Unicorns

Greetings good citizen,
The, er, ‘stress’ of acclimating myself to a reversed schedule has rendered me more ‘incoherent’ than usual.

Doesn’t help that my perspective is contrary to the BS you’ve had hammered into your head since childbirth. [A phenomenon I find extremely curious because once it is confirmed, you should see it for the ‘self-serving tripe’ that it is without my coaching.]

For those of you not so quick on the uptake I will be more specific, I’m talking about that illusion that increasingly makes less and less sense, money.

I was reading an article online the other night where this professional ‘money manager’ was telling his readers that he charges his kids ‘rent’ (forcing them to ‘save’) so they will learn about the ‘value’ of money.

Understand dipstick’s ‘lesson’ is centered on the no longer viable idea that money pays interest (although that wasn’t the ‘example’ he used, he was using his ‘savings’ to buy stocks!)

So he equated spending money with ‘firing’ his personal money making ‘robots’ (what he referred to them as.)

He went on to claim that he had ‘earned’ $3,000 in annual ‘dividends’ from his holdings.

Do you know how few stocks pay dividends or that companies are under no ‘obligation’ to pay a dividend AT ALL? (Even if they’re crazy profitable.)

Well if you didn’t you weren’t about to be ‘educated’ by this idiot’s article!

Which is to reflect just how ‘unreliable’ professional monetary advice can be.

Worse, the most prominent ‘risk’ when it comes to investing is listening to advisors peddling their own self-interest!

Naturally, you’d expect ‘financial advisors’ to focus on the traditional ‘backbone’ of investment, that of ‘savings’. These days ‘ordinary’ savings vehicles don’t pay spit, which is why chucklehead is ‘speculating’ in the market WITHOUT telling you…although he does ‘volunteer’ what stocks HE invested in (hoping YOU will be STUPID enough to buy them!)

Now, back to reality. Markets around the globe are bleeding from the eyesockets today (which has nothing to do with nothing. Wall Street is so far divorced from Main Street as to be on a different planet, as disturbing as that realization and what it implies means to the average citizen.)


Which leads us to this headline:

To Reassure Investors, Fed Stresses It Will Not End Stimulus
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Concerns about the effects of the Federal Reserve’s stimulus policy can dilute the policy’s impact by causing investors to doubt that rates will remain low.

What do you suppose the Fed is going to do when people realize the Fed is inflating away their purchasing power?

Can you say Banana Republic?

How are our two stories ‘related’?

Note the extremely poor ‘quality’ of what passes for ‘investment advice’ these days and how shamelessly the pundit uses his (probably already grown and gone) ‘kids’ as a ‘teaching tool’?

How bizarre is it good citizen that this is a perfect example of ‘what you don’t know’ causing insurmountable harm?

Once again your (deliberate) ‘ignorance’ only aids the grifters the government has failed to protect you from.

Not that ‘government the concept’ failed, it was (of course) the humans running it that have failed.

We’re back to ‘weakest links’…as you well know.

How can ‘The Bernank’ maintain this false façade?

Let us return to lesson one shall we?

ALL MONEY IS FUNNY!

I don’t mean just paper or coins, I mean ALL of it!

How ‘astonished’ would you be if I told you our financial system is based on Unicorns?

You’d probably think I was kidding but think about it.

You’ve seen money but you’ve never seen a unicorn so how can this be?

The whole concept of ‘debt’ is imaginary; that’s the first thing you need to wrap your head around!

The next step is really simple…there is absolutely zero difference between debt and unicorns…so there you are!

Even more disturbing is how prevalent the belief in Unicorns (debt) is.

Do you honestly believe Ben Bernanke has an endless supply of dollars at his disposal? (Especially after his masters have hollowed out the US economy?)

Of course you don’t!

But it works today because the price of disbelief is too stiff.

And there’s the rub!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

What the...

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we have the corporate owned media using trivia to distract us from the real issues at hand.

JPMorgan Ignored Warnings in Loss, Inquiry Finds
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and BEN PROTESS 49 minutes ago

JPMorgan Chase ignored risk controls and withheld information from regulators during big trading losses last year, a Senate inquiry found.

A Senate panel report says that Jamie Dimon, chief of JPMorgan Chase, withheld details about the bank's daily losses.

Then our ‘guardians of society’ double up the information, attempting to confuse the matter even worse than it already is.

How inconvenient the very next article points to the real issue?

Pearl Brady of Brooklyn worries that it will be years before she will be able to put money away.
Younger Generations Lag Parents in Wealth-Building
By ANNIE LOWREY 49 minutes ago

A study finds that younger working adults are not doing better financially than the previous generation.

With ‘wealth management experts' opining we need to set aside at least a half a million dollars to retire ‘safely’ and with most workers earning less than 25 to 30 thousand dollars annually, the only way the majority can retire ‘comfortably’ is magic.

They’d fall short of the mark even if they saved every penny they ever earned!

In order to be a low wage drone for corporate USA, retirement must be an impossibility. (Not that this is news to the people being compared in this article.)

We have been saying all along we’d have to work ‘til we drop’ (IF we were lucky enough to find work after being ‘churned’ into pauper-dom!)

But the 4th Estate knows thinks YOU are STUPID.

How pathetic is it good citizen that a majority of the corporate owned media’s Blarney is insulting to the average person’s intelligence?

If we back up to our first post we have to scratch our heads and wonder what anyone is supposed to make of the banking sectors alleged ignorance.
Which is to point to what ‘everybody knows’. The crash of the financial system was deliberate and these clowns drove it off a cliff KNOWING the taxpayer was going to ‘bail them out’!

So what’s this nonsense about the banks ‘ignoring warnings’?

We’re talking the biggest heist of all time here!

It sure takes a lot of chutzpah to pretend (never mind actually assert) that they had no idea this whole situation was going to end in bankruptcy.

Sort of like this next headline…where once again we are played for ignorant chumps powerless to stop what’s going to happen next:

The drilling rig Kulluk was grounded in January 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Alaska.
Interior Dept. Warns Shell on Arctic Drilling
By JOHN BRODER 8:32 PM ET

The government wants a detailed plan on how the company plans to address safety issues before allowing it to resume exploration.

A REAL government would never have permitted this nonsense in the first place but we all know the political lapdogs are ‘going through the motions’ of pretending to protecting the public while they allow private enterprise to doom our civilization.

We don’t need MORE fossil fuels, we need to use what little there is left much more judiciously.

But the >One Percent doesn’t do privation well (if at all.) Isn’t it bad enough they have to ‘put up with’ the rest of us using THEIR stuff?

Speaking of which:

DealBook
Fed Rebukes Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase Over Capital Plans
By PETER EAVIS

The Federal Reserve cited “weaknesses” in capital plans of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, while Citigroup and Bank of America got a green light.

Doesn’t God ‘rebuke’ people? The rest of us get called on our baloney. How sad is it that the other two thieves got away with their ‘plans’?

We’re back to the ‘appearance of propriety’ as opposed to actual legal oversight.
If YOU were this incompetent you’d be on the outside looking in already!

BUT if this clowns did what they were elected to do they’d be ‘pushing up Daisy’s’ in a remote field somewhere.

You are right to fear a government that has suspended both your right to a fair trial along with any prohibition against executing you out of hand but you SHOULD fear the MEN who made this possible even more!

But I digress, what do you suppose the deal is with this story?

The Galaxy S IV.
Samsung Introduces New Galaxy Phone
By BRIAN X. CHEN and NICK WINGFIELD 7:31 PM ET

Increasing the stakes in the smartphone battle, the South Korean manufacturer showed off the Galaxy S IV, the latest version of its flagship device.

comment iconPost a Comment | Read (1)

Since this is YESTERDAY’S Business section you won’t be able to ‘backtrack’ any of this but there was an article this morning’s news about Samsung being a giant ‘pretending’ to be a scrappy start-up like Research in motion. Or that other tiny company…Apple.

Seriously, good citizen…

New Jobless Claims at a 5-Year Low
By REUTERS 7:38 PM ET

The report on unemployment added to a range of data that suggested higher taxes were having a limited impact on the economy.

Like the whole theme of today’s reporting is ‘insult their intelligence!

The most prosperous time the US have ever known came when the marginal tax rate was at over 90% of income over a million dollars…so employers paid their people instead of handing it over to Uncle Sam.

And what we’re seeing today is the ‘blow-back’ of that policy.

Which is to opine that there is going to be a whole lot of ‘punishment’ going on before we get this ship back on an even keel.

Last but not least we have a token of open rebellion on display!

Media Decoder
Editor Charged With Aiding Hackers Group
By AMY CHOZICK 8:51 PM ET

Matthew Keys, a 26-year-old social media editor, was charged with assisting the hacking collective Anonymous in an attack on The Los Angeles Times Web site.

Perhaps someday we will be able to give Mr. Keys the medal he richly deserves for standing up to our tyrannical overlords.

But for now he’s going to have to live with being black-balled by an industry that insults your intelligence.

Maybe this one is a net win from a realist perspective.

How this landed in the business section remains a mystery but it is the ‘re-surfacing’ of ‘old news’.

Hoping to Save Bees, Europe to Vote on Pesticide Ban
By DAVID JOLLY 4:08 PM ET

European officials plan to vote on a proposal to sharply restrict the use of chemicals that have been implicated in the decline of global bee populations.

Once again good citizen we are witnessing the side effects of failing to prosecute the corporate guilty for playing God recklessly.

What do you suppose this ban on pesticide is going to accomplish?

Most likely it will result in a plague of pests! Then they’ll be spraying twice as much pesticide!

But you (evidently) aren’t smart enough to figure that one out…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Amazing!

Greetings good citizen,

The Dow is regaining yesterday’s losses (if only because they can) which is to point out the obvious, that NOTHING has been done to ‘fix’ the economy…although (apparently) YOU aren’t supposed to be ‘concerned’ about that…

Like my ‘economic desert’ scenario, a ‘broken economy’ spells disaster for the residents thereof.

Currently the global financial system is on central bank life support and is (thanks to ‘creative accounting’) doing much better than the ‘real economy’ as this article demonstrates:

U.S. Banks in 2012 Post Highest Profits Since '06 – FDIC
By REUTERS
Published: February 26, 2013 at 11:54 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. banking industry in 2012 recorded its highest earnings since before the 2007-2009 financial crisis, according to data released on Tuesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The FDIC said the industry's full-year earnings were the second-highest on record at $141.3 billion, an increase over 2011 of $22.9 billion, or 19.3 percent. But the head of the agency said growth would probably slow this year, and warned that bank profits could dive if Congress does not reach a federal budget agreement that prevents automatic cuts.

Bank earnings peaked in 2006 at $145.2 billion.

Much of the earnings growth in 2012 came from banks reducing the amount they set aside in case of losses on loans, the FDIC said. Banks also saw gains on loan sales and higher servicing income.

"While there is still room for further income growth, we don't expect the pace of earnings growth to continue at these levels," FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said.

Um, se habla ‘creative accounting’?

Why does it look to me like the predatory banks are looting the public treasury?

Facts on the ground tell us that banks should be shedding people like mad, they don’t have the ‘income’ to support the people they have because a vast majority of their customer base is a serious credit risk.

Again we bash into the solid fact that fifty percent of US families are on some kind of food assistance program…why is that? Because cheapskate capitalist employers won’t pay their people enough to buy food AND keep a roof over their heads!

[Have to ‘stay competitive’ you know!]

Followed by, “What does how big a bonus I got have to do with anything?”

Same thing in the financial sector…how can these criminals reward themselves for screwing up the global financial system beyond repair?

We’re back to the need to re-define why you get a bonus!

(Because these guys clearly don’t understand the concept.)

Worse, they seem to think we don’t either…

The world clearly isn’t falling apart (Because all money is Funny) but that’s the ONLY reason. (Otherwise we’d be up to our buttocks in reptiles right now!)

Let me explain it a bit more clearly…because you won’t hear this from one of their stooges or anyone else who can get within a thousand miles of a major media outlet.

The banking ‘business model’ is broken!

There aren’t enough customers to keep these monsters afloat.

ALL of the banks (around the entire world) went bust in December 2007.

And until the global economy is re-balanced, they’re NEVER going to be profitable again!

It’s simply not there to be had!

Interest rates locked at Zero are ‘self-explanitory’. There is no money in banking…So, how did the banks have one of their best years since the crash?

Can you say ‘Loot’?

Not that this really matters…what you SHOULD be losing sleep over is that sudden stop that will occur when they decide to ‘derail’ our existing civilization.

(And they’ll do this to throw the law off of their trail.)

Do we have weeks or days remaining good citizen?

The nasty problem here is even they don’t know.

You have to keep your eyes on the exits and even then there will be about a jillion ‘false starts’.

Like the market going up and down for no discernable reason.

I preach to the choir when I point out that our civilization is already ruined.

I was watching the run up to WWII on the Military channel last night and experienced serious ‘déjà vu’.

Nobody dares prosecute the criminals for fear of what they’ll do…

Well good citizen, they’ve already bankrupted us…And A Simple Plan can stop that in its tracks (because it only deals in real assets in real time, none of this derivative nonsense.)

But the decision to change from today’s predatory system to tomorrows equitable one remains to be made…

And guess who gets to make that choice?

YOU!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Cinderella Liberty

Greetings good citizen,

Among the many signs that our civilization is rotting away from the inside is the return of crippling interest rates.

As I mentioned yesterday, the Republican’s ‘repealed’ anti-usury legislation just prior to the economy collapsing. how opportune?

Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent.

[Enlarge This Image
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Subrina Baptiste of Brooklyn says JPMorgan Chase allowed payday lenders to seize child-support funds in her account. ]

With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps on interest rates.

While the banks, which include giants like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, do not make the loans, they are a critical link for the lenders, enabling the lenders to withdraw payments automatically from borrowers’ bank accounts, even in states where the loans are banned entirely. In some cases, the banks allow lenders to tap checking accounts even after the customers have begged them to stop the withdrawals.

Laws? We don’t need no stinking laws!

Did I mention that our (global) banking system is already F.U.B.A.R.?

Understand good citizen, the emphasis in that statement of fact rests in the ALL part. There is no way to ‘repair’ the banking system without totally re-wiring how it works.

[Like A Simple Plan does.]

How hard do you have to be whacked over the head good citizen? This is war (and they’re holding all of the ammo!)

They have ‘spy in the sky’ while all you’ve got is a Zippo and a can of fluid.

How ironic is it that you have a lot less to lose?

Even more ironic is how ‘fire cleanses’…cuz we could sure use some ‘cleaning up’ around here!

Once again we confront the question of how did it come to this?

And the answer is our government was ‘hijacked’ long ago by the very people it was established to protect us from.

EPIC FAIL.

Now how do we prevent that from happening (again) because it HAS HAPPENED EVERY TIME, sometimes even before the revolt is over!

That’s why revolt for the sake of revolt is stupid.

YOU, the average citizen, needs to know AHEAD OF TIME, PRECISELY what you’re buying into.

Which is why A Simple Plan is laid out for you examination, so you can learn the specifics of what’s at stake BEFORE a single drop of blood is spilled.

Not that Mao’s ‘little red book’ did anything to preserve the purity of ‘the people’s revolution’. But capitalism has a way of ‘perverting justice’, as today’s headlines show.

You should all find it most disturbing that the first ‘constitutional convention’ was an ‘invitation only’ event.

Worse, our ‘representatives’ to that historic event were ‘self-selected’ (and thus did they do their utmost to protect THEIR interests…to the doom of the rest of us.)

The idea behind gaining popular support for a new way of running things is so the ‘assassins’ can’t kill the revolution’s leaders (another ‘curious’ historical phenomenon) before they can alter the people’s situation too radically.

Yes sir, things are the way they are because the ‘entrenched interests’ will murder anyone who attempts to change them…

Which should give you some idea as to why you are being denied your right to ‘due process’ (again) after 900 years.

Worse, according to the deceptively named Libertarians, you are endowed with NO Rights. None what so ever.

What gives you ‘rights’ under a Libertine banner? Money.

How STUPID IS THAT? (Considering ALL money is FUNNY!)

So the, er, ‘authority’ who coins the money has a monopoly on rights!

Can you say Seig Hiel?

How ironic is it that the absolute dictatorship championed by the ‘Libertarians’ is indistinguishable from monarchy?

Which is to point out that today’s royal wannabe’s hides behind a ‘mask of liberty’.

Liberty for them; tyranny for you.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Exceptional

Greetings good citizen,

As the snow flies outside (first serious storm of the season) the stock markets of Fantasyland have resumed their relentless upward march.

Besides someone sneezing, it appears those who cook our nation’s economic books have outdone themselves:

U.S. Trade Deficit Shrinks
By REUTERS 8:58 AM ET

The trade gap shrank in December to its narrowest in nearly three years, the government said, suggesting that the economy did better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated.

Chinese Imports and Exports Soar in January 6:11 AM ET

I’m guessing the intention is to confuse the average reader but the headline tells us our trade deficit is shrinking while the footnote tells us our trade partner is going gangbusters…

I guess it makes sense if you flip it over and ignore the first part.

Which is to point out that the Chinese are NOT back on track for double digit growth, which drove them into the number two spot globally a couple of years ago.

The part that, er, puzzles me is how stupid the corporate owned media thinks the rest of us are? (We know it’s pretty dang stupid but the average clown on the street knows China’s double-digit growth was due to the capitalists of this country ‘exporting’ our jobs to the world’s most populous labor pool.

Once that stopped, the ‘growth’ disappeared’…so today’s decidedly false claim is once again a matter of ‘context’…

So no good citizen, it is just plain foolishness to claim the ‘economy’ (anywhere on the planet) is ‘booming’.

The Chinese economy may be doing ‘better than expected’ but you need to temper that with ‘expectations’ barely exceeded ‘death warmed over’.

Which brings us to our second offering of this snowy Friday

The continuing saga of American Exceptionalism!

America Is Far from #1

The latest Global Competitiveness Report comparing 144 countries shows the sorry state of our country's development.
February 7, 2013 |

"The Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013,” by the World Economic Forum, is the latest annual ranking of 144 countries, on a wide range of factors related to global economic competitiveness .

On each of their many rankings, #1 represents the best nation, and #144 represents the worst nation.

Gross Domestic Product is the only factor where the U.S. ranks as #1, which we do both on "GDP” and on “GDP as a Share of World GDP.”

Health Care has the U.S. ranking #34 on “Life Expectancy,” and #41 on “Infant Mortality.”

Education in the U.S. is also mediocre. On “Quality of Primary Education,” we are #38. On “Primary Education Enrollment Rate,” we are #58. On “Quality of the Educational System,” we are #28. On “Quality of Math and Science Education,” we are #47. On “Quality of Scientific Research Institutions,” we are #6. On “PCT [Patent Cooperation Treaty] Patent Applications [per-capita],” we are #12. On “Firm-Level Technology Absorption” (which is an indicator of business-acceptance of inventions), we are #14.

Trust is likewise only moderately high in the U.S. We rank #10 on “Willingness to Delegate Authority,” #42 on “Cooperation in Labor-Management Relations,” and #18 in “Degree of Customer Orientation” of firms.

Corruption is apparently a rather pervasive problem in the U.S.

On “Diversion of Public Funds [due to corruption],” the U.S. ranks #34. On “Public Trust in Politicians,” we are #54. On “Irregular Payments and Bribes,” we are #42. On “Judicial Independence,” we are #38. On “Favoritism in Decisions of Government Officials” (otherwise known as governmental cronyism), we are #59.

On and on it goes, good citizen.

The whole article makes rather disturbing reading although it isn’t particularly ‘shocking’. I am far from being the sole ‘voice in the wilderness’ decrying the downfall of our hijacked and badly mismanaged civilization…

And you won’t ever see the criminals stepping aside and offering up the controls with a sarcastic ‘think you can do better?’ They know they’ve got it wrong…but they’re getting filthy rich doing it.

Which is why they’re disinclined to stop…until they break something important or we make them stop (and it will probably take a combination of both. Because once the machine stops giving milk the new ‘top priority’ will be ‘covering their tracks’.)

Considering they’re being none too careful about how they loot, the obvious solution will be to ‘destroy’ the record keeping equipment.

Now how would you go about a monumental task like that?

Let me give you a hint, it also produces a flash that is said to be ‘brighter than a thousand suns’.

Put a few of those puppies into the hands of the criminals who kill with drones and let me know what you come up with…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS: We need a ‘hero’ who can put a few megaton ‘frag’ on Washington DC AND Wall Street.

If not, the senseless deaths worldwide will continue.

Truthiness

Greetings good citizen,

Nonsense (stock) markets around the globe are bleeding red this morning (while the sneaks on Wall Street managed to ‘paint the tape’ and cause the Dow to have a positive finish at the very end of trading yesterday…

So much for ‘truth’ in financial transactions…in fact it is the prevalence of ‘truthiness’ in today’s business headlines that caught my eye:

E-Mails Suggest JPMorgan Knew Flaws of Some Loans
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

E-mails and employee interviews filed as part of a lawsuit show that JPMorgan Chase flouted quality controls as it bundled mortgages into financial instruments.

A trove of internal e-mails at JPMorgan Chase, filed as part of a lawsuit, offers a glimpse into how the bank bundled mortgage securities.

Are you ‘shocked’ by this ‘revelation’ good citizen or are you like the majority of the public and more than a little steamed that it’s been five years since this obvious fraud and NOBODY has swung for it…yet.

Which is not a declaration of the people’s justice so much as the Devil will indeed ‘take the hindmost’.

Who may not be particularly ‘guilty’ of anything except of being in the wrong place at the wrong time…like so many of society’s victims.

In yet another (non) shocker, we have the following:

European Central Bank Leaves Interest Rate Unchanged
By JACK EWING 10 minutes ago

The strength of the euro is a sign of confidence, the bank’s president, Mario Draghi, said after the announcement. There have been concerns about the rising value of the currency.

Bank of England Leaves Interest Rate Unchanged
Wall Street Takes a Step Backward 9:49 AM ET

The Euro zone is flatter than a pancake so I will remind you that we are discussing the ‘relative strength’ of the Euro as compared to other ‘lackluster’ currencies.

Which tells you something about what Mr. Bernanke is doing to the dollar (to make our stock market rise ‘senselessly’.)

Which is just what it looks like good citizen, the people who ‘own’ the world see their purchasing power increase while the people who work for them see their purchasing power, er, ‘watered down’.

This explains why there are 7 million people who call themselves ‘self-employed’. (It’s better to be the employer than the employee.)

European Leaders Gather for a Trillion-Euro Budget Debate
By JAMES KANTER 9:47 AM ET

The budget represents only about 2 percent of total public spending in the European Union. But it still involves furious horse trading.

The ‘debate’ (such as it is) must be over how long they can keep the shell game of propping up the banking system using the taxpayer’s money?

There is an ‘urgent need’ to return banking to profitability but it’s not going to happen in this generation.

Not much to debate really. Maybe they’ll discuss what might happen to them if they are found out but there really isn’t much point on dwelling upon such unpleasantness.

If the ‘jig were up’ good citizen I’d say the environment is ripe for a ‘hostile takeover’, something similar to how the Nazis swept to power.

I’m also going to predict that it is exactly what will happen…but none of my predictions come to pass. Not yet anyway.

DealBook
K.K.R.'s Earnings Rise 22% on Investment Gains
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 25 minutes ago

K.K.R. said on Thursday that it earned $347.7 million in the fourth quarter, as all of its businesses showed strong gains. For the year, the firm reported earning $2.1 billion.

DealBook: Lazard's Profit Surges as Deal Assignments Pick Up 9:17 AM ET

You know as well as I good citizen that there’s nothing ‘new’ under the sun so what we’re witnessing here is the simple consolidation of market share resulting in the consumer being squeezed ever tighter, while their purchasing power sinks into the basement.

You don’t suppose these guys could be on to something?

DealBook
Ireland to Liquidate Anglo Irish Bank
By MARK SCOTT 8:59 AM ET

The government passed emergency legislation to liquidate Anglo Irish Bank, one of the country’s largest, as part of a plan to restructure debt payments.

What do you suppose would happen if we tried that will ALL of the ‘troubled banks’?

If we listen to the pundits it would mean the end of banking as we know it! I, for one, would not be ‘upset’ by the demise of ‘modern banking’.

If I slip my swami turban back on for a moment I see that ultimately there will only be one bank and they will dictate to us how much it will cost to do business.

And if you can’t afford it, tough!

Or our next story:

Weaker Yen Helps Sony Trim Losses for Quarter
By HIROKO TABUCHI 7:13 AM ET

The earnings at Sony reflect a revival in the fortunes of other struggling Japanese electronics manufacturers, and its shares have surged almost 60 percent in 2013.

Funny how currency devaluation can be a two-edged sword, depending on how you ‘cook the books!’

Finally:

Alcatel-Lucent Chief Resigns as Company Posts Loss
By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN 8:10 AM ET

The telecommunications equipment maker said it lost $1.85 billion in 2012, and announced the resignation of Ben Verwaayen, its chief executive since 2008.

DealBook
Credit Suisse Returns to Profit and Plans More Cost Cuts
By JULIA WERDIGIER 28 minutes ago

The chief executive, Brady W. Dougan, is targeting hundreds of millions of dollars in additional cost reductions after Credit Suisse reported a profit of $436 million for the fourth quarter.

Okay so I snuck two in there. The first tells of what ‘globalization’ has done to the former ‘sole source’ of telecommunications equipment in the world.

Bet you’re all pleased as can be that hundreds of thousands of jobs and our future prosperity have been replaced with cheesy plastic phones that won’t stay on the table when you pick up the handset!

Oh and don’t forget, those old indestructible phones that stayed put were free with the service!

But the free market chuckleheads felt you needed to ‘buy’ your equipment!

Which leaves our final story and one comment...do you suppose they can return to profitability if they fire everybody? (It's the 'free-market way!')

Long live the free markets! (Read: death to capitalism!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Albatross

Greetings good citizen,

Looks like it’s that time again. It’s bad enough that our betters turn a deaf ear to our ‘petty’ (as far as they’re concerned) issues but when they converge on Davos to, er, difficult to find the proper word here…I’m torn between ‘discuss’ and ‘grandstand’ what THEY THINK the world's problems are...and nothing ever comes of it.

Pitiful to consider how ‘out of touch’ the elite are despite these conferences (which are intended to provide ‘the impression’ that they are listening and they care.)

While I have repeatedly accused the global elite of plotting to ‘thin the herd’, I suspect the desire to do so isn’t universal, so we have these conferences where the evil-conniving blend in with the clueless and pretend nothing’s going on.

Some of these powerful people still subscribe to traditional values of customer satisfaction and safe work places…how unfortunate is it for the rest of us that these people are old and on their way out the door?

Let us visit our ‘herald’ to learn what we can of this latest ‘invitation only’ gathering.

DealBook Column

Prophesies Made in Davos Don't Always Come True
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

Many influential people will gather this week at the World Economic Forum to make predictions, and some of them will be right, and some wrong.

And we all know words can sometimes have two meanings…so sometimes what was ‘predicted’ has merely been ‘mis-interpreted’.

And, unsurprisingly, Davos is so popular it has TWO headlines!

DealBook
At Davos, Crisis Is the New Normal
By ALISON SMALE

While global capital remains a driving force of our age, it won't solve big world issues. For those tasks, we must rely either on the nation state or on international institutions whose effectiveness is regularly questioned by the Davos crowd.

Is it from headlines like this that we get the meme that ‘private industry’ would solve ALL of our problems if government would just step out of the way?

Now government is ‘in the pocket’ of private industry and anything even smacking of regulation is nothing more than window dressing, routinely ignored by those ‘in the know’.

Is our civilization ‘functioning perfectly?’

Don’t think so…unless you’re a card-carrying member of the One Percent, then you’d opine things were ‘pretty-good-okay’ (if only for the safety of those you love.)

You gotta love the old ‘go along to get along’ routine. Step out of line and the next thing you know you’re on the outside looking in.

(And it’s cold out here!)

We can only wonder where our intrepid reporter has been, Disaster Capitalism has been all the rage since the Seventies!

Why would she infer that Crisis is the ‘new normal’? (Especially when the vast majority of the ‘crises’ our elite are so focused on are utter fabrications?

Not only do they know why it’s happening but they also know who is responsible!

That pandemic I mentioned yesterday? It won’t be ‘naturally occurring’ in case any of you were wondering…and if we knock around the right heads we could even learn who is behind it!

How many of you would be shocked to learn it was major contributor to the Republican party?

Which is total speculation on my part! I’m just spinning a yarn here and a peasant like myself has no knowledge of what actually goes on ‘behind the scenes’…but I can guess.

Might even call it following a ‘line of logic’ that goes like this: if you’re ‘demented’ enough to fund the party of the One percent it only stands to reason that you’d have an interest in ‘significantly reducing’ the threat posed by ‘the rabble’.

And while showering the rabble with money would accomplish the same goal, for some twisted reason these conspirators would favor a ‘more permanent’ solution.

Talk about ‘unintended consequences’…imagine a plague that wipes out everybody BUT the privileged!

It would be an extinction level event! The pampered few don’t know how to take care of themselves, they’ll be dead in a month! About the same time the lights go off and the phone towers power down.

Worse, planning ISN’T the oligarchs ‘strong suit’. You can bet they have totally ‘overlooked’ this rather obvious aspect of the plan.

While ‘a select few’ could rebuild civilization, most of us wouldn’t know where to begin. Like all puzzles, the pieces are greater than the sum of the parts.

So killing off what these dopes consider to be ‘the useless’ could very well condemn the rest of us to certain death.

We all have our albatrosses, how unfortunate is it that our particular albatross has it in for us?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Useful

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we find ourselves on the cusp of that relic of the New Deal formerly referred to as ‘the weekend.’

We still call them weekends but the week no longer ‘ends’ for the vast majority of us. For the unemployed the weekend represents two bad days to prospect for a job despite the best chance of finding work being in the 24/7 service/retail sector…where it is impossible to get forty hours, never mind forty-one.

So, yeah, the unemployed usually suspend their search for work on Saturday and Sunday because they retain hope that their new job will provide them with those two days off.

Call it ‘tradition’ but we have the Sabbath built into our psyches. (The fact that one is Jew and the other Christian is of no consequence, we have ‘become accustomed’ to having those two days off.

Ironically, our brave new world seldom provides ‘days off’ period.

Some of us are expected to report to work seven days a week but only for a few hours a day (usually ‘peak time’.)

So you only work 28 hours but you have to go back & forth 14 times to get even that little bit!

And you don’t have a ‘day off’…

Now, if you only work four hours out of twenty-four you have most of every day off BUT, in the relentless world of retail, the only days off you get (for now) are Thanksgiving and Christmas.

How ironic is it that you (as a part-time employee) don’t get paid for either of them?

Isn’t capitalism great? (All capitalists think so!)

363 days a year you must wake up and make yourself presentable. Drive yourself to the work place to perform your duties (as assigned that day.) Stay on the job until you are granted permission to depart…(can’t just up and leave come quittin’ time in retail!) and all of this for a minimum wage job that has absolutely zero loyalty.

Screw up even once and you’ll be out the door so fast your head will spin.

But that’s the (broken) ‘make yourself useful’ meme of capitalism. People are ‘disposable’. (And if the people you have disposed of become ‘troublesome’ you have the police shoot them down.)

Sort of going off the rails here when it was my ‘original intent’ to point out that weekends are rapidly becoming ‘a thing of the past.’

And this phenomenon is not restricted to the ‘rabble’ doomed to work short hours for shorter money, people who are routinely dismissed with the threat, ‘be happy you have a job!’

That threat extends to the ‘rank and file’ workers in cubicle land as well. Now the pay is slightly better and the atmosphere (slightly) more ‘professional’ than retail but the threat remains the same…or perhaps it gets turned on its head when the boss asks ‘how many of you can speak Hindi?’

Which might explain inexplicable stories such as this one:

Morgan Stanley's $481 Million 4th-Quarter Profit Beats Estimates
By SUSANNE CRAIG 42 minutes ago

Morgan Stanley reported adjusted earnings of 45 cents a share on Friday, driven by gains in wealth management and investment banking.

On a planet with a broken financial system, how the, er, heck does any bank ‘earn’ 45 cents a share without committing fraud?

Banking is (irretrievably) broken good citizen. The imbalances in the global economy CAN NOT BE ‘corrected’ without a complete overhaul that starts with a ‘clean slate’ (across the board.)

So ‘fictions’ like the one above are exactly that.

Which leads us to our next, er, ‘questionable data’:

Economix Blog
Lifting the Veil on the Fed's 2007 Discussions
By DAVID LEONHARDT 27 minutes ago

The Federal Reserve has just released the transcripts of its meetings in the pivotal year of 2007, when the housing bubble started to burst and the global financial crisis began.

Now that they’ve had five years to ‘muddy the waters’ naturally this work of fiction will have gaping holes in it but it will be downplayed as a side effect of the ‘whole truth’ being ‘unknowable’.

Here is another episode of 'the story that refuses to die' despite the corporate owned media not even hinting that globalization is responsible:

Praised but Fire-Prone, Battery Fails Test in 787
By JAD MOUAWAD and CHRISTOPHER DREW

Lithium-ion batteries are popular because they are powerful and charge quickly, but Boeing has had serious problems with the technology on its new Dreamliner.

Powerful Chemical Cocktail, With a Drawback

And anyone who didn’t see the ‘design-flaw’ card coming needs a serious reality check.

Of course it was a design flaw…but why did the design flaw occur?

Was it because the system was designed in Bejing and built in Seattle? It goes without saying that there was ‘no need’ to test it because it is ‘proven technology’…in the end, stupid is as stupid does.

Yet again, this old dog doesn’t need new tricks, the old ones still work fine!

G.E. Profit and Revenues Top Estimates
By REUTERS 7:40 AM ET

General Electric reported a better-than-expected 7.5 percent rise in fourth quarter profit and a sharp increase in its backlog of equipment orders, sending shares up in premarket trading.

Funny how profitability is easy when you’re half manufacturer and three-quarters bank! If you don’t ‘turn a profit’ from sales you just have the banking arm ‘cook the books’!

Speaking of cooked books and their ‘unintended consequences’:

Shell’s rig was grounded after being set adrift in a storm.
As Shell’s Arctic Drilling Hopes Hit Snags, Its Rivals Watch
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JOHN M. BRODER

Shell’s drilling program, the subject of two federal inquiries, has had problems environmentalists say highlight the dangers of prospecting for oil in the severe Arctic environment.

Talk about your ‘common threads, for years environmentalist have been screaming about the dangers of arctic drilling BUT the ‘too stupid to listen’ crowd goes ahead and does it anyway!

Will they have the chutzpah to say they’re ‘sorry’ after they despoil the arctic chasing what little crude there is?

No, I doubt it, nor will anyone be executed for their ‘hubris’ as has happened here:

At Algerian Oil and Gas Fields Once Thought Safe, New Fears and Precautions
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Local oil executives said foreign oil service companies were in the process of quietly removing several hundred workers until they were confident that the security situation was stable.

Odd how the article implies there was some kind of intelligence indicating the security situation was less than ‘ideal’ but apparently that ‘memo’ was, um, ignored a few moments too long with hostages being taken and killed.

Well, we all know the capitalist credo, ‘profits before people!’ (Power to the shareowners! And oh how they hate the O word! Which is why I use it every chance I get!)

What O word is that, you ask?

The one they can’t defend, ‘Own.’

And for our last entry:

Chinese Economy Expanded at End of 2012, Data Shows
By BETTINA WASSENER

Though there was improvement, economic data also underlined the view that the pace of future growth is likely to remain well below that seen in recent years.

Geez good citizen, I was going to cut this and the story above it off but as it would turn out, they are the two most important stories in today’s offering.

Especially this last offering because it translates to the One Percent’s ‘acceptance’ that the economy as it exists today will constitute the ‘new normal’.

Unemployment will remain as it is as energy prices climb beyond the reach of marginalized citizen.

Which begs the more basic question of whether or not you are still a citizen if the capitalist can’t find a use for you?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Educate

Greetings good citizen,

How pathetic is it that many of the following headlines are either ‘spin’ or rely on accounting gimmicks for their veracity?

But the lead story belabors a point I have been making for decades:

The Education Revolution
Next Made-in-China Boom: College Graduates
By KEITH BRADSHER

China is making a huge investment in its universities, hoping to leverage its enormous population into 195 million college graduates by the end of the decade.

No irony should be lost that China has overtaken the US as the world’s premiere ‘economic superpower’ on the strength of its ‘blue-collar’ workforce.

Shifting back to our curiously missing OWS protestors, what does this (capitalist profiteering) mean to those who already got soaked big bucks, studying for jobs that will not appear anywhere near here?

I repeat, All economies are LOCAL and no amount of ‘koom-bye-ya’ can alter that!

Let me take it one step further and state unequivocally that it is ‘impossible’ to establish global capitalism as the world’s economic system because of its predatory nature. Resources must be ‘managed’ not ‘exploited’!

Global capitalism gives us stories like this one:

The 787 that made an emergency landing in Japan on Wednesday. All 137 passengers and crew members were evacuated safely.
Regulators Around the Globe Ground Boeing 787s
By CHRISTOPHER DREW, JAD MOUAWAD and MATTHEW L. WALD 51 minutes ago

The directives in Japan, Europe and India follow a Federal Aviation Administration ruling Wednesday that it was grounding the planes operated by U.S. carriers.

Design errors, easily corrected or the by-product of the decades long ‘global race to the bottom?’

This is what happens when you put psychopaths in charge of ‘shaking up’ your supply chain. All of the routine safeguards get thrown to the winds in an effort to ‘bull’ their way to a profit. (by bringing their part of the project in under deadline and under cost, thereby maximizing their ‘bonus’!
Seriously good citizen, these people have lost sight of the rationale behind the awarding of ‘bonuses’ (especially considering half the time management rewards itself for failure!)

And remember, THESE PEOPLE CONSIDER THEMSELVES OUR ‘BETTERS!’

They are ‘superior’ to us…at least in their own minds.

But hey, after Wells Fargo made money producing mortgages, we have the (alleged) ‘dummies’ foundering in the same pond…so who are you supposed to believe?

DealBook
Profit Drops 63% at Bank of America After Mortgage Settlements
By BEN PROTESS 6 minutes ago

The bank’s widely expected drop in fourth-quarter profit comes after it settled legal claims over its mortgage business. It earned 3 cents a share, narrowly beating estimates.

Um, talk about lunacy! Here they are, bleeding from the eye-sockets, settling billion dollar claims against them (for mortgage fraud.) Somehow they still ‘beat the estimates’…and Wall Street is giving them a spanking anyway!

Seriously good citizen, if this story isn’t complete and utter, I don’t know what is!

Somebody’s getting robbed and I have a bad feeling about who that somebody is…

In a related story:

DealBook
Facing Legal Costs, Citigroup Disappoints in 4th Quarter
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG 9:30 AM ET

As the bank works to clean up its mortgage mess, it reported fourth-quarter profit of $1.2 billion, or 38 cents a share, significantly below analysts’ estimates.

Did Vikram empty out the main vault as part of his ‘separation package?’ You know how these ‘Master of the Universe’ types operate…

“Sure, I’ll leave…just make sure my golden parachute has a platinum liner!”

Apparently this is something ‘the analysts’ aren’t privy too.

And yet more ‘disappointment’ from the global stage…

DealBook
Rio Tinto to Book $14 Billion Charge; C.E.O. Replaced
By JULIA WERDIGIER and NEIL GOUGH 8:27 AM ET

The mining giant blamed challenges in the aluminum business and at its coal unit in Mozambique for the write-down, and said Sam Walsh would succeed Tom Albanese as chief executive.

I may have dubbed the local rag as the Daily ‘cops behaving badly’ gazette but the business pages of the world’s media are dominated by the details of CEO’s behaving badly (and getting fooked for it…sometimes.)

Then we have this last ditty that lead me to my previous musing regarding the veracity of today’s reporting:

Economic Data Lift Stocks
By REUTERS 52 minutes ago

Wall Street opened higher after some cheery economic reports on unemployment and housing starts.

It’s been two years good citizen and no change as far as my unemployment status. I’m still twiddling my thumbs as are many of my over fifty peers.

Seems the girls of the over fifty club have joined us recently and if you think that’s a coincidence, tell it to Santa Claus!

Part of what I do here is shine a light on the stories the corporate owned media ‘neglects’ and the other part is providing some much needed ‘food for thought’ that should be fueling public debate.

The corporate owned media is paid to ‘pretend’ that things couldn’t be better, our problems are largely in our heads…and they’d be correct about that because it is their fault our head isn’t pointed in the correct direction!

But that’s an issue for another day,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Business as usual

Greetings good citizen,

While it is still WAY ‘too soon to tell’ it seems you’re ALL voting for ‘gutter-gums’, so there is no need to leave the security of the opt-in firewall.

If you’re here it is because this is where you want to be!

All righty then, let’s have a look at where we are!

U.S. Consumer Watchdog to Issue Mortgage Rules
By EDWARD WYATT

In an attempt to prevent future housing crises, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is issuing new laws for lenders.

Um, I know this isn’t the ‘popular’ viewpoint at the moment, most are touting housing’s ‘recovery’ (relative to what we are still unsure.) But it is my ‘opinion’ that the housing markets are toast, houses are ‘all done’ as far as being an ‘investment’.

In order for banks to ‘make money’ originating mortgages, the borrowers need to be paid enough to ‘live on’…and with energy prices poised to hit ‘boing’ at any moment (today’s price is $94 a barrel) the question of ‘how much is enough’ will remain a ‘wildcard’ for quite some time.

The prediction of the ultimate demise of housing hinges, as few of you suspect, on how many will survive the energy crunch.

Without energy there won’t be a ‘housing market/mortgage industry’ left to save.

Although it is conceivable that our (foolish) capitalists will keep the housing industry ‘alive’ in the narrow zone where heating and cooking indoors aren’t ‘musts’.

Okay, not a particularly ‘promising’ start but maybe it will get better:

.
DealBook
Morgan Stanley is shrinking its once-powerful trading business, leaving more of the sector to its bigger banking rivals.

Deep Cuts Raise Questions About Morgan Stanley
By SUSANNE CRAIG

Whether Morgan Stanley can avoid shrinking further and revive its fixed-income trading business will have significant ripple effects in the financial world.

Um, considering Morgan Stanley ‘OWNS’ GE, I wouldn’t be too quick to write their epitaph just yet. Unlike the other ‘financial fraudsters’ J.P. Morgan has a real stake in the bricks and mortar economy…although that stake is run by idiots, it is still successful despite itself.

Moving on:

European Central Bank Leaves Key Rate Unchanged
By JACK EWING 7:56 AM ET

The central bank, which left its benchmark rate at 0.75 percent, appears to have concluded that a rate cut would be powerless to solve a credit crunch in countries like Italy and Spain.

Bank of England Leaves Interest Rate at Record Low 7:14 AM ET

In case any of you are wondering, raising interest rates now would obliterate the global banking network and stock markets around the world in a single day.

But our next story begs the question of just how vital the banking network really is?

Obama’s Pick for Treasury Is Said to Be His Chief of Staff
By JACKIE CALMES

President Obama will announce on Thursday that he intends to elevate Jacob J. Lew to be the next secretary of Treasury, officials familiar with the decision said.

Um, there has always been a patina of ‘patronage’ surrounding cabinet posts but one always assumed the Secretary of the Treasury had to be at least a little ‘knowledgeable’ when it came to the world of finance.

Although Timmy has done the job for the past four years and he doesn’t know anything, so how bad can it be?

How did we get here again?

Did I make my point?

No? Then I doubt you’ll see this one:

Bits Blog
The 2012 Patent Rankings: I.B.M. on Top (Again)
By STEVE LOHR 8:01 AM ET

I.B.M. was granted more patents than any other company in 2012, its 20th consecutive year in the top spot. But the big movement in the rankings comes from Google and Apple.

In THEORY ‘patents’ protect the ‘discoverer’s’ right to exploit certain information. How bizarre is it good citizen that absent capitalism there would be no need for such ‘protection’?

(Which is not to say that patents have protected anything from the suitably deep-pocketed, if you catch my meaning.)

One need only take a hard look at what patents have done to the field of medical research to be convinced it is time to end this counter-productive practice.

But who listens to me?

Finally:

Wall Street Moves Forward
By REUTERS 9:40 AM ET

Stocks rose as stronger-than-expected exports in China raised hopes for a more robust recovery in the global economy this year.

Unexpected Sharp Rise in Exports From China

So, share prices ‘jump’ on ‘unexpected’ rise in Chinese exports…does this sound like ‘sandbagging’ to you too, good citizen?

Which export do you suppose it is (because you know it isn’t ‘across the board’ although that is what the article would like you to believe…)

Think it might be a pick-up in ‘rare earths’ that China had threatened to ‘squeeze off?’

And, as of 10 AM the Dow was only plus ten points and headed straight, you guessed it, down!

So today’s lede may not be its conclusion…

Well, I’m have a ‘good day’ despite the absymal ‘status quo’ the thieves have created for us to wallow in.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Thunk!

Greetings good citizen,

As should surprise no one, news of the train wreck that is the Eurozone remains sparse and guarded…while conditions on the ground deteriorate into chaos (not Anarchy!)

Um, the Stupidity Markets have traded sideways most of the week, unable to justify further upwards movement but unwilling to reflect the crumbling global economy.

Remember good citizen, stocks are what make rich people rich!

For what it’s worth, here’s Friday’s top business headlines:

U.S. Reliance on Saudi Oil Heads Back Up
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Imports of oil from the kingdom have grown by more than 20 percent, leaving the United States vulnerable to tensions in the Persian Gulf.

Wait a minute Slim, don’t we get the ‘bulk’ of our fossil fuels from Canada and Venezuela? Mining the ‘Tar Sands’ has boosted, er, ‘domestic’ oil production by a half a million barrels per day.

So what’s this horse-pucky about? Is this another ‘red flag’ being waved by the war-mongers in the Pentagon?

Or are we simply expressing our ‘concern’ for the ‘well-being’ of our allies?

Give it a fucking rest, will ya?

Blood for oil is only a ‘good idea’ if it’s not your blood.

The next headline appears to be murkier than usual:

Treasury Changes Fannie and Freddie Bailout Deal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 9:59 AM ET

The government is changing the terms of its bailout agreement with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a way that will shrink the holdings of the two mortgage giants more quickly and will require payment to the government of all quarterly profits the companies earn.

Hmmn, that last line is a puzzler, isn’t it? What kind of ‘quarterly profits’ are we talking about if the bailout is ‘ongoing’?

Left to our imaginations is how a hybrid-public/private corporation makes a profit by guaranteeing mortgages?

The whole process just doesn’t compute yet here we are.

How frigging sick is it good citizen that BOTH of these entities EXIST to SHIELD banks from the ‘liability’ of lending to the ‘less than creditworthy’ consumers? (a situation of their own making?)

And how many BILLIONS has the government forked over to keep these two ‘charitable organizations’ operating?

And there you have it, good citizen. The strength of the public, supposedly ‘backing up’ our (failed) banking system (at the public’s expense!)

Speaking of ‘failed banking systems’:

Euro Watch
Merkel Backs European Central Bank
By JACK EWING and DAVID JOLLY 8:58 AM ET

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, supported conditional support for Spain and Italy, but a Finnish official suggested that euro zone leaders were preparing for the worst.

Talk about ‘mixed signals’, what the hell are we supposed to make of those two conflicting messsages?

Um, does anyone give a fuck what Angie supports? And it also stands to reason that the other Euro-zone leaders are ‘preparing for the worst’…even when that means getting out of Dodge before the rush because there isn’t anything else they can do once the currency ‘collapses’.

By now it has been stated by hundreds of sources, mathematically, there is NO WAY OUT OF THIS CRISIS VIA CAPITALISM!

And if you don’t have A REPLACEMENT FOR CAPITALISM, IN PLACE, before they hit the reset button, they are only ‘postponing the inevitable’.

I get a kick out of these assholes who say there’s a way to ‘protect yourself’ from the coming collapse because you KNOW they’re full of shit!

Owning gold is inviting death or at the very least robbed AND swindled (if you’re EXTREMELY LUCKY.)

IF you want a chance at ‘protecting yourself’ you need a small stockpile of ‘trade goods’, common commodities that other people would be willing to swap you something you need for.

The more common, the safer.

Whiskey (nips of all kinds) beer and cigarettes will all be high value trade items.

Nips without seals will be considerably tougher to move due to the high levels of fraud that exist now…but later fraud will be punishable by death so it will become less prevalent.

Speaking of fraud:

Wall Street Opens Mostly Flat
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 41 minutes ago

It appeared in early trading that investors were still digesting a mixed bag of earnings from retailers.

Um, save those who cater to the >One Percent, NO Retailers are earning profits. The rise in ‘aggregate’ retail sales is due to the recent spike in energy prices…and DOES NOT signify a ‘resurgent consumer’.

NOBODY is MAKING more money so nobody is spending it…it really is that simple.

Which is a little misleading. The >One Percent CONTINUE to increase their share of the global economy as they consolidate their ownership of the global markets.

Which does YOU ‘the consumer’ ZERO good.

Having only one source makes you, by default, a ‘captive audience.’

Now the relentless pursuit of profits means the only way to increase shareowner value is to 'adulterate' the product.

So how long will it be before you’re being sold pet food that is mostly rat poison?

In a captive market NOTHING stands in between a capitalist and his profits, not even dead customers.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Parasite known as Wall Street

Greetings good citizen,

This morning the markets gave back everything they gained yesterday and then some. Just like the goofy oil situation, oil has ‘rebounded’ back to $ 90 a barrel and the price per gallon has jumped back up to $ 3.50 a gallon…leaving us with the conundrum of why we could buy gas for $ 3.30 a gallon when oil was at $105 a barrel?

Vagaries of the market…riiiiight!

It doesn’t have to make sense, they charge us what they charge us because they can…

And it will really suck when they sock it to us this winter when we will have to choose between staying warm and starving to death.

Makes me predict a lot of ‘bonfires’ come the onset of cold weather this year…

But I’m projecting… winter is still a ways off yet…thankfully.

Let me clue you in to why I find the price hike in the cost of fuel so disturbing. Back in the late Seventies, you simply couldn’t get gas, there wasn’t any.

Now, in a time where billionaires are suddenly a ‘dime a dozen’, fuel is three times the price, but you can get all you want!

Worse, this brings us full circle to a phenomenon more commonly called ‘kill off’. We could also refer to it by it’s legal name where it is called ‘genocide’.

The mantra of both candidates is, “Jobs, jobs, jobs.” What they leave out is that, because they are unwilling to confront the power of Wall Street and the Pentagon, job growth in America now depends on driving labor costs lower loser and lower to attract business investment. This is the heart of the leveraged-buy out system that Romney offers to bring to the White House. And when Barack Obama cites an expanded GE plant in Kentucky as an example of the rebound of private sector jobs, the press release does not mention that workers who used to make $22 an hour are now making $14.

None of this is a secret to most of our governing class. Certainly, the CEOs and their major shareholders know it. Their economists know it. So do all but the most hopelessly ideological of policymakers. But acknowledging where future living standards are heading would require our political leaders to offer remedies that are unacceptable to Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. Safer not to look into the economic abyss and trust in good old American optimism.

Neither does the public want to stare too hard into the future. Majorities think that the next generation is going to be worse off, but they expect that they, personally, and their kids will be okay. So, while they might agree with the points made by the Wall Street Occupiers, it’s not worth the effort to join the protest. A PEW poll last fall reported that by a margin of 63-21 Americans believed that, “although there may be bad times every now and then, America will always continue to be prosperous and make economic progress.”

Often these polls leave you wondering just who the heck they asked to come up with such a distorted point of view. Are people seriously answering this way because they fear the NSA will mark them as potential terrorists if they speak the truth?

But we again digress.

With the Presidential elections coming up and the extremely disturbing prospect of ‘more of the same’ (regardless of which one you vote for) coming up, one begins to feel like a rat in a trap.

A trap with no place to go.

What will we do, good citizen?

The economy won’t improve, period, until the criminals are weeded out of the financial system and all avenues of investment are closed to speculation.

(Yes Virginia, that means shutting down Wall Street.)

Perhaps the best analogy I can offer is that of a parasite that has grown so large it is now starving it’s host to death.

That’s where Wall Street is today. It’s where Wall Street has been for the past decade. It can only ‘grow’ artificially, there’s no room in the real economy for further expansion!

How do we fix this good citizen?

Those whose livelihoods depend on the financial markets WANT YOU TO BELIEVE you can’t ‘save the host’ while destroying the parasite.

The parasite has been very good to them, they don’t want to see it harmed.

Which is to point out that those who don’t want to see the parasite go ARE THE PARASITES!

And these same ‘parasites’ are setting up to KILL you and yours.

(Make the mental loop back to the price and availability of fuel.)

Again I ask, ‘how do we fix this when neither candidate has displayed the slightest understanding of the problem(s) facing our civilization?

And the oligarchs want the bulk of us dead, no questions.

You can’t interpret the current set up any other way.

And don’t I look like a dipstick for pointing it out?

The time for a ‘huddle’ is drawing near…only everything we say or post is being monitored, and you can bet there will be more than a few ‘tattle-tales’ at any meeting larger than a handful of people.

But the road ahead is an obvious ‘dead end’.

We can’t go forward and we certainly can’t back up.

The only thing for certain is it’s always a bad time for a war.

But I personally think it is unavoidable.

If we don’t fight then we’re all gonna die.

And I don’t want that to happen either.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Bombshell!

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we see a major scandal being broken over the weekend so come Monday they can pretend it is ‘old news’.

This is one of those ‘why are they telling us this?’ kind of stories.

The implications here go deeper than just some ‘isolated criminal behavior’ at ‘some’ European banks. We’re talking the Fed here, that ‘private corporation’ that manages ALL of the United States money!

And those crooks were ‘wise’ to this criminal activity…and probably traded on the information as well!

You would imagine they would ‘dummy up’ and pretend the criminals were just ‘too slick’ for the remnants of the regulatory apparatus they have left…but no.

Instead we get a ‘confession’.

Yeah we knew and no we didn’t do anything about it.

You’d almost expect a statement like that to be followed with a gruff ‘not my job, man.’

Here’s the ‘reveal’:

The New York Fed learned about concerns over the integrity of Libor in summer 2007, when a Barclays employee e-mailed a New York Fed official, saying, “Draw your own conclusions about why people are going for unrealistically low” rates. Barclays wrote in a September report, “Our feeling is that Libors are again becoming rather unrealistic and do not reflect the true cost of borrowing.”

But the New York Fed thought the reports amounted to market chatter and did not provide definitive proof of widespread manipulation. “In the context of our market monitoring following the onset of the financial crisis in late 2007, involving thousands of calls and e-mails with market participants over a period of many months, we received occasional anecdotal reports from Barclays of problems with Libor,” the New York Fed statement said.

The regulator started to identify real problems with the interest rates several months later. In April 2008, the Barclays employee mentioned to a New York Fed official, “where I would be able to borrow” in the Libor market, “without question it would be higher than the rate that I’m actually putting in.”

That same day, New York Fed officials wrote in a weekly internal memo that banks appeared to be understating the interest rates they would pay.

Okay, if we hop back into our playback machine we’d find that the wheels had already come flying off the banking system by the Spring of 2008, the ‘gimmicked’ libor was done to protect the bankers from having to write down their shakier assets to a more realistic level.

Not that they would have anyway, the libor only served as ‘eyewash’.

Which is to point out the obvious, a small draft, a tiny one in fact would be all it would take to blow down the ‘house of cards’ the bankers built.

The Great Recession and the ongoing economic hardship…all caused by the bankers, who were in fact ‘covering’ for the capitalists who are using the crisis to cement their monopolies!

Which is to again, belabor the obvious. We need some Law and Order now!

And we won’t get any justice from the SAME ASSHOLES who looked the other way when all of this was going down…nope. We have to kick things off by ‘purging’ them first!

Make no mistake about it good citizen, we will not see either Law or Order as long as either of the two ‘lapdogs of the >One Percent’ hold the reins of power. [Conservative or Liberal, take your pick.]

While the dreamers among us pretend all we have to do is ‘roar’ loud enough, the more practical take a more pragmatic view.

Those reins won’t get surrendered without our pointing a gun at their head.

Anything less will be a charade.

Again, the results will speak for themselves.

Which is to ask, what do YOU think should be the ‘penalty’ for betraying the public trust? (Technically called Treason.)

The longstanding punishment for this crime is death by hanging…but the criminals running this pop stand have re-written a lot of the rules.

Which only strengthens the case for returning to the ‘old way’ of doing things.

Now, the question to ask yourself is whether or not this ‘admission’ by the Fed constitutes a violation of the ‘public trust’…

They KNEW there was criminal activity and they took no action…so the crime, as it stands, is one of ‘omission’. They didn’t act when they should have.

Treason is a real slippery slope, those guilty of it would like to make it a crime to accuse anyone of committing treason…that pretzel logic problem of being a traitor for turning a traitor in.

Which is to arrive full circle at a large question, good citizen.

We have definitely arrived at a time when we desperately need to discuss the kind of society we want to have…and the operative word here is WE!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Red Flag

Greetings good citizen,

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

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

Which is to ask, how sad is it that these 'fools' are the ones in charge of the bankrupt global economy?

Europeans Agree to Use Bailout Fund to Aid Banks
By STEVEN ERLANGER and PAUL GEITNER 7:49 AM ET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what are we ‘seeing’ here and now?

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

Thus is this post titled ‘Red Flag’.

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

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Prophecy

Greetings good citizen,

The opening bell just sounded but it’s too early to see where the markets are going…although if the ‘rest of the world’ is any indication, our capitalist overlords have another day of bloodshed on their hands.

But who knows, it seems for some (totally illogical) reason; yesterday’s pigs morph into today’s gems!

How sad is it good citizen that the ‘rationale’ behind purchasing stocks has boiled down to, ‘because they’re there’?

But it leads us right up to the edge of the world of ‘funny money’. The ‘presto-chango' required for a nation to abandon one currency and to then issue their own…er, ‘fiat’ currency.

Many of you have probably already heard about Mr. Krugman’s self-fulfilling prophecy by now but here it is for those of you who like under a rock (or anywhere inside the US propaganda zone…)

Below is his post in its entirety.

Some of us have been talking it over, and here’s what we think the end game looks like:

1. Greek euro exit, very possibly next month.

2. Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors try to move their money to Germany.

3a. Maybe, just possibly, de facto controls, with banks forbidden to transfer deposits out of country and limits on cash withdrawals.

3b. Alternatively, or maybe in tandem, huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing.

4a. Germany has a choice. Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain, plus a drastic revision of strategy — basically, to give Spain in particular any hope you need both guarantees on its debt to hold borrowing costs down and a higher eurozone inflation target to make relative price adjustment possible; or:

4b. End of the euro.

And we’re talking about months, not years, for this to play out

Switch mental gears here as we explore the task of putting your own currency out there on the ‘global currency market’.

Understand that nobody doubts that the new currency will be ‘named’ what the old currency was called, at least in Greece’s case, the Drachma will be ‘resurrected’.

The ‘trouble’ comes in at where this ‘new’ currency will be valued relative to the (mostly worthless) already existing currencies.

Get this bad boy wrong and you have instant Zimbabwe on your hands!

IF those who dictate what our currency is worth are ‘too generous’ to Greece there will be a mad scramble to abandon the Euro…so we can be assured that the new Drachma will not receive ‘favorable treatment’.

Now it all depends on (because we’ve got a ‘chickens and eggs situation on our hands here) what they do AFTER a price is ‘set’.

They won’t be able to print Drachma number one without first specifying how many they intend to issue at that price and what will be used to, er, ‘back that claim up’.

Which is to say the market makers won’t issue a ‘value’ for the new Drachma until they are given an idea how many of them there will be.

Naturally, the Greeks would want to, er, ‘undermine’ the Euro, the old Drachma was like the Italian Lira in that respect…which mimicked the Japanese Yen.

One yen is worth roughly one US cent (which was responsible for turning Japan into an exporting dynamo! So how sad is it that it also marks the beginning of the long slippery slope of ‘financial manipulation’ that ultimately destroyed the global economy?)

Like the ‘cesspool’ we live in? Thank a fucking banker!

Back to our ‘exploration’…

AFTER a ‘value’ is set, the Greeks will ‘revalue’ as quickly as possible.

This is where the ‘tug of war’ begins. It is also kind of how they got into this trouble in the first place.

How much money there actually is and how much money they SAY they have will soon turn into a matter of ‘conjecture’ and all of a sudden the global banking system will find itself ‘awash’ in Greek debt instruments.

Hell, it worked the first time and NOTHING has been fixed…

And this time it’s ‘shame on me’! (Which is to opine we should be ‘smart enough’ not to get taken twice…but what kind of world would it be if you couldn’t trust anyone?)

A mighty dysfunctional one good citizen…and no place you’d want to raise a family in.

In a world where nobody can trust anybody we have the beginnings of a global systemic collapse, and we have our financial sector to thank for it!

Naturally, we can only skim the surface of this issue in a few paragraphs but the point is quite clear.

If we can’t trust the people who handle our money then we are well and truly…

Don’t you agree?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Um, PS: A Simple Plan ‘stabilizes’ money by re-purposing it to its ONE useful social function, that of a regulator.

Under A Simple plan there is NO currency, only money of account that is totally non-transferable and therefore, non-negotiable.

Thus does the ‘cheaper there’ not exist, just as it is a ‘fiction’ today.

Um, you have to understand the ‘true nature’ of money to comprehend the above statements which refer to the frauds you are regularly victims of.

I’m unsure how helpful you would find the explanation of a Duck remaining a duck, a Pig remaining a pig and a Dollar remaining a dollar no matter where you were!

Choke

Greetings good citizen,

Around the world the ‘insufficiently connected’ are being forced into unacceptable situations while the people commonly responsible for these circumstances are routinely ‘bailed out’ at the taxpayer’s expense.

The price of food and fuel continue to spiral upwards as the financial sector loots the ‘real’ economy.

Understand, the financial sector isn’t eating all of the losses reckless lending by ‘imprudent’ bankers caused a certain degree of ‘cascading systemic failure’…

TREVISO, Italy — On New Year’s Eve, Antonio Tamiozzo, 53, hanged himself in the warehouse of his construction business near Vicenza, after several debtors did not pay what they owed him.

Three weeks earlier, Giovanni Schiavon, 59, a contractor, shot himself in the head at the headquarters of his debt-ridden construction company on the outskirts of Padua. As he faced the bleak prospect of ordering Christmas layoffs at his family firm of two generations, he wrote a last message: “Sorry, I cannot take it anymore.”

The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”

There’s a weird saying in the business world that goes like this, You’ll get yours when I get mine. Most of the time our entire (screwed up) economic system operates ‘on credit’; everything is billed ‘net 30’ and actually paid between 90 and 120. Worse, you know ‘squeezing’ the people who owe you won’t expedite the process because they are in the same position you are; they don’t have it…(yet.)

This is why the feckless banks went, hat in hand, to their politicians and told them in no uncertain terms that they needed to be ‘bailed out’ or the financial sector around the world was going to ‘collapse’.

Well, the politicians (idiots that they are) took these bankers at their word, never realizing that the bankers WOULDN’T extend the same kind of consideration to their customers…

So the banker got a ‘pass’ courtesy of the taxpayer but the bank’s debtors got what they always get, ‘fuck you, pay me!’

Understand good citizen, NONE of these banks ‘skipped’ paying their staff ‘bonuses’ (They HAD TO or these ‘highly skilled’ technocrats would go ‘elsewhere’…)

Like the entire banking sector around the world DIDN’T (and believe me, it DID) ‘collapse’.

The, er, ‘government (taxpayer) bailouts have been the ONLY thing keeping the (crooked) banking system afloat for the past four years!

Worse, the banks have had TRILLIONS pumped into them and they’re STILL BROKE! (Because the ‘shadow banking system’ had created a quadrillion dollars worth of debt that the brick and mortar banking system is ‘trying’ to make good on…)

Instead of telling the fuckers that created this garbage to go piss up a bent rope!

But that’s okay, that quadrillion dollars will ‘vaporize’ when we institute the new monetary system A Simple Plan uses! (Partly because ALL DEBT will be illegal and mostly because placing someone in YOUR debt will be an EXILE OFFENSE!)

Um, under ‘fair use’ you are only permitted to use three paragraphs of someone else’s work. So if you don’t click the link and read the entire article you will remain ignorant of the fact that the article goes on to (briefly) examine the ongoing effects of this, er, ‘perpetrator free’ phenomenon.

Yeah, if not for my rant about the bankers getting ‘rescued’ but the people who owe bankers not making out so well, you’d be left to your own devices to try and determine who was responsible for this, er, ‘collateral damage’.

In the first three paragraphs of this article it is made out that the ‘fragile economies’ of the affected countries is to blame for this banker created carnage.

Well, good citizen, the bankers are at least ‘partly correct’ that they don’t deserve ALL of the blame, the fucking politician’s hands are dripping with blood as well.

While yesterday’s post examined what it takes to ferment revolution, we should take a moment to examine the miniscule amount of corruption it takes to implement widespread oppression!

The first key is money. Take over a nation’s money supply and you ‘control’ that nation. If you want to ‘simplify’ this process then you ‘manipulate’ the other bankers into agreeing that one currency will be the world’s ‘reserve currency’, making the manipulation process easier.

One you control the ‘printing presses’ you proceed to ‘buy’ control of the ‘business friendly’ political party in each nation.

After you have control of half of the total political ‘pie’, you ‘exterminate’ the other half, keeping it alive only as a ‘sock puppet’ so you will have the only ‘opposition’ in your pocket.

Now that you control the political process, it is a simple matter of co-opting the courts and you have true ‘free rein’.

There is no need to add the ‘rinse and repeat’, this ‘winning formula’ has been repeated throughout the entire (now) capitalist world.

Understand, good citizen, this wouldn’t be possible under any other system. It was only by turning communist China capitalist that they were able to ‘co-opt’ the formerly communist government.

The part we all should get a kick out of is that they did it all with ‘funny money’ (and the cooperation of some REALLY STUPID people.)

I’m gonna drop this one right here and you can try to work out whether or not I just called YOU stupid…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Demos

Greetings good citizen,

Yesterday’s, er, ‘irrational’ surge in world-wide markets is being followed by a nosedive as we can see from the following headlines:

Wall Street Pulls Back
By REUTERS 23 minutes ago

Shares moved into negative territory and bank stocks declined despite some better-than-expected quarterly results.

But the banking sector ISN’T the freaking entire economy!
Yet we have this nonsense:

JPMorgan Chase's Earnings Beat Expectations
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ 37 minutes ago

The bank said it earned $1.31 a share in the first quarter of 2012, compared with $1.28 a share in the same period a year ago.

Lookie that! A whooping three fucking cents! (times a billion shares…WTF!)

Wait a minute, is that a mask hanging out of his back pocket next to the gun stuck in his waistband?

And who is that he’s talking to?

Wells Fargo Profit Rises 13%, as Revenue Increases
By BEN PROTESS 46 minutes ago

Wells Fargo reported earnings of $4.2 billion, or 75 cents a share, as its loan portfolio continued to improve.

Banks produce nothing but DEBT, good citizen, which should warn you to what’s going on when the ONLY ‘successful companies’ in your national economy happen to be in the financial sector…

When your economy is dominated by a ‘non-productive’ sector, you end up with this sort of bullshit: [The ten ways our democracy is crumbling]

1. Money and Politics
2. Voter Disenfranchisement
3. Our Skewed Distribution of Income
4. Tax Breaks for the Super-rich
5. Wall Street Bailouts
6. Deficit Hysteria
7. Crumbling Social and Physical Infrastructure
8. The Failure to Create Jobs
9. The Revolving Door
10. Worshiping the Market Gods

Is It Too Late for Democracy?

The game’s not over yet. We still have freedom of expression and the right to protest – more or less. Occupy Wall Street both showed how the debate could be altered, and how easily the authorities could end the encampments. So, it’s an open question whether we have the will to build and sustain a broad, powerful anti-Wall Street movement.

The financial rot is deeply impacting our democratic structures. It should worry us when Wall Street and its political minions warn that we might become the next Greece. They, of course, are referring to the debt crisis. But Greece is also the very place where finance is crushing democracy. Austerity is being rammed down the throats of the Greek people and democratic government can no longer protect the infirm and the unemployed from the onslaught of the oligarchs. It is both sad and frightening that it’s happening at the historical birthplace of democracy.

We all are Greeks.

It is the last remark that most of you should find, er, ‘objectionable’.

Because he’s right, we are still using a ‘highly bastardized’ form of a method created/pioneered by the ANCIENT Greeks.

(I need to tread carefully here as I’m married to one…)

Most of you are aware that I have been, er, ‘openly critical’ of those claiming to be ‘Democrats’ (mostly because their ideology is far from Democratic!)

The ‘bi-partisan legislation’ coming out of this supposedly ‘Democratic administration’ has been decidedly conservative.

And we can only wonder why that is…

Why is it that the only thing our ‘decide in our name without ever consulting us’ politicians can agree on is legislation that is favorable to or protects the already wealthy?

Which is to ask why does the writer of this article NOT champion a ‘purer’ form of democracy if he truly believes in ‘letting the people decide’?

 You see, we Anarchists believe in ‘true democracy’ where we have the RIGHT to vote directly on the law itself! (Anarchy = ‘rules without rulers’!)

What a wonderful world it SHOULD BE, but sadly those who feel compelled to DECIDE FOR US are too fearful to let us decide for ourselves (although they've done more than 'okay' for themselves...)

Which is to point out that there can be NO DEMOCRACY when only a few are allowed to participate in the decision making process!

Which is to point out that we can ALL agree on the basics and what we can’t agree on we probably shouldn’t be legislating!

Just another little something for you to play with from your uncle Gegner…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Living 'Free'!

Greetings good citizen,

I love Elephants in the room and for the past four years there’s been a huge one that the Corporate owned media avoids like the plague!

Once the bonus addled bankers realized they were creating ghost-towns that THEY were ‘technically’ on the hook for…all of a sudden using their ‘strongest weapon’ became an all around ‘bad idea’.

Weirdly, there’s a reason why 25% of the population ‘can’t qualify’ for a mortgage just as there’s a reason why even during good times 25% of us can’t find work! (No irony should be lost on the serious amount of ‘overlap’ that exists between these two groups.)

Sorry about the shotgun blast full of concepts there but our fucked up social system produces a lot of these ‘conceptual overloads’ (and with it sentences like the one above.)

But anyhoo, back to the Elephant in the room of how some people are ‘living free’ and by extension, making the rest of the economy, er, ‘appear’ better than it actually is.

One of Ms. Fox’s clients is Nicholas Cline, 35, a construction worker who fell behind on his mortgage payments in 2009. (He thought he had modified his loan, but the company he was working with has since pleaded guilty to criminal fraud.) The bank that holds Mr. Cline’s mortgage has left him alone, he said. No letters, no calls, no hassles.

“But now that it’s going on three years, what do you do?” Mr. Cline said. “I am living in my house. But the stress of this, not knowing what’s going to happen or when, it’s an unbelievable burden on your mind.”

In New York, the time to complete a foreclosure has almost quadrupled, from 263 days in 2007 to 1,019 days in 2011. Abraham Kleinman, a lawyer in Uniondale who represents homeowners fighting foreclosure, said he counseled a client who felt guilty about remaining in his home so long after defaulting. “He says to himself, ‘I’m sitting here rent free, it can’t go on forever,’ ” Mr. Kleinman said. “But the plaintiff has not been aggressive. As near as I can tell, they’ve put this to the side.”

It is disturbing to note we still have ‘fraudulent’ mortgage originators but we also have the banks themselves, carrying most of these mortgages on their books at values they’ll NEVER see!

Does anyone else need a detective to deduce what this means for our supposedly ‘asset backed’ financial system?

Which is the OTHER elephant in the room…

Has it occurred to you that even (or especially) if you are renting, you’re getting FUCKED?

Just to swap mental gears for a moment, is it becoming clear to you just who is buying all of those new cars?

(Because, ironically, defaulting on their mortgage HAS NOT ruined these people’s credit rating!)

Or the Auto builders are too desperate to care (meaning they are extending credit to ‘poor risks‘ regardless)…chew that one over for a few minutes and see what you come up with…it will redefine the term ‘depression’.

Which is why I get such a big charge out of the show 'Doomsday Preppers' and how their so-called ‘experts’ keep giving these people really bad advice!

Rule number one of true preppers is DON’T HOARD! There’s no way you can keep visiting the site of your hoard without drawing attention to it!

Only ‘moles’ (people who plan to stay out of sight until it’s safe to come out…which may be never) can ‘hoard’.

But even that ‘strategy’ comes with the commitment requirement, you can NEVER leave the shelter or you risk revealing its existence, and revelation is both damnation and doom.

If people know there’s a hoard, they’ll be on it like stink on excrement…

Just the sight of you walking around looking healthy and well fed (long after you have no reason to be either) will be enough to betray you.

Which gives the wrong impression…roughly 60 days after the supply lines collapse there won’t be much of anything around population wise, the chaos and lack of modern conveniences will ‘kill-off’ most of the, er, ‘surplus population’.

How sad is it that this will make the ‘true’ survivors no less adamant in seeking to ‘refresh’ their dwindling stores of ammo or (what will become) luxury items like toilet paper, tissues and candy/liquor.

Gold? Gold will be a ‘find’ (when these hoarders are eventually overrun) and some (morons) will still try to hoard it although most of the time it won’t do the hoarder any good.

Worse, the wrong word in the right ear and it will probably get you dead, there’s no accounting for morons.

But I digress, we have gone form one herd of elephants to another, entirely different herd and how the corporate owned media is spreading ‘dis-information’ on both.

How pathetic is it good citizen that we have an economy supported largely by people who are ‘living free’?

Worse, good citizen, given the defunct ‘real estate market’ how long will it be before there won’t be ANYBODY paying their mortgage?

What will become of our crumbling ‘financial system’ them?

I’d posit that our civilization doesn’t have that long so the question becomes a rhetorical one at best.

Um, under A Simple Plan the real estate market (along with the parasitic banking system) both ‘vanish’…a place to live (equipped with all of the modern conveniences of the time) are your RIGHT! Not a ‘roll of the dice’ investment that you may or may not recover…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner