Two articles, one by Christopher Booker describing the impending bankruptcy of the UK and another by Victor Davis Hanson describing the catatonic walk over the financial edge by California are united by a single theme: the power of denial.
Britain is broke, says Booker, but none of its major parties want to admit it because it would force them to run on a platform of belt-tightening, welfare cutbacks and sacrifice. But since a public long conditioned to hearing comforting lies would never accept the truth, nothing will be mentioned until the final smash. Until then the voters will be beguiled with soap opera causes, celebrity news and public-relations sleight of hand.
Until recently the difference between the First and Third Worlds was a that the Western future was real. The Western tomorrow was a definite quantity; loans would mature at a certain date, elections would be held at scheduled times and the pension check would arrive in the mail every 15th and 30th of the month. By contrast the Third World timescale had only the present. Tomorrow was ink on a calendar. Only things you could touch, take or use now were real. Checks in the future were as unreal as rocket ships and rayguns.
What a whole generation of Western political leaders have done is abolish the future. Comprehensively and perhaps irretrievably. And since that hasn’t happened in two generations, very few can even come to terms with it. Victor Davis Hanson describes the bewilderment of Californians who find that, for the first time in living memory, tomorrow isn’t coming. It’s so absurd people treat the fact with disbelief. People continue to act rich even though they’re poor. They live as if that check will arrive tomorrow even though no one can give a reason why it should.
The last seven days I tried to jot down what I saw in some slices of America in recession. … There is a new beggar. I see him on the intersections now on major urban boulevards. They are never illegal aliens, rarely African-Americans, but almost all white males. … A new cohort between 21 and 30 is becoming a lost generation — and with good reason. They don’t seem to be working full-time or have good jobs with secure futures. Instead, from construction to teaching, there are far fewer sustainable careers for young people. But given family ties, they can live at home, postpone marriage, find part-time work, and rely on essentials like rent and food from the old embryo, while using what little is made for discretionary spending — allowing the veneer of middle class opulence to continue. …
Because tomorrow’s going to come, right? Those who really know the score refuse to challenge the lie. It’s easier to simply ignore it. The least confrontational way of dealing with political lunacy is to pretend to comply with it until its back has turned. Hanson observes that Utopia eventually morphs into a place-name for a trailer park.
As a rough estimate from this week’s travel, I would guess that there are thousands of illegal aliens living in garages in rural California, or in beached inoperative trailers. Almost one of two rural farmhouses has some sort of Winnebago-like vehicle hooked up to electrical service. In Selma and Caruthers, there are lots of garages that seemed to have morphed into rentals. In other words, in one of the most highly regulated, highly taxed regions in America, noncompliance at every level seems the norm. …
The end-point of a cancerous public culture is total alienation not complete togetherness. Things lead to their opposites. Political correctness becomes coded speech; over-regulation leads to black-markets; unrealistic human rights standards lead to rendition. Lies make everything unreal. Finally people forget who they are and even where things come from. VDH continues:
So I am as worried about the elite upscale yuppie as the poor illegal alien. The former have lost almost all connection with physical labor, the physical world, or the ordeal that civilization endures to elevate us from the savagery of nature.
While many were fit, and seem to work out, bike, ski, and hike, none understood the mechanics that lie beneath the veneer of the good life — the chain-sawing, hammering, drain-unplugging, tractor-driving, irrigating, and welding that allows a pleasant afternoon Greek salad and cappuccino on University Avenue — the disconnect between those Pennsylvania “clingers” and Obama’s arugula-eating crowd.
But maybe with a little more Keynesian stimulus and a little more borrowing we’ll turn the corner. Turn it because the corner has always been turned. Wrong. According to Christopher Booker, Britain, at least, is not coming up for air. Blighty’s tomorrows have arrived. And there’s no check in the mail. Its public indebtedness has reached the point where interest charges alone are unsustainable. Like Jefferson County, the UK can’t pay the interest charges let alone the principal.
This is now growing so fast that it is difficult to find ways of bringing home how stupendous it has become. The Taxpayers’ Alliance has tried to do it by pointing out that public debt is rising by £447,575,342 – virtually half a billion pounds – every day. With the Government’s own projections showing that within four years the National Debt will have doubled to £1.4 trillion. …
The implications of Gordon Brown’s doubling of public spending in the past decade are so hard to grasp that it is hardly surprising the parties don’t want to talk about it, because none of them really has the faintest idea what to do about it. The utter unreality of this debate was illustrated last week by the Tories’ claim that they could cut spending by £12 billion, when it is now rising by that figure every month. Meanwhile Labours boasts that, having trebled spending on the NHS, to no great effect, it could save half a billion a year by cutting out NHS waste – when our public debt is now increasing by that amount every day.
Britain is so badly in debt that even draconian measures won’t hack it. Like the man who has maxed out his credit card and maxed out his other cards to pay for his debts, piling interest on interest, it is no longer a question of curbing the spending spree. It’s a question of telling the public it has to work till it drops to pay a political generation’s folly. And that’s not the worst of it. All that tax money has gone to buy junk: one bloated bureaucracy after the other starting from local councils all the way to the EU monster in Brussels. Britain has gone into debt to buy a ball and chain. Who’s going to tell the electorate that? And how do you sell solutions to such monumental problems to an electorate accustomed to being promised ever more comfort, safety and ease? The answer: you can’t. The political system can’t meet the challenge without liquidating itself. Faced with an insoluble problem the political elite marks time by becoming obsessed with trivia. It rearranges the deck chairs on its Titanic. It whistles past its graveyard.
Yet on all these hugely important issues our political class remains virtually silent, because it no longer has any power to decide what happens. All our political nonentities are left to bicker over at election time is that ever shrinking area of policy-making still under our national control: schools and hospitals, crime… that’s about it. …
This flight from reality was never better exemplified than by the 2008 Climate Change Act, committing Britain, uniquely in the world, to reducing its carbon emissions by more than four fifths. Even the Government admits that this will cost us up to £18 billion every year for four decades, making it by far the most costly law in our history. Though its target could only be met by virtually closing down our economy, such is the bubble of unreality in which our political class lives that our MPs voted for this insane law almost unanimously, without having any idea of its practical implications.
When there’s no money left in the till talk inevitably turns to what color of the garbage bins should be or whether Christians should be allowed to wear crucifixes to work. The really important public issues like carbon trading take center stage. Across the Atlantic in California, Victor Davis Hanson was noticing the same obsession with irrelevant forms in a state facing the same challenges as Britain. As the actual poverty rose in California the “socially conscious” turned in upon themselves, living in overpriced, politically correct communities, seeking solace in “ambiance — that is, living among people like themselves … Why? I have a theory. It allows them to be liberal and progressive in the abstract, without having to live the logical consequences of their utopianism, or deal with the underbelly of American life.”
This may explain the strange inverse relationship between shrinking resources and growing promises. When you can’t provide the real then promise the fake. The bleaker the reality the more soaring the vision. The higher the price of oil, the smaller the military budget, the costlier the medical appliances the more grandiose the goals of the administration become. Why aim for incremental environmental improvement when you can make the seas fall. Never mind if one must accept a nuclear Iran; at least we’ll have a world without nuclear weapons! If Israel can give up Jerusalem there’ll be peace in the Middle East at last! Why fix the health care system where it’s broken? Fix it all.
And it’s all going to happen in the future, that wondrous, inexhaustible cornucopia of a place which will lend us everything we want, and roll it over when we can’t pay. It will do it even though its peopled by people that are too much trouble to care for; like the children who should never be born because pregnancy, according to one judicial nominee being considered by the administration, is “involuntary servitude” comparable to slavery. Can you have a future without people, without cheap, abundant and secure energy? Can you have a future without truth? Why sure you can. Just you wait and see.
Listen here
Now that ain’t working, that’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on the M.T.V.
That ain’t working, that’s the way you do it
Money for nothing and your chicks for free
Money for nothing and chicks for freeGet your money for nothing, get your chicks for free
Money for nothing, chicks for free
Look at that, look at that
Get your money for nothing, get your chicks for free
(I want my, I want my, I want my M.T.V.)
Money for nothing and chicks for free
Easy, easy
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic………………… and then….. all was empty, open cold ocean……….
Here’s what I don’t get about England with the financial situation and the situation with Islamists increasingly bullying the rest of the country: England is a monarchy; a constitutional monarchy, yes, but a monarchy nonetheless. The one advantage of a monarchy over a republic is that its sovereign has the sole duty and responsibility of ensuring that the country lasts into the future; it is after all the monarch’s only heritage for her children. So why is the queen, why are the other royals, not telling the truth that the politicians won’t? It’s their one unique power, gift even, to be able to be above politics and act entirely in the public interest, and yet they do nothing. I simply don’t get that.
I don’t know if the problem is caused by the immaturity/idiocy of the pols or the willful greed of the electorate but I am certain that the ship of state is about to hit the proverbial iceberg soon. I now know what Edward Grey felt when he remarked, “the lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time.”
The list of “First World” economies that are going under continues to grow. The pols and the public of those lands seem frozen and unable to act. Perhaps the future does belong to the Third World, at least they are used to living in a world where tomorrow is just a square on a calendar.
The leaders seem to believe their own propaganda, the “everything will be all right” and that hope and change will soove all problems. I think that when the fall does come it will be harder and faster that anyone would care to think.
Why the Tea Party will not be taken over by the corrupt and clueless Beltway GOP. Why elections in 2010 and 2012 will be even more “historic” than 2008, etc.
Perhaps VDH is in his own comfortable cocoon even in California, though I couldn’t speak for Britain. The future itinerant worker is just as likely to pick bits than beets. A new generation has been educationally spawned with a mind full of useless political agar and the last of a generation have the knowledge of how to dig digital ditches with and without the use of a computer. Like so many Cobol programmers who made a killing reprogramming the calendar before the millennium turned out the lights. I’d like to think that old fashion hard work and technology will have a place until a new generation that has been deprogrammed of their political fantasies can assume the mantle of the world.
Britain, would be better off, perhaps, if they could repatriate their Neolithic populations back to the mythical and long bare forests from whence they sprang, a reverse invasion back into the Norse heartland, but alas, the Moroccans’ beat them to the punch. Pity because from what I can see, it is the South Asians that are holding the reins of the future on that rock.
The economy was talked down for four years until it finally collapsed. The private sector took note and made the hard corrections that had to be made. It drew sharp contrast that the government has not done the same but conversely, doubled down a tax funded stimulus to keep itself as bloated as ever if not more than ever. The private sector is arguably on the rebound but the public is just getting ready to takes it medicine. The only question is will it take its bitter pill or have us all gather around the cool-aid bowl to have a final dose of what ails us.
Because even if Lizzy Saxe understands the problem (She can’t even manage her dogs for gods sake, to speak nothing about managing the country!) she has no chance whatsoever of getting to present her case. The political class, the media class and the QUANGO class would make certain that her message would be misunderstood, maliciously misunderstood as being self-evidently stupid, insane and evil. “Niggardly!”
Then they would political class, the media class and the QUANGO class would be left with no alternative, absolutely no alternative, in the face of a public outcry that they would hear regardless of if it existed, but to ever so regretfully ask her to abdicate in favour of a republic.
Both writers capture the air of unreality that hangs about the western world today.
Hanson mentions the elites (and not so elites) driving around 1970s freeways in their foreign-made cars — at the same time as there are no jobs for young people. Could there be a link there, do you think? Booker mentions the halving of UK industry in recent decades, and now the country has to borrow money to pay interest on its debt. Could the loss of tax-paying industry have had something to do with that, do you think?
Many of us tend to focus on the problem of high tax rates. But perhaps the real killer is excessive regulation, which has given us the expensive deadweight overhead burden typified by the elites in Palo Alto.
Fortunately, the problem of excessive overhead is self-correcting — although the correction will be painful for many. Forget about Peak Oil; we are stumbling into Peak Government, when overhead expenses finally overwhelm the Political Class’s ability to tax & borrow.
This may explain the strange inverse relationship between shrinking resources and growing promises.
I can go on about this at length, let’s see if I can do it concisely.
On the one hand, resources *are* growing! They are immense, compared to even twenty years ago. Technology, and yes, globalism. The world is awash in trillions of dollars, looking for something to do. This allowed the recent financial bubble to form.
On the other hand, the disconnect that VDH mentions is real, too. In short, that’s how the empire falls. Obama can’t make change for a dollar. We’ve been shipping our jobs overseas for generations and now new college grads can’t get decent jobs (nor can I, after 30 years, make as much as I made first year out of college, adjusted for inflation, when back then a senior technologist made about 4x a newbie), while our senile leaders plead for more – college grads! There’s your denial. Kids – and a generation of grown-ups now, are more into their Facebook pages and iPhones than anything in the world. It does not even occur to them, to try to control their environment, that it takes work, and judgement, and tradeoffs. Click here and feed the cow – or don’t, it’s just a game. Do not judge candidates, judgement is arrogant, bias, wrong. Consume a candidate like a movie star, like Coca Cola. Marijuana is illegal? Ha.
Building codes? Well, half the garages in Los Angeles are illegal apartments, but then this has been mostly true forever, I suppose it’s increased somewhat in recent decades, I’m not sure if VDH has a point there or not. Why should it matter? We haven’t enforced immigration laws or our borders for at least two generations. Racist to even propose it. Courts won’t allow it, while you’re making lists of denials.
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” ~ Lady Margaret Thatcher
AM @ 5: I’d like to think that old fashion hard work and technology will have a place until a new generation that has been deprogrammed of their political fantasies can assume the mantle of the world.
I can’t parse that, AM. The way I’d say it is we need now to spend 40 years in the wilderness, have to go through a New Dark Ages, before a new generation will reject the follies of their parents and come back to good sense. Or maybe you’re saying just the opposite, I dunno.
Kinuachdrach – “Peak Government”
Good one. I hope you’re right. But let’s not forget the ability of those with the gold and the guns to make reality whatever they say it is. Hollywood after all is the first arbiter of what is real and what is not. Ask Bill Maher.
Josh, VDH lives on a farm in the central valley. At least I think he does. That is his frame of reference here and it is a good one but Los Angeles is an entirely different beast and could be the subject of a very long post.
The Gods of The Copybook Headings are meanies. You don’t have to pay attention to them. They have no compassion.
And other gods will wake you before the nut comes loose.
Josh. I am holding out hope that old guys like me and the armies that helped build California’s technological gem can eke out a place of employment until we retire; or, in other words, drop dead.
Need more coffee.
I was going to tell this story – when the phone companies deliver phone books now to all the apartments in my building, they leave them at the door. Half the residents don’t grok phone book, so – they leave them lying on their doormats for weeks, stepping over them, rather than so much as push them aside much less pick them up and put them in the recycle bin. That’s the modern mindset. It was not that way twenty, thirty years ago. Will such people really worry whether Obama is a bag of hot air? Nope. These are exactly the people with hope and change stickers still on their Priussseeses.
btw, the edit widget is still random and capricious, seldom shows up, but it just did and I happily used it once, successfully, then tried again, and it decided the time had expired. I had two messages up, … oh, whatever. Same attitude as my phonebook-challenged neighbors?
Maybe the scales always balance somewhere. My son’s company just laid off some engineers who were no longer needed for outdated products. I asked, Why not just reassign them?
He said all the new projects were going to engineers in India, where they pay a bit more than the going rate, thus have many well-qualified candidates in places like Bangalore. It hurts here but over there it is the good life and the youngsters study like crazy to qualify for jobs like this.
Maybe the Indians will be hiring us in a generation or so.
NPR says we get immigration “reform” now.
AM @ 13: That I understand, it describes me, too. However, I am currently waiting for the wave of hyperinflation which will destroy my savings practically to the last dime. Yes, I should buy a couple of rolls of gold coins and hide them under the bed, with the ammunition. Have a nice day.
Historically there has been one out that a nation trapped into insolvency by an incompetent political class can attempt. It is the same relief mechanism that the unproductive Bedouin culture has used as an organizing principle for 1400 years. The solution is war. For England the conflict may be internalized with all of Britain coming to resemble Ulster during the Troubles. For America and the EU as a whole there may be a period of internal struggle but there is a greater risk that conflict will become externalized. This is for two reasons;
1. the greater capacities of America and the EU compared to the UK make it possible to divert the conflict,
2. the smaller size and physical isolation of the UK make it less likely to get entangled with other failing nations.
With the forced repudiation of all promises, plans and contracts the legal, economic and social networks dissolve. Humanity reverts towards a Hobbessian state of the war of all against all balanced by an increase in tribal binding for protection. This will be a very illiberal future. The heirs of Susan Sontag will have a hard time finding a home for their transgressive sensibilities.
“The least confrontational way of dealing with political lunacy is to pretend to comply with it.”-Wretchard
Pretend is the shake your head “yes”when you turn to each other and say “What are they talking about?”.Politics has always been the art of the lie. Modern media raises it to the nth degree. It not that lying has lost its power it is just that lying has undergone an inflationary spiral.
The Milton Friedmans among us despair that there is no central bank that can control the word supply.God forbid but one may have to back to the gold standard of telling the truth as best as one can know it.
The real problem is a line further up in the song:
“lookit them yo-yo’s”
The prophetic Mark Knopfler saw that pop stardom was like winning the lottery: the guys on MTV are a bunch of dopes. They certainly are not dues paid-up musicians like he is.
And that seems to be the big hope the State holds out for us commoners: “you can’t win if you don’t play”. Although people are so uneducated that a big lottery win slips through their fingers within 3 – 5 years.
a 1984 album by British band Public Image Limited includes the single “Bad Life”
BAD LIFE
(Lydon/Levene/Atkins)
Call me up after midnight
Tell me I’m wrong
Tell me I’m right
What do you want
What do I get
Did you just need the argument
Well, bad life
Corporate city
Lucky for some
Richest island in the sun
That’s life
Name of the game
It’s competition
Top of the pile
Not demolition
This is what you want
This is what you get
Bad
Bad
Bad
Bad life
Bad life
Now this machine is on the move
Now looking out for number one
The open road
I’m getting gasoline
Well, bad life
Bad
Bad
Bad life
Human gets dubious side
Well, that’s life
Call me up after midnight
Tell me I’m wrong
Tell me I’m right
What do you want
What do I get
Did you just need the argument
Well, bad life
Bad life
Bad (etc)
Bad life
Now looking out for number one
The open road
Getting gasoline
Human gets dubious side
Well, that’s life
Bad life
Now looking out for number one
The open road
Getting gasoline
Human gets dubious side
Well, bad life
Bad
Bad
Bad life
Human gets dubious side
Well, that’s life
Well, that’s life
Well, that’s life
This is what you want
This is what you get
This is what you want
This is what you get
This is what you want
This is what you get
This is what you want
This is what you get
This is what you want
This is what you get
This is what you want
This is what you get
When I look at those debt levels, I realize – once again – that the UK is going to default on it’s debts. There is no other choice – they are not payable, not even at 100% taxation levels. It is really simple – the debts cannot be repaid.
That default should trigger sympathetic defaults around the world on virtually all debt. Yes, there will even be some form of default on T-Bills. (don’t forget that default can take many forms, an interest moratorium being an obvious one) For anyone who hasn’t already, it is past time to begin liquidating any bond holdings, including T-bills, and also if you must hold stocks be prepared to liquidate them all at a moments notice. Gold and other hard assets are going to be the only way to hold on to things; and I’m sorry to say that those of you who are depending on pensions and SS will be in a hard way when the hyperinflationary day of reckoning comes.
Because hyperinflation, as always, is just a collapse of the currency. I see that happening inevitably across the world sometime in the next 5 years. We are now down to only a very few short months before the deluge begins to take shape.
Yes, the stock markets are looking good – but look between the lines at volume and sentiment, and you will see that every trader now expects some kind of crash to take place over the next 6 months. All we are waiting for is a trigger.
And in this world, triggers keep showing up with increasing regularity.
If the West has lost its tomorrow, the socialists and college commies running things still are waiting for the Worker’s Paradise that determinism and immanence promises. Of course there may not be any workers but that’s a minor detail to be solved by the next 5 Year Plan. The collective farms will feed everyone despite the fact the fields are barren and the farmers died of malnutrition.
This seems to be playing out in South Africa where the crackpot head of the ANC youth movement wants to emulate Mugabe and evict the white farmers from their land or kill them. This surely will be a recipe for success. After all look at Zimbabwe for a model of heaven on earth. No one ever went broke betting on the pure venality and stupidity of political elites.
Gordon @ 15: “Maybe the Indians will be hiring us in a generation or so.”
Time accelerates as we move towards the Peak Government event horizon.
Already, Indians have bought one of the last old major steelworks in England. They plan to shut it down, thereby earning millions from the “Carbon Credits” scam the UK Political Class imposed on themselves. The Indians are then planning to build a replacement modern steelworks in India — which will also benefit from “Carbon Credits”, in some obscure way.
At the end of the day, the Carbon Credits scam will collapse because western countries will no longer be able to pay into it — just another small consequence of Peak Government. The Brits will be left with unsustainable debts, and the Indians will be left with a modern fully-functioning steelworks.
One would have to be a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge or the London School of Economics to understand the benefits of this scheme. I seriously doubt that the Indians will even allow graduates of those fine educational institutions to clean the toilets in the English country homes the Indians will buy with the profits from their steel mill. Not with their track record!
Trang/23; noted on Drudge yest that FBI is unprecedentedly letting the family edit Ted Kennedy’s file. The mess in South Africa, of course, is one of his babies –result of the USA embargo he led, in trying to get a presidential nomination. boys at play throw stones at frogs, frogs die in earnest.
No surprise to anyone familiar with the Good Book:
All you beasts of the field, come to devour—
all you beasts in the forest.
His watchmen are blind;
they are all without knowledge;
they are all silent dogs;
they cannot bark,
dreaming, lying down,
loving to slumber.
The dogs have a mighty appetite;
they never have enough.
But they are shepherds who have no understanding;
they have all turned to their own way,
each to his own gain, one and all.
“Come,” they say, “let me get wine;
let us fill ourselves with strong drink;
and tomorrow will be like this day,
great beyond measure.”
Isaiah 56:9-12 ESV
onesimsu
17. Josh “…under the bed, with the ammunition…”
Josh, if all your ammo fits under the bed you really need to stock up.
I am assuming that you are referring to your ready-use ammo as you seem a pretty smart guy.
Ammo may just be the currency of the near future.
Invest in the “Three Bs”!
Bullets
Beans
Booze.
Using round numbers (who’s counting anyway), the US is carrying
approx. $15T in actual debt, but approx. $90T in future
unfunded obligations like Soc Security, Medicare, etc… The key
is that we need to address the unfunded obligations sooner rather
than later to prevent the unfunded obligations from turning
into funded ones. Because we can make some of the unfunded obligations
go away by simply changing the rules of the entitlements, which
will happen eventually anyway. The first default should be on
the entitlement owner. If the first default is on the holder of
Treasuries, then both ultimately default anyway.
Immenence front.
It’s a put on.
The english monarchy is addled and impotent. There will be NO Cromwell.
It isn’t Beans,Bullets and Booze. Those can and will accrue to those who possess Honor, Virtue,Family and GOD.
It would behoove those that wish to survive and prosper to seek out and retain the basic knowledge and skills that self reliant peoples use daily.
This is not the end times. It is a time of correction. Not feared by those of us who have paid attention.
The earth abides.
And here I was thinking the Three B’s were Ballet, Boots and Boobs.
you can’t invest in Boobs, Mikhail, not only is that a wasting asset but it’s got real high maintenance fees. What’s worse, it is one of the only assets that can decide to pay interest to other investors without you knowing about it, and if it decides to take off completely it has the disturbing ability to drag most of your other assets along with it.
And after that you’ll end up with a lot of free time which can be used to write bitter posts about how cruel, shallow and heartless the wimmins are.
RMS TITANIC
We speak of Titanic and icebergs and floe
I’ve heard of it somewhere and here’s what I know
On a sad day in April of ‘75
Hardly a man is now alive
Now wait just a minute that was Paul Revere
Who rode a horse somewhere, or that’s what I hear
And sometime in April that ship came to harm
She sank, I believe, on some Middlesex farm
The past seems so hazy, so far out of date
The future will come though it may be quite late
The present is peaceful, with goodies for free
I know ‘cause they say so each night on TV
I vote the straight ticket ‘cause else what’s the use
If stuff starts to go wrong I’ve got an excuse
But so far all’s well and I’m quite pleased to say
That my life is one swellegant joy day to day
The government works so that life is quite nice
Though lately I’m seeing a good bit of ice
The captain has said there is nothing to fear
We shall break all the records by end of the year
I sleep soundly now in my Promenade berth
As my ship sails serenely upon this fair earth
I go up on deck to a starry filled night
With there in the distance a glorious sight
Pale white in the darkness, an iceberg I’m told
Now who would have thought that this water’s so cold
Walt,
Iceberg sounds ominously Semitic… Embrace Anglo Global Warming and the PC fact of thaw.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
What we can expect in terms of dollar purchasing power going forward? Much of the answer centers on the continuing argument over deflation /inflation. One thing is certain. A collapse of the financial system is already baked into the cake, that train has left the station, and a dozen more trite but true metaphors. What the inflation/deflation debate seems to boil down to is what Congress, the Fed and the administration will do going forward and that’s not looking good.
It is clear that we are currently in a broader deflationary trend. This is evidenced by what happened with the stock market crash, including commodity prices like oil, copper and even gold, in late 2008 through early 2009. Credit collapsed during this time period – across the board. Essentially, bad debts were being cleared out of the system, just as nature intended. In March of 2009, the Fed and Congress began pumping trillions of dollar into the system in the form of bailouts, stimulus packages, and buyer incentives. This put a floor on the deflationary impact across all asset classes and led to a manufactured rise in those asset classes (inflationary) from March 2009 through today.
If the powers that be were to pull all stimulus and monetary expansion right now, it is evident what would happen to all asset classes, save precious metals; a re-collapse in values. Thus, the future is going to be dependent on what Congress and the Fed do going forward which is to continue printing fiat money with absolutely NO escape from the eventual hyperinflation that will follow and the Mother of all Depressions.
When the SHTF people get very irrational and they are no longer driven by logic, but rather, fear. When the system was on “the brink”, as suggested by then Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson, Congress acted out of fear of the potential for “martial law” across America if the system collapsed, and thus the trillions in spending was justified, which turned out to be exactly the WRONG thing to do …bankruptcy laws could have handled the situation much more efficiently from a legal and monetary standpoint, saving the taxpayer his life savings. Now they want your 401K money. If we were to see a relapse in the housing meltdown and a crash in stock markets, those in charge may very well respond irrationally and do what they did in 2008. Keynesians believe, after all, that the reason the Great Depression of the 1930’s wasn’t prevented is because we failed to spend enough money. This time around obama will print.print,print….visualize chaos.
The long-term position in terms of money? In the short and long term the cake is baked. Expect inflation, hyperinflation from now on: expect a significant rise in your cost of living, especially related to commodity driven prices like gas, food and electricity. And do not expect wages to keep up with rising prices, meaning that as prices in essential goods go up, your wages will not keep up, meaning that over time, you will get poorer and societal breakdown will occur.
We’ve seen the best days. Prepare to eat your neighbor or be eaten.
If you can’t afford to hedge with gold or silver try nickels. The melt value is 122% of the face value .. not a bad return…….http://www.coinflation.com/
Money-making ideas: (1) get Walt under contract (2) failing that, write a book, “How to Live Like a Millionaire”. Make your first sentence ‘First, get a hundred thousand trillion dollars.’ (apologies to steve martin)
Nose ear iously, just look at what Mrs. Welfare has done did to Mr. Kipling’s Army!
No seriously, i know i could research this, but does anybody know offhand what’s going on nationally with rural raw-land prices?
Boob market, good investment, but you really have to keep abreast of developments. The old ‘buy and hold’ is difficult in a mobile society.
W:
Awesome post. A couple of typographic errors, but the content is brilliant.
Having said that, I believe sir that you missed a golden opportunity. You could have ended your writing thus:
Can you have a future without people, without cheap, abundant and secure energy? Can you have a future without truth? Why according to some, YES WE CAN!
Kinuachdrach– Peak Government…Ha! Not happening. It’s a “renewable resource”.
Thanks for the couple of tips on the boob market, Buddy. You must be a real hands-on kind of investor.
There is a new beggar.
We have those in Portland and Seattle.
My brother talked to one once while waiting for the bus. And what he beggar admitted was that he made as much money as my brother (~$40k), but tax free.
None of these people are really in a position that requires begging, but instead have made a conscious lifestyle choice.
On paper, the UK [and many other places] are **cked. But remember the old adage – If youre not part of the solution youre part of the problem.
y’all are quite welcome, Dede –yes, i do try, but it’s not an easy return –the pepper spray, for one thing.
I guess everyone’s heard that Obama told the President of Kazakhstan that America is still working on becoming more democratic itself. Yessir, he’ll get us whipped into fine, democratic shape in no time!
This administration acts more like an occupier than an elected government. They show themselves to be alien to the American experience.
OK, so no great prospects for the money denominations we now circulate in our Potemkin economies. If Gore et. Al. can create a lucrative carbon credit barter scheme, can’t others come up with other currencies based on fake commodities as hedges against the upcoming knock-down?
Surely, the Feds wouldn’t object to citizens “believing in”, swapping and profiting off of Tooth Fairy futures and offsets to compensate for wear and tear on wings.
“The least confrontational way of dealing with political lunacy is to pretend to comply with it.”-Wretchard
aka, the Soviet Union, the shining beacon of the university leftists of the 60s, 70s and on and on. They thought this was a joke: We Pretend to Work, and They Pretend to Pay Us.
Scrivello @44:
Durable canned food
Ammunition
Booze.
Non-power Tools.
Fertile cultivated land with good water supply away from a metropolitan area.
I don’t know what the metal meisers are going to do with their gold and silver until after things get going again following a rebound. If we are spiralling down into a new great depression or worse, you can’t feed yourself with gold or silver unless someone is willing to take it in trade. A good rifle, or trap will provide a rabbit or whatever other meat source is available, up to several times a week to stave off starvation. I’m not trading my firearms or other irreplaceable supplies for something I can’t use like gold or silver.
In the mean time, I enjoy both hunting and shooting. I’ll utilize the tools for home projects. I’ll consume the canned food and booze as I rotate out my supplies. Rolls of silver quarters and gold pandas sitting in my gunsafe don’t float my boat.
Whatever you choose to do, be prepared!
Josh: “the wave of hyperinflation which will destroy my savings practically to the last dime.”?
Zim-Weimar’s socialism: -13.
“and for his removal of zeroes from the currency: 3 were taken off in 2006 and 10 in 2008.”
“Savings accounts we had in banks, post offices and investment centres have disappeared as each removal of zeroes literally stole our money away in front of our very eyes. You have to look at your bank balance, remove thirteen digits and then understand the state we are in here. Life insurance policies and pension funds have been similarly looted.”
“Letters From Zimbabwe: Cathy Buckle”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2490930/posts
rural land is still fairly inexpensive in my area (east texas), don’t know about the other parts of the country. Financing can be hard to arrange, so be prepared to pay cash. As far as a good hide-out if I need it – my sis-in-law just picked up 850 undeveloped acres (woods) on the banks of the Red River in southern Arkansas, beautiful, wild piece of land. Kind of in the middle of nowhere, so it really wasn’t all that expensive. There’s the remains of an old homestead and barn on the property, so somebody made a life there oncet upon a time. I think about the only thing anybody there would really have to worry about is a re-appearance of the Boggy Creek Monster.
anyway if I gotta go native I guess I’ll do it there.
Attention please
got a urgent message for Edgar Habu
http://plej.gazeta.pl/plej/0,0.html#film=105748_7760794
“the Poles dit it”, I repeat “the Poles did it”
s*it when I had bet on Putin missiles !
habu
“The long-term position in terms of money? In the short and long term the cake is baked. Expect inflation, hyperinflation from now on: expect a significant rise in your cost of living, especially related to commodity driven prices like gas, food and electricity.”
Yes, true and a few pointers if I may:
If you can purchase your canned goods in case lots, your dried foods in medium size to large. Invest in a good vacuum sealer and plenty of bags to seal into convenient sized bags. Invest in an air tight barrel, plastic or fiberglass to store food in to keep insects, rodents and air out of.
Invest in candles, oil lamps, batteries and if you can afford it and have a place to store at least 100 gallons of fuel – a generator. Preferably a multi fuel one. and stock the other fuel as you can. Of course this is only for people who live out of town, unless you want to break several laws re: fuel storage. Do you have a horse, motorcycle or bicycle? If not, it might be a good purchase.
Do you live where you have winds? If you do for couple of thousand you can have that power. Or if you have the place to put them and have lots of sun try the solar route because the prices are going down almost every month. Or try both to be safe. Buy that stuff instead of a twenty five thousand dollar or more car.
46. Armageddon Rex (a few additions, modifications if you will.
“Durable canned food (this means that the inside of the can is coated or plated. You have to open one to find out)
Ammunition (all calibers that you have of course but mainly common calibers for barter)
Booze. (glad someone brought that up. Vodka is good, it can be used for more than just drinking, buy by the case)
Non-power Tools. (YES, and tools to sharpen them with)
A website that can be helpful: http://www.alpharubicon.com/
Fertile cultivated land with good water supply away from a metropolitan area.” (Yes and a wooded area for the wood, if available) Of course that means you need a wood burning stove. Be sure you can get water without electricity. Be it a hand pump or free above ground water. Be sure you have purification methods and supplies as most above ground water is contaminated.
Papa Ray
Hyperinflation, which is coming, tends to produce men on White horses. Cromwell, or Napoleon, or Mussolini.
For Britain, the BNP certainly. THEY have a program, and a means. Hyper PC leaves no authentic, national, traditional conservatism left to combat the sort of Social-Nationalism that springs up (always native/majority based as well) in the aftermath of social and economic collapse.
For the US, Jacksonian majority spoils politics. Those arguing that Whites must step down to provide opportunities to others, should see that turnabout may or may not be fair play, but is inevitable. Since you cannot call the bullet back.
I’ve read that, towards the end of the (western) Roman Empire, imperial decrees were rolled out in an elaborate ceremony in which they had been rendered in thin sheaths of gold, carried out on a purple velvet pillow and held aloft in silken gloves as they were officially announced to the public.
Afterwards, they were utterly disregarded in all the provinces.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=downsizinggovernment.org&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
Please mark and read at least the entries from ‘libertypress’, ‘cafehayek’ and ‘lulu’ –these are specific organizations forming around specific federal downsizing objectives –Obama is quite likely trying to tax us “into the hole” where being so choked with interest payments we can never touch principal debt.
Per Soros’ lifetime dream, and the critical goal of the one-world elites, he’s trying to kill the world-reserve currency status of the Dollar –the Dollar is the objective, it enables the American world-cop role, freedom of the seas and global trade –everything else on the leftist agenda will flow from that ‘fundamental transformation’.
He and his forces will soon be telling us –powerfully –that ‘responsible government’ means ‘there’s no choice’ but immediate ‘dramatic tax increases’.
But there IS another way –cut the spending –an enormous amount can be cut tomorrow –which act just the lack of the promise of, is the confidence and certainty-killing roadblock to any recovery.
Tell everyone you know, and ask ‘em all to call their congressfolk –weekly if not more.
Tell them “Cut the spending. If we raise taxes, we quite likely go –and drag the world into –Great Depression II –and will quite likely try to escape it via similar such as the previous bizarre Strong Man Leaders (our own four-term presidency) and a WORLD WAR.”
36. buddy larsen
I haven’t done any real research but I’ve picked up a few items from various articles,LAND, farm land is very hot right now.
Jubilee – an institution of biblical law providing every 50 years for the release of Hebrew slaves and the restoration of family property with all debts being forgiven as well. This was the law of Jubilee, and to be observed every seven cycles of Sabbatical years, each cycle being seven years. Interestingly there is no mention of this institution ever being observed by Israel…hence, never celebrated. It’s obviously too difficult to give up one’s possessions or debtors.
My guess is this law was instituted to prevent a landed nobility, but also to avoid the very kind of debt mess a nation like Britain…indeed all nations…is in right now.
What would happen if all nations’ debt was canceled….forgiven? Could it be any worse than where we are right now?
Read the below. Memorize them, tell your friends and family of them. Devise methods and manners to combat them.
It is past the time for us to stand by meekly and watch as our Republic, our families and our descendants lives are destroyed. Each and every American must plan, prepare and work to not only confront but to defeat our Enemies, those within and without.
Spread the call and get out and get the votes because if the votes don’t come or count…
The next call will be to arms.
Papa Ray
“The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.”
2009 Judge Alex Kozinski
Right wing realist – athough I also agree that the practice of the jubilee does seem to be an economic safety valve that prevents long term problems from building up, it only works if people have been making their arrangements with that in mind. You can’t spring it on a system out of the blue, else it will destroy the system.
Example: I don’t think you understand what it means if all government debts were canceled. Even though I think this will happen some way or another, it makes things clear to put this in words. Canceling all debts means canceling – not just limiting, but canceling – all Social Security. For everyone. Also it means canceling all pensions. There won’t be a public/private distinction because the government is too enmeshed in the financial system – once the government dominoes start to fall, all the private dominoes will as well. Everything you think up as savings? It will simply be digital errata that will be erased, your account numbers will no longer exist. Every dollar that exists is now simply an instrument of debt – canceling debt means canceling dollars means canceling everything denominated in dollars.
Only real property, gold, and the 3 b’s discussed above will have value. And civil society will be a thing of the past.
I think that we’re going to try and keep the system going and hide the cancellation by intentionally pushing inflation of about 10% – 20% per year, while keeping benefits fixed. This could overtime save much of the system at the cost of impoverishing everyone on a fixed income, who will be reduced to beggar status.
Papa Ray – I agree with you that we need to learn Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, but for a different reason.
First – harsh as they are, Alinsky’s rules work. The left has shown us that.
Second – *We* are the radicals now. These are the rules we need to use to discredit and destroy those who are now running this country into the ground.
Study them. Memorize them. Use them.
Because of the urbanization of the US population if the entire eastern and western power grid goes down for more than a week, or hyperinflation causes a wholesale breakdown in the thin veneer that separates the law abiding from the lawless you can expect a few things.
The power grid triggers a cascade of unstoppable events: Power out>water out>food distribution disrupted or ceased> law and order gone>arson>full scale looting. This is what life in the cities will become. No 911, no cops.
All this leads to a massive exodus of the population headed ????? but on the highways.
Here is a mental exercise:
Put yourself in the mindset of Average citizen in a medium to big city where most of our population now resides. He has less than a weeks worth of food on hand and a 12 gauge shotgun in the closet he hasn’t fired in years and maybe a half a box of shells. A half a tank of gas in the car and a small can of gas for the lawnmower. Then the sh*t hits the fan…the banks close , no electricity, his job …what job ..no electricity. The toilet won’t flush because water no longer magically comes out of any tap. The local gas station runs out of gas within an hour or two. Where does he go…what does he do?
He will think he’ll head for someplace safe…so will everyone else creating a cluster f*ck like you can’t imagine. Then ad hoc gangs of desperate “citizens” will form to take stuff. Believe me there are millions of “citizens” who ride the fine line between outlaws and under the radar of illegality. They will begin to prey on the others. They will spread as more gangs form and soon anywhere within 150 miles of ground zero in the city you’re a target. The highways will be jammed ….just like a herd of sheep waiting to be robbed. Average Joe will never make it to safety and he’ll be defenseless.
Military war games call this “refugee lines of drift”.
Folks this isn’t fantasy. This is the collapse of society and survival of the fittest. Think the National Guard will stop it all…they don’t have the resources. Martial law will be a joke.
A good deal is made of how many troops we have in this place and that. Well in Vietnam we had 575,000 troops an NO MORE than 60,000 were in the field fighting. The remainder were all support people. Same thing today.
Better give your survival some thought.
…and I’m not talking about survival of just a week or a month..better think in terms of years.
How many of you even own some type of hiking type water filter? You can buy ones that will allow you to drink horrible water because they filter out 99.99% of the bad stuff but I’d be willing to bet few on this blog own one.
and one think you have to have to survive for more than a week … drinking water.
Buddy larsen…I need a witness.
Do you recall me saying the things being said here by the last several contributors, but doing so two years ago..Nobody picked up the theme or pooh pooed it…well.
Are we there yet Daddy?
Habu, refugee drift lines are one of the reasons the 1940 Blitzkrieg happened so fast –the Germans had it mapped, French village proximities were spaced ideally for it, and leading with surprise attacks with their siren-equipped terror Stukas they systematically filled the French army’s “to the sound of the guns” routes with civilians, just in time to halt the reserves, all over the schwerpunkt approaches. the French colonels and majors were frozen, no one would order a local drive right through their own people.
When you warn, “folks this isn’t fantasy” that was damn sure true for those French civilians –they couldn’t believe it either.
yessir, i’ll bear witness –mainly at Maggie’s Farm, you were jumping up and down about what those CDS were going to do, a full year before TSHTF, and advising gold iirc about half today’s price, right before the zoom. naw it was a good call, on the crash of 2008, that’s all there is to it. But it was so outrageous to normal experience, no one could process your message. And then it all happened.
But –warning –three names; Joe Granville, Elaine Garzarelli, Abby Joseph Cohen !
I think that when the going gets tough the useless better get going.
How many Phds do we need in Femanist Studies? How many management consultants do we need pushing classes in the latest management fads – not presenting solid case studies in what worked and what did not but instead memorizing checklists in Total Quality MBO ISO 9000 Demmings’ principles? How many more IRS agents do we need? How many more lawyers looking for lawsuits against the real producers? How many more Community Activists looking for a cut of the taxpayer’s wealth?
We can afford to put up with this kind of nonsense when we have lots of Design Margin left. But Design Margin is now negative and becoming more so every day.
I’m a space program engineer. My brother is a pharmacist. This weekend we taught ourselves how to patch the drywall in an apartment we own that had beeen trashed by an unemployed drug addict. Last year I bought myself not a new flat screen TV but an arc welder, and I am going to learn how to do that, too. Over the next several months I will be rebuilding part of my fence, completing hurricane reinforcements to my house, finishing painting the place, working on a homebuilt airplane, and fixing an HF SSB radio. And planting some new fruit trees so that I can once again grow some of my own food. And figuring out how to get rid of the alcohol the politicians have mandated to be added to auto gas – and maybe even what profitable thing to do with the leftover alcohol. As Robert Heinlien put it, “Specialization is for insects.”
And it’s time to get the Bugs out of the system.
# 3 Anton:
The voters of California truly believe they can vote themselves into Paradise without paying for it.
Expect chronic inflation in the criticals that we import…
Oil, etc.
Expect chronic deflation in the stuff we already have…
Real Estate.
Expect chronic melt-downs in debt-assets secured by Real Estate…
RMBS, CMBS, CDO’s…
Expect a world-wide crack-up when Syn-CDO’s ‘hatch.’
Habu @ 59: “…and I’m not talking about survival of just a week or a month..better think in terms of years.”
Remember that old joke about the two fishermen who have a close encounter with a bear? As the bear charges, one fisherman stops to take off his waders and put on running shoes. The other fisherman shouts at him – don’t waste your time, you can’t outrun a bear. The first fisherman responds – I don’t have to outrun the bear; I just have to outrun you.
In a true complete societal breakdown event, most of us will be dead within a week – even without the violence borne of desperation. No water, no sanitation, tainted food, disease. Survive that first week, and you can probably live the rest of your life on the pickings from a collapsed civilization.
However, the chances of that complete breakdown are fairly small. There will be islands of sanity around military bases and Mormon Churches. But admission to those islands will be very selective — What can you contribute to group survival? (Hint – not even worth trying to get in if your skills are lawyering or bureaucracy). And the entrances to those islands will of necessity be barred with lethal force.
Group survival, that is what history teaches us. As Hemingway put it: “No matter how, a man alone ain’t got no bloody f…..g chance.”
Alone, you’re ‘long pork’.
Re Anton #3 & TH #63
California has become living proof that the social experiment has failed. “They are running out of other people’s money.”
Some of us are pushing back. We believe that the sooner we cut off their oxygen of inflated taxes, the sooner they will have to face reality and do something about the profligate spending.
Check out this candidate for Los Angeles County Assessor 2010.
o/67; one wonders, how many times DOES the social experiment have to fail? Ignoring the rest of the world’s ample evidence, just look at the blue states, the cities of the blue states, in the upper right quadrant –how on earth can the Dems keep trying to turn the whole nation into THAT smoking obvious hellish harvest of balance-sheet shame? How? Because they just don’t care? That doesn’t make sense. Crazy? Maybe that’s it.
Yes, Habu I remember and I remember what you, I and others have said for years.
And I have been warning of this for years. <–[link]
But you and I know what a comment into the ether will buy you?
NOTHING. People have no frame of reference and don’t really want to imagine how things can go to hell.
And just this year I commented on this blog, trying to say something that most didn’t understand:
Belmont Club – Humble Pie <–[link to #82, you will have to find it, the link jumps back to a lower number]
I still don't know if my apologies were accepted, but my Mama lived through the depression and other times that were almost as bad. But she never envisioned that most Chinese would be better off than us.
If you won’t listen to Habu and others here…
AT least take her advice and value what you have and try and keep it.
Use the three Ps. Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
And if it is not needed, you have wasted nothing but some time and money. The time is gone but the assets you have accumulated can be used.
Papa Ray
Jeez- this comment only took five trys and thirty minutes. The Code Monkeys need to get to work on the comment section. Pay them more or fire them.
Today’s Belmont Club forecast: cloudy, with a chance of Apocalypse.
“THAT smoking obvious hellish harvest of balance-sheet shame? How? Because they just don’t care? That doesn’t make sense. Crazy? Maybe that’s it.” – Buddy Larsen
Buddy, they’re cannibals. They have the psychic outlook of cannibals, even if they
don’t actually eat anybody (yet). They expect you, me, the rest of the population,
to offer themselves up as a sacrifice to their idea of utopia. Public employee unions,
teacher unions, SEIU, all of them, believe that their collective numbers and strength
will win the day. And frankly, they are winning. They are destroying objective value
and eating the seed corn. Locusts scouring the land. What they will actually win,
though, is not quite what they had in mind. Their endless looting and cannibalistic
behavior cannot go on forever.
Most people have had it so good for so long that they cannot conceive of the day when
the electicity doesn’t come on, and the water doesn’t come out of the faucet,
and their credit and debit cards don’t work, and there is no gasoline at the pump.
Who knows what will really happen, but I am amused at the idiocy that is passed on
as news in the MSM. I think a lot of people know that we are on “borrowed time”
(literally), but no one can say how long it will go on.
We live in interesting times. Fearfully interesting times.
anton @ 27: truth is if it all goes blooie I’ll go quickly enough and ammo won’t much help.
BL #68
The Marxist true believers care, only to them it’s a feature, not a bug:
“The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” _Karl Marx
They so truly believe that they are leveling the playing field that they don’t mind at all the consequences of their actions.
When no one is a stakeholder they let their environment (those urban jungles) go to s**t.
That’s how you get the Barney Frank school of economics aka the Community Reinvestment Act.
Buddy @ #53,
Last week within a day of each other:
Bernacke warned of either higher taxes or spending cuts,http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/08/bernanke-warns-of-tax-hikes-or-benefit-cuts-to-deal-with-deficit/
and Paul Volcker urges a VAT. http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/90991-volcker-suggests-raising-taxes-possibly-adding-a-value-added-tax
This appears to be a coordinated effort to get the ball rolling for one of the great socialist goals; suffocatingly high taxes.
Volcker always loved higher taxes, absolutely hated Reagonomics and supported of course Buraq the Traitor Boy.
Funny how now Bernacke makes political suggestions. Back in the Bush years, I don’t remember him wanting us to drill for oil, or want to rein in Fannie and Fred. But right on cue… I think ol Helo Ben was at the vortex of the crash and was always closet socialist.
I do not agree with the gloom and doom scenario. Things are certainly interesting, but as a practical matter, the sun comes up every morning, the red buds are blooming and kids are laughing and playing in the sunshine.
People go to work every day. Steve Jobs sold over 300,000 iPads recently to old and young alike. Microsoft just released VS 2010 and Asp.Net 4.0. Gas prices are going up, but in our area, it is about what it was last year just before every body started getting ready for summer vacation. I see that the stock market is going up. The White House gang is really pi**ing every body off, so mid term elections should be a hoot and as long as we all can think, write, and expound on the internet, there is a good chance of changing things around.
As far as civil unrest, probably not. Look what happened to the Huttarees (or whatever they call themselves). I think that if all the FBI, CIA, and homeland security undercover agents were pulled out of the militias, etc., the membership nationwide would drop by half.
For all the foaming and fussing over violence at political conventions, etc., there has probably been less violence than what happens at the local watering hole most Saturday nights.
The kids that I know are great. They are learning all kind of neat stuff. Last year they experimented with various objects in science class that involved a tall building and a parking lot. They had to observe the burst radius of various objects, calculate the effect of height on velocity with respect to mass, well you get the drift. Several of them already have their own web sites up and a couple are actually making pretty good spending money (for a kid) from theirs.
My youngest grandson just celebrated his first anniversary of radical heart surgery for a condition that just a few years ago would have been deadly. Now, He maxed the treadmill test and is playing soccer for the first time and his prognosis is excellent. Every time I look at him I thank God for the advances in modern medicine (his surgical team was Asian, Hispanic, and American).
Lighten up and smell the roses. In fact, plant some. And of course, buy more ammo. As a short, fat, but fast captain in Viet-Nam used to say, there is no such thing as too much ammo. There is such a thing as not enough.
bl@61: [Habu] advising gold iirc about half today’s price, right before the zoom
Roubini’s calling a bubble in gold.
Meredith Whitney, Prognosticator du jour, is calling for a “material” correction in MBS’s and Treasuries as well as a double dip in housing, as of March 2010.
Corporate balance sheets are stronger than at any point in the last half century. Sitting on piles of investment capital – presumably waiting for investment opportunities that provide safe and reasonable returns, not to mention waiting for Washington to settle down.
OTOH, the cost of capital is higher than it’s ever been.
The above two points are fact. What I hear – repeatedly – as investment opinion – is to overweight blue chip equities, particularly USA companies. I’m not hearing too many currency plays, which remain more institutional than retail.
There seems to be some tension whether growth is coming from large cap USA companies or small to mid cap foreign companies.
I’ve pretty much split the difference, so whatever happens I expect to at least break even.
I have no clue about metals.
Or much of anything else.
And I see you one:
Seven Ps. Not 3 not 6 but 7.
Proper Prior Planning …
OT
I’ve been blogging. There is this exchange with the LT of GA regarding a Convention. Also comments on Ed Driscoll and Roger Simon about stuff and things.
The chasm between the doom and gloom and the ‘we’re gonna-be-ok’ is just what VDH is trying to get his head around in the essay wretchard linked. I think the disconnect is the debt load we’re taking on –we’re sprinting for the cliff but the edge is still a ways off and there’s time to skid to a stop. I’m still in the mkt –80% or so –scared silly but not enough to’ve pulled yet. So i have to watch what i’m doing to know what i think, which is exactly bass-ackwards but how it is. To use wretchard’s word (& bowdlerize Mr. Orwell), i’m making an “Homage to Catatonia”
***
Dick Morris just now: “we collect 900 bbl in income taxes and in a few years will have a 1 trillion bill for INTERST aline!”
OT I have posted comments today on Ed Driscoll and Roger Simon at PJM and I just got tossed not even into moderation but the Spam bin for saying so. Let us see if this slides by, Also I had pointed out that there are seven Ps in the famous formula the first being PeeeRoper or close to it.
It is possible that a real registration scheme will get us out from under the Dpam filter.
RagnarD,
Well played, sir.
Buddy,
Sometimes your prose is downright poetic.
————————————-
I love this bar! It’s my kinda place.
he was racing the belmont editor while oreilly was interviewing him, he meant ‘interest alone’, not ‘interst aline’
(hey thanks programmer –the same backatcha!)
(Ragnar, that’s the same mood as the Brit punkers i linked way upthread –fruuuuuuustraaaaaaation!)
I’ve said before that the secret to a functional democracy is making decisions that 85% of the populace can live with. The problem we are in today is that the Progressives have convinced 20+% of the people that they can’t live without Big Government Progressivism, which 40+% of the people know will eventually drive the whole country into bankruptcy. Of course this is not news to Thinking Progressives, they’ve always known that democracy is ultimately incompatible with their agenda, which is why they love strongman totalitarians so much.
Anyway, that’s the problem. Pols in Merry Olde can’t find a center, can’t find a program that doesn’t P.O. a quarter of the population. Same problem in California. Same problem in Blue State America. There is no politically viable democratic soloution given current voter distributions.
There are four solutions:
1) Abandon democracy and adopt some form of totalitarianism. Then you don’t need 85% support of everyone, just 85% support of the people with guns. Probably easier to pull of in the UK than in the US.
2) Lose a major war so that you’re not in charge of your political decisions any longer.
3) Launch a Civil War and start killing people unitl one side or the other drops below the 15% threshold (either through dying or by rethinking what they find acceptable after seeing enough fellow thinkers die). Then you can re-form a democracy. Unless the Progressives win, in which case they’ll go straight on to #1 because Civil War really doesn’t help the “going broke” part at all.
4) Progressivism is correctly tagged with the responsibility for enough social and economic disasters, supporters of Progressivism are made to understand they will be held responsible for the inevitable disaster caused by those they support if they continue said support, and the liberty-loving folks are able to paint an optimisic enough picture of an alternative future without Progressivism, that the number of people convinced life is hopeless without Progressivism shrinks beneath the Impass threshold.
Please note that #4 is the optimistic solution.
Maybe the Indians will be hiring us in a generation or so. – Gordon #15
That is the case now. 80% of all headhunters or contract job shops who call me are Indian’s with barely intelligible English skills, which is notable because they hold jobs where communication skills are critical. However, they can communicate with their most important audience, fellow Hindi speakers.
My last two managers were Indian, indeed, every manager I’ve had since 2000 was a foreign national. Indian’s literally dominate my IT business world. And, as one Indian friend told me, their world is one where someone from the wrong caste simply need not apply (and I’m in the lowest caste called “white American”). In his world contracts can be had under the same terms as back home, i.e. with some sort of kick back, or to someone from the same culture and tribe. It’s a world where the Western contractual rules and norms for business do not apply.
It is what it is. I don’t begrudge prosperity for any of my Indian friends (or others, who are foreign nationals). I do begrudge a society – my own – who has advertised my job – my IT career to the lowest foreign bidder for virtually my entire 25+ year career. I am a bit pissed off that laws and conventions for (mostly white) Americas do not apply to those who now run my industry. It’s the very definition of “predatory” mercantile practices, all aided and abetted by my government with unlimited H1B visas and other incentives. No American technology worker has much of a future if he or she is over the age of 40. No, that’s not quite correct. The top 20% may continue to prosper as vassals to the new foreign elite, but the rest will find new careers or face unstable employment. I still find work, but of course, at about 50% of my compensation 15 years ago. The more I learn, the more I know, and the harder I work, the less I am worth.
Hmmm … guess I’m in a bit of a sour mood tonight, perhaps because I’ve just worked 7 out of the last 8 weekends. I routinely work holidays and weekends, 60+ hr weeks, I’ve had two “vacations” in 10 years, and at age 55, I no real retirement savings. However, I’m lucky – haven’t lost the home yet as most of the people I know already have. Times are good!
I have my two kids – one graduated from college this year and one will, in maybe 2 years – what career do I recommend they pursue that can’t be outsourced or replaced with cheaper foreign labor? The irony is that the best opportunities for them that now exist may be in government jobs.
Oh well, that’s what led me into the U.S. Navy back in 1980 – Jimmy Carter had done his pre-Obama thing on our economy then, and jobs and careers were pretty thin back then. Now my kid face “Jimmy Carter” years on steroids. I’ve helped prepare my kids for their futures, but have failed to prepare the future for my kids. I regret every vote I every cast for worthless, lying, useless Republicans, who talked the talk but never walked the walk when they got to Washington. As for the fascist Democrat “brown shirts”, well, I don’t want to soil Richard’s fine BLOG by the rantings of a clearly unstable “wingnut”, by saying what I really feel about that half of this country’s population.
OldSalt
Folks, you’re just witnessing the middle of the Obama Bust-Out.
[ For those not familiar with Bust-Outs see Goodfellas, the movie. ]
In the end-phase, after all credit is lost, the target is torched…
In this case to collect on Credit Default Swaps.
Greece is an example of a fulsome Bust-Out.
We have too much Cronyism.
The end-game is ALWAYS a reboot.
——–
BTW, it is increasingly apparent that the wheels have already come off of the Emperor’s Grand Strategy.
We’re just follies away from Stalingrad redux.
BTW, all of our ‘top’ financial ‘institutions’ are in bust-out mode.
Hence all of the ultra-hefty ‘bonuses’ to the inside crew even as ( especially as ) it is apparent that the firm is insolvent.
JPMorgan has an insane devotion to derivatives. If the system goes, put a fork right in.
Wells Fargo has been stove in by WaMu the untamed harpoon.
Citigroup, it’s a financial carcinogen, the blob, break out the dry ice…
Freddie and Fannie: the democrats’ favorite trough. Now effectively American real estate’s banker of first and last resort.
FASB… better and more blinding liars than Communist officialdom. Now rendered just a tool of the top.
MAI real estate appraisals: Made As Instructed — as ever.
Bankers, as a group, are expected to be rigorous and conservative — not to pour RMBS’ out of a boot!
And so, they got drunk on them.
We live in a credit-currency system.
Counterfeiting Federal Reserve Notes is a heavy duty crime and has its own police force: the Secret Service!
However, with FICO Scores and bundling, Wall Street found a way to counterfeit CREDIT. It spent just as well.
—–
Many generations ago, in a more innocent time, persons of means placed their gold and silver in bonded warehouses/vaults, typically co-mingled with the largest precious metals smiths in the Capital. Naturally the warehouse receipts became simplified to the point of being as exchangeable as the bullion or coin.
It then occurred to the wise ‘vaulter’ that he could go higher with his receipt engine as long as that pesky public aura stayed unblemished.
A bezzle this grand ran for so long that it had to be codified into law from its practice.
Ultimately, the Monarch folded this scheme/scam into what is today the Bank of England. The Vaulter had been moved inside the government.
——
I don’t much expect the power grid to collapse. We’re still producing twice as much oil today as we did at the peak of WWII. We can still run our society without massive air travel. We just won’t like it as much.
I expect to see Liquid Natural Gas powered trains pretty soon. Since the Western Roads own their own reserves and the basic technology has been around for decades don’t be surprised.
Liquified Natural Gas is also most suitable for oceanic prime-movers: the slow-rev diesels which are everywhere these days.
b/84; re Goodfella’s movie, the Bamboo Lounge bust-out was based on a real Bamboo Lounge arson that was never prosecuted, in NYC.
In the movie, the set up was fun and games, as the gang started hanging out in the lounge and running up a tab. Over time one of the gangsters, the crazy guy, let his tab run so high the lounge owner complained to him, and got beat up for it.
Meantime one of the other gangsters had been cultivating the owner’s trust, and at this point suggested owner go visit and talk to gang leader (not one of the regular young turks, but a remote presence) about the crazy guy. Gang boss disclaims ability to control “those crazy young guys”.
So good gangster suggests that owner take gang boss in as minor partner, then the gang would have to behave and pay their bills. Owner, desperate for solution, likes idea and proposes it to boss. Boss plays dubious, owner has to ‘talk him into it’ –but boss comes in as part owner.
Then the mob, as Bamboo Lounge part owner/operator, commences buying scads of expensive booze & gourmet food on the lounge’s good credit, and selling the goods for cash at big discount ‘out the back door’.
This continues until the credit dries up. Mob then torches the place for the insurance money (some of which no doubt went to the arson investigators).
Meanwhile, in the movie, as the bust-out becomes apparent to the owner, he is helpless, fearing for his life or his family’s if he interferes. He just wanders in a stupor, signing papers the mobsters shove in front of him, near tears over the disaster befalling his life’s work.
After the fire he just fades away out sight. Matter of fact, during that ”blow-off” time, the expression on his face looked a lot like the expression, during the last few months of his term, on the face of George Bush. I’m very sad to say.
BTW, it’s often said Obama is ‘like FDR, having to face a terrible financial crisis’. Well, there’s lots to be said about that crisis, including that nine years into it unemployment was still over 20% –and did you know this about FDR’s ‘deputy president’ right-hand man?
http://www.bing.com/search?q=harry+hopkins+communist+agent&go=&form=QBRE&qs=n&sk=
Based on Russian open internet sources…
One must infer that it was plans and materials for the Hanford style plutonium converter reactor that was sent to Russia under HH and FDR’s signatures — pitched as just more lend-lease aid.
That is why the first Russian blast was a Fat-Man clone — dead nuts duplicate.
The lend-lease tally showed us sending ‘neutron-shim’; an item the German program never realized they needed.
Neutron-shim permits linear performance and is incorporated in every reactor I’ve known of.
The original German rhombus-in-a-chain dropped ever so carefully into a dip of heavy water would have certainly caused a run-away blast of power — killing the test crew for sure.
The Roman Empire in it’s last days offered the circus and bread what is Obama offering us?
No wonder Yalta was so one-sided –Uncle Joe already knew FDR’s hand.
Programmer #75: I do not agree with the gloom and doom scenario. Things are certainly interesting, but as a practical matter, the sun comes up every morning, the red buds are blooming and kids are laughing and playing in the sunshine.
Even if gloom-and-doom is not in the cards for the immediate future, I’m expecting everything in my household to be very pared down next year due to:
1. The value of our health insurance being declared as taxable income (thanks to Obamacare). I have no idea what monetary value would be assigned to it, but it’s a pretty good plan so I won’t be surprised if it significantly increases our tax bill.
2. Added to that is the fact that the Bush tax cuts expire this year.
In addition to the above, there’s the looming threat of the VAT tax – they want that so bad they can taste it, and what they want they have been getting so this is a very likely possibility. Same with EPA mandates that could quadruple utility bills.
So I’m envisioning 2011 with virtually zero disposable income. Multiply that by millions of other similarly-situated Americans and you know that, at best, the economic prospects are anything but rosy.
And that’s the best-case scenario under our current regime.
I don’t even want to think about 2012 and beyond. The further out you go, the worse it gets, until at last the middle class is bludgeoned out of existence.
Even if we are lucky enough to escape a big whopping financial collapse or some devastating attack, things will be bleak enough.
Don’t forget Mr. WHITE.
FDR had a, now known, NKVD/KGB agent sitting at the Yalta table — right next to him!
It never occurred to Truman that Stalin fully knew of the Manhatten Project — let alone that Stalin knew more than FDR.
The EPA is regulation/taxation without representation nor rationale.
It has been fully captured by those in the green industry….
Who are just as profit and vanity motivated as any to come down the pike.
Of the Hawaiian missionaries it was well said:
They came to do good; but did well, instead.
KY/92; plus, Obama’s budget plan includes revenues from a ‘double federal revenue in next ten years’, and a ‘quadruple exports in next two (or four?) years’ and the kicker, a ’5% GDP growth at 5% long-bond rates’.
Change any of those, and it’s time to call Saint Rita, as Dave says. Change two or more of ‘em and God knows. Luckily, we won’t be surprised, since they’re all utterly impossible, and as a package (double the number of dollars intake at five percent long rates?) double utterly impossible.
The CBO and the Emperor need to put down the bong.
Talk about Columbia Daze.
5% GDP growth!!!!!!!!!!!!!
boy, i’ll say.
Buddy#95:
I do got some wacky ideas on how to work our way out of this. Too late and the post would take up too much space for me right now. But will try to summarize it later.
blert/94; re representation/taxation, did you see this?
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/04/09/representation-without-taxation/
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/03/13/pm_no_eitc/
“no representation without taxation”
How is that statement different than the famous reciprocal, over which our forefathers fought a war of independence?
D/98; take a look @ “A Roadmap for America’s future” –Rep Paul Ryan, the guy whose Blair House performance at the recent ‘bipartisan health care conference’ so starkly stupified the president.
http://www.house.gov/ryan/
http://www.wwl.com/Jindal-campaign-official-hurt-in-French-Quarter/6788247
http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=6024
Last Friday night, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s female staffer and boyfriend were beat down badly outside a New Orleans French Quarter campaign event. Somehow, the news was just released today. Cops are gagged? but bystanders say it was ”protesters” of the GOP event.
Meanwhile Commie Weatherman SEIU “president” Andy Stern today resigned.
Like the ACORN liar Rathke, getting out of the way so the trouble could start without his involvement?
http://nalert.blogspot.com/2010/04/seiu-official-andrew-stern-to-resign.html
Who needs Bull Conner when ya got Andy Stern ?
best account, after some search:
http://www.lifeitsownself.com/?p=18408
200 of ‘em, they damn near got into the restaurant during the event. Chanting the race and gay and greedy stuff –take a look –Juuust what trying-to-recover NoLa needed! GOD they get mad when they feel you haven’t given them enough of your earnings. Then they busted up the young couple pretty bad –broken bones, concussions –hospitalized the girl –
Late to the party, but……….
I’ve got a brother in law, 36 years old, has worked approximately five out of the last 18 years, who outwardly says that as long as he’s being supported by his parents he’ll get up every day at noon and drink beer and smoke cigarettes and drive his jet ski and has no desire to work. His parents know he has this attitude and do nothing but continue supporting him. Of course he keeps on keeping on. He doesn’t live in a cause and effect universe, there are no negative consequences to his behavior, so there’s no reason to stop. Many in our society are like that kid, with government fulfilling the role of parent.
As far as collapse goes, the commenters above who’ve seen it coming for years were right, but you really didn’t have to look that hard. One commenter wrote that our politicians have been telling us beautiful lies about how things can always be great and that material goods and income security can be had forever despite changing world circumstances and events. It changed a long time ago – the idea that these things are birthrights was never right and the society built on that notion began coming off the rails after the oil shocks of the 1970′s, but most people stuck their fingers in their ears and shouted LA-LA-LA instead of doing something about it.
75. programmer
So you’re not buying into doom and gloom. Fine. Buy into preparedness for if you don’t you’ll be roadkill within a day…perhaps you want it that way…anyway good luck.
Britain does not seem too bad on debt-to-GDP if these data are accurate:
http://www.visualeconomics.com/gdp-vs-national-debt-by-country/
Debt-to-GDP is a key metric, above some level default is inevitable, I think. The Us and Europe are not off that cliff yet I would say. But it is out there. The other key metric is growth and projected growth. That is where Europe is problematic. Socialism plus low birth rate makes it hard to grow.
OldSalt@83,
I’ve helped prepare my kids for their futures, but have failed to prepare the future for my kids.
Man that’s tight!
as the former topic is closed
Buddy, I don’t buy the banksters conspiracy too, because Poland, before Kaczynski died, was at 6 months of the presidential elections, and every political journalist could forecast the victory of Donald Tusk there too, so why the pro Europe partisans would have wanted to eliminate a recalcitrant president 6 month in advance ? I think that the loss of Kaczynski now rather embarasses them, they weren’t prepared to deal with a regain of Kaczynski popularity among the Poles, this might push his twin brother ahead ! uh, I got a new conspiracy, his twin brother did it ! he knew that his brother dead, he could win the elections ! :p
Dave, can’t see at exactly what article you’re referring to be EU news, can you elaborate ?
#102 buddy larsen
Oh bugger. Brennan’s is one of my favorite restaurants of all time, and one of maybe 5-6 reasons I would ever set foot in New Orleans again. We were last there pre-Katrina, and even then being out at night was a dangerous thing. Yeah, taxi to and from the restaurant; not because of Obama’s Brownshirts, but rather because of the mass of street criminals. Mind you, I suspect that the two groups are far from being mutually exclusive.
I find it noteworthy that Democrat thugs, whose destination and route was known, somehow “lost” the police monitoring the march. It is not like the police are not familiar with the French Quarter. Nor were they … inconspicuous.
The cops were told to take off for a while. N.O. cops are fabled more for abandonment of their posts and for corruption [political and criminal] than for professionalism.
No arrests made? How shocking.
One of the reasons that governments and courts replaced private violence, revenge, and feuds; was because the “King’s Peace” was maintained to protect all people from violence. If that Peace deliberately will not be maintained in order to favor one group over all others, then the legitimacy of the “King’s Peace” and its enforcers becomes nil.
The Democrats have their own private armies; SEIU, OFA, etc. We have yet to see their Schutz-Staffel [I am assuming that they are waiting in the wings]; but their Sturm-Abteilung is on open display and in action protected by the State, albeit the shirts are more frequently purple than brown.
Political action, and electoral politics themselves, are substitutes for brute force and cannot function in the face of it. History shows that in societies where the rule of law breaks down, brute force beats moral suasion and votes every time.
The enemy’s armies of thugs rule the field right now, and are protected by the government in their attacks. Who will stand against them? Are there Sons of Liberty left in our country?
Plant the Tree in our Homeland, Boys!
Let it grow where all can see.
Feed it with our Devotion, Boys!
Call it the Liberty Tree! …
Subotai Bahadur
Programmer, you go !
got one grand daughter of one year too !
uh forget Habu, he is bored the hell, and anxious, just that his agent got broke and doesn’t assure his promotion anymore, now he’s getting too old to play the Hero part, though he can’t prevent himself from interpretating it in the everyday virtuality ! got a title for his play “papy’s wittering on his barraks adventures”
“Denial” is one reason why Kali-for-knee-ah is going to legalize pot; a stoned populace is much easier to manipulate.
It won’t be too long until Obambi starts spouting the same thing . . . “We need to legalize marijuana and other drugs so we can ensure the safety of the people who care to use them by careful regulation and tax the crap out of them, and when everyone is stoned out of their gourd, we can finish turning the U.S. into a dictatorship and nobody will notice.”]
bl@96: the kicker, a ‘5% GDP growth at 5% long-bond rates’.
D@99: I do got some wacky ideas on how to work our way out of this.
and blert:
I don’t know about the need for wacky ideas since I can think of a few “dumb as dirt” ideas that would work miracles, such as means testing SS and adjusting the eligibility age to reflect changing demographics.
There is no shortage of solutions – from short-term work-arounds to long-term reform. The elephant in the room – the one that’s been getting a lot of (unwanted) attention since 2008 (ref Jamie Dimon’s public rhetoric) – is the twisted helix of crony capitalism and the political classes. That helix needs to be de-contangoed and deconstructed.
Maybe there is a set of technical fixes that can be implemented by bypassing the petrified politics in Washington, but I doubt it.
What I see is one or the other: the Dems will directly redistribute income, which this country is rich enough to absorb – except when the redistribution drops well into the Middle Class, which cannot absorb it; or the Repubs will do nothing, as they have done so well since Reagan. Don’t see much of anything in between.
Until the political machine can be rejiggered, I don’t see what good any of the technical fixes will be. Bottom line, you not only need a wacky idea, but a way to make it happen. That’s why we hear the thunder of rumble in the streets.
And that puts me – at least one and a half feet – into the gloom and doom camp. The mere mention of “California” is enough to shut ME down for several days. What a righteous mess. The other vote for g&d is oil and the pending shortage within 6 to 18 months, just as real estate and employment start to recover.
On a technical note, I hear a lot of analysts projecting 4% growth as not unreasonable with 5% as an upper bound. Where from? I’m guessing oil and financials with some unexpectedly large contribution from retail.
My $0.01 worth. Ingenuity has never been an issue in this country. The burden of government has hit a trip wire. (People like Len Berman speak of the role of government as an ideal to be actively pursued but even he agrees that the current model is ineffective and inefficient. This is in direct contradiction to one of the Tea Party planks. So will government be improved or reduced? I think it needs to be reduced before it can be improved but it’s something to keep in mind as the Democratic agenda moves forward.)
Kinuachdrach @ 7 said:
“Forget about Peak Oil; we are stumbling into Peak Government, when overhead expenses finally overwhelm the Political Class’s ability to tax & borrow.”
Kinuachdrach’s comment is actually a very deep concept. For most of my adult life this thing has been staring me in the face but it wasn’t until I read Kinuachdrach’s comment that I grasped the concept, i.e. human limitation places an upper limit to government complexity. If government becomes more complex than this upper limit then no matter how well intentioned, more harm than good is caused, i.e. the government is simply administrating more background noise rather than something real. One consequence is obvious: The first article in a constitution should read: To be legally valid this document may not exceed # kilobytes as an ASCII file. If some legislator wants to add something new that bumps the document over # kilobytes then he is obligated to remove or compress old content.
A corollary to this observation is there is an upper limit that any organization can grow to beyond which it becomes ungovernable, i.e think “To Big to Fail”.
Now as an engineer this raises a $64,000 question: Are there projects that are so big that no organization can be created to manage it? Maybe an interplanetary civilization or single world government is impossible because any bureaucracy administrating such a civilization or government would collapse under its own weight.
“Too big to fail” has got to be among the most sinister set of words ever loosed onto the public. Its use to describe a sizing or measuring error, or as Eggplant says “an upper limit that any organization can grow to beyond which it becomes ungovernable”, is not the half of it.
It’s actually the negation of the free market.
Citi for example has been bailed out four times since it became, in the late 900′s with its politically-escorted buy-up of Travelers and others, combined with the simultaneous defanging of Glass-Steagull, “TBTF”.
What does it do to the competition, then to the industry, then to the economy, then to the politics of international trade, when –let’s stay with Citi as just an example –a political TBTF designation amounts to an entirely different category definition of ‘risk’ ? All the old relationships fall out of comprehensibility.
In banking, investors seek returns, and if you’re NOT TBTF then those who are will kill you –unless you start taking risks as if you’re TBTF.
TBTF is a gigantic lie put forth by those who want their form of government to be TBTF. It’s a sweet sounding innocent little phrase, like Arbeit Macht Frei –and it is being used in the same way, if not yet at the same end result intensity.
Marie Claude: It was you rlink to EU Times about Sarkozy
doubting Obama’s sanity. Down the page somewhere or other were other items. Such as Sarkozy opening stores on Sunday just for Michelle Obama.
One of those sub-articles concerned a Monsieur Bigard
who states that the planes said to have crashed in Pennsylvania and into the Pentagon are still flying and
that rockets were used to fake the crashes. He is said to be a confidant of Sarkozy.
Well, at least it is not Marcel Bigeard spouting off that way. Last I heard “Bruno” was alive and well
in his 90s.
Dave
Jean Marie Bigard used to be known as a trivial humorist, I saw his coming out about the 9/11 conspiracy in a famous talk show, and was sidered ! I dunno how a proxy friend of sarkozy he is, Sarkozy likes to have a entertainers (saltimbanques) court, did Sarko voiced him about that, dunno, but since then he closed his mouth in the medias.
Also, yes, I read that Sarko made the Champs-Elysées stores opening, Sarko can be such a “lêche-cul” (shoe polisher) when he has to seduct his adversaries, or superiors in a political contest… But in the occurence it was for seducting a powerful woman, that would bring him some credit when he would have to deal with her husband, and like his father he’s fond of women, so, surely it wasn’t a difficult work for him to do that
William (Bill) Isaac, former FDIC Chair, (who resides on my Chris Whalen list of really smart guys who understand finance) was on CNBC today saying that the current reg reform bill won’t touch the TBTF issue – that is the five investment banks who control 50% of the trade. Think about that for a minute.
Of more relevance to the discussion of politically-mediated institutional reform is Isaac’s contention that the original Dodd bill from last November had some serious teeth.
No longer contained in the current bill under consideration.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/35948207/Isaac_Dodd_Knows_Better_And_Can_Do_Better
Do your own googling (or binging). Serious financial reform is DOA.
buddy larsen,
2B2F=2B2B
GL/117; Bill Isaac is one of the people i trust too –wretchard’s site winnows and winnows fine. Dodd, the singularly pusillanimous, has a history of pre-covering via proposals he already has set up to fail, so that when his real position slides into a bill, he can call it ”the best i could do, i did try to do something for you, see my proposal of so and so date”.
It’s no accident he’s the senate banking chair, his organization is designed to collect the free market financial power and concentrate it in his gang, and if control means more of less then so be it, less of more would be ‘cowboy individualism run amok’ or some such sh*t that falls from his largemouth bass-looking face.
Note that tho he knew that we all knew that he had zero chance of winning the nom, when his handiwork went hellzapoppin summer 08, he was shamelessly hiding on the rubber chicken circuit, practically homesteading in Iowa, ‘busy running for president’.
LotM, in an ideal world, yes, and also in the state of nature, yes. The former we either choose to advance as we can, or the latter, a separation from our gift of free will, shall overtake and consume us.
bl: RE Bill Isaac et al
This is exactly what caught me unprepared for 2008. I always thought that people like Isaac were charting the course of this still not irrelevant Ship of State. Twern’t so.
The so-called Tea Party movement will either force the requisite changes in Washington, and at the state level, or it won’t, in which case, the Habu, Papa Ray, etc scenario will play itself out. As has the status quo.
Richard,
Well done. Clear thinking, I hope it is contagious. Keep your courage!
GL, as you know, most folks who want to know do now have a basic understanding of the big things that collided to make the crash –but as you say in This is exactly what caught me unprepared for 2008. I always thought that people like Isaac were charting the course… it’s VERY hard to understand the lack of warning (yes, G’span and others were lamenting ‘mis-pricing of risk’ and other bloodless background dronings).
Well, as timely warning is part of life, as it’s how we adjust and proceed in nearly everything we do, as someone trying to roll you wants to hide or discredit or minimize or inure the timely warnings that observation provides, until such time as the thing they want to do is a fait accompli, i ask you to consider this man, or simply his Forrest Gumpian career, as glossed in the short ‘Life and Career’ passage in his wiki (which BTW has tellingly been altered since i read it months ago, from ‘creator’ of the referenced 2000 act to ‘supporter’ of it, and as well, the former imbedded hyperlink to said act is now taken down & gone from the wiki).
but here it is.
You’ll see how the new rules were specifically written to allow the virtually secret (also see LEH’s ’501-repo’s) CDS growth –which then duly exploded from the few hundred million bucks worth of esoteric specialty biz insurance extant pre-bill in yr 2000, to sixty trillion dollars worth when the blow-off came in the Panic of 2008.
There’s of course libraries building of evidence of malfeasance across the financial world, but almost invariably at the top there’s the mens rea problem (any detective will tell you, every white collar criminal’s arrest statement is “I’m just a really incompetent businessman”).
But here’s the gearbox, and the mechanic. just look at the career, as it applies to the wrecking machine (enron led to sarbox, sarbox led to dark pool hedge funds of london & dubai which threatened to ‘cost USA fortunes in new biz, without the privacy act of 2000′, et cetera & so forth), of your new USA Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman –’head regulator’ of your presidential administration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gensler
PS, i linked to wiki because, as the bio written by wiki’s Democratic Party friendlies, it’s the known-source least purple-raged. But please do search ahead elsewhere, esp by way of helping form a realistic future d&g outlook, thumbs up or thumbs down.
MC 115: Merci.
Now about “Bruno”. Heard anything about him? I remember the history of his 6th BPC.
bl:
Gary Gensler – one of Kudlow’s buddies. He hasn’t been on recently and I presume no knowledge of how deep the “buddihood” between them. But small incestuous community comes to mind.
You’ll see how the new rules were specifically written
My writing may suggest an oblique frame of reference, but I guarantee that I understand the carefully positioned stepping stones. The repeal of Glass-Steagall was a BFD. My “aha” moment was a day late and several tens of thousands of dollars short. But I “get it” now.
That is why I stated several threads ago that my mind regarding this administration would be made up based on the coherency of financial reg reform and energy. Looks like the former is failing. As I thought it would. TBTF. Which kind of puts me in the Habu/Papa Ray etc camp.
Prepared for the worst.
correction, the 2000 act was already in place, natch, prior to the series of practices which so exploited it. And AIG, oh, mercy –best read Taibbi’s first article –Taibbi is harder on Wall Street than he is DC, but his story on how Cassano ‘did it’ is just mind-blowing. Fan & fred, linked, we get elsewhere.
I’ll be spinning in circles ’til the cow come home –it’s all just too cosmic.
I am tired of this juvenile nonsense. The comments numbering system is screwed and comments are routinely lost. Have fun.
”carefully positioned stepping stones” –beautiful –takes me 500 –no 5000 –words to say that –
bl: Agreed. The Cassano story is seminal.
And so yesterday. Won’t ever reach the collective conscious mind of the voting public.
Any more than this comment will penetrate the WordPress fortress.
hmmm…yes we are in dire straits…
Let me tell you how it will be;
There’s one for you, nineteen for me.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don’t take it all.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
(if you drive a car, car;) – I’ll tax the street;
(if you try to sit, sit;) – I’ll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold, cold;) – I’ll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk, walk;) – I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman!
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Don’t ask me what I want it for, (ah-ah, mister Wilson)
If you don’t want to pay some more. (ah-ah, mister heath)
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
And you’re working for no one but me.
Taxman!
heh –that and “Drive My Car” –man those guys wuz good –
Marie Claude @ 110 said:
Ah, child. You will make a nice ornament on the arms of the new master race – coming to a country near you soon! You scoff at your betters who are actually blooded in real conflicts and think you are oh, so, witty. More like half-so.
So, now the country finds itself adrift. Well, I won’t say it.
Buy staples = boolets, booze, boolet launchers, canned goods and dry goods.
Dave
if you can read french (I guess you can), you’ll get the last news about “Bruno” here :
http://secretdefense.blogs.liberation.fr/defense/2010/03/g%C3%A9n%C3%A9ral-bigeard-des-nouvelles-mais-tr%C3%A8s-bonnes.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2250561/
Anne Apfelbaum has abandonned the “conspiracy” version of the plane crash
Ragnard, until that the apocalype, that you announce, comes, I might be gone, so I’m not gonna prepearing a reserve for the after life
MC: Unfortunately I do not read French. However I could puzzle out that he was hospitalized in Nancy and was in a bad way.
Some advanced search googling got me to a blog-chat group in English where I learned that his trouble was phlebitis—-in two places. Had left the hospital and returned home. Since no obituary yet, he may be on the mend.
Lord, oh Lord was the French comment section ever loaded with well-wishers. Which is but proper. I rate Marcel Bigeard and Hal Moore the two best Battalion Commanders in the history of Indochina Warfare. We should be grateful for having had them.
The real trouble? The utterly parasitic have taken over. Note that the class does not only include the underclass; it includes those whose sole job is to shuffle paper, or to shuffle bits in a database, and who neither produce nor distribute anything of real worth.
Who are these people? Not just government bureaucrats, although they are an easy target – but bankers (particularly those who manage risk for the banks themselves), lawyers and accountants. All these groups work less and are compensated better than anyone in industry or retail below the very top of the tree – and have better security and more generous pension arrangements to boot.
Some solutions? (Reference the UK.) Freeze civil service recruitment indefinitely, or at least until the numbers are reduced by at least a third. Repeal most employment and human rights legislation, thus making it possible to fire someone who refuses to work. Make it illegal to give union organisers paid time off for union business. Gradually increase civil service working hours and decrease their holiday entitlement, and at the same time freeze their pay until it reaches a point lower than average – to account for the aforementioned generous pensions. And make the trading of derivatives, and hedge funds, unlawful. (Part of the point of interest on loans is to compensate for risk – currently, they are getting all the interest and none of the risk.)
In the UK at least, at the moment far and away the best option for someone starting up is to get a nice safe job in government or a bank – never have any employment or pension worries again, be generously paid and be required to be in your place of employment for maybe a third of your waking hours. This situation is insane, unsustainable and has to stop.
If something along these lines is not done, then large numbers of paper-pushers are going to end up being introduced to Mr. Hemp and Mr. Lamppost.
Shakespeare in Henry VI had it right. I wonder what he would have said about the current crop of “civil servants”?
Fletcher Christian @ 136: Thanks for a very thoughtful set of proposed remedies to the problem of an overpaid, top-heavy government bureaucracy. Unfortunately, merely imposing a freeze on hiring new bureaucrats, and a freeze on salary increases for them until such time yada yada, gives them more time in office to find ways to undo your efforts.
A clever bureaucrat can find at least a dozen ways to increase his/her compensation without a salary increase *as such*. These people are the absolute *experts* at finding loopholes or ways of undermining laws/rules they don’t like. Ordinary folks like us are *totally overmatched* by bureaucrats when it comes to gaming the system.
Sadly, I don’t foresee anyone taking any effective action to reduce the size or power of government. It will continue to grow in both areas, and to take more of your income. But even hiking the federal income tax to 60 percent on $50K/year won’t be enough to cover the Dems’ new spending, so our national debt will continue to grow.
When the Chinese stop buying our worthless bonds, the govt will simply print fiat money–and shortly thereafter the system will implode due to hyperinflation.
But they were good proposals!
Dave your info about “Bruno” is right, I was astonished to read that he has so many well-wishers though, cuz he left a sulfurous impression since a few decades, I guess that his “Edgar Habu” vocabulary was the cause, while the “beat generation” was bred with anti-war songs, he was seen a bit like an “alien”, for at the times of Indochine war, we had not many reports of the events, and after just sorting out of the WW2 wounds, Indochine wasn’t the main concern
MC #138: Publicized images are often misleading. Even when nobody is deliberately “spindoctoring” them. For example: “Blood and Guts” Patton actually took far fewer casualties than did his contemporaries. The Mad Bomber LeMay did less damage to civilians with his targeted saturation raids than his predecessors did with what was called “precision” bombing. So forth and so on.
I first became acquainted with Bigeard through the histories written by Bernard Fall so my introduction to him was probably a bit more objective than what you heard. The West seems to have an undercurrent of those who just love to disparage heroes and heroic deeds.
From something you wrote a while back, I gather that after Dien Bien Phu, returning French soldiers were under the same cloud of suspicion (and false accusations) that American soldiers were under somewhat later on. Fortunately this pathology no longer seems to be part of the general populace in either of our countries. Now we just have to deal with those fringe elements that thrive on slanderous falsehoods.
At any rate, to read the career of a French farm boy who was drafted as a private for two years in 1936 and who disliked the Army and was dragged back in in 1939 and wound uup retiring as a highly decorated Lieutenant General 40 years later——. Well, our situation is critical but none too serious.
I guess that Bigeard will become a official “hero” when he’ll be dead ! Problem, nowadays, is that in the army you get promoted by your bureaucratic work and your political relations. Bigeard would have no chance to be remarcked, it wasn’t in his habit to care for attending the useful salons. Only heavy conflicts and the lack of pragmatic responsables allow to these kinds of men to have a national fate