Couldn't happen here, could it

…really, more suddenly than most people thought that it could. Even some of the doom-sayers were caught by surprise. Who would have thought that America could go from super-power to third world status, in just two short months.

Some blamed the Chinese. Others blamed OPEC. Still others knew that it had been building for a long time and that all it would take is one or two major currency crisis’ to make things go from bad to terrible.

I'll say it again. Buy that donkey
now while they're cheap.

You don't think this could happen?

Might be a good idea to look and
listen.

More monkeys fucking footballs

SVR's Rob Williams argued that activists need to find ways to make the idea of secession "sophisticated and sexy."

Next they'll hire a big ad agency to make it "sexy".

Let's make it easy.

I secede. I don't want these monkeys' help
and I surely don't want them speaking or
acting for me.

Nothing there. Time to move on.

The institution's motto, a contradiction in
terms, considering that they just want
a different kind of union... "divided we
stand, united we fall."

I'll take it to its logical conclusion and
be divisive: "I'll rule myself."

That was an easy sale, wasn't it.

Full report.

Ripped from chumpfish

So you think you're a property owner

"The right of traffic or the transmission of property, as an absolute inalienable right, is one which has never existed since governments were instituted, and never can exist under government." Wynehamer v. The People. 13 N.Y. Rep.378, 481

Ode to the statist

"I have noted that persons with bad judgment are most insistent that we do what they think best." --Lionel Abel (1911-2001), Important Nonsense, 1986.

M-3 cover-up completely restored

M3 is back

We did some sleuthing and data extraction and put M3 back together from various weekly Federal Reserve reports that are still available.

1. The formula we're using has five 9s correlation to the original data back to 1980.
   
2. There is only one missing element that is apparently no longer available (Eurodollars) and an adjustment has been applied to generate it. Its only about 3% of total M3 so should not have a material effect on the total.
   

Here is our article on M3b, which details our work and notes the sources for the data. Note that as of Nov. 10, 2006 the Eurodollar estimation formula has changed - see the article for details.
John Williams reconstruction of M3 is here.

The full report.

Genetically modified marijuana

The [marijuana] plants resist chemicals that only burn the top leaves without hurting the root, making aerial fumigation impossible, Garcia said.



On Tuesday, dozens of soldiers wielding assault rifles swarmed 38 marijuana plantations, ripping plants out of the ground. As they flew back to their base, they spotted 32 new fields.



"For each 100 that you spot from the air, there are 300 to 500 more than you discover once you get on the ground," Garcia said.

Imagine trying to eradicate a weed that a

whole lotta folks like, whose prohibition

ensures a handsome profit margin, brought

to you by the same folks trying to stamp

it out. Not only that, it grows just about

anywhere and now it grows with a

vengeance.



Strange, the earthmonkeys.



Full article.

A growing political economy

Russia's Gazprom raises gas prices to Georgia

by 100%. Like I said, ominous has been added

to the oil price and now the gas price.

In the first sign of a regional backlash, he attacked Russia's use of energy as a tool of foreign policy, although he was careful not to name or criticise President Vladimir Putin personally. The price of oil and gas should "be a commercial matter", immune from attempts to "politicise it", Mr Aliev said.

The political economy in oil, already the

predominant one, comprising 70% of the

producers.



Full article.

On being suckered

For that matter, Lance Corporal, ask how many members of Congress have even served, much less been in combat. Ask how many have children in the armed services. Look around you. Do you see many (any) guys from Harvard? Yale? MIT? Cornell? Exactly. The smart, the well-off, the powerful are not about to risk their irreplaceable sit-parts in combat. Nor are they going to mix with mere high-school graduates, with kids from small towns in Tennessee, with blue-collar riffraff who bowl and drink Bud at places with names like Lenny’s Rib Room. One simply doesn’t. One has standards.



You are being suckered, gang, just as we were.

That last line says it all. We're all being

suckered, every day in every way. Many are

proud of that and continue to love it....

Once you are in the war, you can’t get out. We couldn’t either. While your commander in chief eats steak in the White House and talks tough, just like a real president, you kill people you have no reason to kill, about whom you know next to nothing—which one day may weigh on your conscience. It does with a lot of guys, but that comes later.

Full rant.



--This has been another Zombie Alert brought to you by jomama.

The Other Long War

One of the things Milton was right about...

Friedman's view of the harms from drugs was not only the wasted money -- now about $1 billion per week -- but more so the destruction of inner cities, racially unfair incarceration, corruption of the police, wars in Colombia, Mexico and other countries that cost thousands of lives and the corruption of foreign economies as well as our own. The drug war has spurred the largest prison system in history with more than 2 million behind bars -- one in four of the world's prisoners residing in the land of the free. As Friedman pointed out: "Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it."

Drug War's over.

Drugs won.

It was over 20 years ago but, of course,
you didn't see it on the 11 o'clock news.

Read.

More routing around censorship

So Google’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil”. Well here’s a tip that allows you to use the Google language translation service to be a little evil, well maybe not exactly evil but at least this will help you view web sites where corporations and countries place embargoes on certain web domains.

See how it's done.

Bah, humbug

Defending Scrooge...

It is instructive that Dickens tells us virtually nothing about the nature of Ebeneezer’s business. We know that he is something of a banker or financier, but we are told nothing about the nature of his investments. Even if he has not been a creative entrepreneur himself, he has, presumably, been responsible for financing many successful enterprises, which have not only benefited the rest of the community in terms of goods and services they provide, but afford employment to countless individuals, including Bob Cratchit. For all that we know – and it would seem to be beneath Dickens’ sensibilities to ask such a question or care about the answer – Scrooge may have provided capital for researchers seeking a cure for the very ailment from which Tiny Tim suffers. We know that, at the very least, by managing to stay in the lending business these many years, and accumulating handsome earnings in the process, Scrooge’s decision-making has been beneficial to others. All of this goes unmentioned by Comrade Dickens, who prefers to focus upon the fact that Scrooge has actually profited from these many benefits that his sound business decision-making has indirectly bestowed upon his neighbors.



If we are to understand the essence of the case against my client, we must inquire into the nature of the collectivist thinking that produced it. In matters of economics, such people believe that wealth is simply a given, something that has come into existence in very mysterious ways, and in a fixed amount that has somehow managed to get into the hands of a few people through presumed and unspecified acts of dishonesty, exploitation, and unscrupulousness. Dickens expresses the dreary sentiment of "original sin" – an idea central to all collectivist thinking – which presumes individual self-interest to be a source of social misery rather than the fount of human well-being. That the pursuit of private selfishness can generate good for others – even when doing so was not the purpose of the actor – was far too complicated a concept for Dickens’ simplistic, fragmented mind. But to all collectivists, including Dickens, the idea that more wealth could be created never manages to invade their imaginations.

Full defense.

The FDA now regulates cherries

On October 17, 2005, the FDA sent warning letters to 29 companies that market cherries. In these letters, the FDA threatened these companies with legal action and told them they had to remove the scientific information on their websites that described the health benefits of the natural medicines found in cherries, such as the anthocyanins that reduce inflammation for arthritis sufferers. According to the warped FDA logic that now seems to be standard, when cherry growers post scientific information about the health benefits of their cherries, they magically transform their cherries into drugs and therefore, as drugs, they must have FDA approval in order to sell them in the United States.

There's that gun in the room again.



Now the lowly cherry has been declared a drug.

If you don't think so, why would the FDA be sticking

its nose in them?



Bwahahahahaha.



Enjoy the show.



Read.

Why do you sacrifice yourself?

Coerced self-sacrifice causes any society to self-destruct.

Simply because the best won't support it. They leave
or withdraw their support in other ways.

The liars, cheaters, deniers, muddled thinkers and
thieves remain. The psychos then rule with impunity.

Seen any that fit this description?

Are you ready for the coming destruction?

The end of Power

"Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not

enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure

that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power

is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in

tearing human minds to pieces and putting them

together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we

are creating? It is the exact opposite of the

stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers

imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment,

a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a

world which will grow not less but more merciless

as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be

progress towards more pain. The old civilizations

claimed that they were founded on love or justice.

Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there

will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and

self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy

everything. Already we are breaking down the habits

of thought which have survived from before the

Revolution. We have cut the links between child and

parent, and between man and man, and between man

and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or

a friend any longer. But in the future there will

be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken

from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from

a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated.

Procreation will be an annual formality like the

renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the

orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.

There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards

the Party. There will be no love, except the love

of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except

the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There

will be no art, no literature, no science. When we

are omnipotent we shall have no more need of

science. There will be no distinction between

beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no

enjoyment of the process of life. All competing

pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not

forget this, Winston -- always there will be the

intoxication of power, constantly increasing and

constantly growing subtler. Always, at every

moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the

sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot

stamping on a human face -- for ever."

George Orwell, 1984



...a stunningly stupid idea.



Wrong species.

Time's "Man of the Year"

See what Lemuel says about that.



Bingo. I don't know why anyone would want to read

Time.

