FINAL POST

It is time to concentrate my energies on other projects, not the least of which being my 2010 Congressional bid.

There is nothing more that I can say here. You all know what I think.

The site will remain "up" for anyone who wants to read my old posts or for anyone who wants to use my links, materials, etc.

God speed to all!!

Sincerely,

Dan Weintraub

House Of Games

If you've never seen David Mamet's film HOUSE OF GAMES, you're missing a good one. It is a story about con men and their "marks". The dialogue---as with all Mamet screenplays---is fantastic.

The United States has become a big ole house of games. The American middle class are the marks. The con men are running the show. They sit on the boards of the big corporations and in the seats of Congress. When are we going to stop buying the con?

See the movie.

Preserve, Protect, Defend?

Yesterday I wrote a piece entitled DIPLOMACY in which I explain that our leaders will do anything, say anything, lie about anything, in order to win the game. And right now, "the game" that our leaders are trying to win is the global economic collapse survival game. Our leaders---and the leaders of every other nation-state---are all embroiled in this global game in which there are no rules and in which the only measure of victory, in the end, is whether or not your nation still exists.

And so WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS??! Why are our political leaders carrying out such blatantly fraudulent and untruthful and insane economic policies? Why is Barack Obama continuing to bomb areas of Pakistan with un-manned drone aircraft?? Why the constant and obvious barrage of lies and deceptions and red-herrings, all emanating from Capitol Hill and From Wall Street and from the studios of CNBC and NPR and FoxNews???!?

Why?

Because the only thing that matters right now to our political leadership is winning the game. You must understand this. Our leaders are embroiled in the ultimate game in which each move they make---every policy decision, every action, every lie, every deception---they believe will determine whether or not the United States of America survives intact for future generations of Americans. It matters NOT to our leaders in the near term---in light of the fact that they see their solemn duty as being to preserve protect and defend the Constitution (In other words, to save the nation from disintegration)---it matters not how many suffer in the short term, as long as the long term survival of the nation---and the survival of the nation's status as an international political and economic super-power---is assured.

I don't now any other way to convey this most transparent of realities. OUR LEADERS ARE LIARS BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE, TO THE CORE OF THEIR BEINGS, THAT THEY LIE TO SAVE US FROM DISASTER. Our leaders believe that, first and foremost, they must act to protect the nation's physical, territorial and hegemonic integrity. That without those foundations, silly trivialities like Freedom of Expression and Representative Democracy and Civil Rights and The Rule of Law are just nice ideas, floating around in the ether but with no home in which to live. And so our leaders---when they DO swear to 'preserve protect and defend' the Constitution, they do so knowing (Or they come over time to believe) that the ideals as embodied in the Constitution come SECOND. What comes first is the survival of the actual nation-state.

I am not opining here. Our history is replete with episodes in which the supposed "rule of law" has been summarily trashed by our political leaders who feared that the actual survival of the nation was at stake.

And so as I said yesterday in my post on non-cooperation, we always have a choice. We can trust our leaders to do everything in their power to save the nation from disintegration---and in doing so understand that all of the lies and bailouts and fraud and amoral behavior is in fact a good thing for us---or we can fight back. And the only honest and realistic way to fight back is to choose not to cooperate with the rules of the game as being proffered by our political and financial elite. And call me naive, but I happen to believe that the destruction of our Democratic Republic is virtually guaranteed if we continue to allow our leaders to rob, cheat and steal their way to "winning" the game. I believe that in attempting to save the nation from collapse through lies and fraud, our leaders are simply driving the stake further into the heart of our future hopes for survival.

And that is why I believe we have no choice.

In my opinion, We must fight back: peacefully, non-violently, and provocatively.

(Below is a reprint of a relevant piece I wrote on why our leaders lie)

"Why The People in Charge Lie"

1. The people in charge ARE smart. Barack Obama, Tim Geithner, Sheila Bair, Ben Bernanke, Chris Dodd (Well, maybe not Chris Dodd), Barney Frank, etc. Smart people.

2. The people in charge---and I know this first hand because I was one of these "persons in charge" when I worked as a high school principal---believe that keeping information secret is righteous. Whether because the law compels them to do so, or because they see confidentiality as central to their being able to effectively perform their jobs, or because their senior colleagues explain that mature leadership requires secrecy and reticence, many powerful folks lie and dissemble and obfuscate and remain tight-lipped because they come to believe that it is the responsible way to lead.

3. The people in charge know that things are really bad. They peruse the numbers and they do the math and they are not stupid.

4. The people in charge believe that their primary responsibility---above and beyond telling the truth---is to keep the country from falling apart.

5. The people in charge know that we're on the brink of falling apart. You can see it in their eyes.

6. The people in charge are willing to lie, are willing to pretend that their policy decisions are sound and they have confidence in those policies, are willing to stand up in front of the TV cameras and feign confidence and optimism and say things that they know deep down are untrue and are blatant falsehoods, because the people in charge think that in doing so they are acting as responsible, mature stewards of our nation.

7. The people in charge look down upon other people---people like Ron Paul and Brad Sherman----because they see people like Paul and Sherman as immature and irresponsible and unpatriotic, even though deep down they know that what those "immature and irresponsible" people are saying is true.

8. The people in charge are proud of how mature and responsible they feel. They believe that keeping the truth from the public is a solemn duty, and that in doing so they are saving lives. In fact, they believe that lying in this case is a virtue.

9. The people in charge feel very important. They know stuff about the economy and about the world that, if the rest of us knew, well they think it would quite possibly lead to anarchy and bank runs and all kinds of chaos.

10. The people in charge believe that keeping the current system intact---even though deep down they know that it is usurious and exploitative and unfair and indeed even homicidal---that keeping the current system intact is their most sacred duty because if the system collapses then the people in charge will suffer, and they think in the end that more people will die and suffer and the USA will possibly get attacked and nuked and poisoned with anthrax and all kinds of nasty stuff.

11. The people in charge are willing to sacrifice truth and honesty and the lives of tens of thousands of people (millions of non-Americans too) in order to do what they believe is in the best interest of the majority of Americans (And in particular in the best interest of their families and friends and other people like them)

12. The people in charge know that the only way to justify increased GE to 65% of GDP, and to simultaneously have the nation rally around insane levels of taxation in order to keep the economy- and the nation- from collapsing altogether, is to involve us in a wider war in the Middle East (or Far East) and to use the power of the bully pulpit to get America behind this "war to save humanity".

Diplomacy

Did you ever play a board game called DIPLOMACY? It's a great game. Totally absorbing a fun, despite the underlying darkness. It's kind of like RISK, only with no dice. All of the moves are done simultaneously, as written orders are submitted and then read together. Anyway....the fun thing about Diplomacy is that your success in the game is totally dependent upon your ability to negotiate, make deals, break deals, stab your friends in the back and still be able to laugh with them over a beer, etc. But despite the fun, the game is also extraordinarily dark. In a kind of weird, microcosmic way, DIPLOMACY (the game) takes a pretend snapshot of what actually happens on a global scale---where billions of actual lives lie in the balance---between nations whose leaders and chief diplomats play "the game" for real. And here's the thing: The leaders of nations will do anything, say anything, lie about anything, to win the game. Because of course the way they see it, the very survival of their way of life, and of the nation whom they purport to represent, is at stake. And why do I make this point? Because if you believe one iota of what your governmental leaders tell you, then you are a fool. And I do not mean that in a pejorative sense. I mean it in a most real and basic sense. If you believe the words of your political leadership, you fail to recognize that they will say and do and lie about anything in order to win the game. Winning the game is all that matters. Means and ends and all of that moral and ethical stuff? Not even a consideration...unless of course employing the ethics or morality "game card" can help you win. So as we listen to all of the words coming out of Washington----whether it be Bush or Obama or Clinton or Reagan or Ike or Truman or whomever---understand that these words are not intended to be true. They are only intended to help sway public opinion in favor of the speaker so that he might gain a leg up on his opponent in the game. And as we watch our government undertake actions and create policies in our names, understand that they do so not because such policies or actions are moral or ethical or justified; they do so to beat their opponents and to win the game. Winning the game is all that matters. End of story.

Peaceful, Non-Violent, Non-Cooperation: A Conversation We May Need To Begin

Resistance is NEVER futile.

At some point it may become necessary to consider organizing a mass movement of non-cooperation in the United States of America. It may become a conversation we need to begin.

The folks who run this nation---the ones on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill---can only continue to run the show if we choose to cooperate with them. Without us they are lost.

If, for example, Americans chose NOT to employ credit in any form, and instead traded and bartered with one-another for goods and services, then of course CitiBank and BofA would collapse. They need us. And as incredible as it may seem, we actually don't need them. They're quite adroit at convincing us that we need them, but we don't.

The choice is always ours. Always. We can choose not to cooperate.

In my opinion, a movement of non-cooperation in the United States would be a movement to end the reign of power that the lords of Wall Street have enjoyed for so many decades. And of course that would also mean bringing to a close the era of the bought-and-sold politician. The two institutions---government and finance---are in my view one and the same.

And so I would envision a movement of non-cooperation in which anything that Goldman Sachs or JPM Chase or Citi or Bofa TOUCHED would become poison. We would choose not to do business, in any manner, with these oligarchs. We would divest ourselves of any involvement in supporting the profits of these institutions.

And of course their wrath would be terrible.

Let us not be naive. Non-cooperation with Wall Street and Capitol Hill would have dramatic costs. We'd have to give up many of the luxuries that we have come, as a nation of consumers, to covet. Many of us would find agents of the government banging on our doors, demanding that we pay taxes on our bartered goods and services. There would be risks: Imprisonment, possibly worse.

There has been chatter out in the ether today about a consumer strike. I think that it is a good idea. It may be a good place to start.

We must never forget that, at a most fundamental level, the government serves at the pleasure of its citizens. Even as our leaders continue to act with utter contempt for the Democratic ideal of a sovereign people, and even as things appear increasingly hopeless and desperate vis-a-vis our leaders' actions (fiscal, foreign policy, etc.), we still hold all of the cards. If we refuse to cooperate, if we refuse to play along, the nation comes to a grinding halt. And once all momentum has ceased, maybe only then will our grievances be redressed.

The same of course is true of a nation's financial elite. Stop buying their stuff, and their wealth goes away. It couldn't be more simple.

But a movement of non-cooperation is a step that must be taken with clarity of purpose, strength of will, and commitment to a peaceful demonstration of our steadfast resolve that we will no longer be robbed of our future by a few rich and powerful men.

Never forget that, despite all of the forces arrayed against us, we always have the ability to choose not to cooperate with a government that ceases to act with our best interest at heart.

We always have a choice. That, as Gandhi demonstrated, is the beauty of non-cooperation.

I make no claims that such a movement needs to happen. I only remind everyone who reads this blog that we are in charge, not them. And that if they continue to push us and play us for fools, one day they will awaken, leaders of a nation who lord over no one.

A Few More ABC's...And D's

ASIA: Nuclear weapons’ technology exists and is proliferating. There can be no return to a time when such knowledge did not exist. The scientists who worked The Manhattan Project guaranteed, through their success, that one day the United States of America would be attacked with a nuclear weapon. This truth haunts our leaders in Washington, and they must spend trillions to preempt such an attack. But unlike in the 1940s, the majority of those monies will NOT be spent producing weapons. They will be spent on intelligence gathering and covert operations. And over the next decade, as the risk of such an attack expands, so too will the amount of money spent to stop it from happening. Add this to the debt we have already incurred from fighting two wars overseas, and the numbers will be staggering. And so how can our current government avoid attack while at the same time seek mitigation of the catastrophic effects of trying to fund wars and preemption through printing and spending and borrowing of more money? Manufacture a wider-war in Asia, give it some grand title---such as THE WAR TO SAVE HUMANITY---have Mr. Obama deliver the message, get nationalistic buy-in from the somnabulent masses, and then raise taxes by some 40-50% per annum in order to fund the new wider-war in Asia.

BUSINESS: The system that got us here in the 1st place---that of irredeemable currency and fractional reserve banking in a 'money-as-debt' system---still exists. The profit motive compels players in the marketplace to cheat the system to maximize return. It has always been so, and it will always be so. In a world of limited resources and production, the only way to maximize gain is to use increasing amounts of leverage. The “Money as Debt” system will always---and exponentially so---lead to larger and larger bubbles that must eventually burst. In our situation right now, consumers possess no capital and therefore cannot service any debt. As such the only route to “growth” would have to be through expansion of debt, regardless of whether that debt could be serviced. That of course is a sure road to default and bankruptcy. But the profit motive for society’s wealthiest will nonetheless compel the super-wealthy to find ways to secure every possible cent from interest, wage garnishing, etc., and in the process the numbers of disenfranchised super-poor will explode. We’ve already been heading in that direction for generations: a shrinking middle class and a growing disparity between “haves” and “have-nots”.

CONSUMERISM: 71% of our GDP is consumer spending. Consumers right now are tapped out. Virtually all of the goods purchased by Americans are produced overseas. Protectionist legislation would mean that corporations’ profits would be undercut as they had to move operations back to the states. Our economy is no longer built for production. Over the past three decades we have evolved into a society of consumers and spenders who possess little in the way of industry and connection to the land. Even if we were talking about 6-7% unemployment, that represents a staggering number of people who would demand 100% support from the state in order to survive. There are already 30 million people receiving aid in the form of food stamps! Without growth our economy collapses. And yet our only path to growth is through consumption, not production. Utterly unsustainable.

DERIVATIVES: Our government refuses to enact REAL oversight when it comes to OTC trading in derivatives because virtually all of the false wealth that exists, and that is currently keeping the banking ponzi-industry from collapsing altogether, is "derived" from trading in these uncapitalized, multi-trillion dollar bets. The poker table remains open, and the big banks continue to steal money from the rest of us by gambling trillions, skimming their profits off of the top to pay themselves multi-million dollar bonuses and paychecks, whilst leaving the taxpayer to clean up the mess when the counterparties collapse in a raized-house of debt and worthless paper. And lurking in the vaults and on the hard drives of these financial institutions are trillions in poisonous derivatives: Credit Default Swaps, CDOs, MBSs, etc., and no one knows just how many trillions we're talking about. And the government continues to lie to us and to tell us that real oversight is on the way. But the fact is that they, our esteemed leaders, know that they cannot pull the plug on OTC trading in derivatives---because if they did, the charade would be up and systemic collapse would be front and center.

You've Gotta Love It

"...I said it on our 8 o’clock show on Thursday and Friday and now I’ll put it in writing: This horrible Great Recession is over, right here and right now. A spate of economic metrics supports this daunting prediction. We'll update this information and topspin it on CNBC Reports tonight at 8 p.m. I'll get to those numbers in a moment. The more important factor, though, is how we FEEL. I've said it before, let's put it on T-shirts: Capitalism is optimism monetized. As I put it in my "Parting Shot" on CNBC Reports on Friday night, hope is the magical elixir of capitalism..." (CNBC---some guy named Kneale)

Cool. I'm psyched. Do you think I can go to the store and buy some food for my family and pay for it with hope? Yes? Sweet!

Take Your Pick

Google "U.S. involvement in ___________, 2009..." and then take your pick:

Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Korea, Honduras, Venezuela, Mexico....

Something's gotta give.

A Nation Of Extremists

I commented this morning on Karl Denninger's Ticker forum---first time, last time (lol)---on his piece about Cap & Trade. I agreed with most of what Karl had said (I usually do. I think his analyses are usually spot-on), though I did point out that literally tens-of-thousands of hours of good, rigorous science make a rebuttal of the verifiable data (that human's are having a profound impact upon the environment---and not a good impact I might add) rather difficult to reasonably defend. Karl---I assume Karl monitor's the traffic---deleted my comment and accused me of fomenting a partisan agenda.

Faaaaaascinating!!!!

Next, I read something that Pat Buchanan had recently said (from a piece written by Paul Watson) on the same topic:

"...Referring to the passage of the climate bill and global warming in general, Buchanan said that the legislation was passed through the use of fear and that, “More and more scientists are coming forward to say this is a hoax and a scam which is designed to transfer wealth and power from the private sector to the government sector and from the government of the United States to a world government. Which is what we’re going to get in Copenhagen when we get this Kyoto two agreement. Buchanan labeled the legislation a “tax bill” that would raise the prices of utilities for every American, hammer the middle class and working class, “for a danger that we don’t even know is really there”. The former senior advisor to three U.S. presidents accused the Obama administration of hyping the apocalyptic myth that the oceans will rise and that cities will be underwater in order to ram through the legislation..."

Dan W:

Where are we, as a society, when conspiracy-thinking and paranoia and such dark passion leaves us unable to cut through the fury and to separate out science and fact from dubious policymaking and crime? The fury on both sides of the ideological divide is becoming so deafening that, for the first time in a very long time (I'd say since the mid-19th century) we are truly becoming a nation of extremists.

Here's my point:

The legislation and policymaking are the sham. The science is just fine!

I happen to oppose the Cap & Trade Bill because I agree with those critics who see it as a way for the banksters and fraudsters to game the system and to make billions for themselves whilst the rest of us have to pay for their financial treachery. And so, from that stand point, one would think me "conservative". HOWEVER, I also believe that the science behind studies of climate change is excellent science. I have read it, studied it, and it seems very clear from my own readings that the scientists behind the work---most of whom are not making any extra money for having reached such conclusions---make a very strong case viz the climate change argument. And so, from that perspective, one might argue that I am a "liberal".

But people cannot, or refuse to, separate the two issues. ANY scientist whose science leads her to conclude that climate change is, in fact, a grave and going concern must be on the Obama-Gore payroll. And even men like Denninger----who time and again make the "objectivist" claim that the math never lies---falls prey to the very clamor that he himself holds in such disdain. I find this totally fascinating!! What would cause men of such intellectual prowess, and who seem to have a commitment to truth-seeking, to become such rabid, anti-intellectual extremists---denying simple data in an all-out assault on basic information?

I have a question for Karl Denninger that he didn't seem to want to address----hence the deletion of my comment: Karl, can you show me verifiable scientific data that you can employ to refute the climate change data?? And I would be interested to see if Karl chooses to embrace false science in order to defend his anti-intellectual ideologically-driven position. (Which is utterly amazing to me, in that Denninger is a wonderful scientist in many regards!) And remember, I am in neither ideological camp. I have no ideological stake in either position. I OPPOSE CAP & TRADE!! IT'S A SHAM!!! I happen find the rigor behind the science of Climate Change verifiable---just as verifiable as I do the rigor behind the science of Evolution. Karl, you do believe in the science behind the study of Evolution...don't you???

When I argue a point---even a point or position that may sound extreme---I attempt to base it upon a strict evaluation of the facts, the numbers. For example: ("...U.S. GDP is poised for an epic collapse. With a national GDP of somewhere around $14.2 TRILLION, the USA must experience GDP GROWTH of about $425 BILLION in 2009 to maintain a minimally acceptable level of economic growth. But remember, this need for 3-4% growth exists within a regime in which consumer spending in 2008 comprised 71% of GDP. And, 17% of this consumer spending represented consumer debt of over $2.5 TRILLION. Also U6 unemployment stands at roughly 16.5% and is getting worse by the week. Consumer spending is collapsing. Everyone, every business, is broke. In light of these realities, it is becoming increasing clear that the Obama Administration plans to artificially grow GDP via increases in government expenditure. And since consumer spending and business investment are in utter free fall, the only way to stimulate 3-4% per annum GDP growth is to do so by increasing GE to 60+% of GDP. Such levels of government spending would correlate well with those witnessed during the early and mid-1940s. And it doesn't take a genius to recognize that only through the development of a war economy and attendant massive tax increases needed to pay for these wars---while not necessarily the preferred route productive of such debt-based and thus eventually inflationary spending---can such expenditure possibly be justified...") YES, I think that the Obama team considers that we may in fact have to pursue a wider-war in Asia in order to mitigate the impact at home of our economic catastrophe. I base this belief NOT upon some troubling, right-wing, Obama-wants-to-rule-the-world conspiracy prattle. I base it upon numbers. But it seems to me, more and more, that intense paranoia is making inroads into every nook and cranny of the political discourse. And this is most dangerous territory, as we know.

Did you ever hear of the book entitled THE HOAX OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY? When I taught history to high school students, something I did for near 20 years, I often employed a book entitled THE HOAX OF THE 20TH CENTURY, written by Arthur Butz, as part of my curriculum. The book is a 400+ page treatise that “proves” that the Holocaust in fact did not occur: that it was all an elaborate ruse created and promoted by Jews who needed to justify their creation of a Jewish state. The book has lots of pictures and charts and appendices and hundreds of footnotes and the book appears to be, at a superficial glance, a reputable piece of scholarship. Of course a thorough reading unmasks the work as the magical creation of a rabid Jew-hater. And of course I use the book not as the foundation for a discussion of the Holocaust, but instead as the basis for a discussion about not believing everything you read, or hear, or see.

But for Jew-haters the world over, Butz's book is good science. They make it good science because they hate Jews and they will only embrace information---false or otherwise---that "proves" their position. Facts be damned, reality be damned. Since it fits in with their world view and their anti-Jewish, Zionist conspiracy ideology, Butz has written an excellent expose of the lies about the Holocaust.

I wonder. What is at stake here? Why are we sinking more and more deeply into a war of ideology that is leaving rational thought behind? And I am talking about both sides here. Liberal and Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. Is this yet another symptom of the terminal illness of a civilization in decline? That numbers and science be damned---if you're not with me, than you're against me?! My party, right or wrong?!!!

I find it fascinating---and increasingly scary---that such smart people can choose to ignore science when, ideologically, they are simply too angry to acknowledge reality. AND, I am NOT saying that the current legislation is good! But is it possible to separate the actions of legislators and "greedy, duplicitous liberals" from the rigorous science of NON-ideologically motivated experts?

The other day I heard Peter Schiff railing on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for being an incipient "activist" justice. Of course, those of us who have studied history understand that this is abject sillyness. Judges----like everyone---change and evolve. Some justices come to the court as seeming "conservatives" and end up adjudicating cases in what might be considered a "liberal", or activist, manner. Earl Warren anyone??? It's a crap shoot. Times change, people change, the social and political climate changes, and you just never know. But my point here is that Peter Schiff---a man of science himself---should know this. And yet he too is becoming blinded by the increasing ideological divide that is gripping our nation.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: This economic crisis (and its attendant issues, such as climate change and healthcare, etc.), and our response to it, transcends ideology. Having spent some time recently in the public sphere, I have noticed that folks vacantly continue to identify themselves, and their views on the economic crisis, almost solely along ideological lines. In Montpelier, VT, at the State House, I have found that the Democrats favor, almost to a man/woman, the Obama stimulus plan, and ALL of the Republicans oppose it. I voted Democrat in the 2008 election and I'm running for Peter Welch's seat in the House as a Democrat, and despite the aforementioned I still vehemently oppose the current handling of the financial crisis. I don't oppose it because I personally disdain liberals like Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Pat Leahy. I oppose it because it is criminal and it is insane. I think that the Obama-Geithner-Summers triad should be tried for grand larceny---along of course with Bush and Greenspan and Paulson---and the lot of them should be thrown in prison. I say this: People who play the "my party right or wrong" card in this debate lack any acuity whatsoever. THIS IS NOT ABOUT POLITICAL IDEOLOGY!

Foundations For Living

Last December I penned a piece in which I ruminated over our---the human species "our"---basic nature. I will reprint it below. I return to this conversation because I think that we need to take a very close look at our nature as we try figure out if, and how, we want to...continue. Such questions as: Are we a naturally aggressive species? Are we naturally territorial? Can our penchant for unbridled greed in fact be overcome? Will we always be willing to kill "the other" to promote the interest of ourselves?---It seems to me that these are questions that we may want to address as many of us search for solutions to our ever-expanding list of global crises.

In a world in which the science of climate change is being assailed by the avarice of corporate interest, in which the greed of Wall Street turns a blind eye to the estimated billion starving human beings around the world, in which the crime of murder on a mass scale is carried out daily in pursuit of just one more dollar, one has to wonder: Are we, as a species, destined to continue to live out this dark comedy, this bubonic farce in which the suffering and death of millions is not only a reasonable price to pay for a bigger house in The Hampton's, but is simply an expression of our basic and fundamental nature---immutable and in fact blessed by god himself. Or, could we perhaps transcend our apparent predisposition toward "evil", despite ourselves. Could we evolve to a higher state in which greed and all of its attendant behaviors simply become indulgences that a species such as ours---living on the brink---can no longer entertain.

Just wondering....

Thursday, December 18, 2008

OK, bear with me for a moment...

1. "On Aggression" (1966) is a book by ethologist Konrad Lorenz. As he writes in the prologue, "the subject of this book is aggression, that is to say the fighting instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species." (Page 3) According to Lorenz, animals, particularly males, are biologically programmed to fight over resources. This behavior must be considered part of natural selection, as aggression leading to death or serious injury may eventually lead to extinction unless it has such a role. (wiki)
2. "Rambo and the Dalai Lama", a book by Gordon Fellman, suggests that the assumption that human life is based on conflicts of interest, wars, and opposition of people to each other and to nature exists as a paradigm that supplies meaning and orientation to the world. An alternative paradigm sees cooperation, caring, nurturing, and loving as equally viable ways of organizing relationships of humans to each other and to nature. Fellman sees this shifting emphasis from adversarialism to mutuality as essential to the survival of our species and nature itself. (Fellman)

Clashing paradigms and theories about human nature and instinct and higher-thinking and consciousness, and it is all quite compelling stuff. Why and how is it that the same species can produce a Gandhi and a Hitler, a Martin Luther King Jr. and a David Duke, a Mother Theresa and an Imelda Marcos? And do all of these figures from our collective history, the "evil" and the "good, have anything in common? Can there be any thread that binds these men and women together---aside from the obvious fact of their humanness? I'm not sure. I would argue, however, that the "good" folks are truly transcendent, in that they somehow refuse to be manipulated or coerced by the greater community into a Lorenzian existence. As for communities as such, the bigger they get, the more chance there is---and exponentially I would argue---that the humans who comprise these aggregations will regress to their "instinctual" state and thus form bonds and relationships based upon aggression and domination.

I know this may on the surface seem tautological: of course the larger the group, the more chances for there to exist a variety of behaviors. Simple math, right? I guess what I am trying to say is that, like an inverted pyramid, we have altered the natural order in which communities subsist. We no longer "begin" with the family, and then move out from there. Parents now unconsciously employ and act out behaviors within the family that reflect a GLOBALIZED consciousness. Parents may not be violent, but their consciousness is informed by thousands of hours of media-enhanced exposure to violence. Parents may not purposefully act out instinctive "aggressive" behaviors vis-a-vis a scarcity of resources, but their consciousness is informed by images and personal experiences with such scarcity, and with the aggressive response of many TO such scarcity---which of course gets the most media coverage. And so, even in our smallest of communities---the family---we tend to witness interactions and attitudes that more closely resemble those of the larger world rather than those we might see in small, insulated communities.

So in a global community defined by scarcity, every possible human/animal trait is bound to be realized. And through the vehicle of the mass media, the Lorenzian paradigm maintains preeminence for humans because for many it is the lone example of human behavior with which they have any identification and familiarity. Were we, however, to maintain smaller communities---not in total isolation but in which the leaders (parents!) were taught to become conscious of their Fellmanite and Lorenzian selves, and to purposefully make the conscious choice to inform their decisions and interactions with the former--- in which in essence "mutualism" is practiced instinctively---could we effectively nullify the Lorenzian determination of man as beast, violent and aggressive by nature? I'm not so sure. In my own family organism, 4 of us---2 adults and 2 children---attempt on some unspoken level to build a community in which aggression is, in fact, unrecognized. In which mutualism is held up as the only source of nourishment and sustenance and in fact the only route toward alleviating the risk of succumbing to the dynamics of scarcity. Some would call it an experiment in civility. I would call it an attempt at survival. Are we succeeding? I'd give us a C+.

I do believe that the world has gotten way too big, and that our inter-connectedness has been manipulated and exploited and perverted by those who seek to use others in order to fulfill their own perceived and real needs vis-a-vis scarcity. Sadly I do not, as such, believe that we can aggregate on a global, even national or regional, scale without reverting to the least common denominators of violence, aggression and hoarding. I believe that our salvation (sic) will be found in our smallest communities, and with practice, and maybe over decades, and maybe with the disappearance of such forces as profit and wealth as modalities of discourse, maybe then we will have a shot at Fellman's dream of MUTUALITY.

Life, Liberty, Pursuit Of Happiness, And Irredeemable Currency

For months now I have been saying that our disastrously failed experiment with irredeemable currency lies at the very heart of our current economic crisis. I have said, without equivocation, the while our leaders are some of the most brilliant men and women in the known universe, they lack the humility and basic education to admit that we were wrong (in "going off" of the gold standard in 1971). And I have also been very clear in stating that this current economic crisis is but a symptom of a wider and far more dangerous political and constitutional crisis.

And now we stand ever-closer to the abyss.

Everyday we read fresh reports about how our government acts with thug-like impunity as it violates, time and time again, the supposed rule of law. (One need only peruse, for example, the musings of such social critics as Karl Denninger to understand the depth of such lawlessness.) But I would add the following: That until we end our 38 year experiment with irredeemable currency, true economic recovery will never come.

Simply put, under a regime of irredeemable currency, the citizens of a nation have no power over the agents of government. None. The people---even in a Democratic Republic such as the one our founding fathers envisioned---are not sovereign. The Federal Reserve is sovereign, and the Treasury Department is sovereign, even JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are sovereign, but the people are not.

You see, in a system of irredeemable fiat currency the government has no check placed upon its absolute, even totalitarian, authority. It can, by whim or fancy or through malice of forethought, artificially manipulate the nation's economy----creating through its "conjurings" massive wealth for a few and terrible poverty for the rest. And since there are no checks upon the government's ability to "print" as much money as it so desires or to create as much debt as it wants to create, and since there is no longer any mechanism for "calling" the government on its actions (by going to the bank and telling the bank that you want to cash in your dollars for gold, as is your right under a system of redeemable currency), the people in such a system---despite any claims to the contrary---live in debt-servitude forever. The citizens of the nation literally exist and subsist at the pleasure of the financial and political elite.

Under a regime of redeemable currency, the government cannot, in fact, print and spend and borrow money without paying very careful attention to the will of the people---as expressed through the return of specie for "gold". As such, a gold standard, if you will, places a natural check on the government's inevitable urge to print and/or borrow and spend money it does not possess; an urge borne of the government's desire to pursue policies that aid the agents of that government in maintaining a hold on power. In other words, the perpetuation of our monolithic two-party system and the outrageous wealth created for the top 1% of Americans (at the expense of the rest of us) by such a system is only possible because we, the people, cannot cash in our dollars for gold. We cannot stop the extortion and the financial terrorism from being perpetrated against us because we do not possess the only weapon in our arsenal to stop the thieves from continuing the theft. It's as simple as that.

And make no mistake about it. There can be no freedom, no liberty, in the United States until we recognize this fundamental truth and abandon our doomed experiment with irredeemable currency.

(For a far more learned and articulate read on this topic, check out the linked piece by A. Fekete)

More Radio Show Tech Issues

My weekly BlogTalkRadio show was hit by a wireless outage about 30 minutes in tonight. Argh.

UNEXPECTED?!??!? I've Been Writing About This VERY ISSUE or Months!!

WASHINGTON – The number of people filing new jobless claims jumped unexpectedly last week, and the total unemployment benefit rolls rose to more than 6.7 million. The Labor Department data released Thursday show jobs remain scarce even as the economy shows some signs of recovering from the longest recession since World War II. The department said initial claims for jobless benefits rose last week by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 627,000. Economists expected a drop to 600,000, according to Thomson Reuters. Several states reported more claims than expected from teachers, cafeteria workers and other school employees, a department analyst said. (Yahoo!)

I wrote this on FEBRUARY 7th, 2009: "...We’ll begin with unemployment. At 15% (U6) give or take, the actual number of U6 unemployed is in the neighborhood of 22.5 million people. These numbers are growing by roughly 500,000 per month, or approximately 2.2%/month. Now, it’s important to also consider the following: layoffs in public education cannot begin until June of this year, when contracts expire. So as the figures above demonstrate, with roughly 6.8 million teachers in the country, the U6 numbers will see a pretty dramatic jump for June as schools cut about 150,000 teachers, or 2.2% (reflective of the general 2.2% losses per month in the other sectors) of the teaching force. (Again, a conservative estimate. Why? Because many school systems are going to reduce FTE's, full time equivalent hours, and as such tens of thousands of teachers are going to become---against their will---part time employees.) And so U6 unemployment numbers, which currently stand somewhere in the neighborhood of 15%, and which are increasing by an average of just over 2% monthly, will experience an addition bump from 2.2% to just shy of 3%, as unemployment numbers for the month of June jump from roughly 500,000 to 650,000..."

It's only "unexpected" because the government and the media are replete with people who are run-of-the-mill, everyday LIARS. That is the truth.

Last Sunday's Interview On VCAM

Dan Weintraub on ASR from Matthew Cropp on Vimeo.

These Guys Think That They Are Heroes!

"...Fed policymakers said its forceful actions, along with President Barack Obama's stimulus of tax cuts and increased government spending will contribution to a "gradual "return to economic growth..."

It never ceases to amaze me how sick these guys are. And it's same with members of Congress. These jerks sit around their big round conference tables in their big comfy leather chairs eating their big thick medium-rare steaks and congratulate themselves and each other for, once again, coming to the rescue and saving the day. Time and again we have to watch these idiots pat themselves and each other on the back as they so glowingly claim that they alone are responsible for making the world a better place. Meanwhile the crimes for which they claim solutions are their crimes, Rome is still burning, their smiling claims of "returns to economic growth" are blatant lies, and we're scurrying about on our hands and knees picking up the scraps of half-chewed fat that fall from their over-flowing plates. Actually, it's even worse than this! These demented power-hungry self-important jerks actually think that we, the people, should all just shut up because we have no idea just how bad "it" could be out there in the big scary world if we didn't let them take care of us. They shake their heads at we little children who have the gaul and timerity to question their motives and their authority. They think they're heroes!!

