The Manufactured Debt Crisis – Lies, Damn Lies And Statistics. Reason Has Been Replaced By Insanity And Corruption.

First off, let me say that there is no debt crisis in the United States.  You can agree or disagree whether you want the government to issue more debt, (and you should want them to issue more debt or print more money until they fix the economy or it will collapse) but beyond the histrionics, ideology and idiocy on blogs, in the media and in Washington, Treasury rates are essentially at all time lows.   This isn’t Greece and it never will be Greece as we have written ad nauseam.   The debt markets are not throwing up on U.S. debt.  To the contrary, demand for debt has driven interest rates to the lowest in our history.   This is all essentially a game of political extortion driven by Republican kooks.  Mind you, I don’t find much redeeming value in any politician but the Republican party leadership really disgusts me.  I can’t even bear to turn on the television or read any mainstream news about this issue.

Now, on some level I am sympathetic to the Tea Party stance because many of these people see Washington out of control and corrupt, and they are right, but you can’t elect people who hate the government to fix it.   I have a high disdain for the state and its endless corruption, elitism, cronyism, seamy back room deals, fascism and corporate welfare just as most Tea Party congresspersons do.  But I don’t hate the government nor wish to dismantle it.  And I think most people of reason can agree with this basic premise of sanity in lieu of government haters.

Government which is the will of the people should reflect the ideals of the human condition.  That is, an imperfect but beneficial bureaucracy which seeks to enforce the rule of law, assist those in society who cannot assist themselves, provide some basic dignity to those who have experienced catastrophe (often not of their own accord),  right the wrongs of the tyranny of the majority, minority, bigotry, corruption, etc.  And do it completely transparency as public servants.  The Tea Party is involved in the same back room smarmy negotiations as those they wished to replace.  And most of them are economic idiots that frankly hold very negative extremist views towards any government. 

The national debt issue has brought an endless stream of ridiculous remarks out of the wood work.   First off, many financial savants who say that monetizing the debt will cause inflation are ridiculous.  I would like to know how wiping away debt or money that has already been spent will cause more inflation.   That is complete and utter nonsense but it is a position held by some self-proclaimed expert bloggers who obviously really don’t know what they are talking about.

Additionally, some say monetizing any debt would cause the dollar to collapse.  There are multiple methods of monetizing debt that would support the dollar if that is a concern.  And I see absolutely no evidence (supply and demand)  anywhere that it should be.  Multiple methods of monetization can be used depending on how the government wants to regulate the money supply and the dollar.    In fact, Britain, when it held the world’s reserve currency defaulted on some of its debt obligations and its currency rose.  And if you understand the role of a reserve currency, you should understand why.  Defaulting or monetizing, either one, is not going to cause a currency collapse regardless of what the self-proclaimed experts beliefs are.  My God, I’ve been listening to this bullshit for a decade.  Will they just please go away.

Similarly, the remarks arguing for the debt limit to be raised because the U.S.’s credit rating could be severely harmed are making a mountain out of a mole hill.  The concept of a credit rating has become moot in any country on earth.    This is akin to your personal credit rating.  Who cares about a country’s credit rating or their personal credit rating?  Seriously?  That system is imploding and there is a very good chance neither will mean a damn thing at some point.  The entire world is insolvent due to corruption.  Everyone’s credit rating is awful.  So what’s the point? 

The U.S'’s credit rating is only important if the U.S. desires to enslave the world in dollar-denominated debt.   Just like your own personal credit rating is only relevant if you wish to become a slave to debt.  There is zero difference.  Additionally, there is never a reason why the U.S. should borrow money from private for-profit bankers.  Ever.   To that point, we could easily have a credit, non credit or combination monetary system where the U.S.’s credit rating is completely irrelevant because there would be no credit ratings.  And we don’t need to use new currency or blow the entire system up.  We could start a new system using the same currency and the same government institutions and we could do it starting tomorrow.   We could have a new monetary system that would issue debt, when necessary or appropriate, and there would be times we should, to society and do it in such a way that  pandering to any of the  fictitious credit rating agencies would not be necessary.  We can get rid of the credit rating agencies just like we can get rid of Wall Street.  Neither are necessary for a functioning, market-based and/or capitalist economy or monetary system. 

When all of that Wall Street criminal behavior was rated as AAA by the fictitious and incompetent ratings agencies, how’d that work out for you?  Or when the banks in the U.S. or Europe were highly rated, how’d that work out for you?  Or when Greece’s credit rating was fictitiously made to look better than it was, how’d that work out for you?  Why would we then believe that a threat of a downgrade from these incompetent and unnecessary institutions would mean the end of society as we know it when the ratings agencies are so systemically wrong and so systemically incompetent?  Treasury interest rates are set by supply and demand or by the government.  Not by credit rating agencies.  Equally fictitious is the belief that supply and demand is set by credit ratings.  That is utter nonsense.  (By the way, we could have a very functional market-based system that also doesn’t need the credit rating agencies for local or state government or the issuance of corporate debt either.)    Now, what a downgrade or default could do is force a hand for transformational change and that just might be a very, very good thing as long as it was very temporary.   But as long as our government remains captured, they will try to destroy institutions serving democracy while maintaining the fascist state as both parties and our president are doing today.

Somehow ideologues howl and scream that the United States government creating money to build bridges or pave roads or fix sewer systems or fix the levies in New Orleans or give some a measly $12,000 for Social Security so an eighty year old indigent grandmother must cause inflation.   They are wrong.  They have no idea what they are talking about and those statements prove it.  The system can easily be designed/modified to manage those dynamics.  But I will tell you what does cause inflation.  That is private for-profit banking criminals printing money out of thin air to piss away on their endless criminal Ponzi schemes of manipulating commodities, speculating in endless financial schemes, shoveling thousands of illegitimate companies onto grandma’s retirement account in the Internet bubble IPO Ponzi scheme, blowing bubbles with their criminal mortgage schemes, funding mergers that create monopolies that enslave society and giving people loans to buy flat screen televisions.   In other words, self-rule and government,  if transparent and freed of lobbyist and banking corruption, is substantially more virtuous than Wall Street sociopaths will ever be.  And the system can easily be designed to enforce strict discipline.  Just like you are able to maintain discipline in your personal finances.  As we have noted before, the time for an economic constitution has arrived.

Additionally, the histrionics around interest rates exploding if the U.S. defaults are equally not true.   While interest rates may rise, we aren’t headed for Greece.  Greece’s rates are so high for two primary reasons.  One, they outsourced their monetary policy and have no tools to deal with their debt enslavement and two, because mostly U.S. financial firms are manipulating Greek interest rates through the totally unregulated credit derivatives market. 

In a worst case scenario, the U.S. government could freeze all interest rates.  Ideologues howl about this as communism or against the free markets or whatever choice words of lunacy they can dream up to terrorize people but the the U.S. has done it before.  And frankly, societies have been essentially freezing interest rates for thousands of years.  They were called usury laws – something that this fascist country remembers nothing about as it beats its citizens into poverty under the guise of free market bullshit.  This free market con game where banks can charge 25% interest on credit cards and other choice criminal behaviors are recent additions to the American lexicon of corruption.   The only reason fixed interest rates would ever create a problem in America is because we have a private for-profit banking and financial system (instead of a public banking system serving democracy and human development)  that speculates and manipulates interest rates spreads and distorts the economy as a result.  The longest periods of prosperity in human history were accomplished under capped interest rates.   And it wasn’t under communism, socialism or other ridiculous hate speak.  

The U.S monetized all of society’s debts in the Great Depression by devaluing the dollar against gold.  That can’t be done today because gold is not money.  But they can accomplish the same thing by monetizing some of our debts.  In the Great Depression, doing so  immediately provided some relief to the banking crisis, allowed a marginal recovery of employment (although it didn’t solve the root cause of the problem that caused the Great Depression or high unemployment) and within half a dozen years, the U.S. economy was back to 3% unemployment and experienced the greatest boom in our history in the following thirty years.  (Again, not as a result of monetizing our debts.)    But here’s the point.  Debt is an illusion.  That’s all it is.  It’s not real.  And the minute that most people figure that out, the party is over.   Maybe this will be the impetus.  Maybe not.

But, one thing we do know is there is no debt crisis.  This is an attempt by the fascist Republican leadership and their elitist masters to dismantle democracy to serve their own political and undemocratic goals.

There is a vacuum in the search for truth and reason in Washington.   As people look for answers within that vacuum, it creates an opening to radical elements in society espousing paranoia, conspiracy theories and hatred.  These unsavory elements, similar to the same elements in Washington, speak to gain an audience for purely self-interested reasons.  And many of those self-interested reasons include an ideology to dismantle democracy. 

