Everyone Back in The Water

The news came over the wire a few weeks ago that Bank of America was repaying their banker bailout money, aka TARP. Today, Citigroup has announced that they too will be repaying the TAPR to the tune of $20 billion dollars. Now, before you get any ideas that these developments mean that these respective bank's health has improved, consider that there is no mark to market accounting with which to make an accurate assessment of the aforesaid bank's assets. In truth, the banking industry's accounting these days is pretty much whatever these institutions (and their ilk) decide they want it to be.

Repayment of the loans, then, is not a sign of health, merely the triumph of a grand lie as it manifests in fictitious bookkeeping. The upshot of all this business is that the banks who are making the repayments will be even freer to do what they please now that they have un-tethered themselves from The Lender of Last resort, which happens to be you and me. Put another way, "Extend and Pretend" will continue to be business as usual until another crisis inevitably erupts.

The Hits Just Keep On Coming

For this citizen, Tuesday the Eighth had to rate as one of the more surreal days of the last few months. On this day, two days before accepting his Noble Peace Prize, President Obama decreed that, in order to jolt Main Street back to life, more stimulus must be provided to the tune of an estimated one hundred and fifty billion dollars. "The U.S. must spend its ways out of a recession." Yes, Mr. President, and the drug addict must shoot his or her drug of choice into their veins so as to achieve good health.

And pardon me if I am bit confused, because, according to the government, the recession ended earlier this year. I mean, it's been in all the papers and on T.V. Why do we need more stimulus for an economy that is already, well, stimulated? A few questions pop out. Will the Obama Administration manage to send the bulk of the proposed one hundred and fifty billion dollars primarily to red states as was done with the original stimulus package? Equally, I wonder if Congress will pack the pending stimulus package with the same amount of pork as they did the last one? And perhaps, most importantly, I can't help asking if the next stimulus package will just simply flat out kill the patient?

I must admit that I have a somewhat different concern than Meredith Whitney, who believes that the government is out of bullets with which to address our rather appalling predicament. Or perhaps more precisely, I imagine a different outcome than Ms.Whitney does. Where she imagines no ammunition, I imagine projectiles that kill. But I digress from the discussion of surrealism as it pertains to today's announcement. Which brings me to: Gold.

Somehow the yellow dog managed to get flattened even in the face of more evidence that argues strongly that Uncle Sugar will continue to spend, in large amounts, money he doesn't have. Markets do move in ways that often defy reason, at least for a time- and occasionally for a very long time-but generally they sort out what is what. With that in mind, it is hard not to believe that investors will not be sorting out that owning coins and bullion fabricated from the barbarous relic will almost certainly be a better bet going forward than investing in a currency that is so absolutely mired in IOUs that a one way ticket to oblivion is more certain than January snow in The Rockies.

DO IT OR ELSE!!!

It seems quite fitting that on Pearl Harbor Day another event that will (or should) live in infamy is occurring. I am speaking, of course, of the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, which starts exactly sixty eight years to the day after the Japanese attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands.

Today's potentially infamous gathering will employ the time honored and ubiquitous mechanism of fear in order to force the nations of the world into compliance with the UN's onerous program. "Our last chance is upon us" -or words to that effect- have been uttered for the purpose of forcing us all to fall in line with the UN diktat. Should we fail to do so we will all suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous GLOBAL WARMING!

Fortunately, the UN hacks, who are proffering this message of doom, have been undermined by an intrepid hack on the personal e-mails of the scientists who have led the way in pushing the message that "mankind is primarily-if not solely- responsible for global warming." Thanks to the hackers, we now have the very strong suggestion, verging on proof, that the science behind the claims of "anthropogenic" global warming is utterly concocted from bogus data.

In the meantime, the UN, despite the shameful and damning recent revelations, appear to be going full steam ahead with their climate scam, and will attempt, at this convocation, to institute their destructive agenda. Should their plans come to fruition, they will be ruinous to the economies of the west who would be taxed into penury to pay for all manner of nonsensical "green" modifications. It will be up to all of us to insure that the outcome of this day (week, really) of infamy has the same ultimate outcome as the day of infamy that occurred over half a century ago today.

Still Plenty Of Dupes Out There.

If the Boston Globe can be believed, slightly more than half of those polled favor President Obama's decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. A quick perusal of the numbers will reveal a certain incoherence on the part of the public regarding the U.S. presence in the region. On the one hand, while most do not think the U.S. should pull out, many have reservations about the cost of adding troops. And almost no one agrees with the 2011 timetable for withdrawal. I'd like to assure those who harbor that specific concern that they need not worry, the 2011 timetable, which makes no sense on the face, given the U.S. pending troop surge, is merely another empty pledge that will bear no fruit.

And also, for those who have serious doubts about the utility, not to mention morality, of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan-far too few according to The Gallup Poll numbers provided by The Globe- there is none, save for tapping into enormous heroin profits, keeping the price of oil higher than it ought to be-which helps out almost no one in the U.S.- and last, but perhaps not least, justifying continued wasteful spending on the military. Oh, and I almost forgot, having a lot of military personnel and machinery on the ground in Eurasia is helpful at disrupting the plans of China and Russia, who, unlike The Taliban and Al Queada, actually pose a demonstrable genuine threat to U.S. global hegemony.

Cognitive Dissonance Version 8.3

You can be forgiven if you are feeling a certain confusion about the state of play in the economy. What I have in mind are ongoing and ubiquitous stories about the economy that sport the term "recovery". The word recovery denotes a condition where a prior state is regained. How, then, can there be a recovery when job losses not only have not leveled off but continue to mount? Well, there can't be, but, as we live in a land of make believe, this sort of fantasy is commonplace. And, after all, it is the "holiday season" which always involves a certain amount of magical thinking.

The Grand Wobble, Part 3.

From denials regarding the doctored science of climate change, to the fresh commitment of troops to Afghanistan, to delaying the release of documents pertaining to military operations, to a health care bill that few credible observers believe is anything but an ill conceived act of supplication to insurers, and last but not least, to the completely flaccid legislative and executive response to the predations of the banking system and financial industry, things really are going pear shaped in a hurry here in Freedom's Land.

And while I realize that, in this hectic holiday season, it is easy to be distracted from the aforesaid damnable developments by one's shopping requirements, and the travails of the Salahi couple, who, despite their vehement protestations to the contrary, appear to have rather audaciously crashed a White House soiree, one should not let quotidian demands and main stream media sideshows obfuscate the fact that our republic is being run into the ground, and the people's welfare trampled, by a corrupt political class operating on behalf of a very small group of excessively empowered corporations and elite individuals.

Here's Your Proof.

One of my pet contentions about those holding federally elected office is that they are only competent in the art of campaigning. Whether it is a cause or an effect-probably cause and effect runs both ways- too many politicians have little interest in or talent for governing. This has always been, to some degree, an endemic problem in our nominally representative form of government, but my view is that this omnipresent nagging problem has intensified to the point that we now have this:

It does not help that many West Wing aides seem to relish an image of themselves as shrewd, brass-knuckled political types. In a Washington Post story this month, White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, referring to most of Obama’s team, said, “We are all campaign hacks.”

Indeed. The acquisition of massive amounts of funds is now de rigueur for anyone considering running for federal office as campaigns that once lasted some number of months now last for several years. In a sense, this condition constitutes the ultimate victory for the owners of government, namely, the corporations. The winning strategy, the master stroke, employed by the business oligopoly, whether done so deliberately or by accident, involves keeping the politicians tied up in what amounts to a constant state of war. Can it be an accident that both the military and political professions employ the term campaign to describe their key activities?

Truly, what better way to bend government to one's will then to keep politicians focused on holding office to the exclusion of doing the jobs they were elected to do. How marvelous it must be for the owners of government to stand in (in the shadows) for elected officialdom merely by employing hordes of lobbyists to help set the agenda and craft the legislation, because what self respecting politician has the time to sort it out for themselves.

On a somewhat different note, it strikes me as more than a little interesting, and perversely fitting, that our political class, like the nation as a whole, now finds itself in a perpetual state of "war."