It May Be Getting Closer To 'Put Up Or Shut Up' Time

There's a lot of bad stuff going on out there. Things seems particularly dark these days. Our government's lies viz "recovery" and "green shoots" and "new financial oversight" are becoming more stunning by the day. The big banks are flipping all of us off, stealing more of our money, and paying their employees millions while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet. Nations that hold trillions of dollars of U.S. debt are meeting and discussing how they can create a vibrant global economy without us. Our political leaders are courting a wider-war in Asia in an effort to distract us from our incipient depression and as a way to extract from us every last tax dollar that they can. The CDS and Derivatives Ponzi-scheme of the century remains a burning tire around the neck of the nation. And the housing market implosion is, amazingly enough, just getting started!

I could go on. But my point is this: It may be getting closer to the time where we need to make our voices heard in Washington, and on Wall Street, en masse, non-violently. At some point we may want to take a stand. Because one day we'll awaken to our coming reality and it will be too late to stand up and say "no" to the crimes being perpetrated in our names, and upon our children.

Schedule Adjustments

My book projects are taking up a lot of time. I will be cutting back my RADIO show to one night per week (Thursdays, 8-9) for the coming couple of months.

More News From Zombieland

WASHINGTON – With North Korea reportedly getting ready for a long-range missile test, President Barack Obama says the U.S. is prepared for any threat the secretive and unpredictable regime might pose. Japanese media have reported Pyongyang appears to be preparing for a long-range test around July 4 and Defense Secretary Robert Gateshas ordered additional protections for Hawaii in case a missile is launched over the Pacific Ocean. "This administration — and our military is fully prepared for any contingencies," Obama said during an interview with CBS News' Harry Smith. The interview was taped Friday and broadcast Monday on "The Early Show." "I don't want to speculate on hypotheticals," Obama said. "But I want ... to give assurances to the American people that the t's are crossed and the i's are dotted in terms of what might happen. "What we're not going to do is to reward belligerence and provocation in the way that's been done in the past," he said....A senior U.S. military official told The Associated Press on Friday that a Navy ship, the USS John S. McCain, was relatively close to the North Korean vessel but had no orders to intercept it and had not requested that authority. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive issue of ship movements. The Navy ship, a guided missile destroyer, is named after the grandfather and father of Arizona Sen. John McCain. Both were admirals. Sen. McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, said Sunday that the U.S. should board the Kang Nam even without North Korean permission if hard evidence shows it is carrying missiles or other cargo in violation of U.N. resolutions. "I think we should board it. It's going to contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to rogue nations that pose a direct threat to the United States," McCain said on CBS' "Face the Nation." The Kang Nam is reportedly the first North Korean vessel to be tracked under new U.N. sanctions. (Yahoo)

Our political leaders are a total embarrassment.

Why This Liberal's Battle Is Uphill At Every Turn

As a political liberal, I am always shocked when people of what I would consider "right" intentions and considerable intelligence get the facts so very, very wrong.

Take for example THIS article (Yes, I know it is from a long time ago. But as an example it remains relevant.) from http://commondreams.org of last December (excerpted below):

By Sarah van Gelder: "...Dear President-elect Obama, The economic stimulus package you laid out today in your weekly radio and internet address is a great starting point -- very much needed as the downward spiral of the economy takes away the breath of even the most level-headed observer..." (You can read the rest of the piece by clicking on the link above.)

Ms. van Gelder is clearly a bright, well-intentioned, learned individual. And so I am mystified as to why it is that folks like Ms. van Gelder cannot apparently do basic math. Is it simply an ideological blind spot? Is it self-indulgent ignorance? And why do I find myself---a self-identifying liberal, just like Ms. van Gelder----constantly having to point out to "my people" that this stimulus bill, and all of the other and attendant Keynesian madness, was (and continues to be) the most expensive, and disastrous, red-herring in the history of civilization??!

Make no mistake about it: The Obama stimuls bill was a ruse. It was clearly a "time-buying" bill at best. Close to a TRILLION dollars of borrowed and printed money was committed to projects and plans that these people, these liberals, MUST HAVE KNOWN could not stimulate anything---other than an eventual bond-market implosion, or worse. I mean, they must have known this, right? The math is so very simple.

As a political liberal, I am admittedly disheartened. The folks with whom I break ideological bread; the folks whom I have always trusted as being progressive and smart and bent upon employing intellectual rigor when making their policy decisions; the folks whom I thought had the integrity to resist the kind of know-nothing partisanship that characterized the eight years of George W. Bush's anti-intellectual dogmatism---these very same folks have been sold a bill of goods by our current Democratic leadership and they have signed on the dotted line---just like the very same loyalty-oathers whom they take great pride in denigrating and ridiculing.

Liberals have purchased the ill-fated and insane Obama economic plan without so much as a peep of dissent. And I must admit that I find this difficult to bear.

Deflation, Inflation, Hyperinflation....Warp Speed Mr. Sulu!!

Mike Shedlock provides some good information today viz his views on deflation. Stoneleigh from TAE provided a similarly grim deflationary picture a couple of days ago. (Schiff is sticking with inflation.)

These are all extremely learned individuals. Their analyses, to a woman and man, appear spot-on. And while I am more predisposed to being onboard viz deflationism (at least in the near and mid-term, with massive hyperinflation appearing further down the road as the dollar is abandoned as the world's reserve currency and as the bond market implodes), my contention with the argument regarding both an incipient and ongoing deflationary spiral is my belief that (a) the FED will literally employ negative interest rates (or some similarly Absurd iterations of Keynesian madness**)---whilst simultaneously funneling trillions in printed funds to banks---to get lending and borrowing moving and (b) that our government will exploit un-self-reflective American nationalism (in the form of the prosecution of a wider-war in Asia) to justify to the beleagured American population a massive 35-50% federal tax increase.

While these actions of course do nothing to fix the economy, they allow the government the opportunity to delay the coming of our all-but-inevitable systemic collapse. And however you slice it, this apple is rotten to the core. It's all bad. All of it.

Addendum: ** case in point** (Hat Tip Denninger) June 19 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s program to help more homeowners refinance may be expanded to include borrowers who owe more than 105 percent of their homes’ values, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart said.The Obama administration is considering allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance loans with current loan-to-value ratios of 125 percent or higher, Lockhart said at a National Association of Real Estate Editors Association conference in Washington yesterday.

More On My Wider-War Argument

I invite you to read THIS piece on the Asia Times website.

The Gulf Of Tonkin "Incident", Iraq's WMD...And Now The "Kang Nam"

"...Meanwhile, the U.S. military is tracking a North Korean ship believed to be carrying illicit weapons or technology, a senior U.S. official said Thursday. While the United States does not know what specifically is on the ship, the Kang Nam is a "repeat offender," known for having carried "proliferation materials," one senior defense official said..." (CNN)

Still Think My War Thesis is Far-Fetched?

Click HERE to read my views on the coming wider-war.

And now....

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military is tracking a North Korean ship believed to be carrying illicit weapons or technology, a senior U.S. official said Thursday. The ship, the Kang Nam, is a North Korean-flagged ship, according to two senior U.S. officials, and is currently in the Pacific. While the United States does not know what specifically is on the ship, the Kang Nam is a "repeat offender," known for having carried "proliferation materials," one senior defense official said. Without speaking to any details of the Kang Nam report, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that the United States would not forcibly board a North Korean ship but, in accordance with the recent United Nations resolution, would request permission to search the ship or press any port the ship docks in to inspect it for illegal materials.

AND

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military is tracking a ship from North Korea that may be carrying illicit weapons, the first vessel monitored under tougher new United Nations rules meant to rein in and punish the communist government following a nuclear test, officials said Thursday. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he has ordered additional protections for Hawaii just in case North Korea launches a long-range missile over the Pacific Ocean. (Yahoo)

It May Be Closer Than You Think

Repost from 2/09

Friday, February 6, 2009

A Trip To The Mall: A Tale Of Woe

On the outskirts of town, on a dry and dusty stretch of State Highway 2009, sits the Bond Street Mall. The mall has many occupants, including but not limited to Charlie’s Toy and Electronics Store, Jerry’s Computer Heaven, Archie’s Steak House, Eunice’s Hair Salon, Cal’s Bath Accessory Shop, and Amos’s Resale Emporium. By far the largest mall ever, Bond Street caters to a wide and varied clientele. The biggest outfit in Bond Street is Charlie’s, which takes up 25% of the space in the mall. They, like Jerry’s, are predominantly a wholesale operation. Amos’s Emporium is also impressive in size, and is well known for purchasing all manner of items from Charlie’s and Jerry’s and then repackaging and reselling those very same products, and at a hefty profit I must say.

Well, for many years all went quite swimmingly for the establishments in the mall. The economy was humming along at a brisk pace; sales were strong, profits high. Charlie’s and Jerry’s were selling tons of stuff to Amos’s for resale, and Amos’s was able to make a tidy sum on the mark-up of the toys and computers and all of the other cool gadgets and TVs and what-not that came from C and J. And the workers in C's and J's were happy because they all had jobs making stuff for A's. But then, somewhat unexpectedly, things took a turn for the worse. The economy began to slow a bit, and fewer and fewer people were coming into Bond Street to shop. Amos’s continued to buy wholesale goods from Charlie’s and Jerry’s, but with less shoppers coming to the mall everyday, Amos’s quickly found itself in a bit of financial hot water. They had lots of stuff to sell, but less and less in the way of buyers.

Now, Amos’s understood that Charlie’s and Jerry’s success was directly connected to whether or not Amos’s could get people to come to the Mall to shop. And begrudgingly, Charlie’s and Jerry’s understood this as well. Both C’s and J’s had tried to penetrate the retail market, but they had found it really difficult. And it was well known in the mall world that A’s shoppers were notorious for buying all kinds of stuff that they really didn’t need. Anyway, that’s why C and J were so grateful to have A’s Emporium in the mall to act as the retailer for C’s and J’s wholesale operations.

Well with the economy hitting the skids, Amos’s found itself in rather uncharted territory. In fact, upon closely examining their own balance sheets, A’s came to the realization that they were in trouble of quite possibly going belly up! The specter of such an event haunted everyone in the mall. And so one day, in response to the crisis, the owners of Amos’s, Charlie’s and Jerry’s had a meeting. And it was agreed that C’s and J’s would lend A’s a whole bunch of money to keep them afloat. In return for the loan, A’s promised to keep the advertising campaigns in high gear and to keep working their hardest to sell the goods provided by C’s and J’s. And so A’s used the loans provided by C’s and J’s to advertise on TV and in print, and to remodel their store, and to expand the size of their operation by renting vacant space in Bond Street, and to hire new sales reps, and basically to do everything they could to get more consumers into the store to purchase the products that were being made and provided by C’s and J’s. And at first the campaign seemed to be working, at least a bit. But the economy continued to struggle, and A’s had to go back to C’s and J’s and ask for more and more loans, and this pattern went on for some time.

Now it’s important to understand that, for many decades, Bond Street had been a bustling hive of buying and selling. Consumers from all over the land would come to Bond Street to shop for all of their needs, and for stuff they maybe didn’t need as well. But over the past decade or so, most of the shoppers had resorted to charging purchases on their credit cards instead of paying with cash. And so now, 10 years later, most of the consumers were too broke to shop at Bond Street, and as such, no matter what Amos’s did to try and bring in new customers---tax breaks and ‘50% off sales’, and ‘no-money-down deals’ and layaways---business just kept getting worse and worse. And now even C’s and J’s were getting nervous because all of the stuff that they were making and supposedly selling to A’s was piling up in their back storage rooms. And C's and J's were having to layoff workers, and that made C and J very edgy, because C's and J's workers were getting kind of angry, y'know? Add to this the fact that C’s and J’s had loaned a lot of money to A’s, and well you can imagine that there was a lot of tension and fear in the air at good ole Bond Street Mall. And then, to make matters even moretense, the leaders of A’s came up with a very controversial plan to try and jump start their operation. Instead of buying goods from C and J, they would make their own stuff. Then their workers, instead of C's and J's workers, would be getting paid to make the stuff, and so then A's people could also turn around and shop at the Emporium, and thus A’s economy would get moving again! Well as you can imagine, this of course did not go over well with C and J, not to mention EU and Ca and other mall tenants. All of the other store owners in the mall were frankly pretty angry at A's for abandoning all of the deals that they had made with them, particularly in that A's had borrowed tons of money from them! And of course, as everyone knew would happen, A's plan fell flat on its face anyway, because all of the workers at A’s were really great at buying and selling stuff, but when it came to actually producing stuff, well, they had given that up a long time ago and they really didn’t have either the knowledge or the discipline to do it anymore. Add to this the fact that A’s workers demanded much more money to build stuff then did C’s and J’s workers, and you can see why this idea didn’t really pan out so terrifically.

So one day---it was a beautiful sunny day if memory serves---the owner of the Mall showed up and demanded back rent payments from all of the Mall’s occupants. Of course the mall owner understood that times were tough, but he owned all of the malls in the world and he couldn’t simply let Bond Street off the hook when other malls were being held to account for their debts. And so C’s and J’s met over lunch, and after lunch they came over to A’s Emporium and they told A’s that they needed their loans repaid. Or, in the very least, they needed the interest on all of the loans serviced so that they, C’s and J’s, could pay their workers on time, keep their factories open, and pay their rent to the mall owner. And the leaders of A’s shrugged their shoulders and said we’d love to help you, but sales have been so bad and none of our shoppers has any money left---in fact they're all in debt up to their eyeballs---and so we’re losing money everyday and we have nothing to give to you. And A’s pleaded with C’s and J’s and promised them that they would gladly pay them tons of interest if C and J would just hold off for a few years on calling in their loans. But C’s and J’s didn’t buy it. They no longer trusted A’s. A’s had tried to abandon them by building their own stuff, but when that plan failed A’s turned around and pretended like somehow C’s and J’s still needed them. The gig was up. And C’s and J’s did, in fact, call in the loans. And for the 1st time in the history of the Bond Street Mall, A’s defaulted on its loans. And C’s and J’s met with Eunice’s and Cal’s and Archie’s and other mall tenants, and they talked about what they were going to do about the fact that A’s was no longer good for its word. And soon thereafter A’s was evicted from the mall, and they were no longer able to get any loans from any other stores in the world, and all of their workers lost their jobs, and the once mighty emporium was bankrupt.

And the people who suffered most were, of course, A's former employees and shoppers. Everyone was poor, and food was hard to get, and lots of other stores closed, and just like that, the once mighty A's had fallen to the bottom of the alphabet, and now they were in the same boat as Z's, that dying store in Central Africa. A terrible tale.

Democracy Is A Luxury That We Can No Longer Afford

The time has come to admit that we no longer live in a Democratic Republic. The people of the United States are no longer sovereign. Our political and financial leaders make policy decisions that do not represent the will of the goverened. And to say that we can simply vote these leaders out of office---thus replacing the corrupt leadership and thus retaining the sovereignty of the people---is false. It is false because Democrats and Republicans are opposite sides of the same coin. Bought and sold leadership knows no ideological boundaries. Our leaders embrace the language of a nation that speaks glowingly of such things as freedom and democracy, and yet these same leaders are indoctrinated by a system that, behind closed doors, acts in ways that are anathema to the existence of a true democracy.

In order for a Democratic Republic to function as such, two things MUST occur: One is that the 'rule of law' must be more powerful than, and trump the authority of, the rule of men. The other is that a truthful and honest FREE FLOW of information must serve as the foundation for decision and policy making. Neither of these conditions exist in the United States of America.

The rule of law has been summarily destroyed through decades of fiscal fraud, carried out by the very men who now run our government. And the information that we receive via the mainstream media is rife with blatant untruths and purposeful deceptions. And the reality is this: Our leaders have come to accept that, in this large and complex world of ours, the survival of the USA as a going concern is far more important than are the rule of law or the free flow of information. Our leaders have all but admitted that TRUTH is not nearly as important to them as is the survival and perpetuation of our way of life. And to that end our leaders will, in our name, engage in policymaking that sacrifices millions and all but ignores such luxuries as truth, honor and law.

And so what does this mean? It means that a wider-war is an inevitability, as our leaders seek to distract the deceive the American people vis-a-vis the crimes committed by the agents of our government and by the men of Wall Street. It means that the coming collapse of the American way of life---a way of life borne of fraud and profligacy and cancerous growth---will be delayed by a leadership who will employ insane fiscal policies and who will stop at nothing, regardless of law and truth, to defend to the end their right to live in a home with 7 bathrooms and 5 flat screen TVs. It means the end of an experiment that, while noble at its birth, has been destroyed by avarice and gluttony and the unchecked power of men.

One need only peruse the news of the day to understand the depth of our desperation, and to begin to grasp the lengths to which our leaders will go, destroying any remaining vestiges of our so-called democracy, in a pathetic attempt to hold back the flood of economic collapse and ever-growing anti-American global resolve.

It is indeed the end of things.

Again And Again And Again And Again

And Again....

We all KNOW that Geithner and Biden and Obama and Bush and Paulson and ALL OF THESE people are liars. And as I've said before, they're not dumb. They know that they're lying. (Even the ones who still believe in Keynesian solutions to this catastrophe on some level understand that they are living a lie.) And as I have also said before, these guys believe that they LIE for a very good reason: they honestly believe that their lies keep things from going KABOOM!! because they know that if the American people knew just how very bad "it" really is, then hell would be a better place to try and govern. And of course they are going to lie and continue to lie about our current economic condition---which by the way can be summed up in one word: BANKRUPT!!---because to NOT lie would be to admit both that collapse is imminent AND that they've been lying all along, thus loosing upon themselves the LEGITIMATE dogs of revolution. So they continue to lie. BUT---and here's the point I've been screaming about for months now---the primary reason they continue to lie and continue to kick the fiscal can down the road is because the KNOW that they have one last silver bullet in their arsenal to "save" America from implosion: AND THAT IS WAR. For all of the reasons I have outlined time and time and time again, WAR saves the nation from collapse and revolution. Just read my piece entitled "BUELLER??". And trust me, I am not a conspiracy theory guy. I simply understand the math, understand history, and understand that these brilliant (as in smart) and terribly misguided (as in amoral and criminal) leaders of ours will stop at nothing, NOTHING!!!, to protect America from collapse and/or failure.

Quick Comment On Ideology

I visited a friend last night. A restaurant owner. I was sitting at the bar with my mug o' coffee, mulling over the Red Sox-Phillies rain delay, when another old "friend" stumbled in. We exchanged pleasantries. We talked about his car. We talked about his brother. And then we started to chat about the economy. (Now don't forget, I'm a social LIBERAL. I voted for Obama. That is important to this little tale.) Anyway, I start in on how messed up the economy is and how insane our FED's policies are viz QE and what-not...and this dude at the bar, the old friend, starts yelling at me for being anti-Obama!! I try in vain to point out that my argument has nothing to do with ideology: it's just math. It's simply numbers. And this dude is freaking out, telling me that I need to tone down my anti-Obama rhetoric and that it's all the Republicans' fault and that I should be laying blame on "W" and Paulson, etc. And I try---again in vain---to point out THAT I BLAME THEM ALL!!! But he cannot hear me. The point of this story is not to make Obama supporters look like idiots. Nor is my point to make conservatives look smart. I simply wanted to demonstrate---yet one more time---how our world is becoming increasing ideological, increasingly polarized---and NEITHER SIDE is actually interested in THE TRUTH!!!

BlogTalkRadio Show VidClips, Friday 6/12: Growth, Fraud & The END Of Things

Bueller? Bueller??

WAR in 12-24 months seems to me pretty much assured. And when I say "war", I mean a much wider war than that which currently exists in South Asia. I mean 500,000+ American troops on the ground, the activation of the Selective Service draft, massive war protests in D.C....the whole 9 yards, so to speak.

The only way---and I believe that our leaders know this---the only way that the U.S. will not ultimately experience a full-on economic and systemic collapse in the near term is to substantially increase its tax revenues. AND, the only way to increase tax revenues by the necessary TRILLION+ dollars (35+%!!) is to be able to actually raise those monies. (Tautological I admit, but I have a point here.)

U.S. GDP in 2008 was roughly $14.2 Trillion. Of that amount, over 70%---or roughly $10.1 Trillion---was based upon consumption (And much of that debt-based consumption). In the current financial crisis, we are experiencing a significant DECREASE in both consumer spending and in business investment. And as these components of GDP continue to crash, the government KNOWS that it has to make up the difference through GE, or government expenditure. What this means is an increase in GE from $2.8 Trillion, or about 20% of GDP, to $8.5 Trillion, or 60% of GDP. The reason for this should be clear: Without these additional expenditures by the government, GDP contracts significantly and the nation experiences the deflationary depression that our leaders---via the Faustian Bargain of QE and monetary policy---have assured us will not happen. But our leaders ALSO must realize that increasing the GE portion of GDP to some $8.5 Trillion means more printing and more borrowing, and eventually (sooner rather than later) the bond market collapses as our creditors tell us to take a hike. So the only solution....TAXES!!

So how does the government increase tax revenues from 2008's $2.5 Trillion to $3.5 Trillion without creating a nullification crisis of 19th century proportions? Wave that flag!!! I believe that the only way that U.S. citizens will willingly pay these absolutely necessary additional, massive taxes---money that citizens will be handing over to a government that has repeatedly bailed out the billionaires and the fraudsters whilst leaving the middle class out to dry---the only way that this will happen is if the government adroitly and masterfully manipulates our sense of national pride and patriotic identity. And they will.

That's the Obama trump card! The Bully Pulpit!!!

Now please understand that I'm not saying that war grows the economy. I'm not saying we are heading for a wider-war because we can create a bomb-building society like we did some 70 years ago. And, unlike Gerald Celente, I am not saying that we are heading for war because it is the so-called logical next step. I am saying that, simply put, increasing TAX revenues in the short term provides the government with a stay of execution from systemic collapse. And that is the best that they can do. I mean look: It's either a 35% contraction and a deflationary depression now (In other words, pulling the plug on the Keynesian bailout insanity and essentially disavowing ourselves of our 38 years of belief and adherence to a regime of irredeemable fiat currency), or it's a hyper-inflationary collapse on a massive scale years down the road because eventually our experiment with QE explodes like the metaphorical dirigible that it is. Unless....

Unless our leaders can figure out a way to convince the public that giving the government an additional TRILLION dollars (minimum!!) in tax revenues is somehow a good idea. And we know that any attempt to simply raise taxes (such as a 20% VAT) wouold be met with cries of nullification and no taxation without representation and it would be a mess. A total mess! And that mess would be here, at home. And our leaders have already shown us that they simply refuse to let things get ugly---really ugly---here at home. In Peshawar or Islamabad or Pyong Yang? That's another story altogether.

We continue to inch closer, everyday, to financial systemic collapse. From tens of trillions in Derivatives & CDS UN-capitalized counterparty risk, to the soon-to-be cataclysmic bubble-mortgage reset explosion, to a job-market (real estate and banking) that will NEVER rebound because those jobs were bubble jobs and they will NEVER come back, to an imminent bond market dislocation, to the FED's continued insane attempts to get 'lending and credit' flowing again for consumers who are already $2.5 TRILLION in debt, to a pension & retirement fund implosion that will leave 10 million ADDITIONAL baby-boomers broke and unemployed.

In this utterly disastrous economic environment---an environment in which our creditors, and all of those nations that hold the U.S. dollar in reserve, are getting ready to pull the proverbial plug because our IOU's are increasing not worth the paper upon which they're written, and in an environment in which productive capital continues to be destroyed, and in an environment in which our government can't even service the interest on our 14 TRILLION dollar debt without printing more monopoly money or without borrowing more money from other countries---in this environment, how does the government stave off systemic collapse?

And finally, add this quintessential question to the mix: How does the United States of America deal with the FACT that there exists an ever-encroaching and ever-growing element around the globe that is decidedly (a) anti-American, that is (b) capable of securing nuclear weapons (if they haven't already done so) and that (c) is bent upon "relieving" the USA of its station as the primary international geopolitical and economic hegemon?

And so now you tell me...

How does the government delay the arrival of all-out systemic collapse, "grow" GDP by 3.5% in 2009 (Obama's promise, not mine), find something useful to do with the growing numbers of terminally unemployed, keep the Taliban from getting a hold of nukes, keep the "red" states from jumping ship when taxes are increased by some 35% (which they MUST, lest our creditors all jump ship on U.S. debt), and continue to tout claims of green shoots and incipient recovery?

Bueller???

The Worst is SO Yet To Come: BlogTalkRadio Show Video Excerpt

We Fight This Battle For Our Kids

Today I read a troubling tale. Seems the government has taken yet one more step toward destroying whatever vestige of sovereignty the American people currently retain in this failing nation of ours:

From lvrj.com via ML Implode: "...There was no indication what they were looking for or what crime, if any, was being investigated, just a blanket subpoena for voluminous and detailed records on every private citizen who dared to speak about a federal tax case..."

It is time to fight back. In fact, it is well past time that we fought back. We are late, and the clock is ticking. Below I will reprint a piece that I penned in prior months. But before I do so, let me add one quick thought.

As you know, I am running for Congress in 2010. I am running as a Democrat in Vermont, and I plan upon defeating Peter Welch in the fall of '10 and heading to Washington to do battle with an establishment that has utterly perverted our Constitutional Democracy and that has left the middle class out to dry. And I will NOT be silenced. My kids are counting on me. And armed with the TRUTH, my voice is going to be heard.

I promise you that.

Friday, December 12, 2008

March To The Sea And Make Salt

Satya is the Sanskrit word for “truth”; agraha means "great enthusiasm and interest"[1]. The two words combined may be rendered as "the firmness of truth.” The term was popularized during the Indian Independence Movement, and is used in manyIndian languages including Hindi. It can also mean"the force of truth." On March 12, 1930, Gandhi and 78 male satyagrahis set out on foot for the coastalvillage of Dandi, Gujarat, 390 kilometres (240 mi) from their starting point at Sabarmati Ashram. At Aslali, and the other villages that the march passed through, volunteers collected donations, registered new satyagrahis, and received resignations from village officials who chose to end cooperation with British rule.^[40]As they entered each village, crowds greeted the marchers, beating drums and cymbals. Gandhi gave speeches attacking the salt tax as inhuman, and the salt satyagraha as a "poor man's battle." Each night they slept in the open, asking of the villagers nothing more than simple food and a place to rest and wash. Gandhi felt that this would bring the poor into the battle for independence, necessary for eventual victory.^[41] Thousands of satyagrahis and leaders like Sarojini Naidu joined him. Every day, more and more people joined the march. At Surat, they were greeted by 30,000 people. Near the end of the march, Gandhi declared, "I want world sympathy in this battle of Right against Might." (from Wikipedia)

It is time that the power of truth be brought to bear on the "powers-that-be" who, through their collective greed and criminality, have placed the entire world in great peril. The actions of the men of Wall Street and the Men of Capitol Hill have left an entire world on the brink of ruin. Hope for many is already gone. These men have chosen to sacrifice billions of us on the alter of avarice. Their mansions and yachts are testimonies to our poverty, their lavish homes a reminder of our homelessness, their Thanksgiving feasts a symbol of our hunger.

And at the heart of it all, of all of the suffering heaped upon the backs of billions of people, are the lies. The power of truth has been beaten down by the forces of greed and gluttony. We rationalize the 30 million dollar salary of the CEO as being justly earned based upon the amount of wealth that his corporation creates, but now of course we know that it is all a lie. Wealth based upon “growth” that is in fact debt (leverage) is not wealth at all, it is fraud. But the greedy nonetheless use this debt as the collateral they need to live in their mansions and drive their Mercedes and sail on their yachts, while the rest of us are left to repay these debts through taxes and cuts in services to the poor and our own debt-servitude. And all of the men in power are complicit in this lie, all of the governmental agencies that have facilitated the lies are guilty of damning the rest of us to nothing more than poverty. And as Gandhi said, poverty is the worst form of violence. And the list of lies is truly endless:

Accounting Fraud

Lending Fraud

Asset Valuation Fraud (Mark-To-Fantasy)

Ponzi Fraud

Unemployment Reporting Fraud

Tax Fraud

Insider Trading Fraud

Derivatives Fraud

TARP Fraud

Securities Fraud

Fractional Reserve Banking Fraud

Currency Fraud

Keynesian Fraud

Election Fraud

Obviously an epic list, and all perpetrated by the wealthy and powerful in order to perpetuate the system, at any and all costs. And now we are the cost, and for the liars, that is an acceptable price to pay. Our lives, the lives of billions of people, our suffering, our hunger, are acceptable to the wealthy and powerful. When will enough be enough? Maybe it is time that we March To The Sea, And Make Salt.

WE MUST WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!

This from Denninger today (in Green):

It takes some real BALLS to cough up this load of crap:

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Tuesday challenged Congress to force itself to pay for new spending as it goes rather than sink the nation deeper into a debt, calling it a matter of public responsibility. Republicans lashed back that Obama is no voice of fiscal restraint as the deficit soars.

I'll be interested in that if and only if it is retroactive to Obama's submitted budget, and holds deficits to no more than George W. Bush's average deficit.

Remember, we're not going to be fighting any more wars, right? So no need for big deficits, right?

Oh wait - we're going to run somewhere around $1.8 trillion in deficits this year, and Obama wants to talk about "PayGo"?

To increase the deficit from HERE?

Who cares? A deficit four times larger than ever run before, and now we're going to say "we'll cap it here"?

This is a joke, right?

No, its not:

The deficit figures flow from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout and the cost of the economic stimulus bill. Obama has defended the massive stimulus plan as essential to helping pump some life back in the economy, one that is still shedding jobs but showing more signs of life in recent weeks.

But that "stimulus" and "bailout" won't and mathematically cannot work, because the excessive debt is still there, having been simply shifted to The Federal Government instead of forced to default on the balance sheets of the imprudent where it would have blown them to smithereens. Instead, it will blow all of us to smithereens.

How in the hell does anyone support this crap? How does this sort of thing not lead to immediate jeers from the peanut gallery, the Press and the people?

How does this sort of flat LIE not lead to 100,000 people surrounding 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with signs, pitchforks and torches - tomorrow?

We are truly a nation of sheep, and we are not going to get sheared this time - we're going to get slaughtered and eaten.

Dan W:

EVERYTHING Denninger says I agree with. EVERYTHING!!! But we are leaving out the MOST CRITICAL piece of the puzzle!!

Denninger states, "...But that "stimulus" and "bailout" won't and mathematically cannot work, because the excessive debt is still there, having been simply shifted to The Federal Government instead of forced to default on the balance sheets of the imprudent where it would have blown them to smithereens. Instead, it will blow all of us to smithereens...."

This is absolutely true. We will be 'blown to smithreens'....unless....

Unless somehow, someway, the government can find a way to increase tax revenues by some 35+%.

This is from the tax policy center:

• In 2008 the federal government collected $2.5 trillion, an amount equal to 17.7 percent of GDP. Federal revenue has ranged from 14.4 to 20.9 percent of GDP over the past five decades, averaging 18.2 percent.
• The individual income tax has been the largest single source of federal revenue since 1950, averaging just over 8 percent of GDP.

So, what if the government found a way to increase tax revenues---even during this economic DEPRESSION---from some $2.5 Trillion to, let's say $3.35 TRILLION, or a 35% increase in revenues.

Now, if we consider that the U.S. owes foreign countries somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 TRILLION (In other words, foreign countries hold around 25% of our national debt), than an INCREASE of close to a TRILLION DOLLARS in federal tax revenues would not only be sufficient to service the interest on said debt, but these monies could in fact be used to begin to pay down the deficit, albeit slowly.

So how does the government increase tax revenues so dramatically?

WAR!!!!

As I said earlier today:

"...The Obama Administration is going to look to kill ALL of the critical birds with one stone: To (a) increase tax revenues---even as people's ability to pay continues to crash---by (b) appealing to the uncritical nationalistic American ethos through (c) the prosecution of a wider-war in an effort to (d) "save humanity" from the scourge of a nuclear-armed Taliban or Kim Jong Il. And in doing so the Obama team can (e) keep unrest from coming to the streets of the USA as (f) the unemployed are put to work in the new war economy---NOT BUILDING BOMBS AND GUNS---but in a massive volunteer corps whose charge is (g) helping keep communities together as their young adults go off to war to save the world from the menaces of nuclear-armed extremism..."

My point I hope is clear. While I totally agree with Denninger and like voices viz the kicking of the metaphorical fiscal can down the road, and of course not actually facing the problem of DEBT by clearing said debt from the system, MY argument is that the Obama team will use the power of the bully-pulpit to artificially and in the near term prop up GDP through an additional 5-6 TRILLION dollars in GE (on top of the current 2.8 Trillion), and that these monies will come from the taxpayer, who will be further fleeced through his own inability to see through the patriotic and nationalistic haze created by the Obama propaganda machine.

Tell me....what other solution---other than a return to sanity and a huge contraction in GDP...

What other solution is there???

The Road Not Taken: 6 Months Later

I penned the following piece 6 months ago. MY comments from December 8th are in BLUE. Any new comments will be in RED.

The Road Definitely NOT Taken

If you've never taken the time to read M.Scott Peck's book The Road Less Traveled, you've done yourself a great disservice. It is an insightful, clear and powerful work regarding the human condition. Not surprisingly, Peck's seminal work also provides us with a keen lens through which we can examine the current financial calamity and the folks who have so generously provided us with this crisis.

I will add my comments in blue.

Discipline (excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#Discipline)

• Delaying gratification: Sacrificing present comfort for future gains.
• Acceptance of responsibility: Accepting responsibility for one's own decisions.
• Dedication to truth: Honesty, both in word and deed.
• Balancing: Handling conflicting requirements. Scott Peck talks of an important skill to prioritize between different requirements -- bracketing.

Peck’s book begins with the profound truth that "Life is difficult!". We must attest to the fact that life was never meant to be easy, and that it is nothing but a battlefield of problems. We can either moan about them or solve them. It is here that the vital role of discipline assumes significance. Peck defines discipline as the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. These tools are delaying gratification, assuming responsibility, dedication to the truth, and balancing.

As I read and reread those words, my head spins with thoughts of just how UN-disciplined our political and financial leaders truly are. And it would be on some level comical, did not their choices to behave without any discipline whatsoever lead us down the road to a total breakdown of 'civil' society. DELAYING GRATIFICATION and accumulating DEBT are the "Rock and Scissors" of finances. And the current "BAILOUT" (8 Trillion Dollars and counting) (OK, 12.5 TRILLION now!), as well as the coming Obama TRILLION dollar stimulus debacle, are all examples of leaders unwilling to delay gratification in lieu of feeding their own self-interest (In this case, the self-interest being both the accumulation of wealth and the maintenance of political stature.) And I sit here and shake my head, drifting in consciousness between blinding rage and surreal bemusement, as our so-called and self-proclaimed leaders choose to buy time for themselves and, I suppose, for us, and postpone the inevitable---and the inevitable? Total collapse of the global economic system. (6 months down the road and NOW I think that the "inevitable", at least in the near term, is the prosecution of a wider-war in Asia, the goal of which will be to artifically and in the near term prop up GDP through an additional 5-6 TRILLION dollars in GE (on top of the current 2.8 Trillion). These monies will come from the taxpayer, who will be further fleeced through his own inability to see through the patriotic and nationalistic haze created by the Obama propaganda machine.) Why? Well, you learned it in grammar school. Negative + Negative = a bigger Negative. -3 + -3 = -6, right? Debt doesn't go away by creating more debt. (And for those who seem convinced that utilizing debt to stimulate spending and borrowing is a logical economic policy, your analyses seem long on ideology and short on facts and reality. Lest we forget, confidence in the veracity of our political leadership is at an all-time low. Don't under-estimate this dynamic. Even in this moment of relative beauty---the election of an African American President---our incipient Chief Executive has pulled together a staff of old-school, Keynesian cronies. His ploy may be an appeal to the Center, but it ignores the reality that tens of millions of Americans have come to associate the old school as entirely corrupt and duplicitous. And these suspicions will only be exacerbated by the doomed-to-failure Freidmanite approach to the financial crisis: that of spending TRILLIONS more on stimulus packages that cannot, by their very nature, succeed in an environment of debt-based toxic shock. Indeed it is beginning to unravel as we speak. The bond market is beginning to signal the end. The Obama team is desperate. War is coming. It is the only choice left to our sick and twisted leaders.

And what about ASSUMING RESPONSIBILITY? Folks in Washington and on Wall Street don't like to accept responsibility. Instead they choose to lie to us and say they feel so badly and pretend to accept responsibility, but it's just an act, a sleight of hand, the skin-on-the-teeth of contrition if you will. If these folks really believed in assuming total an unequivocal responsibility for their past and present, and even future actions, then they would join with the rest of us. (Let's face it. The goal of wealth is to maintain itself...at any and all costs.) Instead they exist apart from us, living lives that do not resemble those lived by the rest of us. As Gandhi said, until our leaders toil in the fields with us, they will not represent us. Nothing could be more true of today's leaders, both political and financial. And what is also true is that 'we the people' have an extraordinary capacity for forgiveness, and for reconciliation. But we also know when an apology lacks credibility, when a fist-pounding appeal for justice lacks moral authority. Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman, did not truly accept "full responsibility" for the demise of his company when he stated, in front of Congress, that he, in fact did, accept full responsibility for the demise of his company. We knew these words were hollow because he will never toil with the rest of us. He owns many homes and many cars and his savings are secure and his retirement monies remain intact and he exists without fear of the future. Not so for the rest of us.

And what of DEDICATION TO THE TRUTH?!? The stunning arrogance of these men is that they not only lie with utter impunity, but they have come to believe that lying in pursuit of policy decisions that they support is actually a virtue. A virtue!!?! It is no wonder that we find ourselves on "the eve of destruction", staring down the barrel of a loaded canon that must, MUST reduce our world to ashes. And I'm not talking about war (Well, in 2008 I wasn't talking about war. But now, six months further on, I am. Now I see that the Obama team's ONLY possible solution to the incipient crash of the bond market, to U6 unemployment reaching 20%, to the possibility of social unrest HERE in the U.S., is the creation of a wider-war. Simply check out what I wrote to Peter Schiff today, above. You'll get the picture.), I'm talking about ashes that result from the millions of fires that will torch the social fabric that constitutes the quality of our very existence. Our leaders have no dedication to the truth: they have no idea what the truth is anymore. They see things like 5% GDP growth (by the way...all DEBT, not actual growth) and unregulated Derivatives Markets and building more and more nuclear power plants as being the truth. Conversely, they snicker at those who would conjecture that the truth is not what we WANT, but what remains within the scope that our ever-constricting circle of resources enables us to construct. And they plot the destruction of those who would dare organize resistance to the foul evils of Fractional Reserve Banking, and currency by Governmental Decree, and over and above all else, Derivatives. Derivatives, the wagers that the rich make on the lives of the rest of us.

These are techniques of suffering, means by which we experience the pain of problems in such a way as to work through them and solve them successfully, learning and growing in the process. Most of us do not want to wrestle with our problems because of the pain involved. Yet, it is only in grappling with our problems that life has its meaning.

But our leaders find suffering anathema to their quest for power and wealth. And our leaders are willing to mortgage our futures because they are unwilling to be truthful: they are unwilling to face reality---reality, which itself is the ultimate expression of truth. Barack Obama may be willing to say "things are gonna be hard", but he's not willing to tell the real truth: that the only way to heal from this orgy of greed that has left us close to death is to let all of the dead tissue slough off, and to help us hold onto each other through the pain and suffering of healing and rehabilitation, and then to begin the process of becoming whole again. Were he that courageous, there would be no stimulus package, per se. There would be no talk of encouraging lending and loosening credit markets and making sure the auto industry survived intact (an oxymoron, auto + industry). But no one in Washington has the stomach for that, because god forbid it meant not being re-elected and thus having to join REAL society once again.

Delaying gratification is the process by which we learn to meet and experience pain first, and then enjoy pleasure. By doing so, we enhance the joy of pleasure. Most of us learn this activity by the age of five. For example, a six-year-old child will prefer eating the cake first and the frosting last.

We teach our children well, but we ignore those lessons in lieu of our greed, our fear, our inability to cope with our own pain.

Taking responsibility for our problems is perhaps the most difficult. Only by accepting the fact that we have problems can we solve them.

Our leaders THINK that they are taking responsibility for our/their problems, but they are not being truthful. Our leaders have chosen to believe that the problem that needs solving is that our economy is contracting and that we have to find ways to stimulate growth, get people working, loosen credit markets, etc. If our leaders reflected HONESTLY upon these things, they might, were they constitutionally capable, come to the realization that the solution they are seeking and proposing is the very problem itself. Addiction to growth is the problem. Trying to find ways to reconstitute our usurious banking system---a system that exists ONLY if people by the hundreds of millions are compelled to obtain loans and financing and credit, and than having to service all of that debt with interest---is the problem. Spending "money" in the name of fiscal stimulus (more debt) to purportedly create jobs that do not reflect an honest appraisal of the future needs of 21st century economies is the problem. Employing QE and insane monetary policy in an all-out assault on reality is the problem. Allowing men like Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner to go on "lying tours" of the world is the problem.

We finally come to balancing-the technique of flexibility. Many a time we function with rigid, set patterns of behavior. Extraordinary flexibility is a must for successful living. Part of this technique is also learning to give up something that is dear and familiar to us.

The Friedmanites and Keynesians and Reaganites that populate our high offices have refused, and continue to refuse, to give up on their dreams of the unlimited strength and power of the irredeemable dollar, of the ability to finance debt ad infinitum without any negative consequences, of the trust in the inherent morality of the marketplace to check actions that might, in the end, result in deleterious impacts upon the economy. And yet our current reality---REALITY!!!---reflects the truth. Reality, by definition, IS the truth. It must be acknowledged, or we will continue to hasten our demise as we bury our collective heads deeper and deeper in the sand. And our reality contradicts the cries of Bernanke and Paulson and Bush and Obama, who continue to clamor for spending our way out of the crisis. And the laws of mathematics and physics could not be more clear on this point: ALL of this debt will ultimately have to be serviced, and eventually it will fall upon the common man and woman, and their children, to pay for the sins of their leaders. Worse still, our leaders will accept the destruction of entire societies, of tens of millions of NON-Americans, as we prosecute a wider-war in name of saving humanity from possibility of nuclear-armed extremists, but with the goal of artificially growing GDP through increased Government Expenditure and accompanying patriotic cries for increased taxation to pay for these wars-to-end-all-wars. Our leaders will accept the suffering and death of millions in East Asia, South Asia and Africa in order to save their wealth and to save a dying way of life.

Peck gives some identifying characteristics for evil persons. Discussed below are Scott Peck's views. Evil is described by Peck as "militant ignorance".

The Reaganite ideologues remain so focused upon their Keynesian dreams, that they absolutely refuse to acknowledge that worship of this false idol has brought the world's economies to the brink of chaos and collapse. Ben Bernanke is militantly ignorant. He would prefer dropping interest rates to NEGATIVE and printing tens of TRILLIONS more in Monopoly money than face the fact that our experiment with irredeemable currency has failed. That we were wrong. That our monetary policy is fatally flawed, and that the collapse of our way of life is assured.

The evil person:

• Projects his or her evils and sins onto others and tries to remove them from others
• Maintains a high level of respectability and lies incessantly in order to do so
• Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency
• Is unable to think from other people's viewpoints.

I rest my case. And still do.

Copy Of An Email To Peter Schiff

Hi Peter:

Dan Weintraub here, of...

http://ashizashiz.blogspot.com
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Ashiz-Ashiz-AFD
http://youtube.com/danontheconomy
http://weintraub2010.com

As for your overall analysis viz the coming bond market dislocation and [the potential for an eventual] hyper-inflationary depression, I'm on board---though it is MY opinion that you are "missing" one key KEY piece.

We (you and I) know that our addiction to Keynesian/Friedmanite madness has led us to the abyss. We know that QE and a refusal to allow debt to be cleared from the system only puts off our ultimate day of reckoning. HOWEVER, what isn't getting enough "talk time" are the following FACTS:

1. That the government can only survive---indeed our NATION can only survive---this insane fiscal experiment if the government is somehow able to increase tax revenues by some 30% MINIMUM.

2. That the citizens and STATES of the U.S. would totally balk at paying substantially increased federal taxes (VAT for example), and that their refusal to do so would be righteous considering all of the fraud, duplicity and unconstitutional actions perpetrated by our agents of government.

3. That states would LITERALLY begin nullification proceedings against any such efforts to raise already tanking tax revenues...UNLESS...

4. Unless the Obama Administration adroitly employs the power-of-the-speech, the power of the bully pulpit, and convinces the citizens of the nation that we must prosecute a wider-war in Asia, to save humanity!!! And that the Obama team, through such exploitation of nationalism and patriotism, could in fact raise taxes to unheard of levels, and the American people would go along with such plans, because the American people lack acuity when the flag is waved in their collective faces.

And so my point here is that the Obama Administration is going to look to kill ALL of the critical birds with one stone: To (a) increase tax revenues---even as people's ability to pay continues to crash---by (b) appealing to the uncritical nationalistic American ethos through (c) the prosecution of a wider-war in an effort to (d) "save humanity" from the scourge of a nuclear-armed Taliban or Kim Jong Il. And in doing so the Obama team can (e) keep unrest from coming to the streets of the USA as (f) the unemployed are put to work in the new war economy---NOT BUILDING BOMBS AND GUNS---but in a massive volunteer corps whose charge is (g) helping keep communities together as their young adults go off to war to save the world from the menaces of nuclear-armed extremism.

We had better NOT UNDER-ESTIMATE the power of the [Obama] bully pulpit.

Warmly,

Dan Weintraub

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Water

Tell Me Lies Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan – Some 7,000 of the new U.S. troops ordered to Afghanistan are fanning out across the dangerous south this week on a mission to defeat the Taliban insurgency and to change the course of a war claiming American lives at a record pace.

Truth-Check: The "Taliban" insurgency cannot be defeated. The Taliban may be radical Islamists, but they also represent, on some significant level, a nationalist movement of the disenfranchised and impoverished. Not entirely unlike Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh---Marxists by ideology, but NATIONALISTIC by cause---the "Taliban" (Talibanized elements) will only go away when foreign powers have vacated the premises (Afghanistan) and when poverty and suffering have been erased from the Afghani landscape.

My Four Point Campaign Platform For My 2010 Congressional Run

NO TO THE PROFESSIONAL POLITICIAN

I am a middle class, unemployed former high school and college history and economics teacher. I was recently laid off by Dartmouth College after two years of work as an IT specialist. I rent a small house on the river in Norwich, VT, where I live with my two children and my wife of eight years.

I am neither wealthy nor interested in becoming so. I do not want, and I will not accept, one cent of the $165,000 salary that members of the House of Representatives receive. If elected, I will donate the entirety of my salary to local foodbanks in Vermont.

I will always vote against any salary increases for elected officials.

I will only serve for one term if elected. I believe that the professional politician is often guided NOT by truth, but by polls. He is guided NOT by conscience, but instead he (and she) is swayed by the will and might of special interest. I will only serve one term in office and I will vote my conscience without any consideration for how my voting record could impact my electability. After two years of service to my nation I will return to my small rented home on the river.

I will actively oppose corporate influence-peddling and I will struggle against those forces on Wall Street and in corporate America who seek to subvert our founding fathers' Enlightenment ideals in order to make a buck.

I will strive to bring our country back to a time in which the people, NOT their political leaders, are sovereign.

I will view members of BOTH political parties equally, and with the contempt they so deserve, and will seek legal remedy, should they prove themselves to be, or are they discovered to be, complicit in the illegal fiscal fleecing of the American middle class.

I will work to limit the ability of people and institutions who would fraudulently and in bad faith seek to make millions of dollars on the backs and hard work of the rest of us.

I will always tell you the truth, even when that truth is painful. Truth of course is real. Any attempt to obfuscate or avoid the truth is productive of the creation of false hope, false dreams, and false beliefs. I will not participate in the perpetuation of falsehood.

I will not employ negative campaigning vis-a-vis character assassination to promote my candidacy or political agenda. I, like my opponents and allies, am a flawed individual. Attacking people's character flaws and/or personal lifestyle choices for political gain would be the height of hypocrisy and I will not do it.

NO TO THE OBAMA ECONOMIC AGENDA

I may be a liberal democrat, but I firmly believe that the Keynesian economic policies that are being pursued by the Obama Administration are leading us toward economic ruin. I know a lot about this. I am an economist and I write often on this very topic.

I will vote against any further stimulus or ill-fated bailout plans. Creating more debt is no way to solve a problem caused in the first place by profligacy, fraud and debt.

I will seek to have former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson indicted for Contempt of Congress.

I will seek to speak truth to all of ways in which the government manipulates data in their effort to perpetuate a money-as-debt system that, through decades of fraud and abuse, has furthered our economic woes.

I will argue for a return to a Gold Standard, for the abandonment of a system of irredeemable fiat currency that, through its abuse, has brought us to the brink of a new economic depression.

I will support true and honest free market Capitalism (In which real risk and real reward exist, and in which businesses succeed and fail without bailouts and free of fraud and undo influence-peddling) whilst simultaneously seeking to expose the fraudulent Ponzi-economy that has made billionaires out of criminals and thieves, and that has left the majority of Americans without monies for their retirements and without a paycheck to pay the rent.

I will seek to end the efforts of Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve to employ ill-fated monetary policy and Quantitative Easing; efforts that continue to push us to the brink of a bond market dislocation and into a new and "greater" economic depression.

I will seek to have the Federal Reserve closed, and Ben Bernanke fired.

I will seek to bring an end to the fraudulent "free trade" efforts of such usurious and exploitative institutions as the IMF and World Bank.

I will ask that ALL members of Congress, including myself, be audited as to the possibility that they have used their political influence to unlawful financial ends. I will ask that independent agencies determine which, if any, officials have acted in bad faith vis-a-vis economic conflicts of interest, and I will demand indictments of those who are found complicit. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IDEOLOGY. This is about keeping government honest and clean.

YES TO SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

I believe in God. My belief in God provides me with strength and peace of mind. My belief in God helps me be a less fearful and more loving father and husband. However, I believe that individual freedom can be measured in the distance that exists between church and state, and I will always act to limit the influence that religion plays in the creation of public policy.

I, like Mohandas Gandhi, believe that "...there is no God higher than Truth...".

I will actively oppose any attempt to limit gay marriage or abortion rights at a federal level. I believe that such efforts are undertaken by individuals who use religious beliefs to guide policymaking. I think that such actions are anathema to the maintenance of church-state separation and I will oppose such efforts at every turn.

NO TO A WIDER WAR IN ASIA

I am unwaveringly opposed to the prosecution of a wider war in South Asia, East Asia or on the Horn of Africa.

I believe that our leaders in Washington may find themselves backed into a corner vis-a-vis promises of incipient economic recovery and as such may be compelled to pursue the prosecution of a wider war as a pretext for artificially growing GDP in the near term through exploiting nationalism and patriotism in an effort to raise revenues through increased taxation. I will oppose such pursuits.

I also believe that calls to "disarm" rogue states such as North Korea, or attempts to keep radical elements such as Al Qaida from gaining access to nuclear weapons through military means is both dishonest and doomed to failure. In a world in which such weapons technologies exist and will always exist, honest diplomacy and humility are the sole effective tools for change. Military engagement will only bring about more suffering. It will not solve the problem.

I will not be swayed by the adroit employment of the Bully Pulpit by President Obama should he attempt to move us toward the prosecution of a wider war in Asia.

War & Unemployment

THE CAMPAIGN BEGINS!!!

Click HERE and read about DAN WEINTRAUB FOR CONGRESS IN 2010!!

I have to secure 500 signatures to get on the ballot.

The Bottom Line

DEFLATION v. INFLATION

This is a fascinating topic. I put forward my 2 cents on the deflation v. inflation discussion during the first 20 or so minutes (begins in earnest at about the 12:10 minute mark) of my radio show today. Check it out HERE.

PLEASE SHARE THIS VIDEO WITH ONE OTHER PERSON, AND ASK THEM TO DO THE SAME

WE HAD BETTER START GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT GETTING SERIOUS!!!!

Look everyone, whether or not you want to DEAL with reality makes no matter:

REALITY IS ABOUT TO DEAL WITH YOU!!!

I just spent 10 minutes trying to get through to yet another in a million-mile-long line of folks who have bought the Obama recovery line, hook line and sinker!! And here's the thing: When the entire deal comes crashing down around us, which IT HAS TO because it is simply a house of cards waiting for the right breeze to collapse it altogether, all of these folks who refused to listen to us, who marginalized us, and who sat in front of their TV's listening to televangelists like Obama and Bush and Geithner and Paulson and Bernanke and Frank and Pelosi and Leahy, et al---when it all comes crashing to an uncermeonious halt----in other words, WHEN IT'S TOO DAMNED LATE!!!---then they'll stare wide-eyed at the TV and wonder how this could ever have happened to such a great and prosperous nation.

Folks, the proverbial poop is but months away from hitting the metaphorical fan, precipitating a supernova of economic and social calamity. I predict 12-24 months before we witess the following in America:

1. A cataclysmic hyper-inflationary depression casued by the FED's blind adherence to Keynesian black magic and poker-table mentality cosmic bluffing
   
2. 25% U3 Unemployment in most major urban centers, MINIMUM!
   
3. Several state nullification movements viz federal tax mandates, exacerbated by increasing social vitriol and DIS-union with regard to such issues as Abortion and Gay Marriage
   
4. A wider war in South Asia, concocted by the Obama team in a desperate attempt to artifically grow GDP through massive GE and accompanied by government-sponsored and bully-pulpit exploited flag-waving, revenue-raising, mumbo-jumbo
5. A military draft
   
6. Food shortages
7. Web censorship
8. Fuel shortages
9. Water shortages
10. Mass social unrest

Our leaders have lost whatever sanity they may once have possessed. They have abdicated ALL reasonable responsibility and have set us on a collision course with a fate far worse than that experienced by our grandparents some 75 years ago. For all of the reasons AND MORE that I have outlined day-after-day, week-after-week here and on my RADIO SHOW and at my YOUTUBE site, we are standing on the edge of a social and economic dislocation of grand and epic proporations. And so Implore you to prepare. Build your ark now! A year or two from now could be too late.

This Is Akin To A Drug Dealer Being Interviewed And Telling Us That We Need More Treatment Facilities For Addicts

WASHINGTON – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is urging Congress and the Obama administration to start plotting a strategy to curb record-high U.S. budget deficits. Failing to do so could eventually erode investor confidence and endanger the economy's prospects for long-term health, he said. Bernanke's comments, in prepared testimony Wednesday before the House Budget Committee, come as concerns grow at home and overseas about the United States' mounting red ink. "Even as we take steps to address the recession and threats tofinancial stability, maintaining the confidence of the financial markets requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance," Bernanke said. (Yahoo)

What a first class, lying clown.

Hey Everyone, I Just Found Out That The Coming WIDER WAR In South Asia Is Winnable! Yippee!!

The Coming Civil War

Book Project Coming Along

My book project is coming along. I'm looking to have a completed copy available via .pdf download sometime late this summer. In light of said project, you may have noticed that I am posting more in the way of podcasts & videocasts than written pieces these days. The book writing process is rewarding, though arduous. Thanks for your understanding. ALSO, please check out my daily radiocasts at BlogTalkRadio.

(Click HERE to be magically transported to my radio portal)

Sunday Morning Musings

DAMN YOU, RICHARD NIXON!!!!

Addendum #1: Remember, the goal of the government will be to grow GDP artificially in the short-term by increasing the government expenditure portion of GDP from its current level of 20% to over 60%. Of course this growth is illusory. It is but more debt...and THAT is why a massive nationalistic campaign aimed at increasing tax revenues in order to offset borrowing and efforts at QE is coming.

Addendum #2: My argument here is that the concept of having "reserve requirements" went out the window not simply due to fraud and/or lack of oversight, and not simply because of legislative action to relax such requirements, but in fact because in a regime of irredeemable currency by fiat---a system in which monetary policy is not tied to any reserve or metallic standard---no one in charge really cares about the idea of reserves because any economic "rough waters" (i.e.---too much leverage and debt) can supposedly be solved through monetization and QE.

Didn't Gates Say This Wasn't A Crisis?

"We will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in the region -- or on us," said Gates, speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore. "Our goal is complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state," he said.