2023 and beyond part 2.

No sooner do I conclude part one of this series then humanity gets hit with the beginning of what appears to be the decade's third (so far) major false flag/psyop that, in its early days, is taking place in the so called "Holy Land" What, pray tell, is this latest theatrical production about, since such extravaganzas are, of course, never, ever about what they are said to be about. 

In fact, I maintain these made for slack jawed T.V. watcher spectacles are not only not what they are said to be about, they generally aren't even real. After all, the only thing that was real about plan-scam-fakedemic were the many millions of people who fell for it (some of whom are still donning blue surgical masks *outside*) and all the unfortunates who were murdered as the result of a not fit for purpose test predicated on fraud, withheld antibiotics, and iatrogenic hospital policies enabled by the CARES Act, which offered a big monetary incentive to kill people who were Covid "cases".

I might have been one of them had I not fended off my local hospitals' attempt to pressure me into getting tested before they would allow me to get an emergency surgery. Why I needed to be tested when I had no symptoms, when the surgeons had been jabbed, and the operating theatre was sterile, can easily be explained in one word, money. Had I tested positive, and had I subsequently died in surgery, accidentally, of course, that would've meant a lot of extra boodle to the hospital. But I digress, sort of.

So what was plan-scam-fakedemic really about, beyond the colossal grift? It was about speeding the plow towards a condition where free and open societies are replaced by fifteen minute cities, no red meat diets, constant bio security surveillance, and general deprivation and immiseration for an even larger percentage of the population than before. It was about the great theft, or U.N. Agenda 2030 if one prefers, because both ghastly schemes amount to the same grandly dismal outcome for the 99% or thereabouts.

And, guess what, so, too, is Israel v. Hamas. I haven't mentioned the RF v. Ukraine until now, but it is intimately connected to this newly minted counterfeit conflict. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Gaza, IMO, is a bigger and badder Lahaina. It is the next installment of 6uild 6ack 6etter, which, as we've seen, entails, among other things, erecting smart cities where not smart settlements use to exist before they were incinerated by DEWs or more well known traditional weaponry that gets the job done nonetheless. This phony war is also about energy deals... with Iran specifically-which, improbably, you may notice, is not being fingered as part of this contretemps. And, one can't help but wonder, why, in the name of the prophet, not? Aren't the Persians supposed to be the sponsors of Hamas? Make it make sense. Don't worry, it does.

There's always a "business model" uh, grift, behind all of these manufactured "crises" and this one is no different. You just know there is a most un-Godly amount of of dough on the line in The Holy Land, because they are throwing everything, including the proverbial kitchen sink at this one. Young damsels being kidnapped and raped by unwashed, brutal terrorists, harmless concert going youngsters mowed down by jihadists in what look like Mad Max flying machines, and, worst of all, babies, by the boatload, being beheaded.

Never mind that the evidence for all of these lurid claims is scant to nonexistent, some folks have got hundreds of billions riding (maybe a trillion or so) on this sordid merry go round. So, there is no lie they won't tell, and no grotesque atrocity they won't assert has taken place. The more horrible the stories the more the stakes are raised for those who would contest the claims, which is exactly why they engage in such outrageous story telling in the first place, not just to sell it, but to shut people down.

You may have noticed that none other than the world's most famous dissolute, B-grade thespian, latterly tasked with portraying a head of state, Volodymyr Zelensky, has interjected himself into the Israel-Hamas proceedings. Well, it just so happens there is a longstanding plan to relocate a lot of Israelis, or are they actually Khazarians, back to Ukraine in what is called the New Jerusalem project. Everything is, ultimately, about real estate it seems. Yes, that was me being glib.

2023 and beyond. Part 1

Unless one has their head buried deep in the sand, is mind controlled, or is suffering from abject idiocy, it's become painfully obvious over the last three years and change that almost all of humanity is under direct assault by those who control governments all over the world. 

And who is it, exactly, that controls governments near and far? As important as that question is-I'll address it in due course-it may not be the most pressing question we ought to ask and attempt to answer. For example, how is it possible that, without hardly batting an eye, so many people have willingly lent themselves to what is shaping up to be the greatest human rights crime in history. Here, I'm referring to the world wide experimental injectable campaign. The mysteryRNA devices have been administered to billions of people, many of whom submitted to injection under threat of job loss, loss of schooling or some by some other pressure point. It's all been a blatant and wanton violation of medical ethics, as any review of, e.g. The Nuremberg Code, The Helsinki Declaration, and The Belmont Report reveals.

So, while I have no doubt that all of these ethics codes will be, or already are, altered to permit depravity-after all, the CDC and WHO respectively, have already changed the definition of vaccine and pandemic-the fact is that we have many thousands of people in the U.S. alone who should be arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison terms or execution for pressuring their fellow men and women into becoming part of a medical experiment. We also have a large collection of people who participated in the colossal fraud that allowed these unsafe and ineffective products to ever be produced and administered in the first place. 

In truth, if all the human rights violators were properly and legally dealt with, we would probably experience a rapid societal collapse as opposed to the more or less orderly (so far) collapse that is now underway. One can argue persuasively that the nation's moral compass has been in a state of severe disrepair for a very long time. Yet, even if that's the case, it's hard to debate that the last three years has laid bare our aggregated state of moral decay in an unparalleled way.

