Knees or feet?

Greetings good citizen,

It’s nice having extra ‘downtime’ so I can expand the amount of material I comb through for your reading pleasure. Naturally, simply cutting and pasting someone else’s work in this space doesn’t do you any good, you could just as easily find these pieces for yourself.

My job is to add to the perspective of the original writer, make the piece more interesting.

Tonight’s offering is sure to set some folks teeth on edge without reading further than the title.

Where do you suppose I stand on this issue? Do you care or is it more important to know where you stand? Are you a ‘weak, fearful thing?’

[Hat tip: The Automatic Earth]

Americans have become weak and fearful things

Joe,

Today, a friend forwarded to me a news article with this headline: "Fines proposed for going without health insurance." Here are some things I don't get:

1) If folks can't afford to reroof the Old Manse or buy groceries or put retreads on the Jimmy, how (and why) are they going to get insurance, and

2) If they can't afford insurance, how are they going to afford the alleged fine, and

3) Who is the Insurance Police, who's going to rat me out, and

4) Why did The Bastards wait until the whole country is unemployed to pull this shit, and

5) Who elected these boobs -- wait, I have a long-standing soft spot for boobs; make that "idiots" -- anyway, and supposedly to act in our interests? Not me.

My elected representatives so far stand mute on these salient and vexing points.

I tell ya, I'm glad I'm old and won't have to watch much more of this nonsense go by. Although, my Ma's 85 and going strong, still tearing up trees and throwing rocks, I seriously don't think I can take it. I'll blow the beans out of my pressure cooker one of these days.

And you? Well?

Jim

------

Jim,

It's like this ole buddy. Mandatory insurance can be made to sound worse than it is. Especially given that the word mandatory scares the hell out of Americans, even though we already have mandatory drivers license and drivers insurance, income tax, building permits, school attendance, vehicle registration, home insurance for mortgages, personal identification, security scanning at airports, income tax filing, dog licensing, sales taxes, etc. (Looking at this short partial list, I can hear the libertarians locking and loading as we speak.)

For example, Spain, which is now considered to have the best overall health system in the world, has mandatory health insurance. So do many other countries, though they do not think of it in those terms, and though they are often technically purchasing it from the government at very low costs, which they perceive (and rightfully so) as a tax. This helps offset the government cost of insuring retired, poor, unemployed and others who cannot afford insurance. The government covers these people anyway, but must recover the cost. (What a novel idea for running a government! Knowing how you are going to pay for things.)

A U.S. "public option" (we are not even allowed to utter the term socialized healthcare, or even universal healthcare, because anything universal, which is to say fair to all, is a goddamned commie plot -- the cold war lives on in our capitalist state indoctrination) could cover everyone unable to afford insurance by providing it at extremely low cost. So low that even people below the poverty level, and thus qualify for supplemental income tax rebates, would have insurance. It would simply be deducted from their $500 tax rebates or whatever. So they would never even see it being paid for.

The insurance companies love the mandatory part, which would deliver millions of new customers into their hands and let them set the price. But they hate any so-called public option, which would give those poor customers an alternative. So they've done a pretty good job of torpedoing the public option. Good enough to scare Obama off it for a while, even though any such public measure of his would always have been a half measure and still depended upon the insurance corporations to exist. Now it's back, but who knows what it looks like now, or will look like when the fight is over.

And insurance companies especially fear the possibility of a national health card, which inevitably comes with any sort of government sponsored public healthcare. It's just too damned efficient. For instance, in France, doctors have no files, just a card reader and an Internet connection that links to the patient's permanent files and scan images. But it also tracks costs, fees and billings. And in France (or Germany, I forget) if the doctor is not paid within 72 hours, the insurance company is fined. Health insurance companies in Germany are totally non-profit, but sell other insurance -- auto and home -- for profit. They see providing efficient health coverage as a good leader item and a chance to show off their performance to customers. A public option is the first step toward such a system, or something similar. But I suspect we will never see a national health card. These thugs in America would never stand for it. They like to count their money unseen.

Elected officials, the strong liberal ones at least, are mute on this because to say anything resembling the above is political death. The brownshirts who worked them over at town hall meetings at the behest of the healthcare industry would not be so easy on them next time, given what's at stake for the capitalist overclass. Which is to say the healthcare industry's corporate criminal cartel.

And besides, they own the joint. Our government is now a corporate criminal enterprise extorting the wealth productivity of the people. The people are so used to it and so conditioned they no longer know how to ask questions or extrapolate outcomes. They just react in fear of any new public proposal that would change the status quo. [Or so it would seem…]

As for the mandatory part and the fines, that is a red herring if ever there was one. People who have a hard time paying for healthcare (and who doesn't?) get scared out of their britches by such threats. That's why the Republicans put it in there. To scare people away. First you take a good and reasonable thing like universal healthcare, and turn it into a scary authoritarian mandatory thing with grave punishments. Put some stink all over it, something obvious and odious. Make it a burden AND a threat.

That is one of the poison pills for the bill. There will be others to come. After the death panel thing, and the way the people swallowed it, we already know the outcome. Hell, one of the anti-healthcare lies being circulated around here right now is that Obama wants to have mandatory abortions of anyone born with low IQ or is otherwise substandard. Which is OK with me because it would spell the end of the Republican Party.

But whatever they do, there will be no rounding up and fining of the underemployed, unemployed or broke. That's 50 million people these days. Any effort would be mostly a paperwork exercise, at this point. And besides, they do not want your body. They want your money. Thug's work the neighborhoods where the money is, not where it ain't. We live in an extortion based criminal enterprise masquerading as a government, so one shudders to think of the paperwork liens that could be placed on homes, etc. They are paperwork too, but have the strength of law behind them. The commissariat judges who provide the legal muscle for the cartels.

All of which is moot as long as medical and pharma costs in this country are astronomical and still rising, making doctors, executives and major shareholders in the crime syndicate richer than ever. And as long as drone missiles, 400 military bases and two ongoing wars keep draining an already looted public treasury that is forced to run international indebtedness anyway.

Whenever we see something like the mandatory health insurance covered in the media, it is there for effect, not to inform us. It is there to cloud the issue and scare the piss out of people toward the ends of the corporate state. To make them fearfully ask the wrong questions and miss the real issue.

The real question is this: When are we going to rise up against our government and the criminal cartel that owns it?

And with each passing day I am more convinced that the answer is -- never. That takes true inner convictions and ideals, not to mention courage. The real thing, not political rhetoric and ideology. Convictions are measured by actions. And true convictions are arrived at through the clear-eyed self-examination and deep questioning and personal sacrifice of individuals. And defining one's self as something necessarily other than the state. We failed to do so too long ago. We are now state property. A mass of people rallying and surging back and forth in response to state manufactured pseudo events and faux choices. If I still loved this country I would weep for it. But I've watched us too willingly acquiesce to this fate for too long. I don't think we have the reservoir of cultural, moral, spiritual and political strength to turn things around. Or even conceive of what can be, other than what we've seen. Instead, we are issued empty terms as convictions, such as democracy and diversity.

Surely though, the noisy pseudo drama of pseudo choices will go on in a pseudo democracy. If I were a younger man, it might possibly be instructive, in a chilling way. But a guy gets tired of learning the same old lesson year after year, decade after decade. The lesson being that Americans have become weak and fearful things. Ignorant of any sort of real self agency in shaping their country's government.They embrace the notion of "working within the system." Then too, the consequences for doing otherwise are dire. Our corpo-government crime syndicate makes that very clear. In a mob neighborhood, everyone is afraid.

In closing let me say, by all means go ahead and blow the beans out of your pressure cooker. I did. And I found that it left me with a clearer head (or maybe a less cluttered delusion of my own, who is to say? But either way, now the decor inside the old cranium allows me to sleep better at nights). People will call you nuts, say you've gone over the brink. But I find that there is plenty of fine company down here at the bottom of the cliff.

In art and labor,

Joe

PS: I hear on the BBC this morning that the US is still number two (behind Switzerland) in economic output. The difference between the quality and security of our lives and that of the Swiss can be seen as a measure of what is siphoned off by the cartel. Evidently there is quite a bit of wealth being produced by the people left to steal, leaving public amenities and the people to run on pure debt. Thus, don't expect our criminal overlords to let up on us any time soon.

So what do you think good citizen? Are American’s ‘washed up’? Are we so weak and fearful that we all forgot who runs this country…or who defends it? [Our kids! Sadly, commanded by their kids.]

There are all kinds of ‘considerations’ that factor into the larger equation but in the end we return to the same old place that those who battle tyranny and oppression always end up, facing the same old question: is it better to live on your knees or die on your feet?

Sadly, if you live on your knees, you’re already dead.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Limited Alternatives

Greetings good citizen,

Friday and Saturday’s posts have dealt with the topic of the economic recovery that isn’t and there’s no better way to illustrate the truth behind that argument than to let some of the air out of the ‘myths’ the so-called recovery is pinned on.

Front and center is the issue of ‘alternative energy’ and the urgent need to convert from using fossil fuels to a clean, renewable energy source. Key to cracking this complex problem is the issue of getting things where they need to be, when they need to be there.

Let us proceed to tonight’s offering for a good look at the progress being made in the future of ‘alternative transportation’.

To Hopeful Makers, the Electric Car’s Time Is Here
By CARTER DOUGHERTY
Published: September 13, 2009

FRANKFURT — The electric car is at the starting line, and the gun is about to sound. Now automakers must prove that the technology — and the markets are ready.
After years of talk and prototypes, some automobile makers believe the electric vehicle is about to become more than just a science experiment.

The French company Renault will unveil a lineup at the Frankfurt motor show this week that includes a purely electric sedan, without a backup internal combustion engine. Renault says the vehicle will be in showrooms by 2011.

General Motors, which recently emerged from bankruptcy protection, is offering the Chevrolet Volt as one of its comeback cars. The Volt is an electric vehicle with a backup gasoline-run generator for longer trips.

BMW will be unveiling the Vision Efficient Dynamics, a plug-in diesel-electric concept car. And Volkswagen is adding an electric version to its Up! concept car.

“This is not a false dawn,” said Paul Scott, vice president and a founder of Plug In America, a group that has long accused automakers of moving too slowly on electric cars. “This is the real thing.” [But is it ‘the real answer’?]

Still, questions about relatively limited range and high costs vex electric vehicles. Two prominent skeptics are Audi, the German luxury carmaker, and Toyota, maker of the Prius Hybrid. These firms are developing fully electric vehicles of their own, but for the moment, are emphasizing other technologies. Audi is pushing “clean diesel” engines, and Toyota is working on a hydrogen-based fuel cell technology that would obviate the need for heavy batteries.

Other companies argue that public fascination with electric cars can be made profitable — soon. [They’re plenty profitable right now…affordability is another issue entirely.]

“Once we put the cars on the road and can have customers test-drive the cars, we are quite convinced that we will transform this interest into a clear market,” said Thierry Koskas, the director of Renault’s electric vehicle program.

Renault’s French rival, PSA Peugeot Citroën, sold 10,000 electric cars from 1995 to 2005, mainly in the form of the Peugeot 106, a compact car. Waning consumer interest and a European phase-out of cadmium, a crucial ingredient in the car’s batteries, ended that venture. But Peugeot is back, having signed a deal with Mitsubishi last week to sell electric cars in Europe by the end of 2010. [Er, but how long will it be before some other rare element is either exhausted or outlawed?]

Electric vehicles might capture the public imagination in much the way that hybrids — the Toyota Prius being the most important —have done in the last few years. But if ambitious rollout schedules give way to delays, automakers could end up feeding consumer cynicism.

“It could be that some manufacturers are awakening expectations that they cannot fulfill in a reasonable time frame,” said Willi Diez, director of the Institute for Automotive Research in Nürtingen-Geislingen, near Stuttgart.

Advocates of traditional engines have by no means ceded the field.

In an interview with Lawrence Ulrich, an auto blogger for the Web portal MSN, Johan de Nysschen, president of Audi of America , called the Chevrolet Volt “a car for idiots.” He argued that the $40,000 base price at which G.M. had hinted smacked of fantasy or, at the least, a narrow appeal to the most environmentally committed.

“No one is going to pay a $15,000 premium for a car that competes with” conventional sedans that cost around $25,000, he said. “So there are not enough idiots who will buy it.” [Add in the cost of replacing the batteries every couple of years and you’re talking some real money…]

Renault, however, says its cars are a “rational choice” for getting around town. “We don’t just want people to buy an electric vehicle because it’s fashionable,” Mr. Koskas said. [Sadly, many who can’t afford it will do just that.]

In Frankfurt, Renault is introducing a lineup of all-electric cars that do without a “range extender,” which is a combustion engine that turns an electricity generator when the battery’s charge is depleted.

(The Volt will have a gasoline engine to charge the batteries on long trips. In the Prius, the range extender is an entire gasoline powertrain alongside the electrics.)

Since most Europeans drive less than 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, a day, or less than the range of a single battery charge, Renault says it can start selling cars before an elaborate infrastructure for charging them is in place. Its electric cars are scheduled to go on sale by 2011 in some countries in Europe and possibly Asia, but not in the United States, Mr. Koskas said. [A more interesting question is what the vehicle will cost in dollars?]

But Nissan, the Japanese automaker that Renault controls, is planning to introduce the Leaf, an electric sedan, in late 2010 in Japan, the United States and Europe. (It will share many components with Renault vehicles.) Renault is not disclosing the cost of its vehicles.

For skeptics like Mr. Nysschen, though, government support for electric vehicles tilts the playing field. The Volt and others, he said in a follow-up statement, exist by the grace of “taxpayer-funded subsidies.”

The Volt’s attractiveness will rest in part on a $7,500 United States government tax credit for purchasers of electric vehicles. And France is offering almost the same amount. [Geez, didn’t know they tucked THAT into the stimulus bill!]

Mr. Koskas counters that the subsidies should be considered part of the start-up phase and should fade away as scale is achieved.

“We will not need this to last forever,” he said. “We are in an industry that depends very much on volumes.”

Indeed, some critics are hedging their bets.

Mr. Nysschen’s company, Audi, created a Web site, electricityuntamed.com, which is counting down to the opening of the Frankfurt auto show Tuesday, where it will unveil a prototype electric car. And Toyota is showing its own Prius Plug-In, scheduled for full release in 2012.

Somehow I didn’t think this article would ask the $64,000 question…but most ‘pump pieces don’t.

Consider if you will, good citizen, where the electricity for these ‘plug ins’ comes from?

Wouldn’t that be either an oil fired or coal fired generating plant? Okay, some of them are fired by natural gas and some of them are hydro…but those are pretty rare, just like the nuke near me.

Honestly good citizen, how many people willing to shell out for an electric car will even consider where the electricity is coming from? All they’re doing is swapping one polluter for another, your net gain is zero.

I don’t know about you good citizen but I think we need to do better than that.

We face the same ‘affordability issues’ with electric vehicles that we do with wind turbines and solar panel set ups.

Perhaps more importantly, it’s no longer a matter of ‘desirability’, we must change or we risk ruining the environment in way we may not be able to recover from.

So what’s more important here, profits or survival?

This is not a rhetorical question and there’s only one acceptable answer…but the capitalists will never go along with it.

We have finally bumped head on into a situation where we must decide what is more important, ownership or survival…and we don’t have a few decades to hash things out.

We have to get off the dime and we have to do it quick, preferably before it is too late.

Understand good citizen that the capitalist model is broken and there’s no way to fix it, but die hard capitalists refuse to accept this outcome, their right to exploit others for personal gain stands in the way of the survival of our species.

The central reason this problem has gone unaddressed for so long is that the solution is ‘distasteful’ to them.

Well, it’s time push came to shove.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

It's not just me...

Greetings good citizen,

Weekends are tough as the ‘news cycle’ sort of stops in its tracks…not that I’m bitchin’, the respite is nice.

That said, I closed yesterday’s offering with a rather grim assessment of the latest short range intelligence coming out of the blogosphere and speculated it ‘might’ just be me. But as tonight’s offering shows, I’m not the only one that has a pessimistic outlook.

[Purloined from: The Automatic Earth]

Friday, September 11, 2009
Through the prism of fraud and poverty

Ilargi: I’ll try to take a slightly different approach today, while remembering the dead, and let someone else do the talking for a change.

Yesterday, I picked up the article below, written by an investment adviser named J. S. Kim, who puts his finger right where it hurts most. In my view, everybody needs to read it who can. Though I’ve never actually met Kim, and, since he charges about $3000 per hour for a private consultation, likely never will, I must say he has a remarkably sharp eye, and a pen that makes his analysis as good as probably anything I've seen recently.

Kim's words appeal to me especially because at this point in time I feel it's increasingly important to provide an appropriately sized counter-weight against the hollowed-out echo chamber of ultimately irrelevant here-and-gone exuberance that spreads around the world. It's as false as it is dangerous. People, on an individual, community and societal basis, will make decisions based on the illusion that growth is back and the recession but an unpleasant memory. Resources that might still have been used to build some kind of shelter from the storm are instead incessantly being wasted not on building solid foundations but on decorative gargoylic elements for the rooftop, never mind that the supporting walls have crumbled beyond any call at recognition or redemption. Are you really hungry enough for good tidings to set your own house on fire?

What this will lead to, and indeed already has, is levels of poverty, both in scope and in depth, which we haven't seen in a long, long time. And which, unless we act to halt their advance, will blow our communities and societies to smithereens from the inside.

When I say that you can judge the quality of a society by the way it takes care of its weakest, many if not most Americans will immediately think of the word "socialism", even as they don't know what it means. But it's not about partisan political choices, about freedom, or the pursuit of happiness, or about big government. It's very simply about minimum requirements for a functional society, period. You can't have tens of millions of people being unemployed and/or living below the poverty line for extended lengths of time without resorting to oppressive measures of physical force aimed at keeping down those who have landed in your gutters. And if you would choose that option, one that many Americans would, knowingly or not, support, then freedom takes on the meaning of "the freedom to repress others", or even "the freedom to repress whoever you can", and down the line, as the single logical outcome, Orwell's "some animals are more equal than others".

While elements of this notion may seem to have much appeal to many of those who remain standing for now, don't be fooled. Unless you want to see soldiers and tanks overflowing your neighborhoods, not providing for your weakest is not an option. And no, you won't feel just as happy about your life, and that of your families, if and when on your way to work you’re forced to pass by children starving by the side of the road while clasping a shotgun in your lap. A functioning society, whatever political label you might prefer to stick on it, is possible only when its members manage to suppress the temptation to take so much for themselves that too little to survive is left for their neighbors.

And them there's your picks: either choose temporarily increased riches at the cost of blowing up your communities, or voluntarily give up on some of it in order to preserve them. Sure, we haven’t had to deal with issues such as these for decades now, and for most of us not in our lifetimes. That was because we were growing, or at least were able to fool ourselves into thinking we were. Present market developments have many among us believing we still are growing.

The human mind in all its segments and facets, developed over millions of years, is the ultimate and perfect sucker for such ideas. That doesn't make them any more true, though. You simply can't grow your economy by borrowing money from yourself. Still, that is, in the final analysis, the only underlying cause for the rally we're about to see run out the door never to return.

We are here, 25 years after 1984 has passed, and 61 years after George Orwell wrote his book by that name. If he could see us now, do you think he would he feel vindicated for being so right, or instead desperate that we have walked into the trap with our eyes wide open despite his warnings?

Here’s the link to the article Ilargi refers to in the beginning of his ‘intro’.

Ironically, because this happens all the time, I posted last night’s piece and then ran into this article. (In fact, I don’t think this article was posted until this morning, the previous day’s post was still up last night.) Which is to say this piece didn’t influence the commentary in my own work (and as far as I know Ilargi doesn’t read me…)

I feel as Ilargi does, it’s important that people not buy into this false recovery or start making decisions based on the idea the ‘depression’ is behind us. It’s not, it can’t be, nothing at all has been ‘fixed’, nothing has changed and that alone should frighten most of you a whole lot.

If you follow the link you will find Mr. Kim also thinks the rally is ‘fraudulent’ (to put it mildly!) He’s also not afraid to point a finger at the guilty parties…

I’m easing up to this one good citizen because it is important. Ilargi is right, society itself is being threatened and (from what we saw yesterday in Joe’s video) there are a lot of people not ‘up to the challenge’.

Registered conservatives only make up 20% of the electorate…but they win elections, which means the number of people who know the definition of socialism are outnumbered by the people who have no clue that ALL societies are SOCIALIST, BAR NONE!

This by itself is disturbing beyond belief because it means most people are ignorant why they belong to a society in the first place. In fact, many are so clueless it has never occurred to them to wonder why they live among a bunch of people that speak the same language and dress like they do!

In fact, they don’t really understand what a ‘liberal’ believes. Seriously, half of Limbaugh listeners think ‘liberalism’ is a kind of disease you can catch from reading books! (Or being born in a liberal household, which makes you ‘defective’ from the get-go.)

Which is to point out that when the shit hits the fan, a full 50% of the population will be opposed to doing anything about it. In fact, these, er, ‘misguided souls’ will come out on the side of the ‘oppressors’.

And not one of them will realize they are the equivalent of ‘good life’ in Saberhagen’s Berserker universe…

Yes, good citizen, a tough sled has just gotten tougher.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Can hundreds of stock-selling insiders be wrong?

Greetings good citizen,

Today some of the chatter around the blogosphere was pretty disturbing, most of it was centered on the so-called recovery and how the dollar being the world’s ‘Reserve currency’ has the power to pull off a (another) ‘false recovery’ as it has for the past thirty years.

Yes, good citizen, going all the way back to the Reagan Revolution the people in charge of our, er, ‘money supply’ have been ripping us off blind and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.

So the ‘recovery’, when it comes, will be just like the last two. The economy (what’s left of it) will shrink to accommodate a much smaller workforce and if you’re on the outside looking in, tough! It’s not their problem; it’s yours.

Understand good citizen, there is no difference what’s coming and when Marie Antoinette quipped ‘let them eat cake!’

I fully expect there won’t be any difference in the public’s reaction either.

What will we run out of first, rope or utility poles?

Make no mistake about it good citizen, this is war, whether you want it or not.

There are no jobs and they’ve already cut off the unemployment benefits of some 300,000 people.

Need I remind you that ‘civilization’ is only 9 meals deep?

Hell of a way to start a piece but I suspect tonight’s offering is powerful enough to get your blood boiling so without further adieu…

[Hat tip: Jesse’s crossroads café ]

11 September 2009
Signs of an Approaching Decline in US Equities That Could Be Quite Impressive

There is a strong correlation between this US equity rally and the Fed monetization of debt, which indicates a 'hot money' flow into US stocks but with thin volumes from a significant market bottom. This points to 'technical price trading' by the financial sector, also known was price manipulation, or trading stocks like commodities.

Continued heavy insider selling from those with the best forward view of the real economy is a clear sign of a top. No one can trust what the Fed or the Administration are saying about an economic recovery, as much now as ever. Obama's administration is no reform government.

This surprisingly robust rally in US Treasuries is remarkable given the decline in the US dollar, based in part on a strong yen and carry trades. The short end is obviously quantitative easing, with strong buying from Asian central banks dumping Agency debt but continuing to manipulate their currencies. 'Free trade' is an illusion.

The long end rally in Treasury is suspect, likely interest rate manipulation by the US Fed and its central bank cronies. It has been a huge mistake to allow the Fed to perform the non-traditional printing that young Ben touted so proudly in his famous essay. Clever in the short term is too often tragic overall.

Gold and silver are surging as investors largely outside the US seek safety in harder assets.

There is also a community of small speculators outside the US which has been buying stocks on dollar weakness, to play an arbitrage with their own currencies. There is a hot money crowd in eastern Europe for example, and in Asia. And so far this year it has been working. At some point that door will close, quite hard, and many will be caught offsides and out of luck.

A dollar devaluation? Technically one cannot officially devalue the dollar per se because it has no official peg. The more appropriate term is debasement perhaps, and de facto default, but the effect is the same; a decline in purchasing power by the dollar vis a vis other monetary instruments. But for now we are in a monetary matrix, and the central banks and their minions can continue to play their game.

Besides being the hallmark of markets made sick by central bank and other official manipulation, these are signs that indicate that the 'smart money' is battening down the hatches for a very rough September and October in US equities as the pros hand off their latest Ponzi scheme to the public.

We will not be surprised if there is a significant decline, first to a pullback of about 7 to 10 percent. Then we will see if the market can rally on renewed dollar devaluation and if not, then another major slide to test lower levels.

If there is an 'event' the pros will dump the market bids quite hard, perhaps precipitously. It is always easier to complete a market wash and rinse when a scapegoat is available. [We can only assume an ‘event’ means some sort of unsettling news and it could be anything from another terrorist attack on US soil to the sudden collapse of a major financial institution…or something between the two.]

Obviously no one can predict the future with certainty, and even within clearer trends the actual timeframes are always most difficult if barely possible when the markets are dominated by computer manipulation. But the auspices are ominous indeed, and we are proceeding with caution.

Until the banks are restrained, and the financial system is reformed, and the economy is brought back into balance, there can be no sustained US recovery. [The above is Jesse’s commentary and below is the story his analysis is based on:]


CNN Money
Insiders sell like there's no tomorrow
By Colin Barr, senior writer
September 11, 2009: 7:27 AM ET

Corporate officers and directors were buying stock when the market hit bottom. What does it say that they're selling now?

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Can hundreds of stock-selling insiders be wrong?

The stock market has mounted an historic rally since it hit a low in March. The S&P 500 is up 55%, as U.S. job losses have slowed and credit markets have stabilized.

But against that improving backdrop, one indicator has turned distinctly bearish: Corporate officers and directors have been selling shares at a pace last seen just before the onset of the subprime malaise two years ago.

While a wave of insider selling doesn't necessarily foretell a stock market downturn, it suggests that those with the first read on business trends don't believe current stock prices are justified by economic fundamentals.

"It's not a very complicated story," said Charles Biderman, who runs market research firm Trim Tabs. "Insiders know better than you and me. If prices are too high, they sell."

Biderman, who says there were $31 worth of insider stock sales in August for every $1 of insider buys, isn't the only one who has taken note. Ben Silverman, director of research at the InsiderScore.com web site that tracks trading action, said insiders are selling at their most aggressive clip since the summer of 2007.

Silverman said the "orgy of selling" is noteworthy because corporate insiders were aggressive buyers of the market's spring dip. The S&P 500 dropped as low as 666 in early March before the recent rally took it back above 1,000.

"That was a great call," Silverman said. "They were buying when prices were low, so it makes sense to look at what they're doing now that prices are higher..."

Posted by Jesse at 12:43 PM

There is nothing in this article that is particularly alarming, although the facts speak for themselves.

Which, unfortunately, is why I’m disturbed regarding the way events are unfolding. Let’s just say it’s a hell of a time to be waiting for a cardiac procedure…this naturally begs the question of if it’s ever a good time to be awaiting such a thing?

I’d be tempted to say the pressure in my personal life is affecting my judgement as far as the big picture goes…but I don’t think that’s it.

Manufacturing employment is lower than it was at the end of WWII, the whole workforce was only a third of the size it is now and very little was automated back then so that’s a pretty scary statistic to be tossing around.

‘More with less’ is a two edged sword…great for the capitalist but not so good for the rest of us.

Unless we rebalance our economy there can’t be a recovery, it’s impossible.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

A 'Curiosity'...

Greetings good citizen,

As I await a puzzled call from MGH inquiring about my whereabouts shortly, I’m doing research for tonight’s offering. [Postscript: either my cardiologist kept them posted or they are both ‘slouching’ big time as no call ever came. The ‘proof’ will come next week when I darken their doorstep only to find they aren’t expecting me.]

{For reasons of her own, my wife prevented me from ‘firing’ them and finding a more competent cardio team…} Er, sorry, back to the business at hand…

While there is this intriguing but decidedly ‘wonkish’ piece from one of my personal favorites, Henry C.K. Liu, it delves a bit too deeply into the intricacies of central bank policy to be engaging for the average reader.

So I continued to search and encountered several interesting items, Cryptogon has a video of Dennis Kucinich er, ‘trashing’ Mr. Obama’s healthcare plan.

It is precisely what we have all feared…nothing more than the same ‘mandated’ insurance we have here in Massachusetts. This isn’t an ‘improvement’ unless you’re an insurance company. The plan makes insurance ‘compulsory’ with Federal ‘assistance’ for those who can’t afford it based on how much they earn…so if you’re already ‘stretched tight’ in other parts of your budget, chances are excellent the new ‘mandatory’ insurance is going to destroy your finances.

Did you ‘stretch’ a little bit to rent in a ‘nicer’ neighborhood? Better call the movers because you won’t be able to afford it now.

Anyway, that was interesting but too short. So I finally decided on this tidbit which is already 2 years old…which makes you wonder what today’s figures are?

Last Year’s Poverty Rate Was Highest in 12 Years

By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: September 10, 2009

In the recession, the nation’s poverty rate climbed to 13.2 percent last year, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, according to an annual report released Thursday by the Census Bureau. The report also documented a decline in employer-provided health insurance and in coverage for adults. [Understand good citizen, the ‘Great Recession’ didn’t ‘officially’ start until December 2007, although the poverty figures say otherwise.]

The rise in the poverty rate, to the highest level since 1997, portends even larger increases this year, which has registered far higher unemployment than in 2008, economists said. [Wait a minute Slim…wasn’t the economy ‘booming’ in the late 90’s? Why things were going so well that President Clinton even eliminated Welfare! (which is to say we were already suffering from the ‘Two America’s’ syndrome that John Edwards based his presidential bid in 2000 on.) ‘Part’ of the economy was doing great but the ‘real economy’ pretty much sucked, like it does now.]

The bureau said 39.8 million residents last year lived below the poverty line, defined as an income of $22,025 for a family of four. [Here we see a very bizarre number, there isn’t anyone you know that eats regularly and lives indoors on that kind of money. Maybe a single person, but certainly not a ‘family’ of four.]

In another sign of both the recession and the long-term stagnation of middle-class wages, median family incomes in 2008 fell to $50,300, compared with $52,200 the year before. This wiped out the income gains of the previous three years, the report said. [What they don’t tell you is most states have a ‘multiplier’ because they know the Federal poverty figures are too low. Here in Massachusetts, if you make less than 4 times the Federal Poverty figure, you qualify for benefits under most state programs…but Boston is one of the most expensive cities (metro areas) in the nation.

Adjusted for inflation, in fact, median family incomes were lower in 2008 than a decade earlier.

“This is the largest decline in the first year of a recession we’ve seen since the Census Bureau started collecting data after World War II,” said Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard University, referring to household incomes. “We’ve seen a lost decade for the typical American family.” [And there’s no way to ‘make that back’, it’s gone for good. Sort of puts those ‘executive bonuses’ in a whole different light, doesn’t it?]

The share of American residents who said they lacked health insurance throughout the entire year remained steady, at 15.4 percent, or 46.3 million people. But the total masked some more worrisome trends that are helping to drive the debate over a national health care overhaul.

Continuing an eight-year trend, the number of people with private or employer-sponsored insurance declined, while the number of people relying on government insurance programs including Medicare, Medicaid, the children’s insurance program and military insurance rose.

The share of children who were uninsured declined, to 9.9 percent from 11 percent in 2007, apparently because of the federal government’s special efforts to insure low-income children. But at the same time, the share of adults aged 18 to 64 without health insurance rose, to 20.3 percent in 2008 from 19.6 percent in 2007. [Naturally, the kids didn’t go out and buy their own insurance, their parents covered them while foregoing benefits for themselves.]

In a speech Thursday to promote his health care overhaul, President Obama referred to the census survey and said that things had grown worse since September 2008. “Over the last 12 months, it’s estimated that the ranks of the uninsured have swelled by nearly six million people,” he said. [Now go back and have a gander at the video…]

The accuracy of the census numbers, which are collected each spring for the previous year as part of the Current Population Survey, is subject to debate. Family incomes in the poverty area do not include the value of food stamps, money received through tax credits or unreported income. On the other side, the poverty threshold has not been adjusted over the years to reflect the rising relative costs of housing and medical care and does not take account of large regional differences in the cost of living.

Whatever the flaws, which remain similar every year, “we think the C.P.S. data present a very good measure of the trends over time,” David S. Johnson, chief of the housing and household economic statistics division of the Census Bureau, said Thursday in an audio news conference.

Because unemployment has climbed so much more sharply in 2009 — averaging 9 percent, compared with an average of 5.8 percent in 2008 — “the real spike in poverty is going to be in the ’09 numbers, which we get next year,” said Sheldon Danziger, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan and co-editor, with Maria Cancian, of the coming book “Changing Poverty, Changing Policies” (Russell Sage Foundation).

There was another ‘curious’ piece today that cited a report by Citigroup which stated that the US was ‘officially’ a ‘Plutocracy’, a society run by the wealthy, for the wealthy.

I passed over this offering as well because the ‘evidence’ was on one of those damn ‘script reader’ thingy’s that won’t let you copy (besides giving you severe ‘eyestrain’ because the font size is so small.)

Oh yeah…and even if you could copy it, there were 18 pages of text to go through.

Here’s the link for the more intrepid among you…

Where were we? Oh yeah, time to wrap up this ‘poverty’ piece…

Like ‘Sherlock’ says at the end of the piece, the er, worst job market since WWII ended sure isn’t helping the damn poverty situation.

Perhaps more telling is the fact that we haven’t lost one decade, the last two have been a total washout...the sad reality is it's all coming home to roost now.

The ‘average’ US family has been bleeding purchasing power for more than twenty years while the only ‘segment’ of society to see any net improvement are the ones who didn’t need it…and that’s the hell of it good citizen.

The ‘hole’ got deeper and we’ve got nothing to show for it, we’ve been ‘ripped off’ by the same people we busted our asses for all these years…and we’re the ones they accuse of being ‘ungrateful’.

All I have to say to that is ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Bank reform...

Greetings good citizen,

First, I have a little ‘public service announcement’ to make concerning my ‘absence’ over the next couple of days.

My cardiologist’s office called this afternoon and advised me my surgery has been moved to next Thursday. They had an, er, ‘emergency’ (that can wait until 4:00 PM tomorrow, so I guess it’s just ‘kind of’ an emergency.) Well, either way, whoever it is needs to be treated before they do anything for me. So I lose another week in the process, and I ain’t getting paid for this.)

As you may have discerned for yourself, I will not be absent over the next couple of days, contrary to an earlier post I made.

In fact, I no longer feel confident in providing future warnings about potential absences given the unreliability of certain sectors of the healthcare system. Which is more than a little unfair as this is the first time I’ve encountered this situation…which may be more commonplace than I realize now that I’m entering the realm of ‘high demand’ health care.

And naturally, this has nothing to do with tonight’s offering , which we shall skip on to without further delay…

Blankfein on Bonuses and Regulation
September 9, 2009, 8:08 am

Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, said Wednesday that multiyear, guaranteed pay contracts for bankers should be banned but also warned that over-regulation could end up stifling the financial markets. [These guys are too much, aren’t they. Ever since Bush did away with the usury laws, these clowns think what they do is, er, ‘socially useful’.]

Mr. Blankfein’s remarks, made in a statement prepared for delivery at a banking conference in Frankfurt, addressed at least two major issues hanging over the global finance industry one year after a crisis plunged Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy protection and sent world markets reeling. [How about that, it’s been a year already, let’s see, what new regulations did they put in place to head off a repeat of this disaster? Oh, right, there aren’t any!]

One of these issues is Wall Street bonuses, and how they might have contributed to risk-taking that planted the seeds of the financial crisis. The question of whether to limit bankers’ bonuses has been hotly debated in Europe in recent weeks. [What’s truly amazing is that there’s any ‘debate’ at all. None of these overpaid turdherders has made any money since 2007 so they don’t deserve bonuses.]

Mr. Blankfein, who was the highest-paid chief executive on Wall Street a few years ago but didn’t get any bonus in 2008, said Wednesday that some kinds of pay structures were hard to justify and suggested new curbs were necessary.

“Compensation continues to generate controversy and anger,” he said in the statement. “And, in many respects, much of it is understandable and appropriate. There is little justification for the payment of outsized discretionary compensation when a financial institution lost money for the year.”

He also said: “Multiyear guaranteed employment contracts should be banned entirely. The use of these contracts unfortunately is a common practice in our industry.”

When it reported big profits in the second quarter, Goldman said this summer that it had already set aside more than $11 billion for compensation for its workers. That figure generated some public controversy, coming during a recession and so soon after Goldman repaid aid from the United States government. [And so soon after it was revealed Goldman is using supercomputers to ‘front run’ the markets, but somehow it’s legal when they do it…]

Also on Wednesday, Mr. Blankfein expressed support for certain reforms of the financial industry, such as moving derivatives trading to exchanges and central clearing houses.

But he urged against creating a thicket of new regulations covering financial firms and products that could choke off innovation and profitability.

He said that “taking risk completely out of the system will be at the cost of economic growth.”

Okay good citizen, let’s see if we have this straight…if we revoke Wall Street’s ‘license to steal’ the economy won’t ‘grow’…apparently because Mr. Blankfein said so.

Geez Louis, what we if went back to the old fashioned way of investing, where people invested directly in local concerns and actually knew where their money was and what it was doing?

Wouldn’t you agree that our major malfunction these days is there’s too little domestic investment in local infrastructure? The money is all going to China to take advantage of ‘cheap labor’, which doesn’t do the domestic economy a bit of good.

I’d like to once again remind you that the ‘banking industry’ exists to serve the community, not to legally extort what it can from society.

I find it deeply disturbing when community spirited bankers like Mr. Blankfien fail to even raise the issue of our missing usury laws.

I mean, missing an issue as important as that sort of makes him look like a…well, you know.

It makes him look like a thief!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Rocket Sled of Doom!

Greetings good citizen,

You may have heard some of the noise regarding China (and a growing coalition of export nations) er, ‘exploring’ the inconceivable notion of replacing the US Dollar as the world’s ‘reserve currency’.

It seems some of our ‘creditors’ think we are ‘abusing’ the ability to print dollars rather than buy/trade for them like everyone else has to.

The ‘conventional wisdom’ says there isn’t another nation ‘strong enough’ to replace the US dollar, even as the dollar tumbles towards the basement of the world’s currency markets…but, naturally, these are the same people who print dollars at will.

As long as we have paper and ink, they’ll have all the dollars they need.

Under the category of ‘I wish I said that’, we arrive at tonight’s offering

[Hat tip: Cryptogon ]

UN Wants New Global Currency to Replace Dollar

September 8th, 2009

Around 70.79, two doors emerge: Behind Door #1: The dollar will stage a massive rally/dead cat bounce/short squeeze from Hell. (Don’t ask me how this would happen.) Behind Door #2: A wildcard event; a system transformation. System transformation is lingo from International Relations. It means paradigm change; a break from past normative assumptions about the system and the actors within it. New rules.

There’s nothing but air under 70.79 and I doubt that the Them will just let the rocket sled of doom hit the wall at a thousand miles per hour. They’ll try some kind of nonsense, a New and Improved Global Confetti Currency, or maybe fewer national confetti currencies. The Amero, perhaps. Something of this nature.

—Gold Is Probably About to Put on a Show

Via: Telegraph:

The dollar should be replaced with a global currency, the United Nations has said, proposing the biggest overhaul of the world’s monetary system since the Second World War.

In a radical report, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has said the system of currencies and capital rules which binds the world economy is not working properly, and was largely responsible for the financial and economic crises.

It added that the present system, under which the dollar acts as the world’s reserve currency , should be subject to a wholesale reconsideration.

Although a number of countries, including China and Russia, have suggested replacing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the UNCTAD report is the first time a major multinational institution has posited such a suggestion. [Apparently accusations of mismanagement have gained traction…]

In essence, the report calls for a new Bretton Woods-style system of managed international exchange rates, meaning central banks would be forced to intervene and either support or push down their currencies depending on how the rest of the world economy is behaving.

The proposals would also imply that surplus nations such as China and Germany should stimulate their economies further in order to cut their own imbalances rather than, as in the present system, deficit nations such as the UK and US having to take the main burden of readjustment. [Yaaaay, where do we sign!…oops, the people that are ‘doing us proud’ aren’t done doing us…]

“Replacing the dollar with an artificial currency would solve some of the problems related to the potential of countries running large deficits and would help stability,” said Detlef Kotte, one of the report’s authors. “But you will also need a system of managed exchange rates. Countries should keep real exchange rates [adjusted for inflation] stable. Central banks would have to intervene and if not they would have to be told to do so by a multilateral institution such as the International Monetary Fund.” [Yikes!!!]

The proposals, included in UNCTAD’s annual Trade and Development Report , amount to the most radical suggestions for redesigning the global monetary system.

Although many economists have pointed out that the economic crisis owed more to the malfunctioning of the post-Bretton Woods system, until now no major institution, including the G20 , has come up with an alternative.

Now the UN is jumping on the bandwagon! How long do you suppose it will be before the dollar is no longer the world’s Reserve Currency?

What isn’t discussed (at all) on this side of the Atlantic is how the ‘Shadow Banking System’ er, ‘created’ more money than there was on the entire planet, all by itself…and nobody lifted a finger to shut ‘em down.

During ‘good times’ the global economy is worth roughly 53 trillion dollars, and that’s during ‘good times’. Well, we can only wonder how the ‘Shadow Banks’ managed to whip up $656 trillion dollars worth of Credit Default Swaps in a couple of short years.

Looking at this from a strictly ‘mercenary’ point of view, the global economy is worth a whole lot more 'dead' than it is alive…think about that one as the government, our government in particular, breaks it’s backside to make good on these insane bets…

Worse, the damn Jackals are doing this right under our very noses and there isn’t a damn thing we can do to stop them…for the moment.

Can we stop them afterwards?

Oh yeah, we can stop them cold. All that needs to be done is to ‘demonetize’ the ‘dead presidents’ and the thieves will suddenly be empty handed.

Them and everyone else…that’s what they’re relying on.

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they must ‘take one for the team’ and this is going to be one of those times.

Naturally, there will be ‘allowances’ made to prevent people from tumbling into abject poverty but at the end of the day, if we truly want to end this crisis, hitting the ‘reset button’ is the ONLY option.

Worse, if we don’t do it, our creditors will do it for us.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner