Guest Post by Charles Hugh Smith
Here’s a chart that shows how the Status Quo “fixes” every problem: it transfers more debt and more losses to the taxpayers.
Many hold a touchingly naive faith that the Status Quo will save them even as the current system unravels. Why is this faith naive?
Let’s start with this key question: does the Status Quo strike you as being even remotely competent?
If you answer “yes,” we have to ask: what planet are you on? Mars? Here on Earth, no one that isn’t a bought-and-paid for-shill of the Status Quo would even make the risible claim of Status Quo competence, except as a bitter joke.
The Status Quo assumes we can’t deal with the truth like adults, and so it sugar-coats every unsolvable problem with lies and false assurances. The Status Quo assumption is the Great Unwashed 90% will shoot the messenger, i.e. toss out our public leadership should they be foolish enough to tell us the truth: the promises issued to you cannot possibly be fulfilled.
Not because of an evil cabal, but because the demographics and financial realities render the promises impossible to keep, regardless of who’s in office.
I’m going to get my Social Security, right? I wuz promised! Don’t be a chump, man. You’ll get something that’s called Social Security, but it will either be taxed to the point it only buys a loaf of bread or will only be worth a loaf of bread. So yes, you’ll get Social Security, but not the one you were promised or the one you’re imagining.
I’m going to get my Medicare, right? I wuz promised! Sure, you are, pal. Just not the Medicare you’re imagining, you know, the one that pays for everything.
The stock market will never crash, right?
Does this look like a stock market that will never crash again, or a stock market that’s poised to crash again? Your answer is a measure of your gullibility and faith in the Status Quo’s false assurances.
Does this chart of federal debt look remotely sustainable to you? Don’t be a chump, man–it’s clearly not sustainable, no matter what rationalizations the Power Elites’ shills are bleating.
Here’s a chart that shows how the Status Quo “fixes” every problem: it transfers more debt and more losses to the taxpayers. Student loans out of control and poised to implode? No problem–just transfer all the uncollectible debt (i.e. losses) to the taxpayers.
If you believe that’s an actual solution, I have a little 3-Card Monte game over here I’d like you to play until you have no more earthly (or Martian) possessions. Alternatively, just sink all your money into the stock market that’s poised to crash. That will wipe you out just as effectively as the rigged 3-Card Monte game.
Don’t think the Status Quo will save you, or make good on its vast multitude of promises. Naive faith in promises and fantasies isn’t helpful in the real world.
Like the FDIC fund of about $68 billion which is invested in Wall Street and is insuring about $7 trillion dollars. The FDIC would disburse whatever it got for it’s equities (maybe you get $1 per $5,000 in the bank).
A neighbor that worked at the nearby college worked an extra year there, because he had just gotten married and I believe it had something to do with he had to have been married to his wife for at least a year before she could get onto his medical coverage which then they would have for life.
At the time he told me about it I had just come across information that that particular medical program that was attached to the pension plan had not been funded or was massively underfunded. I mentioned to him what I had learned, and OH Crap did he go off on me!! He starts into this rant on how he put in the time, he was promised, and he deserved what he had worked for, and on and on.
I just said– yeah– OK — I agree, so what? If the money isn’t there, the money isn’t there. If there is no money what can they or you do?
He just stood there with a blank stare, speechless.
International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland. That is, about $630 trillion in bets placed on about $100 trillion in stocks and bonds. An analogy, to the large amount of bets placed on a smaller amount of stocks and bonds, is the St. Louis Fed data that $60 trillion in claims exist for US dollars against $12 trillion in actual US dollars in circulation globally.
Many wall street people routinely talk about US Treasury bond interest swap spreads having gone below actual US Treasury bond yields, what that means and what they plan to do (e.g. evacuate, take their Gulfstream jets with their second passports to their villas and penthouses in other countries); but the corporate media in the USA (i.e. the 6 corporations who own 90% of the media in the USA and the other large corporations who own another 9% of the media in the USA) has been silent about US Treasury swap spreads going below actual US Treasury bond yields (“going negative”) and what that means. ~Willam Edstrom