High Time

Well, here we are. It's 2016 and the global economy still has not recovered from the so called Great Recession. How is it possible that things have improved hardly at all? Simples. The terminal state of the $IMFS, an acronym for the dollar based international monetary and financial system, will simply not allow for anything that smacks of a return to a healthy state.

In truth, the landscape that existed just before the onset of The Great Recession wasn't really healthy either. How could it have been since it gave rise to the ensuing collapse? The years that followed the end of the internet bubble bust may have seemed a time of halcyon breezes by comparison, but things were absolutely headed in the unhealthiest of directions from 2003 to 2007. The wide spread deployment of MBS, CDOs, and CDS attests to that fact. The period when instruments of mass destruction are being assembled is a happy one compared to the interval when said destructive devices are unleashed.

A tremendous amount of ink was spilled discussing and dissecting sub prime -and everything that was part and parcel of laying the groundwork for The Great Recession- in the aftermath of the aforesaid economic collapse, but our post Bretton Woods system, aka the $IMFS, has always been, at its core, all spur and no brake where credit/debt creation is concerned. As such, it really doesn't matter what the precise kind of debt instrument or credit derivative was at the scene of the crime, just that it was inevitable that some infernal debt concoction would be the culprit for a series of disastrous consequences. What's more, as the real economy choked on "old debt",  it was a foregone conclusion that ensuing debt gambits would become ever more audacious in their size and scope.

I am revisiting Disasterporn for the first time in approximately three years to proclaim that the forty four year old experiment, aka the $IMFS, is finally coming to an end, and in much less time than the time I've spent away from this blog. The monetary authorities have gone about as far as they can go, and, while they will undoubtedly unveil, or at least try to unveil, some number of idiotic schemes to keep the party going, by my runes, support for the system is now well down the road of entirely disintegrating.

Let it be known that foreigners hoarding U.S. sovereign debt has always been the linchpin keeping the $IMFS intact. When physical gold ceased to be the official reserve of the system, the world found it had no choice but to support the insupportable. The oil states, particularly the House of Saud, did what was in their best interest at the time and recycled their more than ample surpluses into Uncle Sam's debt. The rest of the world followed the oil state's lead and, though I am leaving out a few key details, suffice it to say that the rest is a litany of misallocation of wealth and mal-investment, and myriad other societal and cultural deformations, the likes of which the world has never even come close to seeing. From misbegotten monetary systems spring all manner of ills. As one of the Rothschild's observed several centuries ago, "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws." I choose to take that bit of pith to mean not that he who has the most money wins, but, rather, the kind of monetary system one employs has everything to say about how those under its sway are apt to behave. And, so, here we are, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, faced with The Donald versus Hillary.

In fairness to our forefathers who cobbled together the ramshackle $IMFS, the world really didn't have a choice back then. The dollar had to be supported as there was no alternate currency system that could adequately handle world trade. In short, the choice was support the unbacked dollar or face global barter town. Trust me when I say that you absolutely don't want door no. 2. Thankfully, this no choice condition no longer obtains. However desperate the situation appears in the EZ, and it appears quite desperate indeed, my view is that the Euro is here to stay. Most pertinently, the Euro, which can certainly be mentioned in conjunction with the EZ, but should not be conflated with it, was built precisely to survive the dollar's inevitable collapse. Right about now you may be saying to yourself, "The last time I checked the world seemed quite pleased to pony up and buy U.S. sovereign debt."

Indeed. Private capital is still heartily engorging itself on Uncle's IOUs...for now. But there is clear evidence that officialdom, particularly officials who represent nation states who operate with surpluses, not deficits, are no longer bellying up to the bar as they once did. You may have heard or otherwise noticed that China and Saudi Arabia are spending down their dollar reserves toute suite. On the surface it might appear that this is simply due to economic hard times, but I submit that, certainly in the case of the U.S.' number one creditor, China, that there is far more to the story. China stopped becoming a net buyer of Uncle's IOUs a few years ago, and, what's more, even as China has been selling down their reserves, they have been adding physical gold to their official coffers. The House of Saud's activities are more opaque, but, then, it is a matter of record that they are long standing enthusiastic owners of tremendous stores of physical gold. In the meantime, the preponderance of CBs around the world, Venezuela and their minority ilk notwithstanding, are net buyers, not net sellers, of the shiny. To be perfectly clear in a non Nixon like fashion, I do not advocate or expect the emergence of yet another iteration of the gold standard, but I am fully expecting that gold will be the sole asset utilized to effect an overdue and desperately needed monetary and financial system reset.  After all, gold's unique attributes mean that it is the only asset in existence that can both retire the mountainous debt and allow the the old system to, in essence, swap out its bad DNA for good.

But let me conclude this post by briefly returning to the concept of "private capital" for a moment. Private capital's buying, whether it be real estate, or paper assets is qualitatively different than official buying. Private capital is in it to make money. Officialdom, on the other hand, buys to provide support to the system, and doesn't worry too terribly much about profit and loss. Quantitative Easing, of which there has been a boatload over these last seven years, is an excellent, albeit extreme, example of official buying enacted for the purpose of systemic support. For officialdom, making money on such deals, when it happens, is just a happy accident. Things always eventually go sour for private capital, especially in the $IMFS, where serial bubbles and busts are endemic to the system. As far as the system is concerned, that's generally manageable as long as officialdom fills the void left by fleeing private capital. What sunk the last system was a lack of support, and so too will that be this system's ultimate undoing. At such time as we find ourselves in a world where private capital's buying of U.S. sovereign debt constitutes the market entirely, or even just mostly, only the thinnest divide will then exist between a condition where dollars buy much more than they ought to and dollars that can barely buy anything at all.

I Hold These Truths To Be Self Evident

The following list comprises an incomplete and disparate selection of truths-according to me- on a variety of observed phenomenon.

1.)  The United States of America, long a police state, has now become a police state run amok.
2.)  The only way to change the system is to operate outside it, and starve it into oblivion. Reform worthy of the name is NOT possible from within.
3.) Blogging may not be entirely useless as an instrument of change, but, as an instrument of activism, it is far closer to useless than useful.
4.) China is a monstrous experiment in capitalism gone wrong.
5.) Those who present as Hale Fellows Well Met, seldom are upon close inspection.
6.) All things being equal, the older one gets the more insight into the human condition one acquires, until, at some unspecified age, a lifetime of wisdom is compromised by the general degradation of that which houses it.
7.) You can always tell when a tool is important, because the world remakes itself around the tool.
8.) Money must be useless to be money. The minute money has a utility beyond its function as either a medium of exchange, a store of value, or a unit of account it is no longer fit to be money. 
9.) There are few places in the United States that offer pleasant weather during the summer months.
10.) Memory is faulty, but, nevertheless, in recalling past events, however inaccurately, truth is revealed.
11.) Without even trying, one's children expose all one's flaws.
12.) A dog is better than a cat
13.) A cat is better than a dog
14.) A fish in one's tank may be a variety of things, but it is never a pet.
15.) Minivan's are a boon only to those who drive them, and then only just.
16.) A Proper night's Sleep is vastly more important than a proper breakfast.
17.) One can either be married and systematically aggravated or single and chronically lonely.
18.) Vanity has few advantages. One of them is that it sometimes over rides gluttony.
19.) Driving is exhilarating when one is young, a tedious bore in middle age, and a terrifying adventure when one is old.
20.) Lists, like the one you've just come to the end of, are usually hit and miss.

I Want Your Vote

The senior Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry, is vacating his seat in order to be appointed the nation's Secretary of State. In the meantime, a mad rush is on from both political parties to fill the void. As one might expect in the Commonwealth, such hoary political names as Kennedy and Weld are being bandied about as potential replacements. And, then, of course, there is the freshly vanquished interim Senator, Scott Brown, who, word has it, will also be tossing his undistinguished hat into the ring. Frankly, even though this is just a matter of bad luck for denizens of Massachusetts, the prospect of having to face yet another another ghastly election season feels just a tad punitive. I, for one, inspired perhaps by the mysterious synergy of my own personal idiosyncrasies with the fearsome zeitgeist known as The Mayan Apocalypse, am less than thrilled . Which brings me to this:

How would you respond to the following appeal if it was made to you in the form of a document delivered to your front door, or one handed to you as you walked down the street, or, perhaps, if it was made available to you in the form of a flyer on the wall at your favorite local haunt? Would you ignore it or read it, at least in part? And, if so, what would be the chance that you would do anything substantial as a result? So, without further ado, here 'tis:                  

                      

                                                   Edwardo For Massachusetts Senator

Welcome to my campaign. This post constitutes my first act towards running for Senator of Massachusetts. Before acquainting you with my political orientation and legislative agenda, I'd like to tell you who I am and provide you with some personal details that may be of interest to you as you consider my candidacy.

First and foremost, I'm a private citizen with absolutely no background in politics. The closest I have ever come to politics was an introductory political science course in college and some brief campaigning for Bruce Babbitt two decades ago. To some of you this may not matter, for others, it will provide an immediate disqualification to my candidacy. For most of you I hope my status as a bona fide outsider is refreshing news.

I recently turned fifty, and live in_______with my wife______and my two children__________ and our pug_______.  I'm a musician/composer by training, though I haven't worked as a music teacher for a number of years.  Last, but not least, I’m in reasonably good health.

                                                                 Manifesto 

Through much of recorded human history the realm of politics and government has been viewed by many with a mixture of awe and revulsion. There is ample justification for this attitude since the acquisition and exercise of power has all too often been in the service of less than noble motives. And while I don't wish to belabor the point, or, worse, cast myself as being above it all- I'm not- I would simply like to point out what is probably already apparent to many of you which is that our present brand of politics and government here in the United States is, sadly, no exception to the proverbial rule. 

To some degree, the lamentable state of our national politics and government has impelled me towards an improbable run for office. Things must be pretty bad for that to happen, because, if you knew me, you’d recognize that I'm not a natural politician. I’m neither interested nor gifted in the art of being popular. Nor am I the sort of person who acts to bolster confidence in an enterprise at the expense of giving an unvarnished report that runs the risk of upsetting the apple cart. Fortunately, we don’t need more public servants that excel at public relations on behalf of themselves and a broken political system.  

                                                                  My Appeal to You

If you agree with me that we as a nation, particularly at the federal level, have strayed into unacceptable political practices, and that, as a result, government has become severely compromised, I have good news for you. Things can still be turned around. Profound improvement is within our reach. But in order to succeed the voting public must reject the usual cast of revolving door political operators offered up at each election cycle. Whatever their nominal political stripe may be, these well known cast of characters are all, by definition, captives of the present deeply corrupt, bogus two party system. And if anything has been demonstrated over the last generation of politics, it is that no authentic reform will be generated by those who reside within the system.  

                                                                  The Agenda

Given the emphasis I place on the necessity of dramatic political reform, I think it's fitting to begin this long (but by no means exhaustive) legislative “to do” list with the following planks.

                                                               Shortened Elections

On could easily underestimate the inherent harm being done to our society by an atmosphere of relentless political campaigning. Election seasons have become agonizingly long and exorbitantly expensive even as they are increasingly tedious and devoid of substance. By itself, the enormously time consuming nature of campaigns for federal office insures that politics are captive to moneyed interests, and that a high level of government functioning is unattainable. Limiting campaigns to no more than nine weeks from beginning to end means far fewer funds will be required to run campaigns, and that, by itself, would act as a great leveler of the political playing field. Thrown into the bargain we would end the insidious condition whereby we now select and elect candidates whose primary qualifications are that of a fundraiser first, a campaigner second, and a trusted and competent legislator or executive a distant third. This state of affairs is completely antithetical to decent government, and it can be corrected by creating conditions that remove the influence of moneyed interests from politics.

                                                                 Term Limits

It is axiomatic that very few incumbents lose hold of their seats. With few exceptions this is to no one’s benefit. Holding office was never intended to be a career, let alone a lifelong gravy train, but that is what it has become for those who are well connected and/or sufficiently wealthy to run winning political campaigns. In concert with the reduction in the amount of time set aside for elections, removing the possibility of lifelong tenure for elected officials will erode the overbearing influence of the special interest/lobbyist juggernaut that presently has a stranglehold on the actions of the political class. Last, but not necessarily least, by enacting term limits for legislators we will attract a different caliber of person to public service, namely someone who is committed to the idea of public service as an end in itself and likewise believes that it is the sole reason to seek, attain, and hold public office.

                                                          The Popular Vote

                                                            

With respect to Presidential elections, the Electoral College system must be replaced by the popular vote. At one time the Electoral College had a certain logic operating in its favor, but, in our time, it simply leads to egregiously skewed contests where candidates spend inordinate amounts of time, money, and effort in a handful of key “battleground” states.  It is past time to decide Presidential elections by means of the popular vote. 

I hasten to add that everything on The Agenda that follows from here rests on enacting the above political reforms. On the surface it may seem that finding a workable solution to, for example, the Federal Government’s deplorable fiscal and financial condition is more important than, say, enacting term limits, but without the necessary systemic political reforms all the other items on The Agenda will have little chance of being passed. At this point, our political system is so badly corroded it will admit very little in the way of constructive change until such time as the system itself is overhauled. Any candidate for higher office who does not openly acknowledge this set of circumstances and subsequently pledge to reform the system as their top priority is, whether they mean to be or not, part of the problem, and does not deserve your vote. 

                                                                 To be continued

I'm Baaaack!

I may not be better than ever though. In the meantime, I'm going to pledge to my erstwhile dear readers who have, quite sensibly, long since deserted my barren little blog, that I am planning to post one sumptuous piece a month. Should that initiative go reasonably well-don't ask how I will know if it goes well- I will endeavor to post once a fortnight. The Peter Principle, broadly defined may, at that stage, rear its ugly head and throw me back to a once a month offering, but now I'm getting just a tad ahead of myself.

So much has happened in our world since my last post, many months ago, though the changes have mostly been of the sort that may best be defined as beneath the surface. We are presently faced with a Presidential election that occurs in approximately two weeks, and, depending on which poll one subscribes to, what is left of the voting public that still subscribes to the worthiness of Presidential elections seems to be split down the middle regarding who they would prefer to hold executive power come 2013. I know I won't be part of the cult of votism where The Presidential election is concerned, but I will likely participate in the local referendum questions.

Suffice it to say that my view is that the trajectory of the course the U.S.S. USA is on will not markedly change regardless of who is nominally manning the helm come January.  There's just no room to maneuver any more as politics simply won't allow for the sort of bold, not to say draconian, responses that are required to address, for example, the government's seemingly intractable indebtedness. Enacting genuine solutions, as opposed to counterfeit ones, will be left to other actors, and, forces, and in their wake, nothing more than plentifully hollow excuses will be proffered by our political class.

In that light, if you haven't made preparations for the cataclysmic finale that will signify the bitter end of the dollar's global hegemony, I urge you to get with the program, pronto. After all, large swaths of the rest of the world have been preparing for the none too pleasant denouement of the greenback's reserve currency status for a number of years. That is, after all, what all the bi-lateral currency swap agreements that have been erected by and between a plethora of nations of all sizes and shapes are about. When the dollar reaches the event horizon of the looming financial system black hole that, with each passing week, draws ever closer, folks in other lands would like to be able to continue conducting trade for life's necessities. This is the proximate reason for the aforesaid agreements that are cropping up across the globe with all the dizzying frequency of dandelions growing in one's front (or back) yard after a heavy, spring rain.

With respect to timing, my view is that when The Europeans show some demonstrable progress in addressing the key issue that plagues them, namely how to stop living beyond their means via chronic debt expansion, all eyes will turn towards the U.S. and its own grotesque collection of financial excesses. My best guess for a time frame for a great reckoning on these shores is the middle of the decade whether or not the EZ gets things sorted. If, for example, the EZ manages to get a proposed banking union up and running by this coming year, the time line for the U.S. Gotterdammerung will accelerate. But, make no mistake, the train has long since left the station and is now well down the tracks. All that is in doubt is the ETA.

The Vampire Squid and The Morgue

Two of the biggest swinging dick firms that still remain in the once vaunted Wall Street arena are Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. Over the last forty eight hours, in what strikes this onlooker as something of a fantastic temporal correlation, two public testimonials have appeared that excoriate the two aforesaid firms for profoundly unethical- or, perhaps more properly, thoroughly immoral- conduct. Unless you have lived under a very large and non porous rock for several years, if not longer, the perfidy of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan hardly comes as news. However, one devoutly hopes that whatever the intentions are of the authors of these very public jeremiads-more on that shortly- their damning admissions of (non specified) criminality will, in time, represent something of a watershed event.

In the meantime, pardon me if I detect the not so faint whiff of a rat, especially where the Goldman revelations are concerned. Greg Smith, the former Goldman Executive, makes various claims regarding the true nature of his erstwhile firm. Unfortunately a number of them strain credulity, not the least of which is that, in the not so distant past, Goldman Sachs operated at the highest levels of ethical conduct, systematically choosing "to do the right thing" in its dealings with its clients and other business partners. This will no doubt be news to folks such as Matt Taibbi, who, approximately two years ago, famously dubbed Goldman Sachs The Vampire Squid in response to their numerous misdeeds going back generations. How is it possible that such longstanding and systematic vile behavior, so well chronicled by Mr. Taibbi, has only recently become known to Mr. Smith? What's more, where is the evidence of the culture of do gooding that Mr. Smith purports to have, until only relatively recently, been subverted? To encapsulate, the New York Times op-ed written by Mr. Smith almost seems like a clever recasting of the essence of Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs is not the instinctively rapacious firm we thought (we knew) it was, but, rather, an avuncular outfit that lost its way due to some poor stewardship by CEO Lloyd "We're doing God's work" Blankfein who allowed a few- or maybe a few more than a few-bad apples to spoil what once was a bastion of rectitude. We can only hope that (should this be a very clever attempt to take pressure off Goldman by having a critical number of the public now believe that by dint of a few key firings The Vampire Squid can be transformed into a -name your favorite warm and fuzzy creature) such a gambit will fail. In the meantime, as always, we would do well to be more than a little reticent to buy whatever Goldman, or even a self professed, disaffected, ex Goldman man, is selling.

Haiku

Fear for the future
As you live in a present
Undone by the past

Occupy America

What does the Occupy Wall Street movement really amount to? Is it simply a nationwide act of civil protest by mostly youthful, disaffected citizens against a predatory and criminal finance industry (as represented by such commercial melafactors as Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and the quasi private, state chartered Federal Reserve) or is there more going on? Who are the organizers of Occupy Wall Street? Is it, in fact, a leaderless, non hierarchical, self organizing entity that is not, in any meaningful way, controlled by some shadowy someone or something with an entirely different, perhaps even, sinister agenda-One World Government, for example- that is different from the one that the OWS movement ostensibly espouses.

I'm afraid I don't get out enough to have a firm first hand opinion of the precise nature of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it is my sense that, in the main, OWS participants are a peaceful, if somewhat scruffy group, who, contrary to a host of MSM reports, are neither violent nor criminal. In any event, even were the movement peopled entirely by nothing but some aggregation of entitled, snot nosed layabouts and/or execrable street thugs, the group's collective shortcomings and transgressions would pale beside those of the banksters and their wayward political enablers occupying our nation's capital.

In that sense, we would do well to not traduce the messenger let alone slay him. And by way of answering my own question, we would also do well to recognize some of the salient characteristics of this movement and its brief history as we try to figure out what Occupy Wall Street amounts to?

Here are a few key observations that, to date, I believe to be true about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

1.) Whatever hierarchy may exist within OWS it is, in fact, a youth movement. Many of the protesters are approximately of college age, most are under thirty.

2.) Unlike the Vietnam and Civil Rights era protesters the OWS youth are undeniably economically less well situated than both their parents and grandparents. More importantly, they are keenly aware of their condition, if, perhaps, a bit confused about how events and trends have conspired to leave them on the wrong side of the tracks financially and economically.

3.) So far, nothing the protestors have experienced by way of a response from the so called Powers That Be could be thought of as encouraging them to hold onto whatever faith in the system they may still possess. And that's understating the matter.

The following points are conjecture:

1.) Demographically, their numbers are all but certain to grow in the years ahead.

2.) Increasingly, for purposes of self esteem and survival there will be very little to encourage Occupy Wall Street protesters to continue to practice a mode of protest that is peaceful since it has garnered so little for the movement. Put another way, as Gerald Celente would say, those who have nothing to lose, lose it. The authorities have shown their hand in this regard. And even as the government prepare for greater unrest they all but guarantee that there will be more strife.

3.) The other strain of protest, besides outright and open defiance, will emerge in a different form that will constitute a kind of middle ground between peaceful protest and the throwing of molotov cocktails. This form of protest might even become a kind of nation building movement though that may be a bit grandiose and ambitious for what will, at the outset, amount to nothing less than a campaign of dropping out. Communities, hard scrabble ones, will form out of necessity and the values and ways of being that define these communities will be at variance with the values that have defined U.S. society for generations.

4.) The government will attempt to disrupt this movement. They already are engaged in preempting it if one looks at the recent passage of laws pertaining to the growing of one's own food. The government will fail, though they will, as is their wont, create a lot of misery on their way to a well deserved defeat.

In conclusion, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, though it has achieved very little, if anything, towards reigning in or redressing the crimes of the banking and so called financial services industry-which, for all intents and purposes doesn't even exist anymore on Wall Street- has, perhaps, taken the first steps towards setting in motion something far more profound, a society (within our society) that operates along genuinely different principles than those that inform the functioning of institutions that are now under protest.

Seeing is believing.

Some number of years ago I predicted that The Catholic Church was in a terminal state of decline. I think the trend has been pretty clear. Here's some more evidence of the well deserved fall of The Vatican.

The Secret

Hello, is anybody out there? I wouldn't blame you one bit if you weren't. I know this post won't wow you, but obviously the following tidbit-another one in a very long list of pieces from Yahoo designed to manage the expectations and perceptions of those teeming masses who are seemingly inexorably downwardly mobile- is one I feel worth posting.

What's the secret of living well, well, mind you, on eleven grand a year? Well, let's just say that the secret is A.) no secret at all, and B.) once knowing the secret, not one man or woman in a million could successfully follow the prescription, because C.) no one can live well on eleven grand a year in the U.S.A.

Ask Yourself...

Why do we have all the taxes listed at the link? Are they necessary or even advised? I realize the nation is far more populated then it was one hundred years ago, and substantially more complex, broadly speaking, than a century ago, but how much government-since that is what all these taxes go to support-do we need? I emphasize the word need because if we don't require them they should be eliminated. Perhaps another way to look at the problem is to ask ourselves how much tax payer supported government benefits those it is meant to support, namely the citizenry, (and in many cases non citizens) versus simply supporting the economic and financial maintenance of those who are employed by the government irrespective of the cost, broadly defined, to the rest of the nation's citizenry.

I posit that, at the very least, a national experiment be undertaken wherein the elimination of many of the tax levies on the aforesaid list occurs for some decent interval so we can come to an answer regarding the question of whether such taxes are justified.

This is a Joke, Right?

Apparently it isn't meant as a joke, but if you think this plan is anything but another hopeless dodge by legislatwhores eying next year's elections, think again. Lets start with the most glaring bit of evidence that what we are dealing with from the, so called, "Gang of Six" is just more crapulous kabuki theater. Hold on to your hat, folks, but this plan involves finding eighty billion dollars to cut from the most electrified third rail in U.S. politics, the military. Just to give you an idea of what eighty billion dollars amounts to in military spending these days, please note that the total cost of the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq had reached the 900 billion dollar mark in 2008, and that expenditure was considered supplemental to the 600 billion dollar plus official yearly budget. So, first they have to find what is a puny amount and then on finding it, they will cut it. Get the picture?

In addition to the far from courageous posture towards the nation's immense military spending, the Gang has decided to go after the tax code and reduce such things as the mortgage interest deduction. How savvy is that in the middle of a RE depression. Corporations will be taxed at a lower rate, and the alternative minimum tax will, it is said, be abolished. Then there's the once vaunted Social Security system, now a hapless, bleating, sacrificial lamb if ever there was one. You thought that Social Security was a third rail of U.S. politics did you? Well, not anymore. The Gang are going to see to it that, by certain accounting legerdemain no doubt, Social Security recipients will receive less.

In short, what this plan amounts to is merely 1.) a decrease in the rate of increase in U.S. government spending, and 2.) an exercise in engaging in the time honored canard of equating putative enhanced revenue projections (as a result of, in this case, diddling with the tax code and eliminating certain key deductions) with the actual act of really, truly putting the financial and fiscal condition of the nation on a new, healthy track. Setting aside the absolute certainty one should have that any projected revenue enhancements are going to be exaggerated, this pending agreement-as yet uncertain to pass, but out of the gate in impressive fashion- is absolutely more of the same smoke and mirrors rubbish from our political class that one has long since come to feel is de rigueur.

The horror, the horror distilled.

Forgive me, but here is a distilled version of today's same post. Things have crystalized even more for me regarding the debt ceiling farce.

There is no chance of a debt default. None, zero, nada. The government has the funds to pay its interest obligations on the principal they owe, and, if necessary, and it will be -by design- they will take what they need to pay debt obligations from government programs as per the dictates of the 14th Amendment. That is what will transpire assuming they don’t reach an agreement. However, an agreement will achieve the exact same thing as no agreement, except less messily, as it will involve decimating those very same government operations that will be plundered if there isn't an agreement. That’s what I call checkmate, mate. Heads I win, tails you lose.

My bet is that they will come to an agreement because Obama is just another neo-liberal shyster sellout. The third rails of U.S. politics were/are thought to be certain entitlements and military spending. In retrospect it will be clear that when the chips were down it was only the latter that was untouchable not the former.

The horror, the horror.

The title above is not meant to be a reference to Joseph Conrad's brilliant novella Heart of Darkness, but, rather, a reference to the Debt(berg) ceiling talks where the threat of unspeakable, almost indescribable disaster is being asserted anywhere and everywhere as a means to guarantee an outcome that squares with the governing elite's desired ends. Put more succinctly, a certain cohort of The Legislature and The Executive are engaging in what has now become a time honored strategy perhaps best described as a kinder gentler form of extortion. The only difference between government's brand of gangsterism and a true blue gangster style protection racket is that the government isn't posturing as if they will be the ones to use the blunt instrument should they not get their way. No, the pain, we are told, and lots and lots of it, will be administered from other realms.

The truth is that what scares some number of desperate actors in government is not a sovereign default but a sovereign debt credit downgrade. After all, there will be no default if an agreement isn't reached since the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment necessitates that all government debts, and interest on such debts, must be paid prior anyone to else in government getting paid. That means that, in the event the debt ceiling is not raised by August 2nd, a lot of government operations would be frozen as their funds were instead redirected to pay Uncle Sugar's creditors. Such an outcome would be unpleasant for many, but no one should confuse that with a sovereign debt default. However, a partial government shutdown, along with various other developments related to said government shut down, could trigger a credit downgrade which is what worries our legislators the most. Well, it should worry them the most since such a development would make all present and future sovereign debt obligations substantially more expensive for Uncle Sugar.

Just so you know, whatever next week holds legislatively, the death of the dollar is assured. It's demise will not be avoided. Belabored? Almost certainly. Postponed? Perhaps, though that too is looking increasingly unlikely as things are unraveling at an accelerating pace. You see, there is a timeline involved with respect to the life of our currency, our medium of exchange, and while it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to say precisely when that timeline concludes-picture if you will the sand running out of the top of an hourglass-conclude it will. In in the meantime, as more and more sand runs out of the top of the dollar's hourglass, the ability to say with some precision when that last grain of sand will fall to the bottom of the hourglass becomes easier and easier to predict.

Pacification Thy Name is Internet.

The following is part of a (slightly edited) correspondence I had with a friend on-line. I should add that, apropos of the thrust of this post, my friend is someone I've never actually met with face to face. This is not entirely down to the limits of the internet-where virtual is the name of the game- as my friend lives in a part of the country that is quite distant and is not an area that I have reason to visit, well, aside from our seemingly (internet bound) friendship.

"No doubt – I do not know when as I am beginning to lose hope in that most people seem too stupid to know what is happening to them – that and the fact that fully half are now takers rather than makers. So it may be that in the end – the takers win out – who knows."

I've long pondered the whys and wherefores of contemporary citizen inaction, and, while I'm sure entire books could be (and have been) written on such things, I have a few pet ideas. One of them squares on the role of the internet, namely it's incredibly capacity to dissipate all kinds of emotions and energy. Consider the following:

In days of yore, if people wanted to be heard by their fellow man, and I mean heard in numbers, what options did they have? They had few options except to take out ads in the local gazette, manage to get themselves heard on radio or T.V., or, perhaps, rent out a hall-a favorite of political activists going back many generations-and say whatever it was they felt they had to say.

Now they can....blog...and boy do they ever blog by the boatload. Quite a few blogs are downright vitriolic, even incendiary in their style and content, and some, not too many, but some, are compelling. And yet, at least in the U.S., it seems, what transpires from all the chatter? Very little. I am not by any means suggesting that the blogosphere has, all by itself, sucked the life out of any potential political activism, let alone revolutionary spirit, but, still, I fear that the presence of the internet, along with myriad other kinds of (peculiar to our age) diverting fare, and some other, not to be named in this missive, crucial factors, have reduced us collectively to not much more than inveterate talking typists-and here I raise my hand up as a member of this guilty cohort- at the expense of aligning ourselves with one another for the purpose of taking genuine action, not in cyberspace, but in the real world.

Hello Again!

To my loyal reader(s), I'm sorry that I've had no scintillating entries for you over the last six weeks, but, well, I've been busy with other stuff. Now that I have a bit of time I thought I'd just drop a line to say that it appears to me as if the next round of the financial crisis is upon us.

Why now, you may ask? The termination of the so called Quantitative Easing programs conducted by U.S. monetary authorities is not the proximate reason that things are heading south again in my view. Having said that, QE2 has likely contributed to the onset of the next go round of economic contraction since QE2 has been instrumental in causing the price of raw materials to ratchet higher to an extent that has eaten into the profit margins of all manner of business activity. In the meantime, the higher cost of everything from toothpaste, to gasoline, to lawn furniture, to pork cutlets has made just about everyone but the very wealthy feel less wealthy. It's all a recipe for another round of job losses, stock market woes, and general wobbliness in the economy. And as bollixed up as things have become at the hands of the monetary authorities, there is little doubt that they would be worse without the soon to be defunct Quantitative Easing programs.

Don't misunderstand me. I've never been an advocate of the kind of monetary nostrums that have been applied in response to the calamities of '08 and early '09. It's simply that I'm aware that the pain we've experienced to date would have been vastly more intense, albeit relatively short lived-or so I conjecture- had no QE programs been enacted. And because politicians in our governmental system are in it as a career, more precisely for life, they will always, in the main, without fail, opt for the sort of approaches that attenuate pain. To do otherwise would reduce career politician's chances of remaining career politicians. In short, kicking the can down the road is how the political class responds to all crises. It's why, in time, there will be more Quantitative Easing whatever new euphemistic moniker they may apply to actions that will be nothing less than buying debt outright for cash. So, while Quantitative Easing demonstrably creates all manner of painful economic distortions, to not engage in more money printing presents the bigger risk to the political class.

Tall Tales.

As the story of the once great bogeyman Osama Bin Laden's assassination traveled around the globe via main stream media outlets, and the blogosphere, my initial thoughts were that I would attempt to deconstruct the official version. It is clear now, given the multiplicity of accounts, with details of said accounts shifting about as rapidly as the Saharan sands, that attempting to do so is both impossible-which account to deconstruct, which details?- and, more importantly, unnecessary, since the aroma of grand falsehood surrounding this news reduces any such enterprise to an absurd tail chasing activity. Put another way, the authorities, and I use the word authorities advisedly, have done the job for us. Credibility vanished quicker than a flushed turd in a cruise ship commode as the "official" story seemed to change in key ways from hour to hour. Who to believe? What to believe? Answer: No one and nothing.

Many commentators have spoken on the curious timing of the release of this would be earth shaking assassination story, namely that the breaking news distracted the mainstream media from the fetid air of mendacity that was building in the wake of President Obama's release of his purported long form birth certificate. This isn't an entirely unreasonable hypothesis, but, equally, I am sure there is far more to the story regarding "why now." We won't have much of a clue about what more there might be behind what seems to be a considerable (yet botched) disinformation campaign until some time has passed.

But allow me to back up a tad. The likelihood, based on many accounts from a wide variety of individuals who could be expected to know, is that the great and none too lamented bogeyman, Osama Bin Laden, died years ago. Given my own predilections about what 9/11 was, and, more importantly, was not, I find the numerous testimonies that all coalesce around the idea that Osama Bin Laden died years ago far more compelling than the latest mad flurry of press releases purporting his assassination at the hands of a crack team of U.S. Navy Seals.

And, again, for the seemingly zillionth time, especially where officialdom is concerned, we have to decide if the recent overwhelming confusion, not to say incoherence, in the telling of the story of Osama Bin Laden is just a matter of tremendous incompetence on the part of the anointed story tellers, or if there is something more troubling at play. What comes through for me, above all else, is this: If someone wanted to create a scenario where their own credibility was called into play in a profoundly disturbing way, they could hardly have done a better job than with the release of the fabulous, and ever changing tale of Osama Bin Laden's demise.

A Quick Word on the OBL "News."

I will report on this at length, later, but, so far, this story stinks. Put more succinctly, reports that Osama Bin Laden was killed recently by U.S. Navy Seals don't pass the sniff test.

Proof

Has anyone in the MSM bothered to ask, and, more importantly, answer, why it has taken President Obama so long to produce a long form birth certificate? Applying Occam's Razor to this seeming conundrum yields a rather stunning conclusion, which is, that, until very recently, President Barack Obama didn't possess a long form birth certificate. I know, how horribly conspiratorial of me to suggest that one has been invented on his behalf. Do you have a better explanation?

Let's see, perhaps you would like to suggest, in lieu of my straightforward explanation, that Barack Obama and his handlers have, perhaps, the worst political instincts ever, and, instead of, way back when, producing the necessary document to immediately quell the brouhaha surrounding the issue of his place of birth, decided, instead, to let the issue fester to the point that it would gestate, to name just one ghastly progeny, a Donald Trump Presidential bid. No, The Donald isn't going to become our next President, but I hope you catch my drift just the same. Do you really think Obama and his handlers decided the way forward was to stonewall, for well over a year, producing the document in question. It's possible that this explains matters, but, let's face it, the less tortured explanation is that Team Obama needed time (and a lot of money) to fabricate a convincingly authentic long form birth certificate. It must not have been easy. Counterfeiting such things is quite a job, but far from impossible. The technology is there, if you have the resources to bring to bear. Well, call me crazy, as I may well, be, but I propose the Office of The President has just such resources and that in the absence of a better explanation, used them.