JHK’s Three-Act Play
by James Howard Kunstler
How then did Ben Bernanke finally summon the fortitude to entertain tapering Federal Reserve bond purchases from $85 billion a month to, say, $84.7 billion a month come September 18th, the world may never know, but now the deed appears to be done, in his absence, by remote paranormal transmission, while the other Fed board members, with their attendant economist factotums, servelings, and catamites all beamed the message out of horsey Jackson Hole that they expected — even pined for — the vaunted return to “a normal economy.” Which left many bystanders wondering if that meant a Dow Jones industrial average at, say 3,847 around Columbus Day, the 10-year bond at 5 percent, and every pension fund in world bleeding out from a sucking chest wound — not to mention a Hindenberg-like conflagration of the US Treasury as debt payments went beyond critical.
Pardon me for saying that I don’t think these mooks of finance know what they’ve been paying for with the QE series of monkeyshines. They’ve been creating “money” for five years to offset the collapse of a no-longer-cheap-oil economy. It’s really that simple. If any of these poobahs thinks they can run a “normal economy” at $106-a-barrel then they should run out and get a realtor’s license and buy as many Arizona REO’s as the foundering banks will admit to holding on their books, and then become landlord to renters working 29 hours a week on the WalMart loading dock.
Actually, I don’t think they will have to wait that long to see the consequences of their loose, silly talk. America’s major export is now working its hoodoo in many other parts of the world as currencies become unglued and economies look down at the flimsy bamboo scaffolding that holds them up so high. America’s major export these days is economic uncertainty, specifically the question of what, exactly, will maintain the pretense that the hopelessly intertwined financial affairs of China, India, Brazil, Japan, Euroland, Russia, and everybody else, really, including ourselves, are not unraveling like some kind of cosmic sweater knitted with one needle by a cross-eyed god with the jim-jams.
A lot of people begin to suspect that there is something called “an economy” quite apart from the shenanigans and dumb shows put on by the banks and their imitators, the hedge funds. That actual economy is a very earthy thing, in so far as it is pegged to the biophysical realities of the planet — such as, can you harvest a turnip and therefore make turnip soup for dinner? After all, you won’t be making a soup out of interest rate swaps. Of course, dining on turnip soup is not as sexy as driving to work in a Tesla to a hedge fund boiler room where you get to cream off millions every week by playing Where’s Waldo with the rehypothecated accounts of the muppets who foolishly entrusted you with their own ill-gotten savings.
The nervousness out there is palpable and epochal. Not only is everyone waiting for some other shoe to drop after Labor Day; they’re waiting for it to drop on their own heads. The most visible result, I think, will be a shocking flight into precious metals, of which there is precious little to meet the kind of demand soon to overwhelm that teeny-weeny market corner of the financial universe. What else is there now? The Fed taper talk is pretty much a case of holding a gun to a puppy’s head — the puppy being the equities markets. The bond sector is a hall of mirrors. Cash is a lot less than king in several countries now, with the contagion running hot. Everything is mispriced to the upside except Gold and Silver, which are mispriced the other way, especially after the chicaneries of April and June when, depending on which story you believe, the banks ran a naked short campaign to knock the stuffing out of the metals so they could then go back in and hoover some of it up cheap in an attempt to conceal the multiple out-leasings (that is sale, or perhaps theft) of metal left by fools in their custodial charge. Or, some other sages might say, the knock-down was done to defend the honor of the evaporating US dollar (a dollar with the vapors), making it appear sturdier than it actually is. Yes, well that worked, sort of, for a few months, while Wall Street repaired to the annual East Hampton endorphin splash. I was not invited to Diddy’s party, where the pineal glands of the gathered .01 percent were audibly ringing with celestial euphoria as they swapped the reassuring pulsations of their own specialness. Those people, you can be sure, were not pining for a “normal economy.”
Long story short: we’re in for some interesting weeks ahead. Keep your hat on.
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As I type, the U.S. stock markets are actually up today, which means that the DOW is above the 15,000 support level. That’s despite durable goods orders being down 7.3% last month. Yeah, the financial economy is not tied as much into the real economy as one might think.
Just the same, the DOW is well below its recent peak, which suggests to me that the bull market that began in 2009 is on its way to the slaughterhouse. Enjoy your beef while it lasts.
