Clean Sweep

Greetings good citizen,

Let’s begin today’s offering with the familiar refrain, ‘is this the best the (Fourth Estate) can do?

Because this post is about the ‘headlines’ in this nation’s ‘paper of record’, the NY Times…(despite conservative morons choking whenever someone else points this fact out.)

Yup, let’s take a look at what the ‘liberul media’ has on offer.

(And you know it was an idiot conservative who made up that nonsensical label…)

Um, in case you’re new here let me make it perfectly clear that I have zero love for ‘mindless conservatives’, the people who believe what they believe because they believe it.

How ironic is it that the so-called ‘liberul media’ has run yet another headline in TODAY’S PAPER about the all but forgotten Tea Party?

WTF!

But enough of that, let’s have a look at today’s headlines:

U.S. May Scrap Costly Efforts to Train Iraqi Police
By TIM ARANGO

The State Department could jettison a multibillion-dollar training effort by the end of 2012 that has emerged as the latest high-profile example of America's waning influence in the country.

Does something about this story strike you as ‘wrong’? Is it the ‘multi-billion dollar’ part or the ‘waning influence’ our, (er, military) has on this former (multiple) invasion victim?

Make no mistake about it good citizen, we ‘invaded’ Iraq in 1991 then we ‘officially withdrew’ (but continued to bomb the fuck out of them) until we ‘re-invaded’ in 2003.

And if you think we aren’t still bombing them, think again.

How disturbing is it good citizen that the Iraqi’s were the ‘lab rats’ for what they intend to do here?

Considering how the last almost thirty years have gone for the Iraqi’s, is it any wonder they are ‘resisting’ US style law enforcement training?

But our ‘corporate owned’ media makes no mention of this ‘background information’ and we can only wonder…why?

Well, actually we don’t wonder why…most of us are savvy enough to figure out for ourselves you write what ‘massa’ wants you to write if you want to keep getting your paycheck on Thursday.

What is even more disturbing is how the bylines are increasingly being attributed to foreign names. Like John and Jane, who lived recent US history, can’t be trusted to report it the way Rajneesh or Kim Sung (who only know the ‘whitewashed’ version that they learned in school would report it.)

Yeah, how frightening is THAT good citizen?

But I digress, let us move on:

Tea Party Focus Turns to Senate and Shake-Up
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JONATHAN WEISMAN

Tea Party-backed Republican candidates for the Senate are looking to infuse the upper chamber with the deep-seated conservatism that is coursing through the House.

How did we get a ‘Tea Party’ house, good citizen?

Remember the statistics, only one in five voters are ‘registered Republicans’ so how the fuck do ANY OF THEM win elected office?

You aren’t supposed to question this mathematical impossibility because it casts (SERIOUS) doubt on the ‘sanctity’ of our ‘free and fair’ elections…

Or hey, here’s and idea, you don’t suppose the patently corrupt bastards who OWN the fucking media may not be serving their own ‘business friendly’ agenda…do you?

Which is to ask, good citizen, how long are YOU going to let THEM fuck with you like this?

For our final ‘headline’ of Mother’s Day 2012 we have this story:

Degrees of Debt
A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College
By ANDREW MARTIN and ANDREW W. LEHREN

Nearly everyone pursuing a bachelor's degree is borrowing money, and as prices soar, a college degree often comes with an unprecedented financial burden.

Geez bub, what the fuck do you suppose is up with this bullshit, eh?

Isn’t ‘more education’ supposed to be the singular cure to our long running and largely self-inflicted ‘unemployment crisis’?

But again the fucking worthless media has stuck to the official story that too many students have been chasing the ‘wrong’ degrees. Resulting in a mountain of (very lucrative) debt for the finance industry and lifetimes of economic woe for the hapless, succorless DUPES who get roped in by the lying politicians!

Um, understand that when the chips are down and the public looks to collect on the crimes of our ‘elected officials’, we’re going to be handed a ‘sob story’ about how everybody was doing it and they had no choice, they HAD TO go along (or they wouldn’t get re-elected!)

Tell it to the gibbet…

Because you (and those who recruited you) are going to ‘swing’ for your crimes.

But don’t fret, you won’t be alone. Most of the financial sector and ALL of the justice department will be swinging right beside you.

The new broom will, by necessity, ‘sweep clean’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Useless

Greetings good citizen,

It appears to be one of those days when you find yourself wondering when, precisely, the world turned into a lunatic asylum?

We already know that the repeal of Glass-Steagal was a horrendous mistake made that much more horrific by the fact that it remains unrectified!

But that aside, do they seriously expect us to believe they can bend the financial system back into working condition again (even if they erase ALL of the rules?)

In a sidebar one of the ads on my homepage is for the over the counter medication Lunesta…which is for insomnia if you aren’t familiar with the floating green butterfly in the ads.

And I found myself wondering just how many financial professionals were buying this stuff wholesale in the industrial strength, 55 gallon drum?

Because the global banking system is one stiff breeze away from collapsing

I excerpted this particular portion of the otherwise meaningless article for a reason…

That reason should hit you right in the eye:

He was so well regarded by the administration that the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was even tapped to appear at the bank’s board meeting back in 2009 before the appearance was scuttled. More recently, Mr. Dimon has visited Washington numerous times, seeing both allies and sparring partners like Representative Barney Frank.

Now, though, Mr. Dimon’s reputation and possibly his influence have been cut down to size.

The trading loss disclosed late Thursday is a rare misstep by a man who prides himself on having his fingers on the pulse of his 270,000-employee company, and it suggests his vaunted confidence edged toward hubris.

So, what hits YOU in the eye, good citizen?

Is it that really BIG number in an industry that doesn’t produce an actual product?

Despite the, er, ‘profits’ credited to the financial sector, they don’t ‘produce’ any, zero, zip, nada of what we like to call ‘wealth’.

Or, more practically, the problem rests with the inability of the ‘real economy’ to cover the (blank) checks the financial sector keeps writing…

So we find ourselves in a pretty much endless game of ‘extend and pretend’.

I say pretty much endless because it will have to end…someday.

And, ironically enough, we already know when that ‘someday’ will be. It will be the day they go to buy the fuel to send the tractors out into the field and learn that their accounts are over drawn.

Which will mark the beginning of a ‘cascading systemic collapse’.

The tractors don’t go out and plant the crops so there’s nothing to harvest and nothing to harvest means there’s nothing to eat…and then the real fun begins as the desperate start looking for something (preferably meaty) to stick in their hungry mouths.

And the Hollywood’s perverse fixation on flesh eating zombies starts to make sense…

For these aren’t the ‘undead’ they are the nearly dead, preying on the ‘better off dead’ while the (well-fed) criminals watch the drama play out.

Hell, these ghouls even have Blackwater on speed dial, ready to airlift them out of their compounds if things get ‘too hot’ locally.

But let’s return for a moment to the 270,000 JP Morgan Chase employees.

Now we aren’t talking 7-11 here where the bulk of the payroll is part time minimum wage. Nor are we looking at a major auto manufacturer, where the product itself is getting priced to a smaller and smaller audience.

Which is to point out that the ‘average person’ soon won’t be able to afford to drive.

Have you ever stopped for a moment and considered what the ‘economy’ would look like then (especially if we are still groaning under the yoke of ‘fuck you pay me,’ capitalism?)

Now there’s no excuse for it because yes, good citizen…there IS a ‘better way’!

There is NO LACK of things that NEED doing…so there will be no shortage of jobs, all which will pay ‘a living wage’.

In fact, we could set this plan in motion tomorrow!

But the current ‘wealthy at your expense’ crowd is opposed to it.

And yes, good citizen, now we are pointing a finger at the ‘>’ (less than) One Percent.
We could wipe them out of existence and never notice they were gone.

That is the sad part good citizen, like Jamie Dimon’s 270,000 ‘employees’, the > One percent are totally useless.

In fact, Mr. Dimons employees, like Mr. Dimon himself will have to find ‘real (productive) jobs!

But that’s okay, there’s no shortage of ‘things that need doing’!

Which is to point out that we not only have an (easily corrected) legal problem but we also have a (just as easily corrected) ‘management problem’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Chutzpah!

Greetings good citizen,

Time to spend one of my ten NY Times ‘freebies’ for the month, if only because the story itself makes my blood boil.

Um, let me digress for a moment as we take a quick look at the decidedly disturbing phenomenon I’ve pointed to several times before and that is the Opening bell at the NYSE and the ‘miraculous’ recovery of global stock markets…

Fucking criminals!

You’d have to be blind not to see it. Opening bell in New York and stock markets around the globe go straight up…and this is AFTER J.P. Morgan announces a $2 BILLION dollar trading ‘loss’.

WTF!

Remember good citizen, the only thing the stock markets tells us today is how rich the already wealthy have decided to make themselves AT OUR EXPENSE!

Higher stock prices for them mean higher prices for us! (Worse, the nearly wiped out ‘real economy’ can’t take much more of this!)

Let us proceed with that which should shame us all

The evidence is easy to spot. An American company, Element Electronics, for example, has made flat-screen televisions for years at a factory in China but is now expanding in America. It recently opened a factory near Detroit that is producing the first televisions made in the United States by any company in years.

At General Electric, local tax breaks and a concessionary union contract contributed to G.E.’s decision to manufacture its latest electric water heater in Louisville, Ky. — instead of in China. Similarly, the Otis Elevator Company is moving production to a new factory in Florence, S.C., from a plant in Nogales, Mexico, and Master Lock has switched the manufacture of combination locks back to Milwaukee from China.

At P.A.M.A. Furniture, in Jamestown, N.C., the owning Pennisi family has begun to manufacture upholstered chairs and sofas “from scratch,” according to Anthony Pennisi, a vice president.

Until recently, the Pennisis imported chair frames from Italy and Indonesia, and finished them at the family’s Jamestown factory. Manufacturing everything here is more expensive, Mr. Pennisi said, and he has asked for government help. “I think we are a prime example of a small manufacturer producing a Made-in-America product and trying to survive,” he said.

This nation has become a HUGE economic desert…but it wasn’t always so.

Worse, a whole generation has grown up thinking Japanese cars are the best and imported anything was superior to domestic everything…

NOW, the very same fuckers responsible for putting the United States productive capacity on a barge for points unknown are back, crying for MORE government subsidies!

And guess where our witless politicians will carve these ‘lifelines’ from?

From our fucking social security!

Burn them! Burn them to the fucking ground!

Our civilization cannot tolerate this ceaseless onslaught from those already so rich they CAN’T spend it productively anymore!

Burn their factories and HANG their politicians!

OR we could just slap their little wrists and tell them to cut the shit…but you know what they’ll do then, don’t you?

They’ll declare WAR on us (and hijack our own military to fight it for them!)

So we’re back to burn their factories and hang their politicians…and anyone else stupid enough to stick their heads above ground!

Enough is enough, good citizen!

These people need ‘subsidies’ like the rest of us need an extra hole in our heads…something THEIR bought and paid for politicians would gladly provide for us, free of charge!

Somehow ‘dead constituents’ are so much easier to answer to…

(And it’s not like the fuckers haven’t killed off a bunch of us without really trying!)

Look a little closer at ‘stop loss’ and the ‘left-handed draft’ created by the economic desert these fuckers are responsible for!

Now they have the chutzpah to return to the US and, er, ‘ask’ for ‘subsidies’?

You know what the definition of chutzpah is, don’t you?

It is when somebody murders their own parents them petitions the court for mercy because they are suddenly ‘orphaned’…

Same thing!

And, as I point out above, where do you suppose our ‘out of control’ politicians are going to fund these ‘subsidies’ from?

They will continue to ‘cannibalize’ what’s left of the social safety net…never once being asked to explain why a Chinese dollar will buy four times what an American dollar will yet one American dollar will still buy SIX Chinese dollars!

WTF!

In the meantime, good citizen, all (except the mom & pop furniture maker at the bottom of the list) are all fortune one hundred companies that pay virtually zero taxes!

Um, dunno about the electronic company but you can bet their ‘parent company’ is globally ranked.

Which is to point out (AGAIN) that the individuals who run these companies ALREADY HAVE more than they can rationally spend…so we’re subsidizing them, why?

Oh how sad is it good citizen that I find myself ‘bitching’ when our overlords (having read the handwriting on the ‘energy wall’) are trying to sneak back into a market they cruelly abandoned decades ago?

Yeah that’s me…a crank who is never satisfied!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Table Stakes

Greetings good citizen,

Nothing like starting the day with a quick peek at the world’s markets, just to see how things are going.

Naturally, with the massive sell-off of the past few days, we have ‘bargain hunters’ scouring the world’s exchanges, converting other people’s trash into their ‘treasure’.

(When we all know what we’re actually seeing is major players buying back their own stocks at bargain basement prices!)

Buyers Drive Wall Street Higher
By REUTERS 10:06 AM ET

Stocks on Wall Street rose in morning trading as a recent string of losing sessions sent investors looking for bargains.

Why aren’t these same ‘bargain hunters’ letting prices fall further?

(Weirdly, the answer is that without high stock valuations, these idiots are broke!)

I find it doubtful that investors are being ‘encouraged’ by this misleading economic report…

U.S. Jobless Claims Fall, Trade Deficit Widens
By REUTERS 9:40 AM ET

New claims for unemployment benefits in the United States edged down last week, while the United States trade deficit widened in March, the government reported.

The ‘drop’ in new claims is, er, ‘inevitable’ as the pace of ‘shrinkage’ slows…but make no mistake about it, we are still losing more jobs than we are creating!

And that idea doesn’t factor in the increasing tendency to ‘automate’ jobs away.

In our favor is the coming energy scarcity, where ‘automating’ work will become cost prohibitive…but much worse will happen before we flip that card over.

Finally we encounter this little gem, where the consumer has been added as a ‘afterthought’:

Bernanke Says Lending Spigots Are More Open Now
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 35 minutes ago

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday that many businesses and consumers are finding it easier to borrow as banks shore up their balance sheets.

Um, considering how a vast majority of the populace is NOT creditworthy we are left to wonder just WHO Mr. Bernanke is throwing wide the treasury vault doors open for?

Could it be the > One Percent?

The degree of ‘mismanagement’ on display since this whole charade began is clearly treasonous (and should be prosecuted as such…if we could find a single member of the legal community untainted by the corruption that pervades the entire industry…from Law School on up, to bring it to trial…

How fortunate is it good citizen that when push comes to shove, it is NOT the legal industry OR the ‘government’ that embodies the power of law.

No good citizen, 'We the People', ARE The Law!

NOT the guy with the badge.

NOT the guy with the robe.

YOU!

YOU ARE THE LAW!

How fucking sad is it that the criminals have used the clown with the robe and his tin-starred sidekick to ‘steal’ the law away from you?

The ‘honorable gentlemen’ of the law have lifted it beyond your feeble grasp…because you were unfit to wield it wisely.

How friggin’ sad is it that those who stole the law from you have proven even more unfit to safeguard it?

Well, good citizen, time has shown that we have arrived once again at a point where we must pluck the law from the greedy hands of the self-serving and place it beyond their reach…forever!

Thus are the fruits of revolution preserved!

Because history also shows that the law is quickly snatched back from the control of the many and returned to the self-interested few all too soon after a social upheaval.

That’s why A Simple Plan places the law beyond the reach of the self-interested (didn’t know there was an ‘upside’ to this ‘direct democracy’ thing, did you?)

The laws, (even the slightest of them) cannot be altered without a supermajority vote of the general public…regardless of the circumstances.

Which is to direct your attention back to the ‘Why’ our civilization is falling apart.

The criminals would have you think it is YOUR fault, that YOU weren’t willing to ‘pay the price’ for civil society.

When the truth is their ‘theft of justice’ is the reason civilization itself is collapsing.

We are living with the results of ‘justice for a few’ (at the expense of the rest) right now.

Until we repair this ‘breach’ in the social contract, our species is doomed.

Thems is ‘the stakes’ good citizen, whether you likes ‘em or not.

Thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Click, click...

Greetings good citizen,

The ‘Drums of Doom’ are pounding again (and I dislike running back to back posts on the topic of revolt.)

But today we have been, er, ‘gifted with’ yet another grim assessment of the state of our civilization

We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke. And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted -- and in a generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.

It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures. It’s inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.

Let’s begin by asking how many of you disagree with Mr. Chomsky’s assertion that we are headed straight for another ‘dark ages’?

The other question would be how many of you appreciate precisely what this means?

And I’d have to opine ‘too few’. (Even for those of you who are in to ‘swords and sorcery’.)

Ironic that the world described the popular novel Hunger Games is very much like the world we are headed for.

Worse, we will end up there the same way the inhabitants of the story got there…‘spinelessness’.

Because it is never enough for a single individual to speak or act out against tyranny, a lone voice is easily silenced.

(That’s a land mine I tap dance on every day…but someone’s gotta do it.)

Then there’s the flip side of the OWS movement; we all know nothing is going to happen if the most action we take is point a finger and cry ‘shame’!

So good ol’ Noam is betting with me that when the party starts, we’ll have plenty of company.

Strange thing about backbone, it’s contagious. Simply seeing someone else ‘nut up’ sort of inspires you to do likewise. It is especially inspiring when you see those you wouldn’t ordinarily consider ‘courageous’ daring to do great things (even if they are cut down in the act!)

Weirdly, it is precisely this quality that the Vikings revered, facing certain death with unflinching valor is the stuff heroes are made of.

And sadly, we will need a great many heroes good citizen if we are to provide our children a future free of tyranny.

How sad is it that the time to start executing traitors was thirty years ago? (And finding them was as simple as looking for the R after their name.)

Worse, it is STILL that simple.

Where is (Gen.) Smedley Butler when you REALLY need him?

Seems our (generation’s) Smedley was asleep at the switch when the interlopers came creeping.

But the more logical answer would be that because of Smedley, the conspirators were forced to choose a different avenue of egress.

Finding a general to lead a coup was much riskier than it needs to be, especially with so many corrupt politicians just looking for an opportunity to be ‘of service’.

No, unsurprisingly the take over of our political system began at the grassroots level, where the ‘sniff testing’ is done and party endorsements are awarded.

Those people are appointees and it was a fairly easy matter to stack the deck so both sides of the fence were drawing from a singular pool of candidates.

This is why we the people can’t get a break!

And, worse, we can already see it coming again this November!

Our choices are O Bummer or Willard…

Sort of makes your stomach churn, doesn’t it?

Interesting choice…a guy who twiddled his thumbs for four years vs. a guy whose only trick seems to be sitting on his thumb!

Uh, how screwed are we?

Let’s look at it this way…the chances of anything improving economy wise are still ‘slim to none’.

And until we, er, ‘demand’ better, NOTHING is going to change.

Don’t underestimate them, good citizen. They are ready to pull off a coup the second there is a serious assault mounted on DC, they’ve been preparing for it for the past two decades!

This, weirdly enough, would work to our advantage if it were to happen sooner than later…

Just my two cents for anybody planning anything…

I’d tell you not to do anything ‘rash’ but, at the end of the day, it’s all up to you! (and ‘rash’ is always a matter of perspective…)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Austerity

Greetings good citizen,

I’d opine that we just got one step closer to the ‘final unraveling’ that will cause our financial system to collapse and throw the world’s ‘puppet governments’ into, er, ‘disarray’.

The inevitable ‘push-back’ against crippling ‘austerity’ leaves the bankers with no alternative…I said four years ago there is no way to use the system to repair the system, the tools don’t exist!

So what does that tell you good citizen?

That when this crap-storm finally exhausts itself, the only alternative left will be the ‘reset switch’.

The question is do YOU want the fuckers responsible for this disaster to be the ones pushing the reset button?

Your answer SHOULD BE a resounding NO…but how much ‘choice’ do you think you are going to have in this matter?

Try NONE.

Worse, they get to keep ALL of the shit they’ve stolen so far and YOUR circumstances will barely change!

Click, click-boom, Good citizen!

The likely ‘presto-chango’ they are going to pull will be the ‘depersonalization’ of the Real Estate markets.

You will be ‘relieved of your obligation’ to pay for the real estate you’ve purchased (but that obligation will be replaced with a ‘rental fee’ (for maintenance and upkeep, surly you understand…just like condo fees although you’ll still be expected to shovel the driveway and cut the grass.)

You see, good citizen, this will be a ‘win-win’ for our overlords. Labor will be free to move where it is needed now that housing is no longer part of the equation.

Hey, (in the beginning anyway) you’ll be automatically let out of your lease if you are moving out due to a job change…later this might prove troublesome but in the beginning they are more interested in showing you what nice guys they are! (And how lucky you are to have them running things!)

But wait a minute Slim…once again we have a myopic ‘Merikan warning us to beware of the decline of the US

Um, the old codger was 82…and it is not ‘uncommon’ for people that age to have a US centric worldview, but seriously good citizen, when this CF falls apart. More than just the US is gonna come ‘unglued’:

Now in principle, the Big Picture seems simple enough, though devilishly complex in the details. We live in the declining years of what is still the biggest economy in the world, where a looter elite has fastened itself upon the decaying carcass of the empire. It is intent on speedily and relentlessly extracting the maximum wealth from that carcass, impoverishing our former working middle class. But this maggot class does not invest its profits here. By law and by stock-market pressures, corporations must seek their highest possible profits, no matter the social or national consequences -- which means moving capital and resources abroad, wherever profit potential is larger. As Karl Marx darkly remarked, “Capital has no country,” and in the conditions of globalization his meaning has come clear.

The looter elite systematically exports jobs, skills, knowledge, technology, retaining at home chiefly financial manipulation expertise: highly profitable, but not of actual productive value. Through “productivity gains” and speedups, it extracts maximum profit from domestic employees; then, firing the surplus, it claims surprise that the great mass of people lack purchasing power to buy up what the economy can still produce (or import).

Here again Marx had a telling phrase: “Crisis of under-consumption.” When you maximize unemployment and depress wages, people have to cut back. When they cut back, businesses they formerly supported have to shrink or fail, adding their own employees to the ranks of the jobless, and depressing wages still further. End result: something like Mexico, where a small, filthy rich plutocracy rules over an impoverished mass of desperate, uneducated, and hopeless people.

Um, Marx made some insightful observations into the ‘fuck you, pay me’ system but ‘the commune’ was not the solution/alternative he made it out to be.

Being an Anarchist, I’m not too fond of Communists.

But this isn’t about me or dead ideologies.

It’s about YOU and the, er, collapse of life as you have come to know it.

For folks my age, the world we were raised in is gone, irretrievably.

Many of you were born not knowing anything different from what you see today. The Department of Homeland Security and the unilateral, extra-judicial execution of, er, ‘terrorists’ by killer drones were NOT the way things ‘always were’…

But in another generation they will be.

The road ahead is still yours to decide.

Will you choose unity and cooperation or will you choose phantom bogeymen and (mostly angry) spirits in the sky?

You’re the adult now, you choose.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Stock

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we observe the ‘sun up over the NYSE effect’ on global stock markets. For some bizarre reason exchanges around the globe rise in tandem with the opening of NYSE…

Must be that anticipating great things phenomenon…

Because there is no ‘logical’ reason for stocks to be overpriced by some 2000%! (Or some other ridiculous number, it’s hard to tell when you don’t have a reliable benchmark.)

Um, like many things we hear in the corporate owned media we will have to be patient and see what the newly elected Mr. Hollande does with the French economy before passing judgement on his alleged ‘socialist’ credentials.

But I digress, today’s offering is indeed about the stock markets.

The departure of long-term investors does not always lead to lower trading volumes. When people are pulling money out it can lead to spikes in trading, as it did in August when the European debt crisis heated up. But when long-term players exit the market it can lead to a reduction in trading over time, which has many market participants watching the behavior of ordinary Americans like Fred Lines, a retired electrical contractor who lives on Long Island.

Mr. Lines, who is 75, said he used to trade stocks regularly, and had most of his money in stocks even after retiring and many of his peers pulled back. He started to retreat after the demise of the investment bank Bear Stearns in 2008 and has continued to retreat, most recently in December when he shifted funds from preferred stocks in blue-chip companies to corporate bonds. The recent positive returns have not dispelled his fears that the market will suddenly turn on him.

“If it goes up, I know it’s going to go down again,” Mr. Lines said. “I used to just buy the stock and hold it — after a few years it was always up. Now you can’t trust that.”

Hey, once upon a time the expression was ‘as safe as houses’…now it appears unlikely that any of us will find a ‘greater fool’ willing to overpay massively for a stack of lumber that can be replicated for a fraction of what we currently owe on it.

And if you think that’s going to turn around anytime soon you are sadly mistaken.

The Real Estate market won’t get fixed until we repair the employment situation…in fact, under A Simple Plan they would be repaired in tandem!

The only way to solve the unemployment crisis is to cut the workweek/day in half…in order to successfully do that we also need to cut the worker’s expense picture in half…and the easiest way to accomplish that is to eliminate their ‘housing expense.’

Slightly more than half of what the average worker earns goes towards the expenses associated with keeping a roof over their heads.

To make matters worse, many can’t swing lodging of any type unassisted…largely due to the global race to the bottom our negligent politicians have done nothing about.

Shift mental gears with me as we double-back to Saturday’s post when Mr. Chomsky accused the West of committing ‘economic suicide’.

Labor force participation is down while poverty is skyrocketing!

And yet the greedy few are richer than they’ve ever been.

In the Nineties this phenomenon was brushed off as the result of a ‘lack of international law’…which was then and is now happy horseshit!

What we’ve really been, er, observing is the outright collapse of the international justice system!

As I have pointed out repeatedly, we DON’T have a money problem, we don’t even have a labor problem…what we’ve got is a resource problem that is creating one fuck of a LEGAL PROBLEM!

Another universal scapegoat has been ‘incompetence’.

Which is to ask just WHO thought it was a GOOD IDEA to ship our production capacity HALF WAY AROUND THE PLANET when we are RUNNING OUT OF FUEL?

‘Cheap’ super-freighters huh? Worse, (as I have pointed out repeatedly) the ‘cheaper there’ doesn’t exist!

The ‘high price’ of US labor is pure currency manipulation! Just as the (artificially low) price of Chinese labor is achieved the same way!

Then there is ‘productivity’ which is also just so much twaddle!

Units per hour only matter when a capitalist is trying to wring a profit out of effort.

Eliminate the coin in the greedhead’s pocket and ‘productivity’ becomes an exercise in meaninglessness!

By eliminating this useless measure we can return the focus to where is should be, building more durable and efficient products rather than the current (wasteful) drive to build faster and cheaper, often resulting in shoddier work.

A shoddiness that is often met in the marketplace with, hey, if you don’t like it, buy someone else’s…and guess what? There isn’t anyone else’s to buy.

They get away with their shoddy tactics by turning their customer base into a captive audience.

Now THAT’S CAPITALISM!

You take the shoddy crap and like it or you don’t get the sumbitch!

And if you don’t like the ‘roller coaster’ that the stock market has become…don’t play it!

Actually, you’re an idiot if you invest and you’re NOT being coached, step by step, by an insider. Without reliable inside information, you’re going to lose (largely because the markets are no longer connected to reality.)

How’s that as a repository for your retirement funds?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner