Mismanagement coupled with misdirection...

Greetings good citizen,

Are you just standing there like a deer in the headlights, unable to make up your mind about what to do?

Of course you are! So how many of you will be surprised to learn you are already ‘roadkill’ as far as our self-professed ‘betters’ are concerned?

Worse is how the media expects us to swallow the refusal of the, er, ‘opposition’ to raise what they have repeatedly raised for their own ‘sainted’ party leaders while they were president?

I guess it's okay if you're a Republican!

Perhaps more damning is how many of you are convinced that it won’t happen, that it would be political suicide rather than the genocide they are trying to foster?

Among my more ‘out there’ theories is the one where those currently in control are ‘conspiring’ to stretch out their dominion over us by eliminating a large amount of the ‘surplus population’.

If they play their cards right it could win them another hundred years…and if they get it wrong they could wipe out our species! (Which will happen anyway if we don’t seriously alter how and why we do what we do…)

Reading over the various offerings this morning gave me the distinct impression that the wheels were ready to fly off the cart at any moment.

But then I remembered that ‘all money is funny’ so what we’re seeing is all an act!

Yup, the collapse of the Eurozone, the (pending) US default…all FAKE!

But I get ahead of myself…

Today’s first offering is backed up by the major media outlets that Federal agencies are preparing for ‘default’.

"We are developing processes and procedures by which the Treasury communicates to us what we are going to do," Plosser said, adding that the task was manageable. "How the Fed is going to go about clearing government checks. Which ones are going to be good? Which ones are not going to be good?"

Very bullish reversal in the metals intraday, with closes in gold and silver above the psychological numbers of 1600 and 40 respectively.

If they can move higher and stick a close, and hold it through option expiration next week, you can say goodbye to these levels, the dollar, and quite a bit more.

Yes good citizen, the criminals will decide who gets paid and who gets stuck…and the rest of us will live with the consequences… but wait, it gets worse!

Even though many on Wall Street want YOU to believe that a default remains unlikely, the financial markets are starting to become agitated. Volatility in stocks has soared, and some investors say stock prices are falling because a United States default could severely raise companies’ costs of doing business.

In the Treasury market, investors are starting to sell, fearing that the government will not make good on some interest payments that will be due next month. And complex financial instruments that will pay out if the United States defaults have become twice as expensive to buy as they were at the start of the year.

Analysts say the signs of panic are small for now.

“The metaphor is a pile of sand,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “You keep putting one piece of sand on the pile, nothing happens, and then, all of the sudden it just caves.”

How ironic is it that the ‘sand’ Mr. Zandi refers to in his metaphor is easily replaced with ‘lies’…and it doesn’t alter the end result!

The real, er, ‘puzzler’ here is why our politicians are even plodding down this particular path when the solution lies in a different direction entirely?

Which is to ask What are our corporate sellouts up to?

The White House suggested for the first time that Mr. Obama might be willing to agree to a short-term increase in the debt ceiling by Congress — perhaps for a few days — if such a deal was in sight, stepping up the pressure on the two parties to come to terms.

Mr. Obama met separately at the White House with Republican and Democratic leaders. But neither side reported any substantive progress as they searched for a formula that would include deep spending cuts, cost-saving changes to entitlement programs and an overhaul of the tax code that would increase revenues by closing certain tax breaks and eliminating deductions but also lower some tax rates.

Politically, the main question remained whether House Republicans would be willing to negotiate over any package that could be construed as raising taxes, and throughout the day there were signs of internal debate among party leaders.

Conspicuously absent from this charade is the ‘purpose of government’ as well as a solid understanding of ‘the greater good’.

When does the greed of the owners outweigh the security (never mind the basic prosperity) of the people?

Short answer is IT DOESN’T!

But you (hopefully) don’t need ME to tell you that!

So WHY is our government even pretending to be at an impasse over taxation and government spending?

It’s a WTF moment good citizen and it is high time we demand to know WTF!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Stick a fork in it...it's DONE!

Greetings good citizen,

I have used, as a literary device, the idea that when the value of money fell into doubt, people would be startled to find their wedding rings contained enough gold to pay off their mortgages…

ASSUMING you could find a broker willing to pay you that amount.

What people living during these insane times need to learn is the only ‘value’ that matters is ‘use value’.

If you can’t eat it or screw it, piss on it!

Okay, that’s the canine ‘value chain’ but it is far more practical than the one most humans subscribe to.

So, what are we gonna do in a world plagued with high unemployment (although capitalism’s failure to provide workers with desperately needed jobs has become a ‘self-repairing’ problem…as people exhaust their unemployment benefits THEY NO LONGER COUNT AS UNEMPLOYED!)

How fucking ‘convenient’ is that?

Then there is the ongoing, er, ‘drama’ of the debt ceiling impasse being played out against the backdrop of an already ‘insolvent’ government.

But take heart, good citizen! A ‘bipartisan’ solution has been proposed (yet again)

What’s it going to take for these guys to wake up to the difference between famous and ‘infamous’?

The bipartisan proposal from the so-called Gang of Six senators to reduce deficits by nearly $4 trillion over the coming decade — and its warm reception from 43 other senators of both parties — renewed hopes for a deal days after talks between Mr. Obama and Congressional leaders had reached an impasse.

Financial markets rallied on the news. And with time running out before the deadline of Aug. 2 to raise the government’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, Mr. Obama’s quick embrace of the plan left House Republicans at greater risk of being politically isolated on the issue if they continue to rule out any compromise that includes higher tax revenues.

Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader who has led opposition to any deal including tax increases, later issued a statement saying the bipartisan Senate plan includes “some constructive ideas to deal with our debt.”

Methinks the pundits who dismiss a government shutdown as ‘political suicide’ aren’t facing reality. Not only is the government ‘broke’, it is also ‘broken’.

Let us take a moment to pause and consider the Elephant in the room, the looming energy crisis…which is a bit of a misnomer as there will be plenty of energy FOR THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD IT!

You’d think ‘alternative energy’ would be springing up like weeds across the countryside but no! If we were to deploy ‘windpower’ it would be, by necessity, ‘imported’.

The other, er, ‘blatant slap in the face’ to the citizens of the US is how ‘our government’ is abandoning its space program while China is launching theirs (with, make no mistake about it, technology developed HERE!)

So good citizen, how do YOU define ‘treason’?

When Atlantis lands Thursday, the famous room will seem even more ghostly. After 30 years and 135 missions, shuttles will no longer need controlling. NASA plans to turn the space into a training venue, mostly for astronauts going to the International Space Station and flight controllers working with the station.

Over the next couple of months, 800 or 900 people in the mission operations division will be laid off, said Paul Hill, head of that division and a former flight director himself.

"As proud as we are of our success ... I have to keep that in perspective with the 90 percent of the workforce that will no longer be part of that effort," Hill said.

Kwatsi Alibaruho, flight director for this final mission, said the specter of so many flight controllers without jobs is "kind of following us through the halls."

So we will have the ‘appearance’ of a space program without the apparatus of a space program. But wait, what’s that on the horizon?

Why it’s the ‘privatization’ of space…and guess who THE ONLY CUSTOMER IS?

We are living with the granduer of ‘privatized’ healthcare (thanks to the fucking Gipper!) have they privatized ANYTHING that has actually saved the taxpayer a single cent?

Short answer…NO!

The disturbing part is the ease with which this nation is being turned into a third world hell hole…because the ‘focus’ of our justice system has been quietly shifted from social welfare to the primacy of ownership.

Well good citizen, I got news for you. Nobody ‘owns’ nothin’!

And despite your best arguments we all, truly are, in this together!

Refusing to recognize your ‘commitment’ to the rest of humanity does not absolve you that responsibility.

Which is to invoke one of the central planks of A Simple Plan: Those who do not appreciate the benefits of civil society will have those benefits, er, ‘withdrawn’ from them.

Increasingly the ‘luxuries’ of living indoors and eating regularly rely on peace. As the world becomes more crowded, the processes that maintain ‘peace’ become, er, ‘strained’.

This brings us back to the basic social equation: Without equality there can be no justice and without justice there can be no peace…

In order for equality to be achieved the playing field MUST be leveled…which means NO ONE can be permitted to profit AT THE EXPENSE OF ANOTHER!

The world doesn’t need profit good citizen. No irony should be lost on the fact that the blind pursuit of profit is what’s tearing our civilization apart!

What the world needs more of is love good citizen.

If you can’t bring yourself to share then you surrender yours…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Where does it end?

Greetings good citizen,

While I usually make the case for our current downfall being centered on Reagan, he couldn’t have done what he did without the groundwork laid by Nixon…who only won office thanks to LBJ’s flat refusal to seek a second term.

Which is to ask if any of these assholes EVER wore ‘a white hat’?

And the answer is likely no.

Sadly, it doesn’t matter.

How we got here is moot compared to the question of how we are going to resolve this issue.

Yes, we need to understand who was behind this betrayal of our nation so we can insure they are incapable of, er, ‘sabotaging’ efforts to restore balance.

A Simple Plan sweeps away the old power structure completely, even the outdated and useless legal structure would be completely abandoned.

No more lawyers, no more judges and no more legislators.

Who polices the police? The leadership.

Better, leaders are NOT politicians, they have no, er, ‘authority’ to create or interpret the laws as they see fit. (Although they will have to prosecute the law to the best of their ability/understanding. Let it suffice to say ‘dummies’ don’t make leader, you have to be sharp to win!)

Laws will be simple and few, making the task ‘more manageable’.

The central premise behind anarchy is ‘rules WITHOUT rulers’ (and not the ‘anything goes’ no rules happy horseshit the conservatives [who live in the land of ‘make believe’ in the first place] generally contend.)

Who makes the rules? Those who must live under them! (And not just a handful who most often exempt themselves from prosecution in the first place.)

Which is to point out that the law would be a very different animal if EVERYBODY had to obey it.

And that’s the way it ‘should be’, isn’t it?

But we (naturally) digress.

The topic du juor is the aftermath of the ‘Reagan Revolution’ also known as ‘Morning in America’.

The article isn’t clear on who is being quoted here but they make a fair point:

Anyways, here is my take on things after being a long-time trickle down economics person. Awhile back, I came across tax data that showed while Reagan cut A LOT of taxes, he was also forced by threats of veto to also sign into law A LOT of tax increases.

These tax increase were by and large closing of loopholes and tax exemptions, which mainly affected richer tax filers. So much so in fact, that people in the higher tax brackets were paying more in taxes by the start of Reagan’s second term, than when Reagan was first elected.

After looking into this, I still haven’t figured out where history got distorted. However, it seems that what happened during the Reagan years to get things “jump-started” was taxing the rich more, and taxing the middle class less.

And that goes against EVERYTHING that “conservatives” say today.

Why the destruction of the nation’s customer base is suddenly ‘big news’ is mystifying to us older folks but if we keep in mind the younger generation doesn’t know any better the reason behind the current ‘shock and awe’ becomes clear.

Hell, there are adults who BELIEVE Clinton is responsible for globalization.

Why do adults believe this? Because they were too young to remember who first proposed the idea, the original (but by no means the first) corporate sock puppet, St. Ronnie Reagan!

Don’t anybody get the wrong idea about Slick Willy, he is a dyed in the wool conservative from the get go who was very adept at ‘playing the game’. (Unlike the current sock puppet.)

The appearance of bipartisanship is exactly that, appearance.

Just as voting provides the ‘illusion of participation’.

Well Bubba, we have to sweep aside these ‘delusions’ if we are to have any hope of restoring decency and justice to our civilization.

We have to have a framework that supports the ‘rule of the people’ (ALL of the people) if we are to avoid extinction by our own hand.

I have often invited (specific) critiques of A Simple Plan and have yet to receive a single specific quibble much less a problem.

The plan is bullet proof, that’s why nobody can come up with a more specific objection than ‘I don’t like it’ (mostly because you CAN’T get ‘rich’)

Naturally, rich is relative. Under A Simple Plan we would ALL be RICH (but we’d still have to work for a few hours a week.)

Are you all so hopelessly brainwashed?

I don’t think so.

Thanks for letting me inside your heads,

Gegner

Tip of the iceberg

Greetings good citizen,

You’d think this business of bitching about our badly mismanaged society (that we can’t get away from) would start to get repetitive, that one would run out of things to point at…

But NO! Every day there is fresh ammunition just lying there, asking to be picked up!

So, at the risk of repeating myself/belaboring the obvious, yes good citizen, the destruction of our civilization is proceeding apace.

The only ‘question’ is whether things will get better (unlikely, for most of us) or worse once the new regime seizes power.

Which is to ask how much more will the public tolerate?

Rip away their ‘rights’ (to a peaceful legal remedy) and that question becomes meaningless.

The ‘Divine right of Kings' were unspeakably cruel but his majesty could keep it coming as long as here were virgins to rape and peasants to exploit!

And showing ‘intolerance’ to the King was (and soon will be) fatal.

Left to your imagination is the question of what makes a man a King? and, increasingly, in our society the ‘kingmaker’ has become the ‘financial sector’.

A financial sector that would be seriously hard pressed to define the term ‘counterfeiting’…

Investors also remained wary about events in the United States, where President Obama is trying to get lawmakers to agree to a deficit-reducing package before an Aug. 2 deadline for increasing the debt ceiling.

On Wall Street, stocks were down in midmorning trading, with the Dow Jones industrial average off 136.57 points, or 1.1 percent, to 12,343.16 and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index losing 13.95 points, or 1.06 percent, to 1,302.19.

In Europe, the market jitters marked the start of an important week for the European Union as its leaders attempt to stem full-blown market contagion.

As of this moment the Dow is off 163…but, naturally, that makes ‘certain shares’ [hint: financial stocks] a ‘bargain’!

Just ponder that one for a minute and see if it doesn’t come up ‘screw job’ in your mind.

In yet another subject that is suddenly receiving a lot of attention, Mr. Krugman has some interesting observations to share regarding the housing market

Instead, these officials are pushing for a settlement with mortgage companies that, reports Shahien Nasiripour of The Huffington Post, “would broadly absolve the firms of wrongdoing in exchange for penalties reaching $30 billion and assurances that the firms will adhere to better practices.”

Why the rush to settle? As far as I can tell, there are two principal arguments being made for letting the banks off easy. The first is the claim that resolving the mortgage mess quickly is the key to getting the housing market back on its feet. The second, less explicitly stated, is the claim that getting tough with the banks would undermine broader prospects for recovery.

Neither of these arguments makes much sense.

The claim that removing the legal cloud over foreclosure would help the housing market — in particular, that it would help support housing prices — leaves me scratching my head. It would just accelerate foreclosures, and if more families were evicted from their homes, that would mean more homes offered for sale — an increase in supply. An increase in the supply of a good usually pushes that good’s price down, not up. Why should the effect on housing go the opposite way?

I definitely agree with Mr. Krugman although probably for a different reason. (Economists to date have yet to display a convincing grasp of ‘cause and effect’)

While he cites the effect of more foreclosed homes on an already saturated housing market, he ignores the ‘dearth of buyers’ situation…or maybe he assumes this is ‘self-evident’ and doesn’t warrant explaining (in that case, my bad!)

No buyers coupled with a rapidly expanding economic desert that will only get exponentially larger once heating oil rises north of $5 a gallon.

Too many units and too few buyers!

This will eventually make housing a ‘perq’ (a place to stay will be included in your, er, ‘job contract’.) This may create some serious downside the further down the food chain we venture, with, er, ‘low level’ workers being granted space on which to pitch their tents…near a communal restroom and water tap, of course.

Um, it remains to be seen whether or not the ‘rental value’ of these perqs will be taxable. This could vary from, um, employer to employer.

Which begs the reverse statement; the future’s so ‘dim’ I’ve got to wear night vision goggles!

[A parody on that old Huey Lewis tune, “The future’s so bright I got to wear shades!”]

I am sure many of you are taken back by my perpetual gloomy outlook, the constant ‘negativity’.

Honestly good citizen, is there a ‘bright side’ to this mess that I’m just not seeing?

While my posts often veer off into some mighty dark outcomes, every one of them is not only possible, but PROBABLE! (Dependent on where you land on the ‘value chain’)

So, as C.K. Michaelson so adeptly puts it While the ‘clowns’ are in the center ring fighting for ‘no new taxes’ our civilization is being flushed down the toilet.

The US Tax Burden Falls Disproportionately On Individuals and Small Business


Although the nominal US corporate tax rate of 35% seems high, and especially so given all the corporate funded propaganda promoting more tax cuts and givebacks, in fact the realized corporate rates are relatively low both in terms of historical experience and other countries. This is because of the many loopholes, subsidies, and accounting gimmicks available to its corporate citizens from the corporate friendly government.

One could make the case that the tax burden is falling disproportionately on smaller businesses and individuals that do not have the infrastructure and latitude to take advantage of the loopholes available to the bigger business lobby companies.

State and local taxes appear to be regressive. The top echelons of corporations and private individuals seem to be doing rather well for themselves.

Download Ten Charts from Center for American Progress

Follow the link to read the charts.

Today’s post is approaching the short side of long…if that makes any sense!

We wrap up today’s offering with another brief visit to Dystopia

Imagine if you will a world where most of what you know is a lie, worse, you know it’s a lie but there is little you can do about it.

You ‘tuned out’ a long time ago figuring that if things went too far off the rails, you’d ‘probably’ see it coming.

Bad news…it’s not as simple as it looks, is it?

Well, today’s headlines are only the tip of a much larger iceberg.

No irony should be lost on the fact that this is the same iceberg that has sunk our civilization!

Inside was a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by The News of the World, a now defunct British tabloid newspaper.

Yet from August 2006, when the items were seized, until the autumn of 2010, no one at the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly referred to as Scotland Yard, bothered to sort through all the material and catalog every page, said former and current senior police officials.

During that same time, senior Scotland Yard officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the tabloid. They steadfastly maintained that their original inquiry, which led to the conviction of one reporter and one private investigator, had put an end to what they called an isolated incident.

How many of you saw that ‘isolated incident’ claim coming?

Starting to get a little ‘old’ don’t you think?

Pretty soon good citizen, even YOU won’t think it’s funny no more!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The symptoms are NOT 'the cause'

Greetings good citizen,

I’ve already posted once today but the more I thought about this one, the more it ate at me because the Symptoms are not ‘the cause’

But the real culprit — or at least the main one — has been hiding in plain sight. We are living through a tremendous bust. It isn’t simply a housing bust. It’s a fizzling of the great consumer bubble that was decades in the making.

The auto industry is on pace to sell 28 percent fewer new vehicles this year than it did 10 years ago — and 10 years ago was 2001, when the country was in recession. Sales of ovens and stoves are on pace to be at their lowest level since 1992. Home sales over the past year have fallen back to their lowest point since the crisis began. And big-ticket items are hardly the only problem.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently published a jarring report on what it calls discretionary service spending, a category that excludes housing, food and health care and includes restaurant meals, entertainment, education and even insurance. Going back decades, such spending had never fallen more than 3 percent per capita in a recession. In this slump, it is down almost 7 percent, and still has not really begun to recover.

As we all know, if we flipped this rock over we’d find richer rich (and more of them) mostly ‘created’ by stock market shenanigans!

We are told the, er, ‘astounding leaps’ in market valuation have been attributed to ‘increases in productivity’ and most of that has come from the ‘global race to the bottom’.

Since there is no such place as the ‘cheaper there’ (that doesn’t involve criminal money manipulation) most of these increases in valuation are…what’s the best word…FALSE!

This is the hell of the debt ceiling charade, the pretense that we are ‘solvent’ in the friggin first place! You know and I know the nation as well as the rest of the world is bankrupt (on paper.)

The ONLY thing keeping the wheels spinning is ‘creative accounting’.

Which is to say it is only a matter of time before someone comes along and demands their money, only to be told they can’t have it (or they can’t roll over their debt, same result.)

Then the trainwreck begins in earnest.

This is the part almost nobody is prepared for. We will all marvel over the ‘abruptness’ of ‘the crash’.

But still we haven’t touched upon the ‘cause’ of the current, er, drought of consumer demand that Mr. Leonhardt lays out for us.

As I have been lamenting for many years now, nobody can survive very long in an economic desert!

The classic ‘ghost town’ is the perfect example of the end result of failing to protect local/domestic workers.

And there are ghost towns everywhere across these United States, they are not ‘restricted’ to abandoned mining towns (as those flag waving idiots would have you believe!)

So, why is ‘consumer demand’ falling like a rock?

Because the ‘economic desert’ is spreading like wildfire and our useless politicians aren’t doing a damn thing to stop it!

Why is that good citizen? Why has our society allowed the ‘importers’ to hold the rest of us as economic hostages?

Like the title of today’s first post, ‘whatcha gonna do about it?’

It had better be a hell of a lot more than shrug, your kids are counting on you!

Thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Whatcha gonna do about it?

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we see the prevailing attitude is, “Whatcha gonna do about it?” Which is right up there with, “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke!” for getting people’s hackles up.

Naturally, it is, after it is all said and done, up to you.

So good citizen, what ARE you gonna do about it?

I can tell you what NOT to do, don’t waste your time ‘protesting’. The time to ‘protest’ is long past.

And, if you haven’t figured this out for yourself yet, don’t waste your time voting…(go ahead and vote, just don’t expect anything to come of it.)

Contrary to the 'published results', there is no way in hell the Republican’s won a majority in the house in the mid-term elections, there is just no logical way, starting with the 1 in 5 argument!

The reason more than half of all voters are ‘independent’ is because the Democratic party was hijacked by corporate sellouts…

Which brings us to this debt ceiling bullshit

WASHINGTON — With talks on a big budget deal at a stalemate, Congressional leaders turned Friday to negotiating a fallback plan for raising the debt limit as President Obama and House Republicans intensified their efforts to win over public opinion for the long battle ahead.

Given the impasse, House Republicans scheduled a vote for Tuesday on a measure that would cut deeply into the federal budget, cap government spending for the years ahead and approve a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. The Democratic-controlled Senate may vote Wednesday on a balanced budget amendment.

While neither measure will become law, given Democrats’ opposition, Republicans are eager to show their conservative base that they are not retreating, and that they will press their case for vastly shrinking the government through the 2012 elections.

Understand that ‘conservative base’ are the one in five voters who self identify as Republicans.

If we are to believe what the corporate owned media tells us the majority of independent voters side with the ‘nuttier than squirrel shit’ Republicans.

In fairness, more than half of voting aged citizens ‘don’t’…vote that is. They have seen the writing on the wall and choose to use their time more poductively.

Just so we’re clear, we have, er, ‘one side’ telling us we can’t increase taxes and that we MUST reduce the deficit (caused by THEIR wars of choice/free trade policies.)

And we have their ‘opponents’, who are promising to shred the social safety net in exchange for tax increases!

What here doesn’t scream ‘corporate sell out’?

And the really bad news is numbnuts looks ‘on track’ to get re-elected!

If we have to live through four more years of this bullshit there is a high likelihood we will welcome the coming despot with deafening cheers and rose petals!

Um, as some commentators have pointed out, we are entering the fourth year since the meltdown of the mortgage market and we find ourselves on the verge of another collapse (because NOTHING was done about the first one!)

Worse, we all know WHY nothing is being done.

It is the uncontrovertble evidence that our government has been taken captive and needs to be ‘purged’…the only question remaining is whether WE will purge it (unlikely) or THEY will?

Since we aren’t making any moves to, er, ‘correct’ these ‘deficiencies’; the criminals aren’t in any hurry to announce investigtions (which will serve as the criminal’s cue to exit stage left!)

Yes, like the past four years we will be expected to believe that the trail has grown ‘too cold’ to follow and the deeds will go ‘unpunished’.

But, how fortunate for us that this sort of situation makes it the perfect time to prosecute those in charge of the justice system for turning a blind eye and sitting on their hands!

How ironic is it that those who are ‘summarily executed’ without a trial will cry about the ‘unfairness’ of their plight when it was they who created/ruled by precisely that premise (that ‘life is ‘unfair’)

Sort of a ‘reap what you sow’ situation…

Which leads us to our second offering for a look at the fruits borne by those who subscribe to the ‘life’s unfair’ doctrine:

No. 379: June CPI, Industrial Production
Subscription required
July 15th, 2011

• Economy Falters as Key Indicators Put in Worst Performances Since “End” of the Recession in June 2009
• Higher Energy Prices Create Broad Inflationary Pressures Across the Economy
• Despite Short-Lived Dip in Gasoline Prices June Annual Consumer Inflation Held at 32-Month High
• June’s Annual Inflation: 3.6% (CPI-U), 4.1% (CPI-W), 11.1% (SGS)
• Annual “Core” Inflation in a Steady Upside Move Since QE2

Without putting too fine a point on it good citizen the ‘economic dashboard’ is a solid wall of red lights!

The global economy is out of control and about to make a ‘hard landing’.

What you need to understand is that the same ‘incompetance’ behind the failure to prosecute the criminals responsible for this will also be invoked when the supply chain snaps into a million tiny pieces.

How tragic for the rest of us that the, er, ‘designers’ of capitalist society viewed the ‘fuck you, pay me’ system as a sort of ‘insurance’ against default.

You can hear them now saying, "I guess you had better make sure that nobody defaults!"

And now we are staring at defaults across the board!

Naturally, there is no way this is an ‘accident’.

Yet I find myself in the position of proclaiming that Humpty Dumpty was pushed!

It is perhaps fitting to point out that the collapse of our civilization proceeds, er, ‘unhindered’ and ‘as planned’.

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