkers?

Looks like there ought to be a job opening at the NY Times…don’t you think?

Let’s see what got relegated to the ‘inner depths’ of today’s edition.

You don’t suppose THIS would have made a ‘more appropriate’ headline, do you?

Debt Crisis in Europe
Central Banker Sees Structure of Euro Zone as ‘Unsustainable’
By JACK EWING 10:37 AM ET

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, warned Thursday that the structure of the euro zone had become “unsustainable.”

Europe Fears Bailout of Spain Would Strain Its Resources

You don’t suppose the, er, ‘unfortunate choice of words' by the head of the European Central Bank has anything to do with shuffling this story off to the business section, do you?

I mean, calling the world’s fall back currency ‘unsustainable’ is a bit harsh, isn’t it?
Maybe they were reluctant to run a story not centered in the US but, the very next headline tells us what we all already know:

U.S. Steps Up Pressure on Europe to Resolve Euro Crisis
By DAVID JOLLY 36 minutes ago

President Obama has held conference calls with the leaders of France, Germany and Italy to help lay the groundwork for action before a G-20 summit in June.

It is also ‘understandable’ that they wouldn’t want to run with this story as today’s top headline.

The ‘Euro-crisis’ has been bubbling for four years now and nothing they have attempted (or proposed) has proven workable.

What does dummy think will change by adding his two cents?

If he has a solution don’t you think he should try it out on the US financial network first? It’s not like our banking system isn’t on life support.

And naturally good citizen, he doesn’t expect anything to change, he is doing this to provide the appearance of doing something.

If he actually did ‘do something’ it would likely, er, ‘upset’ some important campaign contributors…(who, PS, by the way, are still making sizable contributions to his re-election campaign despite their public dislike for the incumbent.)

He must be kicking back and grinning, ear to ear…just like ‘the great one’ (Jackie Gleason) with a hearty ‘How sweet it is!’

Getting paid tons of cash for NOT doing the right thing!

And NOBODY’S saying a word about it! (Talk about having a muzzle on the media!)

Skipping along we have this little tidbit:

Other Business News
First-Quarter G.D.P. Revised Down to 1.9% Rate
By REUTERS 9:05 AM ET

Economic growth in the United States was a bit slower than initially thought in the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported.

Again, not quite the story you want to run at the top of the paper…although the public would be interested in knowing this little factoid.

But how do you run a headline like that without opening the door for a discussion about why things are going so badly?

Since the ‘official line’ has been to ignore the symptoms leading up to the crash, you don’t want people to start asking questions now…

They might actually expect something to be done about it!

So the question turns back onto YOU…are YOU ‘happy’ with how things are being handled?

Or are you getting fed up with ‘more of the same’ from our deaf and blind political leaders?

Because, UNTIL YOU ‘show them’ you will no longer tolerate inaction, NOTHING is going to change, capeche?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Point, (the)

Greetings good citizen,

Oil, gold and commodities of all types are surging higher this morning, good news for the people who ‘own’ such things and decidedly bad news for the people who need to buy them…

The Dow is up 150 points this morning. It seems to be bound and determined to make up the ground it lost over the last few days, very possibly today (because it doesn’t have to make sense.)

Nor would it considering this headline:

Claims for Jobless Benefits Rise
By REUTERS 19 minutes ago

In other economic reports, the United States government also said the February trade deficit was lower and wholesale inflation in March was flat.

Sure, inflation is non-existent for those who neither drive nor eat…then there’s the trade deficit. Why import shit if NOBODY can afford it?

But hey…there’s no need to let a little thing like BROKE CUSTOMERS stand in the way of inflated stock prices!

As we can see here:

Stocks Post Strong Gains
By REUTERS 49 minutes ago

Wall Street shares rose despite an unexpected rise in initial jobless claims in the latest week.

Don’t you think this would have been a good place to insert a positive blurb…if you had one?

But no, the corporate owned media’s credibility is stretched so thin these days that they have become selective of what they are willing to lie about.

Of course, ‘investors’ are supposedly ‘smarter’ than the rest of us, which probably explains this bullshit:

Stumbling Blocks in a Booming, Newly Opened Economy
By THOMAS FULLER 9:24 AM ET

As Myanmar opens up to the world, foreign investors describe the country as a new frontier. But many worry about a lack of skilled labor, crumbling infrastructure and surprisingly high prices.

What’s that? You mean we’ve reached ‘the end’ of the global race to the bottom?

You can bet there will be plenty of finger-pointing and accusations of just ‘who’ dropped the ball!

But labor, like oil isn’t ‘inexhaustible’, if it were, there’d be a market for ground up over fifty-year-olds!

Not that the freakazoids who would draft such a law wouldn’t first exempt themselves from it.

Yet another ‘defect’ in our badly broken justice system but what are you going to do?


I apologize for the ‘snippets’ from today’s business section of the NY Times but the alternative is rapidly becoming comparable to The National Enquirer.

I keep expecting to see the headline any day now claiming they have proof conservatives are ET’s (or at the very least, under ET’s control!)

That or testimony claiming that conservatives are all possessed by demons (which might be closer to the truth than we think…)

Um, sorry if I am taking the beginning series of headlines as ‘self-explanitory’ but I’m willing to bet the combination of surging commodity prices combined with rising equity values are directly related to the ‘disaster in the making’ that is Myanmar.

Investors (a.k.a. idiots) are jumping for joy over FINALLY having a ‘new’ investment opportunity. It will be the ‘new’ Philippines…but what will become of the existing Philippines?

Naturally there will be lay-offs and cutbacks as what ‘used to be’ made in the Philippines is ‘transferred’ to Myanmar…but then we have those ‘surprisingly high’ prices that will, if unaddressed, will drive labor costs to, er, ‘uncompetitive’ levels.

So how does the ‘cheaper there’ fix things like uncompetitive currencies? They manipulate ‘em away, of course.

The ‘base cost’ of ALL COMMODITIES is ZERO so ‘fixing’ the purchasing power of Myanmar’s currency is a small and simple matter.

Um, from this very real example does anyone else see how they have been ‘fucked’ out of their job, their pension AND their benefits?

Whosoever controls you currency, controls YOU!

Think about it.

That tight box you’ve been painted into is no ‘accident’, you were put there on purpose by the very people who stood to ‘profit’ from your loss.

The ‘problem’ with this is your ability to earn an income has been severely curtailed by this global race that mostly benefits the ‘owners of commerce’.

To give you an idea of what I think of the much-cherished, nay, ‘hallowed’ word ‘own’, I would have it purged from world’s vocabulary.

Not that it’s up to me.

However, I honestly believe that YOU should feel the same way.

Because in the end we all ‘share’ what there is, we don’t need to ‘own’ any of it.

In fact, A Simple Plan DOESN’T WORK if we don’t abandon the exceeding foolish AND greedy concept of ‘ownership’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: This has been your ‘test’ of emotional maturity, if you are unwilling to live in a world where your ‘ownership’ of shit is prohibited, you flunked.

Irrelevant

Greetings good citizen,

I wanted to start off today’s post with yesterday’s market results but, bizarrely, they’ve been ‘zeroed’ for some reason…

Which sort of segues nicely with today’s ‘theme’… what theme is that, you may ask?

Read on:

"Terror... often arises from a pervasive sense of disestablishment: that things are in the unmaking."

Stephen King

Big up day for the metals.

I do not care for their synchronicity with stocks. So many assets are now correlated to a global reflationary event, and the markets are overly sensitive to headlines. That makes these markets highly dangerous.

What is happening with MF Global and the US futures markets is a disgrace. But hypocrisy and betrayal are the temper of the times.

"By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes."

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Interesting words, hypocrisy and betrayal…even more interesting ‘in context’.

As we learned in yesterday’s 'Update' the Greek Prime Minister is intimate with both terms…and he somehow thinks the dark cloak corporate interests hide behind will be extended to ‘protect’ his Premier-ship. It may be ‘in their interests’ to do so but the effectiveness of such a move is very doubtful, considering ‘public sentiment’ at the given moment.

Just as Wall Street continues to cast nervous glances at the OWS movement…

The question nobody is prepared to answer is ‘what comes next’?

Certain aspects of the media is showering largely undeserved accolades upon the intrepid protesters while other have nothing but scorn…although, predictably, the biggest ‘danger’ to the OWS movement is already taking hold, inertia is grinding the movement into irrelevance.

It’s great to make a stink and raise ‘awareness’….although truth be told only the most sheltered were ‘ignorant’ of the issues facing today’s youth/labor force.

If all you’re gonna do is ‘inconvenience’ civil authorities for a few weeks, don’t pretend to be surprised when nothing changes.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if ‘protests’ worked, there would be protests 24/7, along with exactly what that implies, political gridlock!

If all you had to do was cry foul and march around city hall/palace a couple of times, we’d still be living under a monarchy!

Oh, would that it were that we could use the ballot box to ‘vote’ ourselves a better socio-economic model!

And if this really was the democracy they claim it to be, we could!

Except for the ‘vote fixing’ thing.

Vote for something the self-interested don’t like and you automatically get a ‘rigged’ election…not unlike Bush pushing Gore off the ballot in Florida…

Look at what THAT got us ( the new 24/7 ‘security state’!)

But that was then and this is now…

I guess I’d best introduce today’s second offering

Still Sliding: Although I've written a number of posts over the past five years chronicling America's relentless slide from leader of the free world to leading banana republic -- see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here -- it isn't hard to find fresh material with each passing day.

For example, as is typical of those failed Latin American republics we keep trying to emulate, the rich keep finding ways to get richer --

Um, unlike Mr. Panzer, I can legitimately point to ALL of my posts when making the same claim.

This entire blog is about the death spiral of the western economy and the web of lies this nation (and as a result, most of the rest of the world) was founded upon.

No irony should be lost on the fact that most nations, maimed, crippled or crazy, point at the original US constitution as the ‘inspiration’ for their own ‘founding documents’.

Now take a quick glance around the world and tell me, 'What’s wrong with this picture?'

The ‘take away’ here is it doesn’t matter how ‘magnificent’ your founding prose is, it was meant to be ignored most of the time.

Take a good look at your own ‘Constitutional Rights’ good citizen…look at how those you’ve delegated to defend them (and by extension, you) have done their job…

Fucking disgusting, isn’t it?

Time to open up the Rabbit Hole again; Ain’t NOTHING gonna get fixed until WE fix it, the BULLSHIT won’t STOP until WE STOP IT!

Cold weather is coming and the dying is about to begin.

Time to get off your dead ass and do something!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Gone but not forgotten

Greetings good citizen,

It is disturbing to me that ten years after we were attacked by our alleged allies that we are still at war with people who had nothing to do with attack and the corporate owned media continues to, er, ‘rub our noses’ in the ‘circus of mismanagement’ the event and the aftermath have become monuments to.

It is perhaps more disturbing that 10 years after and we still aren’t asking why?

The ‘pat’ answer is that Bin Laden was a psycho that did what he did because he could.

Ironically, this is the, er, ‘determination’ of those foolish enough to believe that history is a series of accidents that occur for no particular reason.

Worse, these are the same people who go around calling themselves the ‘reality based community’.

“Stuff happens, get over it…” but, curiously, they don’t.

[grind mental gears] In a world where there is too much going on for your average mortal to keep track of, here’s a story that gets almost zero press.

Here’s the tail end of it:

That sally into industrial policy, some economists say, is like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped — the horse in this case being America’s possession of the world’s biggest mass market. That ended in the late 20th century with the rise of millions of consumers in Asia and Europe with ample disposable income or access to credit.

The upshot is that governments in these markets pile on subsidies to gain or keep as much production as possible. Whirlpool, for example, makes most of its microwave ovens in southeastern China, with help from local subsidies.

When companies engaged in this kind of strategy in the 1980s, there was often much more criticism than today.

“The reason you no longer get much of an outcry over this exodus has to do mainly with jobs,” says Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress. “Less than 12 percent of the American work force is in manufacturing today, down from 30 percent in the 1970s. So there isn’t the same level of public concern.”

Is the problem really that of ‘vanishing dead-end jobs’?

Because once again we would be demonstrating how myopic we are. These jobs that ‘Mericans’ refuse to do (actually no sane person would surrender their labor for wages that don’t crack their nut.) didn’t vanish, they moved off-shore seeking the lowest possible labor pool.

And guess what? The price DIDN’T drop, it just didn’t go up as fast as others did!

And why do prices continue to rise when the inputs for EVERY PRODUCT are FREE from Mother Nature?

But that’s another of those questions you aren’t supposed to ask because the real answer isn’t, er, ‘rational’.

Now we return to the value of the dollar/zlotny/peso issue, they’re worth whatever Puddin’ Head says they are on any given day.

So our collective mission, good citizen is to get Puddin’ Head!

Although once compromised, Puddin’ Head’s authority to set global currency values would be over ridden by the people he/she works for.

But guess what would happen until a new chain of command was established?

Prices would remain ‘static’.

But I digress, back to the ‘vanishing jobs’ crisis.

Yes good citizen, it is not just manufacturing jobs that are ‘bleeding’ out of our economy, creating an ever larger ‘economic desert’, our decimated tax base is causing lay-offs through our infrastructure base!

Which is to ask, how stupid are you?

Bad enough your employer thinks you’re dumber than a box of hammers but are you really?

Is it too hard to imagine (or too harsh an indictment) to say that the lower 50% of the payroll distribution couldn’t even spell ‘economic theory’ much less grasp the basics?

Let’s shift our aim a little higher, shall we?

The upper 50%, due to the level of ‘because I said so’ involved in actual economic practices, has no clue either!
Which leaves us where, good citizen?

It leaves us at the beginning of the economics puzzle with that mind blowing question ‘what is the purpose of commerce?’

Does it exist to enrich the (lucky) owners or does it exist to provide goods and services to ‘society’ at large (something it has always failed miserably at…in case you hadn‘t noticed.)

Yes, even as we sink below other ‘third world’ economies we stand here befuddled because our government doesn’t work (because it was overrun by criminals and no one knows how to clean it out.)

Is there hope for our species or should we merely hope that we like our new boss better?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS, don’t buy the ‘propaganda’, 9/11 was an ‘inside job’ designed to tear down our government…and it worked like a charm!

The Ultimate Solution

Greetings good citizen,

I love it when I stumble on independent corroberation of ideas that I developed.

What, me? Is Gegner a closet egomaniac, claiming credit for an idea that has surely been around for…decades at best.

No, good citizen, I wasn’t the ‘first’ to champion a reduced workweek, the ‘futurists’ who enthused that automation would ‘liberate the common man from drudgery’ were the first to, er, ‘envision’ a time where automation would eliminate the need for labor and the reduction of the workday would be a ‘natural outcome’.

Unfortunately, modern workday/week advocates only provide us with a ‘half a loaf’:

 a world in which jobs take up much less of our time may seem utopian, especially now, when a scarcity mentality dominates the economic conversation. People who are employed often find it difficult to scale back their jobs. Costs of medical care, education, and child care are rising. It may be hard to find new sources of income when U.S. companies have been laying people off at a dizzying rate.

But fewer work hours for people with jobs is a key step toward solving the unemployment crisis— while giving Americans healthier lives. Fewer hours means more jobs are available to people who need them. Living on less pay usually means consuming less, making more of the things one needs at home, and living lighter, whether by design or by accident. [is this idiot on drugs?]

Today, driven both by necessity and the deliberate choice to live simply, more Americans are shifting toward fewer work hours. It’s a trend that, if done correctly, could get us out of our current economic crisis and away from unsustainable economic growth.

It’s tripe like this that makes me suspect the loyalties of the so-called ‘progressive movement’.

For a ‘reality based’ community, they sure don’t have much courage.

Nor a lot of ‘outside the box' thinking.

A reduced workday-week ISN’T POSSIBLE without significant DEBT REDUCTION.

The ‘worse’ behind this one is a real doozy, capitalism itself cannot survive the necessary reductions/offsets. As I have explained before, A Simple Plan is ‘holistic’, not only money changes, life itself starts afresh with a whole new set of rules (and NO RULERS!)

I will digress for a moment and explain that there will be ‘leaders’ but leaders will be unable to make/alter the ‘rules’.

Back to the ONLY (humane) solution to the unemployment crisis (again I will digress again for a moment to point out that there is an inhumane solution to what some call the ‘surplus labor problem’ and that solution is the one we appear headed toward, a ‘kill-off’.)

Understand that the goal of a reduced work day/week is 100% employment.

Notice how the authors of this article leave the solution as ‘voluntary’, employers would hire replacement workers at their ‘OPTION’ (if they decided to keep operations local at all after sufficient ‘attrition’ had taken place.)

Here we have with yet another ‘jobs Americans don’t want’ situation in the making.

Or another rousing jeer of ‘Americans don’t want to work’…

Which is another way of pointing out that the only way ‘work-sharing’ is EVER going to enjoy widespread acceptance is after (more for me) capitalism chokes to death on its own ashes.

BUT, if we ‘assume’ capitalism has died and a ‘new regime’ has taken its place then yes, a radically reduced workday (without the need to ‘make up the difference’ via increased self-sufficiency, hell, we have hundreds of millions of willing and able workers to keep busy!

But there is a flipside to this ideal arrangement, that is the impact of a severely reduced energy picture. Alternative energy can take up the slack here but the conversion period will be a bit, er, ‘ticklish’.

Oh, and don’t for a moment think that the abandonment of capitalism will be an ‘isolated event’. It will be abandoned ‘en-masse’ and, believe it or not, a new age of global cooperation will be born, especially after the Human anti-exploitation law achieves universal acceptance!

There’s a lot to look forward to once the ‘I own it’ crowd swings from the gallows. (Not how it’s going to happen, it won’t be ‘quick and clean’, it will be ‘lingering and educational.’

Although if this article is accurate the education part will probably be lost on the ‘perps’.

Estimated levels of social psychosis vary but even Jesse speculates that most of the mainstream ones are too low.

Conservatism is one such ’yardstick’ that tells us there could be as much as 20% of the population that is, er, ‘wired differently’.

And again, by degrees.

Like the ’fair days wages’ issue, it is nearly impossible to gauge with any accuracy how much psychosis is, er, ‘harmless.’

Does society itself provide the answer?

Just look at the ‘top 1%’ More money than they can possibly spend and they still relentlessly pursue ’more’.

If that isn’t sick I don’t know what is…except that we let them get away with it.

That, good citizen, is ‘sicker’…but you can’t really go by me, I think of all sorts of weird stuff.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Eye Spy

Greetings good citizen,

Just finished reading Frank Rich’s piece for this week and now I don’t feel so bad. If a nationally read, er, ‘critic’ like him can complain about our absent ‘Justice System’ (and nothing changes) I shouldn’t beat myself up for failing at the same task.

Individually, none of you should beat yourself up for failing to, er, ‘protest’ the degenerate condition of our public institutions.

There is absolutely nothing any of you can do about it…alone.

You know the tune…

“United we stand, divided we fall”

So what does this tell us about the most recent display of ‘public unity’?

The Republican’s would simply love it if we ‘protested’ the government they are largely responsible for on Obama’s watch. (That said, I have serious doubts that Mr. Obama is anybody’s idea of a Democrat or if ANYONE running for public office even has the slightest clue what it means to be a champion of the working class. Neither Clinton had a clue.)

Or as Dylan famously pointed out, a ‘working class hero is something you eat.’

Anyway, what do you suppose the Egyptians will get for their, er, ‘tenacity’?

Right beneath Mr. Rich’s commentary today we had both, er, ‘neo-con’ commentators cheering on the outbreak of Democracy in the Middle East.

What’s wrong with this picture? FUCKING Hosni Mubarack was a DICTATOR put in place BY THE US GOVERNMENT!!!

Why does the corporate owned media choose to ignore this fact?

Could it be due to the unflattering light this situation shines upon ‘fuck you, pay me capitalism?’

Whole societies, er, ‘repressed’ so a few can be rich…

You can understand how this could look ‘bad’ for people who consistently preach that you are the author of your own destiny…

To live a lie you have to do a lot of ignoring of, er, ‘inconvenient facts’.

There’s an old saying that goes ‘when what passes for truth varies too far from the everyday experiences of the common individual, the seeds of revolution are sown.’

Now contrast that with Kruchev’s diatribe on ‘gradualism’ and what have you got?

Does anybody have a firm grip on reality?

Sort of brings us full circle with the issue about the seeds of revolution.

There won’t be a protest never mind a revolt if nobody thinks there’s nothing amiss!

Naturally this leads back to the Overton Window and the ‘science’ behind perception management.

We have (and continue to) let the ‘self-interested’ dictate the terms of the game.

It would be a different story if nobody got hurt (by this manipulation) but that’s not the case.

There have already been 7 million foreclosures and there’s 7 million more waiting to happen.

Which is to slap anybody who even ‘imagines’ that there is EVER going to be ANYTHING that even remotely resembles an ECONOMIC RECOVERY right in their foolish face.

Thus does reality differ significantly from what has been, er, ‘advertised’.

Yet nobody complains.

That’s unfair, there are many people in the blogosphere speaking out about the ‘hypocrisy’ of the Media.

Then there are people like me, closing the loop and hollering about treason…which is precisely what it is.

Brings up another curious point, how the ‘ya-hoos’ who don’t know which end is up are constantly trying to ‘muddy the water’ surrounding the universal understanding of the word.

How sad is it that anyone who objects to (decidedly fascist) conservative values or ideas is guilty (as far as conservatives are concerned) of ‘treason’?

They routinely accuse ‘liberals’ of treason just for being true to their values.

Understand good citizen that ‘treason’ is putting your own interests ahead of the ‘common good’.

It is only natural that conservatives, who routinely ‘self-promote’ would want to ‘re-define’ this term.

Betraying conservative principles, which are decidedly treasonous by themselves, is not if fact treason unless you yourself are a conservative.

Yet these fucktards regularly portray non-conservatives as ‘traitors’.

So when it comes to the media, how much truth do you think there is to the much bemoaned ‘liberal bias’ we keep hearing about in (ironically) the media.

Oh, and the ‘less liberal’ the media outlet is, the more they bitch about it!

So, who the fuck is bitching about the decidedly ‘conservative bias’ that is readily apparent in the corporate owned media?

How does ‘nobody’ hit you?

Even the likes of Frank Rich doesn’t get to, er, ‘criticize’ his own medium.

His stuff has to pass muster with an editor and you can only tug so hard at the curtain of respectability.

Which is to point out that the only ‘free press’ available is right here in front of your eyes.(Not just me, the blogosphere in general.)

Perception management, it’s more pervasive than you think.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

A Head scratcher?

Greetings good citizen,

It appears I pulled the trigger a bit prematurely yesterday. After posting about the bullshit unemployment numbers, weren’t the beauties of the Corporate owned media on the air calling yesterday’s drop in overall unemployment a ‘head scratcher?’

Like these lying fucks DON’T KNOW what happened?

Exhaust your benefits and BANG, you are suddenly ‘out of the workforce’, it’s ‘magic’ (fuck you!)

Yet pundit after pundit expressed their ‘puzzlement’ over the poor performance resulting in a drop in the ‘gross’ unemployment percentage.

You KNOW they think/treat you like you’re STUPID but are THEY that stupid too?

People call one another ‘stupid’ all the time but what they usually mean to say is the other person is ‘mis-informed’. When I call someone/a class of people stupid, I mean it literally, that the person/group in question is incapable of EVER understanding the matter at hand.

It is truly a case of ‘nothing go up top’. Ignorance can be fixed, stupid is permanent.

[Purloined from Some Assembly Required]

Red Herring: 'Structural unemployment' explains unemployment by saying the workers are not skilled enough. Yet if every open job in the country were filled, 80% of the unemployed would still be unemployed. Let 'structural unemployment' never pass your lips again – it blames the victims and apologizes for the overlords decimating America in the chase for profits.

Leave it to the best aggregator on the web to not pull his punches!

Not disturbing enough, good citizen? Mr. Panzer provides us with a more ‘grounded’ perspective Naturally, following the above link with bring you to This story

It's curious that since the ‘Reagan Revolution’ we have been hearing the ‘tale of two America’s’ being told over and over again yet none of our worthless ‘elected officials’ has done anything about it…strange, isn’t it?

Stranger still is this headline New Mexico: Tens of Thousands Without Natural Gas Service; State of Emergency Declared How the fuck does this happen?

And if that’s not fucked up enough for you it gets worse…

Our entire ‘way of life’ is centered on ‘cheap and abundant’ energy, when energy is no longer EITHER ONE (Neither cheap OR abundant) our entire social structure will collapse.

Pick your poison here good citizen, without energy, communications go out so YOU CAN’T order more of whatever it is you think you ‘need’.

But, more succinctly, once the price of energy becomes prohibitive, you can’t afford to get it there even if you are still capable of placing the order! (Carrier pigeon, smoke signal, fucking solar powered CB radio…)

Of course, the military won’t suffer from a ‘lack of funding’…defense is job number one. What you need to understand is defending YOU isn’t the primary directive, it will be the criminals who stole everything that will be demanding protection…and the boobs will do it…because stupid is as stupid does.

You really do have to keep an eagle eye on the bastards in charge of the fucking printing press, they will literally ‘rob you blind’.

And this, my friends, is the part of the game that most of you don’t get.

Those who have ‘hijacked’ our government (and by default the Treasury) are grabbing everything that isn’t nailed down…and they’re sticking the rest of us with the ‘cost’.

Sure, they ‘pay’ for what they take but the money is ‘free’ to them, thus are YOU denied the enjoyment of the goods they consume…goods that they got for free!

The ‘cost’ of their fraud is mostly realized in the ‘lost opportunity’.

Worse, their willingness to ‘squander’ money that they get for free only serves to drive up the price YOU must pay if you want some too!

Now that’s what they call a real ‘win-win’!

Not only do they get theirs for nothing but they also get to gouge YOU while robbing you/us blind!

So good citizen, what am I going to write next?
Aw, come on! This is easy! I’ve been saying it for months now.

Okay, I’ll give you a hint…what do you do with rope?

Now you get it, don’t you?

It sickens me to see our civilization torn apart due to sheer recklessness.

Sure we can pick up the pieces but only after a long and bloody power struggle carried out by mental midgets that are totally unworthy of leadership.

The most you can hope for is to murder this type of tyrant in his sleep…not that the role of tyrant is restricted to men. Women have proven to be very adept at wielding power.

Fight for the ‘wise’ leader, undermine the myopic/selfish ones and we should speed the recovery of civilization.

There is one ‘up-side’ to this whole debacle, citizens of the future won’t tolerate fools gladly like our parents did and many of us have.

Our species faces some difficult challenges ahead. We can make it but only if we stop preying upon one another.

We didn’t make it to the top of the food chain to become our own worst enemy. That is why exile is so important to A Simple Plan.

We need to insure that anti-social behavior doesn’t go unpunished.

It worked in the past and it will work in the future. Banishment is not new.

The question is whether or not we are wise enough to save ourselves from ourselves.

Time will tell.

Perhaps now more than ever, if you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Infinite optimism

Greetings good citizen,

It’s hard to tell which is worse, yesterday’s yearning for body armor or today’s howling like a madman over the gross willful ignorance being served up by the Corporate Owned media.

After thirty years of bending over backwards to ‘help’ the stagnant commercial sector of this nation overcome the self-inflicted wound of ‘market saturation’, I find it incredible that the ‘nitwit in chief’ (actually his puppetmasters) think ‘more of the same’ bullshit that put us where we are today will, er, ‘fix’ our rapidly expanding economic desert.

IF you are old enough to remember when all of this started then you remember hearing that the stock markets were stagnant because there wasn’t anywhere to expand, the markets for western goods were completely saturated.

Sort of like today but now that saturation is global.

There’s no more road to kick the can down, but then, like now, you’ll NEVER hear a capitalist admit that!

Instead you’ll get bullshit like this…

“We need to out-innovate, outeducate and outbuild the rest of the world,” he said. “We have to make America the best place on earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our government. That’s how our people will prosper.”

Naturally good citizen, there’s something missing from the above statement, a limiting clause if you will because it should be painfully obvious at this point in the game that we are not all going to prosper.

No, the ‘prizes’ will remain the same; drink the kool-aid, keep your mouth shut and do what your told and you get to come back tomorrow and do it again, until they decide they don’t need you anymore.

YOUR job has become THEIR hostage, and THAT should piss you off to no end!

Sort of redefines the term ‘my way or the highway’, doesn’t it?

Here’s the thing:

You become dependent upon ‘a job’ so you can ‘earn’ what you need to survive.

If there are no suitable jobs then it falls to society to keep you alive.

Welcome to hell on Earth.

If there are ‘holes’ in the safety net that society provides, it’s not their problem, it’s yours!

Why should the safety net be any different than an employer’s wages? If you can’t live on ‘em, tough!

While I have brought up the subject of our commercial system being ‘unsustainable' as well as being ‘mismanaged’ I haven’t belabored the by-product of combining those two factors, which, as you can imagine, is sadistic cruelty.

Which really redefines the concept of ‘we can’t make you do it; we can only make you wish the fuck you did!’

Nothing like having your nuts in a vise, is there?

And this good citizen is the reason why you will find humans living in the most inhospitable places this planet has to offer, yes, freedom is THAT dear!

‘Civilization’ was intended to provide the remedy for man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. Unfortunately, the ‘architects’ keep fucking it up by letting the wrong crowd ‘tinker’ with their designs.

If we look back in history there doesn’t appear to be a system of government that can survive generational change. A hundred years is pushing the limit. Our current system is bullet-proof BECAUSE it is over 200 years old. The corruption has become so entrenched that ‘cleansing’ it isn’t possible.

Besides, the ‘founding premise’ was corrupt from the get go. Our system was designed from the beginning to EXCLUDE YOU from the decision making process. You only got to pick WHO made decisions in your name without ever consulting you.

And THAT’S how we got where we are today!

Some of you may have noticed that we have no remedy for a politician who fails to act in our interests AFTER they’ve been elected.

AND THERE’S NO WAY TO FIX THAT EITHER!

(Which is why I designed a new way!)

But I digress…

No one should be A.) particularly surprised by last night’s SOTU sell-out or B.) roped in by the empty promises of ‘bipartisanship’ that have yet to happen.

Worse is the recent announcement that since turning traitor to the causes that got him elected, the president has (miraculously) come up in the approval poll ratings.

How sad is it that we only have the CO media’s word for this unseemly turn of events. We are once again forced to ponder just who the fuck they polled to arrive at such an unlikely outcome?

Was it Fox News?

Oh, P.S. by the way, after viewing the most trusted source for news (Comedy central) and seeing Jon Stewart’s takedown of Fox News I am amazed there is still a Murdoch owned media outlet still standing.

What does it take, do they need to hit you over the head with a 2X4?

Anyway, part of me wants to scream in outrage and the other part of me thinks it is already too late to act because there’s no way in hell they’re going to keep it together once things start to fall apart.

Which brings us full circle to body armor…if you haven’t got some, get some!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The Penalty for Treason

Greetings good citizen,

I rage constantly about the ‘mis-management’ of our society by our capitalist overlords. Now that capitalism has achieved its ‘inevitable outcome’, all one has to do is google ‘homeless’ for an incredible eyeful of ‘fuck you, pay me!’

As the first snowflakes of the season fly outside my own window (fortunately too few to amount to anything.) many of you have loved ones who are too proud or to distant for you to help, much less save.

Just to give you an idea as to how ‘close to home’ this issue is for me, my own twin and her son are living out of her car up in New Hampshire and my $5 an hour job prevents me from doing anything to help her. Hell, I’m a half a step away from joining her!

Which is to say I have problems of my own to sort out, what little I have only goes so far.

Contrast this with yesterday’s rant about the Stock Markets; are you beginning to feel a little ‘ripped off’ yet, good citizen?

Thanks to our ‘captive government’ the New Deal has become a ‘Raw Deal’.

We are once again faced with having to ‘re-write’ the social contract and I think this time the ‘Anti-Exploitation’ law will be the centerpiece of any new arrangement.

The people will no longer tolerate being held hostage by criminals.

Not that there will be a ‘society’ to save. The criminals (mistakenly) think we will all perish without their boots on our necks.

Conversely, we are all eager to replace their boot with our own rope around THEIR necks!

Yes, good citizen, it must seem like I have a ‘thing’ for hanging but understand that the penalty for treason is death by hanging. Since ALL corporate types and their criminal legislators are ‘guilty’ of enriching themselves at society’s expense, their crime, quite naturally, is treason.

Did they off-shore jobs while laying off domestic workers? Treason!

Did they close domestic facilities only to import from foreign manufacturers? Treason!

Did they hide their profits in off-shore tax havens? Treason!

Selling your own people down the river for personal gain, Treason!

Repeated failure to accurately report abuses of public trust? Treason!

Failure to protect the public from the predations of the ‘criminal class’? Treason!

And the penalty for treason is death by hanging!

These are crimes against humanity good citizen, most of them ‘audacious’ beyond belief! The ‘failure’ here rests in a corrupt judiciary that needs to be made an example of.

Naturally, nothing is going to happen if these facts don’t get any traction and people remain ‘woe is me, there’s nothing to be done!’

The people ARE the Law and woe unto those who flaunt the domain of the people!

It STOPS the moment YOU decide to put a stop to it!

Until then,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Buy American? (How the hell are we supposed to do that?)

Greetings good citizen,

Your circumstances drive your actions. It is unlikely that you will be seeking ‘investment opportunities’ if you don’t have enough ‘capital’ to fill a thimble…which pretty much describes 97% of us.

However, as tonight’s second offering suggests, could the actions of a ‘few’ blast an irreparable hole in our already foundering economy?

Isn’t one of the key factors of the current crisis due to the ‘consolidation’ of much of the nation’s (as well s the world’s) wealth into the hands of those who need it least?

If we posit that commerce exists to serve the needs of society, a crime of stupendous proportions has been committed.

Worse, the (bought and paid for) US ‘Supreme Court’ invalidated itself by ruling that the ‘primary purpose’ of commerce was to generate profits for its shareowners and nothing else!

This decision, by itself, invalidates the entire purpose of government! (For that alone every one of the justices literally shredded their law degrees, never mind their right to practice law, anywhere!)

Does anyone else find it ‘odd’ that this decision has never been challenged?

If we consider that this, er, ‘judgement’ dovetails nicely with the agenda of our corporate overlords, it’s not surprising at all!

So we arrive at tonight’s first offering where the reporter to a very exclusive section of society ponders a pretty ‘bone-headed’ idea…

Buy American? Upscale Investors Look Abroad
By PAUL SULLIVAN
Published: November 19, 2010

Well-heeled American investors have been doing something lately [Excuse me but how does the last four decades translate into ‘lately’?] that they resisted for decades — becoming more like their European, Asian and Latin American counterparts and substantially diversifying their portfolios outside their home country. [Obviously Bobo is referring to ‘small time’ investors…’simple millionaires’ who have, until recently, found ample ‘investment opportunities’ right here in their own back yard.]

Are overseas investments worth the risk? Which ones can be part of the mix for a prudent investor?

There are two reasons for this. The financial crisis and the slow recovery showed them that the United States was not immune to devastating crashes of the kind that wealthy people in emerging markets have tried to hedge against by investing abroad. And second, American investors are worried that their portfolios are going to suffer for the foreseeable future, given the size of the United States’ budget deficit, the weakness of the dollar and the uncertainty over the stock market.

“I’ve never seen a period in which clients have expressed such an interest in nondollar investments,” said Kent Lucken, managing director at Citi Private Bank. “People are spreading their chips around more prudently and I think more wisely.” [Could ‘quantative shredding, er, easing’, the ‘direct dilution’ of the US dollar be behind this sudden ‘rush for the exits’?]

What is different is how directly these investors are going into non-American markets. They are not content with buying international equities or going into an international bond fund. They are looking to invest directly in Chinese private equity, Indian real estate; Brazilian equities denominated in reals and Australian government bonds. They are also opening cash accounts in multiple currencies. [As you can see, the suggestion here is these particular investors aren’t very ‘sophisticated’ because they are only just now getting around to something they should have done years ago….]

“International clients understand the need to diversify currencies, but this is something new to U.S. clients,” said David Frame, global head of alternative investment at J. P. Morgan Private Bank.

The people putting as much as 40 percent of their portfolios into nondollar investments are quite wealthy. But consider it this way: What can investors of more modest means learn from what the wealthiest people in the country — with the best research and advice at their disposal — are doing with large portions of their fortunes? [What about you? If you don’t have a ‘fortune’ does this behavior have an ‘impact’ upon your future? It sure does. As the money ‘flees’ your future employment is likely fleeing with it.]

UPSIDE Investors who lived through the 1990s will remember the crises in Asia, Mexico and Russia that shook global capital markets. Investing internationally has always carried risks and it is by no means without perils today.

But many investors see a different trade-off, one based as much on a stagnant or declining United States as on certain international markets that are growing, if not booming. [If we keep in mind this article ‘assumes’ that the reader is, er, ‘wealthy enough’ to at least ponder the investment advice offered here, the same statement is ‘incendiary’ to those of us, er, ‘left behind’ by the investor class.]

“When you make an investment in nondollar currencies, you’re making two investments at once,” said Tony Roth, head of investment strategies at UBS Wealth Management. “You’re betting the dollar will go down, but you’re also buying another investment. You need to be compensated for that source of risk.”

He cited the example of buying a one-year Australian government bond, yielding 5.25 percent. He said he believed that the American dollar was going to lose value and the Australian dollar was going to gain it. That’s Part 1. Part 2 is that the Australian government is stable, so an investor can count on receiving that 5 percent annual return. The alternative is less than half of a percent if invested in United States Treasuries.

“I’m going to receive a return,” he said, “that more than compensates me for the marginal risk I’m taking.” [Notice the disturbingly ‘self-centered’ tone of this last paragraph. It’s not about the community you live in (being devastated) it’s all about making something for YOUR pocket! ‘Invisible hand’ my ass! It’s always been about ‘hooray for me and fuck the rest of you!’ It’s high time we put that kind of treasonous tyranny where it belongs, on the hangman’s platform!]

But there are far more risky investments. And the ones that are less liquid — infrastructure in China, say, or a private equity fund in Brazil — carry more uncertainty. But like their equivalents in the United States, they provide a higher return, in theory.

Mr. Frame said clients were investing in Asian infrastructure and Asian private equity by pooling their money with other investors. “There is a lot going on when a country is growing and developing that is hard to address through the public markets,” he said.

While there’s an obvious "pull" to international investments, there is also a bit of a "push" out of the United States: investors who are making their portfolios more international are doing so because they believe that the role of the United States in the global economy is shrinking.

Mr. Roth said the United States contributed 40 percent of global gross domestic product 15 years ago and now contributed 21 percent. He predicted that that figure would fall to 12 percent in another 15 years. Going along with this is the shrinking market capitalization of American stocks compared with global stocks.

“We have the U.S. experiencing flat to 2 percent G.D.P. growth, but you have Brazil, India and China with substantially higher rates,” Mr. Lucken said. “Equity investors are investing abroad to capture higher returns and invest ahead of higher growth rates.” [snip]

Do not fail to recognize this for what it is, it is nothing short of treason! These traitors are putting their own financial interests ahead of the interests of the rest of the nation. Until we regain control of the government, these worthless slimeballs will continue to literally bleed the rest of us to death…because in case you haven’t noticed, you are a ‘captive audience’, you have no place to go!

Unlike the three characters in tonight’s second offering

If you have enough money YOU CAN ‘buy your way out’ of the sinking US economy…

Could Millionaires Fleeing the U.S. Cause a Wildcard Economic Event?

November 21st, 2010

For years, I’ve received emails from people who want to move to New Zealand. Some young, some old. Some well off, some not so well off.

Over the last month or so, three millionaires have emailed me about moving to New Zealand. [Truth be told good citizen, if I had the money, I’d be looking for a ‘safer’ place to be myself…]

The three people who emailed me were all going to invest their way into New Zealand. In case you don’t know, millionaires can make “investments” in New Zealand to, in effect, buy different types of residence visas. New Zealand Immigration calls these “Business Visas.” Depending on the type of arrangement and the age of the applicant, between NZ$750,000 and NZ$10 million is required. [So plans to open a Pez dispenser sales booth isn’t good enough to buy you entry into a, er, ‘safer’ environment.]

It’s one thing for me to leave the U.S., with my meager savings, boxes of books and already old clothes (not much, in other words), but what happens if large numbers these wealthy people leave the U.S., pulling millions of dollars out of U.S. banks and moving it… elsewhere? [I think Kevin has the wrong ‘take’ on this, these people are fleeing the growing ‘economic desert’ where ‘lack of funds’ is increasing the incidence of ‘lawlessness’. There are still roughly 750 US Billionaires so a few, er, ‘multi-millionaires’ isn’t about to cause a financial panic…especially when we consider ‘what’ it is that makes most of these ‘refugees’ rich…stocks! These people AREN’T going to liquidate their holdings just to move to a different economy.]

It worries me that I heard from three of these people in such a short period of time. What does that mean, in terms of the bigger picture? Might this be a leading indicator of something to come? I started to wonder if this flow of wealthy people out of the U.S. represents a sort of wildcard threat to the U.S. economy. Is there a way to know how much money is leaving the U.S., and at what point it places the system in jeopardy?

I know, many of you are thinking, “Who cares if a few fat cats flee the U.S.?”

Well, in case you haven’t noticed, a tiny number people have most of the money in the U.S. The absurd U.S. ponzi scheme depends on these wealthy people leaving their funds in U.S. institutions. One of these people leaving the U.S. (and taking their money with them) would be like thousands or tens of thousands of “normal” people pulling their money out of the banks. [Still, the ‘percentages’ aren’t there…most of us don’t have a pot to piss in, never mind a window to throw it out of!]

Anyway, if little-old-Kevin on his backwater conspiracy blog heard from three millionaires who want to flee the U.S., what might we be able to extrapolate from that in terms of the bigger picture, if anything? Has some kind of tipping point occurred? Or, is this not that big of a deal?

Um, I’d be inclined to say ‘no biggie’, there’s aren’t ‘millions’ of millionaires and a lot of people who are so fortunate CAN’T liquidate their holdings because they’re locked up in a trust!

There are only a couple of hundred thousand ‘households’ with networth in excess of seven figures. Of those ‘couple of hundred thousand’, only one percent of them control 85% of that wealth! This brings us to our handful of billionaires, with a large percentage of members having a single billion and change.

Worse is how much of this exists only ‘on paper’. You can be fabulously wealthy ‘on paper’ but ‘penniless’ in fact. We are extremely fortunate that most of the ‘quadrillion dollars’ worth of CDS debt exists only ‘on paper’ because push come to shove, there isn’t a ‘quadrillion dollars’ in the whole fucking world!

Sort of like ‘old times’ where instead of ranting for three or four pages, I provide you with half dozen pages of somebody else’s stuff!

Then I’d worry that I’ve taxed your patience and sign off real quick

Leaving my opening comment unexplained…actually, half the time, I leave a lot of topics open for interpretation…

I guess I’m just no good at pinning something down and beating it to death. If I get bored writing it, you MUST get bored reading about it!

One last comment before I do close this out. Didn’t Mr. Rich focus this week’s piece on the potential for a Palin presidential bid?

Ironically, ol’ Hil has just gone ‘on record’ as stating she ‘isn’t interested’ in making another run at the White House.

Naturally, politicians seldom say what they mean…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner