What will OWS do?

Greetings good citizen,

For some bizarre reason this story is back in the headlines

The approval of the deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama is a victory for President Obama and proponents of the view that foreign trade can drive America’s economic growth in the face of rising protectionist sentiment in both political parties. They are the first trade agreements to pass Congress since Democrats broke a decade of Republican control in 2007.

All three agreements cleared both chambers with overwhelming Republican support just one day after Senate Republicans prevented action on Mr. Obama’s jobs bill.
The passage of the trade deals is important primarily as a political achievement, and for its foreign policy value in solidifying relationships with strategic allies. The economic benefits are projected to be small. A federal agency estimated in 2007 that the impact on employment would be “negligible” and that the deals would increase gross domestic product by about $14.4 billion, or roughly 0.1 percent.

What hits one in the face is the, er, ‘indifference’ of the political crowd while Occupy Wall Street is still ‘center stage’.

Is the (according to some) ‘movement’ made up of Friedmanites that still believe, despite the evidence, that globalization is a net positive?

If I don’t miss my guess, good citizen, the movement became ‘mobile’ BECAUSE these long stalled ‘Free Trade Agreements’ were threatening to move forward.

I think most would agree that the last thing we need is another expansion of the ‘economic desert’, facilitated by ‘the left wing’ of the Libertarian Party and its incumbent president.

This is, of course, a slap in the face to the protesters…who I believe expected as much and I also suspect they aren’t (well most of them anyway) prepared to take things to the next level.

For all of their, er, ‘wisdom’, I just don’t see this situation being resolved ‘peacefully’.

Avoiding confrontation only prolongs the decay of a long moldering corpse we once called the United States.

Kids camping out in public parks didn’t win us the 40 hour work week, burning factories and riots that killed thousands did.

So it was, so it shall ever be.

I’m all for peace but so are they!

Each side will vilify the other for ‘disturbing the peace’ (no matter how fragile) but neither side will back down from doing what they are used to getting away with.

In tacit recognition of that which is sure to come we have this ‘add-on’ to our nation’s largest export:

The Joint Economic Committee report reviews data showing that the occupations that are expected to grow the most in the future are also those with a high share of workers who hold bachelor’s degrees. According to Labor Department data cited in the report, about a quarter of the job growth between 2008 and 2018 will come in professional occupations, where about 65 percent of current workers hold a four-year degree.

At the same time, the five slowest growing occupations, including production, maintenance and repair and farming, fishing and forestry, are those that do not tend to require college degrees.

Because trade can displace entire industries in a specific region, it helps if a displaced worker can move. But the report shows that older people are much less likely to move than younger workers, making it harder for older laid-off workers to find new jobs.

Not to be mean but isn’t the ‘House with the white picket fence’ an integral part of “The American Dream” ?

Now, in order to survive the growing ‘economic desert’ the, er, ‘successful’ worker has to become a ‘Bedouin’ with NO permanent roots!

Sort of fucks the mortgage industry, doesn’t it?

And, in case you haven’t been paying attention, the mortgage industry supports our entire banking system!

Did I mention that our ‘social model’ is broken?

No? Well, that’s okay, Mr. Panzer takes care of that little detail for us

More on the Train-Wreck-in-the-Making

In "Just in Time for Halloween," I highlighted three charts (along with accompanying commentary) that paint a frightening picture of where things stand in today's America. But those aren't the only examples. In fact, hardly a day goes by when I don't stumble across yet another data point or statistical series that adds to the notion that our economy -- and our country -- is a train-wreck-in-the-making. Here are three I picked up from today's journey through my usual run of blogs and mainstream media outlets:

An overwhelming majority of small businesses are pessimistic about the economic outlook

Um, nobody should be surprised that a ‘second’ Great Depression has been developing while those responsible for this train wreck continue to pretend all is well.

No, the ‘insidious’ part of the looming disaster will be the stark contrast between those suddenly faced with impossible choices and those who don’t realize they, er, ‘accidentally’ landed on the other side of the fence.

They DO have the income to meet the price structure INTENDED to sink the vast majority of us.

It won’t even occur to these people that others aren’t quite as ‘fortunate’ as they are so they won’t understand ‘why’ these people are rioting.

So it will be doubly, er, ‘unfortunate’ when they (foolishly) try to defend what little they have.

If you can’t hide it in a body cavity you have to ask yourself if whatever it is is worth dying for…seriously.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS, ’Reader’s Digest’ version of A Simple Plan tomorrow! (possibly late, like last night’s post.)

Economic Justice...

Greetings good citizen,

At the risk of being redundant, the destruction of our civilization proceeds a pace. Naturally, the stock markets continue to ‘defy gravity’ for no apparent reason.

While the media will use the sudden plummet in stock values to invoke panic among the public, the actual event, when it happens, will be as meaningless as the market highs.

And that should say something to you good citizen. Verily, it speaks volumes about the ‘falseness’ of paper wealth.

Not that this dissuades ignorant fools from pursuing it blindly

Finance Industry Elites Still Expecting Hefty Bonuses

If you want to point to one single thing that exemplifies the privileged, insular, infuriating attitude of the financial elites, this will do nicely: 

The onset of what has been described by the Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King as "the most serious financial crisis" in history has failed to dent expectations for bonuses in the City. Nine out of 10 finance professionals expect to receive an annual handout again this year.

The downturn in banking that has forced Deutsche Bank to issue a profit warning and other banks to alter their business plans is expected to be underlined by US firms in the coming days, when JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs report results for the third quarter.

Bad enough our entire economy has been an exercise in ‘creative accounting’ for the past decade but the fact that there’s no way to fix the current mess is only eclipsed by the pretense that there’s nothing to fix!

Those who owe their fortunes to the current fantasy are not at all eager to see the situation rectified.

Worse good citizen, this variety of ‘grasping greed’ feeds on itself, making an already bad situation even worse…and it hastens the collapse in the process!

You see, we are already inside the vortex of shrinking supply due to too few customers.

While ‘deflationistas’ like to frighten you with the ‘bogeyman’ of falling prices and the ‘disappearance’ of money (oddly, if this were a genuine danger you’d think there would be some specific examples…like hyper-inflation in Zimbabwe.)

Wiemar Germany? Nope, hyper-inflation again!

The ‘drying up’ of money only happened under the gold standard, paper currencies don’t suffer from ‘hoarding’.

So why are the ‘reality based crowd’ so convinced the ‘drying up’ of credit is going to result in a physical ‘money shortage’?

The current ‘money shortage’ is indeed being caused by ‘unacknowledged’ inflation, prices are rising to provide the ‘illusion of economic recovery.’

As I have opined before, the ‘push’ for collapse is being driven by the palpable fear of prosecution.

Not that any of them will escape.

Short of the return of Monarchy that is.

I think I speak for the many when I opine that we have gotten used to NOT bowing and scraping and are VERY UNLIKELY to return to such practices willingly.

Which returns us to issue one, how far will you go for a crust of bread?

You better be prepared to find out because the new rulers will be the only ones with any (literal) ‘bread’ to hand out.

And they won’t ‘pass it around’ to anyone who hasn’t proven their loyalty…

The really sick part will be the answer to the first question that should pop into your mind.

Where will the ‘self-serving’ get their hands on bread?

The answer is obvious, it will come from the same place they get everything else, they’ll steal it!

Murder for it is likely closer to the mark…why should the ‘self-important’ change their modus operandi when there is a ‘kingdom’ to be had?

Yes, good citizen…the ‘rich’ really are different from you and I, they are far too ruthless to ever be included in civil society.

And that, in the end, will be their ultimate reward.

(Read about Exile in A Simple Plan if you are uncertain of what this means.)

Speaking of A Simple Plan, I’m somewhat overdue to post an abbreviated version so you can all look forward to that in the coming week.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Work and ethics...

Greetings good citizen,

How quickly we lose sight of ‘The Golden Rule‘. in our first offering America’s ‘work ethic’ is called into question.

Naturally, the article is written from the perspective of that ‘rugged individual’ the employer (who isn’t prepared/willing to pay a living wage.)

Worse, good citizen, were we to bring back slavery to satisfy this ‘owners’ labor requirements, they’d be the very first to scream ‘oppression’ when they were hauled into court for starving their slaves!

A Times article last week profiled a Colorado farmer who tried to replace a third of the seasonal workers he hires from abroad with local residents interested in extra summer cash. He was surprised to find few takers, especially for the back-breaking work involved in picking sweet corn.

But foreign migrants have always performed hard labor in U.S. agriculture, no matter what the national unemployment rate. So when Americans complain about the lack of jobs today, they are drawing a line somewhere. For many people of the unemployed, it makes more sense to collect unemployment or disability or other benefits than it does to take a temporary job that they cannot or will not do, for whatever reason. As President Obama seeks more extensions on unemployment benefits, even some jobless Americans are asking if providing this bigger safety net is the right, or the only, thing to do in this economy.

Let’s begin with how extremely displeased I am that this article is unattributed because it was written by a FIRST CLASS Flying Asshole!

Pay a ‘living wage’ and you’d have workers lined up from here to kingdom come to get the job!

But to perform work for pay that doesn’t ‘crack your nut’ is INSANE…(just like the idiot who wrote this piece of tripe!)

You know you’re in trouble when you read how even people collecting benefits are allegedly quoted as wondering about the usefulness of extending the very benefits they rely on to stave off homelessness…

It’s the sort of question only a nutty Libertarian would ask…and, as we all know, ‘nutty’ and ‘Libertarian’ is redundant…

Joe the Farmer would have no problem finding ‘help’ if he were willing to PAY THEM! But no, since people are unwilling to work for nothing it’s not Cheapskate Capitalist, it’s LAZY WORKER!!!

WTF!

Worse, good citizen, it seems this problem persists wherever capitalism reigns

“The banks make loans to who the Communist Party tells them to,” Mr. Walter said. “So they punish the household savers in favor of the state-owned companies.”

It is not just China’s problem. Economists say that for China to continue serving as one of the world’s few engines of economic growth, it will need to cultivate a consumer class that buys more of the world’s products and services, and shares more fully in the nation’s wealth.

But rather than rising, China’s consumer spending has actually plummeted in the last decade as a portion of the overall economy, to about 35 percent of gross domestic product, from about 45 percent. That figure is by far the lowest percentage for any big economy anywhere in the world. (Even in the sleepwalking American economy, the level is about 70 percent of G.D.P.)

A little advertised fact, good citizen is when Nixon ‘opened the doors’ to China in 1972, who went to ‘advise’ Chinese government on setting up a supervised version of capitalism? Why it was economists from Chicago, the university founded by that great capitalist/monopolist John D. Rockefeller!

Is it any wonder the ‘global economy' is collapsing, given what we now know to be true about the teachings of the Chicago School of Economics? (That it’s a failure.)

What continues to baffle me is how people keep ignoring what the evidence points to. Roughly 100 Veterans for Peace were arrested in Boston last night…will these confrontations lead to rioting is, at this moment, unknown.

So far the answer has been no…but I suspect a stronger stance is forthcoming…from both sides.

And we will be forced to ask ourselves just how STUPID the people who live among us and wear the blue/black uniform are?

Are their bosses willing to stand guard outside their houses at night or is that part of the risk you take when you pin on the badge?

Understand, ‘I was just following orders’ didn’t work for the Nazis and it won’t work for you…no matter how often your supervisor says “you worry too much.”

It’s one thing for me to rant about the clear and present danger and quite another to see the evidence for yourself.

(The link leads to charts, thus there isn’t a lot of corresponding text…)

You’d think with OWS making headlines that the apparatus of the status quo would be a bit more sensitive regarding how they push their agenda…

But apparently not.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Noise

Greetings good citizen,

Columbus Day being a ‘minor’ holiday, the stock markets are open…which is not particularly surprising. What raised my eyebrows this morning is how the markets managed to open up nearly 200 points FOR NO APPARENT REASON!

Understand good citizen, what passes for the global economy is ‘circling the drain’ and there isn’t anything capitalists can (or will) do about it.

Although, as a sidebar, I was reading about the occupy Wall Street phenomenon and they were pointing to one of my favorite hobby horses, the ‘fake’ nature of money.

Which is to say when it comes to bombing our detractors into the Stone Age, money isn’t a factor…but when it comes to a living wage all of a sudden there’s ‘no money’.

Worse, when it comes to profit centers, corporate America’s best turns out to be their own employees!

Recession Officially Over, U.S. Incomes Kept Falling
By ROBERT PEAR

Published: October 9, 2011

WASHINGTON — In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found.

Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau officials. During the recession — from December 2007 to June 2009 — household income fell 3.2 percent.

The finding helps explain why Americans’ attitudes toward the economy, the country’s direction and its political leaders have continued to sour even as the economy has been growing. Unhappiness and anger have come to dominate the political scene, including the early stages of the 2012 presidential campaign.

How about that $50 K ‘median household income? When you consider that is based on two incomes it suddenly doesn’t look quite as impressive.

Worse, since this is the ‘mid-point’, half make more and half make LESS…although, according to this article, we’re ALL making less.

Which returns us to one of the core issues facing our civilization, how do we make decisions when the ‘official data’ is so heavily ‘manipulated’ as to have no relationship with reality?

Is unemployment REALLY 9% or is it closer to 50%? (Less than half of all working aged adults have full time jobs…)

And if you can’t survive on what you make its not society’s problem, it’s YOURS!

(All so ‘a few’ can be rich…what a system, eh?)

More ‘frightening’ is how mortgage interest rates have fallen below 3% and NOBODY is re-fi’ing…

Understand, people would LOVE to roll over some of their massive debt but, all of a sudden, NOBODY ‘qualifies’ for a new ‘cheap’ mortgage!

What’s the message again?

“It Sucks being YOU!”

If we were to hop back to the other message today’s offering sends it would be a re-enforcement of something I raged about back in 2008 and that would be ‘The New Normal’.

What sucks about the ‘new normal’ good citizen?

It has no room for YOU!

Now it’s time to put OWS back into perspective.

‘Protests’ DON’T WORK! (Regardless of how ‘high-minded’ they are!)

Ask yourself, are our former slaves REALLY better off than they were before the ‘civil rights’ movement?

Not really, considering it has become increasingly apparent that voting doesn’t do ANY of us any good. (Since we are consistently denied the opportunity to vote when it really matters…something A Simple Plan changes!)

So let us ask, point blank, what has at least crossed most rational people’s minds…

How ‘disappointed’ will you be when OWS vanishes down the memory hole with no apparent results?

Which is not to overlook the true significance of OWS, that we are NOT as DIVIDED as the corporate owned media would have us believe we are, (an important accomplishment all by itself.)

Again, the pragmatists among us know that nothing is going to ‘change’ until we force change to happen.

How unfortunate is it for the rest of us that the only the most ‘anti-social’ forces among us are prepared to act?

Worse, the ones that control the, er, ‘spotlight’ call the tune and right now there are some downright whacko people calling the tunes!

Which, on the flipside of this ‘unity’ coin that OWS represents, united over nothing isn’t exactly inspiring.

Dialog about change covers a lot of ground and it opens some dangerous doors…but if we don’t 'move' things will never improve…

Which brings us to the next harsh realization, ‘improvement’ is ‘relative’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Lies!

Greetings good citizen,

Just as most of us feared, it didn’t take long for the Occupy Wall Street movement to be ‘hijacked’.

Worse, it has been hijacked by the people pretending to be Democrats, here are (allegedly) Five New Rules supposedly drafted by the OWS leadership committee:

1. Corporations are not persons.

2. Money is not speech

3. Tax Financial Transactions

4. Tax all income as ordinary income

5. Declare a moratorium on foreclosures

Do you think banks are hiding behind their ‘corporate personhood’ to shield the guilty from their misdeeds?

Um, why do you think running for public office is ‘expensive?’

What’s the largest single ‘expense’ a politician faces? Media expenses…

Geez bud, why do you think the average schmuck can’t afford to run for public office?

Is money ‘free speech?’ no but if you want to get your message out you’d better have mighty deep pockets. Free Speech is a damn myth that won’t exist until NOBODY owns a media outlet!

So why would the OWS crowd be looking to banish these features from our current social model?

Will it create jobs? Will it stop ‘free trade’? (which is really nothing more than global labor arbitrage…)

Taxing ‘income’ isn’t nearly as important as leveling the income playing field. Until we ALL work for a paycheck the vast majority of us will continue to be screwed by those with the power to do so.

Yet ‘nationalizing’ our commercial sector isn’t one of the demands of those who have been made redundant by capitalism…
If memory serves, the number one concern of the OWS movement is the shriveling employment situation and how to correct it.

Eliminating ‘corporate personhood’ and limiting campaign contributions have done NOTHING to derail the captive nature of our politics!

So why demand them?

I’m guessing the real answer is they aren’t…

The ‘Progressives’ are inserting their own agenda into this nascent movement…which will fall apart if the ‘Left wing’ of the Libertarian movement succeeds in usurping their message.

These kids are (rightly) concerned about an economy that has no use for them. They know the solution to this predicament lays in the law, but none of the alleged ‘demands’ is even remotely related to their stated goal…

No irony should be lost on the fact that the people pretending to be ‘Progressives’ (Democrats) and the people pretending to be conservatives (Republicans) are BOTH, in reality, Libertarians…

The thing the public needs to understand is that Libertarianism has absolutely nothing to do with Liberty…

In fact, the one thing Libbies are really after is ‘freedom from prosecution’…and I mean precisely what I wrote for they are NOT (except, perhaps, in their own minds) ’persecuted’.

Understand, they are strongly ‘anti-government’ because the only thing (sometimes) standing between you and a good screwing is the law.

Who handles ‘the law’?

The same people the Libbies hate the most…which should come as a surprise to no one.

What should amaze you good citizen is how ‘transparent’ this all is and how easily they deflect scrutiny from their nefarious deeds.

I know I come across as a ‘whack job’ myself when I go this far off the reservation but if you don’t stick your neck out, sometimes the truth succeeds in remaining hidden.

The Libbies don’t walk around with an ‘I’m Evil’ button pinned to their lapels (Although they might as well!) Worse, only Tea Partiers openly display their ‘true’ political colors.

They’re Libbies, through and through!

But I digress, a little.

A target you’re not aiming at will escape attack while it continues to cut you to pieces…and I think the ‘non-commital’ OWS know that.

So it is disturbing to me to read this ‘off the mark’ manifesto as a proclamation from the camp that is trying to give voice to what the unheard from majority is experiencing.

The Libertarians could have easily penned this useless tripe!

The thing we need to recognize is that the Free Trade Loving Libbies are the enemy!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Lost Decades

Greetings good citizen,

Folks my age (basically the middle/end of the baby boom) have seen a lot of bull shit in their fifty plus years.

Worse, today’s youth think we’re the ones responsible for destroying (whether they realize it or not) the ‘global economy’.

The ‘roots’ of today’s global unraveling reach all the way back to the sixties and the hellaciously bad idea of attempting to open up the Asian markets as consumers of the Western lifestyle…

Although today’s youth would be spot on in charging us with being worthless lumps when it came to preventing the, er, ‘excesses’ of the past forty years.

All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing…and we got bagged again, although, in our defense, we didn’t have any good role models.

Think about that for a minute, even Superman was a good corporate toad…and you just know “The American Way” was really spelled C-A-P-I-T-A-L-I-S-M.

With capitalism approaching its dotage, we are seeing the end result of a system that relies on ‘constant, exponential growth’…crash and burn!

Unsurprisingly, the corporate media is still in denial despite the ‘evidence’:

The New Lost Decade
As for this decade, less than two years in, we already know that the news isn't likely to be much better. The problems that plagued Americans in the previous decade show little sign of improvement.

Take the jobs market. Tally the number of jobs eliminated since the recession began and also the labor market's failure to create enough jobs to keep up with normal population growth, and you're left with an 11.2 million jobs deficit, a chasm between where the economy should be and where it is now. Filling that gap is the key to any recovery, but to do so by mid-2016 would mean adding 280,000 jobs a month -- a pipe dream in an economy limping along creating an average of just 35,000 jobs a month for the past three months. Unless the country's jobs engine were somehow jump-started, 11.2 million jobs in this decade would be a real stretch.
 
But few in Congress, and none of the controlling Republican politicians, will even think about using the jumper cables. President Obama's relatively modest American Jobs Act, for instance, was declared a corpse on arrival at the House of Representatives. On Monday, a reporter asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), "The $447 billion jobs package as a package: dead?" Yes, Cantor assured him, indeed it was.

While this article laments the ‘lost decade’ just passed, those who have had their eye on the ball know we, the politically marginalized ‘working class’, has been ‘losing’ since the Seventies!

Now that we’re into the ‘end game’ the unraveling becomes impossible to hide:

Other precursors of future hiring, like temporary employment, showed modest improvement last month. Temporary help services added 19,400 jobs. The average weekly hours worked, which tend to climb before companies start hiring again, rose slightly, as did average weekly earnings.

Allen L. Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics, a consulting firm, said he supported the president’s jobs plan and estimated it could lead to 600,000 new jobs. Other economists have said it could create as many as 1.9 million jobs.

Right now, even profitable companies are reluctant to hire in Mr. Sinai’s view. “C.E.O.’s are paid to grow shareholder value,” he said. “They are not paid to hire people if demand isn’t there and if they can substitute machines for people. That’s a no-brainer for the people who run companies.”

Understand good citizen the ‘physics’ haven’t changed. Pour money into a leaky bag and it is still going to leak. The, er, ‘hopeful idiots’ are ‘wishing’ for economic improvement while NOTHING has been done to improve the ‘customer base’.

Pay a body to dig and fill in holes and where are they going to spend their wages? Locally, but the money will vanish into the ‘multinational void’ of the global banking system, never to be seen again.

Once the ability to pay for ’busywork’ is exhausted, what’s left?

What’s next is Zimbabwe style inflation…which shouldn’t make anyone feel warm and fuzzy!

We’ll starve to death in an ocean of ’funny money’ (take that deflationist’s!)

Why do deflationist’s keep missing the fact that money DOESN’T ’dry up’ when ‘credit’ blows away…that’s where the criminals use the printing press to cover their escape!

Why do they keep insisting this doesn’t happen when evidence to the contrary is everywhere?

But no matter because the ‘end result is ‘identical’…you’re dead…and so are the thieves!

Sure, some of them have ‘planned ahead’ and established what they think are ‘safe havens’ in the tropics…but look at who they’re escaping with?

Even if they manage to evade the detection of the ‘avenging angels’, they don’t have the ‘right stuff’ with which to build a new society with.

And their kids sure as hell won’t have a good ‘work ethic’…

Makes you wonder what they’re going to do after the hired help revolts?

But that won’t be our problem…until they decide they need to come back and enslave us.

Isn’t that always their ‘Plan B’?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

History repeating itself

Greetings good citizen,

Another ‘first Friday of the month' is upon us and once again the unemployment figures are, er, ‘disappointing’.

So what do the pundits say (in a feeble attempt to turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse?)

That the number was ‘higher than expected’.

How fucking pathetic is that?

I don’t have any ‘hard figures’ on the kind of jobs created over the past thirty days but I can say with reasonable confidence that the vast majority of them paid minimum wage…it is the beginning of the holiday hiring season.

Which, interestingly enough, brings us to the other tiny bright spot on the economic horizon

“One of the questions as we go into holidays, frankly, is where margins end up,” said Chris Donnelly, an executive in the retail practice at Accenture, a consulting company. “I think you’re going to see more aggressive discounting to make sure they capture as much of the holiday sales as they can. And you’ve seen it in some of the folks that reported today, where they said sales have gone up but margin and average selling prices have gone down a little bit.”

Generally, stores that go after higher-end shoppers fared better than those focusing on middle- and low-end customers.

The top performers among department stores was Nordstrom, where same-store sales rose 10.7 percent, beating estimates by more than 5 percentage points. Shoppers seemed drawn to luxury purchases; Nordstrom said its top categories for the month were designer clothing, dresses and handbags.

The caveat I omitted from this headline is how ‘upscale stores’ lead the way during the recently passed ‘back to school’ shopping season.

What does this mean good citizen?

It means the rich are stupid!

I sure as fuck wouldn’t be ‘flaunting’ my wealth when everybody else was struggling…but these assholes are…and it is likely they will pay the price for their foolishness.

But the cluelessness doesn’t stop there!

Because Obama is ‘supposed to be’ a Democrat and the Occupy Wall Street movement is definitely not Republican/Tea Party based, the media has tried to, er, ‘align’ the rudderless ship with the progressive movement…and the occupiers are having none of it!

Which does my heart a world of good!

(It has long been my conviction that people aren’t nearly as stupid as the corporate owned media would have you believe they are!)

Which brings us to our next bit of ‘infotainment’

September’s number of new jobs was well more than analysts had expected — one consensus predicted a gain of 55,000 jobs — and the Labor Department also revised the August figure of zero job growth to a gain of 57,000 jobs.

Still, the report came on the heels of disappointing data about consumer confidence and the housing market. Economists have also grown increasingly concerned about a ballooning European debt crisis that could send ripples across the Atlantic.

In a news conference on Thursday, the president urged Congress to act to prevent weaker growth and more job losses. “There are too many people hurting in this country for us to do nothing,” Mr. Obama said. “And the economy is just too fragile for us to let politics get in the way of action.”

Remember good citizen, it takes 150,000 new jobs EVERY DAMN MONTH just to offset the number of new entrants into the labor force…so the ‘additions’ since Obama took office really represent the failure of capitalism to provide employment for all who need it.

Which is to point out there hasn’t been a SINGLE month since the incumbent took office that job creation has exceeded the number necessary to ‘break even’…which is why we have, young workers in the streets, protesting globalization that is DENYING them the ability to get on with their lives!

Switching mental gears here, we run the full spectrum of, er, ‘definitions’ concerning money. There are pundits who believe in a system of rational and finite money and there are those who realize a vast majority of what passes for money is in fact confetti!

The ‘we can’t pay’ crowd, like the ’deficit hawks’ don’t get it.

Money is the most ‘abused’ utility in existence, it is really only ‘useful’ to the ‘end user’.

Why is our civilization falling apart?

Understand good citizen, we DON’T have a MONEY PROBLEM…we have a LEGAL PROBLEM!

Here's one version of today's economic reality:

"CEOs Say U.S. Unlikely to Slip Back Into Recession" (Reuters)
Corporate America's chiefs do not expect the nation to slip back into recession, but say political gridlock in the United States and Europe could make for a long, slow recovery.

Top chief executives including General Electric Co's Jeff Immelt and ExxonMobil Corp's Rex Tillerson said on Thursday that the U.S. economy could remain sluggish but will likely avoid an outright double-dip downturn.

"Recovery is underway, but it's a long, slow recovery. Slower than we'd like," the head of GE (GE.N) told a group of about 500 executives from mid-sized U.S. companies.

While conditions are making executives nervous, the situation does not seem nearly as dire as it did during the credit crunch during the last recession.

"This is a lot different than 2008," said Immelt, chief executive of the largest U.S. conglomerate. "There's liquidity; there's pockets of growth."
And here's another:

"Is US Economy Flirting With 'Modern-Day Depression'?" (CNBC)
“Here we are today, with a severe recession (2007-09) followed by the weakest recovery on record and now on the precipice of another economic downturn,” David Rosenberg, senior economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff in Toronto wrote in a special analysis. “This is a modern-day depression, not entirely dissimilar to Japan’s post-bubble experience of the past two decades.”

As I has stated previously, for all of our financial woes, we don’t have a money problem, we have a huge ‘legal problem’…which is to say the situation won’t be addressed until the laws are changed.

And as the public is starting to realize, that isn’t going to happen until we alter HOW we go about making those laws…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner