Thankful...ly

Greetings good citizen,

Does the list of things you’re thankful for read like a list of (narrowly averted) disasters rather than a bounty of blessings?

Truth be told good citizen , the 99 (actually 80 percent) doesn’t have much to be ‘thankful’ for (Which really steams the self-professed ‘job creators’, big-time!)

Being thankful that we weren’t beat up worse than we have been is sort of, er, counterproductive…

What does it say when the idea of fighting back sounds like something that you’d like to be thankful for?

Well, you know what they say, ‘shit in one hand and wish in the other, see which one fills up first!’

Which is to point out that you should be doing more than merely ‘wishing’ you could stand up for yourself.

Maybe NEXT Thanksgiving…

On this Thanksgiving day we’re going to kick off with a ’double shot’ of Shadow Stats

No. 402: GDP Revision, October Durable Goods and Existing Home Sales
November 23rd, 2011

Headline Gross Domestic Income (GDP Equivalent) Growth Collapsed with Suggestion of 0.8% Contraction for Third-Quarter

Slowing Annual Growth in Durable Goods Orders

Existing Home Sales Bottom-Bounce Once Again, U.S. Government Signals Lack of Fiscal Concerns

No. 401: Underlying Economic Reality, October Housing Starts November 17th, 2011

Housing Starts Continued Three-Year Pattern of Bottom-Bouncing

Economic Recovery Never Happened

Hyped Gains Were Based on Gimmicked Inflation Adjustments

Current Downturn Already Exceeds Duration of Great Depression’s First Down-Leg

Um, there isn’t really much I can elaborate on here. Mr. Williams (once again) pretty much nails it.

Nailed what, you might ask?

That the facts have been distorted to fit the desired outcome.

Which is something to ponder while you’re sitting there contemplating whether or not it’s a bad thing that you can’t think of anything to be genuinely thankful for (or, more succinctly, anyone to be grateful to, a common conundrum experienced by fellow atheists.)

Perhaps, while your pondering the imponderable you can puzzle for a while about how this whole lack of gratitude thing plays right into the hands of the disgustingly ungrateful few!

Yes, they never miss an opportunity to accuse the rest of us of being ‘ungrateful’, the only thing more puzzling is why we should show gratitude for what basically amounts to fucking ourselves?

Be happy you’ve got a job, millions of people would kill to be as ‘lucky’ as you are!

Which promptly causes you to wonder if you missed the day when the teacher explained that ‘lucky’ is a synonym for ‘stupid’ because nobody would feel lucky to have a job working for an asshole like him!

How ironic is it that your ‘reward’ for not screwing up is the opportunity to come back the next day for another bite of the everlasting shit sandwich?

Seriously good citizen, we have little to be (genuinely) thankful for…worse, it’s only a paid day off for some of us…the rest (and I’d say for a majority) it’s just another bite of the incredible everlasting shit sandwich.

Which is to point out, things won’t get better until we make it happen!

Happy Thanksgiving (to my US readers) and a Happy November 24 to the rest!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

[Time to eat the turkey!]

Progress

Greetings good citizen,

I have refrained from belaboring the obvious lately but this morning I feel compelled to remind you that the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace.

The ‘chump’ market is down more than 266 points (with most of the world ‘in the red’ in sympathy with the crippled Dow.)

And yes, that means precisely what you might expect, if you own stock , you’re a chump!

In an extremely ‘rare’ (this topic is almost universally absent from the conversation that is centered on ‘deficits’) article, Mr. Reich, Labor Secretary for the Clinton administration, points to a topic I recently raised, most of the money is concentrated at the top of our society Until this is fixed there will be significant ‘social unrest’.

5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar? [snip]

Starting in the late 1970s, the middle class began to weaken. Although productivity continued to grow and the economy continued to expand, wages began flattening in the 1970s because new technologies — container ships, satellite communications, eventually computers and the Internet — started to undermine any American job that could be automated or done more cheaply abroad. The same technologies bestowed ever larger rewards on people who could use them to innovate and solve problems. Some were product entrepreneurs; a growing number were financial entrepreneurs. The pay of graduates of prestigious colleges and M.B.A. programs — the “talent” who reached the pinnacles of power in executive suites and on Wall Street — soared.

It is also interesting to note that another pet Hobby Horse of mine has also jumped out in this article, one of gross mismanagement.

Understand good citizen, these people ARE NOT stupid, they just want you to think they are!

Are you scratching your head? To pretend one is stupid is to play the ‘incompetence card’, the only ‘justification’ for their obviously disastrous actions.

Time to go ‘off the reservation’ again as I defend my accusation of our current plight as being no accident!

Peak Oil, in case you have been asleep for the past two decades, will radically alter our current social model.

No irony should be lost on the fact that it is not just the ‘Western’ way of life that will disappear, life EVERYWHERE will, er, ‘change’ radically.

Let’s put the pieces of the puzzle together and see what they reveal?

First you have a consolidation of what currently passes for wealth into the hands of…an ancient few. These are people who have both types of power at their command, monetary and military.

Do these people give a fuck that civilization is on the verge of collapse?

No, they are also ‘disinclined’ to do anything to stop it either…but that’s not the worst of it, they aren’t adverse to ‘making matters worse’ if by doing so it helps them.

Capitalism is all about ‘market share’ while, conversely, Survivalism is all about Number One.

Um, so economists label acts that, er, ‘impede’ the consumer as ‘illogical’ while these same acts are not only logical but necessary from a survival point of view!

Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight and don’t ‘assume’ you’re watching an economic battle when you’re really part of a survival competition!

Er, how many of you noticed I altered the ‘focus’ of that last statement, from watching to participating?

Don’t be a ‘boob’ and think you’re just watching this, as it unfolds, YOU ARE PART OF IT!

I think Mr. Panzer picks this stuff up off of a local newswire because you don’t hear a peep about it nationwide!

My last two posts have touched upon the growing ‘economic desert’, couple that with the nationwide ‘drought’ in purchasing power and you have all of the necessary ingredients for a nasty uprising.

An uprising that will take place right on schedule if I don’t miss my guess.

Let’s take another step closer to the ‘Twilight Zone’. Peak oil turns the social clock backwards not a hundred years but a thousand…and there isn’t a fucking thing you can do about it!

Well, maybe there is…

It starts with ‘poisoning minds’.

Like running gold up to ridiculous highs so the average ‘peasant’ will be ‘in awe’ of it after the paper money of old loses its value.

Where do you think the bulk of the world’s gold (bullion) is right now?

It (physically) resides with those who have the ‘power’ to take advantage of it. If YOU don’t have an ‘army’ capable of defending your stash, you’re better off without it.

But that is secondary, nobody can pull this off alone and for the moment we have a loose confederation of conspirators.

Understand, peak oil IS COMING and governments around the world are powerless to stop it!

How fortunate is it for the rest of us that A Simple Plan is one of the few management system that WILL continue to function in the absence of gold, either ‘black’ or metallic?

We’re, er, ‘prematurely’ butting up against the ‘peak oil’ wall here because a certain degree of ‘mobility’ will be necessary to maintain a military advantage over the walking masses.

Anyway, peak oil has been used to secure ‘global cooperation’ among a willing group of ‘followers’, the promise is they will become the next ‘global elite’.

However, once the emergency has passed, all bets are off.

And it will be ‘shame on them’ time because they knew who they were getting into bed with in the first place.

Funny thing about the capitalist pyramid, there really isn’t ‘room at the top’. Worse, there certainly isn’t room for debate or alternative points of view.

In case none of you noticed, capitalism has nothing in common with democracy, it is decidedly ‘authoritarian’.

You’re either ‘top dog’ or you’re not…there is no ‘in between’.

You may ‘share the glory’ but at the end of the day you will bear the blame alone.

Well, that rant sort of ‘rambled’…sorry if it’s confusing but without writing a book on the subject, that’s about as good as it gets. If you read it slowly you can pick out the main points easily enough.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Out here in the fields...

Greetings good citizen,

There are still two weeks before the ‘debt ceiling drama’ ends in the collapse of our government and the, er, ‘take over’ by conservative (backed) elements of the corporatocacy.

Interestingly enough, there has been almost no mention of the scandal created by News Corp in London for hacking the cell phones of government officials…weirder still is there have been NO arrests associated with these crimes!

Have you asked yourself why media outlets around the world are still standing?

‘Tis a mystery, is it not?

Let us return to to the current ‘showdown’ between the ‘corporate sock puppet’ and the self-styled heroes of ‘small government’

Underlying the budget drama between the White House and Congressional Republicans is another compelling drama among Republicans, which exposes an ideological and generational gap. On one side are older, more senior conservatives like the two top leaders, Speaker John A. Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, who remember the budget fights and Republican setbacks of the 1990s and want some deal.

On the other are the proudly uncompromising junior lawmakers, many of them Tea Party sympathizers, whose ranks were so inflated by Republican gains in the midterm elections. Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, has emerged as their standard bearer, debating Mr. Obama in the White House sessions and then boasting of it afterward.

So, the ‘sympathies’ of LESS THAN ONE PERCENT OF THE NATION are going to cause the US to default on its now massive debt?

Not that this particularly matters from the ‘what are they gonna DO about it perspective…

If the US defaults, it will lead a chain of defaults around the world, and the resulting chaos will slaughter millions! (Due to resource scarcity related conflicts.)

So yeah, if you’re a criminal looking to escape prosecution this turns into a ‘win-win’.

I find it disturbing how many people/pundits think this whole crisis will just blow over, that politicians ‘won’t let it happen’

Let’s talk for a minute about what Republican leaders are rejecting.

President Obama has made it clear that he’s willing to sign on to a deficit-reduction deal that consists overwhelmingly of spending cuts, and includes draconian cuts in key social programs, up to and including a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. These are extraordinary concessions. As The Times’s Nate Silver points out, the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!

Yet Republicans are saying no. Indeed, they’re threatening to force a U.S. default, and create an economic crisis, unless they get a completely one-sided deal. And this was entirely predictable.

So, with the ballot box so obviously broken, who is ‘simple’ enough to believe that politicians are even modestly concerned about YOUR vote?

Honestly good citizen, why start now? Nobody in Washington or the corporatocracy has given a fuck what you thought for the last THREE DECADES!

Why would they suddenly start caring now?

The ONLY ONE who THINKS they give a shit is YOU!

Bad news good citizen, you’re wrong.

So, if you haven’t already, lay in a supply of non-perishable food to hold you over for the first couple of weeks. Most of the ‘yahoos’ will have killed one another off by then.

Ironically, this will leave only the cleverest to contend with. IF you have taken the additional precaution of establishing a ‘circle of trust’, you should be able to rid your area of, er, ‘poachers’ via the power of numbers.

If you have someplace to ‘bug out’ to, now (first week of August) is the time, in case you haven’t noticed there are bigger problems looming than whether the government can spend 13 trillion or 14 trillion worth of ‘funny money’ (keeping the already wealthy in the lap of luxury!)

In fact, one of those problems is exactly how ‘funny’ money has become!

Are you ready to ‘barter’? What can you get your hands on that is ‘tradeable’?

Don’t put all of your focus on precious metals, many pawn shops are turning away people who want ‘cash for gold’.

I haven’t checked but I’m willing to speculate they’re not paying half the current ‘spot price’ for an ounce of gold. Isn’t being a ‘distressed customer’ fun?

How much more fun will it be when ‘Sharpie’ finds out the ‘folding money’ is worthless too?

Get ready to chase down your next meal with a stick, if you don’t beat it to death, you don’t eat!

In the times to come, ‘potable’ (safe) water will become a ‘tradable commodity’ (although you’d be well advised not to trade for such a precious item with anyone outside of your circle of trust!)

But that is further down the road than we need to be looking for the moment.

So there you have it good citizen, I’m calling August 3rd ‘crunch time’.

If you assemble all of the evidence you will likely come to the same conclusion…which is not to rule out the possibility of an earlier collapse!

I told you back in June this problem hadn’t ‘gone away’…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The Usual Suspects

Greetings good citizen,

As you may have noticed the (who gives a fuck) markets recovered 150 points to close down fifty rather than the full 200 points they were off earlier.

Understand good citizen they closed down fifty on the decidely feeble release from the ‘strategic oil reserves’ and a piss poor employment report.

Which is to say the ‘who knows what they indicate markets’ climbed 150 points on absolutely hellacious data!

WTF!

As I mentioned yesterday, Saab being unable to meet its payroll obligations was totally ‘off radar’ in the US Business press. You can be sure the resulting bankruptcy filing will make headlines for…30 seconds or so.

Why so brief?

Now we’re back to the old ‘if the mushrooms were going to pop in fifteen minutes, would they tell us?’

They don’t run stories showing the failure of capitalism because too many of us already fear capitalism is on its last legs.

While this SHOULD BE reason to celebrate, we have nothing with which to replace capitalism with. (We should qualify that with “nothing that is acceptable to the ‘status quo.’” There are dozens of hare-brained schemes to choose from and most of them serve as nothing more than an example of the developer’s profound ignorance of economics!)

Which would be more accurately manifested as your own, er, ‘less than adequate’ understanding of matters economic…which is how we came to be sitting where we are in the first place.

A Simple Plan replaces the fuckaree that is curently collapsing around our ears with a safer, more controlable system.

A system that starts, includes and ends with YOU!

Understand good citizen, your ‘participation’ in the current system is ‘optional’ and reliant upon YOU making yourself USEFUL to somebody that doesn’t give a fuck about your well-being!

In fact, if we were to shine a spotlight on what is ‘wrong’ with the globalized economy Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? this article would spell out the disastrous policies of the ‘more for me’ crowd.

From the beginning of the 1980s, the trend of rationalization, which is characterized by plant closings, tended to jettison the jobs of unionized blue-collar workers. And from the beginning of the 1990s, marketization, which brought the end of the one-company-career norm, has placed the job security of middle-aged and older white-collar workers in jeopardy. Finally, from the 2000s, globalization, which drove the offshoring of jobs, left all types of members of the US labor force — even those with advanced educational credentials and substantial work experience — vulnerable to displacement.

Most of us trace back the destruction of our civilization to the Reagan administration.

The fact that the rape of our nation has gone unchallenged for so many decades says much about the ‘duplicitous nature’ of our so-called ‘leaders’.

But I digress…I’m more than a little worked up about yesterday’s bizarre turn of events.

It doesn’t help matters to have articles like this one turning up almost ‘on cue’…

Budget Talks Near Collapse as G.O.P. Leader Quits

The breakdown was set off by the surprise decision of Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader and one of two Republicans participating in sessions led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., to quit the negotiations.

This week’s talks were considered to be crucial as the Aug. 2 deadline for an increase in federal borrowing authority nears. [snip]

“As it stands, the Democrats continue to insist that any deal must include tax increases,” Mr. Cantor said in a statement. “There is not support in the House for a tax increase, and I don’t believe now is the time to raise taxes in light of our current economic situation. Regardless of the progress that has been made, the tax issue must be resolved before discussions can continue.”

My readers won’t be ‘shocked’ by the news that the government has been ‘brought to its knees’ by Republican obstructionism.

As far as these turds are concerned, it’s a ‘win-win’.

The article goes on to explain that Rep Cantor ‘quit’ so he wouldn’t have to listen to ‘logic’ (that his constituents pay him well to ignore.)

You see, numbnuts thinks we can only reduce spending, raising revenue is out of the question.

This is what you get when you let the corporate owned media elect morons to public office!

The ballot box only works in conjunction with a ‘free press’. I don’t need to explain to you that a ‘for profit’ press isn’t by any stretch of the imagination, ‘free’.

It only stands to reason that the same thing applies to a population held hostage by a ‘surplus’ workforce.

Um, again I am ‘slouching’ in the posting dept. Had the day from hell yesterday (with everybody else’s troubles superceding my own priorities) followed by by my son crashing my equipment and losing the (nearly completed) document on me for the second time in a row!

Anyway, this time I was able to find the ‘recovered document’ mostly intact and proceed from there.

So, where were we? The (now enormous) surplus labor force.

Rather than admit the problem the lying liars continue to camouflage the crisis by.

In it’s own myopic way the article highlights one of the other stunning facts of the ‘jobless recovery’.

If you click through to the article you might notice that ALL of the people profiled are YOUNG.

Yes, some of them are in their thirties but guess what chief, despite what the media tells you, the hardest hit segment of the workforce is pushing retirement age!

The ‘kids’ are, as we can see, fed up with long hours and low pay…

Still, is job-juggling really sustainable, particularly when the next stage of life hits and there may be a mortgage and children?

Ms. McCarty doesn’t think so. She is looking for an end to her 80-hour weeks and meager paychecks. “I don’t want to be 30 and working a bunch of small jobs so I can pay my bills,” she said.

What the article doesn’t ask is where is this leading?

The article really doesn’t want you going there. You will find out where this is headed all too soon as the ‘artificial’ energy crisis hits and and civilization literally collapses, killing off large swaths of the ‘surplus population’.

We are just months away from this cataclysmic event.

The ‘end’ of the Mayan calendar is just a coincidence, a handy albeit convenient excuse.

Worse, it will probably be all over but the shouting by Christmas 2012.

The extent of the carnage depends on the stupidty of the people.

Keep your head and you’ll come out on the other side relatively unscathed (IF you have highly honed survival skills or are fortunate enough to join up with those who do.)

Your primary mission is to survive, your secondary mission is to remain ‘free’, which is to point out that the ‘easy path’ carries a very hefty price.

Better late than never,

Gegner

Human Social Contract

Greetings good citizen,

Most ‘major’ posts are setting down their ‘predictions’ for next year. Odd duck that I am, I’m filtering those predictions through the lens of the ‘Human social contract’.

Here, Ilargi provides us with an admittedly purloined top ten list that doesn’t stand up too well under the social contract prism.

I am sure most of you are scratching your head, wondering just what the hell I’m yapping about. There is no such thing as a formal ‘human social contract’ that has the force of law anywhere on the fucking planet. The only thing that comes close are a few religious tenants the might get you ‘ex-communicated’ if your are found guilty of breaking them.

Worse is the general ‘who gives a fuck’ attitude most people have towards this gaping omission from our legal statutes.

It’s like that tune by ‘The Clash’ back in the 80’s titled ‘Know your rights’.

You had precisely 3 of them…and the canny musicians gave each in turn as well as how each could be negated by the elite on a whim…

Which is to point out the frightening obvious. When it comes to ‘rights’ you have precisely zero.

So why don’t you kill the next person who crosses your path on general principles?

Ah ha! Now we’re getting somewhere! We all ‘agree’ not to fuck with (murder, maim, molest) those who don’t threaten us with such undesirable outcomes first.

It’s the ‘I’m okay, You’re okay’ contract that makes civilization itself possible. If you can’t trust people any farther than you can throw them, you can’t form a working society.

Now we get down to the real ‘nitty gritty’, what does this society ‘owe’ you for not attacking it or endangering its safety?

Is the answer ‘nothing’?

There are many who operate on precisely this principle (Fuck’ em all and the dumb ones twice!)

Sadly, ‘society’ has come to protect those who, er, operate under the ‘buyer beware’ system. Mostly because those who would screw you into the woodwork for their own gain have made ‘justifiable homicide’ illegal.

This is an extreme violation of the basic human contract…and it was only voided by ‘promising’ that ‘justice’ would be done, IF the system were allowed to work as intended.

What do you suppose the big flaw in this system has become? The ‘average person’ has, for a very long time, been unable to afford to bring a wrongdoer to court to seek justice.

You see, the (fucking) capitalist turned ‘justice’ into a ‘for profit’ venture. This in turn made it profitable to break the law (as well as the social contract) because the average victim couldn’t afford to seek justice!

This would NOT happen if wrongdoers faced being killed out of hand for their crimes. (But this tends to leave a lot of unanswered questions, as dead people tell no tales.)

What am I saying? A legal system that prevents you from seeking justice is itself unjust.

Perhaps part of the problem lies with the question ‘What is Justice?’

But I digress considerably from the point I’m trying to make.

We need to back up a couple of steps and return to the question of what does civil society ‘owe’ you, the law abiding citizen?

Let’s start with the single most basic question, what’s the point of being a member of society if that membership DOES NOT include THE IMPLICIT PROMISE of participation in that society? If your participation in a society does not GUARANTEE that you will be allowed access to what you need to survive, then membership in that society is USELESS!

What’s the single scariest feature of Libertarianism? The central concept of Libertarianism is that NOBODY OWES YOU ANYTHING!

And that is flat wrong! If this were true, Libertarians wouldn’t exist, they’d all be DEAD!

We keep returning to the ‘message of the season’ which tells us in no uncertain terms that the ‘business of humanity is NOT BUSINESS, the business of humanity IS HUMANITY!

Yet, somehow, most don’t seem to be able to grasp this simple concept…mostly because it conflicts with their instinct to grab as much as they can, as fast as they can, and screw everybody else!

And THAT’S not nice!

For that matter, neither is this, (it is not the charts but the commentary) that make this link worth following, it’s a dose of Jesse at his finest!

The human social contract, good citizen, it’s the reason we don’t kill one another on sight!

Most of you haven’t thought about it much but we really DO need to have this ‘bargain’ we are all forced to comply with ‘etched in stone’ somewhere.

Otherwise, your right to basic human dignity will continue to be violated by anyone with deeper pockets than your own…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Circles of trust...

Greetings good citizen,

I know that I sometimes send mixed messages when I point to what other writers have to say and this is no exception

Specifically, I am pointing to Stoneleigh’s commentary at the beginning of Thursday’s post.

She provides a very accurate assessment of the ‘Death Spiral’ we are currently locked into AND she also points to the best, er, ‘escape route’ the average individual can take which offers the highest likelihood of survival.

There should be no irony lost on the fact that ‘circles of trust’ are a decidedly ‘socialist’ concept. A capitalist doesn’t trust anyone but themself.

So if you try to build a ‘circle of trust’ with a capitalist, know up front it is already a ‘one way street’. The capitalist expects you to trust him while he is unwilling to trust you.

Sadly, most people aren’t cautious enough to avoid inviting their ‘materialistic’ neighbors to join their circle.

What they’ll end up with is a circle that doesn’t work.

So we have ‘critique A’.

We can add to that the very logical question of what good will ‘cash’ be when the world’s financial system lies in ruins?

At the very root of the coming collapse will be the ‘untrustworthy’ nature of (any) fiat currency.

Many are already busting their backsides for paychecks that don’t crack their nut…a situation that will only get worse.

If you can’t get what you need, what’s the point?

From here, collapse is only a short step away.

Naturally, the point is the associated ‘desperation’ that comes with being unable to make ends meet.

This, in case you haven’t noticed, is the cliff we’re being pushed over. All so people who already have more than they know what to do with can have more!

Which is to point out that this goes well beyond ‘ordinary greed’.

The pigs want to kill you so they can increase their share of what resources that remain.

I’ll put the brakes on here; we need not descend into darkness in EVERY post.

Backing up just a little, you want to be careful that the people you invite into your circle of trust know what they’re buying into and are willing to do what is expected of them when the time comes.

The capitalist will be tickled pink to learn what he can expect from the group, alternately, he’ll be livid to learn what he’s expected to give back!

Giving doesn’t come naturally to people who put a price on everything they do.

Anyway, just a piece of advice that you can file along with all of the other advice you’ll get.

The wise don’t need it and fools won’t heed it…but every once in a while, somebody is paying attention and they’re thankful for what is freely offered.

I’ll wrap it up here for today, other matters press.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Perception management

Greetings good citizen,

In an ‘I’m not sure how to interpret this’ moment, it is rather perplexing to see all of the wailing and screaming over the ‘much anticipated’ stock market bounce come to naught…

My last post was on how unemployment numbers were affecting the stock market and it seems to have been the ‘banner du jour’ of yesterday’s blogosphere commentary.

BUT, what most people were expecting to happen, DIDN’T happen…beyond a tiny surge at the end of trading on Friday, the markets remained fairly flat.

This is not to discount the fact that the markets tacked on 190 points over the course of the past week; and it is not unreasonable to assume that this was mostly in ‘anticipation’ of ‘better than expected’ unemployment figures…which sorta didn’t happen.

So, did it happen or didn’t it? I’d be inclined to say the weasels pulled off another ‘fast one’ right under the public’s unsuspecting nose.

The ‘owners’ of equities succeeded in ‘enriching’ themselves at the public’s expense for absolutely no good reason other than that they could. Isn’t zero percent interest fabulous (for fat cat bankers?)

Some of you have questioned why I go berserk over our obviously ‘massaged’ unemployment figures. After all, isn’t a ‘certain amount’ of unemployment ‘natural’?

Think about that for a minute because the answer is obvious…No, it’s not natural at all! Worse is claiming that the current rate of unemployment is 10% and then admitting that we have 83 million working aged citizens who are NOT unemployed…but are instead ‘Not in the workforce’…I mean WTF, just how badly does capitalism have to be broken for it to be scrapped?

Sadly, we all know the answer to that one. It doesn’t matter how badly broken capitalism is; so long as it benefits the elite, it’s not going anywhere.

So we proceed with tonight’s offering

[Purloined from: The Automatic Earth]

January 9 2010: Drowning by numbers

Ilargi: No doubt there are people who see this week's BLS Non-Farm Payroll survey as "not good, but not all that bad either". They can point for instance to the fact that the 85,000 jobs lost according to the report is much better than the 800,000 jobs lost back in March 2009. The Wall Street Journal puts it like this: ”Even though the payroll number was worse than expected, the data reflects an improvement in the jobs market.”.

But unfortunately, this is all smoke, mirrors, bias and outright falsehood. The Household part of the monthly BLS survey mentions 465,000 lost jobs. 647,000 full time jobs left the building. But that's not even remotely where the true problem lies.

The reason why unemployment, as per the Household survey, stayed at 10% and "only" 85,000 jobs are reported MIA in the Payroll survey can be found in the labor force numbers. From November to December 2009, the "persons not in the labor force" category went up by 843,000 (over 1 million when not seasonally adjusted), and now stands at 83,865,000. The vast majority of those signing off, i.e. not actively looking for work, are people who can't see any jobs anywhere in their environment. The worse the economy gets, the fewer people are counted as unemployed. It’s a lovely invention, but it's also am awfully perverted one.

That is also true for seasonal adjustments in other categories. It’s estimated that the actual initial claims numbers may be double what's reported, simply because the models used are too rigid to take into account present economic conditions. A similar idea is true for continuing claims. Michael Widner at Stifel, Nicolaus says:

”We could conceivably have nearly 11 million people collecting unemployment and see the data reported as a 3.something million figure."


U6 unemployment is up. Average and median unemployment duration is up on all counts. The amount of people without a job for more than half a year is soaring and these people now form 40% (6.1 million) of the total unemployed. The employment to population ratio fell to 58.2%, the lowest in at least 27 years. The national payroll level went from 130.8 million in 2000 to 130.9 million today. [ 100,000 jobs added for the 13 million people who were added to the "available" labor pool. In other words, 13 million unemployed were added.

Extended benefits and Emergency Unemployment Compensation, the two programs set up for the long-time jobless, are bursting through their seams. A slight decrease in initial and continuing jobless claims may seem to indicate something positive, but the reality is that people don't leave these programs because they find jobs, but because they've exhausted their benefits and are forced into extended and emergency programs. There are strong suggestions that the latter grew by some 43% in just the past month.

And though we've seen no mention of it this week, we haven't forgotten that the BLS "owes" us the 824,000 jobs they "forgot" to count till March 2009.

No matter where you stand, no matter what you see the economy doing in 2010, it should be clear to everyone who can read by now that reporting on unemployment in the US is a god-forsaken mess, strongly biased towards what pleases Washington, i.e. numbers much lower than the real ones. That said, while many citizens may still be fooled by the official data, you can bet that Washington knows perfectly well what the real numbers are, and many hours of backroom meetings are dedicated to the topic. How much of that reflects genuine care for constituencies, and how much mere worry about election numbers, we’ll leave up to you to ponder.

The same mentality that leads to the severely distorted jobs numbers speaks loudly from the AIG files, that increasingly question Tim Geithner role in the $100+ billion handed to Goldman Sachs et al as 100% compensation for lost credit default swaps wagers. And that, predictably, leads to calls for the resignation of Geithner.

But we've seen similar calls for Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers to resign. And they're still there. Moreover, what difference would it make to remove one of them and leave the others be where they are? If you don't clean up for real, why bother? It becomes just another silly game that way, doesn't it?

Reminds me of a man named Travis Bickle, who said some 35 years ago:

"All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."

Um, I’ve never heard of Travis, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m sure Ilargi included that quote with the best of intentions and purest of meanings; that someday in the uncharted and murky future, people will rise up and clean the, er, ‘scum infested’ halls of power.

Being the left wing ‘nut’ that I am, I’d propose a more certain option…tear the halls of power down! That will not only clean them out but it will also keep them clean!

Besides, if we are to ever put a stop to humans using their fellow humans as barnyard animals, we have to put ‘power’ beyond the reach of those who would abuse it for personal gain.

It can and must be done if mankind is to survive.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

What are they playing at?

Greetings good citizen,

Not only did the nation mourn the loss of the senior senator from Massachusetts, but the stock markets, which looked close to closing negative, rallied once more in the last five minutes of trading.

I’m sure you’ve all heard enough about the funeral arrangements so there’s no need to dwell upon them further here. On the other hand, if you blinked you likely missed the post that is tonight’s offering

Yes, good citizen, after rising continually throughout the ‘deflationary’ period of low interest rates and ‘negative’ inflation, we are now being advised that food prices are, once again, ‘on the rise’.

I’m pretty close to this issue as I ‘do’ the shopping…um, is this article trying to tell me that food prices stopped going up and are now resuming their climb or are they saying they will move up at an even brisker pace than they have been rising?

Food Prices Likely to Start Ticking Up

By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: August 25, 2009

Prices for beef, milk, eggs and some other grocery items have been dropping for several months, providing relief for consumers who suffered through the steep increases of a year ago. But prices are likely to start edging upward again as the economy recovers, according to a new federal report and economic analysts. [Excuse me? When did the price increases stop? If they stopped, I have yet to see it reflected in the weekly shopping bill.]

“The impact from lower energy prices on grocery store prices has largely been played out, and so we’re now looking at grocery store prices to rise modestly through the end of the year,” said Mark Vitner, a managing director and senior economist at Wells Fargo. [Again, the original word on this topic is grocers were unable to ‘recoup’ their ‘losses’ when energy costs spiked and they would keep increasing prices because of this…now we’re being told that ‘reduced energy prices’ have finally ‘played out’ and prices are about to go up again? WTF! Prices haven’t stopped rising.]

The government report, by the Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture, said that grocery prices decreased 0.5 percent in July, compared with June. Compared with July 2008, when overall food costs were surging, grocery prices in July were down 0.9 percent. [Um, notice they don’t tell you what planet this is taking place on, as ‘tenths of a percent’ are once again being treated as a ‘big deal’.]

In several food categories, prices dropped sharply. Beef fell 2.3 percent in July, compared with June, the eighth decrease in the last nine months, according to the report. [Have you priced beef recently? They are indeed knocking down the price BECAUSE NOBODY WAS BUYING IT!] Egg prices were down 2.7 percent from June to July and were 21.3 percent below their level in July a year ago. Milk prices declined 0.4 percent in the month, the 10th decline in the last 11 months, and were 18.4 percent below July 2008. [Somewhat strange to see them using heavily subsidized milk prices as a comparison since the price has no relationship to reality.]

The national average price for a gallon of fresh whole milk in July was $2.99, compared with $3.96 in the same month a year earlier, a 25 percent drop, according to federal data.

Prices for fresh fruit and vegetables were also down markedly compared with their levels a year ago. [Um, you don’t suppose ‘seasonality’ AND the drastic reduction in energy prices have anything to do with it, do you?]

In contrast, some food prices rose compared with last year, including breakfast cereals, sugar and carbonated drinks. [So much for our nod to ‘reality’, a lot more than breakfast cereal and soft drinks have gone up in price.]

Over all, the Agriculture Department forecast that prices for what it calls “food at home,” a category that includes purchases at grocery stores, convenience stores and farmers’ markets, will rise 2 to 3 percent this year. Last year, the department said, prices for food at home rose 6.4 percent, the highest jump in nearly two decades.

“We do expect some price increases with the recovering economy,” said Ephraim Leibtag, a senior economist at the Agriculture Department. “Our numbers here imply there has to be some additional inflation in the next six months to get out of the negatives we’re in right now.” [Wait a minute, Slim! Do you see the ‘smokescreen’ being blown up your backside? The so-called ‘recovery’ (which so far only bloodhounds have caught scent of) is going to be accompanied by rising food prices? What kind of twaddle is this? As I have pointed out repeatedly in the past, it is extremely dangerous to lie about what the consumer can see and touch themselves. If you haven’t been paying attention, let me inform you that despite the lousy spring, they’re projecting a bumper harvest this year! But then again, we’re literally swimming in oil and the price continues to rise…]

Bill Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, a consulting firm that specializes in analysis of food commodity costs, said that even with only a modest gain this year, food inflation was expected to outpace the overall rise in the Consumer Price Index, which he said could be close to zero for the year. [What do you suppose this will do for the still nascent economic recovery? Worse, it appears we are being prepped to let speculators make another killing while they pick our pockets yet again!]

Mr. Lapp said that one reason food prices would continue to rise was that commodities like corn continued to trade above historical averages, even though they had come down from the unusually high levels they reached last year. [Um, add to that that most ethanol producers have gone bankrupt in the meantime…]

And some of the food categories that have recorded price declines, like beef, pork, poultry and dairy products, will begin to go back up as farmers cull herds and flocks, causing supplies of those products to decline.

“I think that the food inflation wake-up call won’t begin, in large measure, until late this year and in 2010,” Mr. Lapp said. He said, however, that there were already signs of rising prices for chicken and milk. [So, this is the tip of the iceberg…millions have lost their homes and millions more have lost their jobs, how do you suppose this is going to turn out?]

Faith Weiner, senior director of public affairs for Stop & Shop, the supermarket chain, said that shoppers had been snapping up large packages of meat or poultry when they were on sale.

“We think folks are stocking up,” Ms. Weiner said. “You might have a special on chicken breasts, a Big Buy packet at a reduced price. People are buying more than they normally would and freezing them because it’s a good value.”

What part of this picture don’t these assholes get? Cut jobs and slash the wages of those who keep their jobs, then let prices climb out of control…what does that sound like to you?

It sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

How much do they think people will tolerate? Sadly, we’ve already proven that we will tolerate quite a bit, even the unfair and the unreasonable.

And once you’ve ‘given it back’ you have to fight for it all over again.

How bad do you suppose it will get good citizen? We all have different thresholds and can even astound ourselves with the levels of depravity we will tolerate.

Why?

Because in our current ‘anything goes’ situation, nobody is making a stand, it’s all good…until it isn’t.

There’s been a lot of discussion out there about ‘moral compasses’ and it has revealed we don’t, as a society, have one.

Be afraid, good citizen, be very afraid.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

No recovery possible...

Greetings good citizen,

I had one of those ‘fish or cut bait’ moments when it came to tonight’s post. I could have run with a reasonably ‘fresh’ update of the homeless situation or I could chose a relatively ‘stale’ story about the non-existent ‘green shoots’ that everybody is beating to death.

Well, didn’t I run into a few ‘copies’ of the homeless story in various places today so I decided to go with the ‘stale’ failed recovery angle…mostly because there is a ‘tie-in’ between Jesse’s main point and my own closing remarks in last night’s piece.

Until I noticed that Jesse had ‘cross-posted’ this article himself, I was backing away from using it (not that it would have been the first time I’d used an article posted by a third party, it was the ‘third party, stale issue’ bit that had me waffling.)

One of the problems with blogging, we almost never get to stories first. It’s our added ‘two cents’ that make the story worth reading, er, again.

There is No Recovery coming…

Submitted by Jesse of Le Café Américain


"The banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, and balance
restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery."

Often a closing comment from our blog, essentially this is what Robert Reich is saying in his recent essay on the economy.

The median wage must generally increase for consumption to resume, and for this to happen the heavy taxes of the financial sector and the oligarchs on the real economy must be lowered significantly in proportion to its size.

There is reason for pessimism that this can happen voluntarily. I have come to the conclusion that there is a pathological drive in some small portion of the population to acquire and control and devour rather than consume, even to their own destruction.

The law sets limits on the speed on highways to protect the many from the reckless and willful behaviour of the few. That we ought not to set limits on the banking system is a remarkable bit of speciousness.

There are obvious questions of how to limit, and how to detect and prevent and prosecute violations, but few can argue that not regulating traffic is the best solution to the difficulty of the task. The comparison of highway regulation to economic commerce and financial transactions is more valid than obtuse. And there are many Wall Street bankers guilty of at least manslaughter in this most recent episode of reckless defiance of the common good for the sake of personal profits.

The comparison of this latest epidemic of bad economic behaviour is strikingly reminiscent of the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century and the Roaring 20's. As you may recall both periods were followed by economic dislocation and a world in flames.

Why we allow this sort of bestial behaviour to ravage the many, in the mistaken support of 'free markets,' where nothing these people touch can remain free and effective and efficient for long, is truly an accomplishment of propaganda and those blinded by ideology.

Robert Reich
When Will The Recovery Begin? Never.
Thursday, July 09, 2009

The so-called "green shoots" of recovery are turning brown in the scorching summer sun. In fact, the whole debate about when and how a recovery will begin is wrongly framed. On one side are the V-shapers who look back at prior recessions and conclude that the faster an economy drops, the faster it gets back on track. And because this economy fell off a cliff late last fall, they expect it to roar to life early next year. Hence the V shape.

Unfortunately, V-shapers are looking back at the wrong recessions. Focus on those that started with the bursting of a giant speculative bubble and you see slow recoveries. The reason is asset values at bottom are so low that investor confidence returns only gradually.

That's where the more sober U-shapers come in. They predict a more gradual recovery, as investors slowly tiptoe back into the market.

Personally, I don't buy into either camp. In a recession this deep, recovery doesn't depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.

Problem is, consumers won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don't have the money, and it's hard to see where it will come from. They can't borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of ten home owners is under water -- owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can't are hunkering down, as they must.

Eventually consumers will replace cars and appliances and other stuff that wears out, but a recovery can't be built on replacements. Don't expect businesses to invest much more without lots of consumers hankering after lots of new stuff. And don't rely on exports. The global economy is contracting.

My prediction, then? Not a V, not a U. But an X. This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years -- featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere -- simply cannot be sustained.

The X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin.

Most certainly good citizen there is no going back to the way things were before. To do so would require that the economy shrink to a point where a vast majority of humanity is left on the outside looking in.

No irony should be lost on the fact that our leaders are indeed, right this very minute, endeavoring to put our old economy back on track, which, fortunately for most of us, is an exercise in futility.

It is the ‘exercise in futility’ part of this puzzle that constitutes the most disturbing aspect of what is being done ‘to us’ rather than ‘for us’…

There is no portion of the stimulus program that promotes economic growth. There is no CCC or WPA providing jobs for the tens of millions that have lost them. There isn’t even a disastrous ‘Taft-Hartley’ act under consideration intended to curb the rampant off shoring of desperately needed US jobs.

No good citizen, at best the ‘stimulus’ merely serves as temporary ‘life-support’ while the economy shrinks down to its ‘new’ size.

If you can’t find a job once the dust settles, you aren’t looking hard enough!

Then, like now, we will scratch our heads and wonder what the hell they’re smokin’ because then, like now, there won’t be any, er, ‘legitimate’ jobs.

Bizarrely, once the rule of law ‘fails’, the rules of the jungle automatically take over.

You’ll find a ‘job’ all right; you’ll have a full time job avoiding capture for the crimes you’ll be forced to commit.


Unless you want to ‘cut to the chase’ and do things ‘Japanese style’. You wander into a retail establishment that is known to prosecute every incidence of shoplifting. You make it pretty obvious that you are taking some goods ‘for a walk’ and stand outside the store until security ‘apprehends’ you.

Given the already crowded state of the prison system, it is unlikely that you would be jailed for a ‘first offense’, or maybe even a second or third offense. But eventually they will ‘lock you up’ and you’re home free, three squares a day and a roof over your head…and nobody got hurt. (Well, YOU may get hurt depending on how big a dickhead security wants to be. To the plus side, punching out the guard for being too aggressive is sure to ‘expedite’ your trip to the big house.)

Not that this is how anyone ‘wants’ to live…but in a society that fails to provide you with a way to support yourself, this is one way out, albeit a dangerous and ultimately meager one.

The natural ‘alternative’ would be to boost as much stuff as you could without being caught. This is easier said than done because it involves never hitting the same place twice. If the operation is a chain, always assume that security in the first place you hit has sent your picture to the other outlets in the region.

Listen to me, giving advice on stealing…and I’m no thief! Sadly, this is where things are headed and survival is job one for each and every one of us.

For the time being, this is a bridge most of us won’t have to cross anytime soon. Although as matters stand, there soon won’t be a nickel’s worth of difference between being in the big house and living on public assistance.

Walls and bars do not a prison make.

As an aside, the topic I was going to comment on, the homeless situation; lends credence to the fact that our society is on a downhill run.

While most people that lose their living situation have family, not every family is capable of taking in their less fortunate siblings for an extended period of time.

In fact, the entire ‘landscape’ of homelessness has turned on its head. Homelessness was once characterized as being mostly single men, now 80% of the newly homeless are single women with one or more children in tow.

Apparently, (and for the time being) it is still unusual for a married couple to fail to find one sibling/parent between the two of them that is capable of (at least temporarily) taking them in.

No one wants to impose but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Why am I even bringing this stuff up? Isn’t the current employment picture gloomy enough without pointing out that many of us will be faced with um, dire choices in the not too distant future.

I’ve been rolling this subject forward on the personal level up until now, let’s ‘zoom out’ for a look at the macro environment.

The economy has shed tens of millions of jobs, off shoring is still a major issue and nobody with the power to curb it is doing anything about it. There is no ‘accident’ here nor is it merely an ‘oversight’. Most of our ‘allies’ have ‘export based’ economies, if we close off access to our markets, they have no place to turn.

Yet for the US to recover, we need every job we can get our hands on.

Eventually this will turn into a ‘do what you’ve got to do’ sort of situation. We will have to start producing what we can for ourselves just as our ‘allies’ will have to scale back their export based economies.

Until this ‘re-balancing’ of local economies takes place there is going to be a whole lot of ‘pain’ happening throughout the world.

Once again, there is no such thing as magic and time is the enemy. The speed with which local economies can re-balance directly effects the amount of carnage any given society experiences.

There is, naturally, another enemy waiting in the wings and that enemy is those who have benefited from destroying the global economy.

How quickly can these powerful criminals, who will adamantly resist change, be dealt with?

Since these multi-national criminals effectively control the governments of the world, I’d posit the pain they are inflicting upon us will be long lasting indeed.

That said, it’s never been easy.

We were standing pretty much in this exact same spot 90 years ago…and we gave the capitalists another chance.

Will we let them ‘off the hook’ again?

I don’t think our children can afford such leniency. The future of our species now depends on our pursuing a more sustainable path.

If we are to survive we must stop enslaving one another for our own selfish ends.

So, since there is no ‘recovery’ possible, what’s it going to be?

Do we select a new path or do we allow the greed-heads among us to drive our entire species over the cliff as we return to barbarism?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner