EASY READING CULTURE OF LIFE NEWS: OVERSPENDING WILL NOT SAVE ECONOMY « Culture of Life News 2
Artwork by Keith Taylor
A bank is robbed in Queens and it is symbolic for the overall bank robberies going on all over the place. For the bankers ARE the robbers. And as our economic ship sinks, Obama is led to believe, all we need is more liquidity! I.e.: more debts will fix our bankruptcy due to too many debts. We don’t need more red ink, do we? German workers are beginning to actively fight back while US workers hope for some sort of funny money solution so we can continue a first-world, first class sail on the USS Titanic.
Astoria Bank Heist Right Out Of Hollywood Script – wcbstv.com
Landau owns the restaurant that shares a wall with the bank. On her video security system she saw three men trespassing and casing the area. She figured it had something to do with the bank. The three men stole her camera. They even returned to make sure it hadn’t been replaced. But Landau bought a new and improved camera and put it in a different spot that the thieves did not see.
Before the heist Landau went to a bank manager and told her about her suspicions. She said she is not sure what, if anything, was done with that information. On Monday morning, however, it was clear what they had been up to. The crooks made off with items valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even a million.
Burke said many are surprised to learn the contents safe deposit boxes are not insured. The bank recently underwent renovation and investigators are looking into the possibility someone familiar with the blueprints may have been involved.
The bank issued the following statement:
“There was a burglary at the 18th Avenue Astoria Federal Savings branch (4302 18th Ave at East 2nd Street in Brooklyn) sometime early Monday morning, Feb. 23. Approximately 2 percent or 60 of 2,900 safe deposit boxes were compromised due to circumstances beyond our control and despite the fact that all our security systems functioned and operated as designed.
The banks sell security and then, when warned that funny things were going on, allowed this to happen and then, when the insecure boxes were raided, had the temerity to tell customers, tough luck!
So, banks that want to be bailed out when making bad loans want to be not responsible for losses due to them practicing virtually no vigilance? Imagine babysitting children, telling the parents, the children would be secure and then letting them loose in heavy traffic! If banks are poorly secured, they should say, ‘INSECURE boxes for rent, we can’t guarantee that robbers won’t bust in!’ Heck, imagine how many customers will come fro that service?
Obama’s Budget Proposal Would Push Deficit to $1.75T – washingtonpost.com
President Obama today unveiled a proposed $3.55 trillion budget for the coming fiscal year that he said discards “dishonest” accounting practices of the past and makes “a historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform.”…
In addition to the budget for fiscal 2010, the administration also proposes a $3.94 trillion budget for the 2009 fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. The figure includes an additional $250 billion that could be used to bail out struggling banks, as well as $410 billion that the House approved this week to fund major government agencies through the remainder of the fiscal year. Congress has not yet passed a 2009 budget, but has funded the operations of the government with continuing resolutions through March 6 and spending bill are currently being considered.
Obama’s spending plans would push the 2009 budget deficit to a massive $1.75 trillion, officials said this morning. The government’s yearly shortfall would equal 12.3 percent of the nation’s annual economic output. Such a percentage has not been seen since the end of World War II, when the deficit came to 21.5 percent of GDP.
The new budget includes nearly $534 billion for the Defense Department in 2010, up 4 percent from 2009. The administration is requesting $75.5 billion for the rest of 2009 to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and $130 billion for 2010.
Every time I read these things, I want to tear my hair out. But refrain, why punish myself for these things? This is the final madness. The US has lived off of deficits for much of my life. One of the two chief costs that bedevil us are the military costs and the refusal to pay for social services while, at the same time, raiding Social Security to fund part of the deficits.
We just spent over a trillion dollars, killing Muslims in two small countries, one of which is the poorest nation on earth. We got nothing great out of these expensive excursions. Obama has been busy lying to us. He said, our troops will be out of Iraq by 2010. Except for 10,000+ troops who will patrol the place and keep watch over ‘American assets’. HAHAHA. Some retreat!
And he is doubling troops in Afghanistan. As if we can afford to do this. How can this be missed? If our troopers can’t win a war, it is best to retreat. Why bankrupt America, trying to do the impossible? No matter how many tribal members we slaughter, it just seems to make them more determined to destroy us. And we are being destroyed! They are WINNING.
Anyone reading the news this week can see that victory is theirs. All they have to do is annoy us to death. We have to gold-plate all our retaliations so a rock tossed at us has to be answered with a $500 million mission with missiles, remote controlled robots and a huge force behind it all, needing comfortable first-world housing as well as all the goodies of civilization.
Virtually no one wants to settle accounts. Everyone wants desperately to spend our way to prosperity. But no prosperity ever comes from wild spending, wild borrowing. We are leveraging our entire empire on loans to obvious rivals and even obvious potential enemies. This deranged belief that it is OK to go to Beijing for borrowing while at the same time, insulting China at every possible chance…as my previous story showed, the US is still poking the Dragon in the eye over ‘human rights’.
Dem spat delays mortgage relief bill in House – Yahoo! News
A dispute among House Democrats stalled legislation Thursday to let bankruptcy judges reduce the principal and interest rate on mortgages for debt-strapped homeowners.
The measure, backed by President Barack Obama, is the most controversial part of a broader housing package that had been expected to pass the House this week.
It hit a snag after a group of moderates expressed concerns in a closed-door meeting of House Democrats about how the bill would affect homeowners who are still struggling to make their mortgage payments.
This is like a flood: once the dam is breached, all the water in the lake will drain out in a mad rush. Why pay a 6.75% mortgage on a house that is $250,000 ‘underwater’ when you can join the mob and get it redone in your favor? No one will bother paying and all will clamor for resets. Each reset costs a fortune. Many of the mortgages going down to bankruptcy were for loans that are less than 3 years old! This is absurd.
And more people are losing jobs and most Americans are deep in debt and one paycheck from destruction. JP Morgan just announced, they will lay off more thousands of people, just for example. The entire US auto industry is dying rapidly and these are top-wage earners going down, not poor people struggling to work overtime for Burger King’s Gollum Sachs owners.
Bankrupt Delphi Told It Can Cancel Retiree Benefits – – CFO.com
Delphi Corp received bankruptcy court permission to cancel benefits for 15,000 retirees, which would enable the bankrupt auto parts maker to save more than $70 million annually.
As a result, according to a report on the court proceedings in the Detroit News, on April 1 Delphi could cancel salaried retiree health care and life insurance benefits.
I hope this news opens everyone’s eyes: all deals made with manufacturers in America are dead. These were cynically thrown as sop to workers so they would go quietly away. Go move to Phoenix or Miami. Then, when all the benefits are cut forever, they can’t protest. They can’t shut down the factories. They can’t complain to politicians since they tend to retire to the Deep South where they are welcome so long as they are bringing in money. But if they want to cause labor trouble in the Slave States, they better wake up. Ain’t going to happen.
With American automotive giant General Motors struggling to survive amid the worst car industry downturn since 1982, employees of the company’s European subsidiary Opel laid down their tools on Thursday to take part in mass demonstrations in a last ditch effort to save their jobs.
Over 15,000 workers gathered at Opel’s flagship factory in the western German industrial city of Rüsselsheim near Frankfurt with a total of 60,000 people joining protests at 14 Opel factories across Europe. “It is no longer five to midnight, the clock has already struck midnight,” Klaus Franz, head of Opel’s works council, told the gathered workers at Opel headquarters. “There is only one single chance, and that is spinning off Opel from the GM group.”
Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who will be running against Chancellor Angela Merkel in general elections this September, also attended the Thursday protest, saying he was doing everything he could for Opel. “We all agree that it is up to GM management. GM has long earned good money with Opel. It would be obscene were they now to throw away European factories like a squeezed-out lemon.”
Germany is much smaller in size than the US so it is harder to isolate workers in various regions. The socialist experiment in Germany is much older than the US, too. The US managed to kill off almost all unions. But not in Germany! Shutting down the factories in Germany will be very difficult. In the US, it is laughably easy to do.
AIG Rescue May Include Credit-Default Swap Backstop
American International Group Inc. may get a backstop from the U.S. to protect against further losses on credit-default swaps, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The federal guarantees may be included in New York-based AIG’
s restructured bailout, which the company plans to disclose next week with fourth-quarterresults, according to the person, who declined to be identified because the talks are private.
Regulators who saved AIG in September feared that a collapse of the insurer, which sold swaps to banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., would spread losses throughout the global financial system. In November the U.S. committed $30 billion to retire some of the contracts tied to subprime mortgages, while not addressing other swaps tied to corporate loans and European debt.
“Counterparties around the world continue to have significant exposure to AIG, and market conditions continue to be fragile and sensitive to the potential disorderly failure of AIG,”
the Federal Reserve said in a report in November.
GOOD GRIEF! Are we seriously trying to ‘backstop’ the Derivatives Beast? The futility of this is obvious to me. It is a magical creature which has elements of all the most deadly of the Goddesses in the Cave of Wealth and Death. Infinity, Zero and Random Chance, this creature was born to protect from losses and then turned itself into a massive casino for bets and then became bigger than all known wealth on earth.
Now, this news really irritates me. The mainstream media including Bloomberg news, ran stories about how the derivatives swaps were not a complete disaster. No, they were small! And easy to deal with! To prove this, the government and the major bankers all got together and PRETENDED to do the swaps! But they were faking it.
This is why all the Derivatives Beast’s mess is coming to the fore again, just one quarter later. As the exterior losses mount, the derivative losses double, treble and quadruple. This is the nature of derivatives. Tiny little things can swiftly balloon into huge, impossible to contain things.
The worse part is, the bankers want desperately to believe their lies. They know they are lying but hope that if they lie, this will fool the monsters lurking in the dark. This is plain stupid. One thing these creatures understand best, are lies. They grin in the dark when bankers lie. They know that all they have to do is eat some more magic money numbers and the bankers will be forced to tell new lies. There is NO SOLUTION to this at all.
Only punishments to be meted out to those people who set this in motion. Just like it is illegal for clever robbers to bust into bank boxes and steal, so it is with dishonest, greedy bankers. Both need to go to prison and both must be watched most closely. And both cannot be trusted.
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Culture of Life News 
Yep – throwing money at this problem is a mistake.
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methinks it is a problem with fewer and fewer people in charge who have ever had to make a living producing or making or doing something real and then having to close the sale to get it sold. i hate to ask, but do you suppose president obama …. has he ever had a job for example that would be considered “real”? no disrespect meant but….same with lots of good paying jobs that get their money from tax payers or institutions or “donations”….or (vomit) lawyering. i mean what if nobody in charge knows what they are doing. barney frank interupting….god.
Elaine, the picture at the top is one of the best I’ve seen….it sums up whats going on currently.
to openly hidden:
I think Ob was a community organizer in Chicago or something like that
Then he was a college professor in Harvard
jeremy/Nashville: If you like the artwork then you will love this, it perfectly expresses how the majority of people deal with the economic collapse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NHpTG9xxlI&eurl=
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Great campaign concept. In fact with so many illuminated individuals running around the campaign will probably be successful.
US has to stay in Iraq for as long as all the oil runs out.
How long would it take for the Iraqi government to renationalize the oil reserves if US left?
Thats why US has to have troops there otherwise Iraqis could have too much freedom and democracy :(.
Thank you Elaine for a wonderful blog.
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STOPSTOPSTOPSTOP!
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what if sharkbabe or whoever is onto something? the only solution? what if…. what if we can change our “thinking”, our “perception”, our habitual “feelings”? the problem surely isn’t that the world cannot feed everyone, or we cannot make enough “Stuff” that we really and truely need now is it. most likely, soon enough the world WILL be able to get by with even far, far fewer workers to run the computer system robot machines to make stuff for us. and what if we all could get past our perceptions of “spiritual” and “evolution”? somehow “spiritual” seems to be synonymous in everyones mind with some alien all seeing all powerful completely devouring invisible “god” who lives somewhere near enough to know when we have been naughty or nice and hates women? well, what if this all is simply natures way of pushing us along to evolve into the next step? and this step would be a more spiritually evolved creature….a creature that was a lot more conscious of itself instead of being like driven by unseen, unrecognized powers and forces that we have to sacrifice ourselves and everyone else to including our planet even. a creature that did not seem to have such distorted “needs” of strength and power over other people in so many ways. and didn’t need to feel superior to other people in so many basically destructive, distorted ways. what if all along “god” was really within us after all and what this pain is for is to propel us all one way or the other to evolve into something different that doesn’t feel it has to rape other holes to get it up or feel like a “man” or pay money to plastic surgeons to distort its lips or enlarge its breasts or remove its naturally aging developments so it can feel “beautiful” and “young” or this new spiritually evolved creature does not have such distorted needs that it will be having litters of kids because everyone else is so fucked up we do not feel any need to protect old people and others who cannot provide for themselves to fill their terrifically hungry “needs” or this creature could recognize this life is only one life of many so why be so obsessed with feeding this life with so much tittytainment and whatever it is that drives the likes of eurotrash and hollywood “celebrities”? sharkbabe could be onto something somehow that is the only way out for all of us and that is to grow up finally. its not “religious” the way you all think of it at all necessairly. something in our evolution past changing into a higher order of another thing is not necessairly “religious” but i bet it felt that way to the creatures being changed. sharkbabe is onto something if only we can get past the gnomes needs and the illuminattis needs and the tyrants needs and the criminal needs and recognize that instead of the egoistic hungry monkey mind driven ugly, ugly inside things we are now, if we meditate on it and let it happen, something hugely better could be trying to manifest itself finally. i am the most “spiritual” person i know of and i am not a bit “religious” in the way bigots think of religious as being. its all in the definations folks. maybe. there is something here for better people than i to develop i bet. iknow i have had other lives but this is not necessairly “religious” like you mean….and i know i can not only survive but thrive in hugely better ways than at the expense of my fellow creatures.
and by “i” i don’t mean openly hidden has lived before but what i really am is the purpose of all this evolution and openly hidden is just what i am experiencing right now and openly hidden when dead will be gone forever….but not “me”. and this is not “religious” requiring sacrificing priests to order and maintain for me either. maybe your life is my life too so why try and make my life into something that controls and diminishes you and orders your life around and makes you my tool? evolution. it could be a beautiful thing methinks. i bet that was what krishna was getting at….maybe not.
Fannie Mae report new multibillion loss(Fannie Mae mit erneutem Milliardenverlust) http://tinyurl.com/btbd3p
Q4 USD 25,2b, all y2008 58,7b.
i am satisfied sort of with this. i bet this is the true message….sort of. could be better said….maybe i am finished and will just watch the rest of you struggle to evolve– like me — while i study the inside of my skull and am better for it. good bye cruel world. and buffalo ken, i have my eye on you too.
Off topic for this post but of extreme importance. This totally blew me away when I read it. U.S. Energy Department Cannot Account for Nuclear Materials at 15 Locations.
Read @ http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20090224_7895.php
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…a report released yesterday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded “the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material.” Read the report here, and weep: http://www.ig.energy.gov/documents/IG-0813.pdf
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“Auditors found that Energy could not accurately account for the quantities and locations of nuclear material at 15 out of 40, or 37 percent, of facilities reviewed. The materials written off included 20,580 grams of enriched uranium, 45 grams of plutonium, 5,001 kilograms of normal uranium and 189,139 kilograms of depleted uranium.”
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Are these guys serious? 20.58 kilos of enriched uranium!!!! That is enough to make a fully functioning nuclear warhead with a serious yield. And what about the depleted uranium, how much do you need for a dirty bomb? 1,500 kilos. So that’s over 120 dirty bombs. The US spent how much money to go over to Iraq to look for “nooklar” bombs! This is totally insane not to mention incredibly inept and stupid. Any country that cannot responsibly control its nuclear facilities should not be a nuclear power. Period! Here they are pointing fingers at Korea and Iran, no fingers for Israel, and they can’t even do proper inventory. How can any other nation, or the U.N. hold the U.S. with any esteem or credibility? After crapping this economic brouhaha on the whole world, now we have to live with this nuclear booga booga. What a freakin joke. Unf…ing believable. There are no expletives that could come close to doing justice describing the incompetence of these morons. Sorry but that is just the plain truth.
situation is at least 10 times worse at Russian side, who knows how much weapon warheads leaked out, there is no telling
It is a question of will not capability
Actually a lot of the Russian silos were dummies. But yes, we could expect that from the evil empire couldn’t we, but the U.S. of A? The stuff went missing since 2004, 5 years ago! And this was when the economic, political and military power was in full swing. Big difference comparing it to a bankrupt and dissected Russia. They had an excuse, the U.S. is chock full out of excuses.
Story today on the BBC world website about the newspaper industry in the US and how it might shut down. Great opportunity to open a more local effort, don’t you think? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7913400.stm
Other news in there says our dear Treasury has increased its stake in Citigroup. Stake through the heart would be a better solution.
What we really need to get rid of is the bimbos and himbos on the TV news. For a while I wondered if they were computer-generated but alas it seems they are ‘real people.’
Excuses or not, I expect a lot of fissile materials “unaccounted” for in the world
They are not like lost keys or golf balls, most likely they are in the hands of people with intention of possessing them. At least
U.S. economy shrank at 6.2 percent rate in fourth quarter – Reuters
Giraffe: Paulson purchased 7.8% stake in Citi initially for $25 billion. He then leveraged the US by guaranteeing 90% of future losses on $301 billion in assets. Plus the taxpayers injected another $20 billion dollars. At the time, Citigroup had a market cap of about -$50 billion dollars. Today, its worth -$13 billion.
