JHK’s Three-Act Play
“Guidance” is the new organizing credo of US financial life with Janet Yellen officially installed as the new Wizard of Oz at the Federal Reserve. Guidance refers to periodic cryptic utterances made by the Wizard in staged appearances before congress or in the “minutes” (i.e. transcribed notes) from meetings of the Fed’s Open Market Committee. The cryptic utterances don’t necessarily have any bearing on reality, but are issued with the hope that they will be mistaken for it, especially by managers in the financial markets where assets are priced and traded.
One such infamous moment of guidance was Ben Bernanke’s May 2007 statement saying that percolating sub-prime mortgage problems were “contained.” If that was a signal for anything it was a green light for banks not yet deemed too big to fail to continue constructing swindles called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which were bundles of already bundled mortgage backed securities based on janky mortgages for million-dollar houses owned by Las Vegas busboys, and the like, that had no prospect of ever being paid. The banks kept at it sedulously for another year, and then in September of 2008 this stream of combustible financial garbage blew up the banking system. Nobody at the Fed saw it coming, least of all Janet Yellen.
And then the banking system was “rescued” by the “program” (free money bailouts) enacted by congress called TARP, while the Fed set up a carry trade system that would enable the floundering (now) too big to fail banks to convert massive volumes of zero-interest no-risk loans into a dependable revenue flow to “build reserves,” that is, allow them to appear solvent while engaging in new dodges, swindles, and manipulations of markets, currencies and interest rates.
Which brings us very near the present. Fed chairperson Yellen gave a marathon six-hour audience to the House Committee on Financial Services last week. It was so devoid of substance and meaning that the TV network covering it switched the feed a few times to the exciting Olympic event of curling, in which “athletes” wield brooms to induce giant polished stones to glide across a length of ice at a scoring target — that is, an entirely artificial and purposeless activity aimed at producing a trance of contentment among viewers who have nothing better to do in the middle of the day.
Last May’s remarks by then Fed Chairperson Ben Bernanke that the Fed might consider “tapering” its gigantic monthly purchases of US Treasury bonds plus an equal amount of stranded mortgage paper made the markets so nervous that stock indexes had a seizure and the interest rate on the lodestar ten-year treasury bill shot up 150 basis points — into a zone that would cripple the government’s ability to keep its credit revolving. These dire portents prompted Bernanke to take back what he’d said, but then three months later, in the fall, he restated the taper guidance. By then, market watchers and playas were sure that he was just juking them, and anyway they were too busy stuffing their Christmas bonus stockings to take him seriously.
Lo, the taper is still on under Wizard Yellen, for the simple reason that if she backed out of it now, before she officially chaired her first meeting of the Fed governors, her outfit would lose whatever shreds of credibility it still hangs onto. Even with the taper on, it is for now still pumping over half a trillion dollars a year into the banking system. There is some reason to think that it made the markets puke two weeks ago. But then a really bad employment number came out, and in the inverse climate of bad-news-being-good-news for bubble markets, that was construed as a sure sign that the Fed might have to un-taper sometime around late spring with Yellen’s chairpersonship fully established. I suspect they’ll do something else: they’ll continue to taper down purchases of treasuries and mortgage detritus via the direct TBTF bank channel and they’ll establish a new “back door” for shoveling money into the system. Nobody knows what this is yet, and it may be some time even after it starts that the mechanism is discovered. In the meantime, the seeming placidity of the renewed “risk on” mood should be a warning to market cheerleaders. Something’s got to give and I think it will be the US dollar index, which has been in Zombieland since November. The world has never been so ready for a change in direction. Expect no real guidance from your leaders.
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“Something’s got to give and I think it will be the US dollar index”
But aren’t most (if not all) major countries increasing their money supply at a rapid rate ?
Yes, ‘Something’s got to give’ But lets hope it is not Janet Yellen swimming around a pool in a only a flesh-colored bikini bottom.
“Something’s got to give”?
Yes, the Chinese are well aware that what is going to give . . . is the US Dollar, as the world reserve currency.
Why else do you think they are buying gold hand over fist? To the tune of 2150 tons in 2013, and starting off 2014 by buying 247 tons in January.
You think they just might know something we don’t?
By “Something’s got to give” I was thinking major devaluation of the USD. But think you are correct, CancelMyCard. Just a matter of time before the dollar loses its status as wrc (the process has already begun, with countries accepting other currencies in payment for oil).
And when it does lose wrc status it will probably be devalued around the world, perhaps significantly. Certainly oil will become more expensive in the USA, leading to further economic deterioration.
One “intelligent response” is to reduce your dependency on your car and pursue less energy intensive living. Now, before the BRICS agree to a different wrc.
Hey Chipshot,
You might look at the new electric bicycles or tricycles. The new lithium ion batteries can go up to fifty miles a day and they can be recharged thousands of times for just pennies a day. An added bonus is no license, title or registration is needed.
Great suggestion, md. Big fan of e-bikes, think they have tons of potential for future transportation needs. Sooner the better.
Not sure we can afford to drive ourselves around everywhere for much longer, using e-bikes instead of cars would leave us with more $$ for…everything else.
LMAO!
(re Yellen in the bikini)
It would be totallyphat
Ah I’ll try again.
It would be totally phat.
All currencies are fiat. Buy gold and silver: http://youtu.be/7KNBNmWbn2Y
From you I suppose. What is really going to happen is that the world is going to switch from paper money to credits. Plain and simple you work, or invest and you receive credits to buy crap you don’t need and will save a few forests. 0’s and 1’s and they can trace everyone of them. Those of you hoping that gold or silver is the answer will have to go into the jewelry making business and receive so many credits for your troubles. If you think you will get fair value for the gold and silver you are hoarding take a good look at the history of the value of those metals. Governments can make them worthless in seconds. Oh, yea they look good in the mouth.
You’re partially correct. The established crypto-blockchain (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Maxcoin, et al) backbones will form the basis of a worldwide currency regime, but that doesn’t remove precious metals from value. Quite the opposite, none of the techno-narcissism ploys will function without silver’s unique physical properties, ergo no modern police state. How about Gold? Well, let’s just say if the most beautiful women desire to wear it, then the most powerful men will accumulate it.
Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac – Henry Kissenger
You’re partially correct. Except Kissinger was a Nazi, fascist pig and the most powerful men are going to run out of time and support. And well beautiful women are always appreciated and I know plenty that are not at all interested in wearing any thing let alone gold. Oh yea.
Indian weddings? No gold, no marriage.
Open up your harem of lovely ladies who aren’t interested in wealth! Or perhaps they’re interested in paper wealth markers; technotrinkets and the lifestyle that our Western paper buys.
As nature reverts to the mean; the petrodollar will fail, along with the militarism and psychopaths who back it: Kissenger, Soros, Clinton, Bush, and Joe Six-pack. Obvious wealth will then take precedence over fictions.
First, the tense you are looking for is “is”, since Kissinger is still alive and well, unfortunately. Second, while he may be a facist in the intended pejorative sense, he certainly isn’t a Nazi, since he is, after all, a Jew. Although no doubt as evil as he is he would sell out his entire family to the Nazis if given the chance.
But as the rising cost of energy, food and insurance erodes disposable income, can we avoid a deflationary spiral ?
If not, will the price of precious metals rise ?
How can we expect anything except obfuscation and best wishes from the folks who keep the rickety structure of global finance from toppling down?
There’s real desperation, however, in the recently mobile classes of America. As I hunt about for a rental property to purchase, I keep meeting nice folks screwed blind by the System. They’ve lost jobs, lost homes, lost hope, and are headed down. Their homes are going, cheap, and as long as the current rotten system lasts, they are a better investment than the smoke-and-mirrors stock market.
What can Chairman Yellen do about that? Zippity-nada.
“One such infamous moment of guidance was Ben Bernanke’s May 2007 statement saying that percolating sub-prime mortgage problems were ‘contained.'”
This is a year after the bottom fell out of the residential real estate market. I was lucky that my house closed in May 2006. I got out just in time. As for Bernanke, what a bunch of wishful thinking!
“Nobody at the Fed saw it coming, least of all Janet Yellen.”
And Yellen has the reputation of having made the most correct predictions of how the crisis would unfold of all the Fed Governors. That doesn’t contradict what you wrote. It just means everyone else was worse.
“Fed chairperson Yellen gave a marathon six-hour audience to the House Committee on Financial Services last week. It was so devoid of substance and meaning that the TV network covering it switched the feed a few times to the exciting Olympic event of curling, in which “athletes” wield brooms to induce giant polished stones to glide across a length of ice at a scoring target — that is, an entirely artificial and purposeless activity aimed at producing a trance of contentment among viewers who have nothing better to do in the middle of the day.”
Now there’s an appropriate juxtaposition. I know of one way to make curling interesting–having someone explain the science of it. Yes, turning a sport into a physics lecture is actually an improvement in the case of curling.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/02/more-science-of-olympics-from-discovery.html
“Something’s got to give and I think it will be the US dollar index, which has been in Zombieland since November.”
As long as there are other major currencies that are in worse shape, the US Dollar will still look good in comparison. As for it being in Zombieland, it’s in good company. “The Walking Dead” is back on. That was enough to prompt me to look for what the interest in the Zombie Apocalypse means as a metaphor. I think I found the answer–a chance to get what one sees as justice during a collapse without an outside authority standing in the way. The zombie label then works to dehumanize one’s adversaries. That’s an even scarier thought than actual zombies.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-archdruid-and-his-readers-on-zombies.html
Janet Yellen herself states there will be no change of direction. She is a Bernanke protege, here to carry out his policies far into the future.
That’s why she was picked and confirmed so easily to begin with.
One thing I’m not clear on. We are told the Federal Reserve is a private entity not connected to the US Government. Why then is its chairperson appointed by the President, and confirmed by Congress?
–BRH
Federal Reserve is a private entity not connected to the US Government. Why then is its chairperson appointed by the President.
Sort of like a cherished dignitary firing the starting gun at the start of a marathon race. It is all a sub-chapter of the old boys club. Old refering to old money.
It’s a way of gluing a veneer of trustworthiness onto a gang of bankers (quite a feat in itself). This is accomplished by invoking “the will of the people” through their “duly elected representatives”; it’s a coronation by subterfuge, if you will. (It’s a consummation wished by Goldman-Sachs and their many friends who comprise the members of the Bilderberg. Guess who? The rich and powerful who fervently wish to remain so, in perpetuity.)
I smell scapegoats and fall-guys. (Surprise, surprise!) A [nearly] black president and a woman [heaven forfend] chair of the most powerful fraud-perptuating organization in america? Puh-leeze… these are appointments designed to take the blame when sparks are fanned into infernos. (Notice that they do nothing really effectual to mitigate the misery of “the little people”, but rather preside over their immiseration.)
Example: The president hurries out to Californey, pretends to provide monies to cover the losses of “family farms”. (Of course this is nothing more than an attempt to polish his turd of a legacy while hoping to patch a few more holes in the lifeboat of public confidence.) When his brand of alchemy can turn Fed Funds into burgeoning supplies of groundwater, then I’ll believe. Til then, I ain’t holding my breath.
The incantations of these various wizards have but one end in mind: To give the appearance that everything is being done to help the citizenry that can possibly BE done. It’s as thin as any other Madison Ave. lie.
Suffice it to say that we’re being treated like cultivated mushrooms…
I smell scapegoats and fall-guys. (Surprise, surprise!) A [nearly] black president and a woman [heaven forfend] chair of the most powerful fraud-perptuating organization in america
Like chess set. Once can find them in traditional turned wood motif or as figurines made to satisfy any collectors whim. The appearance can change but the game is the same.
I like the carved onyx sets from Mexico.
(Mind-buzzing: “Ooo, them there diz purdy an bee-oo-tee-full; see the light shine thru?” Awakening: “Checkmate?! Whadaya mean, checkmate?! I was sitting right here; wha’happen??)
That last sentence is pretty funny, Oz. I got a chuckle out of that.
Yeah, but mushrooms get treated better.
At least they’re prepared lovingly before they’re eaten!
My guess is the Dollar will be seen, at least in the near future, as a safe haven as various Emerging Market currencies adjust to their new reality of major trade imbalances. Turkey, S. Africa, Argentina, Venezuela to name a few. Of course, devalued currencies mean fewer imports which are someone’s exports. And then, there’s China, currently riding the mother of shadow banking bubbles. There’s a nasty global recession ahead, very deflationary. When the US Fed tries to reflate, then there’s your dollar crisis.
That’s why there’s still a market for us govt bonds. It’s, as they say, the “best house in a bad neighborhood”.
The death of the dollar is on hand,the Government is manipulating the inflation numbers, covering the real inflation numbers, while at the same time income is falling and jobs are disappearing.
The 2008 depression never really ended it was simply papered over by the manipulation of the statistics.
Soon the bottom will fall out.
Most activity people engage in is artificial and purposeless. Gliding stones across polished ice is harmless enough if you ignore the hundreds of millions spent to bring it into everyone’s living room. But not so all activities and rituals. A the new temple of Karnack Wizard Yellin must find new ways of building the trillion dollar a year pyramid of stimulus. Nobody knows what her new rituals will be but she will have to do something to top helicopter Bens performance. Perhaps this will do. Those not of the manor born can go directly to jail. Do not pass go but stimulate the economy with a two hundred dollar fine on every trip to jail. Like galley slaves rowing the imperial barge towards foaming white rocks we plod on. Expect no real guidance from our leaders. The forgotten ground round in the sub-basement of the abandoned warehouse ripens and the trust on all the paper regulating trade in corn, pork bellies, cocoa, coffee, wheat, corn and what have you runs off like ink on a rain soaked valentines day card.
“The world has never been so ready for a change.” Perhaps, but I don’t see where the change will come from.
The UAW vote in Tennessee is instructive. Along with the abysmal failures of the Occupy and Tea Party movements, the nay vote evidences a seeming lack of willingness on the part of Americans to act in a concerted effort to advance common causes. This, in itself, may be symptomatic of the larger issue of societal disintegration (I’m wondering if ‘collapse’ is even a proper appellation).