The Social Contract

The state and its cheerleaders have not stopped calling for more forced collectivization. Socialism did not crumble with the Berlin Wall. If anything, the dust and rubble from that era has seeped deeper into the cracks of modern civilization.

Civilization? Could anyone point me to it?



I must be blind. I can't see it.



"What about The Social Contract?", says some twit

in the back of the room.



I've never seen it, so I couldn't have signed it.

Without a signature there is no contract, no

agreement.



Now, fuck off.



Drizzten's rant.

Chaos, the stuff of Falling Empires

WASHINGTON — U.S. Special Forces teams sent overseas on secret spying missions have clashed with the CIA and carried out operations in countries that are staunch U.S. allies, prompting a new effort by the agency and the Pentagon to tighten the rules for military units engaged in espionage, according to senior U.S. intelligence and military officials.

Full article.



Thanks to Rick White.

The dollar

In the interest of watching what I think is
The Big One, I'm pinning this post at the
top for a while. The chart here is updated
daily.

New posts will appear below this one.

Update:

The server containing the graph of the dollar
that was here originally has been down for some
time.

Here's one that should continue working:



Update:

This post will now go the normal route and
eventually disappear off the bottom of the page.

If you want to follow the dollar, see the charts
here and here.

Truck-tonnage numbers

There's no consolation in the less scrutinized indicators, either, like the tonnage of freight carried by trucks. On Nov. 27, the American Trucking Assn. said its seasonally adjusted truck-tonnage index dropped 1.8% in October and was down 4% from a year earlier. ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello said "the latest number fits with anecdotal reports that the traditional fall freight season was essentially nonexistent this year." That's bad news because trucking is a barometer of the U.S. economy. David Rosenberg, chief North American economist of Merrill Lynch (MER), wrote that the truck-tonnage report "looked borderline recessionary, for lack of a more polite term." He said "this was the worst October for trucking activity since 1982, when the economy was in recession."

Read.

The clowns have changed their make-up again

Cabinet ministers have been told by the Foreign Office to drop the phrase 'war on terror' and other terms seen as liable to anger British Muslims and increase tensions more broadly in the Islamic world.

...but a welcome change.

Expect the same cheap make-up in a different color.

Read.

$20bn gas project seized by Russia

Shell is being forced by the Russian government to hand over its controlling stake in the world's biggest liquefied gas project, provoking fresh fears about the Kremlin's willingness to use the country's growing strength in natural resources as a political weapon.
...
The Russian authorities are also threatening BP over alleged environmental violations on a Siberian field in what is seen as a wider attempt to seize back assets handed over to foreign companies when energy prices were low.

The state, doing what it does best: stealing.
Shell and BP got what they deserved, playing
with bear traps.

It used to be that if you had the money, you
got the goods. That was all that was asked.

Now there's a Russian bear behind the curtain.

Ominous has been added to the oil price.

Full report.

There went that damn cat again...

"Typically, the Treasury reports the budget deficit on current accounts basis. That's why Treasury announced recently that the 2006 federal budget deficit was going to be $248.2 billion. But it is a gimmick," Williams claimed.

"When we see the Treasury report on Friday we are probably going to find out that the real 2006 federal budget deficit is more like $3.5 trillion."

Williams predicts, however, the mainstream media won't report it.

"It's not the type of news Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal like to broadcast to investors and the American public," he said. "Besides, the financial press won't take the time and effort to analyze the figures and comb through the footnotes. The report is going to be released on Friday and most financial reporters aren't accountants."

Why the huge discrepancy between the two figures?"
...
The United States is bankrupt," he insisted. "With less than one-tenth of the actual deficit being reported each year, a cumulative negative net worth exceeding $50 trillion has built up in stealth to where the total obligations of the U.S. government are now more than four times our annual gross domestic product.

...old news for regular readers here.

If a corporation practiced this kind of accounting
the Board of Directors would be in the slammer.

Who regulates the regulators?

Watch the Biggest Shell Game on the planet unwind
along with The Others.

Follow it here, on this blog

But the Circus must go on even though the lions
are looking puny.

Read.

The bumbling is only exceeded by the hubris

Watch the film.

The Circus must go on though you will want to stay
away from this wild animal act.

The Fall

Control is lost. But your gummint won't realize that...ever.
Control is their first, last and middle name. They live it,
breathe it and jump its bones.

Many outside of the Halls of Control do recognize the Ones
on the Inside lost. As more ousiders put the puzzle pieces
together, they'll realize chaos is here, the very thing the
controllers fear.

Nothing to do but wait for The Fall, trying not to be
underneath.

Nice if you can get it

The "happy handover" orthodoxy of the International Monetary Fund is that America will escape with a shallow slowdown. Asia and Europe will pick up the growth baton. The world will march on without missing a step.

Nice if you can get it. The more ominous possibility is that America fails to recover quickly, and takes the world with it. Japan already shows signs of stalling. Retail sales have fallen for two months. Far from bursting back to life as expected, it is still teetering on the edge of deflation.

France ground to a halt in the last quarter as the surging euro ate into the country's industrial core. Airbus was humming when the euro was worth 90 US cents. Now it must compete at $1.33, with wage costs in euros set against delivery contracts in dollars. Currency hedges protect for a while, then reality hits.

Read.

Law as 'Reason' or as 'Violence'?

The other day, I received an alumni fund-raising letter from my old law school. It opened with a post-September 11th quote from a present faculty member who praised our current civilization, declaring that one of its most impressive accomplishments has been the development of a "legal order committed to resolving disputes between humans by reason and not by violence."

There is nothing particularly remarkable in this man’s observations: one would find virtually unanimous agreement with such sentiments at any gathering of lawyers, judges, politicians, or other professional groups. What is noteworthy in his words is how far removed they are from the reality they purport to describe. Like so many of the litanies and bromides by which most people sustain their faith in systems such as the state, these words have a reassuring quality to them, at least as long as one does not examine them closely.

He then proceeds to examine them closely.

Guess what?

Read.

Fallen Empire

Yesterday, Elisabeth, Anthony and I walked the streets of Rome, the little village of seven hills founded in 753 B.C. that rose to rule the world from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic coast.

At its height, Rome dominated 120 million citizens and subjects, nearly half the world’s entire population.

Its land area stretched across 2.5 million square miles, more than the total of all West and East European countries today (with the exception of Russia’s).

What caused its demise?

Simple really. As I've said before and will
say again, force always destroys itself.

One problem with the essay. I wouldn't
recommend buying government debt as
he does, because of this.

See it all.

The Iraq Study Group

This page intentionally left blank.

Dumping the hierarchy

The state is like a chicken that has just had its head chopped off: it flaps and flails around in a noisy and messy display, spreading blood in its trail. But its fate has already been determined.

Into the void are arising new, informal, and relatively unstructured systems that serve the interests of those who choose to associate with them – rather than the dying practice of conscripting people into the service of institutions. The decentralized nature of the emerging social systems is well-reflected in the words of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Shirin Ebadi. She described the organizational model that has been successfully used by Iranian feminist groups in these words: “They are very strong. Their approach is unique because they have no leaders. They do not have a head or branch offices. . . . The movement is made even stronger by not having leaders. If one or two people lead it, the organization would weaken if these leaders were arrested. Because there is no leader, it is very strong and not stoppable.” Such is the emerging model in which liberty and variability will flourish in a decentralized world. [My emphasis]

Full essay.

The Dismal History of Phony Money

History has shown that money – not counterfeit, but official money printed by the government – has been known to lose value and become virtually worthless. Examples include Russian rubles from pre-Revolution days, 50-million marks from 1920s Germany, and Cuban pesos from pre-Castro days. In all of these cases, jarring political and economic change destroyed currency values – suddenly, completely, and permanently.

Coming soon to the planet you live on.

That's right, I said planet-wide.

Do you have any idea of the ramifications?

Again, stay tuned.

Full essay.

Surviving in Argentina

Editors Note: The following are excerpts of various articles written by an individual living and surviving in a current real SHTF (Sh*t Hitting The Fan) situation. Few Americans know about the collapse of the Argentinean economy back in 2001, or their ongoing struggles and continued slide down the ladder of prosperity. FerFAL (a pseudonym) has been graciously sharing his everyday struggles to survive on the Preparedness/Patriot website www.frugalsquirrels.com. Only minor editing has been done for the purpose of clarity and readability. What you are reading is essentially (99%) his words, and FerFAL's words speak volumes. Everyone should read this and his other entries to get clear insight into what we could and will be dealing with WHEN the SHTF.

A long and interesting account from The
University of the Street.

True?

Likely so.

Highly recommended. (link updated, July 30, 2008)

Comparison of the Fall of Soviet Union to the coming Collapse of the West

From a fellow who was there...

Economic collapse affects public sector employment almost as much as private sector employment, eventually. Because government bureaucracies tend to be slow to act, they collapse more slowly. Also, because state-owned enterprises tend to be inefficient, and stockpile inventory, there is plenty of it left over, for the employees to take home, and use in barter. Most Soviet employment was in the public sector, and this gave people some time to think of what to do next.

Private enterprises tend to be much more efficient at many things. Such (sic) laying off their people, shutting their doors, and liquidating their assets. Since most employment in the United States is in the private sector, we should expect the transition to permanent unemployment to be quite abrupt for most people.
...
The term "market failure" seems to fit the energy situation in the United States. Free markets develop some pernicious characteristics when there are shortages of key commodities.

There were no 'pernicious characteristics' from
the shortages based on central planning in the
Soviet Union? Makes you wonder where he was
then.

Except that the planet has never seen a free
market. The United States came close before
1913. There was no Federal Reserve before then,
no income tax and no drug law, the regulations
came in a small book. It's been said that there was
more wealth created in that short period of time
than the whole planet created up til that point.
Expect things to quickly move back to that when
governments run out of money and all government
issued paper is used for something more valuable,
like toilet paper. The transition won't be pretty.
People are accustomed to 'let someone else do
it'.

...
Many people expend a lot of energy protesting against their irresponsible, unresponsive government. It seems like a terrible waste of time, considering how ineffectual their protests are. Is it enough of a consolation for them to be able to read about their efforts in the foreign press? I think that they would feel better if they tuned out the politicians, the way the politicians tune them out. It's as easy as turning off the television set. If they try it, they will probably observe that nothing about their lives has changed, nothing at all, except maybe their mood has improved. They might also find that they have more time and energy to devote to more important things.
...
A private sector solution is not impossible; just very, very unlikely.I'm working on that last .

When the public sector goes tits up, what else
is left but the private sector? If that's not
private, I sure as hell don't know what to call
it.

Terrible habit, protesting an unresponsive
government, debilitating...a dirty, filthy
sideline until the Fat Lady has had her few
minutes on stage.

But it's fun, like a good steak and a fine lager.

Otherwise, an interesting read.

Shell closing refinery

Shell portrayed its Bakersfield refinery as old and unfit. One executive said there was "simply no longer an adequate supply of crude oil" nearby.

Out of all the whining in that article,
that's the only relevant sentence, but
help yourself to it.

Atlas is shrugging. Live with it.

The Flying J is just Eddie Willers on the dead
train. They just don't know it yet. Maybe they're
planning a Road Warrior refinery.

Don't know what I mean? It's all here and
in the report.

First World Government junk bonds on the way

There's been talk around the net that the
European bummints are in good shape.

All very conventional and predictable.

"Some one of them has to have it right," goes
the refrain. "Our Gods are not dead. We will not
let them die."

The Delusion lives.

The reality:

What a large number of even the more educated US Dollar bear-and US financial crisis expectation camp however do NOT seem to be aware of is the global nature of the problem. It is completely wrong to assume, for example, that the Euro or the British Pound are inherently ‘hard’ and healthy currencies that would provide protection from a plunging US Dollar. It is not known by most, that in fact the majority of the Western ‘developed’ world and not just the United States is facing national bankruptcy shortly ahead, and that this has been officially predicted by the world’s leading rating agency, Standard & Poor’s.

US, Germany, France and UK face junk debt status
Expect all this much sooner than predicted in the
chart.

There's more.

There is no "fair tax"

While most of you are busy bitching about what's a fair

tax, a euphemism for how to screw someone else, keep in

mind that the tax thieves (that's what taxes are: theft)

are busy coming up with more taxes for you to pay. Why

should they care what you think?



Do you support stealing?



But there's always that Gun in the Room, whether you

see it or not...and you'll pay, and pay, and pay then

you'll continue whining about how much theft, stolen

from which group is "fair".



What to do about it?



You'll have to decide.



In the meantime, how about forgetting the idea of

making thievery fair?



Distractions abound.



to the thieves.

Are we all soon to be suspected terrorists?

Looking for new enemies everyday in every way...

WASHINGTON - Without notifying the public, federal agents for the past four years have assigned millions of international travelers, including Americans, computer-generated scores rating the risk they pose of being terrorists or criminals.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.

Ask your next door neighbors or your friends if they're
on the terrorist list. If they say they don't know,
explain to them that they can't know.

If they say no, explain to them how it's impossible
to know.

If they say yes, welcome them to the club.

Read.

Global warming?

A little behind the times, that idea.

See what I mean?

We can be sure that sooner or later the bummint
"scientists" will shift their focus to the coming Ice
Age as the new sinecure.

Tell 'em now, so they can keep up.

Is an Ice Age guaranteed? Tell me, what do you
know that's 'guaranteed' to happen.