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What does that mean? For a 100% of Citi market value, plus insurance guarantees worth of as much as 500% of its value (-$275 billion), the taxpayer got stiffed for less than 1/10 of a company that was worth 1/5 of their original investment. Pretty good fuzzy math that.
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Simon: The Ichi-ban suspects are the Israeli’s who to this day deny nuclear capability. They are suspected of having over 100 warheads.
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Matheus: I am expecting that number to drop to -20%, am surprised they are even reflecting 6.2% publicly with all the bullshit they’ve been machinating. The way things are going that number is starting to look conservative. Imagine, now even the academe are starting to spew enlightened truth. Too little, too late the heroes.
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Harvard author and financial crisis guru Niall Ferguson has landed with a thud in Ottawa, spreading messages that could make even the most confident policy makers squirm… ““There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable. The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics. That seems a less certain outcome. We’ve already talked about why China and the United States are in an embrace they don’t dare end.” http://tinyurl.com/bnvyqx
AIG is as much a front organization for the CIA as the National Endowment for Democracy. Since the CIA runs the gov, they can’t let it fail. Through AIG, the CIA has access to personal information of millions of people in a whole host of countries–including China and Japan.
On another note, I had a good chuckle when I saw this yesterday:
“Russia’s passport offensive: Former Soviet citizens receive documents”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5g8kghdx-GPjDgVwOLJ64yEs8YCRg
thats the thing i guess… if you get robbed you have to spend more moeny so that if you get robbed you have nothing left… and you beat those bastards thief
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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-53565441845289277&q=nuclear+fision&total=185&start=10&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
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tie me to government value staple me tape me glue me
The missing uranium will be used for 9/11 II. Hungry and angry citizens will have enough of the rape and pillaging of their country by a group of international Zionists bankers. They will need pacification via nukes and and a bigger and bolder, Patriot Act III.
It worked before.
About the nuclear materials that can not be accounted for. Once again, “credit” must go to the Bush administration. It is the Bush administration that has been blocking information on nuclear facilities from the public. I guess the public doesn’t need to know if they are living next to a nuclear facility that leaks. The purpose was to block public interest groups from tracking these nuclear facilities safety records. Shouldn’t be a surprise. This is the same President who protects every other corporate polluter. Check out the big benzene “pond” just outside of Houston courtesy of Exxon-Mobil.
Numbers for those who love them. Economy at a Glance
http://stats.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm
Hi all,
This is a must see.
Click to access 20090224_WhalenRemarks.pdf
What do you thinkabout this ponzi CDS scheme ?
elaine, I posted this earlier today on the Oil Drum, but I suspect that your readers might benefit from it to:
While I am not a professional economist, I have learned some things over the years. For example, I know that if the FedGov ramps up the annual budget deficit hugely, the only way it is going to be able to finance that is by issuing massive amounts of new Treasury obligations.
I also know that if you massively increase the supply of something, the price will go down – unless the demand also increases massively. Now it is just possible that households and businesses might start being a little more frugal, save a little more, and thus increase demand for Treasuries a little. However, we are in the midst of a recession (depression, really); millions of people are losing their jobs, other millions are seeing their incomes stagnate or decline, businesses across the board are on the verge of bankruptcy. It is unlikely that domestic demand for Treasuries is going to increase to anything even remotely close to the increased demand that is being issued. By the way, if domestic demand for Treasuries DID increase that much, wouldn’t that mean that consumers were saving a lot more and spending a lot less? Given the fact that 70% of the US economy is consumer driven, how would this “stimulate a recovery”? Wouldn’t that defeat the whole point of this exercise?
Similarly, because the entire world is in recession, it is unlikely that foreign demand is going to increase for our Treasuries, either. Thus, it is likely that supply will increase substantially relative to demand. This suggests to me that the prices of Treasuries will be falling – substantially.
Now, I also know that when the price of a bond goes down, the yield must go up. Thus, it appears that we can confidently predict that the yields – and thus the effective interest rates – of Treasuries will be going up substantially over the next couple of years.
This can’t be limited just to Treasuries, either. When their yields rise, yields for other bonds and interest rates in general will also have to be forced up. Why would anyone buy a corporate bond or CD for 2 or 3 percent when they could earn twelve percent on a Treasury bond?
So, over the next couple of years, it looks set that we will see a massive increase in interest rates across the board – probably into double digit territory.
Now, let me ask: Given double-digit interest rates, how likely is it that the US economy is going to “recover”? Isn’t this a recipie for stagnation or decline?
Of course, the Federal Reserve could try to avoid this by buying the Treasury obligations itself. The technical term for this is called “monetizing the debt”. The immediate consequence of this is to increase the money supply. This, in turn is inflationary. Even if such inflation doesn’t show up immediately in prices and wages, it will indeed make itself felt very quickly in US dollar exchange rates. The immediate effect of debt monetization will be a massive devaluation of the US dollar.
Will the Chinese and other holders of large amounts of US Treasury obligations just sit tight and see the value of their holdings decline, or will they start to divest themselves of their holdings? I very much doubt that they will all just dump everything all of the sudden (AKA “The Nightmare Scenario”); however, it is quite likely that they will taper off their purchases of new issues, and might very well start paring down their holdings, slowly and quietly. Thus, if the Fed absorbs the increased supply of new Treasuries, there is no guarantee that foreign holders of old Treasuries will not respond by selling some of their holdings, thus increasing the supply of Treasuries on the market and confounding the Fed’s efforts. Furthermore, not only would we fail to avoid a run-up of interest rates due to simple supply and demand, but we would also see an even further increase in interest rates as an inflation premium would be added by the market.
In conclusion, it appears to me to be about as certain as this type of thing can be, that THIS CANNOT WORK. Which means that the probability of this being a protracted “L”-shaped recession with no recovery on the horizon is not 30%, as Roubini has estimated, but rather close to 100%.
I’ve got far more respect for the guys that did the heist in Queens than
the yacht club toilet trout that kited eachother fraudulent paper, taking
huge cuts and bonuses everytime the paper was shifted from one computer
to another. Really now. How much talent in involved in that ? I’d say the
guys that made the phony chimney and cut their way down into the vault
had some REAL talent. I feel sorry for the people that lost their valuables
but in a way, I hope they dont get caught. Hell, during the Great Depression
half the country was cheering on Dillinger, Floyd, and the Barrow gang.
WNC, you are correct. We are now in a debt trap and we can’t escape it via a debt ladder because we are on a downslope, not an upslope. That is, borrowing to grow because you expect a good future is totally different from borrowing to keep the wolf from the front door.
Openly (open) H, this is to you- and your list of “what if’s”…
We have previously tangled about the definitions, and you wrote…
well, what if this all is simply natures way of pushing us along to evolve into the next step? and this step would be a more spiritually evolved creature….a creature that was a lot more conscious of itself instead of being like driven by unseen, unrecognized powers and forces that we have to sacrifice ourselves and everyone else to including our planet even. a creature that did not seem to have such distorted “needs” of strength and power over other people in so many ways. and didn’t need to feel superior to other people in so many basically destructive, distorted ways. what if all along “god” was really within us after all and what this pain is for is to propel us all one way or the other to evolve into something different that doesn’t feel it has to rape other holes to get it up or feel like a “man” or pay money to plastic surgeons to distort its lips or enlarge its breasts or remove its naturally aging developments so it can feel “beautiful” and “young” , etc, etc, etc
OH, if the outcome were all that you describe, then you have my complete attention and agreement. Elaine points out often a vaccuum will be filled. Working on our own gnome-esque aspects and recognizing the ways that the “beast-be-us” should be a lifelong task. We need both conscience and consciousness to achieve the world you describe.
But people meditate in all kinds of ways- weavers weave, gardeners dig and feed the soil, artists allow an image to develop and flow with it. They may not use a mantra, but they arrive at the goal of flow, meeting god within and without, stilling the monkey mind.
So, its true about the defintions needing parsing, but I also think the times deserve a real outcry for the obvious criminality. Prisons are packed with our society’s throw-away people who have done far less harm in the grand scheme- as Elaine has said, we have an illusion of freedom- but we are all slaves now to some very phony, evil people. History is filled with creative and uppity slaves who figured out a way to challenge, ruin or overthrow the yoke of their nasty masters, even if it meant their own personal death or punishment. “Happy slave” is too much of an oxymoron for me.
angela and cc and elaine: you wrote: “people meditate in all kinds of ways”….definitions again. you think meditation is about “nothing” on your mind or being spaced out and so unaware i couldn’t drive machinery for example. not true. me mind completely independent of me can tend to wander from what i am actually doing and experiencing at the moment if i let it this happens all too easily. when i “meditate” while i am working outside alone on the farm doing humble manual labor for example, i find i can do the work perfectly fine and practice keeping my mind from going away somewhere else than where i am at and what is happening right then. that is staying in the moment which is harder to do always than you may be aware. my awareness nailed in thie moment is like super-awareness of where i am at and what i am doing and what is happening with me then….completely different from my ordinary “reality”. or if i am doind something that really really requires constant concentration, i keep my mind completely focused on this and that is meditation to me . now when i look inside my skull as i describe it which is not true what is happening, what i am doing has zero nothing to do with being unaware of what is going on if something happens i instantly am aware of it. but when i “practice death” i do become super aware of my inner awareness i suppose because i have completely shut down the gibbering monkey mind that is constantly taking off on its own for you all even if you are unaware of it or consider that “thinking”. i hate to keep writing like this everytime i think i have said all i have to say more comes up i want to clairify like what i call meditation for example probably is the same as what you do weaving or painting sometimes. my mind is my enemy actually if it is unfocused, not where i am at doing what i am doing and not paying attention. this is why our leaders wonder how and why they fucked up so maybe their minds was playing mind games when they ought to have been paying attention. but sometimes if i am lucky and really quiet inside, then i can sometimes become aware of something other than myself inside up there too but that is completely not an indulgence is is our batteries or whatever as i think of it what makes the bunny go. heh. you can have sex and let your mind wander off into imagination or whatever….or you can focus and be completely aware what is happening and this is something completely diffeent and life is the same way….when i used to have sex that is what i think i remember anyway. of course that is not true. i have sex in my mind all the time if i let it. heeeh. i have ruined the moment for me now haven’t i.
”We got nothing great out of these expensive excursions.”
Possibly true in this case, but this is part of a well established program to control and loot other countries. Its also like a mafia, they think they have to set an example to show they can’t be messed with.
so, all that effort, meanwhile someone is looting the headquarters.
Correct, Ziff.
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BY THE WAY: My main computer is kaput. Apple is sending me a new one. This will take about 4 days to do. During this time, I am using what has to be an ancient computer which means it is HELL to use, I type very fast and it puts up letters much slower than my typing speed and this is DRIVING ME NUTS!!! My hands can’t take the stress!
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So I won’t be posting as much as usual. ARRRGH!!! When I get my better computer that has much greater memory and speed, I will be happy again.
So,,,some of the possiblities
– someone , chinese or wall st ,hates US imperialism and is trying to wreck it, but china can’t do this alone
– someone is greedy and stupid and has no idea what they are doing
– no one is doing anything and the system is collapsing under its own weight
– the universe is chaotic and its all of the above
i am back and i thought about how to better explain “mind” and “meditation” to wimps. IF you go through life humming a tune to yourself or to yourself, or carrying on imaginary conversations with people, or imagining what you would like to do in this situation or replaying what you wished you could have done, or just living a walter mitty like fantasy life, etc….THEN you are only half there and half a real developed person in the first place. MEDITATION is using your real TOOL, what you probably think is “YOU”…i.e. your little sick puny half developed out of control “MIND”. if you are strong enough to be “real” then you have this available for you any time you want when “mind” is needed like for instance actually singing if you want to sing, or actually having a conversation with someone that is real if you want to speak, or real self-rehearsing for something real coming up, or thinking and reasoning through a problem you are trying to solve or doing something you are really really doing, then you are using your real tool, your mind. otherwise, you are a weak minded wimp only half there most of the time going through your life like a spook that isn’t real. so use your personal mind that is there available when you want to think about something real, then when you are done using your mind, shut up inside and set your disciplined mind on idle and then WHAT YOU REALLY ARE will be able to actually sense and understand and handle what is happening in that moment without being distracted by an idiot. what you think you are is instead a distortion, probably an evolving, developing tool you will be able to use if you grow up someday. otherwise, join half the world taking “prescriptions” to make your sick, weak mind “happy” or self-medicate like most of the other half. me, i prefer reality…i am reality. it is nothing like elaine said. hah! now i am done. now i am surely done with ignorant comments about shamans and lizards and fighting imaginary battles. ha! now do you see? sick puppies all around….
Openly hidden, people who really meditate don’t get angry and call people ‘sick’ etc. We are all insane. Even people who meditate are insane. WE ARE THE INSANE APE. If we were sane, we would be living in the jungle, picking lice out of each other, eating termites and bananas and having wild sex all the time when nothing else is going on. This is the Garden of Eden. Instead, we have these TORMENTING brains that keep us from living like lizards, sunning themselves on a rock. See? Now, relax and enjoy the madness. Eat a donut.
your brain “torments” you elaine? ha! case closed!
having sex with corpses, reusing toilet paper, ruining entire nations and civilizations, serial obsessive anything, axx fxxx, useless wars, creating this world like it is out of ignorance and lies and pure ego….anything that feeds the sick hungers of insane out of control distorted little “minds”… meditating is NOT about mantras or visualizations or blank spaced out “nothing” despite what anyone else has told you. these are supposedly helpful mechanical TECHNIQUES. what i said is real “meditation”. last i say about this except of course anyone sane will get mad as hell at being on this planet of the apes….