The citizens of America, and in fact the West, seem to lack an easily identifiable center against which they may vent their common wrath: no evil monarch, repressive regime, unfeeling oligarchy nor fanatical theocracy to defy. International Corporatism has, by increments, sapped nationalism of its power. And International Corporatism is ever aglow with the happy face of ‘Free Enterprise’.
People – especially the young – sense the impotence of national entities and tend to ignore national problems in favor of more local and immediate issues. Meanwhile corporations give the appearance of being untouchable and immovable…and they may well be so.
Along with the Age of Fossil Fuels, the Age of Nationalism and the Age of Industrialism, the ‘Age of Revolution’ may be behind us.
Perhaps, but I don’t see where the change will come from.
Not knowing where the change will come from means it is going to happen without any conscious human direction. Like the bottom being ripped out of the ship of state. A black swan event but one which will be explained after the fact.
Somewhere a cornicopian mentality crept into the American character that this is the best of all possible societies and to think to do other than merely fit in becomes irresponsible. The godless heads of International Corporatism knows all and sees all, and we must trust in their bottomless wells of wisdom. For they worship at the temple of infinite progress and boundless plenty. As individuals we are impotent fools. Just try and make an I-phone in your garage. Just try it. The corporate citizen has talent, far more than you or I. And they have more rights than you or I too. is this not the supreme edict of the land.
There is no place to vent the common wrath and wrath is not all that common enough to vent anyway.
What cause would a union at VW have served?
The cause of turning Chattanooga into the next Detroit?
Good point, which is why we need creative leaders to lead the way. When people tell you about their lives, their plots, they tell you nothing about themselves if they are really interesting. Interesting events and circumstances happen, but what is really interesting is not that what life hands out for it merely happens to us. It is what is deep inside, unique and different at the core that is truly interesting.
“When he was elected, everyone hoped and expected that he would reform not only the United States but also the rest of the world. But he failed to implement any constructive reforms. Moreover, it seems like perhaps he doesn’t even care if America is still perceived as the superpower it once was.”
You send out a straw man – a weak one at that! Chattanooga is a strong, mid-sized town. I’ve been there. It has nothing in common with Detroit nor can it ever. The fact that Volkswagon raised no objection to the unionization of the plant staff speaks volumes. The Germans know the value of a contented worker.
It was a massive negative ad campaign paid for by corporate interests that fed the fears of the hapless workers, and sent the measure to defeat.
“Chattanooga into the next Detroit”….please.
Agreed with Greg here. The Iron Heel came down hard on the workers, scaring them. But a vote is a vote, even a bought vote.
The Corportatists won this one, even if VW would have lived with the UAW.
Yet to see Chattanooga becoming Detroit after a pro-UAW vote is, however, evidence of the very brainwashing our Corporate rulers dish out through their owned media. Detroit’s decline is complex, with UAW intransigence only one small part.
Now go back to your Fox “News” and Cheese-Doodles. All is well in the Home of the Brave.
Well-spoken. And unfortunately it has the ring of truth to it.
Hopefully something will come down the pipeline to change this paradigm, but I’m not banking on it!
All currencies are fiat. Buy gold and silver
the first half of that sentence says nothing. the US dollar is as good as gold, thats why everyone on the planet accepts it. yeah i know theres a billion chinamen hoarding gold and silver, plus the indians, etc. im sure they hoard all the dollars and euros they can get, too.
i `like` gold and silver and have bought it, and would like to see american dollars backed by it, but gold and silver have been real lousy investments the past year or so.
youre in the game to make money, or no?
peace peaceniks
There is such a thing as arriving at the party too early, and that is where many PM buffs found themselves in the past 2 years. However, the mis-pricing / price-fixing of assets eventually leads to shortages (remember Soviet Russia?). Precisely, it is that perceptual awakening that will burn and scar the psyches of the duped classes.
You can take your paper dollars and mix them with your rice. I’ll take my silver and lead any day. I’ll store my food and and you can bite me!! I’ve got canned food up the yazoo. Happy President’s Day!
In other words, you’re in possession of REAL “currency” (items that represent some actual value.)
Tip: Don’t store canned food up your yazoo. ;o)
OK Rip I know which way to head when TSHTF. North!
I’ll be wearing a blue shirt. Don’t shoot!
–BRH
“The world has never been so ready for a change in direction.”
That could be as the status quo, nowadays known as the “House of Cards”, is characterized by a paper thin economy hidden by a bevy of distractions that few find interesting. A little unnoticed nudge in the right place at the right time and the king will be revealed to have no clothing.
http://www.thesisa.org
“they’ll establish a new “back door” for shoveling money into the system”
The back door is the overnight lending window. The TBTF banks are “borrowing” money at zero interest and buying US treasuries which they put on deposit at the Fed as “capital reserves”. The Fed will just redefine the qualifications for “capital reserves” down to toilet paper.
Anyway, as you point out, it’s all numbers and the dollar is going to suffer the inevitable fate of all fiat currencies.
http://michael-hudson.com/
fr. interview Monopoly’s Poster Children
Prof. H: They’re indoctrinated. There are two ways the Chicago School of economics pushed neoliberal theories. In Chile, they went down under the Pinochet regime and closed every economics department in the country that didn’t teach their Chicago School theories. They assassinated labor leaders, they assassinated economists and professors, and had a continent wide terrorism campaign, Operation Condor, which killed tens of thousands of intellectuals.
They didn’t have to do that in Ireland or America.
In American they gained control of the main refereed economic journals. And that means that in the United States – and probably Ireland and Europe too – when you graduate with your PhD and want to go into teaching, you have to get promoted by being published in arefereed journal.
But the referees are Chicago boys or Harvard neoliberals. They are ideological totalitarians. The free market boys realize that you cannot have a free market without having utter totalitarian control. That’s what they’ve achieved.
The aim of totalitarian control is to make sure that there is no alternative. So by the time I graduated from NYU, I was told – by a professor who worked for the CIA – that it was not worth while studying the history of economic thought, because if economic theories were good, they would have succeeded by Survival of the Fittest. If they weren’t taught, it’s because they were outdated and obsolete. So, in the United States they’ve dropped the history of economic thought from the academic curriculum. They’ve even dropped economic history. So you’re not going to learn what was taught when I was in school 50 years ago: the history of rent theory, price and value theory.]
Listen to the whole thing. We can’t get any leaders of consequence because we can only have 1 failure of an economic theory. TINA–THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE.-M. Thatcher.
From your linked article:
The problem is that even when you Irish did – as you should have done – and voted out the party in power, the incoming party has the same policy as the former one. It’s much like the United States, where we voted out Republican George Bush, and then got an even more Republican Democrat – Barack Obama.
They all promise change, and then follow the financial sector’s directions.
That’s the story. It’s inverted totalitarianism. This is about giving the people in the show pony elections all the drama of the sport yet offer nothing but the same policies.
Neoliberal and Neoconservative.
Also check out Pepe Escobar on our new ginned up cold war with Russia, we’ve already sunk $5bill. to the players in the Ukraine to overthrow the democratically elected govt. Can you spell COUP?
Found it:
The New US-Russia Cold War
Did you see 60 minutes last night? Bill Browder is dedicating his life to fighting Putin because they kicked him out of Russian for financial shenanigans. How dare they decide what is right and wrong in their own country! The look on his face was exactly the same as on Bernanke’s face or Blankfein’s. The same sly, smarmy, slimy, smile. He says Russia is a criminal regime. They say he is a criminal and have an arrest warrant made out for him. I believe them more than I believe him.
He says they killed his assistant. They may have. They do play rough sometimes when they feel their major interests are at stake. As if we don’t?
I agree with you, k-dog. The promise of change is held out and then snatched away. I didn’t realize how corrupt our nation had become until the debacle with Goldman Sachs. I knew that the government was influenced by the private sector, but I didn’t understand that the govt. had been completely taken over by the private sector. All that is left is smoke & mirrors.
Smoke mirrors and snake oil, being as the other kind of oil is going fast.
And it is not happening only in economics, but also in other humanities or even in the primary education all over the world. Right now, you can find this program called Girl Rising! Which I consider another direct attack on the heterogeneity of education in other parts of the world. They have to accept OUR ideals, they have to do as we say, with democracy, free market and other lies we teach them be it directly or indirectly.
US has with its money taken control over what can and what can’t be published. Ofc you can still publish in some Chinese or Indian journal, even Europe has some, but they are never quoted, and are considered worthless.
Every big debate about social science is in the hands of those who don’t want any change. Its the Mitchells iron law of oligarchy used by scholars and social scientists, who have to obey (and publish) their masters or become slaves.
Speaking of the dollar …
I read a lot of history, and one thing that never ceases to amaze me is when say, value of money in the 19th century is converted to value today. For example, I was just reading of an Army major who earned $3000 a year in 1900, “which translates to about $65,000 per year in 2011”.
Or when you hear older people talk about the 1965 Ford Mustang they bought new for $2800.
I was just talking to a guy whos grandfather bought a beachfront home on Cape Cod in the 1950s for $6500. When you hear these things you realize how worthless our money has actually become. Since a dollar ultimately represents a unit of human labor our working lives are worth less, too.
–BRH
There is such a thing as arriving at the party too early, and that is where many PM buffs found themselves in the past 2 years. However, the mis-pricing / price-fixing of assets eventually leads to shortages (remember Soviet Russia?).
too early? gold rose steadily for a decade, lol, i think you mean they arrived too late.
re shortages, the government can control markets and shortages too, just remember the hunt brothers – when they literally cornered the silver market, the government changed the rules and broke them on the spot.
there is not going to be any apocalyptic repricing of `real` money, i.e. gold and silver going to the moon. markets are highly controlled, there is multinational simultaneous coordination, in particular to avoid another 2008 close call.
i`m sorry to have to tell you this.
peace peaceniks
Hey, BRH, two things matter for the happy motoring public: wheels and burgers. Things are going well on those fronts. The national average price for a gallon of regular gas was $3.49 in 2013. That’s down about 12 cents from the average price in 2012. In this, the greatest country in the world, people can get a cheap cheese burger for a dollar or even cheaper taco in Taco Bell for 80 cents or so. It’s all good, BRH.
Easy motoring ah those were the days. Days now gone when the wheels could spin with hardly a thought of how much it was costing. Nothing like an ever changing visage of farmland shifting past at sixty miles an hour to clear the head. How I loved to hang out the window and let my tongue flap in the wind.
But cheap cheese burgers for a dollar. Gone with the days of happy easy motoring. Never mind your GRAFT, pay attention to the graph.
Big Mac prices v GDP per person
You nailed it, Marlin. The dollar is just a measuring system. The value of say, a house, is still the same as it was 100 years ago, but the measure of that value has risen in dollars. Therefore it’s the dollar that’s changed, not the house. As an analogy, take a yardstick. It is measured in inches – in this case 36. If measured in centimeters, it is 92, and if measured in millimeters, it is 920. 36, 92 and 920 are wildly different, yet the size of the yardstick hasn’t changed.
So what you see with the dollar is a change in the measuring characteristics. It’s now measured in millimeters, not inches. All this is due to tinkering from the Federal Reserve. The numbers have changed so much that people, governments and businesses are confused and are losing faith in the dollar. When a certain point is reached, they won’t use a yardstick anymore, they’ll use something else. Personally, I agree with the poster above who stated that a credit system, say like bitcoin, will be used. If not, gold and silver will make a comeback in daily usage.
Nicely put BTB. Real clear writing.
–BRH
Yellen’s testimony “….was so devoid of substance and meaning that the TV network covering it switched the feed a few times to the exciting Olympic event of curling, in which “athletes” wield brooms to induce giant polished stones to glide across a length of ice at a scoring target — that is, an entirely artificial and purposeless activity aimed at producing a trance of contentment among viewers who have nothing better to do in the middle of the day.” – jhk –
Damn, man, but that’s seriously funny!! And, I for one, very much appreciate some humor mixed in with my week’s serving of doom. Next – would you consider an analysis of non-US “football,” where superb runners kick a ball around a field for hours – all the while knowing full well that the game will likely be settled by a penalty kick, usually after regulation play ends.
And then, before March Madness, would you please take a look at basketball? This game was invented using 10 foot high peach baskets with the bottoms still in, when the average athlete was way less than 6 feet tall – and probably couldn’t jump all that well, either. Personally, I think they ought to make the basket about 14 feet high – thus opening the game back up for us middle aged guys whose genome does not favor jumping.
And, as always, thanks for giving us another look at another possibility of economic collapse. Such collapse is as inevitable as the Sun turning into a red giant – and will likely happen a great deal sooner than that.
Some will argue otherwise, which keeps this place entertaining when you know some of the players.
Maybe it is all good?
LOL! The “playas” have all the seriousness of hunting lions once that stone is let loose! This blog is a never ending stream of terrific metaphors!
Schiff nails it in this interview, including a statement of interest to Chairwoman Yellens FED, the recent US Congress action on the debt by money expansion is not an extension of the ceiling, but is printing up debt with no limit. No ceiling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXgdozKr33M
K-Dogs Gold Recipe
Step 1: Begin with equal parts tincture of a thousand flowers and water From a murky Swamp.
Step 2: Add hair from a lions mane and sprinkle with fairy dust.
Step 3: Add one each pinch of dragon scale and pinch of powdered crystal.
Step 4: Wave the ‘Forward America’ magic wand over the mix while simmering over a fire of inflating Federal Reserve Notes.
Let me know if it works.
Sure. In return you let me know, about whatever it is you are doing, is working.
“I was just reading of an Army major who earned $3000 a year in 1900” –BRH
Hey, BRH, I’d be suspicious of what you read. A public school teacher in 1900 only earned an average of $328 a year. Were Army majors really being paid 900% more than school teachers?
Let’s look at this “dollar is just a measuring instrument” argument a little more:
In 1900 dozen eggs cost $0.23
In 1900 a pound of butter cost $0.26
In 1900 dozen eggs cost $0.39
In 1900 a pound of butter cost $0.36
Eggs and butter did not change between 1900 and 1910. They still provided the same nutritional value. So who can we blame for inflation? Let’s see:
The Federal Reserve was created on December 23, 1913, so we can’t blame the Fed for the inflation from 1900 to 1910.
World War I had not yet started, so we can’t blame World War I.
The United States was still on the “gold standard” so we can’t blame “fiat money.”
We did have a Republican president in those years: Republican President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) … hmmm.
Nevertheless, even without the Fed, even without war, even without fiat money, even with a Republican president, I’ll bet someone (maybe a doomer) was complaining in 1910 about inflation and how it was going to be the end of the USA. No such luck. Greatest country on earth. Like a Timex bunny it just keeps on ticking.
I am proud to be an American, proud of our immigrants, proud of our multicultural demographic makeup, and proud of our Black president. I count my blessings and refuse to complain about the value of the dollar or the Fed or inflation. I refuse to fret about “Black Swans” or look for who to blame. Keep your head down, your powder dry … Semper Fi
Oh boy.
BTW, Copernicus, you used the year 1900 in all of your examples.
This is an excellent description of the economic traps we set and how we managed to get both legs stuck in them. We’re still thrashing about, but soon to be carrion in the talons and claws of scavengers. We mistook all this as something under our command and are about to be instructed otherwise.
All the quotation marks recall conversations where the speaker pauses and makes those annoying little finger crunches to emphasize irony. In this case the quotes are bullshit markers, warning of obfuscating terms, like “clean” coal.
As if finance wasn’t bewildering enough, the churning language makes it impossible to follow.
But in the scheme of things knowing the churning language of deceit will soon be as useful as knowing Sanskrit. Carrion in the talons and claws of scavengers will have no need of either.
… and are about to be instructed otherwise.
yep, we`re always about to get it, about to see the shtf, about to be eviscerated.
wake up, things can be managed by all manner of artifice…and always have.
don`t you manage perceptions in your own family sometimes, in order to avoid dispute?
its done on national and international scales as well. sheesh, plant a tree (yes, plant a tree), enrich the soil in your yard with mulch, collect rainwater in barrells and put up some solar or wind , or mini hyrdo, if you can.
not to brace for the end, just to do some good other than the ridiculous soothsaying out here.
things are demonstrably getting better, in the midst of lots of shit, which has always been the case.
peace peaceniks
Your grip on reality has long been eviscerated.
love lawman
It would seem so… In any event this “things are demonstrably getting better” statement is questionable. I’m going to need details.
This stimulus is a success!!! Come people, get back in the stock market!!
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-stimulus-turns-five-the-white-house-declares-victory/
Eh, scratch, scratch, I need some scratch.
From the link:
total job creation was about 9 million one year full-time jobs through the end of 2012.
Population of the U.S in 2012 – 317,493,212
Population of the U.S in 2010 – 308,745,531
A difference of almost nine million in two, not the five years the article refers to.
Sniff, Sniff, I’m not smelling success, I’m smelling sh……….
As in essence of bull.
“Nobody at the Fed saw it coming”
I find the accusations of the Fed’s ineptness amusing. This is the seat of the global reserve currency that is controlled by the most powerful cabal in the world, the world’s governing body as it were. Try to imagine the unimaginable quantity and quality of the information that they possess and have analyzed in order to exercise controls in pursuit of their very personal and probably very narrow self-interests. These people are not inept. The simple fact that the global economy has not already crumbled to dust is a testament to some herculean efforts to prolong it.
I believe that their mistake was made decades ago or perhaps, even centuries ago for not pulling the plug on a growth-based economy when the total suffering would have been insignificant in comparison to what humanity is facing now.
The other condition that I find amusing is that the controlling elites seem to be bound by a code of complete silence. Public opinion rages against them and they resist the temptation to just come out and say, “ya, we own all you fuckers and the entire world…”. Stoic, aren’t they?
Jim says, “I suspect they’ll do something else”. Ya, me too – and I sincerely doubt that it will be as pretty as quantitative easing.
~toktomi~
JHK says he’s allergic to conspiracy theories…
According to the tone and the evidence framed in this weeks blog, the Federal Reserve Conspiracy has been proven due to the appointing of Yellen and the content of board meeting notes.
Bank of America has a policy that requires account holders to spend $250 a month in order to avoid a $16 monthly maintenance fee (membership fee). This reverse psychology rewards people for spending money at the same time making them feel like they are saving money. BofA wants to be an institution that is primarily used in the circulation of money and not the saving of money. They promote capitalism through the trading of goods and services one of which is housing mortgages.
Wells Fargo is another example of a national bank that makes money primarily through the transaction of fees for the service of moving your money. They have already been taken to court due to their exorbitant $35 overdraft fee because someone decided they would make more money processing modest people’s debits before their credits. They know very well most of their clientele live from paycheck to paycheck or on a fixed income. The people won a settlement but Wells Fargo has not changed their policy regarding the amount of the overdraft fee because fee income is non-taxable.
The Federal Reserve is an actual building that houses actual MONEY or SAVINGS or GOLD RESERVES. It does not take an economist to figure basic principles of spending and saving. Yet, our country and world are being dumbed down by political and social rhetoric (evidenced in the Olympic games analogy). As long as we ACT wealthy, then we will ATTRACT wealth or success. The Olympic theater attracts world wide talent and attention. The irony being that people and institutions are taking huge risks with their lives and livelihoods to create and sustain this illusion of superiority.
The United States is broke. The only thing keeping us on top is the physical holding of the worlds gold in Fort Knox.
“The only thing keeping us on top is the physical holding of the worlds gold in Fort Knox.”
The amount of gold held at Ft. Knox is a pittance compared to the amount stored at the Federal Reserve in NYC.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/whatwedo.html
“The New York Fed oversees the Second Federal Reserve District, which includes New York state, the 12 northern counties of New Jersey, Fairfield County in Connecticut, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Though it serves a geographically small area compared with those of other Federal Reserve Banks, the New York Fed is the largest Reserve Bank in terms of assets and volume of activity…
has several unique responsibilities…
storing monetary gold for foreign central banks, governments and international agencies”
“Reserve requirements establish the proportions of demand deposit (checking) accounts and time deposits that must be held as non-interest bearing reserves at Federal Reserve Banks or as vault cash. Reserve ratios are rarely changed…
For an overview of new policy tools that the Federal Reserve has implemented to address the financial crisis that emerged during the summer of 2007, go to Credit and Liquidity Programs and the Balance Sheet feature at the Board of Governors website.***
International Operations
The services provided for these institutions include the receipt and payment of funds in U.S. dollars; purchase and sale of foreign exchange and Treasury securities; and the storage of monetary gold.”
***”Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
The Federal Reserve System was designed to ensure its political independence and its sensitivity to divergent economic concerns. The chairman and the six other members of the Board of Governors who oversee the Federal Reserve are nominated by the president of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. The president is directed by law to select governors who provide “a fair representation of the financial, agricultural, industrial and geographical divisions of the country.” One term is set to expire every two years. This is to prevent any one president from saturating the Board with his or her nominees.”
Whoo! Check out Venezuela! The revolution is falling apart! American diplomats kicked out, 3 days to pack up and leave! Blood in the streets, more blood to come, stores empty, currency worthless, oil industry in ruins!
Sean Penn, get your skinny white ass down there and buck up that revolution. Bring your fellow chavezinistas … Jimmy Carter, Bill ayers, Oliver Stone, danny Glover, Joe Kennedy … fly in on your private jets, check in at the best hotels available, wear berets like Che Guevara wore, take to the streets, man the ramparts, eat dinner in the best restaurant in Caracas, fly back to Hollywood that nite, Revolution restored! job well done! Job well done boys, job well done. Hand shakes, pats on the back and asskisses all around, as well as interviews with Charlie Rose and Bill Moyers.
–BRH
Mr. Maduro, a socialist who was elected in April, has often said the United States is seeking to oust him from office; Sunday was the third time in less than a year that he has announced the expulsion of American officials. – The New York Times
Armed vigilantes on motorcycles attacked anti-government demonstrators in Venezuela on Wednesday, setting off a stampede by firing into crowds as the biggest protest against President Nicolas Maduro’s year-old administration turned violent. Three people were killed. – Daily Mail
Main complaint seems to be they ran out of toilet paper, none to be had in the whole country.
Maduro blames TP shortage on US meddling. Sean Penn, goddamit, charter a second 747 loaded up with toilet paper. You can afford it. Its the least you could do for the revolution. Same goes for Oilman Joe Kennedy. there’s a good deal at Walmart on TP right now.
chavez promised ‘the people’ a brave new world. Instead there’s no Toilet Paper. What kind of f-ckin revolution is that?
–BRH
No toilet paper but there is still sh…….
Hey, BRH, Inflation is running at over 50 per cent in Venezuela and it appears to be on the verge of becoming a collapsed state. Jeering at the likes of Oliver Stone and Danny Glover is a cheap shot in the face of human suffering unless you really don’t care about the welfare of ordinary Venezuelans. But even so, you may be cheering the demise of “the revolution” prematurely for one word: OIL.
The apocalypse hasn’t come yet. “The crash never comes because Venezuela has an insurance other countries don’t have – one of the largest oil reserves in the world,” said Jorge Roig, president of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce. Venezuela’s economic indicators defy logic, he said, but the international thirst for oil has postponed the day of reckoning.
Population of the U.S in 2012 – 317,493,212
Population of the U.S in 2010 – 308,745,531
A difference of almost nine million — K-Dog
==========
How’s the weather in the Northwest, Keith?
About your statistics: Child labor is illegal. I doubt two-year olds make up the 9 million new jobs created over the last five years. Nor do Mexican immigrants because there is a net loss of immigrants under Obama (more Mexicans leaving than arriving) due to increased border security and due to Obama’s deportation efforts.
With a 71% school drop out rate (according to BRH), we need more to encourage the arrival of more immigrants because we don’t have enough educated graduates/job applicants here.
Yeah two years vs five your child laborists need parents, you loose. Have a nice week.
“A difference of almost nine million in two, not the five years“
*** “Guidance” is the new organizing credo of US financial life with Janet Yellen officially installed as the new Wizard of Oz at the Federal Reserve. Guidance refers to periodic cryptic utterances made by the Wizard in staged appearances before congress or in the “minutes” (i.e. transcribed notes) from meetings of the Fed’s Open Market Committee. The cryptic utterances don’t necessarily have any bearing on reality, but are issued with the hope that they will be mistaken for it, especially by managers in the financial markets where assets are priced and traded. *** -JHK
Well now, here it is again. A subject that K-dog and I have bandied about before: definition of terms (or a deliberate muddying of said definitions).
As JHK opines (along with noting other purposely skewed words) in this week’s missive, “guidance” is the new word for blowing smoke, happy-talk, moonbeams, sunshine and powdered unicorn horn up our collective backsides.
(I’m not certain, but I don’t think the word “guidance” used to mean anything quite like that…. and I’m talking about yesterday.)
Is language sort of key to our understanding of things, or can we do without it and depend on grunts and frantic gesticulations? Thanks Frank Luntz, aka Humpty Dumpty; I’ll be watching (since conversing no longer contains any standard meaning).
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”‘
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
— [Yes, we are already] Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Your grip on reality has long been eviscerated.
another nothing statement by those who have nothing to offer but fear.
we of success and progress salute you as we soar far, far above you into our future of superabundance and cornucopia.
as proof of this stellar future:
For the first time, a nuclear fusion reaction has been created that produced more energy than was absorbed by the fuel in making it. Scientists are enthusiastic that this most recent milestone could solve the world’s energy crisis.
peace peaceniks
Yo Rube,
Did you even bother to fully read up on this? Here’s a nice quote from the LA Times article:
“…the reaction caused only a fraction of the fuel to fuse and did not manage to release more energy than the lasers put into it – they can pour in 1.8 million joules, so 99% of the energy is still being lost in the process…”
Keep on wishin’ there, Jiminy!
i purposely left that out, hoping someone would read the article and comment.
you have to read this very carefully. yes, the energy of the lasers is greater than the energy produced.
however, the key is that the amount of energy given off by the bombarded hydrogen exceeded the amount of energy it absorbed.
so the hydrogen absorbs 1, and emits 2, to simplify this.
this is revolutionary and the first instance of this having happened. science is getting close to fusion reality.
now, the game is to up the amount of energy emitted by the bombarded hydrogen until it exceeds that of the lasers. a process of refinement.
peace peaceniks
It’s been a week or so since I read a little about it, but you sucked me right in to comment on your post. Well done.
I don’t remember the details, and frankly I don’t fully understand the process or the physics, but I gathered that they have been ramping up the amount of ‘containment’ energy to yield larger and larger results. I think there was something said about needing to double the laser pressure for the next iteration. My questions is: how much more energy is needed to ‘double’ the pressure? 10 times? 100X, 1000X? Any way you slice it, it’s still a losing proposition.
Another odd thought that comes to mind: do you suppose they could unintentionally initiate an uncontrolled, albeit limited, fusion burst of some sort? Like, suddenly themselves and the building around them instantly vaporizes? Great sci-fi fodder…
I read somewhere that one of the main reasons the USofA moved H-bomb testing to underground was because they realized that they were setting off a limited ‘meltdown’ of the atmosphere by initiating hydrogen fusion in the sky — that the only reason the entire atmosphere didn’t go up in lights was cuz air is too heavy (moves too slowly) and so it couldn’t feed the conflagration quickly enough to sustain the reaction. In effect, it was self-snuffing. Damn scary though, if this is true. Haven’t found reliable sources to confirm, but then that kind of intel would probably still be classified.
Cheers,
Greg
Kip Thorne discusses the dynamics of hydrogen fusion in one of his books. He is a first class scientist, so you can trust what he writes.
Essentially, hydrogen must be contained to fuse, so there never was any chance of lighting the atmosphere. Fermi did a similar calculation in 1945 for the Trinity Test, using what was known at the time, and concluded that anything like that was highly unlikely. Now we know it to be impossible.
The fact that the military decided to go ahead with Trinity is another matter. I have read that they reasoned, “Our enemies are so irresponsible that they will do it. So we must do it first.”
BTW, Copernicus, you used the year 1900 in all of your examples. — Hineshammer
I realized that but didn’t want to waste bandwidth to correct it because I know that, like you, Einstein, the CFN readers are very intelligent.
Nonetheless, eggs did go from 23 to 39 cents a dozen, a 70% inflation rate increase from 1900 to 1910 … without the Fed or “fiat money”. We were still on the “gold standard”
“… giant polished stones…. producing a trance of contentment”
My wife gave me an antique curling stone for my 50th birthday. I keep it by the wood stove and use it to warm my feet and hands after a busy day. Trance of contentment, indeed; one of my favorite re-purposed objects. As an antique curling stone, turns out its worth a bit of money. Funny, that.
Rube-i-con, don’t pay attention to the nattering nabobs of negativism.
Fusion energy represents a future alternative to fossil fuels, meaning an alternative energy will completely replace fossil fuels. Scaleable for nine billion, more economical than any other known energy source. It only needs deuterium and tritium — from two abundant resources: seawater and relatively small amounts of lithium.
In other words, fusion energy will give us way more power, without dangerous radiation or the burning of fossil fuels. Fusion will provide us with limitless clean energy. There’s no pollution coming out of it. There’s no weapons applications. The fuel is available to all nations.
The reason you are running into the CFN buzz saw is because you are going against the CFN dogma which states magical thinking will not save us. Those working on fusion energy will prove the doomsters are wrong.
I, too, salute them, cowering in their underground shelters, as we soar over them into a bright future.
…and pigs will fly!
On second thought, that should’ve been “…and pigs will soar!“
Fusion power would resolve all the world’s energy problems, I agree. I can’t comment on what happened with this experiment because I wasn’t aware of it, but it appears to be some progress in the right direction. It is only one more step, though, so I think it will still take years to get a working fusion reactor on-line. Even so, let’s continue and expand research in this field.
Interesting isn’t it that we’ve recently been discussing solar power, which originates in the sun, and fusion is what powers the sun and allows solar energy to reach us.
“the nattering nabobs of negativism” : Spiro Agnew
Consider the source. Need I say more?
Flying pigs!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_WWbWBRV-c
Funny. Pork Slops.
Farmer, throughout history there has always been your kind of ridicule directed at scientific advancement. Once people were saying humans could never fly in flying machines. If we were meant to fly, we would have been born with wings, they said of the Wright Brothers’ experiments with flight. Time and again science has won out over ignorance, superstition, fear, and outright denial that something was even possible… until science won and the impossible was proven possible. Nuclear fusion will replace fossil fuels and it will be universal and provide unlimited energy. I’m not saying if fusion is good or bad. I’m just saying it will happen in the near future. A kind a “white swan” that Taleb talks about in his book.
The latest fusion reaction took 192 lasers and a building the size of three football fields to coax enough juice to light a bulb for a minute. No one is going to drive the camper to Disney on this.
The fuel delivery guy and I stood next to his truck this week and sighed. “I’m really going to miss this stuff,” I said.
“There’s nothing else like it,” he said. “A drunk plows into my truck and I’ll walk away. If this is propane, we’re ashes, and I won’t drive it.”
There are times when I’m encouraged by how many people understand that we’re working within a collapsing framework. People who use tools will just keep working. People who push paper will . . . come to think of it, what will they do when the stock tickers go dark? Maybe they can be retrained to service all the cold fusion reactors we’ll be plugged into.
Cold fusion seems like a fantasy, workable as a very expensive science project and that’s it.
JK, you sum it up nicely. Matter of fact, you don’t post often, but your posts are always right on the mark.
–BRH
As an enthusiastic reader of this blog for many years, I just wanted to pass along that if this blog continues to just harp and whine about this silliness, I’m gonna stop reading it.
Why? Because it’s pointless. It’s a waste of time.
If you want to complain about this stuff once a month, okay, great. but week after week after week, it’s take it’s toll on this reader.
Just say’n.
I thought that Putin had gotten the P…ssy Riot under control?
“SOCHI, Russia – Two members of the Russian female protest group Pussy Riot were questioned at a local police station after there was an alleged theft in the hotel they are staying in here near the Winter Olympics, according to Russian news service Interfax.”
The latest fusion reaction took 192 lasers and a building the size of three football fields to coax enough juice to light a bulb for a minute. No one is going to drive the camper to Disney on this.
yep, nuclear fission won`t ever work either. and the first car engines, well they couldn`t push the buggies up lots of hills, even. so lets scrap combustion engines.
and those clunky computers with green screens.
the point is that some hydrogen bombarded with lasers absorbed 1.0 worth of energy and emitted 2.0 worth of energy, so to speak.
now, work begins on getting more and more energy out compared to energy absorbed. until energy out exceeds [energy absorbed + laser energy expended].
it has now been proven that you can get more energy out of something than is absorbed by it.
this is revolutionary. when in the history of mankind do you get more energy from less energy? this is a first, and destined to be refined and improved, as is the natural course of scientific advancement.
rather then energy descent, we are getting tantalizingly close to energy ascent.
laff`s on you guys, as usual. get used to progress, it`s all around you.
peace peaceniks
“rather then energy descent, we are getting tantalizingly close to energy ascent. laff`s on you guys, as usual. get used to progress, it`s all around you.” — Rube-i-con
LOL!
The “law” of entropy, the second “law” of thermodynamics, turns out to be not that much of a law at all as classical Newtonian physics gets its ass kicked by quantum. Gotta feel sorry for those who cling to their certainties. Embrace uncertainty.
Fusion power plants have been 20 years away since 1960. That was then, when we had cheap fossil fuel, and therefore had a huge real capital surplus.
But now is now. We don’t have the capital to rebuild the electric grid, let alone to upgrade it for transmission of even more power. And if we don’t have the real capital for that, then we don’t have the real capital for hundreds of giga-buck (?? tera-buck ??) plants to overload an obsolete grid. IF they ever materialize.
Think about how old the transformers on the grid are. Then think about their lifespan. For starters.
Energy depletion, false promises of technology, inability to raise sufficient capital to finance growth in advanced industrial civilizations … Rubicon and Ajmuste aren’t buying any of it.
Maybe they’re right, who knows.
I hope so.
–BRH
You got that right, BRH.
I wish I had a nickel for each time JHK had predicted collapse.
Remember when he said it would all collapse before Columbus Day 2013?
Like JHK, many have been led by their ideology to make false statements, and some in CFN believe in the alarmist rhetoric:
PAUL RYAN
Back in 2010, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan explained that the Federal Reserves plan to purchase $600 billion worth of securities — known as QE2 — was little more than “sugar-high economics” that risked rising inflation and weakening the dollar. But instead the opposite took place. Since 2010 the dollar has risen against major currencies and inflation has stayed below the Fed’s goal of 2 percent.
Paul Ryan is an idiot.
JIM KRAMER
On March 18, 2010, Jim Kramer stated on Larry Kudlow’s program that Obamacare would tank the stock market. The reform package was, in his words, “the single greatest impediment to the stock market going higher.” On August 17, over two years later, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was pegged at 13,264. Granted, the market could still take a nose dive. But odds are it won’t be because of health care reform.
Jim Kramer is an idiot.
MICHELLE BACHMAN
In 2009 Michelle Bachman said Obama’s policies were representing the “final leap into socialism.” But General Motors bought back all preferred shares held by the U.S. Treasury as of December 2010 reports. Oh, and Wall Street banks (Citi, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan) are all still privately run, not taken over by “socialist Obama.”
Michelle Bachman is an idiot.
GLENN BECK
In early 2010, then-Fox News commentator Glenn Beck said that the U.S. was likely in for a “Great Depression Times 100,” and the country would experience a period of hyperinflation. Unemployment during the Great Depression peaked at around 25 percent, but in the Great Recession unemployment only reached slightly above 10 percent and is now below that. Inflation has remained stagnant at 1.5 percent, the nightmare warnings of hyperinflation expounded by Beck as well as by renowned “economist” Peter Schiff appears to be just that: Their own private nightmares.
Glenn Beck and Peter Schiff are idiots.
RICK SANTELLI
In October of 2009, CNBC analyst and Tea Party founder Rick Santelli said on the show Fast Money that he believed “stagflation is almost a certainty.” In other words Santelli was predicting that America would go through a period of high inflation and high unemployment. The only question he had was when. Instead, inflation has risen far below the Federal Reserves 2 percent annual target.
Rick Santelli is an idiot.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
During the March 8, 2010 daily radio show The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh announced to his listeners that healthcare reform, which would be signed into law later that month, would end up leaving 250 million Americans uninsured. Another Limbaugh FAIL.
Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot.
MITT ROMNEY
In the June 13, 2011 Republican Presidential Debate, Mitt Romney, when asked about the consequences of not raising the debt limit answered the moderator’s question with a question. “Well, what happens if we continue to spend time and time again, year and year again more money than we take in?” implying that this can only mean that the U.S. will eventually be unable to pay off its obligations and, as a result, default. Well, it’s now 2014 and the USA has not defaulted in spite of raising the debt limit over and again.
Mitt Romney is an idiot.
PETER SCHIFF
Economist Peter Schiff stated that the Federal Reserves monetary policies would lead to 20 percent inflation within one year. The statement, made in October 2008 on Glenn Beck’s former CNN program, was proven wrong. During 2009, the U.S. actually experience deflation. Six years later we still have not seen the inflation Schiff predicted would happen within the year.
Peter Schiff is an idiot.
RON PAUL
Congressman Ron Paul believed that runaway inflation was “just horrendous” in May 2011, he said during an appearance on Fox Business News. When Congressman Paul made that statement, inflation was pegged at 3.2 percent and, after peaking at 3.9 percent that October, inflation steadily fELL to 1.4 percent in July 2012 and has stayed under 2%.
Ron Paul is an idiot.
We don’t have the capital to rebuild the electric grid, let alone to upgrade it for transmission of even more power.
we have all the capital we need, at the press of a button. any amount of funds can be sent flowing in any direction necessary.
do you REALLY think the guys in power will let the electrical grid just fail? come on, just look at all the colossal govt projects over the decades.
its nothing for them to spend a trillion on upgrading the grid.
the country is in so much better state than you think it is. yep, there are instances of awfulness, like bridges collapsing.
when was it ever different?
do we need to upgrade the telephone lines? the advent of the wireless cellphone made that a fairly moot point.
thats what technology does. in countries with no telephone wires, they dont even need to be installed, ergo no need for upgrading.
technology has leapfrogged that problem.
it really is amusing to hear the dead wrong soothsayers out here, soon they`ll be posting from their self-driving cars that rarely, if ever, have an accident, and take you where you tell them to at a voice command.
now tell me i`m dreaming about that one too, or look it up on the internet, that global technological wonder thatll never work, and that is partially powered by solar, wind and who knows what else alt energy – and eventually by fusion – unless the net is made obsolete by thought communication (yes, that too is making marvellous advances).
peace peaceniks
“we don’t have the capital…”
Yes we do. We could build small, safe, nuclear reactors to power towns and cities with electricity for years without refueling. Oh, but the technical challenges, you say? Well, let’s say that instead of providing electricity for private homes, we needed a fuel source that is small, quiet, lasts for years without refueling, and powers a submarine. Oh, that we can do! For that suddenly we have the capital, proving it is not a question of resources. It is a question of political will. One word: thorium.
Oh boy, here comes a power source that is already known to work, something what is being developed, and likely WILL be utilized whether anyone thinks it’s a good idea or not.
“According to the International Energy Agency’s latest estimates, some 400 trillion cubic metres of economically recoverable methane lies trapped in coal and shale beds around the world. It roughly doubles estimates of how much gas miners may be able to get their hands on. But that is just the start. There might be even more gas down there in different rock strata, much of which has migrated from coal seams over millions of years. And why limit the plan to existing gas? The real prize, the miners say, is to create yet more methane by setting fire to the huge amount of unmineable coal lurking underground.”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129560.400-fire-in-the-hole-after-fracking-comes-coal.html
======================
And, AJ Muste-rarely-site-a-source, how is anyone supposed to agree with you and heap praise upon you for your wonderful uniqueness – when you don’t give citations for your most excellent copyings and pastings?
http://twittweb.com/obama+s+personal+micro+-26165196
Your uniquely crafted plagiarism concerning Ron Paul, et al, is to be found immediately underneath the info. on the handwritten Obama letter – which is, itself, a sad sort of story of economic decline.
“how is anyone supposed to agree with you and heap praise upon you for your wonderful uniqueness” — Prog
Friend Prog, my uniqueness does not concern me, but thank you. Agreement and praise are not sought. But thank you. Hence, I feel no need to cite stuff. If this were an academic blog I would be providing footnotes and bibliographies. But seeing as how we are just entertaining each other here, I don’t feel the need to cite. But just for you, here is an interesting link:
WILL THORIUM SAVE US FROM CLIMATE CHANGE?
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/512545-will-thorium-save-us-from-climate-change/
BTW, thorium is readily available, does not contribute to weapons, and does not have the waste problem uranium has. People are catching on to the idea. Ohio State House Reps Terry Boose and Andy Thompson have introduced a house resolution supporting the development of Thorium based MSRs (Molten Salt Reactors) in Ohio. Thorium the size of a bowling ball contains the same amount of energy contained in an oil supertanker.
Thorium has 1,000,000 times the energy density of carbon-based fuels.
We will never run out of thorium because it is simply too common.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY
All these wonderful sources of energy cited here today … now is a good time to start bringing them on-line … since WTI topped $103 per barrel about noon today. Yes, there’s no time like the present. Time’s a Waistin’!
–BRH
“WTI topped $103 per barrel about noon today.”
According to Reuters, it stayed there, too. Brent crude also shot up to $110. This shouldn’t be a complete surprise, as last week Hale Stewart at the Bonddad Blog noted that WTI was at an upper resistance level of just under $101 and if it broke through, there was nothing stopping it from reaching the next technical price level of $110. Looks like he will be right.
http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2014/02/oil-at-important-resistance-levels.html
As for what that means here in Metro Detroit, I made a prediction last week that the low prices I saw over the weekend might just be over by tonight, as national gas prices have been steadily increasing the past week. I expected that would drag Detroit’s prices up. I’ll check on the way home if that’s indeed happened.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2014/02/good-news-for-now-as-corner-station.html
Good points, I had not heard those downsides in the storm of enthusiasm for Thorium. Global warming is a fact, and CO2 is going to kill the planet, so we need help, but wherever we turn we run into our old nemesis, human nature. Lets assume Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s latest experiment in nuclear fusion isn’t a fluke, and our $5 billion investment pays off.
They have a nugget of hydrogen encapsulated in a gold sphere, and under the pressure of 192 high power lasers, the hydrogen was briefly made to fuse, releasing more energy than what was used to produce it.
There doesn’t seem to be any pollution related to fusion of hydrogen nuclei. However, the problem of human nature is the same whether you have oil, natural gas, thorium, or uranium power.
Lets imagine “limitless” cheap energy. No restraints on the primary energy required to create stuff, mine giant holes in the ground, or create useless consumer crap. No limit to the size of an SUV and no limit to the amount of time you could spend driving it all over our state wildlands. Everyone will simply forget turning anything off, and all efficiency incentives will be ditched.
Lets think about what the effects might be.
From the article cited by aj @ 6:35, we find the following paragraph:
“Thorium can be employed in a variety of reactor types, some of which currently use uranium—including heavy water reactors like Canada’s CANDU. But some experts say new technologies, such as molten salt reactors, including liquid fluoride thorium reactors, are much safer and more efficient than today’s conventional reactors.
So Why Aren’t We Using Them?
Although they may be better than today’s reactors, LFTRs still produce radioactive and corrosive materials, they can be used to produce weapons and we don’t know enough about the impacts of using fluoride salts. Fluoride will contain a nuclear reaction, but it can be highly toxic, and deadly as fluorine gas. And though the technology’s been around since the 1950s, it hasn’t been proven on a commercial scale. Countries including the U.S., China, France, and Russia are pursuing it, but in 2010 the U.K.’s National Nuclear Laboratory reported that thorium claims are “overstated.””
– aj muste not have read this part –
It is so kind of you to cite sources. It is especially helpful when these sources contradict your own premise, as this avoids needless quarreling.
Thank you, and good evening.
Good points, I had not heard those downsides in the storm of enthusiasm for Thorium. Global warming is a fact, and CO2 is going to kill the planet, so we need help, but wherever we turn we run into our old nemesis, human nature. Lets assume Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s latest experiment in nuclear fusion isn’t a fluke, and our $5 billion investment pays off.
They have a nugget of hydrogen encapsulated in a gold sphere, and under the pressure of 192 high power lasers, the hydrogen was briefly made to fuse, releasing more energy than what was used to produce it.
There doesn’t seem to be any pollution related to fusion of hydrogen nuclei. However, the problem of human nature is the same whether you have oil, naturalg gas, thorium, or uramnium power.
Lets imagine “limitless” cheap energy. No restraints on the primary energy required to create stuff, mine giant holes in the ground, or create useless consumer crap. No limit to the size of an SUV and no limit to the amount of time you could spend driving it all over our state wildlands. Everyone will simply forget turning anything off, and all efficiency incentives will be ditched.
Lets think about what the effects might be.
Mornin’ Prog, I believe a coupla weeks ago the blog was about Walter White and “Breaking Bad” . I followed that show and they used Hydrofluoric acid to dissolve bodies and motorcycles. Jesse put it in a tub and the stuff ate through the porcelain and cast iron. Fluorine is the worst halogen out there. It makes Chlorine and Bromine look like Play-Doe. The s@@t will dissolve glass and most anything it touches. Good luck with that reactor!!!.
It’s not “GLOBAL WARMING” it’s “CLIMATE CHANGE”. Get it straight folks. I have been in this house for thirty years and have never had an ice dam. There is ice flowing down the front of the house. There is more snow and rain on the way. My attic is insulated up the yazoo and my heat goes down to 58 degrees at night. Climate change is real.Whether man-made or sunspots it really does not matter.
“they can be used to produce weapons”
In an LTFR, Thorium absorbs a neutron and transforms into either U233 (mostly) or U232 (sometimes). Both can be used for fission bombs, but U232 is a strong gamma emitter. Gama rays are extremely deadly and require many inches of lead or feet of concrete for shielding. U232 is for all practical purposes inseparable from U233, therefore if someone drained off the fluoride salts laced with the U233/232 mixture, they would be dead from gamma poisoning long before they could make a dirty bomb, let alone make the metallic uranium required for a fission bomb.
Additionally, unlike the current solid fuel reactor, the fuel could cycle through the LTFR until the daughter products have all been “burned up” massively reducing the waste output and the fuel requirements.
The existing technology was chosen for political reasons. The existing plants are really plutonium factories with a power plant on the side.
“It is so kind of you to cite sources. It is especially helpful when these sources contradict your own premise, as this avoids needless quarreling.” — Prog, avoiding quarreling
Yes, I do so much agree with you. I link to objective sources which provide both the pro and the con, so you can make up your own mind.
Just as you post arguments against immigration and arguments for … no, wait …
I don’t recall you ever posting arguments for immigration, just one-sided posts.
Be sure to view the video at the top of this page. It presents a comparative argument vis a vis thorium and uranium and thorium and fossil fuels.
I do appreciate how polite you are being. It is so pleasant to have a civil exchange with you and not be called names. Thanks, JHK.
All these wonderful energy sources cited here today … right now would be a good time to start putting some of them to work since WTI crude topped $103 per barrel a few hours ago.
There’s no time like the present.
Time’s a Waistin’!
–BRH
So we can have all the capital we need by pressing a button, eh? I suppose that you write your wife a check for $1,000,000 for cooking lunch, and she writes you a check for $1,000,000 for taking out the garbage? And then you buy a Mercedes to celebrate your newfound wealth?
No, that’s not how things work for families, nor for countries in an era of declining resources. What I’m talking about is REAL capital; you know, things like copper and silicon steel. Today we must make choices. If you only have so much diesel, you can either pay Horace to deliver the steel or deliver the cabbages.
We have chosen to pay Horace to deliver the cheese cretins and soda pop. That will be our epitaph.
You must teach her how to serve Man…
http://www.amren.com/news/2014/02/11-arrested-for-serving-human-meat-at-nigerian-hotel-restaurant-report/
What say you we just break some windows? and pay each other to fix them. We will all be rich!! Yipee!! Happy days are here again. Maybe we can do each others laundry!
Thorium, Methane, Windmills, Solar Panels, giant mirrors, and last nite on C2C a guy was talking about running a cable from earth’s surface all the way into outer space, give us all the energy we need, unlimited energy, energy there for the taking. It was late, the presses are loud, I didn’t hear everything. But it sounded promising.
–BRH
Yes why not plug in submarines? If we can go to the moon, we can build an extension cord long enough, DON’T YOU THINK?
Yes, when we have cold weather oil prices go up. Then summer comes and oil prices go down. This is just what happens. It is exciting. Maybe the DOW will drop to 4,000 as JHK has predicted with the combination of news from Venezuela, Kiev, and oil prices. The beginning of the end. The collapse we have all been waiting for … waiting for years, for decades, some of us. No more TV. No more internet. No more electricity from an ailing grid. Peac and quiet. What a great time to be alive!
By AP
“The price of oil extended gains above $100 a barrel Monday as the cold weather in the United States increased demand for heating fuels and solid Chinese credit numbers eased concerns over the world’s number 2 economy.
“The ongoing cold weather in the U.S. is continuing to lend support to energy prices,” analysts at Commerzbank in Frankfurt said in a note to clients.
They added that prices are likely to correct, possibly as much as several dollars, once the cold weather abates, as happened at the start of last year.
For now, though, oil prices have been supported by favorable credit growth numbers from China, which suggested the Chinese economy is not suffering a dramatic slowdown.”
Last night a young white girl was arrested for stabbing to death her Puerto Rican boyfriend in Torrington (pop. 40,000), Connecticut, once a prosperous and well kept city, now stricken and crumbling. Nobody doubts narcotics were involved. For about the past 2 decades the state, using sect. 8 vouchers, has been moving black and hispanic families out of Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury and New Haven into the smaller industrial towns and cities in Litchfield County. Its just added to the problems in these places, making them more abject than they already were. All the sudden there are gangs and numerous OD deaths, stabbings and shootings, rapes in the schools, burglaries and street muggings.
The people in these places are trapped and abandoned. Sad thing is, many do not even know it. This is where they grew up, they’ve never been anywhere else, they hear stories from parents about halcyon days when Main Street was full of shoppers on Thursday nites, when factories (now empty shells) were humming, about the uncle who won a silver star in Korea, they see the war monuments in the park … signs of past glory and prosperity surround them. They don’t realize its not coming back. They think something is wrong with themselves.
–BRH
I’m curious: What did the “P…ssy Riot” steal from the hotel? Bath towels?
“SOCHI,
Russia – Two members of the Russian female protest group
Pussy Riot were questioned at a local police station after
there was an alleged theft in the hotel they are staying in
here near the Winter Olympics, according to Russian news
service Interfax.”
Big winter sports fans no doubt. Either that or they just happened to be in Sochi.
These gals are no good Puck. Baaaad to the Bone. Yes one of them is very beautiful. But that just makes her a more powerful witch. Can you say Baba Yaga?
After JHK’s initial posting of a Monday morning and the approx. 6 hours following, I realize it’s far too late in the comments section for this to have much chance of being seen, but I believe it to be a trenchant warning for MOST of Kunstler’s audience to internalize. (Though certain posters would make it seem otherwise by the sheer volume of their postings, their views veer far from the thrust of this blog and cleave tightly to mainstream status quo.)
Further and deeper to the roots of Magic Monopoly[r] Money creation, un-backed by any assets other than wishing and the strategic manipulation [by threat of violence or subterfuge] of other peoples’ resources, and also the Wondrous Jetsonian Future.
Be very careful what you’d wish for (or be duped into), you may just support it into existence. Unhinged paranoiac raving, you think? Think harder…
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/02/18/global-capitalism-written-human-race-paul-craig-roberts/
*Note the use of quotation marks around a few cherished and psychologically entrenched phrases.
So I read above article by Paul Craig Roberts, Oz, some pretty depressing reading to say the least.
Vlad, too, has been mentioning Robot labor on this site of late. Maybe there’s something to it. The term ‘Robot’ itself goes back to only 1922, used in a short story by some Czech writer whose name I forget. Then of course there was the Vonnegut novel, about 1950, where he has robots fighting the wars. I was a big fan of the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ scifi series a few years back.
Something else to worry about in the future for our kids and grandkids. As far as there being too many people and the super rich hunting us down for sport, that’s the theme of another Vonnegut novel (that guy was prescient) Its an unspoken meme of the environmentalists as well; too many humans, some need to be eliminated. But which ones?
–BRH
When I bought ‘The End of Work’ I expected it to describe a wonderful world where abundance and leisure would triumph.
Uh NO! Robotics, Unemployment, Globaloney.
Think Section 8 gone wild!
Also keep up the all too accurate reports on life as you see it.
To think the same state that Marlo and Phil spent 10? million to buy a tear down [house blocked their view of the ocean]
has what you describe.
As one from yr state said ‘highest % of millionaires of any state’.
And if ya didnt notice, in the last 2 years USA has added 9,000,000 people to its footprint.
He’s right. The philosophy is called Transhumanism and they really believe that their consciousness will be downloaded into machines to live forever. Of course some just want to live a long life as gods of a depopulated world and be served by machines and human slaves. Pretty moderate. Anyway, one of their chief theorists is Ray Kurzweil.
http://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Biology/dp/0143037889/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392854119&sr=1-3&keywords=ray+kurzweil
Prescient? Remember the short story The Most Dangerous Game? That was long before Vonnegut. And the Abos hunting each other for meat was long before any such story, short or long.
Oz, do you agree with my sentiments of torrington, winsted etc? Or am I off the mark?
You are spot on. The future of these moribund communities will be very much different from what they are now (and it certainly won’t be a sparkly one).
Yea we-re getting another dusting!! My dogs were out for a half hour and came in like Snow-balls. Winsted was a beautiful town 20 years ago. I have not been there in a while. That whole Rt. 8 corridor was nice..
Can’t resist this one, Oz. A few thoughts:
1. This guy presents a fascinating meld of both of the extremes of what the Archdruid calls the myth of progress — he is espousing a techno-utopian apocalypse built on the most extreme conspiracy theory! “…the rich intend to annihilate the human race and live in an uncrowded environment served by their robots…” Wow! Got to pass this one on to Greer.
2. Have you watched the later seasons of the Sci-Fi channel’s series “Stargate SG-1”? SG-1 finds themselves fighting these nasty little beasties called “replicators”, which are “machines [that] can be made to build any three-dimensional structure on their own and with minimal instruction. But what is truly staggering is their ability to adapt to their work environment and to each other; to calculate losses, reorganize efforts and make adjustments…” Which came first, the chicken or the Stargate?
3. I cannot argue that “Unregulated greed-driven capitalism is destroying…” just about everything of true and lasting value, including the opportunity for citizens to exercise the rights to life, liberty, etc., but I just can’t go along with the extent of his conspiratorial doomerism.
4. Not being a degreed scientist, engineer or programmer, I’m nonetheless far from ignorant of many technological disciplines. Such hyper-complex systems as this author discusses are anything but safe bets for actually coming into practice on any serious scale; resource, energy, and capital constraints pose significant barriers. Furthermore, look at ANY high-level computer programming and you’ll see all sorts of bugs and unintended consequences. Hell’s bells, mega-rich MicroSoft can’t write a stable reliable OS for home computers; can these boys write the code to reliably run these ‘replicators’? I’m sure as hell not gonna hold my breath waiting for them to perfect this technology to the dangerous extent this article suggests. Good luck with that.
This relates, as well, to the previous comments and discussion around the recent nuclear fusion “breakthrough”. I’m sure as hell not gonna get all excited about the idea of someone building colossal laser-containment fusion reactor systems gigantic enough to power a city. I’d rather go without electricity.
Thanks, Oz, for the link to another example of uber-ridiculous grandiose techno-fantasist idiocy.
Cheers –Greg
Hey K-Dog, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.
Here boy, come boy, good doggie! (Seriously, weigh in on this)
Cheers –Greg
Greg,
I’d agree that all your points have concrete validity. As we’ve seen time and again, the more complex a system, the more “brittle” it is.
My neighbor is a top-flight engineer and owns a stripped-down pickup truck (crank-down windows, keyed, manual doorlocks, etc.). He was talking about a small SUV that many of his co-workers have invested in with push button, electric relay dependent “everything”. His short comment (from a background in the high-end aerospace field): “More things to break”.
Be this as it may, it won’t stop the wealthy and powerful (in their stupefying hubris) from mis-allocating valuable resources in a misguided attempt to make their techno-narcissistic fantasies a reality. (…To sloppily paraphrase our host.) They’re busily at it as we speak. The suicidal practice of outsourcing manufacturing should provide a clue to this mindset.
As to PCR’s perspective: consider his background/era. He’s not invested in the idea of ‘contraction’ either; so that should tell us something as well. (He’s pretty sharp for being a member of the Reagan regime though! ;o)
Okay, more than enough outta me! Thanks for your realistic input. Shutting up now…
No need to shut up, Ozone.
I take the exact same approach (less things to break) as your neighbor: my vehicle is a stripped-down bare-bones no-frills 4-cyl Nissan Frontier w/5-spd standard transmission. I like the reliable starts and efficiency of fuel injection, but I hate that there’s a COMPUTER behind it, along with a host of high-tech gadgetry that requires another computer to diagnose (oxy & mass air flow sensors, etc.) — I’d rather deal with points, rotors & carburators from a maintain/repair-It-myself standpoint.
As I work to build up my self-sufficiency farm, I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) to avoid the chic “green” technologies that promise magical results. Example: Aquaponics — rearing confined fish whose wastes fertilize hydroponic or potted plants. Valve or pump failure = under-filled or over-flowed tanks (flooding) = dead fish. A power outage is devastating without backup. And I don’t even want to talk about the constant Ph/nitrobactor monitoring/adjusting issues. If I can maintain and stock a pond (a big hole in the ground with water in it), then fine. Artificial, non-natural systems lack resilience, and more so as complexity grows.
Speaking of failures of complex systems, a number of farmers here in Colorado may be without irrigation water this season after the diversion structures, metering gates and supply ditch networks were destroyed by the floods last fall; they’re not sure they can get it all rebuilt in time, and they’re quibbling about who should pay for it. My own irrigation supply is a precarious series of hundred-plus year old ditches and underground pipes stretching a couple miles from the source river that could easily suffer very costly damage which I may not be able to afford to repair.
I certainly agree that the power elites will attempt (Ha! are carrying on) all sorts of mischief to secure their positions. And that there seems to be a pervasive sociopathy/psychopathy where it concerns their effects on fellow humanity. Even most of us common Muricans have no idea how our participation in the system contributes to the abuse and exploitation of other humans. Think cheap grocery store produce because of migrant laborers (more or less slaves) who have to live in squalor. Other examples: Foxconn, Nike shoes and nearly all of our clothing.
Cheers –Greg
Sorry, one more comment…
These notions (like the termite replicator robots, fusion power, algae fuels, etc.) bring to mind the picture at the start of chapter 3 of JHK’s Too Much Magic: a 1925 depiction of what New York City would look like in the future world of the 1950’s. A fantasy not at all unlike the fantastic (literal use of the word) notion of robots eliminating the need for the excess of humanity. Dream on.
Yo Farmer, I hate complex electronics as much as the next guy. You gotta admit the stuff works better than a carburetor. You just can’t work on the sh@t. My 2002 Toyota Tacoma fires up like a Swiss watch at 15 below. When I was in the oil patch in ’78 I had to put a can filled with sand and diesel fuel burning’ under my ’70 ford straight 6 to get the got darn thing running!!! “Course that was about 30 below outside of Yellowstone..
What about the Roomba? Have you heard of 3d printers? Think “terminators” are just in the movies? The Army thinks otherwise. Or how bout insect sized drones? Being worked on even as we speak.
It’s not what these devils have done so far, it’s what they’re a gonna do that’s truly frightening. But two can play this game: 3d printers can be used by the people to make plastic projectile ejectors. Imagine plastic as a force for good! Magneto was put in a plastic prison.
Welcome to Viridian. You are late to the Global Conspiracy Party. Weren’t you one of many who mocked Alex Jones in oh such a supercilious pseudo learned way – even though he is respected and has hosted many of our heroes: Celente, Roberts, Orlov, etc? No matter. Come, come whoever you are. Ours is not a Caravan of Despair.
“…some sense of belonging to a country or to a community. Globalism destroys this sense.” — PCR
some sense of being alone. Family destroys this sense.
some sense of belonging to a family. Tribe destroys this sense.
some sense of belonging to a tribe. Community destroys this sense.
some sense of belonging to a community. Town destroys this sense.
some sense of belonging to a town. The city destroys this sense.
some sense of belonging to a city. The county destroys this sense.
some sense of belonging to a county. The state destroys this sense.
some sense of belonging to a state. The nation destroys this sense.
some sense of belonging to a nation. Continent destroys this sense.
some sense of belonging to a continent. The hemisphere destroys this sense.
some sense of belonging to a hemisphere. Globalism destroys this sense.
What PCR is saying about globalism is NONSENSE.
I am a proud citizen of planet earth… and to all the subdivisions thereof.
Just the opposite of what you said – as usual. Family is the basic building block of society. From them come healthy clans. From healthy clans, healthy tribes. From healthy tribes, healthy nations. And from healthy nations, perhaps someday a healthy world can come. The Elite have tried to short circuit this process out of their unspeakable greed and lust for power.
Perhaps some of the intermediary terms can become redundant, their function taken up by the higher order. But we must proceed cautiously. The Muslims and Hindus maintain their clan or extended family structure – to the greater strength of their societies. But nothing can take the place of the family – or the nation.
“Family is the basic building block of society.” –J.S.
Dmitry Orlov discusses this in his book The Five Stages Of Collapse. He points out that localized, clan-based economies tend to be more stable and reliable since people are transacting with fellow clan or tribe member: family that you both trust, and with whom you interact in more of a reciprocal “gift” economy rather than a tit-for-tat “commercial” sense. We should be always looking out for the welfare of our own; not so with strangers.
Problems come in when you start dealing with outsiders that you neither trust, nor have regular opportunity for reciprocal “gifting”. It’s beyond the family/clan/tribe/village environment that mediums of exchange (money) and rules/laws concerning such transactions become necessary.
Sadly, most Americans have no sense of this because its been stripped from our modern corporate-plutocracy culture. Witness how many families have been permanently fractured by squabbles (hell, major fights and court battles) over who gets to inherit Grandma’s antique furniture — let alone Dad’s bank accounts. Our relationships have been reduced to commercial transactions.
Interesting stuff.
Cheers –Greg
The whole concept of the ‘healthy nation’ – at least as an ongoing entity – seems dubious at best. Humans are simply not instinctually predisposed to function properly in groupings larger than the tribal scale. Elite classes are inherently parasitic (at least as far as the long-term good of their host societies are concerned) but without elite classes, the immediate and often complex needs of the nation-state can not be adequately addressed… Therefore: no elite = no nation.
It is true that clan and tribe-based societies have leaders – often strong ones. But, because of the more intimate scale of the tribe, the likelihood of an insular elite developing within would seem remote. [A spear in the back of an abusive chief, hurled by a resentful sub-alpha male would cure all…and the chief knows it too!]
Furthermore, the idea of the ‘healthy family’ is equally questionable.
The family, as we know it (Mom, Dad, Junior, Sis and Fido) that hangs together for decades on end, is largely a construct of civilization, and has little to do with the way human societies evolved. The benefit to the nation-state is that the nuclear family unit is small and powerless. Its emotional bonds are often tenuous, and it can thus easily be manipulated through guilt and sentiment (religion and patriotism) as well as through various programs and policies.
Not so with the clan or tribe. These groups can be poison the the nationalist cause and must be suppressed. Constructing a myth based on the sacrosanct nature of the ‘Family Unit’ has proven easier than the outright suppression of more functional – and therefore more threatening – sub-national groupings.
The widespread acceptance of the ‘healthy family’ myth, even among the intelligentsia, has been a constant source of amazement to me.
Good points I must admit. The Nuclear is a product of industrialism for sure. And it’s been getting smaller and smaller with the Grandparents out and then the Husband. Now it’s just a welfare mom with her brat bastards.
You are in line with Islamic thought which rejects the Nation in favor of the Ummah, the People, the Super Tribe. On a more reasonable and Western scale, see the work of Jack Donovan who is trying to get us to tribe up again. Nothing else will save our Race at this point.
Tribe is minimum 75 people consisting of 8 families with elders, adults, and cgildren in various stages of development. The elders are the elite because they carry more wealth and knowledge. They have applied the knowledge more effectively.
The “elder statesman” as portrayed my our bankers at the fed levels, have openly admitted in transcripts that their day to day managment of the worlds source of wealth is “befuddled” by the mismanagement of funding held by national banks and investment firm
What happens when elders have a loss of confidence? They do not help the failures by allowing them to continue with tribe. They use failures as object lessons. The elders being removed from the rest of the tribe, having proven themselves, delegating authority can never be held to account for what others do. They simply get frustrated.
True, tribal elders are not insulated by layers of underlings, and are therefore answerable to the tribe as a whole. But any grouping of over 150 or so needs middle managers. Middle management is where the trouble begins. There’s usually more ‘management’ than ‘middle’ to the mix.
Greetings fellow citizen of Planet Earth, Comrade Ajmuste
Hail and hello
Let us venture forth together, tip toe thru the tulips, and sing Kun-ba-ya with our third world brethren
–BRH
Did any of you follow the Amanda Knox trial?
Rudy [who raped Meredith as she bled to death] is now allowed to leave jail for school!
The Italians are as crazy as we are. They couldn’t accept that a Black did it – even though his DNA was everywhere and hers wasn’t. As if Blacks don’t do such things all the time. No. It had to be the AMERICAN BLONDE (fake), Foxy Knoxy. Sick people, hateful of America, envious of Nordic beauty. That she is quirky and not the typical girl next door didn’t help her either. It just strengthened their peasant view that she was a witch.
I’m glad you’re here. Perhaps you alone can share in my triumph: Fred Reed has used dog breeds to illustrate the differences in human races. Remember how Kyoo and others used to mock me for this, rolling their cyber eyes? I laugh at you now Kyoo. Return and pay your obeisances as the Hare Krishnas say.
Behold: http://fredoneverything.net/Bowser.shtml
“Sadly, most Americans have no sense of this because its been stripped from our modern corporate-plutocracy culture. Witness how many families have been permanently fractured by squabbles (hell, major fights and court battles) over who gets to inherit Grandma’s antique furniture — let alone Dad’s bank accounts. Our relationships have been reduced to commercial transactions.”
– farmer mcgreg-
Good post. And yeah, American free-market capitalism has been doing its deliberate best to kill the extended family since about WWII.
As far as squabbles and fights – yeah. Look to the misadventures of the King family over the Nobel Prize (not the money, likely long gone) and one of MLK’s traveling Bibles. Is that getting out into the national and international media? Freakin’ Atlanta media is certainly all-atwitter with it.
Again, speaking of family squabbles – I’ve actually seen more than my share. Some were justified, some were not. Some were minor, some were major. All should have been avoided. Families take work.
And families take foresight and planning. Floating on top of the deeds, titles, certificates and other paperwork of modern living to be found in my wife’s and my safe deposit box – is a signed letter from her and me to the surviving progeny.
Maybe one of these days I’ll share some of it here.
“Maybe one of these days I’ll share some of it here.” –Prog.
I’d be interested in your thoughts.
It’s disturbing to me how many good farms have been ruined because the one offspring who had chosen to stay and work on the farm (usually for most of their adult life) lost the whole thing when mom finally died because her Will insisted that it be divided evenly between all siblings — even those that left home as teenagers. Since the farmer couldn’t afford to ‘buy out’ the others, it all got liquidated. Often sold off to “developers”.
Thanks –Greg
Yes, the Land must go to the oldest son if he is capable. Primogeniture is one of the basics on any culture. If not, the land parcels get too small to sustain a family. Of course, unless birth control is practiced, soon there are too many landless men. They must emigrate – or conquer. Or emigrate to conquer as the Mexicans are doing.
Yes, the guy who was genetivally matched to the rape, dropped oit of classes before, was kicked ogf his rich guardians proprty, is given a second chance to mingle with students. Anyone still a foreign student in italy is nuts to stay there. Money will not protect you.
Be sure to check out last week’s archdruid report.
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2014/02/fascism-and-future-part-one-up-from.html
Comments were very interesting, especially on the topic of family. I may have to comment to his newest post, on fascism II, which just posted this afternoon.
Vlad/Janos – I’d like your observations, since you are the resident CFN expert on fascism and its derivations.
Yes, families have always been the primary human grouping. Sounds like a good idea, but if the family is dysfunctional, then living in it can be hell on earth – and I ought to know. No thanks,I’ll stay away from family. Remember, you can choose your friends, but not your family.
I haven’t felt much like posting this week; guess I have a lot of other interests I’m pursuing at the moment.
BTB says “…you can choose your friends…”
Brings to mind a bit of ancient wisdom:
“You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t wipe your friends on the back of the couch.”
Har Har –Greg
Geez! what the hell is going on in Kiev? who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? It looks serious.
Meanwhile. down in sochi, pussy riot, wearing ski masks, got whipped on the street by Cossacks (Cossack Militia patrolling the Olympics, with bullwhips) GOT WHIPPED ON THE STREET BY COSSACKS!!! Think about that for a minute.
–BRH
Pussy Riot is just a distraction for those caught in kulcha wars. Go ahead and miss the big picture–keep trifling with nonsense.
From Paul Craig Roberts today:
[In an eight minute, 46 second speech at the National Press Club sponsored by the US-Ukraine Foundation, Chevron, and Ukraine-in-Washington Lobby Group, Nuland boasted that Washington has spent $5 billion to foment agitation to bring Ukraine into the EU. Once captured by the EU, Ukraine will be “helped” by the West acting through the IMF. Nuland, of course, presented the IMF as Ukraine’s rescuer, not as the iron hand of the West that will squeeze all life out of Ukraine’s struggling economy.
Nuland’s audience consisted of all the people who will be enriched by the looting and by connections to a Washington-appointed Ukrainian government. Just look at the large Chevron sign next to which Nuland speaks, and you will know what it is all about. http://www.sott.net/article/273602-US-Assistant-Secretary-of-State-Victoria-Nuland-says-Washington-has-spent-5-billion-trying-to-subvert-Ukraine%5D
Hey BT what about the iron hand of Moscow? How much has moscow spent trying to subvert Ukraine? Look at the pockmarked face of the former Ukrainian Prime Minister, poisoned with radiation by Russian Intelligence, and tell us the Russians are innocent in all this.
I know, I know, you see the big picture, I don’t. You’re not impressed by COSSACKS WITH BULLWHIPS, vigorously reacting to a little Pussy Riot street theatre at the Olympic Games..
where is ‘Rage against the Machine’? they were petty good at challenging authority when it came to President Bush. i’d like to see them challenge COSSACKS WITH BULLWHIPS!
–BRH
Hey BRH, Rage actually broke apart as a band in 2000, so as a group they didn’t really challenge Bush. They definitely disliked Clinton, though, but their disdain for American politics in general and our hegemony and imperialism in particular cast a wide net. I like their music and the lyrics behind them but it’s all wasted on us Americans.
“Bulls on Parade” would be a good song for the Cossacks with the whips.
These girls weren’t disciplined by their Fathers so now they need to get whipped by Cossacks. Makes perfect sense. People need boundaries just as Nations need borders.
One of the Pussy Riot girls masturbated with a chicken in a supermarket while being filmed. If not stopped, they and those like them will begin to burn churches. Communism always begins with Anarchist street theatre.
ok, No doubt Russians are baddies too. But, don’t know how much of this is Kabuki theater. What I see is too much emphasis on social issue fight against a backdrop of global financial takeover.
And ginning up of cold war as Russia can’t be dominated by US in the mid east and other pipelinestan areas.
Got to look at the chess game and not the checkers.
So you support what Broward tried to do?
So this Financier/Pirate goes to Russia, gets a Russian Lawyer, and starts trying to bring corrupt Russian Companies to justice. News Flash: It’s not your country Bill. Imagine if someone tried to do this in China? Or even here in America? But people imagine that Russia should stand for it. He gives new meaning to the word Chutzpah. Or was it just foolishness? Anyway they apparently killed his lawyer and threw him out. He’s now dedicating his life to bringing “the criminal Maffia” down – much like what’s his name in London who finances the Chechens. He got thrown out too.
His grandfather was Chairman of one our Communist Parties. Think that has nothing to do with it? He certainly didn’t go to Russia with no connections…
http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/bill-browder
Grandson of Earl Browder, President, CPUSA?
–BRH
Expect no guidance ??
Whoa – wait a minute – doesn’t anyone remember the masterful leadership of George W Bush?
How can anyone forget the brilliant – the decisive – and easily, the most meaningful, patriotic leadership of all time?
______________ “Go shopping.”
With these two words – and of course – the “War on Terror” – America displayed what is most right and wanton about the word.
Submitted for additional discussion – what public figure’s utterance irritates your bowels to discharge uncontrollably……..?
“Hope and Change!”
“If you like your insurance, you can keep you insurance”.
“Benghazi was caused by an offensive video”.
“What difference, at this point, does it make?” — Hillary Clinton, before Congress, answer question what caused Benghazi massacre.
Just for starters.
–BRH
On the other hand, consider…
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.
The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
Those truths are well established.” – James Madison
I look at our war culture like our tattoo fetish. I don’t like it, but it’s all we’re good at anymore and it’s here to stay. I quit a lucrative career in defense as a baby step. It didn’t affect noticeable change, but at least I quit feeding the fire. We’re in fix similar to the late Romans’. The quartermaster is stretched to the limit and there’s not much for soldiers to do if and when they make it home intact.
James, well said. I, too, suspect that war is with us to stay for a long time to come. A very long time. And when those soldiers come home, many are so addicted to the constant adrenalin rush that they find “normal” life intolerable. Not unlike extreme sports addicts.
The Finger Lakes where I live have a network of abandoned railroad beds that would make a dandy project for returning soldiers. It would be a big, manly job that we could take pride in while moving lots of stuff around more gracefully.
JK, what war culture? The US has to be the least militaristic place on earth. A nation with a population of 320 million has an army of fewer than 500,000 soldiers. For god’s sake, Grant had more soldiers than that in 1865. I really don’t see any war culture. We don’t even have a draft.
–BRH
We are very military. While on the subway in Washington D.C. my high-powered associate pointed out that if everyone who worked for the Pentagon was in uniform we’d be the only two guys in plain clothes.
There are something like 190 sovereign nations on earth and we have military bases in 150 of them. It’s why those 20 Saudis blew up the World Trade Center–we set up camp and dug latrines on their holy sites.
I fear, like most Americans, you fell for the cover story: benevolent U.S. saving the world from itself. Pure bullshit.
Even within the military itself — the Army and Navy — I didn’t see much of a ‘war culture’. It was pretty casual, really.
–BRH
There’s enough spinning out there to jolt planets.
Spinning by the mouth-pieces of the moneyed set, that is. These clowns are out there blaming technology for what afflicts middle-class incomes and employment. As if the explanation makes everything OK. But, I mean, if you have to lie, tell the BIG lie, if you have to spin, do it on a cosmic scale.
It’s something like saying to someone who’s deathly ill – wrong, wrong, wrong, it’s not malnutrition that’s killing you, it’s cancer.
Small consolation to the afflicted. Especially when the party of the “right-to-work” (that is to say “right-to-starve”) stands steadfast in denying the afflicted any remedies.
OK, let’s blame technology. Let’s play along. Let’s assume the explanation holds water.
And so I’m going to belabor the screamingly obvious which I hate doing but I’ll do it anyway. For while robotic workers and computers never sleep and don’t join unions, neither do they buy cars. Or anything else for that matter.
Anyway, that’s assuming the technology bogeyman is to blame. Which it isn’t. Like I said, that’s just so much spin. Not particularly smart or creative but in the mouth of an experienced bullshitter it sounds good.
In any case, we’re on this suicidial course, the nature of which JHK and other commenters recount week in and week out. All because the idiotic rich idiotically thought it was in their interest to wreck the middle class. Never mind that wasn’t in their interest. But did they actually do it on purpose? What difference does it make? Either way, don’t ask me to explain their logic because there isn’t any.
Or as Hedges would say, the rich bloody well know they will crash the system and they don’t give a shit. They’ll retreat into their gated compounds where they think they’ll be safe.
Isn’t it silly talking logic wrt people (the wealthy), who seemingly cannot connect two big, shiny, side-by-side dots. Because the rich won’t see the dots, let alone connect them.
What rich are you talking about, V?. i just read Sean Penn has $150 million in the bank, Michael Moore about $60 million. I saw that in an article about the troubles in Caracas, talking about Chavez’s American friends. Oilman Joe Kennedy, another amigo, has a personal income of about $! million per year, basically doing nothing. Does Sean Penn care about middle class white Americans?
–BRH
Please check out this Alternet article: long article well worth spending time on.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dc-insider-theres-shadow-govt-running-country-and-its-not-re-election
It’s about a good deal of what we talk about here and very intelligently-no hysteria, just a good look at how group think works and how the government and the private contractors, Wall st. and Silicon valley works.
Here’s a taste of what’s in it re: Wall st. and what I describe as the Untouchables.
[Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one. Invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater. Should the politicians forget their lines and threaten the status quo, Wall Street floods the town with cash and lawyers to help the hired hands remember their own best interests. The executives of the financial giants even have de facto criminal immunity. On March 6, 2013, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder stated the following: “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.”
This from the chief law enforcement officer of a justice system that has practically abolished the constitutional right to trial for poorer defendants charged with certain crimes. It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice — certainly beyond the dreams of a government salaryman. [3]
So what? You’ve believed this since you were in college. What you have to realize is that these same people fund Communism.
Your reaction is pure knee jerk.
I don’t believe you read a word of this because this goes back only the last 3 decades. If you’re too lazy to read, do listen to it on Bill Moyer. The video is down the page.
Time for a change goys and birls.
http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2014/02/jimmy-kimmel-pranks-pedestrians-fdr-just-died/
The people are a bunch of two legged sheep. Lets get them into the pen before the wolves kill them.
Pop Quiz:
Who do you think won the battle in Ukraine:
A) President Viktor Yanukovich who is supported by Putin, the Russian military, the Ukraine military, the paramilitary militias, snipers, secret service agents, and the police who used live ammunition against protestors.
B) Protestors in the street and the parliament who represents them
If you guessed B, you are correct. Yanukovich is OUT. The people won. Putin lost.
Ukraine’s parliament voted on Saturday to remove President Viktor Yanukovich, who abandoned his Kiev office to protesters and denounced what he described as a coup after a week of fighting in the streets of the capital.
Is Putin going to just stand by and let this happen?
Don’t be surprised if Russian tanks begin rolling in from the east, like in Georgia a few years back.
–BRH
“periodic cryptic utterances made by the Wizard”
I’m sorry, did someone call me, by *name*?!? Heh! Well, then – there you go – I’m BACK!!!
“constructing swindles called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)”
Don’t forget those monstrous absurdities known as Credit Default Swaps (CDSs)… “They’re” doing the same thing all over again, cinq ans en *RETARD* – waiters and waitresses are getting $750K mortgages on Hawaii mansions (2,000+ sq ft, with *full* utilities and major cities within 10 miles)…
“the TV network covering it switched the feed a few times to the exciting Olympic event of curling”
Nice! I can’t figure out why golf, bowling, billiards, or shuffleboard aren’t in the Summer Olympics?!… I like curling – it puts me right to sleep, when I’m suffering my usual insomnia attack.
“the interest rate on the lodestar ten-year treasury bill shot up 150 basis points — into a zone that would cripple the government’s ability to keep its credit revolving”
Every time the 10 year hits 3%, it *MAGIKALLY* drops almost immediately to 2.7%, then hovers there for *quite* some time, before slowly ascending (as it is now – 2.76%) back to 3% – what is *THIS* due to?!~? (I’m too bored to investigate, and quite frankly, I don’t give 2 sh!tz – but U seem to enjoy looking into these sorts of details)
What else can I say? If’n U’r curious, go back and re-read everything I’ve said over the past 3-4 years (with a grain of salt?)… Thingz ain’t lookin’ too hot (or maybe, *too* hot?) for our atmospheric depletion/boiling off event…
Putin is a paper tiger. He is all hat no cattle. Can’t even handle the gay movement in Russia, or Pussy Riot, much less Yulia Tymoshenko, who is now backed by the Ukraine military and the protestors who are as mad as hell and just threw out the President of Ukraine.
If the Russian military invaded they might find themselves defeated because Obama has warned the Russians not to cross the line. With Obama’s support of the protestors the resistance to Putin would be fierce. Russia would have multiple 9/11s and that they don’t want.
Putin is too concerned with public image to make any moves challenging the Ukraine military or the Ukraine constitution. All the forces are against Putin: the gays, Pussy Riot, and an outraged protest movement. Putin will stay put, with his tail between his legs, weakling that he is.
CORRECTION
If the Russian military invaded they might find themselves defeated AGAIN. Remember the Russian military was thrown out of Afghanistan because the Russian military could not defeat the old men in turbines wearing traditional clothing. Meet Obama. The new Charlie Nesbitt Wilson.
“Turbines”?
I meant this:
…the Russian military could not defeat the old men in turbans wearing traditional clothing.
LOL!
Another defeat of Russia’s military would be humiliating in any event.
Prog: I read the Druid’s two pieces on Fascism and they are correct and most informative. I have little to add. The most powerful arguments against Fascism come from the Traditionalists – the real Conservatives. “Conservatives” are part of the Liberal regime – the loyal or even fake opposition if you will.
In defense of Fascism against these just criticisms: One definition of Fascism is the modern Nation State organized against attack. Traditional structures and ways of life are often respected by Fascism. But they cannot meet the all out attack from within and without that has been launched by Liberalism, whether in its Capitalist or Communist mode. They are always on the defensive – which is a commitment to defeat. Fascism is willing to go on the attack.
I would remind you of Hitler’s commitment to conservation and natural foods. His love and passionate defense of workers and farmers is legendary. To some extent, his regime protected Traditional and Local hierarchies and structures. Not nearly enough for many, but again – he faced war from both sides. All nations must centralize to some degree in times of crisis. Obviously the Capitalists weren’t going to let him do away with International Banking – other countries would have followed suit once the economic miracle became known.
Needless to say, the Druid’s heart is still utterly committed to Liberalism and the dispossession of White Americans. He cannot let go of this deep commitment to globalism even if he has in the economic and technological realm. White genocide is part of his fake Druid faith. He cannot be an Elder the same way Native Americans are because he isn’t for his people the way they are. The Ancient Druids were and thus the Romans persecuted them without end.
Prog and Janos, I am with Beantown on the question of family. Family is a source of widespread social problems (rampant child abuse, stress/illness, divorce, domestic violence, teenage runaways, alcoholism and drug abuse, etc.)
The family is the unit which perpetuates divisions of nationalism, race and religions — all of the things that are most ugly. The family does the work of transmitting loyalty to all these things.
Once the family goes, the destructive “family values” it instills will be gone — patriotism, belief in a fictitious God, reliance upon instilled conscience instead of intelligent consciousness.
It is not about MY family or my psyche. The family as an institution enforces a divisive identity onto EVERY child.
Yeah, janos, thanks for the analysis of JMG’s two posts on facism. I figured he had his facts right. And, so he’s correct about the shifting meanings of fascism, nazism, liberalsim, and conservatism.
From my view – those shifting meanings have rendered the first three of those words all but useless, with the fourth not far behind – except for use as what the ADR calls “snarl words.” As proof, consider the way that “liberals” have adopted the mantle “progressive,” instead. And consider how “feminazi,” or “environazi,” is used to distract and denigrate. That doesn’t mean we won’t have Fascism eventually emerge in the US, mind you – it just means “they” will have to call it something else, and organize it around different “ingroups” and/or “outgroups.”
=======================
As far as the “heart of the Druid?” Yeah – that’s probably a pretty interesting question. I believe that all of us who study the “peak everything scene,” are outliers to one extent or another. And the Druid lies farther out there than most. For example – he claims to have never driven a car, if memory serves. I think he’s also 1/4 Lakota Indian, or something like that.
Some people see the faults of their society and want to change it. Others see the faults of their society and look forward to its complete destruction. I’d say the Druid fits better in this second category – although he is working quite hard to see that “the best technologies, etc?” have a chance of surviving collapse. An interesting man, I’d like to have a beer with him. Some of his followers and frequent commenters – not so much. Makes it unpleasant to comment over there, sometimes.
Again Vlad, you’d be interested in the comments of “Juhana,” and “Enrique,” over there. But they comment sporadically.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/02/22/sleepwalking/
“massive sums squandered in Iraq ($3,000 billion), Afghanistan ($3,000 billion)”
I personally think PCR’s low-balling those numbers (moar liek 12 trilli0n t0tal…)
Be that as it may, one must *WONDER* why Iran didn’t go the Thorium route?!… Can you *IMA-GINE* the leverage they’d have?!?
(and yes, I poasted *TWICE* this week – thx SOAKER, you spammer – keep replying to yourself 4-5 times, non-thread – *DOUCHE*)
“Once the family goes, the destructive “family values” it instills will be gone….” “ajmuste”
I have already noted that the traditional extended family has been almost destroyed in most of the West, due to declining birthrates, mobility, and other reasons.
Now – I will ask you to explain how the rest of the destruction of the family is going to be accomplished so that, “the family goes.”
I probably will not respond, so as not to “quarrel.”
====================
Speaking of which, James Howard Kunstler (JHK), has only elucidated two rules for this comment space in public, to my knowledge. Those two rules were, “Don’t quarrel,” and “Don’t post YouTubes.”
With this in mind, aj, it is interesting to examine your posting history for the week.
You made at least two posts attempting to entice BackRowHeckler into a quarrel. Then you tried to entice Farmer McGregor into a quarrel over the Wright Brothers and flying pigs. Then you posted an incredibly worthwhile and topical YouTube of a pig flying.
Next, you went into a series of posts on thorium. When no one would quarrel with you about that – you posted another YouTube that purported to show human hands holding liquid thorium. Finally, you attempted to entice this poster into a quarrel over immigration.
fascinating. not polite. but fascinating.
And please note, that I am not attempting to quarrel, here. Toward that end, I see little need to comment further at all. I’m just pointing out some facts for the record.
Hi Little Debbie,
A minor correction is needed here:
“They have a nugget of hydrogen encapsulated in a gold sphere, and under the pressure of 192 high power lasers, the hydrogen was briefly made to fuse, releasing more energy than what was used to produce it. ” -Little Deb
===========================
In truth, very little of the actual energy focused on the hydrogen atoms ever reached them, yet what minuscule amount did break through did produce a positive net output.
=============================
“Strictly speaking, while more energy came from fusion than went into the hydrogen fuel, only about 1 percent of the laser’s energy ever reached the fuel. Useful levels of fusion are still a long way off. “They didn’t get more fusion power out than they put in with the laser,” says , the head of a huge fusion experiment in the U.K. called the , or JET.
The laser is known as the , or NIF. Constructed at a cost of more than $3 billion, it consists of 192 beams that take up the length of three football fields. For a brief moment, the beams can focus 500 trillion watts of power — more power than is being used in that same time across the entire United States — onto a target about the width of a No. 2 pencil.” -Reported by Geoff Brumfiel
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/12/275896094/scientists-say-their-giant-laser-has-produced-nuclear-fusion
Next is the question of Helium as a fuel resource. Is there enough in our own atmosphere to really make this a viable, scalable global energy producing technology? Oh, and considering the amount of capital and fossil fuel energy now being invested in “discovering” these technologies, are we nevertheless pissing into the wind?
Hey Zone and K-Dawgie Dogg,
I see you two are still fightin’ the good fight. Or, just wastin’ time on the same 4 Trolls on CFN ;>)
I pop in to gather up links fairly often still, so thanks for those. It’s Sunday and by now nobody is payin’ attention to the commentary here as everyone shifts focus to JHK’s Monday submission, but Zone, I hope you see this one because I’d be grateful for your analysis of the article below, if it’s worth your attention.
I dip in to NBL also, as I really like to see the stuff that poster Ulvfugl (sp?) submits. He’s a brutally analytical writer and defender of Guy Mcpherson, but he submitted this piece awhile back and sort of dismissed it as little more than ad hominem against Guy. I read it anyway and perceived it to be a fair take-down of many of Guy’s climate science interpretations and predictions. In terms of point-for-point scientific discourse, I found it to be useful for further research. Anyhow, give this man’s blog a read, and please let me know what you think.
http://fractalplanet.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/how-guy-mcpherson-gets-it-wrong/
Thanks!
Yo *SOCKIE*!!! I know you’re ASOKA (AJMUSTE) Well, how could I know that?!?
KEEP ON TROLLIN!!!
ZrCryp,
Hey I’m not sure why your callin’ me a Troll. I haven’t posted in quite some time, being busy with school and a new job. My account is recognizable, and I’ve been in contact with JHK before. He knows my real name and has my phone number, so if he suspects me of being a government spy, or whatever, he could surely out me.
Also, nothin’ in my posts constitutes Trolling. On the other hand, if one is to look back at your contributions for the past month or so, there’s no way to consider you anything else but a TROLL.
Sadly for me, I identify with your writing skill and enjoy and agree with your disposition on most things. But you’ve fed right into the hands of Asoka or ajmuste or whomever, just as intended. Congrats. You and the others who constantly battle with that guy create exactly the type of clutter you rail against.
JHK should ban all of you for stirring up the same back and forth bullshit week after week.
SOCKIE!!! that’s all U R.
Back atcha… and though I’ll be missing once again next week, you’ll be here doing exactly the same as this and the last. Have fun with that SOCKIE.
Yes he’s another Shakespeare. LOL! Oh the LULZ you provide. Please go away often.
OMG, LULZ? I thought I whuz the only 1 who used that aphorism (ooh, BIG WERDZ).
Why the F*F R U so racist? I know, niggaz are low life, given the police-state… But I really can’t get inside your head, concerning this/./ It’s disconcerting, to say the *LEAST*.
I’m not a *TOTAL* bad-@$$ – err bad guy?!… Let’s make *AMENDS*!!! OK, we do that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XOdKG9Z_Xw
Andreas – my man, since ’85!!! JAM MASTAH…
Caiphas my friend I know you sympathize!
That sounded friendly, but I have *ABSOLUTELY* no idea WTF you talkin’ ’bout…
P2C,
New book out of George Kennan’s letters you might want to take a look at, ‘specially his attitudes toward Hispanic immigration and 3rd world immigration into the US. Similar to what Samuel P Huntington was saying. These are two 20th century intellectual giants and their pointed criticisms of the demographic disaster befalling the United States should carry a lot of weight in any immigration argument. Of course, i’m not asserting they in any way match up intellectually with Al Sharpton or the Messiah …
Ok racefans, Daytona 500 starts in a few minutes. Grab your Buds and Buffalo wings, settle in to watch the spectacle.
–BRH
Put on your robot ears! Yes, that’s what they say before robot fights. In its infancy, but you might like it. I have no doubt that you enjoy demolition derbys, especially the trucks and school buses!
I’ll be enrolling at NYU grad skool, studying the Dynamics of White Privilege and Theory of Comparative Homo Literature.
See you there.
–BRH
Thing I like about you vlad is you never pass up an opportunity to bust my balls. Reminds me of one of my old drill instructors.
–BRH
Ok racefans, Daytona 500 starts in a few minutes. Grab your Buds and Buffalo wings, settle in to watch the spectacle. — BRH
Will do, cowboy. Although since my favorite (JPM) left NASCAR for Indy cars, I won’t know who to cheer for. Enjoy the race!
Ooo, 1/2 a mile a gallon!!! *I’m* game (sigh)…
You’re certainly *game*, sockie. Gaming the replies to ones self, without even *THREADING* them – that’s *NEATO*!!!
Who doesn’t enjoy Bill Moyers and interviews with former top-level US bureaucrats who awoke to the fully realized Deep State…?
http://billmoyers.com/episode/the-deep-state-hiding-in-plain-sight/
Welcome to Viridian, Zone. Paul Craig Roberts says,
http://www.infowars.com/ukraine-western-powers-sleepwalking-into-destructive-conflict/
d00d, I think I already poasted that link (and not one of those sockie repub rip-off sites – straight from the PRC)… You Arian (inbred) racist… Your children must be *PROUD*!!!
Did you read the latest Fred? Whites are German Shepherds, Blacks are Great Danes – dumb. If you weren’t so ill from jungle fever you’d be able to see this.
As the slave mastah, Ju (haha JEW) must know how much *bettah* balck women are in the *SACK*.
Just *SAYIN’*.
As the slave mastah, Ju (haha JEW) must know how much *bettah* black women are in the *SACK*.
Just *SAYIN’*.
Hey Unstoppable Force, UA –
Did you once post as CharlieFoxtrot, or do I have you confused with someone else? Which is to ask, is UFIA your only posting ID that you’ve ever used @ CFN?
Regarding McKibbon and NTHE – I’m glad someone is posing the question. I consider that the future is a continuum of possibilities, where Multicultural Thorium-powered utopia anchors one end – which means that Near Term Human Extinction anchors the other.
I consider that both ends of this continuum have a possibility of occurrence of from 0% to 5%. Which is to say that I consider a long decline of human muddlings to occupy the middle of this continuum; with a probability of occurrence of (say) 25% to 50%.
I think too much contemplation of NTE could make a man crazy.
Maybe that’s where you are, maybe?
Personally, I don’t “BELIEVE!!” in NTE as McKIbbon defines it. I think the “worst” thing that could happen would be collapse of climate and the death of billions. From that, I think that remnants of humanity might linger on in the Arctic or Antarctic, maybe for many generations.
In the US continental landmass, human society might linger on for many generations in underground habitats. I’m pretty well invested in beekeeping and permaculture right now. Although I did do an internet search today of “land for sale with cave entrance.”
If I ever see evidence developing of ecosystem collapse and death of billions – then underground living will become my backup plan.
I belieb (BEIBER) you’re3 in a very bad place. Your socks are *ONE UP*, but your in sh!!t town And it gets much worse from 8HERE8…
Did U give me that iroqouis cry?!@!!!
You calling me a sock too, IxNoMore?
I’m not. Just me – same posting ID (beginning with progress) for over 3 years, now.
Hey, BRH, I usually cheer for the underdog. So now I have decided who I’m cheering for in the Daytona 500: car number 10 of the Stewart-Haas Racing team.
6 hour rain delay. More rain coming in. Its a washout.
I know JHK hates NASCAR.(all those stupid hicks cooking meth in the parking lot) Sunoco provides the fuel for these events free of charge. These 750 bhp behemoths certainly burn a lot of it. But so does Al gore’s private 747, taxiing around the runway at the Stockholm airport, in town to pick up yet another award.
–BRH
“These 750 bhp behemoths certainly burn a lot of it. But so does Al gore’s private 747…” — BRH
Right! You can’t trust liberals like Gore. They are hypocrites. Al Gore had no problem with pocketing $100 million from the Qatari government last year. That government is funded by the country’s immense oil wealth. But then Gore has been an oil man for decades. His family’s wealth (Al Gore, Sr. and Occidetal Petroleum) is from oil. So his hypocrisy is nothing new. But you might want to be careful about criticizing doomers *cough* JHK *cough* who fly around in jets.
“6 hour rain delay. More rain coming in. Its a washout” — BRH
Not quite a washout. They are continuing the race under lights. My driver, Danica Patrick, is way back in the pack. But she has guts.
Well, the men drivers could not control their cars and crashed into Danica pushing her into the concrete wall at 200 mph. Her car is out of the race. Damn reckless men drivers. I’m out of the race, too. See y’all tomorrow.
OMG, the *Iroquois CRY!!!*. Been a long lost *SLUMBER*. We destroy every last living *THANG* – yet, we still *PRETEND*…
May your dreams pretend even moAr than I’m *able*…
portend?!… (I know – sleepy-sleep)
Why so many Americans are against Federal Reserve? Are they are REALLY that naïve? Federal Reserve is their best friend and without it they’d be forced to eat their blogs, their FaceBook pages, their i-pods and above all their ever-greenbacks.
Sure Federal Reserve is a looting and racketeering operation, but primarily it is mostly targeting countries outside of so-called “golden billion” – US, EU and of course Great Britain with its colonies (sometimes I wonder – is US is STILL a Colony of British Crown?, it definitely feels like it).
If Americans had any brains they’d easily figure out why massive money-printing operation by the FED does not produce sizable price inflation within the US – that’s because THEY (them) force the rest of the world EAT extra “evergreens” through MANDATORY purchases of sizable tranches of dollar-denominated paper to create so-called “bank reserves” and “trade reserves”.
Of course those “reserves” are nothing more than thinly disguised military loot that is forced upon its colonies by the “shiny city on the Hill”. What happens if colony refuses to pay? One doesn’t need to look any further than at what happened in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Egypt….