I saw a constitutional lawyer talking the other day and he said that the Republican leadership has already dismantled the Constitution by using this manufactured con game to politicize and threaten the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.  In other words, our political parties are acting on unconstitutional grounds.  And that their behavior should be stopped by the rule of law if necessary.   Why does that not surprise me?  No one in Washington seemingly gives a damn about the rule of law or what is morally just.  Why should they?  Politicians spend much of their time subverting the rule of law and morality.  

And so the nonsensical political theatre in Washington continues.  All the while no one in Washington has proposed a single solution to solve the largest problem in our country – economic opportunity and the restoration of the economic rule of law dismantled by said politicians. 

Need A Job? Run For Congress. Approval Ratings Point To Winds Of Change.

The American people have been well ahead of this crisis for a long, long time.  As we have noted before, polling approval ratings for Congress have been horrendous since early in the first term of the Clinton presidency – often polling as low as around 12% positive.    The reality is most politicians simply don’t reflect the virtues and values of most Americans.   They reflect the virtues and values of the kleptocracy.   AAnd why shouldn’t they with the kleptocracy’s money being the driving force behind who gets elected.  We can surely then conclude  the wrong people are attracted to public stewardship for their own desires of power and greed and to serve a criminal ruling class’s will.  And with a monopoly on who actually gets the massive corporate and elite funds needed to get elected, the American people are presented with false choices of corrupt Republicans or corrupt Democrats.  Mind you, the presidency surely represents these same morally bankrupt dynamics.  And so do many state and city governments. 

The vast majority of Americans may not have been able to predict exact dynamics in our society as they have unfolded, but that is because most Americans spend their time raising their family and working more hours than any other industrialized nation.  But the reality is most Americans have never bought the swill out of Washington.  It’s in most people’s DNA to question the false prophets from afar promising endless glory and riches while that ends up on our door step is usually a big pile of doggie doo.  (We can thank politicians for long work weeks as well.  30 years ago there was talk of a 4 day work week.  What ever happened to that?  With productivity where it is in our nation, we could easily have a three day work week.  EASILY.  Have you ever wondered why you work the hours you do?  At one point, corporations pushed children to work 80 hours a week.   And they more than likely would today were society’s collective consciousness not to have evolved.  There is nothing magical about 40 hours or any other number.  As a free and democratic society, we could decide the work week should be 20 hours a week or 30 or 10 without affecting living standards.  The only baseline requirement is that the nation produce enough to feed its people and whatever it wishes to consume. 

It is only corporations and beholden political crooks - bureaucrats who financially benefit from the profits extracted by long hours of our workforce - who truly benefit of the low quality of life created by the longest work week in the industrial world. 

What better way to improve the quality of life for families, spend more time bonding emotionally,  spend more quality of time improving our children’s lives and have more time to contemplate future invention, and on and on and on?  Do you want the happiness index of our nation to improve or the productivity index of corporations to improve by working longer hours? 

What ever happened to concern about quality of life?  Peacefulness? Compassion?  Community?  Connectedness?  Meeting our society’s emotional needs as human beings?  It has been destroyed by the fascist state.  Corruption and the Orwellian corporate state has created a very emotionally-uncentered society as we live out the uncentered view from the bureaucrat’s mind of what our society should be .  Is this as good as it gets?  Are you happy with how your fellow man is treated by the machine?  By you, because you support the machine?  Or is it ‘all about me’ with you?

You work long hours because you are a slave.  It’s all a mirage.  That is, everything you believe about the economy and our monetary system.  And as such, your belief in that mirage is the only thing that makes it real.  Your mind makes what you believe become a reality.  Nothing more.  And that belief system is now crumbling for millions and millions of Americans.  I can’t think of anything more liberating or enlightening.) 

Unlike the stereotypical views from Wall Street and Washington and other endless media, corporate and political mouthpieces for the corporate state, most Americans don’t want to lay around on their fat ass and each the corporate state’s toxic industrial food all day long.  That and other stereotypes are projections of the unstable minds of egocentric shills.   In fact, while I know someone out there must be lazy, I can’t recall ever meeting anyone who didn’t want to work and provide for their own well being.  Well, except for politicians; most of whom have never done an honest day’s work and would rather live off of other people’s money.   If the government does default, the first layoffs I wish to see are all of Congress and the White House.  Maybe we can outsource them to China.

While polling for Congress has been abysmal for a few decades, polling that I have seen generally shows a higher approval rating for an individual’s own congressional representatives.   While polls can be wildly inaccurate, especially based on wording and profiling, this is the first poll of any kind I have seen that shows most politicians could be forced to find a real job. 

What is an out-of-work politician to do if the lobbyist, political consulting, campaign consulting and political think tank engine collapses through reform or worse?  Well, I guess they could join always work at McDonalds since those are the types of jobs their policies disproportionately seek to create.   Looks like the lawyer bubble might be on the verge of popping.  Without the massive political fascist regime to prop it up, being lawyerly might entail flipping burgers.  The new normal. 

I’ll take a Quarter Pounder with cheese, a large fries and and a Coke.  A meal the industrial food monopoly would be proud of.  And who better to serve it up than out-of-work political idiots whose pandering to corruption created the very food they would now have to serve. 

It’s good to be the king.  Not much longer though.

Title link here.

The Unmanipulated Advance-Decline Data Is Not Confirming Price Activity In Equity Markets

We have shown my advance-decline data on here quite a few times. With so much distortion of markets by leverage and derivatives, it is constructed to keep it real.

The data imploded in May of 2010 and has not recovered. As we have remarked numerous times, something broke in May of 2010 and we have said what that “something” likely is. 

Let's look at the data again but do so from a weekly perspective. Below is the S&P 500 with the advance-decline data overlaid on it.  See anything unusual? The data over the past two months has essentially had a mini crash and has not recovered.  In other words, the market is levitating without seemingly any supporting action by equities. 

As we start to see money drain out of the global economy at an unprecedented clip, this is what one would expect.  A coming global liquidity shock is surely possible without a change in course by political idiots and banking criminals around the world.  The Federal Reserve obviously sees this because they are supplying more than ample liquidity to their cronies on Wall Street. (While main street Americans and community banks continue to take a proverbial baseball bat to the solar plexus courtesy of the same Federal Reserve and politicians who are have proposed absolutely zero solutions to this economic calamity.  Instead political idiots continue their ideological war between both parties that serves absolutely zero purpose to self rule, democracy, solving social issues or fixing our economy.  Both parties serve one purpose – power and control.   And just like any unstable mind driven by power and control, both political parties driven by power and control are seemingly in the process of self destructing. And, in some way, shape or form, that will eventually be a very good thing.)

Political Terrorism Or Extortion? Rewrite The Constitution Or I Will Bring Down The U.S. Government.

More aragoto kabuki theatrics aka exaggerated histrionics from the loony bin in Washington.  What we need is a constitutional amendment requiring politicians to pass a Rorschach test. 

Space Shuttle’s Plasma Trail As It Enters The Atmosphere As Seen From The Space Station

Link here.

The Insanity Of Those Seeking Power And Control & The Unsettled Mind

One of our theses on here is that reason and peaceful activism are the only methods we advocate to throw the bums out of office and agitate for transformational economic change.   A society cannot survive without reason and by extension the rule of law.  And it’s no coincidence both are in short order in the leadership vacuum in the United States. 

As I have said before, I am about as close to a pacifist as one can be without actually being one.   In other words, I understand in certain circumstances that the unsettled mind of people like Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin and others emerge into positions of authority and power.  And that these unsettled minds understand nothing but force.  Or, as Teddy used to say, walk softly and carry a big stick.  But in all but very extreme examples such as this, there is never a solution that involves violence, war or force of any kind.  Violence, war and force are the manifestations of the unsettled mind.  There is no exception to this reality whether that applies to someone’s personal life or to international political policy. 

Similarly, the unsettled mind seeking authority is not exclusive to third world countries or places void of democracy.  The unsettled mind seeks power and control within religious bureaucracies that has led to often systemic issues of child molestation and rape.  The unsettled mind seeks power and control to perpetuate messages of religious intolerance, bigotry and hate.  The unsettled mind seeks positions of authority within our political institutions, corporations, Wall Street and any bureaucracy affording it power and control to appease its own demons.   And often when the unsettled mind convinces itself it has no voice or no power and control, that same unsettled mind seeks to impose its distortions on other people through acts of abuse, violence and even murder. 

There is a universal truth with no exception as we have remarked before.  No man should ever have dominion over another human being.  Any position of dominion involves these characteristics mentioned above. 

Positions of stewardship and leadership in corporations, religious institutions, government and peace officers, as an example, are supposed to be filled with people honoring that stewardship granted to them in grace by society.  Instead they are often filled with the most unstable minds in society.  We clearly see that in spades today.  The world of authority has gone mad.  There is little reason, the rule of law has often been subverted or dismantled and the histrionics of politicians is almost to a level that I would classify as insanity. 

Chris Hedges and Eugene Robinson write two excellent articles on the heinous crime in Norway and how similar unsettled elements in our society are radicalizing much of our bureaucracies and by extension those they have dominion over.  That includes religious institutions. 

Chris Hedges link here – fundamentalism kills

Eugene Robinson link here – the influence industry of rage.

Endless Corruption In China – The Latest Example Is The Attempted Cover Up Of High Speed Rail Disaster

This is not a time for laughing but I remember laughing when I was listening to people in the U.S. say we were falling behind China as they started building high speed rail.  Well, we might benefit from a well-planned high speed rail but we aren’t falling behind anyone in innovation and invention.  And as long as this country has some modicum of democracy left in it, we never will.  I’ve been on high speed trains in Europe and Japan.  The engineering discipline around safety and preventative engineering management are the best in the world.  I would have no problem riding either one every day of my life.  I wouldn’t even begin to consider riding on a Chinese train or Chinese airliner.  Not once.  

As we have noted time and again, China is the world’s source of all things junk.  It is where western multinationals go to subvert worker safety rules, environmental rules, living wage rules and any other types of regulatory rules that are driven by a need to protect society.  And it is also a source of engineering junk.  Almost everything out of China that does not adhere to strict quality guidelines first developed in the United States and Europe one hundred years ago, is Wal-mart quality junk.   And because suppliers are not often demanded and checked to have such high engineering standards, unless the entire supply chain is managed by international firms, everything out of China is of dubious quality or safety or both.  And we can safely assume just about every public works project in China is built using similar junk all enabled by a corrupt communist culture. 

Who suffers?  The innocent people of China.   Often with their lives be it tragedies like this or cancer or other diseases caused by rampant corruption and environmental dumping of toxic waste or people exposed to unsafe chemicals in the workplace.  Who enriches themselves?  The connected party bureaucrat and the cronies tied to that culture.  That often includes cronies from companies in democratic countries. 

It’s no surprise the ministry of propaganda, is trying to shut this story down.  I think it is safe to assume when a communist party has a primary intent to control, everything out of China is of dubious quality.  That includes its propaganda.

More Ways To Cut Trillions From The Federal Budget Without Dismantling Social Programs For Elderly, Underprivileged And Children

Courtesy of Alan Grayson

Each one of which would save up to $1 trillion, or more, over the next ten years:

1. We could let the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire. (“No! No!” shout the Koch brothers.)
2. We could let Medicare negotiate the price of drugs, the way that the VA and private insurance companies already do.
3. We could require the rich to pay the same percentage of their income toward Social Security and Medicare as the poor and the middle class do. Not a higher percentage – my God, that would be progressive taxation! Just the same percentage.
4. We could impose the same alternative minimum tax on giant corporations that we mere humans must pay.
5. We could reduce U.S. military spending to a paltry 40% of the world’s total, from the current 48%, which would still leave us spending four times as much as any other nation.
6. We could make Warren Buffett pay the same tax rate on his income as his secretary pays on hers, by eliminating the long-term capital gains tax break, the great majority of which goes to the hyper-rich.

Ralph Nader – The Corporate Supreme Court

Ralph Nader has been a cassandra for decades across a host of social and economic issues.  And history is now proving he was right on so many issues.  Yet the two party system has attempted to paint him as a radical or a buffoon with views out of the mainstream to marginalize his reasoned dissent and search for truth.   But that’s what power does.  It doesn’t matter if it is Nazi power, Stalin’s communist power, power elements in our society or any other type of bureaucratic orthodoxy.  Power’s intent is driven by a disturbed mind.  And the behavior of a disturbed mind is and always will be consistent.  Power is never brilliant but it is easily predictable.

Our entire system of government has been corrupted by money and power.  That includes the courts.  I question the voracity of any argument for the lifetime appointment of any judge.  It’s the same dynamic of not  having term limits in politics.  How’s that working out for you?  I also question the political appointment of any official or judge when politics is so corrupted by money and special interests.   Those appointments first and foremost are influenced by those paying the most money to politicians.  Even if it is a minor nudge or a mildly subconscious taint.   Mind you, we can surely conclude it is seldom a minor nudge or mildly subconscious.  

Corporate Personhood, one of the greatest crimes against humanity and a substantially large contributor to the destruction of the rule of law and democracy, is something we incessantly rail against.  As I wrote years ago, there is substantial evidence to believe Corporate Personhood has its roots in the bribery and corruption of the Supreme Court.   As we have noted before, political bribes in Washington were legal for the first eighty or so years of our country’s existence.  Congressmen actually used to solicit special interests for bribes.  I’ve seen some of the historical correspondences and maybe I should rephrase that – it not solicitation but actually extortion.

Then the United States passed political bribery legislation that exempted judges.   So, power and money no longer had a method to legally bribe politicians.  Well, what better way to subvert that process than what was announced soon after political bribery legislation became the rule of law – that is, the Supreme Court decision that rules corporations were people.  This court decision would then allow corporations to legally bribe Congress thus subverting the rule of law outlawing bribery.  Whatever the driving factor being the decision of corporate personhood, it most assuredly was not a random court decision.

There is no rule to say that there should be any set amount of judges on the Supreme Court or that the appointment should be lifetime.   Under current law we could have 50 judges or one from every state.  We could have a judge of every race comprising over 1% of the U.S. population or require judges of both genders to ensure the views of democracy for all Americans are represented on the courts…  because judgements are supposedly reasoned opinions that are to reflect society’s views on democracy.  In other words, views just like court decisions on a vast majority of issues are fluid opinions that change with the views of society.  Decisions are simply opinions of the flawed human mind and never based on perfect truth.  In other words, judges are at best fallible and at worst are political ideologues with substantial flaws in reasoned thinking.  We could also have a President who decided to stack the Supreme Court with new justices beyond the current number in order to fix the matter of corruption and overturn Corporate Personhood.  I don’t really care what the process is as long as it is virtuous and reflects all of society, including those who are constantly being beaten down by the corporate state.

While I’m at it, another concern I have mentioned before as it pertains to the Supreme Court is the concept of judicial review.  The court has granted itself the exclusive authority to determine what is or isn’t constitutional in this country.   That is not a right granted by the Constitution of the United States.  It is a right granted to the Supreme Court by the Supreme Court over time.   It is a dubious granted right I completely disagree with but there is also tremendous political inertia behind it.  The Congress and the President of the United States have it within their constitutional authority to legally subvert that self-interested authority not granted under constitutional law.  In other words, if the Congress or the President were not under the duress of the same money corruption as that which upholds the concept of Corporate Personhood in the courts, they could mount a constitutional review (most obvious would be a congressional review)  to upend Corporate Personhood and the Supreme Court’s extremely flawed if not corrupt decision.   A decision that I know at least one Supreme Court justice disagrees with as noted by the corporate shills at the Wall Street Journal.  Ever wonder why Republicans tried to discredit Sotomayor as a justice nominee? 

Most people have no idea this legal ability exists.  But, I can assure you beyond any doubts, it does exist across any issue of constitutionality. 

The court system is just as broken as the political system.  That is, because politicians under the influence of untold corporate money controls the process of stacking the judiciary, often with corporate friendly ideologues aka toadies.

We need someone to mount a constitutional review of Corporate Personhood or stack the courts with judges who will overturn it. 

Title link here.

New Poll Carries Warning Signs For Obama In 2012

Ya think?  Obama has lost independents which is now  the largest political party of the United States.

I would almost bet my life that Mitt “I will do anything for approval and adoration of others and thus I have to win the presidency for my own ego-driven reasons” Romney ain’t gonna win anything in 2012.  Romney is a shill for Wall Street where he made his money dismantling companies and taking his cut using taxpayer money to do it.  That Romney beats Obama in direct polling shows how horrendous Obama is polling.

Alan Grayson - How To Cut $2 Trillion From The U.S. Budget In Ten Years (Something Obama And Republicans Won’t Tell You)

I like Alan Grayson as someone who speaks reasoned dissent to the corporate state.  Republican lackeys for the corporate state hate Grayson and targeted him in the last election.  Corporate state lackeys chafe against regulatory reform, cutting corporate welfare and social programs which add dignity to to the lives of people  who are often victims of the corporate state.  

Grayson and Pat Buchanan agree on the illegitimacy of the corporate state.  Yet ideologues wish to paint these two and many others as people who should never agree on anything.  But ideologues wish to perpetuate divisiveness for their own personal gain rather than search for truth.  The search for truth would find that today’s issues aren’t left versus right as ideologues would wish to frame the debate,  but rather right versus wrong.   Grayson and Buchanan agree.

Buchanan’s remarks are also truthful.  Let’s take Buchanan’s remarks a step further to a point we have made on here.  Not only is the U.S. borrowing from Japan to defend Japan, the U.S. is borrowing from China and Russia to encircle China and Russia with America’s military and political hegemony.    These countries aren’t chafing at lending dollars to the U.S. because the dollar is worthless.  (By the way, they are lending our dollars back to us in one of the greatest acts of insanity of our time.)  That is utter nonsense perpetuated by ideologues we call dollar bears.  China and Russia are chafing against lending  dollars to the U.S. because this dynamic is funding the U.S. political and war machine’s encirclement of their own countries.   This dynamic is clearly unsustainable - enemies of the United States are not going to continue to fund our hegemony over their own wishes.

Grayson & Buchanan’s comments on the debt binge of the U.S. corporate state and what President Obama and the Republican leadership won’t tell you.  Instead they would rather take money from Grandma, from disabled veterans and from special needs children to protect the corporate state:

PEACE.

Now, I know that peace may not be as popular as it used to be.  The polling is very iffy.  The focus groups are mixed.  But let’s look at the facts.

Last year, we spent $154 billion in appropriated funds on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  That is in addition to the $549 billion in appropriated funds for the Pentagon – you know, just to keep the lights on.  And the non-appropriated cost of war was even higher – especially when you include the cost of care for the 15% of all the American troops in Iraq who come home with permanent brain abnormalities.  According to Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, the war in Iraq alone is costing us $4 trillion and counting. That’s more than $13,000 for every one of us, and roughly 8% of our entire net worth as a nation.

The cost of war is enormous.  So enormous that, as I pointed out in H.R. 5353, The War is Making You Poor Act, if we simply funded that cost through the Pentagon’s own budget, rather than through supplemental appropriations, we could eliminate taxes on everyone’s first $35,000 of income ($70,000 for married couples), and still reduce the deficit by more than $10 billion a year.

And that was last year.  Since then, the number of wars has gone up by 50%.

This is what Pat Buchanan – of all people, Pat Buchanan – said two weeks ago:

"The United States is strategically over-extended, worldwide. What are we doing borrowing money from Japan to defend Japan. Borrow money from Europe to defend Europe. Borrow money from the Persian Gulf to defend the Persian Gulf. This country is over-extended. It is an empire and the empire is coming down."

You say that you want to save $2 trillion in ten years?  It’s simple:  end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and end whatever it is that they are calling it now in Libya.  I’d rather do that than throw Granny from the train.

But that’s just me.

Guns or butter.  It’s not a new choice.

I prefer butter.

What about you?

Courage,

Alan Grayson

P.S.  Please sign our petition at www.No-Cuts.com.  And pass it on to every friend you have.  It’s important -- let’s be heard.

Geither’s WSJ Op-Ed On Financial Reform – Should Anyone Really Care?

Mr. Geithner sat at the head of the New York Fed and had primary responsibility for regulating Wall Street yet apparently he was eating tea and crumpets while Wall Street was in the process of destroying the United States economy and our financial system.  Or maybe he was spending his time trying to line up his next job being that was apparently more important to him than actually doing the job he was paid to do.   

Now, if we lived in an economic meritocracy instead of one that rewards cronyism, why would we care about this op-ed or what Geithner thought about financial reform?  Because in a meritocracy, he would have no legitimacy or credibility.  To my knowledge he’s never proven he knows anything about finance or Wall Street or banking.  Well, unless he wants to write a book titled ‘How I Napped Through the Greatest Crisis in American History’.  That might be credible. 

As a former member of Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm focused on providing political guidance to corporations and states, for a fee of course, he probably would be qualified to tell us how to use “consulting” such that corporations and states can get governments to pass policies that are beyond the transparency of democracy or the will of a country’s citizens.  ie, Back room deals.  Of course, I may incorrectly assume that but then I have never actually seen Kissinger Associates pleading before democracy or this country’s citizens for any particular policy. 

From a contrarian perspective, it’s interesting to note the timing of this op-ed.  From an economic perspective, the U.S. economy is and has been rolling over for some time.  Not substantially….   ….yet.  Without further stimulus and more purchases of Wall Street’s incompetent mistakes by the Federal Reserve, is there any reason to believe it won’t keep rolling over?    If we see trillions of dollars taken out of the U.S. economy with federal budget cuts or tax increases or both, we will see trillions of dollars of defaults as those cuts hit.  That is, unless we see a new economic model. 

We are nearing a tipping point globally.  Either the world’s leaders (excuse me for calling them leaders) create a plan for sustainable global development that refudiates what we now call globalization, or the world economy will be nudged closer to the abyss.

Title link here.

Pakistan Funds U.S. Congressional Elections In Attempts To Manipulate U.S. Foreign Policy.

You might not have a voice in your own government but those hiding Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists do.  

It’s time to limit campaign funding for politicians.  Public funding of  something like $200,000 would suffice for a Congressional seat.  Possibly some small amount more for a Senate seat given the audience size disparity. 

With Youtube, live online streaming of debates or Q&As and new advances in technology, spending tens of millions of dollars for congressional elections and hundreds of millions of dollars for presidential elections serves only those who can pay to play.  It also attracts the wrong type of individual.  It attracts those most interested in power and greed rather than those interested in public service. 

If you take away the incentives granted to those seeking authority rather than public service and leadership, we will have a different type of citizen seeking public stewardship. 

Goldman Sachs Revenue Collapses. Profits “Unexpectedly” Miss By A Wide Margin. Layoffs Expected By Year End. Stock Falls To Post Crisis Lows.

It’s not the end of the world for Goldman Sachs…..  ….yet.   All in due time.   Not that I haven’t said this was coming for Goldman Sachs over the last few years. (Sorry for that double negative.)   Don’t expect this to be an aberration either.  And don’t expect Goldman Sachs will be able to manipulate public policy to create a new source of revenue and income to stop the slide. 

As I have said countless times, the dumb money is Wall Street.  It always has been.  Wall Street’s perceived brilliance has always been based on front-running the Federal Reserve, monopoly access to society’s capital at guaranteed below market rates through the Federal Reserve and  legalized bribery of politicians that rig the rules to the game and guarantee their financial success (fascism).  

Investment banking and financial manipulation as a business model are in serious trouble.    I guess that “free market”  Wall Street loves but is too afraid to compete in is starting to take its toll.  Eh?  Party on Garth!

Title link here.

The Kleptocracy That Have Gained Control Of Our Society Have Learned Nothing. The Future Has Already Been Writ. They Still Don’t Get It…. Yet.

In countless posts including a prior post we put up with this Courier & Ives print from 135 years ago, we have hammered incessantly that what we are experiencing is not a recession.  That our economy has not recovered and that it won’t recover without a new economic model.    And we have discussed the historical precedence for brilliance being assigned to Goldman Sachs (and Wall Street) has actually been a harbinger of coming economic doom.  And of the misplaced viewing the rise of finance as some grand new economic paradigm (which is completely impossible since finance is nothing more than a tax on capital(ism) and society).  So, I thought I would repost this prescient picture for your viewing pleasure.

It is quite amazing to me that we hear nothing from politicians or the finance industry as it pertains to what economic activity increases the capital stock of society versus that which is a tax or a consumptive item.   This is a fundamental requirement to understand basic economics.   Especially sustainable economics.  As we have remarked numerous times, a job is not a job is not a job.  Some jobs actually tax society and thus are comparatively or completely undesirable as an economic burden that should be avoided if at all possible.  The entire financial industry and all supporting industries fit this category as we have ranted incessantly. 

Every single financial activity that is glorified today was recognized as a Ponzi scheme 135 years ago.  (As shown in the 135 year old graphic below.)  By the way, that includes the state’s infatuation with gambling,  taxes on finance and finance industry lobbyists funds as a source of political revenue.  It’s actually quite amazing and frightening to view this print because 135 years ago the U.S. was in the midst of the longest protracted depression in our history.  A depression created by elitists, banksters, the finance industry and politicians.   What have elites and politicians learned in the last 135 years?  What have we as a society learned about sustainability and economic democracy? 

As we have remarked for years, any time society views bankers as brilliant and government jobs as the most desirable available to society, the world is in a state of delusion that will eventually lead to a rude awakening.   We wrote that before the 2008 crash and how accurate that has turned out to be.  It will become even more accurate as the true world reveals itself.   Make no mistake, financial crooks, elitist thugs and politicians have destroyed our economy and it just didn’t happen under George Bush.  It happened under the watch of Republicans and Democrats who were engaged in a power struggle that reflected none of the ideals that our Constitution or most Americans hold dear.  This is especially true since Reagan took office.  And they did it all behind closed doors because in the light of day, the American people would have been aghast at what these people were doing to our society and the motives of greed, avarice and desire for more power behind those activities.   This is what William Black highlights as Control Fraud – an insidious fraud perpetuated by authority that uses their power and dominion over  society or corporations to steal from both. 

Without transformational change, the future has already been writ.   And that future is exactly the opposite of what banksters, the finance industry, elitists and politicians believe for they suffer from a deluded mind.

Click on the picture to view or download a readable view.

Citi Reports Profit At Expense Of Financial Stability? Thank You Washington.

In January of this year we remarked about balance sheet shenanigans on Wall Street starting back up and we wrote at that time we were once again bearish on banks.  Since then many bank stocks have imploded.  Looky, looky, looky at what I found while reviewing Citi’s results.  Citi is now reporting a substantial profit using money taken from its loan loss reserves; more balance sheet shenanigans.

Hey, maybe hedge fund savant John Paulson should have called me back in January.  We could have had tea and crumpets or whatever royalty does during afternoon chats about important issues.  I could have told him he was going to lose his butt on Citi and Bank of America.   (Probably could have saved him all of his agony on Sino-Forest as well. )  What I would have really mentioned that he should liquidate his fund and leave with the mythical status of genius before the market destroyed that myth.  Or he could have read this blog for free six months ago and saved himself a cool billion.

Ain’t no rocket scientists running our financial, regulatory or political system.     Remember, one of the long term outcomes we have had on here is that the hedge fund industry and quantitative finance is going the way of the Dodo bird. 

All in good time.

Wisconsin Governor To Be Recalled?

How many times have I said on here that Republicans and Democrats have misinterpreted their election victories as mandates for their failed ideologies?  The American people, like the Japanese people, have been sacking both parties consistently since the mid 90s.  They are doing so because they want something other than the same old demagogues who spew hate, divisiveness and neoliberalism.   I see very few people realizing this fact yet, but there is an enormous vacuum in political leadership and that means there is an opportunity for a leader to step forward unlike at any time in this country’s history.  Someone will eventually fill that vacuum.  Some think it will be a figure akin to  Adolph Hitler but the dynamics today are far too different as are the constructs of our very heterogeneous society.  As we have remarked years ago, that fact alone makes it nearly impossible to spark any nationally-focused propaganda and hatred.  The U.S. society’s cumulative consciousness has far outgrown the small-minded hatred and bigotry of such sociopathic personalities.   Can small pockets of bigoted and hate-speaking politicians be elected?  Sure with limited and homogeneous population bases.  But a presidential election? 

It doesn’t matter if the people from Wisconsin pick a Democrat, a Republican or the Man from Uncle as governator.   But whomever anyone picks to be a public servant, that person should be a servant of the people, to the Constitution, to the rule of law and to reason.  And if the people of Wisconsin are substantially divided on any issue, then political leaders should attempt to educate society on the issues and engage in public discourse to flush out superior solutions determined by an educated and reasoned society. 

Walker remarked after winning the governorship that he won so he got to do what he wanted to do.   Where do these people come from?  How might I ask is this self-rule?   This seems more like a very disturbed mind wishing to turn democracy on its head in order to appease its own demons.  No.  That is not what you get to do.  You get the privilege of serving society in some attempt to please all of your citizens with moderate and acceptable ideas based on reason and virtue. 

Walker is not a conservative politician.  He is a neoliberal.  And with it comes the neoliberal attitude that shows a substantial disdain for the voice of democracy, self-rule and reason.   

Society cannot survive without reason.  Without public discourse to solve its issues.  Without virtue and morality.  And that means it surely cannot survive if we allow self-rule to be turned into a mockery by listening to self-interested politicians driven not to serve the people but to serve their own inner demons and/or ideology. 

Title link here.

Photovoltaic Sheets Capture Up To 95% Of Sunlight And Industrial Heat

It’s been a while since we have remarked in any detail but back when oil was on its way to $140+ a barrel, we put up quite a few posts surrounding innovation and energy demands and that we would innovate our way out of the addiction to imported oil.    And that the only reason we hadn’t done so before was that the world’s scientific community wasn’t focused on this issue.   The innovations we are seeing today are happening at a dizzying pace across a wide spectrum of science.   The pace is literally mind boggling.  That includes advances in research into existing sources of energy such as coal and natural gas.

Now we need to get our government focused on serving society again to help both public and private entities monetize these advances. 

Title link here.

Is Goldman Sachs’s Stock Joining Bank Of America In Breaking To New Post-Bailout Lows?

To my knowledge, this is the only source on planet earth who has stated repeatedly that the long term viability of Goldman Sachs is in question.   Politicians and the mainstream press have been too busy fawning over their brilliance.  So, when Goldman lobbies our government, they listen.  You know, because Goldman only hires the smartest people on earth.   It’s pretty easy to appear intelligence when lobbying sets the rules of competition and success in your favor.  I could have made a few billion dollars under that scenario.   We got a true glimpse of that superior intelligence last year during the Congressional testimony before Carl Levin and the Senate.  I think Goldman Sachs  might consider a new measure of what intelligence truly is. 

On the surface it may sound completely ridiculous to most people but then we have made some very accurate calls on our financial system over the years.  Calls that most people would have laughed at just months or a few years before.  Those calls weren’t luck.  They were based on a substantial understanding of our financial system and its weaknesses and a substantial amount of hard work.

There are very compelling reasons to be concerned  about the viability of Goldman Sachs’ business model.  I’m not going to list them out in this post but we have cited some of them in prior posts.  In a nutshell, Goldman Sachs is a poster child for the Ponzi economy.  Much of how they make revenue and profit either used to be substantially regulated (and eventually will be again when we get real financial reform), or was regulated out of existence or is completely impossible to replicate over the long run without having an advantage garnered through lobbying. 

Goldman got a reprieve during the crisis by being allowed to become a government-protected and taxpayer-backed bank.  I have no problem attempting to save Goldman Sachs from themselves but they should have been forced to change their business model to receive this special privilege. 

It is substantially obvious to me that if Goldman is going to survive long term, it will be because they are granted special consideration.  In other words, I believe the fate of Goldman Sachs may lie with society or the government.     Yes, this all sounds ridiculous.  But then I recall making comment that there was once another hallowed institution a century old that didn’t have a sustainable business model either.   I didn’t read anyone else remarking of the concern about that institution’s fate at that time.  That is, until they were on the verge of collapse and were saved from themselves only by a government bailout/sale to Bank of America.  It once seemed impossible Merrill Lynch would cease to exist as well.

All in due time.  For now, it seems that if Goldman’s stock price breaks much further, it could be headed for another move down to retest the 2008 crisis lows.   Now why would that be?

Update: Forgot to mention something.  Notice how the spikes and movements upward and downward are the same in all three graphics?  This is because we are in an environment where Wall Street and computers buy baskets of all stocks using leverage.  ie, Everything moves in tandem regardless of fundamentals affecting markets or individual companies.  The use of derivatives has increased thousands of times in the last twelve years.   Pricing in equities has no relationship with fundamentals as we have ranted incessantly.  Fair value for the S&P is 80-90% south of current pricing.   Unless you believe bandaids and paper clips can hold this system together, that’s where we are eventually headed.  There is zero intelligence in equity markets.  Their movements only tell us if the system is close to breaking again.  They don’t tell us anything about reality or the clairvoyance of the mythical all-knowing market.

Greece Presses EU and IMF For More Free Money By September 15th

This is essentially free money.  It won’t be paid back and I can almost guarantee few of these fire sales of publicly-owned Greek assets are likely to be allowed.   This is  hilarious and ridiculous at the same time.  The end game is default or debt haircuts or debt forgiveness in Greece if we continue to play this game; something we have said since this crisis started.  But apparently we may all be underestimating the Greek politicians.  Maybe we shouldn’t given Greeks originally taught the rest of the world a few things about philosophy, reason, democracy and science.  Manipulation seems to be the latest lesson. 

I’m beginning to wonder if the Greek politicians are schtooping the EU and IMF bureaucrats with a little bit of Pavlovian conditioning.  Push the button and get a treat.  ie, Greek politicians squawk about needing more money from the EU to avoid default knowing the EU will respond out of fear.  Then sit back and just wait for more free money to fall from the sky.  Free money courtesy of EU bureaucrats who fear losing their illegitimate authority.  This money won’t be paid back anyway so why not bilk the system for all they can while they can?  That’s the mindset of neoliberalism that defines globalization.  Maybe the Greeks have learned how to play the game better than anyone is willing to give them credit for. 

If the Irish, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese politicians are shrewd enough, they’ll soon learn their own Pavlovian tricks.  It’s just a little bit of payback for the mess the EU and IMF have helped put these countries in. 

“Big Thinkers” - Veterans, Senior Citizens And The Disabled Are Greedy Bastards Bitching All Day Long About Their Government

Mind you, this is a direct quote of the co-chair leading the White House’s commission on fiscal responsibility (To cut Social Security and other social programs while maintaining the corporate state).  Is this the voice of a  public servant who cares about the people of America or the voice of narcissism and self-importance? 

This type of “journalism”, or whatever you want to call it, is what you get when you drive reason & truth out of reporting, allow corporations to make news  profit-driven that then slash wages & budgets out of investigative journalism and then replaces it with bobble-headed  propaganda and mindless corporate swill.  

Big thinkers?  These are all people who either directly contributed to the crisis building for decades, benefited from the policies that created this crisis or were deer in the headlights as the crisis locomotive came rolling down the tracks.   I do see one thing in common - they are all card-carrying bureaucrats of the corporatocracy.  Not a lot of creativity and ingenuity created by people who live off the work of others.  But the comments section really is quite hilarious.  

CEO of JP Morgan Jamie Dimon - The World’s Best Grifter. JP Morgan – His House Of Ill Repute.

I applaud Aaron Task for getting beyond the ridiculous that generally is mainstream journalism to pointing out what no one in the media wants to admit for fear of being reprimanded or worse.  To be honest, I’m shocked by the candor of this story.   Task asks if Jamie Dimon has created a culture where bad behavior is epidemic across JP Morgan.   I think we all know that question is rhetorical.

Task clearly intimates that JP Morgan is a predatory institution.  What a surprise.  I think it’s fair to say that any public company’s culture reflects that of its CEO’s persona and character.    I feel comfortable making that observation given I have a substantial amount of experiences across dozens if not more than one hundred major companies upon which to draw.   So, what does JP Morgan’s culture say about the emotional well being of Jamie Dimon?  Dimon has bought bank after bank over the years and has seemingly been obsessed with more and more personal power.  I think it’s fair to ask the question if this is the type of person we want to give a stewardship position to that is responsible for guarding society’s capital.  Maybe we need to start having CEOs and politicians take Rorschach tests.  You think I’m kidding….   People who seek power are some of the most unstable or unwell minds in society …..or worse.

The more time passes, the more society becomes aware of the predatory nature of the Wall Street racket.   There is no doubt that any individual in our country who perpetrated the types of behavior that JP Morgan has, would be in prison for the rest of their lives.  Maybe JP Morgan should get the death penalty under the Supreme Court’s ridiculous beliefs that corporations are people.  In other words, terminate their existence.  Of course, we have written of the the aberrant effects of monopoly and oligopoly since starting this blog.   If we terminated all large banks and corporations or broke them into teeeeeeny tiny little pieces, how would that be a bad thing?  In their place we would finally start to see a rebirth of our economy. 

I’m highly confident that the forces of nature will eventually do what politicians won’t – the bigger they are, the harder they fall.  JP Morgan is Humpty Dumpty teetering on the precipice and is being propped up not by its own ability but by the tether of protection by the state. 

The Debt Ceiling Con Game – Surprisingly, Does Ron Paul Propose What We Have Alone Advocated Since This Crisis Began?

That is, to monetize our debt?  Economist Dean Baker on CounterPunch is writing that Paul is advocating the Federal Reserve monetize U.S. debt.   Regardless of Paul’s specific intent or Baker’s interpretation of his intent, this is a position we have advocated since this crisis started.   Something that would completely throw off all of the histrionics by ideologues who believe the only way out of this mess is to see a debt collapse.

Let’s get a few things straight.  There is ideology and there is reality.  Most everything anyone will read or learn about economics and monetary economics is ideology.  Everything in politics is ideology.  The founders of fascism or corporatism in America, the modern day Republican Party, have not proposed a single jobs bill yet want to cut social programs that countless underprivileged or unemployed people rely on in this crisis, or even completely eliminate these programs.  All while they continue to support the war state and corporate welfare of the fascist state.    People, especially corrupt politicians, adopt a position as a religion and either don’t or can’t think beyond that religion to a greater truth.  And because of that, very little of what anyone reads about economic or monetary economics is true.   Nothing about politics is ever true.  Ever.  It may be one of many acceptable realities as a relative statement but that’s about as good as it gets.   That’s why politics and science don’t mix – Al Gore.

The reality is the government could continue to spend 70% of national income forever and we could still have a democracy.  But as it is structured today, everyone’s money is no one’s money.   What kind of system would that be if most Americans had the fruits of their labor spent by some bureaucrat or given to some corporation as part of corporate welfare or corrupt bankers who decimated our economy?  Well, I think we know because we are witnessing that today.  We see CEOs, bankers and bureaucrats, the parasitic economy, paying themselves the wages and benefits of gangsters off of the backs of productive people in society. 

As long as government spending comes from the pockets of its citizens, which it shouldn’t and doesn’t have to but does today, spending 70% of national income is an afront to economic and personal freedoms.   It results in the destruction of an economic meritocracy, a stagnation of innovation and human achievement, economic and political cronyism, fraud and corruption, a loss of economic and personal freedoms and an Orwellian big brother telling everyone else what to do across a wide range of issues that big brother shouldn’t and doesn’t have any right be have his nose in.

We wrote the exact words that at some point in the future the Federal Reserve would be forced to monetize debt and that would expose the debt bomb as a fraud, a myth, a con based on corruption.  And, if they are forced to do so because of the debt ceiling con game or a future bailout of banks or to force the dollar downward from a murderous ascent that threatens U.S. economic interests or bank derivative positions or whatnot, everyone will start realizing if this happens that debt is nothing more than a myth.  It can be wiped away like a gnat.  And then why can’t all of our debt be wiped away?  Who decides who is granted that privilege?  Politicians? 

As we have written countless times, debt is a symptom not the problem with the U.S. economy.  And that the U.S. government has increased transfer payments (state-based and welfare-related income programs) 700% over the last three decades is a symptom of a broken economic model created by fraud and corruption of elites and their bribery of government policy. (Although these crooks would often tell us it is because Americans are lazy.  More Nazi-type propaganda and political terrorism.)  

Globalization is based purely and completely on corruption.  And in governments where there is some small modicum of virtue and transparency, those governments do whatever they can to protect their people and their own political power in this game.  ie, As an example, the euro currency is France and Germany’s fraudulent attempt to capture other nations under the same corruption that the U.S. has used the dollar to capture corrupt emerging markets.  Except while the U.S. is able to do it through brute force of currency, France and Germany do it through owning and protecting the majority of the economic means of production in Europe.  So, the euro enslaves other euro nations to primarily Germany. (Remember, we have written that Germany is headed for disaster.  This when Germany was held as a shining star in the collapsing global economy.)  Our call for Germany’s future crisis is effectively the same call that globalization is dead.  Because in some similar fashion, the euro is operating under the same dynamic.

This free market con game only flies in the United States and the corrupt countries it can bribe to create these massively fraudulent “free trade” agreements with.   You see Germany or France or Japan signing a “free trade” agreement with the U.S.?  Free trade is a code word for financial pillaging of other countries by U.S. elites.  And no developed country is going to allow that.  Globalization is now imploding because it is all based on fraud.  This has nothing to do with a credit crisis as so many of the status quo and economists are still trying to convince us it is.  They are simply useful idiots or con artists.

If the Federal Reserve can monetize the Treasuries it currently owns, then why can’t it go out and buy all U.S. Treasury debt and monetize all of it?  And then why can’t we fix Social Security rather than cut it to pay the interest on our national debt?   Why does the U.S. pay hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars a year to private banks to borrow money?   Money that could back in our pockets or go to providing for the special needs of our citizens or health care for everyone or rebuild our infrastructure or whatever.   

Yet all I see everywhere is people still howling about debt and future obligations or future debt doing us in.  About not having the money to fund Social Security or Medicare.  Well, that is ridiculousness of the uninformed mind.  Remember when we asked hypothetically if society would have any money were our economy to be completely automated and no one needed to work?  One needs to think this dynamic through and understand how it could be applied to Social Security such that it could be funded forever without the threat of political terrorism to cut it as is happening with Republicans today. 

When I read about people talking about how debt is going to cause a great depression I have to laugh.  Laugh if it wasn’t all so sad.  These people are unknowingly using terror to support a corrupt economic and political system of tyranny.    Debt causes economic slavery.  It doesn’t cause depressions.  It didn’t cause the Great Depression, although countless “experts” will tell you to the contrary.  Well, just like everything else, the herd is usually wrong and doesn’t truly understand what they are talking about.  

So, let’s get back to Dean Baker and Ron Paul.   How many people have bullshitted you because they don’t understand money or economics?  Told you that debt was the driving crisis in America?  Or that we could not keep our future obligations to Social Security or fund needed social programs?  Just about everyone I see writing out there from prominent financial bloggers to everyone in the finance sector to everyone in the Republican Party.   Their beliefs on money, economics, debt and countless other issues are based on the subjective world in their mind and not on what is real.  Their beliefs are driven by limited thinking and limited knowledge yet they present it as fact.  What is possible is only limited by the artificial prison that is the human mind.  

As I have said on here many times, I could put forth a clear and simple plan to solve the economic and government funding issues in the United States.  Those who believe the world must first come to an end are ridiculous.  There are countless people who could either improve upon those solutions or who have even better solutions.  If the United States would embrace public discourse where every reasoned idea by every American was given a voice to solve its problems rather than rely on corrupt political ideology created under the duress of endless money lobbying, we would be completely out of this crisis within a few years.  

Title link here.

Did The Corrupt USDA Just Deregulate All GMOs And The Poisons Used To Treat Them?

Link here.

Paul Volcker & George Schultz – America’s Statist War On Drugs Has Failed - Decriminalize Drug Use

Putting people in prison for drug use is a crime in itself.   You don’t treat addiction in prison.  

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted on the war on drugs.  Money that could have been spent to provide education or health care.  

You want to fix the drug problem?  Fix the economy.   Fix health care.  Dismantle the war state.

It’s hilarious to look back on Reagan’s presidency(godfather of the statist war on drugs) and his talk of limited government when in actuality he presided over unprecedented growth in government bloat.  But rather than bloat that served society, it was bloat that served cronyism and the war state.

Title link here.

Iraq In Talks To Buy U.S. Fighter Jets Then Decides It Is More Important To Serve Its People Than To Fund The U.S. War State

Let’s buy the jets.

Let’s not buy the jets.  Apparently Iraq’s parliament decided to divert military funds to social programs to serve their people.  Maybe we should outsource Congress to Iraq since its apparent they have a better grasp of democracy.

Deja Vu All Over Again - Novellus Outlook Cautious As Sales Take A Dive

Semiconductors are taking the exact same path they did before the 2008 collapse.   This is like a bad dream or deja vu.  And why wouldn’t it be?  We bailed out a ridiculously incompetent financial system so the behavior is going to be exactly the same as before.  That is, everyone went running into semiconductors as financials started to weaken before the crisis back in 2008.   Loud mouths like Jim Cramer howl that technology is back and to buy buy buy, we write that technology isn’t back and that it is simply people rotating out of risk into reasonably valued assets coupled with speculators like Cramer ramming the stocks and then leading semiconductor companies start reporting poor to miserable results.   Cramer makes points that commodities-related companies are reporting great numbers and makes constructive comments about gold.  lol.  Umm yeah. 

Are Viruses A Major Contributor To Global Warming?

"Science warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.”  --Thomas Huxley, 1860

There is growing evidence that viruses are not only key to adaptation and evolution, but that viruses may actually be responsible or play a substantial role in the human mind’s development.   These views are not exactly mainstream science but there are some very capable scientists espousing new views beyond existing dogma and ideology often masking as science.  The reality is we know little about the role viruses or bacteria play in the ongoing development of our planet. 

One thing we can be sure of, and something Thomas Huxley cites above - Al Gore and others like him are driven by aspirations (self-interest) and conforming facts to said aspirations.  In other words, he has no idea what he is talking about and people like him are incredibly dangerous to society.  They politicize and destroy the search for truth and science in favor of a personal agenda driven by their ego’s need for validation and self-importance.  

How did Al factor in the dynamics cited in the title link?  Hahaha.  We need to embrace science, the search for truth and a greater understanding of our universe and the known and unknown energy sources that impact it before we start listening to more histrionics from delusional minds like Algore.

When just about every planet and moon in the solar system is showing signs of turbulent weather, climate change and warming, I think we can safely conclude that human made global warming is a bureaucratic con game.

Title link here.

Bernie Sanders On The Debt Ceiling Ideological Con Game

There is no doubt President Obama is not a leader.  Period.   You can disagree all you want.  There are key traits that define leadership and he simply does not exhibit those traits.   Of course, neither does any of the Republican authority in Washington.   Now, is he or any other politician capable of growing into a leader?  Well, leaders are made, not born.  So the answer is clearly yes.   But this debt ceiling power struggle between two corrupt political parties is a defining moment for President Obama and for both political parties.   This moment, if left to turn to crisis will seal the fate for one or both parties in 2012, especially with regards to the Presidency.   Link here.

Commodities: Copper Update

Over the years we have written a lot about copper on here.   Pairs trading, economic utility, Chile’s equity market and economy, stock market indicator, economic indicator, etc.  This is all a rehash of prior posts but it is worth repeating for both long time readers and new readers. 

By the way, this brings to mind a timely remark since we have been writing about the coming bust in commodities since long before the 2008 collapse.  We are essentially waiting on dozens of expected outcomes we have written about.  Dozens of anticipated outcomes have already come to pass and many more will surely follow.    The only outcome we have changed our perspective on is our expectation for U.S. government bonds.   Originally, we wrote that as the world economy came crashing down that foreign countries will no longer be in a position to buy U.S. debt, something that is still in play, but we wrote that will likely increase U.S. borrowing costs.  But as we have written, this is a position that is no longer in play until the Federal Reserve no longer purchases government bonds.  This dynamic has changed demand characteristics.  At least until they no longer are buying them.  I think we are going to see substantially more of the Federal Reserve involved in the U.S. government debt market in one way or another.  A post next week will highlight this point again. 

Okay, back to copper.  The direction of copper is a remarkably accurate indicator of economic activity or liquidity as one would expect.   That said, copper never in the last one hundred years exceeded the range of 50-70 cents a pound.   It didn’t matter if the dollar was backed by gold or was backed by fiat decree or if they dollar was worth 90% more than it was today or whether Europe was in the throws of its massive rebuilding after World War II or whatever.  The value of copper was consistent in its economic price elasticity characteristics relative to money.  That is, until today.  Remember, it’s never different this time when the prevailing wisdom is that it is different.  Especially when that prevailing wisdom is comprised of bureaucrats on Wall Street.  

What has made it different this time is financial manipulation.  Frankenfinance came into its full glory within the last ten years and with it the manipulation of commodities.  Wall Street has inserted itself into the supply chain for copper to extort economic users of the product just as it has for other commodities.  So, the U.S. floods China with money for economic development and then extorts its fair share of all commodities that China will buy and that leads to massive profits on Wall Street as the financial crime families take their cut.  It’s just like in the mafia movies.  Except the mafia is our financial system defrauding its unique position as having the world’s reserve currency.  The fraud in our country is massive and extends to preying on people in nearly every country on earth.   In particular, foodstuffs and energy manipulation are causing massive crisis and hunger with the world’s poor courtesy of Wall Street.  And you thought they were just preying on Americans.  Haha.  The fascist state seeks to extort everyone for its power and greed.

Even today with high energy prices, copper costs approximately 5c a pound to mine.  That’s right dog breath.  5c.  So why the discrepancy between cost and price?  In other words, why is copper trading at at 10,000% markup to its mining costs?   Are we at peak copper as noted by a noted financial clown three years ago?  The same conclusion drawn by equally brainwashed minds telling us the high price of oil is because we are at Peak Oil or peak carbon energy?  Come on.  That’s a false choice made by false thinking.

As we have noted countless times, patterns are of value because human nature, the rhythm of economics and natural forces at work in our world are cyclical or repeatable.  This copper pattern has both a price and time component as an A-B-C pattern and as a Lindsay’s analysis of middle sections and time symmetry.  The time component is exhausted.  The price component, depending on one of two interpretations is either exhausted or could actually reach about $5.10-5.20 a pound.    If it is to reach beyond current price highs, I would expect that to happen very rapidly given the time element involved.

It’s obvious I am ratcheting up the rhetoric over the last month or so on commodities as I did near the peak of the commodities bubble back in 2008.  Because the system is becoming wobbly again and another collapse could very well be aligning before the end of the year.  Especially if the crooks get their way in the short term by instituting global austerity measures.  That will eventually lead to more liquidity shocks and plunge us into another economic mess.  A much worse economic mess as we have cited numerous times.

President Obama Offers Up Cuts To Medicare And Social Security To Save The Idols Of Control And Power Worshipped By The Corporate State.

More Privatizing Gains While Socializing Losses.  Might I add, socializing losses onto the backs of the most underprivileged people in our society.  People who are usually underprivileged because they don’t have a voice in Washington.  No money to offer up to politicians => No voice. 

I told you years ago they were eventually coming for your Social Security.   What better way to do so than to have someone who is perceived by many to be on the side of the people to deliver that message?  

We do not need to cut Social Security.  Period.  Let me repeat that.  Period.  Almost everyone wants Washington spending curbed.   Spending 70% of national income is ridiculous and invites massive corruption and economic slavery for millions of Americans.  But as we have said repeatedly, until the fascist state is put under control, any cuts will damage democracy and our democratic institutions while preserving the fascist state.  And it is very clear that Obama will protect the war machine and corporate state at the expense of our democratic institutions.

The Obama administration is throwing the American people under the bus.

Republicans and Democrats simply present a false choice of varying degrees of immorality.  Dismantle the fascist state and its endless wasteful corporate welfare programs, rightsize our military to one of national defense in lieu of global political hegemony, get rid of Homeland Security and the CIA and any other secrecy-based institution not predicated on the needs of war, consider a new economic model, a new monetary model and then if all else fails, then consider cutting Social Security.  But the cut to Social Security would never happen under those ideals of reason and truth.  Instead our king decides in secrecy what the future of our government and society should be.  Often secrecy involving special interests who care nothing about democracy.  Is that self-rule?  Democracy?  Freedom?

I sort of view this process of realization around Obama and both political parties as akin to the breakup of a romantic relationship.  Slowly but surely one person starts to realize their idealization of their partner that their mind manufactured was nothing more than a delusion.  Lies of the mind.   After a while one begins to finally question their initial belief that what they shared was love, respect and loyalty.  Their voice is not being heard when seeking a say in how the relationship is progressing and how decisions are made.  There is no compassion or empathy from the other partner.   Their partner lacks any respect in their actions.   There is no desire to constructively work together to make the relationship better.  

At some point, one realizes that it is all about the other person and their mate never cared about them.  Ever.    Their mind lied to them.   If their eyes were open, and if they had made decisions for the right reasons as opposed to manufactured beliefs, they never would have committed to this person in the first place.  And that is exactly the case with Obama, the Republicans and the Democrats.   They never should have received our commitment, our loyalty, our respect and our trust.  But our minds lied to us.  Yet now we are seeing more and more clearly as our public servants are nothing of the sort. 

President Obama was elected on the backs of a belief.  It was a false belief.  One that is in the process of being shattered by his own actions.  That is, this person (Obama) cares about me and he is going to change Washington and save us from the cesspool of corruption that exists.  And he is going to restore our economic freedoms, restore our personal liberties and heal our nation.   Sounds a lot like a savior syndrome.  And, frankly, that is why many people enter into romantic relationships.  They subconsciously believe their partner is going to save them.  At one time or another we all suffer from the delusions that someone else is going to make our life better or make us happier or countless other lies of the mind.  Only you can be the change you wish to see in this world.  Only you.  

The reality?   Obama=Bush 2.0 or (Bush=Clinton 2.0 and Obama=Clinton 3.0)

I think the American people are in the midst of a breakup in their relationship with politicians.  A divorce, per se.  It has been going on for a few decades but then some breakups last much longer than they ever should.  This is one of them.   

Politicians seek office to exorcise or ameliorate their own demons by seeking power and control.  Power and control is an illusion that simply perpetuates the ego’s instability rather than the necessary reshaping of the mind needed to gain peace and stability.   That usually means We The People are on the receiving end of those ameliorations and exorcisms through unstable and even immoral actions of the unstable or ungrounded egos of politicians; just like in a romantic relationship with that same type of persona.

"A leader is best when people barely know he exits. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, 'We did it ourselves.'." - Lao Tzu

Four more years of this?  Are you kidding me?  Vote for truth, empathy, personal empowerment, personal responsibility, integrity, honesty and the restoration of community and humanistic values.   Vote for true leadership.  As we have said for years, vote for leaders who reject the two party political monopoly as limiting the search for reason, justice, truth and morality.  Vote for leaders who wish to restore the intimate love affair and relationship of their government with We The People. 

Title link here.

CFTC – Oil & Commodities Futures Manipulated By Financial Predators

It’s nice to see that the regulatory agency responsible for commodities futures oversight for all markets in the United States has finally acknowledged what we have been saying since starting this blog six years ago and many years before that in public comments elsewhere.

The Bush administration made a laughing stock of public service in more ways than one.  One was that the CFTC under Bush did an investigation and concluded there was no proof speculators were manipulating oil prices.   We have no idea if that was an outright political lie or whether the CFTC has been made that incompetent by politicians allowing capture of our government by Wall Street.

The Obama administration wants to triple the staff of the CFTC.  Without a new model of enforcement and regulation, it will simply mean more money will be wasted – seemingly a favorite strategy of the Obama administration.  But then any bureaucracy seeks a solution to any perceived problem by extending the power of said bureaucracy. 

I have a better solution.   Let’s get Wall Street out of commodities markets so we don’t have to regulate what is criminal activity.  We simply abolish it and the ridiculous need to police it. 

As we have written ad nauseam, Peak Oil is a myth.  Will we run out of oil 100 or 300 years from now?  Possibly.  But as we cited on here in the peak of the Peak Oil frenzy, the stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.  The world today is awash in the largest oil glut in the last thirty years and we have enough carbon-based energy reserves to last us 500 or more years.  At some point when corruption is tamed in this country, we will innovate our way out of oil dependency just as we innovated ourselves out of the stone age.   But similarly, first we need to get rid of the Elmer Fuddstones aka corrupt politicians.

Title link here. (The use of the term “day traders” by the Financial Times needs to be explained.  This is not Billy Bob sitting in his underwear in the basement of his grandmother’s home using her Social Security money to day trade oil futures.   There is massive leverage and risk trading any futures product and all but a relative handful of individuals don’t have the skill or algorithms to successfully do it.  This is short term, often high frequency trading by Wall Street firms and hedge funds using massive leverage to manipulate markets.  Manipulation that should be investigated under racketeering (RICO) laws.   Wall Street is by legal definition a racket.  And banksters have the legion of lawyers to prove it.  John Gotti, Al Capone and Lucky Luciano never had it so good.  Pablo Escobar did.  But then he didn’t live in the United States.)

On this same topic, it’s quite interesting to note that JP Morgan is one of the successful oil companies to receive oil from the Obama administration’s release of our emergency SPR oil reserves – a political move to a problem caused by political corruption. 

WTF is a U.S. bank given special privileges by the U.S. government and the American people to keep our deposits safe doing in the oil business?   It’s quite obvious.  They are manipulating it by inserting themselves into the supply chain as a massive tax on who are often the most underprivileged people in the world.  Underprivileged mind you, because of the same banksters denying people access to their own capital.  We need a public banking system that serves human development and not the whims of financial predators and sociopaths.

By the way, the CFTC is also reporting this exact same dynamic is driving the stock market and other commodity markets for anyone who still believes buying stocks or commodities for more than a short term trade is anything other than a Ponzi scheme.   Again something we said would happen when we wrote numerous times since the 2009 stock market bottom that Wall Street would eventually trade out competition in stocks and commodities as it had successfully done in its other businesses that are rigged to keep out competition…..  courtesy of politicians.   And that means Wall Street is again holding the bag for overpriced assets just as it was in the mortgage business.   This is exactly what we said would happen.  Exactly!  The world is unfolding as we said it would over the last six years, albeit more slowly than initially expected because politicians are busy spending everyone else’s money. 

Wall Street is the dumb money as we have said repeatedly.  Who is left to take the other side of their trades when they are proven wrong?  Why, that would be none other than the American people through more eventual bailouts by the Federal Reserve.  Something we also said will eventually happen.   Fool me once shame on you.  Fool me twice and you might have society sack its government, just like the people in Iceland did. 

The Age of Enlightenment continues.

Crime In America Pays – JP Morgan Settles Municipal Bond Bid Rigging Suit By Paying Out Taxpayer Money

Inner city youth sell crack on the street corner many times because it is the only available option to make a living wage.  And that dynamic might involve the breakdown of the family unit due to lack of economic opportunity.  This because private for-profit banksters have robbed his community of economic opportunity and access to society’s capital.  

Said youth goes to prison for ten years for selling $10,000 of crack that impacts a handful of lives. 

Banksters manipulate and rig markets and sell our municipalities, charities and defenseless grandmothers endless toxic junk while rigging markets to the tune of illegally taking hundreds of millions to hundreds of billions of dollars out of society’s pockets.  This impacts millions of Americans.

Said bankers pay small fines that are a fraction of the profits they made in their racketeering while admitting no guilt and receiving no punishment.

Crime in America pays and it is endorsed from the top down.   Over time people learn to adjust and to do what is necessary to survive in an environment of fraud and corruption.  And often that is whatever they can. 

We keep putting the wrong people in prison.  What a surprise.  Most crime is economic.  Fix the economy and the problem with rampant crime and drug use will fix itself without another state-based war on poverty, crime or drug use that does nothing to solve the problem.

Title link here.