HEROES & WHORES

With the new Netflix documentary about the Madoff fraud out, I thought reposting my take on the Wall Street scumbags who perpetuated this fraud and the corrupt losers at the SEC who turned a blind eye, would be worthwhile. Written 5 years ago.

“Certainly one of the most important things I learned is that numbers can be deceiving. There is a logic to mathematics, but there is also the underlying human element that must be considered. Numbers can’t lie, but the people who create those numbers can and do. As so many people have learned, forgetting to include human nature in an equation can be devastating.”Harry Markopolos, No One Would Listen

Harry Markopolos: The man who hunted Madoff - Feb. 25, 2010

The quote I used from Harry Markopolos’ No One Would Listen book about the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme in my last article triggered a bittersweet recollection. For me, the experience captured the true nature of our warped financial markets, a culture  glorifying wealthy arrogant criminal assholes, while ignoring or ridiculing honest, hard working, highly intelligent truth tellers.

Continue reading “HEROES & WHORES”

THE ONLY THING SYSTEMATIC IS THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair

Image for post

Upton Sinclair was describing willful ignorance based upon who butters your bread. The rampant corruption of our society, as power has been consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, has resulted in our political, financial, cultural and economic systems being captured by a billionaire class who use their wealth to dictate the path we are forced to follow – or lose everything.

The sociopath class include the Silicon Valley social media titans, the billionaires running the six mainstream media companies, the rogue billionaires like Soros and Bloomberg who fund chaos and foment insurrection, the Deep State surveillance agency operatives like Clapper, Brennan, Comey and Mueller doing the bidding of the oligarchy, Wall Street criminals like Dimon, Paulson, and Blankfein doing god’s work, and last but certainly not least – Powell, Yellen, Bernanke and slimy Kashkari priming the pump for the never ending systematic pillaging of the nation’s wealth.

Continue reading “THE ONLY THING SYSTEMATIC IS THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA”

FOURTH TURNING ACCELERATING TOWARDS CLIMAX

“At some point, America’s short-term Crisis psychology will catch up to the long-term post-Unraveling fundamentals. This might result in a Great Devaluation, a severe drop in the market price of most financial and real assets. This devaluation could be a short but horrific panic, a free-falling price in a market with no buyers. Or it could be a series of downward ratchets linked to political events that sequentially knock the supports out from under the residual popular trust in the system. As assets devalue, trust will further disintegrate, which will cause assets to devalue further, and so on. Every slide in asset prices, employment, and production will give every generation cause to grow more alarmed.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

Economists Predict Great Depression II for US Economy: Fast or V ...

I’ve been writing articles about the Fourth Turning for over a decade and nothing has happened since its tumultuous onset in 2008, with the global financial collapse, created by the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street co-conspirator owners, that has not followed along the path described by Strauss and Howe in their 1997 book – The Fourth Turning.

Like molten lava bursting forth from a long dormant (80 years) volcano, the core elements of this Fourth Turning continue to flow along channels of distress, long ago built by bad decisions, corrupt politicians and the greed of bankers. The molten ingredients of this Crisis have been the central drivers since 2008 and this second major eruption is flowing along the same route. The core elements are debt, civic decay, and global disorder, just as Strauss & Howe anticipated over two decades ago.

Continue reading “FOURTH TURNING ACCELERATING TOWARDS CLIMAX”

FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE: IS DONALD TRUMP THE MULE?

In Part One of this article I analyzed the similarities of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy to Strauss & Howe’s Fourth Turning, trying to assess how Donald Trump’s ascension to power fits into the theories put forth by those authors. Now I will compare Trump to the most interesting character in Asimov’s classic – The Mule.

The Mule

“A horse having a wolf as a powerful and dangerous enemy lived in constant fear of his life. Being driven to desperation, it occurred to him to seek a strong ally. Whereupon he approached a man, and offered an alliance, pointing out that the wolf was likewise an enemy of the man. The man accepted the partnership at once and offered to kill the wolf immediately, if his new partner would only co-operate by placing his greater speed at the man’s disposal. The horse was willing, and allowed the man to place bridle and saddle upon him.

The man mounted, hunted down the wolf, and killed him. “The horse, joyful and relieved, thanked the man, and said: ‘Now that our enemy is dead, remove your bridle and saddle and restore my freedom.’ “Whereupon the man laughed loudly and replied, ‘Never!’ and applied the spurs with a will.”Isaac Asimov, Foundation

I had not thought about the Foundation Trilogy for decades, until someone recently mentioned it in a comment on my website. They pondered whether Trump’s arrival on the scene represented The Mule’s advent during the decline of the Galactic Empire. Trump’s numerous enemies would love to portray him as an evil mutant freakish warlord, bent on using his persuasion powers to mislead the populace into doing his bidding. I don’t necessarily see Trump as The Mule, but as a disrupting factor, disturbing the best laid plans of the establishment and helping reveal the hidden agendas of the Deep State.

Seldon’s science of psychohistory was outstanding at predicting the behavior of large populations but worthless in trying to predict what an individual might do. The emergence of the Mule, a mentalic mutant with an acute telepathic ability to modify the emotions of human beings, could not have been predicted by the Seldon Plan, focused as it was on the statistical movements of vast numbers of peoples and populations across the galaxy.

Continue reading “FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE: IS DONALD TRUMP THE MULE?”

WHY IS OBAMA MEETING WITH WALL STREET CRIMINALS?

Do you need any more proof about who is calling the shots in this country than the fact that the CEOs of the TOO BIG TO TRUST Wall Street are meeting face to face with Obama in the midst of a government shutdown “crisis”?

Why isn’t he meeting with the CEOs of some small credit unions and local home town banks from Iowa? Why isn’t he meeting with some unemployed middle class workers or millenials up to their eyeballs in student loan debt?

He isn’t meeting with the little people because they aren’t running the country. We don’t live in a Republic or a Democracy. This country is run by bankers, mega-corporation CEOs, and shadowy billionaires.

Doesn’t it give you a warm feeling inside that the very same evil motherfuckers that crashed the worldwide financial system in 2008, stole $700 billion from the taxpayers, created the huge debt problem that has caused this debt ceiling crisis, and are now making record profits due to Bernanke’s ZIRP and QEternity policies, are the first people Obama consults regarding the government shutdown?

The men strolling into the White House this morning should be in the same prison as Bernie Madoff. They are criminals who have stolen trillions from the American people. Their leader is none other than Jamie Dimon, the head of the criminal enterprise known as JP Morgan. Calling them a criminal enterprise is not hyperbole. They have been forced to pay $7 billion of fines in the last two years for their criminal exploits.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-30/jpmorgan-7-billion-fines-just-past-two-years

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is in the process of fining them $20 billion for the largest mortgage fraud in world history. Jamie Dimon has been in charge of this criminal enterprise for over a decade.

How could the president of the United States allow criminals into the White House to give him guidance? Maybe it is because they bankrupted their own organizations and creatively used accounting gimmicks, fraud, and threats to bring down the financial system as their method to stay open and continue pillaging the muppets. Obama wants to know their tricks.

Inviting Jamie Dimon to the White House for guidance on handling this financial crisis would be on par with Franklin Delano Roosevelt inviting Al Capone to the White House for guidance about prohibition.

In case you weren’t sure yet, YOUR OWNERS ARE IN THE HOUSE!!!!

 

Wall Street CEOs to Meet With Obama as Budget Crisis Continues

AVAILABLE

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley

 

 

Six months ago I wrote an article called Are You Seeing What I’m Seeing?, describing my observations while traveling along Ridge Pike in Montgomery County, PA and motoring to my local Lowes store on a Saturday. My observations were in conflict with the storyline portrayed by the mainstream media pundits, Ivy League PhD economists, Washington politicians, and Wall Street shills. It is clear now that I must have been wrong. No more proof is needed than the fact the Dow has gone up 1,500 points, or 11%, since I wrote the article. Everyone knows the stock market reflects the true health of the nation – multi-millionaire Jim Cramer and his millionaire CNBC talking head cohorts tell me so. Ignore the fact that the bottom 80% only own 5% of the financial assets in this country and are not benefitted by the stock market in any way.

The mainstream corporate media that is dominated by six mega-corporations (Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Comcast, Viacom, and Bertelsmann), has one purpose as described by the master of propaganda – Edward Bernays:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

These media corporations’ task is to use propaganda and misinformation to protect the interests of the status quo. The ruling class has the power to manipulate public opinion, obscure the truth, alter government data, and outright lie, but they can’t control the facts and reality smacking the average person in the face every day. Based on the performance of the stock market and the storyline of economic recovery being peddled by the corporate media, the facts must surely support their contention. Here are a few facts about what has really happened in the last six months since I wrote my article:

  • The working age population has grown by 1.1 million, the number of employed Americans is up 500k, while the number of people who have left the labor force has gone up by 600k. The BLS reports the unemployment rate has fallen without blinking an eye or turning red with embarrassment.
  • The number of Americans entering the Food Stamp Program in the last six months totaled 1 million, bringing the total to 47.8 million, or 20% of all households (up 15 million since the Obama economic recovery began in December 2009).
  • Existing home sales have increased by a scintillating 2.9% on a seasonally adjusted annual basis and average prices have fallen by 6% in the last six months. It is surely a great sign that 32% of all home sales are to Wall Street investors and 25% are either foreclosure sales or short sales. A large percentage of the remaining sales are funded by 3% down FHA government backed loans.
  • There were 31,000 new homes sales in January versus 34,000 new home sales six months prior. Through the magic of seasonal adjustment, this translates into a 15% increase.
  • Single family housing starts were 41,600 in February versus 51,400 six months prior. Even using seasonal adjustments, the government drones can only report a pathetic 4.7% annualized increase and flat starts over the last three months, with mortgage rates at all-time lows.
  • The National Debt has gone up by $750 billion in the last six months, while Real GDP has gone up by less than $150 billion.
  • Real hourly earnings have not increased in the last six months.
  • Consumer debt has risen by $65 billion as the Federal Government has doled out student loans like candy and auto loans (through the 80% government owned Ally Financial – aka GMAC, aka Ditech, aka ResCap) like crack dealer in West Philly.
  • The Federal Reserve has increased their balance sheet by $385 billion in the last six months by buying toxic mortgages from Wall Street banks and the majority of Treasuries issued by the government to fund the $1 trillion annual deficits being produced by the Obama administration. It now totals $3.2 trillion, up from $900 billion in September 2008, and headed to $4 trillion before this year is out.
  • Retail sales have increased by less than 2% over the last six months and are barely 1% above last February. On an inflation adjusted basis, retail sales are falling. Other than internet sales and government financed auto sales, every other retail category is negative year over year. This is reflected in the poor sales and earnings reports from JC Penney, Sears, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, Lowes, Kohl’s, Darden, McDonalds, and Yum Brands. I’m sure next quarter will be gangbusters, with the Obama payroll tax increase, Obamacare premium increases, 15% surge in gasoline prices, and continued inflation in food and energy.

Considering that 71% of GDP is dependent upon consumer spending (versus 62% in 1979 before the financialization of America), the dreadful results of retailers and restaurants even before the Obama tax increases confirms the country has been in recession since the second half of 2012. In 1979 the economy was still driven by domestic investment that accounted for 19% of GDP. Today, it wallows at all-time lows of 13%. In addition, our trade deficits, driven by debt fueled consumption, subtract 3.5% from GDP. These facts are reflected in the depressed outlook of small business owners who are the backbone of growth, hiring and entrepreneurship in this country. Small businesses of 500 employees or less employ half of all the private industry workers in the country and account for 65% of all new jobs created. There are approximately 27 million small businesses versus 18,000 large businesses. The chart below does not paint an improving picture. The small business optimism has dropped from an already low 92.8 in September 2012 to 90.8 in March 2013.

Small business optimism report for March 2013

The head of the NFIB couldn’t make the situation any clearer:

While the Fortune 500 is enjoying record high earnings, Main Street earnings remain depressed. Far more firms report sales down quarter over quarter than up. Washington is manufacturing one crisis after another—the debt ceiling, the fiscal cliff and the Sequester. Spreading fear and instability are certainly not a strategy to encourage investment and entrepreneurship. Three-quarters of small-business owners think that business conditions will be the same or worse in six months. Until owners’ forecast for the economy improves substantially, there will be little boost to hiring and spending from the small business half of the economy. NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg

If consumers, who account for 71% of the economy, aren’t spending, and small business owners, who do 65% of all the hiring in the country, are petrified with insecurity, why is the stock market hitting all-time highs and the corporate media proclaiming happy days are here again? It can be explained by the distribution of wealth and income in this country. Every media pundit, politician, Wall Street shill, Ivy League PhD economist, and corporate titan you see on CNBC, Fox or any corporate media outlet is a 1%er or better. The chart below shows the bottom 99% saw their real incomes decline between 2009 and 2011, while the top 1% reaped the stock market gains and corporate bonuses for using “creative” accounting to generate record corporate profits. The trend in 2012 through today has only widened this gap, as real worker wages have continued to decline and the stock market has advanced another 20%.

The feudal financial industry lords are feasting on caviar and champagne in their mountaintop manors while the serfs and peasants scrounge in the gutters for scraps and morsels. This path has been chosen by the king (Obama) and enabled by his court jester (Bernanke). Money printing and inflation are their weapons of choice. We are living in a 21st Century version of the Dark Ages.

On the Road Again

I’ve been baffled by a visible disconnect between deteriorating data and the storyline being sold to the ignorant masses by the financial elitists that run the show. The websites and truthful analysts that I respect and trust (Zero Hedge, Mish, Jesse, Karl Denninger, John Hussman, David Stockman, Financial Sense and a few others) provide analytical evidence on a daily basis that confirm my view that our economic situation is worsening. We are all looking at the same data, but the pliable faux journalists that toil for their corporate masters spin the data in a manner designed to mislead and manipulate in order to mold public opinion, as Edward Bernays taught the invisible ruling class. As you can see, numbers and statistical data can be spun, adjusted, and manipulated to tell whatever story you want to depict. I prefer to confirm or deny my assessment with my observations out in the real world. I spend 12 hours per week cruising the highways and byways of Montgomery County and Philadelphia as I commute to and from work and shuttle my kids to guitar lessons, friends’ houses, and local malls. I can’t help but have my antenna attuned to what I’m seeing with my own eyes.

As I detailed in my previous article, Montgomery County is relatively affluent area with the dangerous urban enclaves of Norristown and Pottstown as the only blighted low income, high crime areas in the 500 square mile county of 800,000 people. The median household income and median home prices are 50% above the national averages. Major industries include healthcare, pharmaceuticals, insurance and information technology. It is one of only 30 counties in the country with a AAA rating from Standard & Poors (as if that means anything). On paper, my county appears to be thriving and healthy, with white collar professionals living an idyllic suburban existence. One small problem – the visual evidence as you travel along Welsh Road towards Montgomeryville or Germantown Pike towards Plymouth Meeting reveals a decaying infrastructure, dying retail meccas, and miles of empty office complexes.

I don’t think my general observations as I drive around Montgomery County are colored by any predisposition towards negativity. I see a gray winter like pallor has settled upon the land. I see termite pocked wooden fences with broken and missing slats. I see sagging porches. I see leaky roofs with missing tiles. I see vacant dilapidated hovels. I see mold tainted deteriorating siding on occupied houses. I see weed infested overgrown yards. I see collapsing barns and crumbling farm silos. I see houses and office buildings that haven’t been painted in 20 years. I see clock towers in strip malls with the wrong time. I see shuttered gas stations. I see retail stores with lights out in their signs. I see trees which fell during Hurricane Sandy five months ago still sitting in yards untouched. I see potholes not being filled. I see disintegrating highway overpasses and bridges. I constantly see emergency repairs on burst water mains. I see malfunctioning stoplights. I see fading traffic signage. I see regional malls with rust stained walls beneath their massive unlit Macys, JC Penney and Sears logos. I see hundreds of Space Available, For Lease, For Rent, Vacancy, For Sale and Store Closing signs dotting the suburban landscape. These sights are in a relatively affluent suburban county. When I reach West Philly, it looks more like Dresden in 1945.

                      Dresden – 1945                                                     Philadelphia – 2013

 

I moved to my community in 1995 when the economy was plodding along at a 2.5% growth rate. The housing market was still depressed from the early 90s recession. The retail strip centers and larger malls in my area were 100% occupied. Office parks were bustling with activity. Office vacancy rates were the lowest in twenty years during the late 1990s. National GDP has grown by 112% (only 50% after adjusting for inflation) since 1995, with personal consumption rising 122%. Domestic investment has only grown by 80%, but imports skyrocketed by 204%. If the economy has more than doubled in the last 18 years, how could retail strip centers in my affluent community have 40% to 70% vacancy rates and office parks sit vacant for years? The answer is that Real GDP has not even advanced by 50%. Using a true rate of inflation, not the bastardized, manipulated, tortured BLS version, shows the country has essentially been in contraction since the year 2000.

The official government sanctioned data does not match what I see on the ground, but the Shadowstats version of the data explains it perfectly.

My observations also don’t match up with the data reported by the likes of Reis, Trepp, Moody’s and the Federal Reserve. Reis reports a national vacancy rate of 17.1% for offices, barely below its peak of 17.6% in late 2010. Vacancy rates are 35% above 2007 levels and more than double the rates in the late 1990s. But what I realized after digging into the methodology of these reported figures is the true rates are significantly higher. First you must understand that Reis and Trepp are real estate companies who are in business to make money from commercial real estate transactions. It is in their self -interest to report data in the most positive manner possible – they’ve learned the lessons of Bernays. These mouthpieces for their industry slice and dice the numbers according to major markets, minor markets, suburban versus major cities, and most importantly they only measure Class A office space.

I didn’t realize the distinctions between classes when it comes to office space. The Building Owners and Managers Association describes the classes:

Class A office buildings have the “most prestigious buildings competing for premier office users with rents above average for the area.” Class A facilities have “high quality standard finishes, state of the art systems, exceptional accessibility and a definite market presence.” Class B office buildings as those that compete “for a wide range of users with rents in the average range for the area.” Class B buildings have “adequate systems” and finishes that “are fair to good for the area,” but that the buildings do not compete with Class A buildings for the same prices. Class C buildings are aimed towards “tenants requiring functional space at rents below the average for the area.”

So we have landlords self-reporting Class A vacancy rates in big markets to a real estate company that reports them without verification. Is it in a landlord’s best interest to under-report their vacancy rate? You bet it is. If potential tenants knew the true vacancy rates, they would be able to negotiate much lower rents. There is a beautiful Class A 77,000 square foot building near my house that was built in 2004. Nine years later there is still a huge Space Available sign in front of the building and it appears at least 50% vacant.

I pass another Class A property on Welsh Road called the Gwynedd Corporate Center that consists of three 40,000 square foot buildings in a 13 acre office park. It was built in 1998 and is completely dark. The vacancy rate is 100%. As I traveled down Germantown Pike last week I noted dozens of Class A office complexes with Space Available signs in front. I’m absolutely certain that vacancy rates in Class A offices in Montgomery County exceed 25%. When you expand your horizon to Class B and Class C office space, vacancy rates exceed 50%. The only booming business in my suburban paradise is Space Available sign manufacturing. We probably import those from China too. Despite the spin put on the data by the real estate industry, Moody’s reported data supports my estimates:

  • The values of suburban offices in non-major markets are 43% below 2007 levels.
  • Industrial property values in non-major markets are 28% below 2007 levels.
  • Retail property values in non-major markets are 35% below 2007 levels.

The data being reported by Reis regarding vacancies in strip malls and regional malls is also highly questionable, based on my real world observations. The reported vacancy rates of 8.6% for regional malls and 10.7% for strip malls, barely below their 2011 peaks, are laughable. Again, there is no benefit for a landlord to report their true vacancy rate. The truth will depress rents further. This data is gathered by surveying developers and landlords. We all know how reputable and above board real estate professionals are – aka David Lereah, Larry Yun. A large strip mall near my house has a 70% vacancy rate, with another, one mile away, with a 50% vacancy rate. Anyone with two eyes and functioning brain that has visited a mall or driven past a strip mall knows that vacancy rates are at least 15%, the highest in U.S. history. These statistics don’t even capture the small pizza joints, craft shops, antique outlets, candy stores, book stores, gas stations and myriad of other family run small businesses that have been forced to close up shop in the last five years.

The disconnect between reality, the data reported by the mouthpieces of the status quo, and financial markets is as wide as the Grand Canyon. Even the purveyors of false data can’t get their stories straight. Trepp has been reporting steadily declining commercial delinquency rates since July 2012, when they had reached 10.34%, the highest level since the early 1990s. The decline is being driven solely by apartment complexes and hotels. Industrial and retail delinquencies continue to rise and office delinquencies are flat over the last three months. Again, the definition of delinquent is in the eye of the beholder.

The quarterly delinquency rates on commercial loans reported by the Federal Reserve is less than half the rate being reported by Trepp, at 4.13%. Bennie and his band of Ivy League MBA economists have reported 10 consecutive quarters of declining commercial loan delinquency rates. This is in direct contrast to the data reported by Trepp that showed delinquencies rising during 2012.

Real estate loans

All

Booked in domestic    offices

Residential 1

Commercial 2

Farmland

2012:4

7.57

10.07

4.13

2.67

2011:4

8.48

10.34

6.11

3.26

2010:4

9.12

10.23

7.96

3.59

2009:4

9.59

10.54

8.73

3.42

2008:4

6.04

6.67

5.49

2.28

2007:4

2.91

3.08

2.75

1.51

2006:4

1.70

1.95

1.32

1.41

The data being reported doesn’t pass the smell test. Commercial vacancy rates are at or above the levels seen during the last Wall Street created real estate crisis in the early 1990’s. During 1991/1992 commercial loan delinquency rates ranged between 10% and 12%. Today, with the same or higher levels of vacancy, the Federal Reserve reports 4% delinquency rates. When the latest Wall Street created financial collapse struck in 2008 and commercial property values crashed while vacancy rates soared, there were dire predictions of huge loan losses between 2010 and 2012. Commercial real estate loans generally rollover every 5 to 7 years. The massive issuance of dodgy subprime commercial loans between 2005 and 2007 would come due between 2010 and 2012. But miraculously delinquency rates have supposedly plunged from 8.78% in mid-2010 to 4.13% today. The Federal Reserve decided in 2009 to look the other way when assessing whether a real estate loan would ever be repaid. A loan isn’t considered delinquent if the lender decides it isn’t delinquent. The can’t miss strategy of extend, pretend and pray was implemented across the country as mandated by the Federal Reserve. This pushed out the surge in loan maturities to 2014 – 2016.

In an economic system that rewarded good choices and punished those who took ridiculous undue risks and lost, real estate developers, mall owners, and office landlords would be going bankrupt in large numbers and loan losses for Wall Street Too Stupid to Succeed banks would be in the billions. Developers took out loans in the mid-2000’s which were due to be refinanced in 2012. The property is worth 35% less and the rental income with a 20% vacancy rate isn’t enough to cover the interest payments on the loan. The borrower would have no option but to come up with 35% more cash and accept a higher interest rate because the risk of default had risen, or default. Instead, the lenders have pretended the value of the property hasn’t declined and they’ve extended the term of the loan at a lower interest rate. This was done on the instructions of the Federal Reserve, their regulator. The plan is dependent on an improvement in the office and retail markets. It seems the best laid plans of corrupt sycophant central bankers are going to fail.

Eyes Wide Open

There are 1,300 regional malls in this country, with most anchored by a JC Penney, Sears, Barnes & Noble, or Best Buy. The combination of declining real household income, aging population, lackluster employment growth, rising energy, food and healthcare costs, mounting tax burdens, and escalating on-line purchasing will result in the creation of 200 or more ghost malls over the next five years. The closure of thousands of big box stores is baked in the cake. The American people have run out of money. They have no equity left in their houses to tap. The average worker has only $25,000 of retirement savings and they are taking loans against it to make the mortgage payment and put food on the table. They can’t afford to perform normal maintenance on their property and are one emergency away from bankruptcy. In a true cycle of doom, most of the jobs “created” since 2009 are low skill retail jobs with little or no benefits. As storefronts go dark and more “Available” signs are erected in front of these weed infested eyesores, more Americans will lose their jobs and be unable to do their 71% part in our economic Ponzi scheme.

The reason office buildings across the land sit vacant, with mold and mildew silently working its magic behind the walls and under the carpets, is because small businesses are closing up shop and only a crazy person would attempt to start a new business in this warped economic environment of debt dependent diminishing returns. The 27 million small businesses in the country are fighting a losing battle against overbearing government regulations, increasingly heavy tax burdens, operating cost inflation, Obamacare mandates, a low skill poorly educated workforce, and customers with diminishing resources and declining disposable income. Small business owners are not optimistic about the future because they don’t have a sugar daddy like Bernanke to provide them with free money and a promise to bail them out if their high risk investments go bad. With small businesses accounting for 65% of all new hiring in this country and looming healthcare taxes, mandates, regulations and penalties approaching like a freight train, there is absolutely zero probability that office buildings will be filling up with new employees in the next few years. With hundreds of billions in commercial real estate loans coming due over the next three years, over 60% of the loans in the office and retail category, vacancy rates at record levels, and property values still 30% to 40% below the original loan values, a rendezvous with reality awaits. How long can bankers pretend to be paid on loans by developers who pretend they are collecting rent from non-existent tenants who are selling goods to non-existent customers? The implosion in the commercial real estate market will also blow a gaping hole in the Federal Reserve balance sheet, which is leveraged 55 to 1.

federal reserve balance sheet

I regularly drive along Schoolhouse Road in Souderton. It is a winding country road with dozens of small manufacturing, warehousing, IT, aerospace, auto repair, bus transportation, retail and landscaping businesses operating and trying to scratch out a small profit. Most of these businesses have been operating for decades. I would estimate that most have annual revenue of less than $2 million and less than 100 employees. It is visibly evident they have not been thriving, as their facilities are looking increasingly worn down and in disrepair. Their access to credit has been reduced since the 2008 crisis, as only the Wall Street banks and mega-corporations with Washington lobbyists received Bennie Bucks and Obama stimulus pork. These small businesses have been operating on razor thin margins and unable to invest in their existing facilities or expand their businesses. The tax increases just foisted upon small business owners and their employees, along with Obamacare mandates which will drive healthcare costs dramatically higher, and waning demand due to lack of income, will surely push some of these businesses over the edge. There will be some harsh lessons learned on Schoolhouse Road over the next few years. I expect to see more of these signs along Schoolhouse Road and thousands of other roads in the next few years.

The mainstream media pawns, posing as journalists, have not only gotten the facts wrong regarding the current situation, but their myopia extends into the near future. The perpetual optimists that always see a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow are either willfully ignorant or a product of our government run public education system and can’t perform basic mathematical computations. As pointed out previously, consumer spending drives 71% of our economy. As would be expected, the highest level of annual spending occurs between the ages of 35 to 54 years old when people are in their peak earnings years. Young people are already burdened with $1 trillion of government peddled student loan debt and are defaulting at a 20% rate because there are no decent jobs available. Millions of Boomers are saddled with underwater mortgages, prodigious levels of credit card and auto loan debt, with retirement savings of $25,000 or less. Anyone expecting the young or old to ramp up spending over the next decade must be a CNBC pundit, University of Phoenix MBA graduate or Ivy League trained economist.

There will be 10,000 Boomers per day turning 65 years old for the next 18 years. Consumers in the 65-74 age segment spend 28% less on average than during their peak years. It is estimated that between 2010 and 2020 there will be approximately 14.5 million more consumers aged 65 or older. The number of Americans in their peak spending years will crash over the next decade. This surely bodes well for our suburban sprawl, mall based, cheap energy dependent, debt fueled society. Do you think this will lead to a revival in retail and office commercial real estate?

We’ve got $1 trillion annual deficits locked in for the next decade. We’ve got total credit market debt at 350% of GDP. We’ve got true unemployment exceeding 20%. We’ve had declining real wages for thirty years and no change in that trend. We’ve got an aging, savings poor, debt rich, obese, materialistic, iGadget distracted, proudly ignorant, delusional populace that prefer lies to truth and fantasy to reality. We’ve got 20% of households on food stamps. We’ve got food pantries, thrift stores and payday loan companies doing a booming business. We’ve got millions of people occupying underwater McMansions in picturesque suburban paradises that can’t make their mortgage payments or pay their utility bills, awaiting their imminent eviction notice from one of the Wall Street banks that created this societal catastrophe.

We’ve got a government further enslaving the middle class in student loan debt with the false hope of new jobs that aren’t being created. We’ve got a shadowy unaccountable organization, owned and controlled by the biggest banks in the world, that has run a Ponzi scheme called a fractional reserve lending system for 100 years, and inflated away 96% of the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar. We’ve got a self-proclaimed Ivy League academic expert on the Great Depression (created by the Federal Reserve) who has tripled the Federal Reserve balance sheet on his way to quadrupling it by year end, who has promised QE to eternity with the sole purpose of enriching his benefactors while impoverishing senior citizens and the middle class. He will ultimately be credited in history books as the creator of the Greater Depression that destroyed the worldwide financial system and resulted in death, destruction, chaos, starvation, mayhem and ultimately war on a grand scale. But in the meantime, he serves the purposes of the financial ruling class as a useful idiot and will continue to spew gibberish and propaganda to obscure their true agenda.

It is time to open your eyes and arise from your stupor. Observe what is happening around you. Look closely. Does the storyline match what you see in your ever day reality? It is them versus us. Whether you call them the invisible government, ruling class, financial overlords, oligarchs, the powers that be, ruling elite, or owners; there are powerful wealthy men who call the shots in this global criminal enterprise. Their names are Dimon, Corzine, Blankfein, Murdoch, Buffett, Soros, Bernanke, Obama, Romney, Bloomberg, Fink, among others. They are using every means at their disposal to retain their control and power over the worldwide economic system and gorge themselves like hyenas upon the carcasses of a crippled and dying middle class. They have nothing but contempt and scorn for the peasants. They’re your owners and consider you as their slaves. They don’t care about you. They think the commoners are unworthy to be in their presence. Time is growing short for these psychopathic criminals. No amount of propaganda can cover up the physical, economic, social, and psychological descent afflicting our world. There’s a bad moon rising and trouble is on the way. The time for hard choices is coming. The words of Edward Bernays represent the view of the ruling class, while the words of George Carlin represent the view of the working class.

“There’s a reason that education sucks, and it’s the same reason it will never ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it. Be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the big, wealthy, business interests that control all things and make the big decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re irrelevant.

Politicians are put there to give you that idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, and they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses, and the City Halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear. They’ve got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want—they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest. You know something, they don’t want people that are smart enough to sit around their kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.” George Carlin

 

APPARITIONS IN THE FOG

 

After digesting the opinions of the shills, shysters and scam artists, I am ready to predict that I have no clue what will happen during 2013. The weekend weather last week was a perfect analogy for attempting to forecast the future. The professional highly educated meteorologists predicted sunny warm weather, just as the PhD Wall Street paid economist mouthpieces assure the multitudes 2013 will be the year when zero interest rates and $1.2 trillion deficits will finally lead to sunny economic skies. Instead, the weekend was overcast and damp. As I was writing this article and watching the miraculous Baltimore Ravens comeback against Denver, I received a two minute warning from my wife. I had to pick up my son and his buddies at the Montgomery Mall. As I pulled the car out of the garage, I backed out into fog that was thicker than pea soup. I’ve driven the roads to the Montgomery Mall hundreds of times, but the fog was so thick I couldn’t see ten feet ahead. I drove hesitantly, wondering what might be just over the horizon or what might dart out from a side street. I see 2013 as a year of maneuvering through thick fog with startling apparitions lurking to surprise us and force a deviation in our normal course. As I proceeded cautiously through the murky mist there were few cars on the roads and the strip centers and fast food joints resembled haunted houses and grave yards. I expected to see Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and Wolfman panhandling on the corners.

The fog of uncertainty is engulfing the nation, making consumers hesitant to spend and businesses reluctant to hire or invest. It was like being in a commercial real estate horror film, with SPACE AVAILABLE, NOW LEASING, and STORE CLOSING signs startling me everywhere I turned. The trip took a spooky turn as I passed branches of those zombie banks – Bank of America and Citigroup. They don’t even know they’re already dead. I finally arrived at the Mall passing thousands of empty parking spaces with a few cars huddled close to the zombie starring in Night of the Retailing Dead – Sears. In the miasma, the few visitors appeared to be automaton like consumers programmed to shuffle through the mall and buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have. To say the road ahead for this country in 2013 is foggy would be an epic understatement. Let’s hope it doesn’t have a Nightmare on Elm Street like ending.

Virtually all of the mainstream media, Wall Street banks and paid shill economists are in agreement that 2013 will see improvement in employment, housing, retail spending and, of course the only thing that matters to the ruling class, the stock market. Even among the alternative media, there seems to be a consensus that we will continue to muddle through and the day of reckoning is still a few years off. Those who are predicting improvements are either ignorant of history or are being paid to predict improvement, despite the overwhelming evidence of a worsening economic climate. The mainstream media pundits, fulfilling their assigned task of purveying feel good propaganda, use the 10% stock market gain in 2012 as proof of economic recovery. The facts prove otherwise:

  • Real GDP, using a dramatically understated inflation rate, has barely grown by 1% in 2012. Using a true measure of inflation, the GDP was -2% during 2012. Even this pitiful growth was generated by 0% interest rate deals for subprime auto loans through Ally Financial (85% owned by you the taxpayer) and 7 year 0% home furnishing financing deals through GE Capital and the other government subsidized Too Big To Control Wall Street banks. The Federal government chipped in by guaranteeing FHA subsidized 3% down payment loans on houses and handing out billions in loans to students so they can find themselves, keep the unemployment rate down, get drunk, and if they graduate – enter debt servitude for decades.

  • The number of people who have left the workforce since last December (2.2 million) almost matched the number of newly employed (2.4 million), as the labor participation rate has collapsed to a three decade low of 63.6%. The propagandists attempt to peddle this dreadful condition as a function of Baby Boomers retiring. This is obliterated by the fact the 55 to 69 age bracket has added 4 million jobs since Obama became president, while the younger age brackets have lost 3 million jobs. The working age population has grown by 13 million since 2007 and there are 4 million less people employed.

  • Another 1.5 million Americans were forced onto food stamps during 2012, bringing the total increase to 17 million since Obama assumed office. With 47.5 million depending on assistance to feed them, a full 20% of all households in the U.S. are dependent on this program, costing taxpayers $76 billion, versus $34 billion in 2008. Another 4.8 million have joined the ranks of the disabled since 2009, with a dramatic surge when the 99 week unemployment benefits began to run out. These trends are surely signs of recovery.

  • Real average hourly earnings were flat in 2012, and have fallen 1.5% since Obama became president. The average middle class worker is making less than they were forty years ago. Using a true measure of inflation would reveal the true devastation wrought on the middle class. As the things we need (food, energy, shelter, education, healthcare) have grown more expensive and the things we are brainwashed to buy (iGadgets, HDTVs, luxury autos, bling) by the masters of propaganda have been made easily accessible through credit, the middle class has enslaved themselves in chains of debt. The declining average wages since 1973 have forced families to have both spouses work outside the home, with the consequence of more divorces, children raised by strangers, and the proliferation of depressed human beings. The lost real income has been replaced by credit card, auto, mortgage, and student loan debt.

Jan2_Real Wages

The reason Bernanke, Geithner, Obama, Wall Street, corporate titans, and media pundits focus their attention on the stock market is because they are looking out for their fellow 1%ers. The working middle class, once the backbone of this country, own virtually no stocks. The 88% stock market increase since March 2009 hasn’t benefitted the middle class one iota. The Federal Reserve engineered stock market recovery has benefitted moneyed bankers and wealthy corporate executives, the very people who collapsed the worldwide financial system and received the bailouts when they should have gone to jail.

20110410-062035.jpg

Those who continue to tout a non-existent economic recovery have focused on the manufactured stock market and housing recovery, extrapolating those trends without understanding how it has been achieved. A master plan implemented through the collusion of the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Executive branch, Wall Street cabal, and corporate media conglomerates has created the illusion of recovery. Make no mistake about it, those in power held clandestine meetings and had covert discussions that will never see the light of day in transcripts or recordings. They developed a strategy to save themselves, their fellow cronies, and the corporate interests that run this country. They threw the middle class, senior citizens, and young people under the bus in their sordid determination to retain their power, wealth and control. Their multi-faceted scheme has been rolled out as follows:

  1. Reduce interest rates to 0% so Wall Street banks could borrow for free and reinvest in Treasuries, therefore earning risk free profits so they could rebuild their non-existent capital. The Wall Street banks also used the free money to generate trading profits using their HFT supercomputers, with only the occasional glitch (JP Morgan London Whale $9 billion slipup, Corzine blowing up his firm and stealing $1.2 billion from ranchers & farmers). The ability to borrow at 0% has spurred these financial institutions to make 0% loans to subprime auto buyers and offer 7 year 0% interest deals on behalf of furniture, electronics, and appliance retailers. This Keynesian solution is supposed to spur demand and generate new jobs. The reality is that Bernanke’s ZIRP has transferred $400 billion of annual interest income from savers and senior citizens to the Wall Street bankers, while setting the table for more massive bad debt write-offs when the millions of subprime borrowers default.
  2. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department forced the FASB to scrap mark to market accounting, allowing the Wall Street banks to fraudulently value their worthless assets. The Federal Reserve than tripled their balance sheet from $900 billion to $2.95 trillion by purchasing almost $1 trillion of toxic mortgage debt from the Wall Street banks at full face value of the debt. The Fed purchased Treasuries to artificially lower mortgage rates and attempt to spur a housing recovery.
  3. The Wall Street banks have purposely manipulated the foreclosure process and restricted the inventory of foreclosures available to purchase. In conjunction with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, large inventories of foreclosed properties have been sold in bulk to connected Wall Street firms at above market prices and positioned as rental properties. The FHA has done their part by guaranteeing 3% down payment mortgages and putting taxpayers on the hook for the billions in losses to come. Fannie and Freddie have already lost $200 billion of taxpayer money since 2008 on behalf of the Wall Street banks. The concerted effort to restrict the supply of homes available for sale resulted in the price of homes sold rising in 2012. Those in power are attempting to resuscitate the millions of heavily indebted underwater home occupiers at the expense of the young and frugal who would buy when home prices dropped to a clearing level. The same people who created the first housing bubble are attempting to re-inflate it as a solution to our economic woes.
  4. Despite the fact that individual investors have pulled billions out of the stock market over the last three years, the stock market has managed to approach all-time highs. This has been the lynchpin of their plan. The sole purpose of every QE initiated by Bernanke has been to elevate the stock market. Academics like Bernanke and Krugman sell the “wealth effect” storyline to the masses as a way to spur consumer spending. The only wealth effect is to shift the wealth of the working middle class to the ruling class who own the stocks and control the markets. As each QE has further enriched the 1%, the inflationary impact on energy, food, and clothing has destroyed the lives of millions in the middle class who own virtually no stocks. The gap between the uber-rich ruling class and the peasants has never been wider.

The master plan has succeeded in delaying the worst of the Crisis, further enriching the oligarchs, further impoverishing the middle class, fanning the flames of revolution across the globe, provoking foreign adversaries, inciting anger among the populace and darkening the mood of the country. Those predicting a return to the peaceful autumn like days of the late 90s reveal their ignorance of history. Winter is here and there are many dark days ahead before Spring is discernible. The linear thinking crowd who hang their hats on never ending progress spurred by technological innovation and a limitless supply of cheap resources are denying reality. Delusion and hope for a better tomorrow is not a strategy. We have entered the 5th year of this ongoing Crisis. Fourth Turnings do not fizzle out; they build to a societal earth shattering crescendo (American Revolution, Civil War, Great Depression/WWII). Economic, financial, social and global conditions do not progress during a twenty year Crisis period, driven by the generational configuration that arises once every 80 years. An epic struggle between good and evil, rich and poor, government and governed, young and old, nation and nation, awaits us over the next fifteen years. No matter what happens in 2013, it will be driven by the core elements of this Crisis – Debt, Civic Decay, and Global Disorder.

“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe -1996

Until Debt Do Us Part

The storyline of austerity and deleveraging perpetuated through the mainstream media mouthpieces is unequivocally false, as consumer debt has reached an all-time high of $2.77 trillion, driven by a surge in subprime auto loans and subprime student loans. The reason for the surge in these loans, while credit card debt lingers 15% below the 2008 peak, is because the Federal Government is doling out these loans with your tax dollars. Ally Financial (aka GMAC, aka Ditech) is under the complete control of the Federal Government and doesn’t care about future losses. The taxpayers won’t notice another $1 billion in losses. There are Cadillac Escalades, Silverados and RAM pickups to peddle to morons without money.

Could there be a more subprime borrower than a 20 year old majoring in African literature or a 40 year old former construction worker enrolled at the University of Phoenix with 500,000 other schmoes? The Federal government assumed control over the student loan market in 2009 and has proceeded to blow a new bubble. They have driven tuition higher and enabled millions of barely functioning morons to enter college, where they will not only fail, but also be burdened by un-payable levels of non-dischargeable debt. Now the government solution is to pass those bad debts onto you the taxpayer while encouraging even more debt for students. Here is an assessment of the new “Pay as you Earn” program from your owners:

“(BusinessWeek) We have one example of someone who might look similar to an MBA student. He starts out with a starting salary of $90,000 and by the end of 20 years is making $243,360. Under the old IBR program, he’ll have paid $409,445 by year 25 and be forgiven $23,892 of his loan balance. Under the new IBR repayment plan he’ll pay less than half of that, or $202,299, and be forgiven $208,259 by year 20. The old IBR plan was punitive if you borrowed a lot of money, made you pay more over time and trapped you, so there were serious consequences to doing that. It was a downside and a pretty big risk, which is why you didn’t see people borrowing without regard to how much it will cost. The new plan essentially eliminates any downside or risk for that type of behavior, and cuts payments in half and then some.”

The enslavement of our children in student loan debt and handing them the bill for $200 trillion of unfunded entitlement liabilities will be the spark that ignites the worst part of this Crisis.

Student Loan Projections

Those in power realized very quickly that without continued credit growth, their entire corrupt, repugnant, fiat currency based debt system would implode and they would lose all of their fraudulently acquired wealth. That is why total credit market debt is at an all-time high of $56 trillion, and 350% of GDP. The National Debt of $16.5 trillion is now 103% of GDP, well beyond the Rogoff & Reinhart level of 90% that always leads to economic crisis and turmoil.

As Wall Street bankers acted like lemmings leading up to the 2008 financial collapse the famous July 2007 quote from Charles Prince, CEO of Citigroup, summed it up nicely:

“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing,”

Now central bankers across the globe are dancing an Irish Jig. Every major central banker in the world is lemmingly following Bernanke’s lead and printing money at hyper-speed. The Europeans have surpassed the Japanese in their quest to become the first casualty in the coming debt collapse. Bernanke, in his quest to not be outdone, has committed to taking his balance sheet to 25% of GDP within the next year. Japan has vowed not to be outdone. The currency debasement race is gathering steam. The devastation, anger, resentment and ultimately war caused by these bankers will engulf the world when it reaches its apocalyptic ending.   

Will the grain of sand that collapses the pile be a debt ceiling crisis as postulated by Strauss & Howe?

“An impasse over the federal budget reaches a stalemate. The president and Congress both refuse to back down, triggering a near-total government shutdown. The president declares emergency powers. Congress rescinds his authority. Dollar and bond prices plummet. The president threatens to stop Social Security checks. Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Default looms. Wall Street panics.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe – 1996

I don’t think so. The Democrats and Republicans are playing their parts in this theater of the absurd. Neither party has any desire to cut spending, reduce our debt, or secure the future of unborn generations. In 2013, I see the following things happening related to our debt crisis:

  • The debt ceiling will be raised as the toothless Republican Party vows to cut spending next time. The political hacks will create a 3,000 page document of triggers and create a committee to study the issue, with actual measures that slow the growth of annual spending by .000005% starting in 2017.
  • The National Debt will increase by $1.25 trillion and debt to GDP will reach 106% by the end of the fiscal year.
  • The Federal Reserve balance sheet will reach $4 trillion by the end of the year.
  • Consumer debt will reach $2.9 trillion as the Feds accelerate student loans and Ally Financial, along with the other Too Big To Control Wall Street banks, keep pumping out subprime auto loans. By mid-year reported losses on student loans will soar and auto loan delinquencies will show an upturn. This will force a slowdown in consumer debt issuance, exacerbating the recession that started in 2012.
  • The Bakken oil miracle will prove to be nothing more than Wall Street shysters selling a storyline. Daily output will stall at 750,000 barrels per day and the dreams of imminent energy independence will be annihilated by reality, again. The price of oil will average $105 per barrel, as global tensions restrict supply.
  • The home price increases generated through inventory manipulation in 2012 will peter out as 2013 progresses. The market has been flooded by investors. There is very little real demand for new homes. Young households with heavy student loan debt and low paying jobs will continue to rent, since the oligarchs refused to let prices fall to a level that would spur real demand. Mortgage delinquencies will rise as job growth remains stagnant, leading to an increase in foreclosures. Rent prices will flatten as apartment construction and investors flood the market with supply.
  • The disconnect between the stock market and the housing and employment markets will be rectified when the MSM can no longer deny the recession that began in 2012 and will deepen in the first part of 2013. While housing prices languish 30% below their peak levels of 2006, the stock market has prematurely ejaculated back to pre-crisis levels. Declining corporate profits, stagnant consumer spending, and increasing debt defaults will finally result in a 20% decline in the stock market, with a chance for losses greater than 30% if Japan or the EU begin to crumble.

case shiller and stocks

  • Japan is still a bug in search of a windshield. With a debt to GDP ratio of 230%, a population dying off, energy dependence escalating, trade surplus decreasing, an already failed Prime Minister vowing to increase inflation, and rising tensions with China, Japan is a primary candidate to be the first domino to fall in the game of debt chicken. A 2% increase in interest rates would destroy the Japanese economic system.
  • The EU has temporarily delayed the endgame for their failed experiment. Economic conditions in Greece, Spain and Italy worsen by the day with unemployment reaching dangerous revolutionary levels. Pretending countries will pay each other with newly created debt will not solve a debt crisis. They don’t have a liquidity problem. They have a solvency problem. The only people who have been saved by the actions taken so far are bankers and politicians. I believe the crisis will reignite, with interest rates spiking in Spain, Italy and France. The Germans will get fed up with the rest of Europe and the EU will begin to disintegrate.

Civic Decay Accelerates  

“History offers no guarantees. If America plunges into an era of depression or violence which by then has not lifted, we will likely look back on the 1990s as the decade when we valued all the wrong things and made all the wrong choices.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

The liberal minded Op-Ed writers that decry the incivility of dialogue today once again show their ignorance for or contempt for American history. They call for compromise and coming together. They should see Spielberg’s Lincoln to understand the uncompromising nature of Fourth Turnings and how conflicts are resolved. They should watch documentary film of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Guadalcanal during World War II. Compromise and civility do not compute during a Fourth Turning. It is compromise that has brought us to this point. Avoiding tough decisions and delaying action occur during the Unraveling. We’ve known the entitlement issues confronting our nation for over a decade and chose to do nothing. The time for delay and inaction is long gone. The pressing issues of the day will be resolved through collapse, confrontation and bloodshed. It’s the way it has always been done and the way it shall be. The current conflict over banning guns is just a symptom of a bigger disease. Government, at the behest of the owners, has been steadily assuming more power and control over the everyday lives of citizens who just want to be left to live their lives. Government has used propaganda, fear and misinformation to convince large swaths of the populace to voluntarily sacrifice their freedom and liberty for the promise of safety and security. Warrantless surveillance, imprisonment without charges, molestation by TSA agents, military exercises in cities, drones in our skies, cameras watching our every move, overseas torture, undeclared wars, cyber-attacks on sovereign countries, and now the threat of disarmament of the people have all contributed to the darkening skies above. A harsh winter lies ahead.

Civic decay is being driven by two main thrusts. Lack of jobs and destruction of middle class wealth by the oligarchs is resulting in the anger and dismay overwhelming the country. The chart below reveals the truth about our economy and the fraudulent nature of BLS reported data, skewed to paint a false picture. The 25 to 54 year old age bracket captures Americans in their peak earnings years. In 2007 this age bracket had 83% of its members in the labor force and 100.5 million of them employed. Today, according to the BLS, only 81.4% are in the labor force and there are 6.3 million less employed. The BLS has the gall to report that since 2009, even though the number of employed people in this age bracket has declined by 1 million, the number of unemployed people has dropped by 1.5 million people. To report this drivel is beyond laughable. The horrific labor market situation is confirmed by the fact that despite a 3.6 million person increase in this age demographic since 2000, there are 7.8 million more people not employed.

The reduced earnings and savings of the people in this demographic is having profound and long-lasting impact on our society. Household formation, retirement savings, tax revenues, and self-worth are all negatively impacted. The mood of desperation and anger is materializing in this age bracket. The resentment of these people when they see the well-heeled Wall Street set reaping stock market gains and bonuses while they make do on food stamps, extended unemployment and the charity of friends and family is palpable. More than 100% of the employment gains since 2010 have gone to those over the age of 55, further embittering the 25 to 54 workers. There is boiling anger beneath the thin veneer of civility between Millenials, GenXers, and Boomers. The chasm between the ultra-rich and the masses widens by the day and is leading to a seething animosity. The country has lost 2.4 million construction jobs and 2 million manufacturing jobs since 2007, but we’ve added 250,000 fry cook jobs and 440,000 University of Phoenix jobs stimulated by $500 billion in student loans. The complete transformation of a producing society to a consumption society has been accomplished.

stock market and total jobs

When the average person sees Wall Street bankers not only walk away unscathed from the crisis they aided, abetted and created through their fraudulent inducements and documentation, but be further enriched at taxpayer expense, their hatred and disgust with high financers like Corzine, Dimon and Blankfein burns white hot. The mainstream media propaganda machine tries to convince the average Joe that stock market highs and record corporate profits are beneficial to him, even though the gains and profits have been spurred by zero interest rates, fraudulent accounting and outsourcing their jobs to third world slave labor factories. A critical thinking human being (this rules out 95% of the adult population) might question how corporate profits could surpass pre-collapse levels when the economy has remained stagnant.

Shockingly, the entire profit surge was driven by Wall Street. Accounting entries relieving billions of loan loss reserves, earning hundreds of millions in risk free interest courtesy of Bernanke, and falsely valuing your loan portfolio can do wonders for profits. We’ve added 6.9 million finance jobs in the last 20 years as this industry has sucked the lifeblood out of our nation. A country that allows bankers to syphon off 35% of all the profits in the country without producing any benefits to society is destined to fail, with the dire consequences that follow.

My civic decay expectations for 2013 are as follows:

  • Progressive’s attempt to distract the masses from our worsening economic situation with their assault on the 2nd Amendment will fail. Congress will pass no new restrictions on gun ownership and 2013 will see the highest level of gun sales in history.
  • The deepening recession, higher taxes on small businesses and middle class, along with Obamacare mandates will lead to rising unemployment and rising anger with the failed economic policies of the last four years. Protests and rallies will begin to burgeon.
  • The number of people on food stamps will reach 50 million and the number of people on SSDI will reach 11 million. Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, and Jeff Immelt will compensate themselves to the tune of $100 million. CNBC will proclaim an economic recovery based on these facts.
  • The drought will continue in 2013 resulting in higher food prices, ethanol prices, and shipping costs, as transporting goods on the Mississippi River will become further restricted. The misery index for the average American family will reach new highs.
  • There will be assassination attempts on political and business leaders as retribution for their actions during and after the financial crisis.
  • The revelation of more fraud in the financial sector will result in an outcry from the public for justice. Prosecutions will be pursued by State’s attorney generals, as Holder has been captured by Wall Street.
  • The deepening pension crisis in the states will lead to more state worker layoffs and more confrontation between governors attempting to balance budgets and government worker unions. There will be more municipal bankruptcies.
  • The gun issue will further enflame talk of state secession. The red state/blue state divide will grow ever wider. The MSM will aggravate the divisions with vitriolic propaganda.
  • The government will accelerate their surveillance efforts and renew their attempt to monitor, control, and censor the internet. This will result in increased cyber-attacks on government and corporate computer networks in retaliation.

Global Disorder Spreads

“Eventually, all of America’s lesser problems will combine into one giant problem. The very survival of the society will feel at stake, as leaders lead and people follow. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers’ visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

The entire world resembles a powder-keg in a room full of monkeys with matches. As economic conditions worsen around the world the poor, destitute and unemployed increasingly have begun to revolt against their banker masters. Money printing, reporting fraudulent economic data and pretending to make debt payments with newly issued debt does not employ anyone or put food in the mouths of the people. With worldwide unemployment surpassing 200 million, food and energy prices surging, peasants in the Far East treated like slave laborers, politicians stealing from the people to enrich their banker owners, and young people losing hope for a better tomorrow, the likelihood of strikes, protests, armed revolution, and war is high.

The world is about to find out the downside to globalization, as turmoil in Europe or Asia will swiftly impact those in the rest of the world that are interconnected through trade and financial instruments. The trillions of derivatives that link financial institutions across the world will ignite like a string of firecrackers once a spark reaches the fuse. Treaties and alliances between countries will immediately enlarge localized military conflicts into world-wide confrontations. Dwindling supplies of cheap oil and potable water, a changing climate (whether cyclical or human activity based) that is creating droughts, floods and super-storms on a more frequent basis, and religious zealotry set the stage for resource wars and religious wars around the globe and particularly in the Middle East. Fourth Turnings always intensify and ultimately lead to total war, with no compromise and clear winners and losers. The proxy wars that have been waged for the last 60 years will look like kindergarten snack time when the culmination of this Fourth Turning war results in death on a scale that would be considered incomprehensible today. And it will happen within the next fifteen years. The climactic war is still a few years off, but here is what I think will happen in 2013:

  • With new leadership in Japan and China, neither will want to lose face, so early in their new terms. Neither side will back down in their ongoing conflict over islands in the East China Sea. China will shoot down a Japanese aircraft and trade between the countries will halt, leading to further downturns in both of their economies.
  • Worker protests over slave labor conditions in Chinese factories will increase as food price increases hit home on peasants that spend 70% of their pay for food. The new regime will crackdown with brutal measures, but the protests will grow increasingly violent. The economic data showing growth will be discredited by what is happening on the ground. China will come in for a real hard landing. Maybe they can hide the billions of bad debt in some of their vacant cities.
  • Violence and turmoil in Greece will spread to Spain during the early part of the year, with protests and anger spreading to Italy and France later in the year. The EU public relations campaign, built on sandcastles of debt in the sky and false promises of corrupt politicians, will falter by mid-year. Interest rates will begin to spike and the endgame will commence. Greece will depart the EU, with Spain not far behind. The unraveling of debt will plunge all of Europe into depression.
  • Iran will grow increasingly desperate as hyperinflation caused by U.S. economic sanctions provokes the leadership to lash out at its neighbors and unleash cyber-attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities and U.S. corporations. Israel will use the rising tensions as the impetus to finally attack Iranian nuclear facilities. The U.S. will support the attack and Iran will launch missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel in retaliation. The price of oil will spike above $125 per barrel, further deepening the worldwide recession.
  • Syrian President Assad will be ousted and executed by rebels. Syria will fall under the control of Islamic rebels, who will not be friendly to the United States or Israel. Russia will stir up discontent in retaliation for the ouster of their ally.
  • Egypt and Libya will increasingly become Islamic states and will further descend into civil war.
  • The further depletion of the Cantarell oil field will destroy the Mexican economy as it becomes a net energy importer. The drug violence will increase and more illegal immigrants will pour into the U.S. The U.S. will station military troops along the border.
  • Cyber-attacks by China and Iran on government and corporate computer networks will grow increasingly frequent. One or more of these attacks will threaten nuclear power plants, our electrical grid, or the Pentagon.

So now I’m on the record for 2013 and I can be scorned and ridiculed for being such a pessimist when December rolls around and our Ponzi scheme economy hasn’t collapsed. There is no disputing the facts. The economic situation is deteriorating for the average American, the mood of the country is darkening, and the world is awash in debt and turmoil. Every country is attempting to print their way to renewed prosperity. No one wins a race to the bottom. The oligarchs have chosen a path of currency debasement, propping up insolvent banks, propaganda and impoverishing the masses as their preferred course. They attempt to keep the masses distracted with political theater, gun control vitriol, reality TV and iGadgets. What can be said about a society where 10% of the population follows Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga on Twitter and where 50% think the National Debt is a monument in Washington D.C. The country is controlled by evil sycophants, intellectually dishonest toadies and blood sucking leeches. Their lies and deception have held sway for the last four years, but they have only delayed the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. They will not reverse course and believe their intellectual superiority will allow them to retain their control after the collapse.

“Washington has become our Versailles. We are ruled, entertained, and informed by courtiers — and the media has evolved into a class of courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are mostly courtiers. Our pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms, are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games, and the purpose behind its deception.”Chris Hedges

Every day more people are realizing the con-job being perpetuated by the owners of this country. Will the tipping point be reached in 2013? I don’t know. But the era of decisiveness and confrontation has arrived. The people will learn there are consequences to our actions and inaction. The existing social order will be swept away. Are you prepared?

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…” – Winston Churchill

survival seed vault

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE – PART ONE

Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared. For a Few Dollars More

 

“Tell me, isn’t a sheriff supposed to be courageous, loyal and, above all, honest?” – Man with No Name – For a Few Dollars More

Whenever I get an idea for an article I plan to keep it short and sweet. But it never seems to work out that way. Once I start typing, the articles tend to grow exponentially. It happened again with my attempt to make sense of how the United States of America managed to screw our finances up so badly, that an epic collapse is within view to people with their eyes open to facts and the truth. You don’t end up in the predicament we find ourselves in today due to a couple minor mistakes over a short time frame. It took thousands of horrible choices, colossal doses of delusion, a heaping of stupidity, and a mountain of denial over decades to put us on the brink of economic collapse. An unholy amalgamation of demographics, fiat currency, debt, taxes, power and greed have led us to this point. Next we experience collapse, revolution and ultimately, retribution.

Since I’ve identified four major rationales for our impending doom, I’ve decided to write a four part series that can be read in small doses, rather than one enormous article. I don’t want anyone to miss tonight’s episode of Dancing With the Stars, get distracted from the Royal Wedding preparations, or skip the best reality TV show ever – Ben Bernanke’s press conference, while reading an 8,000 word article about the end of America. The four part series will have a Clint Eastwood theme. For a Few Dollars More will address the Baby Boomer impact on America’s decline. A Fistful of Dollars will examine how the creation of the Federal Reserve and the income tax in 1913 set us on a path to ruin. Outlaw Josey Wales will scrutinize the looting of America by a small group of powerful, connected, super rich men lurking in the shadows, but pulling the strings on our puppet politicians. Lastly, Unforgiven  will detail the impending collapse of our economic system and the retribution that will be handed out to the guilty.

Over the last few weeks there seems to be consensus among many financial bloggers, whose credibility is far more trustworthy than the corporate mainstream media, that the country is teetering on the verge of economic collapse due to the complete capture of the government, financial, regulatory, and media by a small group of oligarchs. They have also been described as the super rich, plutarchs, ruling elite, and scum sucking leeches. The bloggers that I have the utmost respect for, including Jesse, Charles Hugh Smith, Mike Shedlock, Yves Smith and Gonzalo Lira have all come to the logical conclusion the horrific economic situation of the country is a direct result of the greed, corruption, fraud, and plundering by a powerful connected group of rich financiers operating without fear of being brought to justice by the authorities.

While pondering the ruminations of these dedicated truth tellers, I was reminded of the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western For a Few Dollars More. The quotes above are representative of living in the USA today. There are supposed to be courageous, loyal and honest sheriffs that protect the citizens from crime, corruption and evil doers. But, just as we saw in the Old West of Clint Eastwood movies, the sheriffs are always corrupt and bought off by the evil cattle barons. In a world where life has no value and you can’t rely on law enforcement to protect your interests, the citizens eventually will need to turn to bounty hunters to take care of the bad guys. The bounty hunters of truth reside on the internet. They reside at Zero Hedge, Jesse’s Café Americain, Of Two Minds, Mish, Chris Martenson, and dozens of other anarchist websites. When you can’t trust your government, your bankers, your church, your media, or mega-corporate CEOs, you need to seek the truth where it can be found. The insightful bloggers who courageously print the truth on a daily basis have unanimously concluded that a small band of powerful elite have accumulated undue influence and control over this country, having brought it to the verge of economic collapse. How did this happen? Who is responsible? Why were they permitted to gain this power?

Boomers Come of Age

“If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.” – Howard Zinn

Whenever I direct any blame for our economic woes towards the Baby Boom generation they react as expected. They blame the GI Generation for creating the welfare state. They declare that Generation X and the Millenials are just as greedy and self centered as the Boomers. Boomers are great at blaming, ridiculing and acting pompously, while taking no responsibility for their actions and more importantly their inaction. This generation cannot avoid their responsibility for the state of affairs. They like to take credit for their stand against the Vietnam War and their protests against the man during the 1960s. They don’t like to take credit for turning into materialistic, greedy, selfish, short-term focused bastards. When a generation of 76 million people decides to go in a particular direction, the country will go in that direction. While blaming FDR and the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy for creating the unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities, the Boomers have been voting since the mid-1960s and have been in control of corporate America and the levers of government since the early 1980s.

The U.S. Congress is dominated by Baby Boomers today and has been dominated by this generation since the 1990s. The Senate has 60 Boomers out of 100, while the House of Representatives has 254 Boomers out of 435 members. Boomers occupied the White House from 1992 through 2008. They have had the political power and control of the agenda for two decades and have failed miserably. Rather than do what was best for the country for the long-term, they took the expedient, easy, vote getting route. Promise more than you could ever deliver and let future generations worry about the consequences. Not one true noble statesman has arisen from this generation of myopic, self centered “Me Generation” political hacks. Even as the country nears the precipice, they continue to address the great issues of the day with talking points supplied by other Baby Boomer PR maggots from Park Avenue. These weasels care not for the country, but worry only about poll numbers and the next election cycle. An apathetic public, dominated by the Baby Boom generation, has the attention span of a gnat. As long as they can make the lease payment on their Escalade, use one of their 15 credit cards at the Mall, be entertained by 600 cable TV stations, play with the latest iSomething, live in their McMansion for two years without making a mortgage payment and consume massive quantities of fast food, then any thoughts of future generations or civic duty are unnecessary. Live for today has been the rallying cry for the Boomer generation. Pot was their drug during the 1960s. Debt has been their drug since 1980.

The drug (debt) dealer for the Baby Boom generation has been the Wall Street mega-banks, coincidentally, run by Boomers. The entire corrupt financial industry is being run by Boomers. The CEOs, CFOs, and the thousands of Harvard MBA VPs that created the fraudulent derivative scheme to bilk billions from clueless municipalities, pension funds and American taxpayers are all Boomers. It is no coincidence that the great debt delusion began in the early 1980’s. Jim Kunstler captured the essence of Boomer transformation:

“The Baby Boomers came back from the land, clipped their pony tails, discovered venture capital, real estate investment trusts, securitization of “consumer” debt, and the Hamptons. Greed was good.”

The Boomer CEO hall of scam has been built on the brilliance and financial acumen of Lloyd (god’s work) Blankfein, Charlie (keep dancing) Prince, Jamie (friend of Obama) Dimon, and the king of the Boomers, Hank (the system is sound) Paulson. These mainstays of crony capitalism led the Boomer charge of greed, greed and more greed. The Baby Boomer generation has been the proverbial pig in a python working its way through the decades as presented below. By 1985, Boomers had entered the work force in full force with the entire generation between the ages of 25 and 42. It will be a great day when the python craps this pig of a generation out the other end.

It is not a coincidence the National Debt growth has far outstripped GDP growth since 1980. Boomers had been spoiled their whole lives and felt they deserved the goodies today while passing the bill to future generations. They voted for politicians who promised them more benefits, more programs, more subsidies, more tax breaks, more military adventures, and more pleasure. And this was “paid for” with more debt. Thirty five years of government debt declining as a percentage of GDP was reversed over the next thirty years starting in 1980, pushing it past the 90% tipping point in the last year. The country is over-indebted to the tune of $9 trillion on a current basis and $100 trillion on a long term accrual basis.

There is no better picture of Boomer decadence and myopia than an historical view of the national savings rate. The parents of the Boomers understood the meaning of sacrifice and investing in the future of the country. During World War II they bought US War Bonds to support the cause. From 1950 through 1985, the savings rate consistently ranged between 7% and 12%. Americans had this odd notion that if you saved more than you spent, you actually got ahead in life. Excess savings were used to invest in new plants and equipment that were used to produce goods and employ more Americans. By 1985, the Boomers considered these notions as quaint and old fashioned. The savings rate methodically declined until it went negative in 2006, just prior to the worldwide financial conflagration. Our inspirational Boomer president George (Mission Accomplished) Bush while waging two wars of choice, asked for the ultimate sacrifice from the Boomers. He solemnly urged them to buy a GM SUV with $0 down and 0% interest for 7 years, so we could defeat the terrorists. The Boomers who ran GMAC were more than happy to make loans to people with no income so they could “purchase” a $40,000 ostentatious gas guzzling hog. They were doing their patriotic duty for the good of the nation. It brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it.

The Boomers not only heeded George’s call, but they did him proud by buying 8,000 sq ft McMansions with $0 down and negative amortization ARMs. Luckily, the executives at the mortgage origination sweatshops were Boomers. They found no good reason to verify income or assets before loaning someone $600,000, because they knew their fellow Boomers at the rating agencies would rate the bundles of these toxic shit loans as AAA so the Boomers on Wall Street could sell them to greater fools. GMAC’s exemplary subprime mortgage arm – Ditech, did a bang up job getting migrant Mexican workers into $450,000 homes in California’s inland empire. As the tsunami of bad debt swept toward shore, delusional Boomers across the land borrowed $500 billion against the inflated value of their McMansions and installed granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, home theatres, elegant patios, Olympic sized pools, and with the excess home equity, leased a BMW or two. The first devastating tsunami wave hit in 2008 and wiped out billions in faux Boomer wealth. Instead of learning a brutal lesson and reverting back to saving and frugality, the “never say sacrifice” Boomers ventured out to where the waves had subsided looking for more trinkets and treasures.

Tsunami Warning by Mobile Phone

The next tsunami wave is on its way. The delusional Boomers will be surprised again.

The Boomer persona has been formed over the last five decades and the country will deal with the consequences for decades to come. The clean cut Beaver Cleaver children of the 1950s turned into the pot smoking Dobie Gillis of the 1960’s, then into the slimy Gordon Gekkos of the 1980s and ultimately into the eternal wealth seeking Gollums of today.

 

  

This Boomer debt orgy over the last thirty years would have made Caligula blush. Of course, none of this could have happened without the Creature from Jekyll Island. I will address this aspect of our fate in Fistful of Dollars – Part Two.

Now for the righteous indignation from the Boomers that think I have unfairly lumped them all together as one. Their reactions are predictable. Even though they have had the means, the power and the time to reverse the course of USS Titanic, they plowed full steam ahead into the abyss. The GI Generation is dead. Generation X doesn’t hold the reins of power. The Boomer generation needs to look in the mirror to recognize who is to blame.  I’m sure there are a few good Boomers out there somewhere, but as a generation they have failed this country and our unborn generations miserably.

ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

Americans have an illogical love affair with their vehicles. There are 209 million licensed drivers in the U.S. and 260 million vehicles. The U.S. has a higher number of motor vehicles per capita than every country in the world at 845 per 1,000 people. Germany has 540; Japan has 593; Britain has 525; and China has 37. The population of the United States has risen from 203 million in 1970 to 311 million today, an increase of 108 million in 42 years. Over this same time frame, the number of motor vehicles on our crumbling highways has grown by 150 million. This might explain why a country that has 4.5% of the world’s population consumes 22% of the world’s daily oil supply. This might also further explain the Iraq War, the Afghanistan occupation, the Libyan “intervention”, and the coming war with Iran.

Automobiles have been a vital component in the financial Ponzi scheme that has passed for our economic system over the last thirty years. For most of the past thirty years annual vehicle sales have ranged between 15 million and 20 million, with only occasional drops below that level during recessions. They actually surged during the 2001-2002 recession as Americans dutifully obeyed their moron President and bought millions of monster SUVs, Hummers, and Silverado pickups with 0% financing from GM to defeat terrorism. Alan Greenspan provided the fuel, with ridiculously low interest rates. The Madison Avenue media maggots provided the transmission fluid by convincing millions of willfully ignorant Americans to buy or lease vehicles they couldn’t afford. And the financially clueless dupes pushed the pedal to the metal, until everyone went off the cliff in 2008.

America is proving itself to be insane as described by Albert Einstein:

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The 2008 cataclysm was created by the voracious greed and avarice of Wall Street, sustained by corrupt politicians in Washington, non-existent regulation by banking regulators, Federal Reserve easy money policies, unspoken guarantees of Fed bailouts if Wall Street excess risk taking blew up, and millions of delusional Americans with an unlimited credit line. Excessive debt created the problem. Adding debt is the present solution to the problem. And the accumulation of debt will lead to a tipping point that destroys the U.S. dollar and topples the Great American Empire.

This spiral of government sponsored debt financed debacles has shockingly accelerated as we have supposedly been experiencing an economic recovery for the last two years. The 2008 financial meltdown was the result of too much debt peddled to too many people who never had the means or intentions to repay the debt. The Wall Street peddlers of debt didn’t care if it got repaid because they had already packaged it, bribed Moodys and S&P to rate the toxic garbage as AAA, and sold it to their “clients”. Then they made derivatives bets that it wouldn’t be repaid and raked in billions more as their Ponzi scheme unwound. There was just one problem with their master plan. The Wall Street titans made their derivate weapons of mass destruction so complicated and confusing that their own evil organizations of Harvard MBAs didn’t understand them. Enough hubristic CEOs existed at enough financial firms (AIG, Lehman, Bear Stearns, Citicorp) to bring the entire system crashing down as the toxic derivatives intertwined every major institution in the worldwide banking cabal.

What has happened since those dark days of 2008 is mind blowing in its epic proportions and epic stupidity. To quote Doug Casey, “Not only haven’t we done the right thing, we’ve done the exact opposite of the right thing.” It is absurd and ultimately suicidal to cure a debt disease by administering massive doses of more debt. But that is exactly what those in power have done. The National Debt has risen from a $9.7 trillion to $15.6 trillion, a 61% increase in three and a half years, while our real GDP has grown by $244 billion, a 1.9% increase. Not exactly a fabulous return on investment. But at least there are 7 million less people employed today than there were at the peak in 2008. Plus, senior citizens and middle class savers have seen $450 billion of annual interest income they were earning in 2008 pilfered from their savings accounts and handed to the Wall Street banking elite through Ben Bernanke’s ZIRP.

The Federal Reserve has tripled their balance sheet (actually your liability) from $950 billion to $2.9 trillion. Various other Federal government controlled bureaucracies (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA) have stealthily subsidized hundreds of billions in losses on behalf of the criminal Wall Street banks. Other Federal government run agencies (BLS, BEA, CBO) exist solely to massage, manipulate, misuse, and malign economic data and financial projections in order to muddle, misinform and mislead the American people about the true nature of our ongoing economic calamity. Propaganda and obfuscation are the scheme of choice by the powers that be. They are counting on decades of government run public education to insure that millions of non-critical thinking dullards will be unqualified or uninterested in the truth about our grim economic prospects. The oligarchy’s master plan has centered on houses, automobiles, and the illusion of a jobs recovery.

Whenever I’m trying to understand the motivations of the sociopathic Washington politicians, Wall Street bankers and mega-corporation CEOs, I always come back to the words of master manipulator Edward Bernays:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

The relatively small number of wealthy men thinks they are smarter than the masses and can manipulate them through their control of the government, the financial system and the media. The players in this game remain the same, but they have switched positions. The debt accumulation which led to the 2008 collapse was heavily concentrated on the books of the ruthless Wall Street psychopathic banks and on the backs of a readily pliable public. Today, the Federal government and the Federal Reserve have switched positions with their banker puppet masters, essentially shifting all past and future debt onto the backs of the American middle class. The Federal Reserve Flow of Funds Report, issued two weeks ago, reveals the extent of this blatant scheme to screw the American people in order to save and further enrich the Wall Street psychopaths who won’t be satisfied until their looting and pillaging leads to complete collapse and the world erupting into a world war. The despicable facts are as follows:

  • Total U.S. credit market debt has RISEN from $50.9 trillion in 2007 to $54.1 trillion as of 12/31/11, a $3.2 trillion increase.
  • Household debt has declined from $13.8 trillion in 2007 to $13.2 trillion as of 12/31/11. The mainstream media would point to this $600 billion decline as proof that Americans have embraced austerity and have learned their lesson. Of course that would be a lie. The Wall Street banks have written off $200 billion of credit card debt and the 5 million completed foreclosures extinguished another $800 billion of mortgage debt. The truth is that consumers have continued to pile up debt.
  • Much has been made of corporate America being flush with cash. If they are so flush, why have they added $900 billion of debt since 2007, an increase of 13% to an all-time high of $7.8 trillion?
  • The revealing data shows up in the financial company data. These Wall Street national treasures have reduced their debt from $17.1 trillion in 2008 to $13.6 trillion as of 12/31/11. How were they able to do this, while writing off $1 trillion of consumer debt?
  • You guessed it. They dumped it on the American taxpayer. The Federal government increased their debt from $5.1 trillion to $10.5 trillion. And our old friends called government sponsored enterprises (Fannie, Freddie, Student loans) increased their debt from $2.9 trillion to $6.2 trillion. Wall Street banks and millions of deadbeats who chose to game the system and live the good life have effectively foisted their $4.5 trillion of debt upon the backs of middle class taxpayers who lived within their means. Another $4.2 trillion has been pissed down the toilet by Obama with his $800 billion Keynesian porkulus program, home buyer tax credits, cash for clunkers, green energy boondoggles, 47 million people on food stamps success story, 99 weeks of unemployment, doubling of SSDI membership, and his multiple wars of choice in the Middle East.

The average hard working, taxpaying American has been enslaved in debt of such proportions that they will never be able pay it off. Your share of the $15.6 trillion National Debt is now $50,000, and growing by $4,500 per year. Your share of the future unfunded liabilities, created by the people you elected, is approximately $350,000. This crushing burden is in addition to the $13.8 trillion of mortgage, credit card, student loan, and auto loan debt Americans have accumulated in the last three decades of delusion. Forty percent of all credit card users do not pay-off their credit card every month and carry an average balance of $16,000 at an average interest rate of 15%. Good to see the Wall Street banks passing along some of their 0% borrowing windfall to their “customers”.

Source: TF Metals Report     

Pedal to the Metal

You may have noticed the corporate mainstream media, crooked politicians and lying Wall Street shills attempting to pound the economic recovery storyline into the consciousness of a terminally distracted populace. This is part of the Bernays inspired master plan of a small cabal of powerful men to control the public mind and keep our mass consumer society functioning smoothly so these corporate fascists can continue to gorge upon the carcass of a once vital republic. Decades of mass media consumer indoctrination, dumbing down of children through public school education and the conscious manipulation of attitudes and opinions of the malleable masses has succeeded. The invisible government of the rich and powerful has effectively converted responsible citizens into mindless consumers of products, bought with debt, peddled by associates of the invisible government. The crowded shopping malls, automobile showrooms, and restaurants are a testament to the power of propaganda and the intellectual bankruptcy of a vast swath of the American population.

Only psychopaths would encourage and condone behavior that would financially enrich themselves while destroying the lives and personal wealth of millions. The invisible government (Wall Street bankers, D.C. political hacks, mega-corporate executives, mass media titans) exhibits all the traits of a psychopath as described in a recent Harvard Business Review article:

  • Glibness and superficial charm
  • Lack of empathy
  • Consistent decisions in their self-interest, even where it is ethically questionable
  • Chronic, sometimes transparent lies, even with regard to minor things
  • Lack of remorse
  • Failure to take responsibility for their actions, and instead blaming others
  • Shallow emotions
  • Ignoring responsibilities
  • Persistent focus on gratifying their own needs at the expense of others
  • Conning and manipulative behavior

Do you recognize any of these traits in our president (Obama), congressmen (Weiner, McCain) Wall Street bankers (Dimon, Blankfein), corporate CEOs (Immelt), and mass media titans (Murdoch)? These people and many more like them will stop at nothing to further their self-serving agenda. They are intelligent and highly skilled at lying and manipulation. They lack empathy and don’t care what others think as they relentlessly pursue riches and power no matter the damage they inflict upon the people they so casually abuse, scorn and look down on. These are the people attempting to convince you that the path to economic recovery is through increased spending by consumers, utilizing debt supplied by them.

The entire recovery theme is a sham, financed by the Federal government with your tax dollars and the tax dollars of future unborn generations. I’ve arrived at this conclusion after pondering what I’ve been seeing with my own two eyes and through the insightful analysis found in the non-mainstream media (Zero Hedge, Jesse, Mish and many others). The mantra being pounded relentlessly by the mainstream media is that retail sales are booming and the unemployment rate has declined significantly, therefore an economic recovery is at hand. The chart below reveals the dramatic surge in vehicle “sales”. The annual pace is all the way back to 15 million, from the low below 10 million in 2009. The brief surge in mid-2009 was due to Obama’s highly successful Cash for Clunkers program that cost taxpayers $2.8 billion or $24,000 per car sold. It was highly successful for Government Motors (GM) and their union workers (Obama voters).

This rapid surge in auto sales has also resulted in a boost to overall retail sales, which have reached an all-time high. Automobile “sales” make up 18% of the retail sales number, by far the largest segment. The “record” retail sales are the result of surging gasoline sales, swelling food inflation, and a somewhat confusing cascade of car sales. It’s somewhat confusing until you realize how and why the 50% rise in vehicle sales has been accomplished by our Bernaysian masters. Retail sales in the first two months of 2012 are up 8.2%, led by a 9.2% wave of motor vehicle sales. Auto sales are at levels last seen in early 2008. This seems peculiar, since there are still 7 million less employed people in the country than in early 2008 and the real median household income is 9% lower than it was in early 2008. Real average hourly earnings have fallen for the last three months and are 1.2% lower than they were in October, 2010. A critical thinking person might ask himself, how could American households with less jobs and lower wages increase their purchases of automobiles by 50% in the last two years?

The answer is just what you expected. A phenomenal amount of debt peddled to people without the means or intent to ever repay the debt by the usual suspects: Ally Financial, Capital One, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and Bank of America. These fine upstanding institutions control 25% of the auto loan market. They doled out $24 billion of new car loans in the 4th quarter of 2011, with an outpouring of loans to those downtrodden subprime borrowers and an extension in the average loan length beyond 6 years. Subprime borrowers now account for 45% of all auto loans. As a refresher, subprime borrowers generally have little or no assets, have a history of late payments or defaulting on obligations, and have low incomes. No worries there. When has making hundreds of billions in subprime loans ever caused a problem before. Ally Financial CEO Michael Carpenter had this to say about the market:

“We have seen crazy, irrational competition in the subprime end of the marketplace, which is one reason why more banks are targeting the lower end of the market.”

Bank of America and Capital One increased their market shares of the auto loan market by 40% in the 4th quarter as they attempt to keep up with Ally Financial in reckless lending to deadbeats. If you aren’t familiar with Ally Financial, then you should be. You own 74% of this POS. Here is a brief summary:

  • GMAC, after contributing mightily to the financial crash of 2008 through their reckless subprime mortgage (Ditech) and auto lending and requiring a $16 billion bailout from American taxpayers, changed its name to Ally Financial in 2009. It’s sort of like John Dillinger using acid to try and change his fingerprints.
  • Ally Financial provides financing for all GM and Chrysler customers and dealers and is the market share leader in auto lending.
  • Ally Financial still owes the American taxpayers $12 billion.
  • Ally Financial is a ward of the Federal government and will do anything it is told to do by Obama. The recent foreclosure fraud settlement required Ally to pay $250 million to the customers it defrauded. They will only pay $110 million based on their inability to pay $250 million. Sounds like a company that should be increasing their subprime loan portfolio. Obama and his minions instead received a commitment from a lender they own and control to cut principal for delinquent borrowers and refinance underwater borrowers. And Obama didn’t even offer us a cigarette afterwards.
  • Ally Financial, along with Capital One, failed the Federal Reserve stress test last week. Ally, Capital One, Bank of America, and Citicorp are dead banks walking. Brilliant bank analyst Chris Whelan succinctly sums up their fate after analyzing the Federal Reserve stress test results:

“When you get to junior liens and HELOCs you will understand why I have been saying that Ally Financial and BAC need to be restructured. With a plus 20% loss rate on second liens, Ally has substantial capital issues to put it mildly. But look at C right behind them with a loss rate in the mid-teens followed by BAC. Yikes. This type of loss rate is typical for credit cards and both of these second lien portfolios are > $100 billion.

And the real lesson, dead friends, is that the good old USA is a subprime nation, a society of individuals whose aggregate probability of default is probably around a “B” to “CCC.” Convert the loss rates in the stress tests to bond ratings using the break points from Moody’s or S&P and tell me what you see.

Last point on Ally Financial: Yikes. Probably the weakest results of the whole group. Memo to POTUS: File Ch. 11, sell auto biz and bank to GM in 365 sale. Liquidate ResCap. Declare success. But do not be surprised if BAC follows if Ally goes into bankruptcy. The one thing that the Fed almost completely ignores is the vast financial risk facing BAC and Ally, and to a lesser degree, WFC, JPM and C.”

When you understand this background, anecdotal evidence that seems absurd starts to make sense. I spend two hours per day on the road and have plenty of time to observe my surroundings. I drive through the Mantua section of West Philadelphia every day. The average household income in this neighborhood is $16,000. The average home value is $25,000. The true unemployment rate exceeds 40%. At least 20% of the properties are vacant and the neighborhood resembles Baghdad. Last week, I counted six brand new vehicles with registration tags in their back windows in a one block radius of this neighborhood. Every block has newer model Ford Expeditions, GMC Sierras, BMWs, Acuras, Cadillacs, and Mercedes sprinkled among the squalor. Someone is loaning these people the money to buy these $40,000 vehicles or approving them for leases. This neighborhood puts the SUB in subprime. No financial firm worth spit would make a six year $35,000 auto loan to someone in this neighborhood unless they were instructed to do so by the Federal government or were guaranteed that the future loss would be borne by someone else – YOU.

The GM, Chevy and Chrysler car dealer ads in my local paper actually have the following headline in bold:

Have credit problems? NO PROBLEM

Most of the ads don’t even list the prices of the vehicles. They either tout the 72 month 0% financing or they list the monthly lease cost. It seems that virtually any vehicle can be leased for $300 per month or less these days. This might explain why 25% of all vehicles are leased today. In reality, 25% of the cars being “sold” today are really just being rented for three years. Both the lessors and lessees are basing these transactions upon delusions and assumptions which will likely blow up in their faces and again cost – YOU.

An auto lease payment is based upon interest rates, the cost of the car, subsidies from the auto makers, and the expected residual value of the vehicle at the end of the three year lease. When have financial companies ever miscalculated any of these assumptions? How about 2001-2002 and 2008-2009? The reason auto leases are ridiculously low is because Ben Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy is providing free money to Ally Financial and the rest of the Wall Street zombie banks and creating huge mal-investment – Again. The auto makers see no risks, as the used car market has been extremely strong for the last year and they anticipate continued strong demand for cars as they come off their three year leases. Therefore, they have estimated the residual values three years out at a very high level. The strong used car market may have been slightly impacted by the destruction of 700,000 vehicles under Obama’s Cash for Clunkers debacle. The combination of excessively low interest rates and excessively high residual value estimates leads to ridiculously low lease rates. The sales statistics for the first two months of 2012 reveal why this will blow up in the faces of lessors and the predictably incompetent financial drug dealers.

Feb-12

% Chg Feb’11 YTD 2012
Cars

612,145

23.9

1,080,466

Midsize

304,601

25.6

532,818

Small

225,061

26.5

397,838

Luxury

81,476

22.7

147,647

Large

1,007

-85.8

2,163

Light-duty trucks

537,251

7.6

982,217

Pickup

148,956

13.8

273,430

Cross-over

225,621

0.4

412,974

Minivan

64,849

15.3

111,764

Midsize SUV

54,827

15.3

101,813

Large SUV

16,783

-5.4

31,566

Small SUV

13,926

24

25,951

Luxury SUV

12,289

12.4

24,719

 

It seems the delusional American public and their love affair with big SUVs, pickups, and their 8 cylinder luxury wheels will continue until they are hit over the head with the baseball bat of $5 a gallon gas. The Madison Avenue Bernays disciples have molded the minds and formed the opinions of millions of easily influenced, financially ignorant superficial Americans into believing the vehicle they drive is a true measurement of success. These people choose being up to their eyeballs in auto debt or perennial renters of luxury vehicles to appear prosperous to their neighbors and coworkers rather than actually achieving real success through the time honored tradition of earning more than you spend and saving the difference. The fact is that 80% of all the vehicles being sold in the U.S. are SUVs, pickups, crossovers, minivans, and larger cars that get 25 mpg or less.

As gas prices continue to rise towards $5 per gallon, a war with Iran looming in the near future, interest rates beginning to rise, and the country headed back into recession (MSM is wrong about the recovery), the car makers are poised to again experience enormous losses. Auto makers will have a sense of déjà vu as they have committed an epic blunder by overestimating the future value of the gas guzzlers they have been leasing. As a result, when the leases expire and auto makers take back the SUVs and pickups that get 15 mpg and attempt to resell them, the losses will run into the billions of dollars. There will be no one buying used gas guzzlers, with gas costing $5 per gallon. As the millions of subprime borrowers realize they can’t afford car payments, paying 40% more for gas, and trying to put food on the table, auto loan delinquencies will soar. This is as predictable as the housing market collapse in 2005. None of this matters to the psychotic governing elite who only care about the illusion of recovery today. These vampire squids will not be satisfied until every drop of blood is sucked out of the national carcass.

Ally Financial is part of the Federal Government and is being used to promote the agenda of the governing elite. They join Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal student loan peddlers as the primary tools of the corporate fascist powers that control this country. The nominal private ownership of these companies is a sham, as the state dictates how they will be run and who they will benefit. This corporate fascist empire is built upon an unholy alliance between big banks, big business, big media and big government, with each protecting and enriching each other. The psychopaths who are drawn to these organizations want to control people. They desire power, wealth, and the ability to manipulate public opinion. Their tactics include spreading fear and an atmosphere of paranoia in order to convince the populace that more government action will improve their lives. We are headed towards economic and financial collapse as these psychopaths will never willingly reverse course and the majority of our population has become so degraded (have you been to a Wal-Mart lately) that they are incapable or unwilling to confront the psychopaths.

Doug Casey in the latest Casey Report explains how evil and stupidity are a deadly combination:

“I would like to suggest that what really distinguishes political elites from normal people is not just a predilection for stupidity but a real capacity for evil. Evil might best be defined as the intentional and usually gratuitous commission of acts that are cruel or unjust. A person who commits many evil acts is a sociopath. The sociopaths who are naturally drawn to government eventually come to dominate it. They’re very dangerous people. They reset the social mores of the country they control. After a certain point, a critical mass is reached, and it’s GAME OVER. I suspect we’re approaching that point.”

The next time you hear a government drone, Wall Street shyster, or corporate mainstream media whore declare we are experiencing an economic recovery try not to laugh out loud. Their agenda doesn’t include making your life better. You are not in the club. Prepare accordingly.  



 

THE BEST LOOKING HORSE IN THE GLUE FACTORY

“Believe me, the next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar, the rejection of the dollar is a big, big event, and then your personal liberties are going to be severely threatened.” Ron Paul

As usual the MSM did its usual superficial dog and pony show for the American public on Saturday and Sunday. The overall tone on every show (not journalism) was to calm the audience. Every station had a “downgrade special” to explain why you shouldn’t panic over the downgrade of the United States. As we can see, it didn’t work. Worldwide markets went berserk. The reactions of the various players in this saga have been very enlightening to say the least.

As I watched, listened and read the views of hundreds of people over the last few days, I recalled a statement by David Walker in the documentary I.O.U.S.A. This documentary was made in late 2007 before the financial crisis hit. The documentary follows Walker, the former head of the GAO, and Bob Bixby, head of the Concord Coalition, on their Fiscal Wake Up tour.

In the film, Walker tells the audience: “We suffer from a fiscal cancer. If we don’t treat it there will be catastrophic consequences.” He argued the greatest threat to America was not a terrorist squatting in a cave in Afghanistan, but the US debt mountain. He was nervous about the increasing dependence on countries such as China, which are the biggest holders of US Treasury bonds. Bixby explained: “If you knew a levee was unsound and people were moving into that area, would you do nothing? Of course not.” These men were sounding the alarm when our National Debt was $9 trillion. Evidently, no one in Washington DC went to see the movie. They’ve added $5.5 trillion of debt to our Mount Everest of obligations.

After listening to the shills, shysters, propagandists, and paid representatives of the vested interests over the last few days, Mr. Walker’s response to someone pointing out Europe and other countries were in worse shape than the U.S. came to mind:

“What good does it do to be the best-looking horse in the glue factory?”

At the end of the documentary there was a prestigious panel of thought leaders discussing ideas to alter the country from its unsustainable fiscal path. I was shocked when Warren Buffett basically stated there was nothing to worry about:

“I’m going to be the token Pollyanna here. There is no question that our children will live better than we did. But it’s just like my investments. I try to buy shares in companies that are so wonderful, an idiot could run them, and sooner or later one will. Our country is a bit like that.”

Buffett has since turned into a Wall Street/Washington apologist, talking his book. He declared this weekend the US deserves a quadruple A rating. He has tried to protect his investments in GE, Goldman Sachs, Moodys and Wells Fargo by declaring their businesses as sound and their balance sheets clean. He is now just a standard issue sellout spewing whatever will protect his vast fortune. Truth is now optional in Buffett World.

The Oracle of Omaha has continuously bad mouthed gold and pumped up the economic prospects for the U.S. He trashed gold in his March 2011 report to shareholders:

“Gold is a way of going long on fear, and it has been a pretty good way of going long on fear from time to time. But you really have to hope people become more afraid in a year or two years than they are now. And if they become more afraid you make money, if they become less afraid you lose money, but the gold itself doesn’t produce anything.”

I guess the leadership of this country has created a bit of fear in the market, as gold has risen from $1,400 to $1,750 and Warren’s beloved financial holdings have tanked, along with the stock price of Berkshire Hathaway (down 23% since March). There seems to be an inverse relationship between the barbarous relic and lying old men shilling for the vested interests.

Vested Interests

When you watch the corporate mainstream media, or read a corporate run newspaper, or go to a corporate owned internet site you are going to get a view that is skewed to the perspective of the corporate owners. What all Americans must understand is everyone they see on TV or read in the mainstream press are part of the status quo. These people have all gotten rich under the current social and economic structure. Buffett, Kudlow, Cramer, Bartiromo, Senators, investment managers, Bill Gross, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, Jeff Immelt, and every person paraded on TV have a vested interest in propping up the existing structure. They are talking their book and their own best interests. Even though history has proven time and again the existing social order gets swept away like debris in a tsunami wave, the vested interests try to cling to their power, influence and wealth. Those benefitting from the existing economic structure will lie, obfuscate, misdirect, and use propaganda and misinformation to retain their positions.

The establishment will seek to blame others, fear monger and avoid responsibility for their actions. Ron Paul plainly explains why the US was downgraded:

“We were downgraded because of years of reckless spending, not because concerned Americans demanded we get our finances in order. The Washington establishment has spent us into near default and now a downgrade, and here they are again trying to escape responsibility for their negligence in handling the economy.”

The standard talking points you have heard or will hear from the vested interests include:

  • Stocks are undervalued based on forward PE ratios.
  • Ignore the volatility in the market because stocks always go up in the long run.
  • Buy the f$%ing dip.
  • America is not going into recession.
  • The market is dropping because the Tea Party held the country hostage.
  • The S&P downgrade is meaningless because they rated toxic subprime mortgages AAA in 2005 – 2007.
  • The market is dropping because the debt ceiling deal will crush the economy with the horrific austerity measures.
  • The S&P downgrade is meaningless because Treasury rates declined after the downgrade.
  • Foreigners will continue to buy our debt because they have no other options.
  • Foreigners will continue to invest in the U.S. because Europe, Japan and China are in worse shape than the U.S.
  • America is still the greatest economy on the planet and the safest place to invest.

Each of these storylines is being used on a daily basis by the vested interests as they try to pull the wool over the eyes of average Americans. A smattering of truth is interspersed with lies to convince the non-thinking public their existing delusional beliefs are still valid. The storylines are false.

Here are some basic truths the vested interests don’t want you to understand:

  • As of two weeks ago the stock market was 40% overvalued based upon normalized S&P earnings and was priced to deliver 3% annual returns over the next decade. The S&P 500 has lost 17%, meaning it is only 23% overvalued. Truthful analysts John Hussman, Jeremy Grantham and Robert Shiller were all in agreement about the market being 40% overvalued. This decline is not a buying opportunity.
  • The S&P 500 was trading at 1,119 on April 2, 1998. The S&P 500 closed at 1,119 yesterday. In March 2000 the S&P 500 traded at 1,527. By my calculation, the stock market is 27% below its peak eleven years ago. As you can see, stocks always go up in the long run. It is just depends on your definition of long.
  • The talking heads on CNBC told you to buy the dip from October 2007 through until March 2009. The result was a 50% loss of your wealth.
  • The government will report the onset of recession six months after it has already begun. People who live in the real world (not NYC or Washington DC) know the country has been in recession for the last seven months. The CNBC pundits don’t want to admit we are in a recession because they know the stock market drops 40% during recessions on average and don’t want you to sell before they do.
  • The stock market held up remarkably well during the debt ceiling fight. It did not begin to plunge until Obama signed the toothless joke of a bill that doesn’t “cut” one dime of spending. The markets realized  the politicians in Washington DC will never cut spending. The National Debt will rise from $14.5 trillion to $20 trillion by 2015 and to $25 trillion by 2021, even with the supposed austere spending “cuts”.

 

  • The left wing media and the frothing at the mouth leaders of the Democratic Party have conducted focus groups and concluded that blaming the extreme, terrorist Tea Party for the stock market crash and the S&P downgrade plays well to their hate mongering ignorant base. They have rolled out their rabid dogs, Joe “gaffe machine” Biden, Howard “AYAHHHHHH!!!” Dean and John “ketchup” Kerry, to eviscerate the Tea Party terrorists.

  • The mainstream liberal media would like you to believe the Tea Party is an actual cohesive group that wants to throw grandmothers and the poverty stricken under the bus. The neo-cons in the Republican Party and their mouthpieces on Fox News have tried to co-opt the Tea Party movement for their purposes. There is no one Tea Party. It is a movement born of frustration with an out of control government. Ron Paul represented the Tea Party before it even existed and is the intellectual leader of the movement. His is the only honest truthful voice in this debate:

“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.”

  • S&P’s opinion about any debt should be taken with a grain of salt. They, along with Warren Buffet’s friends at Moodys, were bought and sold by the Wall Street criminal element. Anyone with a smattering of math skill and an ounce of critical thinking would have concluded the U.S. was a bad credit three years ago. A Goldman Sachs trader had this opinion of the brain dead analysts at Moodys: “Guys who can’t get a job on Wall Street get a job at Moody’s.” Michael Lewis, in his book The Big Short, summarized the view of the rating agencies:

“Wall Street bond trading desks, staffed by people making seven figures a year, set out to coax from the brain-dead guys making high five figures the highest possible ratings for the worst possible loans. They performed the task with Ivy League thoroughness and efficiency.”

  • The most laughable storyline spouted by the Democrats and their lapdogs on MSNBC is the extreme austerity measures forced on the country by the Tea Party has caused the stock market to collapse. The plan “cuts” $22 billion in 2012 and $42 billion in 2013. Over this time frame, the Federal government will spend $7.4 TRILLION. The horrific spending “cuts” amount to .86% of spending over the next two years. Meanwhile, we will add at least $3 trillion to the National Debt over this same time frame. Of course, we could listen to Paulie “Spend More” Krugman and add $6 trillion to the national debt with another stimulus package. When a Keynesian solution fails miserably, just declare it would have worked if it was twice the size.
  • Barack Obama, the James Buchanan of our times, gave one of the worst Presidential speeches in the history of our country yesterday. In full hubristic fury he declared the United States of America would ALWAYS be a AAA country. The American Exceptionalism dogma is so very amusing. We are chosen by God to lead the world. Barack should have paid closer attention in history class. The Roman, Dutch, Spanish and British Empires all fell due to their hubris, fiscal mismanagement and overseas military exploits. The American Empire has fallen and can’t get up.

And now we come to the $100 trillion question. The establishment/vested interests/status quo declares the United States as the safest place in the world for investors. They frantically point out that people are pouring money into our Treasuries and interest rates are declining. They hysterically blurt out that Europe has much bigger problems than the U.S. and China’s real estate bubble will implode in the near future. These are the same people who told you the internet had created a new paradigm and NASDAQ PE ratios of 150 in 2000 were reasonable. The NASDAQ soared to 5,000 in early 2000. Today it trades at 2,358, down 53% eleven years later. These are the same people who told you they aren’t making more land and home prices in 2005 were reasonable. They told you home prices had never fallen nationally in our history, so don’t worry. Prices are down 35% and still falling today.

Medicare and Medicaid spending rose 10% in the second quarter of 2011 from a year earlier to a combined annual rate of almost $992 billion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The two programs are likely to crack $1 trillion before the end of the year. Medicare’s unfunded liability alone amounts to $353,350 per U.S. household. The National Debt will reach 100% of GDP in the next four months as we relentlessly add $4 billion per day to our Mount Everest of debt. Federal spending in 2007 was $2.7 trillion. Today, they are spending $3.8 trillion of your money. The country does not have a revenue problem. We have a spending addiction and the addict needs treatment. Doctor Ron Paul has our prognosis:

“When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.”

The politicians and bankers who control the developed world have made the choice to print money and create more debt as their solution to an un-payable debt problem. Europe, Japan, the U.S., and virtually every country in the world want to devalue their way out of a debt problem created over the last forty years. It has become a race to the bottom, with no winners. Every country can’t devalue their currency simultaneously without blowing up the entire worldwide monetary system. But, it appears they are going to try. The United States will never actually default on its debts. Ben Bernanke will attempt to default slowly by paying back the interest and principal to foreigners in ever more worthless fiat dollars. This will work until the foreigners decide to pull the plug. For now interest rates are low and the U.S. is the best looking horse in the glue factory. But we all know what happens to all the horses in the glue factory – even Mr. Ed.

 “It is true that liberty is not free, nor is it easy. But tyranny – even varying degrees of it – is much more difficult, and much more expensive. The time has come to rein in the federal government, put it on a crash diet, and let the people keep their money and their liberty.” – Ron Paul