Elaine wrote:
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“[After retired workers are cheated out of their retirement funds],they can’t complain to politicians since they tend to retire to the Deep South where they are welcome so long as they are bringing in money. But if they want to cause labor trouble in the Slave States,they better wake up. Ain’t going to happen.”
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Elaine, here in the slave states government and society doesn’t want worn out workers unless they do bring us lots of nice retirement money. This means that our already overstretched welfare services would have more old people to care for. And our God fearin fundamentalst churches would have to buy up more dented cans of soup at food salvage stores to donate to those poor folks. No thanks! We don’t want them! And we can’t afford them.
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We want us some rich Yankees to come here, preferably retired politicians, corporate managers and CEOs and such folks …with some real cash so we can bleed it out of them.
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Elaine, I live in North Carolina, and our beach and mountain retirement areas will pick your pockets if you move into those gated, resorts…golf complex, condo areas. Our Blue Ridge mountains are worse that the beaches…rich folks pay enormous prices for mountaintop summer houses and then winter in Miami…and this drives property prices out of sight for locals.
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South Carolina is far worse than NC when it comes to picking Yankee pockets. My daughter’s first job after college was in Myrtle Beach, SC., and the pay seemed really good at first, before she discovered what Myrtle Beach is really about. She moved into a gated golf condo complex with golf balls denting her car hood every day or so and went to work..Soon, she discovered that car insurance was three times higher than back home. Auto license tags were hundreds of dollars, the golf complex had extra fees for everything that were added to rent…and food cost twice as much as back home…and shopping for even ordinary items would break you. And you couldn’t even afford to visit tourist type entertainment centers. After two years, she returned home completely broke, took a job that paid less and brought home a lot more money than she did in SC… While in Myrtle Beach,SC, she overheard a local talking about the costs of things. The guy snorted and explained that Myrtle Beach is South Carolina’s revenge against Yankees…they might have won the war, but when they retire here, we own them and pick em clean and bury them. Later, we also discovered that vacationing at Myrtle Beach, SC is more expensive than the French Rivera.
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If someone, even a Yankee, wants to economically retire to the South, stay away from the golf complexes, tourist centers and scenic mountains unless you can afford to spend a fortune.
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Come to a midsized town and discretely inquire about available real estate. Often you can hire local contractors to build you a new home cheaper than if you buy an existing one, and sometimes you can find modestly priced local land. Research a lot and visit, and talk to people. There are some wonderful places to live here, and some wonderful people also.
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A word of warning, you might want to live in Mayberry, but in reality, very small towns tend to be very parochial, and often residents are related through a couple of hundred years of inbreeding, and sometimes they don’t easily accept outsiders. Talk to people and get a feel for the place before you settle, and you won’t be disappointed later.
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About Anti-Unionism
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After the Civil War, industrialists moved into the defeated South and bought the legislators, and brought money and industry to an otherwise poverty ridden region. They came for the cheap labor and natural resources. Slavery might have been abolished on paper, but it was kept alive and well even into this new millennium.
And many poor Southerners bought the anti-union message that was even taught in schools and certainly in factories.
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Just mention the word Union in many Southern factories, and you will find yourself looking for a job. Even our professional teacher organization here in NC is not really a Union with the power to negotiate our teacher contracts…and we never once went on strike in all the years I belonged.
However, it did provide lawyers for defense in case of a lawsuit and in case superiors put undue pressure on an employee. So, it helped a little, but we needed more power to increase our earnings, and our sweetheart union didn’t do much for us in that respect. I think outsourcing and job losses have changed some Southern minds on unions…at least I hope so. We need them.
And
leavingtheoffice: Hank Greenberg used to be the “shadow” CIA Section Chief in the Philippines during the time of Marcos. It was pretty common knowledge, he would not hide it, and even capitalized on it in social circles. Lots of people owed him “favors”.
cc…
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What lies behind us and what lies before us are
small matters compared to what lies within us.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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happy feet cc
OH: Agreed.
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None is poor, O Bhika
Everyone hath rubies in his bundle
But how to untie the knot
He doth not know and thus remains a pauper.
~ (Bhika)