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.

Think Again.

It seems that on the back of a warning of a downgrade of U.S. government debt by, FWIW, the S&P ratings agency, there is renewed discussion of how this latest debt downgrade will spur officialdom to really, truly, you better believe it, tackle our-just outside the black hole event horizon-fiscal situation. For all those talking such piffle, whether you are just clueless or ghastly toadying shills, I have news for you:

The only weapon government has to extinguish the U.S.S. debtberg is talk of the kind designed to deceive the easily duped into thinking that constant can kicking is something other than, well, can kicking. Government can't do anything like the sort of budget/debt reduction needed because that would shatter to pulp the one wooden peg leg our economy remains standing on. After all, government, both federal and local government combined, employ more folks than anyone else by a long shot. If we want to really have unemployment skyrocket, and to see absolute social disintegration/mayhem ensue lickety split, then, by all means, cut all the social programs back big time, bring most of the troops home-troops who, in the full flush of their testosterone saturated youth will not be able to find gainful employment, but are, by the way, quite handy with firearms and explosives-and let the too big to fails, fail. Yeah, that's what I thought.