Saviors, one and all

President Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and Senate majority leader Harry Reid are planning to prop up the economy.

What are they going to use? Toothpicks?

Maybe a new device that stuffs the toothpaste back in
the tube.

Such hubris...and all dumber 'n a box o' rocks.

Have you practiced your dumpster diving lately?

Read.

The fix is in

Psst...it's not what you think.

The above failure of government will be blamed
on the subprime debacle, i.e. the market.

Hilarious.

Sarkozy is due to hold talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday to discuss ways of improving the transparency of financial markets following the subprime credit crisis.

Full article

Balloons and bullshit

What struck me, living and working in the United States, was that presidential campaigns were a parody, entertaining and often grotesque. They are a ritual danse macabre of flags, balloons and bullshit, designed to camouflage a venal system based on money power, human division and a culture of permanent war.

A classic statement, ain't it.

Way past time to stop playing the hamster on the treadmill.

See it all.

New kid on the block

(CBS/AP) The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police armed with a warrant can barge into homes and seize evidence even if they don't knock, a huge government victory that was decided by President Bush's new justices.

What used to be a First World country is now
officially declared a Banana Republic.

Full report.

What would they report if he won?

Lamestream media is scared shitless of Ron Paul.

What does that tell ya?

After two second place finishes and strong showings in New Hampshire and South Carolina, it is clear that Ron Paul is a significant player in the 2008 race, yet your so called free press seemingly does not want you to realize this fact.

Read.

Update ...Thanks to Rick White

Do the math.

Who got the missing 22%?

It's laughing raucously

Control-freak politicians abhor gold because it ignores them; it won't do what it's told. It defies economists and laughs at central bankers.

Full article.

That's a start.

This is the finish.

The End of the World as We Know It

This won't be on the 11 o'clock news...


Running thru all the results of that will be a bitch. ™

Distrust and xenophobia have given way to tin cup efforts on the global circuit. The transition from hegemon bully to beggar will take time, quite the adjustment.
...
American businesses are up for sale, whereas up to now mainly USGovt officials and legislators have been up for sale.

I haven't brought this up here in awhile:

Do you have your plot of land, donkey, wooden hoe,
and a goodly supply of burlap sackcloth yet?

See the article where this graph originated here.

The New Political Jesus...

...politics being a religion now

Will he be crucified?

The Good News

I lied...in the title to this post.

The year 2008 will start with a resumption in the disorder breakdown buzz, a resumption in the gold climb, and new chapters in big bank bankruptcy throes, and eventually a nearly complete loss of respect and integrity in the US Federal Reserve. The word 'Bankruptcy' will not be used until a big bank actually files for bankruptcy. The ring of the word Bankruptcy is more accurate, since it implies Hemorrhage, another great word. The collateral damage will include most bond insurers going bust, but holding firm to 'AAA' ratings in pure corrupt manner. The collateral damage will include most homebuilders going bust. However, the centerpiece of 2008 woes will be the PRIME MORTGAGE BUST, felt much like the stage falling through the floor in the Victorian Theater. The decline in housing prices will continue to push prices down another 5% to 10% in the new year, killing off prime mortgage portfolios and their bonds. The bust will take down the entire US banking system, which is now reeling and tipsy, like a punchdrunk boxer after enduring ten rounds of a pure beating, bloodied, wobbly, dizzy, blurred in vision. The mortgage debacle will extend to the commercial property arena, the degree of which will be uncertain.

Very highly recommended.

Doug Casey's predictions

Am I predicting the Greater Depression may be upon us? Let me preface my response with a disclaimer. I'm not a fortune teller. But my gut feel is: yes. I'm not going to mount all manner of statistics to buttress the assertion. My point here is to draw your attention to the fact that there's a lot that's likely to go wrong besides the central problem of the Business Cycle, a problem that is now evidenced in the collapsing housing sector and all the pain associated with that collapse.

The "other" problems now include the Forever War against Islam, peak oil, increasing political control over virtually all aspects of life, the potential for social unrest (within the U.S. Mexican community, for instance), the historically high level of foreign holdings of U.S. dollars, a rise in nationalism and protectionism, etc. While not always obvious, all of these things are related, so it's likely that when one of them starts running out of control, so will the others.

Full essay.

A Year Later...

But, the feds didn’t come down this way much anymore. There was too much resistance and too many people willing to shoot them on sight. They stayed pretty near the big city, over 50 miles to the north. In the city, people did what they were told. If they didn’t, they could be deprived food and water, or a place to sleep. Many would have left if they had tradable goods with which to travel across the now lawless areas between the big cities. They were told that to leave the city would mean certain death at the hands of people gone savage.

It was a lie, of course. The dangers in the rural areas were no worse than when the government was around. Though some of the rural inhabitants were too well accustomed to the entitlement culture, they had quickly adapted to the free life, or left for the cities. The rural people continued to trade food and fuel, parts and seed, news and entertainment. They also kept a watchful eye on the roads from the cities, ever vigilant to protect their property and their neighbors. Communications were maintained through ham radio, CBs, and what few phone systems could be maintained by the technicians who remain in the rural areas.

The whole story.

Scheiss storms

My contention is that the entire US financial engineering contraption is being dissolved, a crumbling pile of wreckage, with evidence of fraud throughout the structure. It is an historically unprecedented failure in innovation, a reckless extension to develop the inflation-based system. Such a system is destined for the scrap heap though, since every bubble in history suffered a contraction, this one no different, only bigger. The threat to the entire banking system has never been this great since the Great Depression. When comparison after comparison is made to magnitudes of this or fact factor never being so great since the Great Depression, one must raise the possibility that conditions are indeed similar and approaching such an outcome, but with central bank reactions assured. The Euro Central Bank infusion of $500 billion is such a powerful reaction, enough to soil the boxer shorts of any Deflation Theorist. My contention is that the inflation forces will ramp up considerably, in offset to the deflation forces building momentum, enough to create massive scheiss storms. The lightning, high winds, and resulting destruction will be enormous. Opportunity abounds.

Full report.

Behind every camel's nose, there's a defecating beast

Imagine how much I could help you if I had the right to forcibly control you. If my respect for your self-ownership and your individual rights weren't in the way, just think how much better I could make your life through the use of violence and the threat of violence. Here are just a few things I could do:

...Highly recommended.

Robert smells a rat, then uncovers it

I smell a Rat!

A big gray stinkin sewer rat. Smelly and good for nothing. A parasite.

Nanosolar announces production of thin layer solar panels costing 99 cents a watt, well under the other panels out there costing 4 to 8 times as much.


There is a hitch!

There is no "Click to Buy Here" button. Strange, I wonder how it is a Public Corporation can decide to sell only to Power Companies and not Home owners? Is it Legal? Is that Wise?

Can we form our own Power co-op? Place panels on our roofs and "husband" the panels?

Seems too early to tell what will be explicitly permitted.

Lots of useful information in that article.

The coming clusterfuck

...whoever ends up in the oval office will preside over one king-hell of a clusterfuck. In the immortal words of TV's erstwhile "Mr. T," I pity da fool who gets elected into this mess. There will be a whole continent full of bankrupt, re-poed, and idle former WalMart shoppers, many of them with half of their skin tattooed and many of that bunch all revved up to "roll heavy and gun up" against the folks who screwed them.

See it all.

Fred goes to Cuba

The trappings of bumper-sticker socialism are everywhere in Cuba. Signs on walls say “Venceremos!” (“We will conquer!”) and “Patria o Muerte!” (Fatherland or death) and other exciting things. Adolescence dies hard everywhere. A billboard shows pictures of Bush, Hitler, and someone who perhaps was meant to be Cheney (it looked like but can’t have been John Lennon) with arithmetic notation: Bush plus whoever equals Hitler. Che Guevara’s face appears endlessly, the communist Christ, shot from slightly below, staring bravely off into a socialist paradise that didn’t fit on the tee-shirt. I saw postcard racks offering thirteen different photos of Che. If he had severe acne scars and funny ears he would be of no socialist importance, but he does make a good tee-shirt.

The press is assuredly controlled. The political section of a bookstore I saw consisted of maybe a dozen books about (sigh) Che, the rest being not much better. Confusingly, there were a couple of textbooks on business management. Television is heavy on affirmation of socialist patriotism. In particular there are channels from China, which Cuba seems to regard as communist (when did you last hear of a communist economy growing at ten percent, or at all?) and from Venezuela. Hugo Chavez clearly is thought to be a great man.

Full report.

Guess who

"It's amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites." --Thomas Sowell