Revised GDP Is Negative And It’s Not The Weather

The recently cited survey of nary a single economist expecting GDP to contract any time in 2014 was released right on time.  Revised GDP didn’t disappoint.  It was negative as everyone has likely seen by now.  Thus, once again proving that economics as taught in universities is only propped up by state actors.  If we really had a free market and decisions were made through natural selection, economists would disappear.  Like the Dodo and Dinosaur.  And like the investor class, the political class and the capitalist class.   Like Wall Street and the vast majority of corporations.  But, instead since the economics profession is essentially funded very substantially by the propped up Federal Reserve and its centralized fascist structure, this profession also remains propped up.  For now.   We might yet see this “profession’s” extinction in our lifetimes.  At least as it is taught today. 

Let’s allow the spin doctors at the Whitehouse explain why first quarter GDP was negative.  Oh, it was weather.  Doh!    What a surprise.  Why expect any real appreciation that correlation is not causation from the anti-science crowd at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?  They apply the same flawed correlated reasoning to GDP as they do global warming. 

Psst.  Here’s a not-so-secret-secret.  In December I reported on here that we were witnessing the biggest profit warning in U.S. recorded history.  Umm, this contraction all started before any weather-related effects.  Just like hundreds of thousands of years of ice core samples clearly show that global warming is not driven by lagging C02 levels but is certainly correlated to it.  

Now, the Whitehouse and economists will tell you that GDP will rebound substantially with pent up demand in 2Q.  Of course, this isn’t based on any type of scientific analysis.  It’s just more corporate state propaganda and spin.   Don’t bet on it.  This quarter’s economic data looks soft as well. 

If you appreciate that a service or servant-based economy requires greater and greater debt-driven spending  and consumption, well, and servant poverty wages to serve up those services to class privilege, then you can appreciate this dynamic is a form of emotional violence perpetuated by capitalism and the state.  At some point, people realize that.  Often through emotional exhaustion or when it’s a choice between bread and a bigger debt payment.

So…  not only are the money printers running out of gas, or creating massive and painful distortions that are causing them to take their foot off the gas pedal, but guess what else?  Upwards of $5 trillion in stock buy backs has helped to prop up equity shares over the last five years.  Well, as has record margin debt, leveraged derivatives and the money printers.  More of that deceit, lies and manipulation of corporate state financial engineering.  Of course, all to the benefit of our corporate masters who lined their pockets through share repurchases.   And then for good measure used some of that money to buy Washington and state capital politicians courtesy of the Supreme Court.

Why wasn’t that $5 trillion spent to create jobs in this nation?  Or to invest in capital expenditures?  (Remember, as noted on here many times over the last nine years, we are in a capital spending depression and have been for decades.)  Or wealth creation for our nation?   Or to raise wages out of poverty?  Or to pay taxes?  Hahaha.  Does anyone actually believe our masters give a shit if we have a job, a living wage or a roof over our head?  They booted millions of Americans out of their homes, trashed private pensions over the last 20 years and stole our wages to pay themselves a king’s ransom.  Does anyone really think the capitalist class, the political class or our King Obama cares?  He spends his days golfing and playing basketball.  Well, and spending $40 million of other people’s money on vacations while an unprecedented number of Americans slip into poverty.  Gotta love those jobs and economic programs he has created.  Oh, that’s right.  What jobs and economic programs?  Well unless it is for China or other nations through the TPP.

Masters always choose higher profits before clothing, feeding and housing more of us lowly cotton-picking wage slaves.  That only happens after the master has had his fill of gluttony of the backs off his slave’s labor.  There will be no jobs recovery as written on here ad nauseam.

But with declining profit margins, earnings misses, and even losses starting to accrue in the corporate state, we can expect that we have either seen or will soon see the Ponzi Scheme of corporate share buybacks hit a massive, unprecedented peak. 

So, in closing let’s take a look at the Russell 2000, an index discussed on here quite a few times in the last few years given it has reached a valuation of discounting nearly one hundred years of earnings.  (Actually it surpassed one hundred years of discounting some months ago)  That is a massive bubble never before seen in such a broad index of stocks.  Ever.  Not in 1792 (The founding of the NYSE), 1929, 2008 or anywhere in between. 

Overlaid on the chart of the Russell in black is the yield of the ten year Treasury.  Notice that the Russell and ten year interest rate (or the diminishing long-short interest rate spread) is moving in tandem or the two data points are correlated.    That is because small cap stocks are much more sensitive to the credit cycle.  Which means if this trend continues, the Russell’s going to be discounting a lot more than 100 years of earnings at these levels. 

The Russell is essentially in a range of fourth quarter 2013 levels while about six of thirty Dow stocks hit new highs and propel that index to new highs.  This isn’t good news if this continues.  1) That ten year rates are falling substantially as GDP turns negative.  And, 2) that small caps are following interest rates downward.  Someone thinks there is possible trouble ahead.  Duh!   Over the last week someone or a group of someones is trying to rally the Russell and keep it from making a lower high and lower low, which would possibly point to a major change in trend.  So, can they manipulate the index higher with Treasury rates headed the opposite direction?  I guess we are going to find out.  Bubbles can always get bigger as the Federal Reserve and Wall Street has taught Americans time and again since 1913.

Market internals are weak but not that weak.  So, some type of major market down draft may not be immediately imminent, but the markets are starting to flash strong warning signs.  This when the investor class is wildly bullish, banks are throwing free money out the window, China is trying to reign in excessive speculative growth, the Fed is trying to taper their easing, housing is hitting major snags, GDP just turned negative, last month’s employment report was negative, corporations are reporting the biggest profit warning in history, oil market manipulators are wildly bullish in their futures positions, YOY farm land values just turned negative for the first time since the collapse and private equity and M&A activity has once again entered the complete insanity zone. 

But the Whitehouse shows you a chart where first quarter temperature was well below normal as the culprit.  It seems they want to have their cake and eat it too.  First the temperature is too hot and now it’s too cold.  Baby Bear says his porridge is just right.    Just right not for the mythical Goldilocks future that political dunces wish us to believe but for a coming economic slowdown with the real unemployment rate already at nearly 25%.   This should be really fun.

After five years of massive state deficit spending and tens of trillions of dollars pissed down the legs of central banking buffoons, this is our economic recovery?  No.  This is what they system is willing to do to save itself.  That is, spend unlimited sums of other people’s money to bail itself out without a care in the world for those other people.  Another asset bubble, mounds more debt, mounds more government red tape, mounds more wards of the state created and on and on.  Baby Bear says it tastes more like gruel forced down his gullet through state violence than any just-right porridge.  

Financial Engineering: The Trouble With IBM

The title of this post is the title of a Bloomberg article linked to below.  I have written extensively about IBM since Buffett made an investment in the firm.   As I have noted on here before, technology is generally a horrible investment.  That’s why one of Buffett’s rules is to steer clear of technology.  In IBM he broke his own rule.  IBM is a company in very serious trouble.  As is the entire IT industry.  In fact, I wrote over three years ago that IBM may well be putting in its last stock market top.  Forever.  Since that post IBM’s stock hasn’t budged.  There is ample reason to believe the longer it sits here, the more likely it is putting in a major trend change. 

This current article isn’t anything particularly interesting except for one point made about three-fourths of the way into it.  And, the user comments below the article that point to many serious issues within the company as recognized by many.

Here’s the article quote I want to cite.

“That phrase, financial engineering, is a catchall used by critics for the variety of ways IBM has made earnings per share go up even as revenue goes down. The spectrum of maneuvers starts with common practices like dividend increases and share buybacks, and extends to more esoteric tactics like designating major costs as “extraordinary” and devising ways to pay lower tax rates. The most transparent companies present their performance according to generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. IBM’s 2009 annual report didn’t use the phrase “non-GAAP” at all; the 2013 report used it 125 times.”

I have noted many times on here over the years that it will only be an understanding of fundamental analysis that saves anyone from the Frankenstein of quantitative finance that dominates Wall Street today.   Yet, I seriously am unaware of but a handful of people who really know how to tear apart a balance sheet or financial statement.    None of them work on Wall Street.  I don’t really talk about this but I consider myself an expert at doing so.    But it is incredibly time consuming.  I certainly am not “the expert” but I know the games companies play because I have taken the time to be taught by experts.   Just like most anything else, it’s a skill and it can be learned by anyone.   Mind you, the games corporations play in today’s world are extraordinary. 

And the games don’t just include corporate financial statements.  But extends to the financial and economic underpinnings of modern economies and the games politicians play.   I haven’t written on here probably one hundred times that we are in the biggest financial bubble in history just for grins and giggles.   In fact, those remarks, written countless times before the 2008 collapse are now starting to become recognizable by everyone with an intent of discovery.   Central banks have literally pumped tens and tens of trillions of dollars into the system by dropping their trousers over the last five years.  Where is the recovery?  Not the propaganda but the real recovery?  More people on government assistance, more people on food stamps, more people in nonliving wage jobs, more people on disability, more people out of the work force, food inflation through the roof, another M&A bubble, another private equity bubble, another housing bubble in high-end homes and rental properties, a massive stock market bubble with thousands of companies at valuations never before seen.  Ever.  And on and on.  The system is more unstable than ever.  Printing money rightly stabilized the system in 2008 but it didn’t fix anything.  It simply made the situation worse.   It didn’t fix anything because the problems were created by politicians and not central banks.   Central bankers are simply the enablers to the dysfunction in the rotten and corrupt global political governance.

The whole system is rotten and wildly incompetent.  That people sit back and allow banks, corporations and politicians to continue on their same path of destruction is going to create dire consequences.  Because these are the state actors that created this mess.   The political parties and status quo thinking that created this mess isn’t going to ever get you to the championship game.  Something Schumpeter noted long ago.  That is, society has to first rid itself of the ignorance of the status quo that creates economic crises before any true solutions can be implemented.

My point in the comments leading up to this is the keyword of non-GAAP found 129 times in IBM’s 2013 reporting isn’t even on the radar screen of anyone in the mainstream financial system.   This is startling yet representative of the times in which we live.  Corporate financial reporting is in a state of contrivance like never before.   Earnings are often anything but sustainable and often more financial engineering than economic success.  Wall Street itself  only is alive today because financial standards were relaxed or contrived.  Or, some may say, simply engineered.  (By the way, as has been posited on here countless times over the last six years, Wall Street would eventually trade competitors out of financial markets and be left batting assets back and forth between hedge funds, banks, central banks,  etc.  This is becoming more and more evident.  And that means the engineering behind asset prices is likely to become more and more interesting.)  

These are economic rules of law that mean nothing anymore.  They have been shit upon and destroyed by corporations and politicians just as our Constitution has been destroyed by corporations and politicians.   Footnotes to earnings and explanations to non-GAAP business results now often span dozen to even hundreds of pages in corporate financial reports.  Think about that.  What exactly does that mean?  What does it mean to report non-GAAP 129 times?  It’s quite simple.  It means what is reported through the mainstream financial media isn’t representative of reality.  Reality is contained in the dozens and hundreds of pages of legalese and financial engineering that very few people can actually even understand.  And, more importantly, very few managing pensions, investments, loans, mergers and our nation’s money on Wall Street ever reads. 

Instead, market, bond and company valuations are driven simply by endless money printing.  IBM, as just one small example, is valued astronomically higher than any Dow stock in 1929.  That is, right before the market collapsed 95%.   Yet, that has no bearing on its valuation or on anything else under the sun.   Thousands of companies are in the same situation.  

Finally, if you are like me, you often read news not for the news itself but for the comments below the news article.  The comments are far more informative and telling than the often shoddy journalism of the mainstream media. 

This article’s comments do not disappoint.  They simply confirm what most people already know.  That is, corporate surveys over the past decade or so have pointed to record low employee morale.   And late last year federal employees joined the club with record low morale.   No one enjoys being kicked like the rented mule of corporate or political bureaucrats.  No one enjoys being a wage slave or forced into mundane, meaningless work for the benefit of their masters.  Or worse, no one enjoys being manipulated into doing things that are inconsistent with our value systems.  And no one enjoys hearing economists glow about productivity improvements whilst U.S. workers slave away under the longest work week in the world.   We work more today than advanced societies did 2,000 years ago.  Literally.

Our corporate masters are extracting unprecedented rent out of their wage slaves and rented mules (contract workers).  And, they chalk it up to productivity gains and increased profits.  It’s just another example of engineering business results with unsustainable factors.  The comments below this article point to that reality.  This isn’t just an issue with IBM.  It’s an issue with private, for-profit capital, the investor class and corporations controlling democracy instead of democracy controlling them.   It’s an issue of being considered chattel to be used, abused and manipulated by corporations as persons.  This while real persons are denied their natural rights.  IBM and countless other major corporations operate on the illusion of cutting their way to prosperity.  Temporary prosperity. might I add.  Because at some point you can’t bleed a turnip.   You actually have to produce accountable business results.  More of that austerity enforced by the unaccountable plutocracy.   But, instead of austerity enforced by the political class, it is  austerity driven by corporate capitalism driving employees into deeper and deeper wage slavery.  All while the plutocracy in this nation is living large.  For now.

Seemingly everything touched by politicians or corporations is a result of financial engineering, deceit, manipulation or outright lies.  In other words, the disconnected ego’s intent to control.  

Control is nothing but an illusion created by the ego.  And that illusion only last as long as truth can be subverted. 

Eurodoom: Rising Nationalism In Europe Overwhelms Entrenched, Corrupt Political Systems.

The Financial Times article is titled populism but it is really nationalism.   Because of how the world is divided today, populism is nationalism.   People are seeking to reassert their own cultural identity, cultural values, traditions and individualism in a system of repressive conformity of unelected bureaucrats, bankers and corporations whether that is the United States, Europe or anywhere else in the world.  For most of the world that is some level of nationalism.  Of course, there are nations where arbitrary boundaries were drawn by the powers that be.

People in Europe are rejecting the faux intelligentsia of European liberalism and taking a hard turn towards individual freedoms and local self-rule.  Which, by the way, were central tenets of the original Age of Enlightenment.  That is, people were better suited to make decisions about their lives than state bureaucrats.   That is, localism.  By the way, Obama seems to be in the same vein as European liberalism.  That is, some substantial degree of self-appointed arrogance and faux intellectualism that loves telling other people how to live their lives.  That European arrogance and faux intellectualism is the foundation of socialism, communism and capitalism.   Obama misses the true teaching moment as he often wags his finger at others.  The true teaching moment is for him to recognize that people don’t want government handouts, government control and government bureaucrats running their lives.  They want liberty.   European political liberals are finding that out now in spades.

Because of the state of fear that has been created by European  state actors, sometimes these movements involve hate and violence.  People are looking to blame someone for horrendous conditions throughout Europe.   The state wants to keep people pointing the finger at each other rather than recognizing it is state actors that are the basis of Europe’s crisis.   These election results show that the state, the entrenched political class and the capitalist class are losing that propaganda battle.  

There is absolutely no way the EU as it is currently configured will survive this current cycle.   The EU was a bait and switch on the European people.  It was sold as an economic union.  Instead, it has turned into a repressive, exploitative form of economic control that suppresses human rights, liberty and self-rule.

Let’s look at one of the most overwhelming victories in Europe.  That would be the UK Independence Party made popular by Nigel Farage, who has been cited on my blog numerous times.  (By the way, the status quo has thrown everything they can at Farage.  Making unsubstantiated claim after claim to assassinate his character.  And, we now know from Glenn Greenwald’s recent revelations that the state actually plants this information to destroy its enemies.) 

The UKIP just sacked the major political parties in Britain with large wins.   On the UKIP’s web site they have a 2014 Local Manifesto.  It is no coincidence that the word local is highlighted on their web site as has been written ad nauseam on here since starting this blog.  It’s coming.  Local government,  local economics and a community-based existence are the only true forms of self-rule. 

The six UKIP priorities in this manifesto are:

1. Local referendums
2. Regain control over local development
3. Prioritize services for local people
4. Moving government closer to the people
5. Spending our money at home
6. Fighting crime and anti-social behavior

In some way, shape or form these points could be found in Occupy Wall Street or Tea Party manifestos.  And, frankly, manifestos of people seeking to restore power over their own lives anywhere on earth.  Illegal and undocumented immigration has become a tool for the aristocracy to exploit the working class and common people in countless nations around the globe.  In fact, it is U.S. and European foreign policy that props up thugs in third world countries while subverting human rights that creates an enormous diaspora of immigration to the U.S. and Europe in the first place. 

Most Tea Party members and Occupy sympathizers or participants have more in common with each other than they do with any class-based state actors in this nation.  Just as most rank and file U.S. military personnel have more in common with the average Iraqi than they do the political class in this nation that fomented war or the Iraqi political class.  When this bridge of common values and ideals is built, the status quo is finished.   From these results, it appears we are closer than we have ever been.

You Are Free From The Illusion Of Debt Slavery! Chilean Activist Burns $500 Million Of Student Debt.

This is a powerful act of humanity against the money changers.  Before this cycle is finished, we could easily see a global repudiation of debt when people realize money is nothing more than an illusion of control used by the state to beat people into conformity and  state  submission.   To turn us  into mindless consumers for corporate capitalism’s overproduction needed for it to survive.  When everyone is grubbing for money, privileged state actors can be assured that they will always maintain their power, class rank and privilege.   Because that money is used primarily to extract value from your industriousness and ability.   Industriousness and ability they don’t have.  Debt, just as taxes, goes one step further by guaranteeing privileged state actors will receive a revenue stream of income off of the backs of humanity.   The rent-extraction schemes of corporate pharma, corporate agriculture, corporate industrial food, corporate banks, corporate health care, corporate education, the investor class and on and on rely on this state-violence-enforced rent-extraction scheme to survive.

There is absolutely no reason why any education in this world needs to cost a nickel.   All primary and secondary education could easily be free.  All university education could easily be free to those who meet the requirements.  All special education could easily be be free.   Money is the artificial obstacle to this being possible.   It’s no coincidence that we have over a trillion dollars in student loan debt in this nation.  And at the same time university bureaucrats have obliterated professor tenure, wages, etc.  And in the process these corporate state bureaucrats have paid themselves incredible sums of money for making universities more “efficient”.   Well, and for turning the sports programs into modern-day slave labor systems exploited for incredible profit by often predatory coaches, bureaucrats and corporate media.    

The profitization and privatization of education into corporate-controlled sweat shops is destroying the long-standing ideals of a free society for a free education to all children.   Additionally, state actors have turned university education into a farm system for corporate employment.  Very few jobs actually require four years of education.  Most require nothing more than on-the-job training.  That has never been the foundation of university education in a free society.  A university education was originally comprised of the liberal arts.  It is where people went to become great stewards of freedom.  Where people went to become great citizens of humanity.  The free university was an intellectual bastion of new ideas, human expression, human progress and free thinking. 

Now?  Ha!  Do you really believe it’s a coincidence that liberal arts degrees are now mocked as useless in Amerika?  How often have you heard the comment, “Why are you taking music, literature,  math or any of the humanities in university?  What kind of job are you going to get with that useless degree?”.    Has there ever been a more ignorant statement ever uttered by anyone?  This is a form of emotional violence directed at human individuality.  A form of violence in support of the dumbed-down culture of work glorified in the corporate state.  

If your masters had their way, the liberal arts would be obliterated.   Even in common core curriculum, state governors, bastions of great intellect and free thought themselves, are now designing education so that kids can read a corporate manual rather than learning how to think for themselves.   How rich.  Rick Perry, Jan Brewer, Rick Scott and Rick Snyder, to name a few, are teaching our children.  Could our educational system actually get any worse that to have these Mr. PotatoE Heads f$cking it up even more? 

Bureaucrats don’t want you to think for yourself.  That makes you a threat to the the system of corporate and political class.  Because neither actually operate on any kind of merit.  Instead, they achieved their class privilege by controlling humanity.  They want you to be taught what to think.   Learn to read that corporate manual so you can graduate to student loan debt in perpetuity.  And then after that,  life-long debts as slaves to this corporate capitalist-controlled system. 

State Violence Defined: The Distribution Of Wealth, Capital Income And Returns Since 1913

In other words, since the year the Federal Reserve was created and thus permanently enabled a criminal class of looters in this nation and in the process stole whatever was left of the rule of law and freedom.

I got this work of Professor Emmanuel Saez from Alan Grayson.  (Link at the very bottom)  So, I am going to take the liberty of summarizing it through some of his observations.  But first a reminder.  I have noted on here before that we are going to see a massive wealth redistribution from those who have stolen everything to those they have stolen it from.  It’s just a matter of when and how.  Every time in history we have seen such massive theft, the outcome is the same.   It’s coming.   This is part of the battle between good and evil that is taking place in this world.   And, that may be one reason why we see such a radicalization of the domestic  government.  That is, to protect the criminal class of state actors that have stolen everything.   To protect them from We The People. 

Some key data points from this work are below. (The link to the entire document is at the bottom of this post.) 

For the bottom 90% of Americans, since the late 1980s:

1. The bottom 90% of Americans had to spend more than they earned every year from 1997-2008.   Credit has tightened since the 2008 bust and people have pulled back their spending, a form of forced austerity has reigned in this dynamic.   Now, some of this is nonliving wages forcing people to take on debt and some of it is people buying into the state’s propagandized (violence) consumption mania and  living beyond their means.  (Remember, I have written on here ad nauseam that it was Clinton & Reagan who created this mess.  Even though party hacks and those who outsource their thinking to them tell us both Clinton and Reagan were great leaders.   Ahem.  Oh, and Al Gore.  This data confirms what I have said many times.  That is, George Bush inherited this mess from Clinton.  Although he and Obama did nothing but perpetuate it.  The supposed liberal intellectual who supports the Democratic Party is literally creating their own suffering or future suffering.)
2. The value of home equity has crashed. (Remember, my downside target for housing prices could possibly reach early 1990s or even 1980 levels.)
3. The value of small businesses has crashed. (Something else written of on here.  There is no such thing as small business being the backbone of America.  That’s another myth.  The corporate state ensures this to be so.)
4. The value of liquid assets – cash, stocks and bonds minus auto and credit card debt -- has been wiped out entirely.
5. The only form of middle class wealth that has sustained itself is pensions/401(k)’s, and more than a quarter of all American workers don’t have one.  (401ks and pensions are headed for the scrap heap.  Most defined benefit pensions have been gutted by corporate criminals and instead turned into gambler’s 401ks helping to fuel the massive financial bubble.   Public pensions are headed for a major reset, if not zero too.  There is no way out.)

The bottom 50% of Americans cumulatively own nary a nickel free and clear.  Most in some way or another are wards of the state.  Even if they have a job.   This is state violence defined.  That is, destroying individual’s economic rights and turning them into chattel to be exploited and ultimately disposed of. 

The capitalist criminals and Republicans would tell you that the bottom 50% or thereabouts are the people who caused the 2008 crisis.  Because they were getting loans they had no right getting.  Hahaha.   That’s right.  Those poor sonofabitches should know their place as wards of the state or wage and debt serfs.  Homes are for the rich and people of class title and privilege.  Your place is in the poorhouse and they aren’t going to let you forget that if they get their way.   Because people not of class aren’t actually citizens with rights.  If you don’t have any money, you don’t have any rights.  Rights are to be purchased by the highest bidder. 

Contrarily, if this trend continues, 400 American will own the entire country by 2114.  Now, that certainly isn’t going to happen but it highlights the brutality and violence of this system.    Remember, one of my long-time themes on here is the investor class is headed for the poorhouse.   In other words, the investor class is headed for a bout of karma.   It’s called Newton’s Third Law.

The rich now earn 6% on their money so they are loving the Federal Reserve’s attempts at reflation.  If you aren’t making at least 6% annually through wages or gambling on the Ponzi scheme, you are losing ground.   Compound that a few times over a handful of years and you appreciate why people cannot retire or even subsist on their savings anymore.

One final remark about all of this.  I have noted on here for the better part of this blog’s existence that the U.S. and China are in a Nash Equilibrium.  ie,  Essentially a state where neither participant has any reason to change the current arrangement.  And at some point that equilibrium would break.  I have said for the last couple of years that it seemed the time for China’s crisis to metastasize beyond its control was near.  My timing hasn’t been accurate.  But, the basic analysis is still completely valid.   China will break.  It’s just a matter of what will break it and when.  My assumption has generally been that China would be forced to devalue its currency or face collapse.  We have seen signs of this happening in the last few months as the yuan has started south from its peg against the dollar.   If this happens, it would generally lead to “dumping” or selling goods at an unfair advantage or below subsidized cost (devaluation) and we could expect the U.S. would retaliate with economic actions.   Thus possibly slamming the door on China’s corrupt mercantilist scheme and forcing its economy to completely unwind.  

Then, our masters would pivot their economic policies back into the United States where worker’s rights have been obliterated and people are begging to be employed at any cost.   At least, that is how capitalism wants this to work with its comparative advantage.  Whether they are successful at this pivot is quite another story.  There are many failure points that I don’t see any way of overcoming.   But one must appreciate that our masters certainly see their U.S. field slaves (the working class) getting restless and now that they have looted China with impunity, their future policies may be more concerned about keeping what they have rather than looting with impunity.  If so, they may try to keep the us from escaping the plantation or sacking our masters and upsetting their looting mechanism of class-based corporate capitalism by pivoting to job creation in the U.S.  Good luck.  We have 100 million people underemployed or unemployed. 

I see possible evidence that the U.S. has been baiting China more and more.   And China is feeling its newfound power as well.  Or so they think.   Those two dynamics will ultimately collide.   This week the U.S. announced high profile charges against China for economic spying.  Which almost certainly is true in a broader scale.  Whether these are trumped up or “timed” charges with an intent, no one really knows.   But China, like the U.S., Russia, Europe, etc are predatory states that steal and loot with impunity.   I have a friend who works in a very sensitive field of technology and seven or eight years ago people in his firm found that China had planted spying “stuff” in some of the unrestricted technology equipment they manufactured in China.   In other words, China was attempting to steal their restricted technology just as the NSA has been exposed of doing.

As this economic crisis re-intensifies, at some point a line will be crossed between state actors and there will be no going back.  That is, unless humanity stops them.   The only question is if these actions will be willful and planned.  There is ample reason to believe they may be.   That the U.S. has created China only to destroy it.  I wrote that on here eight or so years ago but never expounded upon it.  At that time no one ever would have considered anything to be possible that I would have written on the topic.  So, I have saved those remarks and will be posting them this year.   With the revelations of Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and others, people have shed much of their beliefs and are more open to discovery and are willing to consider that this system is much more rotten than anyone could ever imagine.  The evidence of such policy of economic warfare is lacking due to secrecy but the motive and actions are not.   It’s just a matter of whether this is the way the system works or if there is willful intent.   No one knows.

Regardless, one thing everyone should appreciate is that the world is not as it seems.  We are spoon fed what the state and its actors - corporations, the media, politicians, Wall Street – want us to think rather than how to think from the time we enter pre-school.    And I doubt most anyone other than a handful of deep state actors have any idea of what is contrived and what is real.   Certainly most elected officials are simply pliant stooges willing to do the bidding of others for a payoff.  But the stakes are much higher than that.  So, the true intents are likely to be much more sinister.

The state and its power have really only coalesced globally in the last 100 years.   100 years ago, much of the world still lived in laws and customs created through local communities and local governments.   Even in the U.S., 100 years ago state power had not coalesced to the degree of being able to exert much, if any, power or violence against its own citizens.   Now that we see the maturation of the state globally, we see its true nature and intent.   Make no mistake, the state exists for only one reason.  Violence.   Capitalism, an invention of the state, is clearly a form of state violence that enriches state actors just as it did the political stooges, bankers and corporate titans in the British Empire of 1776.  And now everyone around the world can see reality clearly.  That is, if they are willing to open their eyes.   In this moment, the state is highly vulnerable to collapse everywhere.   Europe, South America, Asia, North America, Africa, it doesn’t matter.  Or, at least massive reform of state functions and power that pushes power back to the people to allow them to make decisions about their own lives as the original Age of Enlightenment intended.    The tenet of people being better able to make decisions about their lives than the state, a founding principle of this nation, has been obliterated globally.

These statistics by Professor Saez and the resultant suffering we see globally are completely contrived by state actors.    This crisis is completely contrived.   There has been no thermonuclear bomb dropped on our cities that has devastated our economic abilities.   This whole scheme is a state-driven fraud.   This degree of suffering and theft we see around the world is only possible through state violence.  The promise state actors make for such control is protection of its citizens.  That is the only reason the state exists.  How’s that working out for you?   How many hundreds of millions dead, imprisoned, living in squalor and exploited courtesy of state actors during the 20th century?  The state, being fundamentally of class and power, is and always has been a miserable failure in the evolution of human progress.  State actors have fought human progress every single step of the way.

At some point, we will almost certainly enter a stateless world.  A world where China, Russia, the U.S., European states, etc will cease to exist.  I don’t have any idea when that will happen.  But it almost certainly will.  Or we will see massive reforms in how government works.  Reforms that substantially neuter state control, power and violence.  Because it’s the only way humanity can ever achieve a peaceful state of being with the planet and each other. 

Title link report here.

The Free Market Smashes Socialism As The Swiss Minimum Wage Vote Goes Down In Flames

Hahaha.  My title is a mockery of the drivel, lies, deceit, propaganda and emotional violence we are exposed to in this nation and in modern corporate capitalist societies around the world.   

In the United States, a nation of such overwhelming propaganda that actually people actually voluntarily victimize themselves, how else do you explain why so many tens of millions of people live on poverty wages?  And have for decades?  And why no such living wage bill would ever be given serious consideration in this nation?  Seriously.  Any properly functioning form of state violence regulates itself through the dynamic of fear.  

This bill would never have a chance in hell of passing in the U.S. either.   Well, that’s because for countless millions living in squalor, maybe the corporate state is the incarnation of hell.   At least under this current economic system.  But discussions around nonliving wages and attempts at raising wages around the world are happening at a faster and faster clip.   Not that anything has really changed anywhere.  Nor will it in this system.  But they certainly are signs of what is yet to come.

Did anyone else find it ironic that the person highlighted in my original link (last post) to this vote was a nanny?   In other words, a modern day wage slave.   A servant for someone else's children.   Just like the house negro Malcolm X talked about so often.   I wonder if she wasn’t required to serve a person of privilege, and forced to leave her country to grub for money in this control system, if she would be spending time with her own children?  Or, something similar.   Or, frankly, what could she actually be doing to improve her life’s experiences?  Just like that mall worker in the United States.  Or the fast food worker.  Or, countless other marginalized people around the world. 

But, it was no surprise that she said in that article that if she was a Swiss citizen and could vote, she would vote against the bill because she was afraid she’d lose her job.  How many migrant workers around the globe operate under the same duress?  This dynamic is a poster child for migrant or undocumented workers in the U.S.  This is the beauty of institutionalized state violence.  People victimize themselves out of fear. 

So, there are really two types of people voting on this issue in Switzerland.   Or, anywhere else.  Those making a marginal wage that would benefit from higher pay and those who are already making more than a marginal wage.   Now, why do you think that vote failed?   Or, why do you think as low as wages are in the U.S. that it has never even come up for vote?   This topic isn’t even seriously discussed in the U.S.   

Do you think people living in poverty or people marginalized enjoy their own self-victimization or living in a state of fear?  Do you think impoverished and exploited people actually want to refuse a pay raise?  That’s a sadistic joke.  And do you think all people making a decent living are against those living in poverty having enough money to survive?   77% of people shot this vote down.   Think about that.  What are the reasons?   I’ll tell you exactly what the reasons are.  They can be boiled down into one simple reason.  Fear. 

Fear that I will lose my job if I ask my master for more money.  Fear that I might have to pay higher prices if I already make a living wage.  Fear that I may have to pay greater taxes to fund all of this.  Fear that someone my ego believes is less worthy than me may actually make as much money as I do.  Or may make more than I believe they deserve.   Whatever the reason, it’s driven by ego.  And, the ego has only one intent in whatever decisions it makes.  That is, control.  And the ego seeks control solely out of fear.  The individual fear-driven reasons are as varied as people’s experiences in this world.  But it is purely fear.  Which, by the way, perpetuates this system of exploitation and state violence.

That’s the beauty of state violence.   It takes what the earth freely and abundantly shares with humanity and convinces the ego of state actors and those who enrich the state that some aren’t worthy of those natural right of abundance.  Rights granted by their Creator.   Today it’s called the free market.   Whatever it is called, it is the reason that since the inception of the state that the vast majority of humanity has lived in squalor.  This while state actors and those who support the state grant themselves the privilege of thieving other people’s labor and intellectual capital.   This while denying a basic human right to the vast majority of people they thieve from.  And using money as the control mechanism to accomplish this.  Money never existed before the state.  Anthropologists have already proven this.  It is the state that uses money as a form of violence to control, repress and subjugate the human experience while enriching itself. 

This dynamic is currently called the free market by those who subjugate humanity and deny their freedoms.  But it’s always been called something other than what it really is.  Which is the subjugation and theft of basic human dignities and natural rights granted by our Creator.  Whatever it is called in whatever period of human history, it has  one true name;  Godlessness.  It is the evil that has a complete lack of empathy for the plight of others while granting the self privilege others are denied.  Privilege granted through state violence.  

Today’s modern world is one of great abundance.  That anyone is denied their basic economic and natural rights is nothing more than the manifestation of evil.  Evil survives through fear.  Or, as is famously quoted, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”.  And, they do nothing out of fear.

Title link here.

On Sunday Switzerland Votes On A $25 Minimum Wage

A guaranteed living wage is a consistent theme on here.   Or, something equivalent.  The criminals will tell you that isn’t possible.  Or they will tell you that raising wages simply means higher prices.  This is outright bullshit.   A small fraction of price is determined by labor.   Was the U.S. better off when it adopted the Henry Ford model of high wages or is America better off today with neo-feudal wage slavery?   Many even use circular reasoning and ego-driven logic to rationalize their morally-bankrupt positions.  They make claims that it is compassionate to allow the market to set wages because otherwise, raising wages actually will cost our economy jobs.  The Godlessness of this world is all-consuming when left in the hands of class-based predators and private capital that controls and manipulates markets, news, economics, politics and on and on.   I wonder how many people espousing these immoralities would work for $8 an hour?  Ah, they would say that they would better themselves so that they wouldn’t need to work for $8 an hour.  What exactly does that mean?   I’ll tell you what it means.  More bullshit.  You mean, more than likely, they would do whatever it takes to stomp on the face of their fellow man to rise to a level of class rank and privilege that they could exploit the person making $8 an hour and thus extract a higher wage off of the backs of the working poor. 

Someone always needs to sweep the floors.  All people are worthy.  In fact, sweeping floors is a much more noble endeavor than victimizing people through debt slavery as Wall Street does. 

Higher wages drive higher productivity.   Low wages stagnate true productivity growth as written on here before.  And, that is one reason why the true productivity in the U.S. is and has been stagnant for decades.   Well that and the commonly-held belief that we have transitioned to a low-productivity service economy, which, if you really understand what is going on, we clearly have not.  More on that later in some posts that will shock people back to reality from the nonsensical drivel we are being fed by bloggers, economists, politicians and financial pigmen.  The reported numbers of huge productivity numbers in this nation are a mockery created by the corporate takeover and consolidation of power into Soviet-style state-propped-up enterprises.    Much of the supposed gains in productivity that have taken place in the last 20 years are a complete myth. 

As I have remarked on here numerous times, if a business cannot afford to pay a living wage, then it shouldn’t be in business.  It’s not a business democracy needs.   We don’t need more modern-day plantation owners.   If it is a business that we need, and nary one of three hundred plus million people can figure out how to pay a living wage, then we should simply print the money necessary to supplement wages.  But, that’s just one of the mythical limitations of an economy driven by the artificial control mechanism of money and profit.  If corporate capitalism, the state and the supposedly free market can’t figure out how to pay everyone a living wage job, I certainly know how.  And, there are countless others that can or have figured it out as well.

The reality is that at some point we simply need to remove basic income from the concept of work as noted many times on here.  That day will come.  It’s just a matter of when.  Then rather than fretting about technology taking our jobs, and by inference, the money we need to survive in this system of class-based control, we can actually spend our time focusing on how technology should take our jobs and relieve us of the dumbed-down existence of work.    Or, more pointedly, spending our existence as dumbed-down, ego-primitive mental midgets raping the planet and each other in the forced wage-slavery overproduction for a predatory class of state actor’s overconsumption, be that rent-seeking corporate bureaucrats, the military-industrial complex, the political class, the capitalist class, the birthright aristocracy, the completely useless and predatory investor class, the debt-sucking banking criminals or other looting, plundering, victimizing predators enabled by the force of the state. 

Only then can humanity dedicate the time necessary to become who we were meant to become.  That is, divine.

Title link here.

Health And The Human Condition Postapalooza

The gut-brain axis

7 things you had no idea gut bacteria could do.

Fearful memories haunt descendants of trauma.

Is your cholesterol too low?

The cholesterol myth

The healing power of cats’ purring.  (And if you don’t have a kitty, why you should create your own healing vibrations through something like chanting, humming or listening to music.)

Cat saves small child from dog attack.

The most complex microbial ecosystem on earth is ….. you.

The gluten-thyroid connection.

Celiac and other diseases linked to Roundup by MIT professor.

Split brain paradox resolves itself naturally

Vermont, asserting its state’s right of sovereignty, becomes the first state to pass mandatory GMO labeling.. (Video)  Expect a violent response by the centrally-planned corporate state.

Trauma inherited from parents.

Roundup common in pregnant women’s umbilical cords, placenta and breast milk.

Plagues hit bananas and oranges. 

How modern society turns big-hearted babies into selfish monsters.

Ebola outbreak shows no signs of slowing

New theories link Black Plague to Ebola (Are increased outbreaks in viral and bacterial mutations pointing to the possibility of a new plague?)

Tapping for stress, depression, anxiety and pain relief.  Open your energy meridians/chakras with this simple yet powerful technique.

Study validates tapping as a form of energy psychology.

How stress changes the brain

Children suffer mentally from too much homework.  Competitive parents are destroying their children’s spirit.

Scientists edit DNA to cure disease

Drug reverses schizophrenia.

Autism and the gut connection

The coffee & gluten connection (cross-reactive foods)

Psychiatry:  (The drugging of the military.  Chapter 3)  The entire documentary Psychiatry: The Hidden Enemy starting with chapter 1 here.

The sinister self-interested wealth connection between drugs and psychiatry.

Morning sun exposure tied to lower weight.

Is procrastination always bad? 

Does low blood sugar turn us into aggressive monsters?

Is there scientific evidence that the mind can heal the body?

Hand soap antimicrobial agent does just the opposite of what is intended by increasing bacteria.

What it’s like listening to psychopaths for 20 years.

Trauma passed through sperm

I knew sugar was bad but this blew me away (and why you need cholesterol)

Reduce your toxins 80% in weeks

Not everyone needs probiotics.

How to become diabetic

Most harmful mutations to human DNA is recent. 

What she learned in dental school made her patients sick

Gluten intolerance can wreck your life.

Three steps to perfect poops (Rebuilding your gut’s fauna)

How inflammation affects your mental health

The cholesterol myth harming your health

Monsanto GMO: Scarier than you think

Exercise keep brain from shrinking.

Could this be the hidden factor behind chronic fatigue and heart disease?

How Monsanto annihilated paradise

4 foods that have surprising medicinal benefits.

The importance of vitamin D in normalizing cholesterol (and many other important reasons you may need more)

Improving your sleep may prevent and improve metabolic disorders

Why do we overeat?

American apples covered with poison

The Expanding Exposure Of State Violence And The Actions Of Empire: Did The FBI Threaten An American Citizen With Death For Refusing To Spy For The State?

Update on 5/13.  Glenn Greenwald talks about bugging tech hardware, economic espionage and spying on the UN.

First, let me put in for a plug of Frontline’s special tomorrow night titled The United States of Secrets.   So much for the predatory police and national security state being able to sweep their massive treason, corruption and crimes under the rug.  The attack on corruption, violence and exploitation is only expanding.  And, tomorrow Glenn Greenwald will be releasing new Snowden revelations.    Well, and it appears Boko Haram, a Muslim terrorist organization whose recent actions elicited a genuine response from Michelle Obama, may actually be funded or controlled in some part by the CIA.   And then there is the recent report that CIA torture techniques were developed for them by ex-Nazis.  The CIA and its evil rot is now literally being exposed everywhere.  Even deaths associated with vaccines in under-developed nations.  Could there be much of any doubt how evil and undemocratic the CIA actually is?  Don’t buy the bullshit that the CIA is keeping us safe.  The CIA’s global web of terrorism is making us unsafe.  And rather surprisingly, to me at least, so is the FBI.   I knew the FBI was capable of pockets of state corruption but with revelations over the last few years, I wonder what what isn’t tainted by Orwellian state propaganda.  Movies, books, print media, television media, state talking points and on and on are now exposed as often manipulated for public consumption by a dystopian evil we call the national security state. 

For decades we have seen revelations regarding the illegal and  unconstitutional secret activities of the American political class and those behind the curtain who manipulate it.  The Church Committee, John Stockwell (A top CIA official who exposed its massive corruption decades ago) , John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hitman), Daniel Ellsberg (Most Dangerous Man in America),  Iran-Contra, Bill Moyers (25 year old PBS special titled Secret Government), FOIA releases that show the CIA was originally stocked with ex-Nazis and on and on and on.   And somehow all of these and more have been accepted, swept under the rug, under-reported or unreported by a pliant corporate media and even eventually romanticized by movies and spy novels.  Now we have he latest incarnation of these revelations in the form of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.   Will today’s outcomes be the same?  Or has the American psyche changed?  Will the battle in the mind of humanity between good and evil finally produce lasting change?  

American empire is clearly in substantial decline.  But, I suspect it may have quite a few more tricks up its sleeve.  As the world changes, tactics will certainly change with them.  I’ll soon be writing what those tricks may be.  From my perspective, it is very low odds for any other nation to bring down American Empire.   Any potential external threats to empire are far more corrupt and far less powerful.  A frontal assault on the United States isn’t likely to be taken on by any state actors resisting it.   Does anyone truly believe that if Germany, Russia, Britain, China or any other state had the power of American empire, it would be used benevolently?  You’ve got to be kidding.   Little ole Costa Rica would be ruled by pathology and predators if they had the equal power of American empire.    

There may be some ability to damage or disrupt empire at the fringes as noted in prior posts.  Russia may have this ability if their state actors play their hand perfectly or close to it.  But, in the process, Russian state actors will almost certainly collapse their own economy or worse.  To believe that Russia can rely on trade with China or other nations to save itself is absurd.   First off, Russia is now part of the global corporate capitalist and central banking cabal and as noted on here before, we have no idea what the intentions of state actors are in perpetuating instability around the globe.   Do we really know what events are and aren’t staged for our consumption?  Do you really know what is and isn’t real?   Obviously there are competing interests but we really have limited ability to authoritatively understand much of anything affecting geopolitics and state activity.

Additionally, China is a slave labor colony of U.S., and to a lesser extent, European empire.   Just as it was under British rule.  China is at the mercy of the American & European consumer, American & European capitalism, American & European technology transfer and American & European politicians.  As noted on here many times over the years, expect the possibility of outright trade wars between the west and China.  Corporate capitalism is a trade war.   But it’s violence is often covert so many who are exploited by it actually support their own oppression by becoming true believers in support of their own slavery.  As noted on here many times, these are the useful idiots.  Free market, Southern plantation Mises morons comes to mind.  They make life unduly miserable for the rest of humanity.  

The U.S. Empire is still incredibly powerful.  Even if it is clearly late stage empire.    Beyond its military and financial dominance, the U.S. is far more important to the global economy than anyone realizes.  As noted on here before, the U.S. is probably responsible for upwards of $50 to $60 trillion in annual global trade.  Not GDP but trade.  (More on that in later posts.  After nine years, I can honestly say that I have yet to put up the best posts on the global economy and financial markets.   As noted on here many times, I have often not laid out detail behind much of the analysis because everything on the internet is pilfered and I have seen my work show up elsewhere.  Now that everyone has had a chance to lay their cards on the table and play their hands, it’s time to call.  Some of my most important posts are scheduled for this year.) 

As it relates to this post, I want to once again pull out three far-out statements I made on here well before the revelations of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden.  I’m going to continue to beat the drums on much of my prior postings because they are very important.  These far-out statements were:  1) I would not be surprised to see extra-judicial Nuremberg-type tribunals at some point in the United States.  2) At some point there will likely be revelations about our government that will horrify the American people. And, 3) Wee could see the American soldier refuse to fight or see large desertions in the American military. 

I gave some reasons and precedence for these remarks in prior posts.  I suspect 3) from above is already in progress.   There is growing evidence the U.S. could not raise citizen support or rank and file soldier support to create any new wars.   Shooting  missiles into a country or other reasonably spontaneous military activities?   Possibly.  But, even that was wildly unpopular in Syria.  And that unpopularity actually stopped the U.S. from killing untold numbers of innocent people.   Dedicating thousands of new soldiers to a new conflict?  I am highly dubious.  More covert use of violence through the CIA and other secretive operations?  Most certainly because that may be the only tool left to foment instability unless another nation’s activities give the U.S. cover to use outright economic, financial or military violence.   Is this the reason Putin is playing recent events publicly?  In order to ensure the U.S. has no cover to attack Russia economically or financially without it being witnessed by the world?

A large number of American soldiers are now appreciating how they have been exploited and then disposed of by Washington politicians and the corporate state.   Endless horror stories abound.  Suicides, VA nightmares, unemployment, all types of physical and mental illness, disabilities, etc.   And who sees all of this?   The friends, families and communities of these returning soldiers.  U.S. policy is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of resistance to greater empire violence.

Ultimately my prior remarks noted above come down to two things.  One, empire only exists through holocaust.  Truly.  As I have linked a few times in the past, the British Empire murdered millions more people than the Nazis ever did.  And, I do mean millions more. (Although combining World War II tips the balance.  That is, if you believe British Empire and other European empires had nothing to do with covertly fomenting World War II as the U.S. Empire covertly foments violence today.)  

Other European empires were equally as brutal, if not as large as the British Empire.  Similar Asian empires throughout the ages butchered people by the millions.   The state is the source of all large scale violence in this world.  Be that through corporate domination, outright physical violence or otherwise. 

Don’t kid yourself that hasn’t happened under watch of U.S. empire.  It may not have always involved U.S. troops directly, although wars of empire aggression like Vietnam and Iraq certainly did.  And it may have been hidden from American citizen view or manipulated for our consumption, but there has always been ample insider evidence from the few who exposed this system that the CIA alone wages hundreds of violent, covert campaigns annually.  That may include starvation or other acts that may not appear to be related to state violence.   Many of those acts have been exposed for decades to be directed at Americans themselves.   That includes possible involvement in the U.S. drug trade as noted on here many times.  And, as noted on here before, there is ample evidence it was the United States that captured Nelson Mandela and had him imprisoned for life.  These are just examples of how threats to class and political power of class-based corporate capitalism, private banking and empire.   Where does the madness end?  Empire is about conquest for the purposes of stealing and plunder for the ruling class of state actors.  There is ample evidence that many dictators around the world committed great atrocities with the direct or indirect support and involvement of the United States. 

And, the second reason is, corporate capitalism has only ever existed through similar crimes against humanity.   It is corporate capitalism that is the tool through which American Empire plunders, exploits and steals from the world.   Well, and does the same to the American people.  I have to throw up in my Cheerios when I hear white males of class in the United States talk about the good ole days of corporate capitalism.  You know, the Robber Barons, Pinkerton guards murdering workers, slavery, and other examples of the free markets.

The American corporate, capitalist and political class within this nation hold values inconsistent with that of most Americans.  Frankly, of most human beings.   From what I see, the evidence points to the American people bringing down empire or empire failing from within.  Those are really in some ways, the same outcome. 

I’m a big fan of appreciating how the crowd is always wrong through the viral acceptance of dumbed-down groupthink.   Within the liberal educated class or supposed intelligentsia that only exists through state violence, and within the conservative Republican capitalist-minded class that also only exists through state violence, both have a very well-accepted belief that the American people are stupid, gullible and/or lazy. 

Sheople is such a common term anymore that it has gone mainstream.  People in this nation are far from stupid.  Ignorance is often palpable.  But that ignorance starts at the very top.  Those supporting corporate capitalism as it has always been practiced are wildly ignorant.  Those in the liberal intelligentsia who believe that somehow their rank privilege or supposed “education” or self-described brilliance are wildly ignorant.  Both of their flawed belief systems and the class rank and privilege that those belief systems afford are propped up by state violence.  And I’ll be talking a lot more about that.   Mind you, ignorance is not stupidity.  Not even close.   Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame appears to be very ignorant regarding certain beliefs.  Donald Sterling appears to be very ignorant regarding certain beliefs.  People and nations that glorify the pro-active use of force and violence as the U.S. and many of its allies do are ignorant.  Empire itself is based on ignorance, be that willful or propagandized.  And I’ll give readers a big dose of it soon enough. 

Ignorance is driven by the acceptance of belief systems.  The more our perceptions of reality and experiences are driven by beliefs, the greater the present moment is subverted, the greater the search for discovery and truth that the present moment affords is subverted, the greater the ignorance.   The more we each believe what we are told rather than learning through accepting present moment experiences, the more we become ignorant. 

The fact that American people, in record numbers, don’t believe anything their capitalist masters, the liberal intelligentsia or the government tells them, is a profoundly simple yet powerful indicator that our society’s ignorance is lifting.   And that means all of those whose positions have been afforded through state violence are in serious trouble.   This profundity is beyond political affiliation or economic class.  White collar, blue collar, black, white, man or woman.  It doesn’t matter.  People are awakening to propagandized social belief systems that are nothing more than utter bullshit.  Bullshit used to exploit people and convince them through propaganda to do the bidding of state actors.

A profoundly simple truth derived from this is that once the American people decide this system is finished, it’s finished.   It’s that simple.  Do you honestly believe the rank and file soldier is going to start killing his family and friend on behalf of the American aristocracy as many conspiracists believe?   Do you honestly believe this system can continue to rule much longer without said violence?  

As I have noted on here many times, we are in revolution as I type this.  It doesn’t necessarily mean war or even armed conflict.  But there is a violent battle occurring right now.  It is the battle to control the minds of Americans. And state violence and state secrecy are being used to wage that war against the American people.  But, the more one becomes exposed to something, the more one becomes habituated to it.  There is ample evidence the propaganda isn’t working anymore across a broad spectrum of corporate state manipulation. 

We are now seeing glimpses into reality and truth of what is behind the curtain of state secrecy.   Many people don’t believe the entire truth will ever come out.  I suspect just the opposite is going to happen.  ie. That we are going to see it all exposed at some point.   If that happens, Katy bar the door because there certainly will be tribunals in this nation.  And they will be extra-judicial because our legal system is bought and paid for and cannot be trusted to mete out justice. 

We know from examples of state violence time and again throughout history that bureaucrats love to keep records.   They had better have the shredding machines fired up in Washington if they lose control of the secrecy machine that protects their crimes against the American people and humanity.      

A view into what likely happens on a daily basis in some form or another in the world of empire.  Democracy Now! video interview and excerpts from taped conversation intimating what appears to be FBI threatening an American citizen with death.

Original Mother Jones story here.

Monica Lewinsky Speaks Out

The sensationalism and dumbed-down coverage of mindless drivel by the mainstream media in this nation is beyond disgusting.  What does it say about our nation that the national news headlines are about a dirty old man, Donald Sterling, and a gold-digging prostitute who betrayed him?    Illegally, might I add.  He gets his karma but I suspect she’s going to get hers too.   This when our nation faces unprecedented crises including poverty, homelessness, mental illness, epidemic nonliving wages, etc.

I’m going to broach a topic that, in my regards, some people believe is part of the same venue.  Ugh.   It’s not.  Not even close.  Predators using positions of authority and power to exploit people is a fundamental issue of our time.  In a kyriarchy, which is clearly what state violence is comprised of,  (a class-based social system of domination, oppression and submission that encompasses sexism, racism, homophobia and economic injustices) we see a predatory class of many disparate actors and venues exploit society through countless methods for many intents.  Not just in the U.S. but globally.   And, for lack of a better explanation, in the past our society in particular  has  suffered from some type of Stockholm-ish Syndrome by having positive feelings for our abusive oppressors.  ie, Wall Street, corporate capitalists, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the predatory legal establishment, the liberal intelligentsia, religious fanatics, fanatical Ayn Randians, etc.    (Identifying with the aggressor is one way that the ego defends itself. When a victim believes the same values as the aggressor, they cease to be a threat.)  Umm, our society has certainly adopted many of the values as our pathological aggressors.  We love war, violence, greed, mammon, exploitation, competition, gambling, amusing ourselves to death, hating those who are different, watching our fellow man suffer in misery, etc. 

Predators often have a unique ability to understand people’s weaknesses and how to exploit them for their own personal gain.  That involves often convincing others to seemingly participate of their own free will in gross misconduct.  I say seemingly because it is anything but.   What it is is the predator’s calculated and willful manipulation of its victim.  Whether that is the calculated and willful manipulation of the American people for purposes of corporate capitalist overconsumption (hyper-consumerism), or glorifying military-industrial complex violence, or the most powerful man in the world taking advantage of a young, naïve intern, or congressional leaders emailing pictures of their private parts or having intimate relationships with pages, or pig parents abusing their children, or Catholic priests molesting young children or grieving adults.  They all share the same predatory, exploitative, victimizing pathology. 

These remorseless, unempathetic beings prey upon the emotions of shame and guilt that the rest of us experience.  So, it’s easy for them to make their victims feel as though they did something wrong.  Or, it’s their fault.   Or, to create such trauma that they semi-permanently or permanently alter the vivacious life force that exists in their victims.   This manipulation, predation, exploitation and abuse allows them often to go undetected for years and years or even an entire life time.  How many people want to publicly acknowledge the shame and guilt surrounding their abuse by authority figures or people who hold some emotional power over them?  And then, if they come forward, be told they are lying or crazy and then be publicly ridiculed, criticized, chastised and possibly be turned into a social leper or economic outcast?   The Vatican has perfected this form of emotional violence to protect what has literally been documented as 1700 years of sexual abuse and molestation by untold thousands and thousands of priests.  And, so the cycle of predation and abuse continues in silence. 

I have a special place in my heart for people like this.  And, there is no forgiveness.  I have no empathy for those who are incapable of empathy themselves.   This is not mental illness.   This is evil.  And, while some may claim this type of behavior may be caused by childhood trauma, in actuality much of it is something we just don’t understand.  But it is clearly some manifestation of evil.  Maybe even evil in a religious context.    Who really knows?   But blaming everything on mental illness absolves pathology of responsibility for its behavior and its crimes.  They can simply check themselves into therapy and claim some form victimization as a cover for their crimes.  Or worse, if it’s Wall Street as an example, they simply convince society that their behavior is to be exalted.  So, in many regards, modern medicine and its dubious claims that everyone is a victim has allowed pathology to remain a constant threat to anyone near it.  And, that means the list of future victims could involve countless more innocent people including children. 

I feel a great empathy for Monica Lewinsky.  I can certainly appreciate how Bill Clinton came close to destroying her.  This while he now lives large.  Makes hundreds of millions of dollars not by curing cancer but by using the crony contacts and power he was granted as a public servant to enrich himself at the expense of others.  This appears to possibly be a repeated pattern time and again.   Lewinsky was victimized by someone who used their position of authority.  And, then that person literally tried to publicly destroy her.  She leads a life of shame and guilt.  Her abuser, and let’s be honest, that is what the sum total of her experience is, that is, abuse, leads a life of wealth and public adoration by many in the “Big L” liberal establishment and those who outsource their thinking to it.  

Something is very, very wrong with this world and from what I know, which certainly isn’t everything, Monica Lewinsky, for all of her flaws of being human that we all share, isn’t part of that wrongness.    She is another victim of those being wronged by those who do wrong.   Those committing often petty crimes are imprisoned in our nation while the truly criminal class run roughshod over humanity.

Shame and Survival – Monica writes for Vanity Fair

How I was left suicidal

Bill Clinton took advantage of me

The Clinton administration tried to destroy Monica Lewinsky

Oh, by the way, 29 of the 30 Dow Industrials have invested in Hillary and Bill Clinton in case you want who our pathological masters are betting on.

Harry Dent & Robert Prechter Video Interview

America has been in a depression for nearly forty years as noted on here countless times.   While most Republican corporatists and faux Democratic intelligentsia would laugh at any such characterization, most working class people and seekers of truth who were at least of childhood age in the 1970s can intuitively appreciate this.   But let me say there is data to back up that intuition. (As promised before, more substantial detail on that is coming.)  

Unfortunately, we live in a society dumbed-down by political, religious, university and corporate hierarchical structures so we are often told by class and hierarchy to believe something to the contrary to the truth.  The Reagan Revolution, supply-side economics, NAFTA, WTO, real estate as an investment, the technology revolution, the financialization of our economy, MBAs, service economy retraining, the lawyering of our economy, blah, blah, blah.  It’s all bullshit.  All of it.  I doubt this con game is any form of willful lying so much as institutionalized ignorance and corruption driven by the exaltation of mammon.  (The ego is capable of rationalizing anything and then believing it.)   But wtf does Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan know about economics?  Or, anything else for that matter.  A sign of the times is that politicians now exhibit unbelievable arrogance and ignorance by trying to control nearly every aspect of our lives including the economy.   Why?  Because it serves their own wallet and their own insatiable need for power.

Over the last year we have started to see some very disturbing economic data that is a direct result of political, university and corporate malfeasance and misfeasance.   It first started with the commodities import collapse in China noted on here last year.  Then it started to metastasize into corporate results in China and emerging markets.   And, then currencies started collapsing against the dollar.  Then we saw the biggest corporate earnings warning in recorded history.   And more recently Russia and China have both reported major slowdowns or worse.  The other BRICs nations of Brazil and India are reporting very disturbing contractions as well.   The rupee has hit all-time lows and Brazil’s capital contraction is staggering.  In 2014 we now see  the world’s capital structures are cumulatively in contraction.   We have recently seen mortgage numbers literally collapse.  And this past week in the household survey report, we saw that the economy actually may have lost 73,000 jobs rather than the establishment survey pumped in the press.  

Ignorance and corruption go hand-in-hand.  So, just as in other mania tops, we saw similar asinine behavior.  One I clearly remember in 2000 was Airbus announcing the flying city A380; a flying albatross and money pit that has been a total flop and will likely be abandoned at some point.  It’s just one example of many.  Then before the 2008 collapse, a few examples were the Burj Dubai, the Hamptons mania, and the CEO survey that showed American business leaders as wildly bullish; all reported on here at the time as signs of impending doom.  Now we have similar ignorance and corruption going hand-in-hand with  the Saudi Kingdom Tower.  And, BMW and Mercedes chasing the uber rich.  And, London with a staggering $237 million condo sale.  (London is the center of global financial corruption) And, a Hampton’s property in the U.S. going for a record $145 million.  (Long-time readers will remember my posts leading into 2008 that the Hamptons mania was a sign of impending doom reminiscent of 1929.)  And, the Chinese take Manhattan.  And, the universally-bullish economist survey cited in the last post just before the U.S. announced negative GDP.  And Republicans have started coming out in support of Obamacare.  (You had to know there was something sinister in their change of heart.  Could it be their corporate masters told them Obamacare was good for the Republican Party’s  wallets?)   There are many examples but just a few data points I have recently seen come across my desk.

I don’t generally pay a lot of attention to other analyses because of my own analysis tools and models.  But Dent and Prechter are two people, that when they talk, I generally wish to listen to what they have to say.  Similar to Marc Faber.  I don’t endorse any other people’s analytical viewpoints or belief systems on here.  And, I definitely have a major viewpoint difference with Dent on what is driving this cycle and where this will all end up.   I think much of his analysis is to be commended for being very creative but some of his demographic theses are fundamentally-flawed.   In some ways, Prechter appreciates beliefs, value systems, astrological factors and sociology as the foundation to much of economics and thus, he is more appreciative of nuances and degrees of truth.  Yet, both see a future within this system.  That is because they are in this system and profiting from it.  So there are tremendous blind spots in their thinking.  Both Dent and Prechter would have no unique method of survival if this system itself ceases to exist.  So, they discount this outcome.  Otherwise, they would not be able to maintain their current business.  This is a clear example of flawed analysis reinforced by existing belief systems.  Regardless, all seekers of truth can find much common understanding in what is happening and what is yet to come.  

Below is a link to an hour long interview with Dent and Prechter.  I only listened to the first 15 minutes but plan to listen to all of it.  You’ll have to give your email address to watch but that’s a small price to pay.   The first 15 minutes was enough to confirm that we all share the same understanding of markets and thus recognize the dangers we are now facing.  Dent’s downside target on stocks is pretty much exactly where mine has been for the last six years.  Well, that is, if the stock market actually survives.  Although Prechter fails to give a specific number I have seen him intimate that we could be headed back to the stone age.   Both men see the gold bull market as over and both understand how states around the world are fanning the flames of monetary policy in order to maintain what are effectively control-based Ponzi schemes that benefit class rank and privilege.  But, we all know control is nothing but an illusion of the ego.    Well, as is hierarchy, class rank and class privilege that maintains its grip on humanity because of it.

I think I have noted on here before that I have prepared myself for the possibility of losing everything.  No one can be certain of exactly what will happen but given ignorant, class-based political and corporate hierarchies have gained control of literally everything in our daily lives, we should anticipate that what they have created is a monster of unprecedented proportions.  And, if it unwinds completely, so will every corrupt and ignorant myth that has propped this system up.   

Video interview with Dent and Prechter here.