Your other topic was high-priced oil. One of the technologies that is allowed by that price and in return keeps the cost of oil production up is fracking. I mentioned in comments last week that “fracking is a perfect example of technology in the service of population and affluence increasing impact.” That reminded me that I had been sitting on several stories on the subject of fracking besides “Discovery News reviews ‘Gasland’.”
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/08/fracking-as-bad-t-in-ipat.html
Walid Shoebat appeared on the Savage Nation to discuss reports that Barack Obama’s brother is a major player with the Moslim Brotherhood.
http://shoebat.com/2013/08/23/michael-savage-interviews-walid/ ~L
Walid Shoebat? That name’s a non-starter with me. He’s such a notorious Islamophobe that he has his own tag on Loonwatch and articles that describe him as a fraud, fake, and snake-oil salesman who fleeces his audience.
http://www.loonwatch.com/tag/walid-shoebat/
Loonwatch is a pro muslim site?
No, an anti-crazy bigot site. It just happens to be that the most visible and rabid religious bigots these days are anti-Islam.
Since you gave me the opportunity, here’s something I wrote last year that applies to you and anyone else who accepts Shoebat’s conspiracy theories.
“[I]mmigration can be a net positive for the community. That’s something that I wish the xenophobes and bigots who held a severed pig’s head aloft at the Arab International Festival would realize. Until then, I have this to say to them. Get your intolerant asses out of Michigan and leave my neighbors alone!”
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2012/06/fantasy-and-reality-about-immigrants.html
So what is going to be different if everything is switched to gold and silver? The same rat bastards are going to own and control all of it and life as we have come to know it will still be in free fall.
I’m not sure that the rat bastards will control all the Au and Ag. I control the Pb and when ya’ get down to it that’s all that matters.
Pb? Hey Ripthunder, are you saying you control the Pabst Blue Ribbon? If so, that’s saying alot. I’ll be headed up US 10 to get some.
BRH
`Pb`is lead, and I guess he`s referring to the ammunition for his arsenal.
Thanks, I thought it meant Peanut butter…very nutritious stuff.
Au? Ag?
At first I thought ‘ag’ was ‘agriculture’.
Did you post [long ago] that a county ‘poverty expert’ was paid
500,000$ a year?
If so what town or county?
Whats the job title?
Should coincide nicely with Fukushima Part II.
Catamites?
Ya…..but which ones?
Jim,
BOOM, goes the dynamite!
Excellent (and tragically hilarious) analysis of the knife-edge we’re teetering upon. Notice how the ‘fixes’ they keep plastering over the stinking corpse of international finance come unglued and fall off in shorter and shorter periods of time? Some wizard whacked electronic communications with the profit-stick by making it available for the gen’l public, and now, SUPRISE, those with a lick of sense can see what the wizards are up to! The irony is taking on the appearance of a bog of dangerous quicksand sinks.
This one slew me:
“America’s major export these days is economic uncertainty, specifically the question of what, exactly, will maintain the pretense that the hopelessly intertwined financial affairs of China, India, Brazil, Japan, Euroland, Russia, and everybody else, really, including ourselves, are not unraveling like some kind of cosmic sweater knitted with one needle by a cross-eyed god with the jim-jams.”
Thanks again for the wonderful imagery! You’ve made my week… and it’s only Monday! 😉
I second that quote.
“Everything is mispriced to the upside except Gold and Silver, which are mispriced the other way, especially after the chicaneries of April and June when, depending on which story you believe, the banks ran a naked short campaign”
Gold has recovered $200 an ounce since the bottom of its crash in spite of both India’s banning of gold coin imports and the vampire squid’s actions. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was back over $1800 in time for Christmas.
It also wouldn’t surprise me if Goldman Sacks tried that same trick again.
About QE3 (and 1 & 2), my understanding is that it consists primarily of the Fed minting about $85 billion per month of new digital money, which is then used to purchase fraudulent mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and other ponzi toxic waste issued by the banks. It is not – as some think – a welfare program for the poor. Rather, it’s welfare for the rich.
Since the 0.01 percent only purchase a limited amount of Lear Jets, yachts and mansions every year, most of this newly created money sits in bank accounts of America’s ruling elite. It doesn’t get spent at Costco or Burger King. If QE3 actually did go into the pockets of the (rapidly disappearing) middle class, it would in fact be a real stimulus. Inflationary to be sure, but it would indeed put people to work.
Because only a small percentage of the new money trickles down to consumers, it hasn’t triggered hyper-inflation (yet). Some inflation, yes, but not a lot. I would not be surprised if a fair amount of the new cash that is being showered on the rich isn’t being vacuumed off to buy physical gold and silver, even while the too-big-to-fail-banks short the paper-metals market. Indeed, it would make perfect sense to flood the paper-metals market with shorts, so that real gold could be picked up on the cheap by the aristocracy.
Eventually, I expect huge defaults on those shorts, and as Jim has mentioned, lots of the gold that is supposed to be in vaults will eventually wind up “missing.” No bonus points for guessing just who will have most of that gold (hint: it won’t be burger flippers or Wal-Mart greeters).
Since the 0.01 percent only purchase a limited amount of Lear Jets, yachts and mansions every year, most of this newly created money sits in bank accounts of America’s ruling elite. It doesn’t get spent at Costco or Burger King.
I agree with ^this^ to an extent. The QEs flow into the markets, lifting most boats, and some small portion of stimulus occurs amongst the hoi polloi as the wealth effect from improved 401k balances brightens outlooks.
If and when “the big one” hits I see precious metals going down with everything else as the panicked instructions to brokers becomes “SELL EVERYTHING!”
The rationale for the commencement date of that event being September 3rd is so obvious that it won’t actually happen that day but some more innocuous day.
Somewhere, a long time ago, I read a description of antebellum World War 1 Europe. Cannot for the life of me remember who penned it. In 1913 royalty, nobility and upper classes were busy lazing about, playing in the late summer warmth, with all of the diversions appropriate to their class(es.)
The British Raj was in full flower, Germany’s industrial might was waxing, and the Russian, Austrian and Ottoman Empires sat fat on historical glories. It was a genteel time – the soft clicking of croquet balls on verdant lawns; polite political conversations on expansive verandahs; all accompanied by cool drinks and the swirling of smoke from cigars completed an idyllic setting.
In five years time the paradigm shift from late empire to the modern age was nearly complete. The full carnage of industrial strength warfare was measured in the tens of millions and the remaking of a fecund landscape into one of mud, trenches, shell craters, destroyed cities all saturated with blood Autocratic regimes that had stood for centuries were dissolved.
All resulting from the catalyst of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.
The folks who are enjoying the Hamptons, Riviera, Corfu and other select desinations this summer still live in a bubbleland and continue the tradition of the Elites. They are protected from it all due to their wealth and connections, no? As well the lumpenproletariat, ignore the handwriting on the wall as the mass of technotronic civilization strains – economic, political, military, cultural – pulls on the flimsiest frayed power.cord from the wall outlet.
Ben Bernanke and his Bankster friends can play their (extraordinarily successful) three-card monte game for not too much longer. Something is in the air this cusp of Labor Day in America. Maybe something like the smell of chemical weapons all the way from Syria.
JHK says: Dow Jones industrial average at, say 3,847 around Columbus Day
Your specificity leaves no room for doubt.
Excellent!
JHK says: Dow Jones industrial average at, say 3,847 around Columbus Day
I must agree with your thinly veiled skepticism. This would be a 75% decline in a month and a half. In the Great Depression it took the DOW 2 years, 9 months to decline about 89% to its July 1932 low. Then, again, the October 1987 crash was a percentage doozy.
Jim knows what he’s doing though. If the market (only) loses 20-25% by December 31st no one will fault him.
But the BenBernank’s infinite re-hype-ification is working wonders for the U.S. clownbuck at the moment. Compare its “strength” to what’s recently happened to the value of the Indian rupee, Japanese yen, (to a lesser extent) the Aussie and Canadian dollars… It’s not just the best-looking horse in the glue factory; it’s the zombie with the fewest fingers rotted off, scrabbling for the brains of the not-yet-unemployed workers of the world.
In the old mercantilist days, prior to, say, 2002, when the American economy was still notionally about making some things that could be exported, that would have been a BAD thing. It worsens the trade balance for the USA! USA! USA! But I think the 0.1% have chosen a new paradigm: Print as many dollars as they can pass out to themselves while wrecking other currencies. Then use that “money” to buy things and exert control over other places with weak currencies. Money is the distilled essence of power. If you have it, and you’ve sucked the juice out of other peoples’ power, you rule! Especially when you’ve got the world’s deadliest terrorarmy to shoot cruise missiles into anyplace that dares challenge your dominance.
Especially when you’ve got the world’s deadliest terrorarmy to shoot cruise missiles into anyplace that dares challenge your dominance.
For the contrary argument to ^this^ statement see the latest Fred on Everything blog post.
I did, Q. I agree with Fred on his foreign policy outlook, but find him revolting when he whines like a grumpy old white bastard about womens’ rights, gays and other social/sexual issues.
Fred’s most recent slap at the glorification of America’s army of deathification is right-on. But it’s not cynical enough. Even though China “no fight, he sell things,” that’s a rug under that can be yanked out from China’s feet when the people it sells things to can no longer buy those things. As TPTB devastate and impoverish people around the globe, they want less of what China offers, and unemployment goes up in China, while iron mines in Australia make workers redundant, and econo-ripples spread.
Everything that’s happening makes perfect sense if you look at events in terms of a Great Die-Off. JHK is right about Peak Oil and Peak Everything. If the planet’s population is +7 billion, that is. But if there are only, say 1 billion people consuming those resources, the remaining oil will last a lot longer. Pollution like greenhouse gases will go way down when fewer of us CO2 spewers are breathing. And if 999,900,000 of those remaining humans are serf-ing their feudal overlords in factories that make Lear Jets and foie gras farms, the overlords will continue to have a GREAT late 20th Century lifestyle. Which is all they know, and all they care about. They just need a lot less of us getting in the way of their good thing.
To echo the title of an old post-WW II movie: “What did you do during the Die-Off, daddy?”
You think that there even can be an America without boring, grumpy Whites? Your genocidal fantasies are suicidal.
Actually it’s the next to last post by Fred titled Martial Ramblings.
Once again, the myth that QE is money printing is once again making the rounds. You can prove to nimrods that it is not money printing, but as is habit, people will go with their first impression and no amount of evidence presented to the contrary thereafter will convince them otherwise. Still, it’s important to state facts in refutation of false first impressions.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-inflationary-risk-of-us-commercial-bank-reserves-by-martin-feldstein
Why Is US Inflation So Low?
Why has quantitative easing coexisted with price stability in the United States? Or, as I often hear, “Why has the Federal Reserve’s printing of so much money not caused higher inflation?”
That is why the absence of any inflationary response to the Fed’s massive bond purchases in the past five years seems so puzzling. But the puzzle disappears when we recognize that quantitative easing is not the same thing as “printing money” or, more accurately, increasing the stock of money.
CommentsThe stock of money that relates most closely to inflation consists primarily of the deposits that businesses and households have at commercial banks. Traditionally, greater amounts of Fed bond buying have led to faster growth of this money stock. But a fundamental change in the Fed’s rules in 2008 broke the link between its bond buying and the subsequent size of the money stock. As a result, the Fed has bought a massive amount of bonds without causing the stock of money – and thus the rate of inflation – to rise.
CommentsThe link between bond purchases and the money stock depends on the role of commercial banks’ “excess reserves.” When the Fed buys Treasury bonds or other assets like mortgage-backed securities, it creates “reserves” for the commercial banks, which the banks deposit at the Fed itself.
CommentsCommercial banks are required to hold reserves equal to a share of their checkable deposits. Since reserves in excess of the required amount did not earn any interest from the Fed before 2008, commercial banks had an incentive to lend to households and businesses until the resulting growth of deposits used up all of those excess reserves. Those increased deposits at commercial banks were, by definition, an increase in the relevant stock of money.
CommentsAn increase in bank loans allows households and businesses to increase their spending. That extra spending means a higher level of nominal GDP (output at market prices). Some of the increase in nominal GDP takes the form of higher real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, while the rest shows up as inflation. That is how Fed bond purchases have historically increased the stock of money – and the rate of inflation.
CommentsThe link between Fed bond purchases and the subsequent growth of the money stock changed after 2008, because the Fed began to pay interest on excess reserves. The interest rate on these totally safe and liquid deposits induced the banks to maintain excess reserves at the Fed instead of lending and creating deposits to absorb the increased reserves, as they would have done before 2008.
CommentsAs a result, the volume of excess reserves held at the Fed increased dramatically from less than $2 billion in 2008 to $1.8 trillion now. But the new Fed policy of paying interest on excess reserves meant that this increased availability of excess reserves did not lead after 2008 to much faster deposit growth and a much larger stock of money.
CommentsThe size of the broad money stock (known as M2) grew at an average rate of just 6.2% a year from the end of 2008 to the end of 2012. While nominal GDP generally rises over long periods of time at the same rate as the money stock, with interest rates very low and declining, households and institutions were willing to hold more money relative to total nominal GDP after 2008. So, while M2 grew by more than 6%, nominal GDP grew by just 3.5% and the GDP price index rose by only 1.7%.
CommentsSo it is not surprising that inflation has remained so moderate – indeed, lower than in any decade since the end of World War II. And it is also not surprising that quantitative easing has done so little to increase nominal spending and real economic activity.
I have no doubt this proof that QE is not money printing will be largely ignored, once again. Collapse conjurers aren’t interested in the truth, they’re interested in thoughts and ideas that validate their thirst for revenge for a lonely and empty existence.
I have no doubt this proof that QE is not money printing will be largely ignored, once again.
Correct.
What do you mean?
And Kool Aid ‘Why Is US Inflation So Low?’. Inflation is huge, if you
compare 1950 to now or 1980 to now.
CPI is a joke.
What anti dod says is true. Read ShadowStats, ZeroHedge or many other sources for explanations about how the “inflation” number has been cooked by R’s and D’s for decades. “Hedonics” my azz! I wait for the day when the “inflation” number is based entirely on the change in price of rutabagas, because cost of gasoline, food, corporate water, commoditized air, etc. is just TOO volatile for the statty fiddlers, so they had to rework the formula once again. After all, the price of rutabagas is stable, since no one likes those things except for a few errant Finlanders in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula who insist on putting them in pasties.
Excellent point, only I would add that Very Cheap Stuff made with offshored American jobs also conceals a tremendous amount of inflation.
With all this concealment going on, and they call it a “recovery,” I wonder what they’re going to call it when the “revealment” comes.
Maybe one reason people think we have inflation is because prices are rising. As Herman Kahn once pointed out, increased prices might not be due to inflation. Rather, they might be due to an impoverishing event.
Nice try, but I’m not buying. Yes, technically you’re correct in that the Fed isn’t printing physical cash. Rather, they are printing Treasury Bills, which they “give” to the banks. I put “give” in quotes, because legally the Fed just can’t give money to the banks and get nothing in return. So the Fed uses the Treasury Bills to purchase junk paper (ie Credit Default Swaps, etc) which are next to worthless. This clever accounting trick has made the big banks super profitable, and explailns their astonishing recovery from losing trillions when the mortgage ponzi scheme came crashing down in late 2008.
In other words, QE3 is a gift to the banks, and thus ensures continued CEO bonuses for doing nothing but bribing politicians with campaign contributions. Nice work if you can get it.
Yes, as another poster mentioned above, QE3 does drive up stock prices, at least for now, and thus retirees who want to raid their 401 accounts have a little more to spend on groceries. But most of the QE3 money doesn’t trickle down into the real economy, which is why it is not highly inflationary. Wall Street CEOs may live very high on the hog, but even their profligate spending habits cannot trigger high inflation because there are too few of them.
How long can the QE3 ponzi scheme continue? I have no idea. I only know that when ponzi schemes unravel, they tend to come crashing down with great speed.
Everything you say is well and true but it doesn’t mean QE is printing money in fact, or in effect. The Fed has ensured that money doesn’t reach “the street” by paying interest on the member banks excess reserves thus holding the money stock (M2) steady. What part of this do you not understand? Quit calling it money printing. It’s not. You’re wrong about that part so admit it.
Economics means the management of the household. You have to get back to basics and forget all these monkey shines if you want to know what’s good for the Nation – as opposed to what’s good for you and your class. You don’t want to be a Class Tyrant, do you Q?
Here. This book “Economics for Helen” is a Non-Economist explaining Economics to a little girl named Helen. Only people outside the field can see it and explain what it is and what it should be instead.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=economics%20for%20helen&sprefix=economics+for+hel%2Cstripbooks&rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Aeconomics%20for%20helen
The post attributed to me (Q. Shtik) at 12:00 pm was made by an imposter. I hope Janos and all others are able to recognize such fake posts. There were one or more yesterday on last week’s thread as well. It’s very annoying and I hate to admit how annoying it is (a violation of Wm. Safire’s rule #4) since this gives the imposter(s) great pleasure. I hope to hell JHK is aware his comments section is being raped and that he’ll do something about it.
I’m not sure that the rat bastards will control all the Au and Ag. I control the Pb and when ya’ get down to it that’s all that matters.
I think “their” control of the Pu and U trumps your control of Pb. But hey, if it makes you feel better to think that, then keep on keepin on. Belief in a deity makes people feel better too, but it doesn’t make it true that one exists beyond their belief. It doesn’t make it less true either.
no one will fault him
Even doomsayers have their catamites.
Correct. I’m one of them. A catamite to doomsayers. And proud of it.
Have you looked up the definition of “catamite”? A youth who gets sexually used by an older man, like in an altar boy/pervert priest relationship? Considering your derision of the Doomer crowd — of which I am one, and I lead a GREAT life, thank you! — I don’t think you’d want to be my catamite. And Bukko don’t swing that way anyhow. Not that there’s anything right with that. Catamitery, that is.
The “doomsayers are wrong ’cause it hasn’t happened yet” crowd are often the type of people that think that because the Dow didn’t tank yesterday, it’s “Morning in America”.
Stuff looks like it happens fast in history books because it took you fifteen minutes to read about it but people who lived the 1929-1949 bust went to sleep and woke up for 7200+ days of a little glee followed by an enormous shitstorm. Yes, my goofy CFN’ers … 1949 when the deflation finally stopped. There’s a reason why the late 1940s was prime ground for Film Noir because after the victory celebration in 1945 the harsh realities of 1929-1941 kicked in again.
Now, the “American Disease” of CEOs of corporate poobahs giving themselves big raises after bad earnings has hit Europe. This is a global shitstorm, not scattered thundershowers.
E.
A Freudian slip. Your poor beaten down conscience has spoken. There is literally nothing right abut Catamitery.
Based on a few posts above I conclude that
ozone said: “Some wizard whacked electronic communications with the profit-stick by making it available for the gen’l public, and now, SUPRISE, those with a lick of sense can see what the wizards are up to!”
==============
“Those with a lick of sense?” Who in the hell would that be? If the collapse crowd is any indication, there is no lick of sense. One of them passes gas and they construe it as the rumble of a tsunami heading for shore, or the shifting of the tectonic plates beneath their feet, or an asteroid that will finally put them out of their misery.
See my post immediately above. Of course, history will make the Q. Shtik’s of the world appear like horse’s arses but “it’s all good”.
You and Janet are like “frenemies” because you’re thinking is Dow is at 15000 so things must be pretty good. No matter that 80% of new job creation is part time and a majority of newly-degreed college kids can’t get jobs in their major … even many branches of engineering.
No matter that consumer debt isn’t falling but wages are. And pooh-pooh on all those nagging people who point out that half the American public doesn’t have one WEEK’s worth of cash reserves in savings.
Yes, they are like Bad Santa and should be censured. We’re appointing you and Janet, hereafter name “Quajanet” to the Ministry of Truth to carry out the punishments to all those who trot out macroeconomics to refute micro-truths.
E.
Eleuthero said: “No matter that consumer debt isn’t falling…”
But consumer debt is falling and has been since 2008.
“Overall, consumers have been much more cautious about spending on credit since the recession –- they discovered what overleveraging can do when the economy is struggling,” said Leslie Levesque, U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight. “Balances have been generally declining as consumers use credit cards less and pay off more of their outstanding balances.”
Another nugget of economic wisdom from E. proved wrong.
Notice that ordinary people “discovered what overleveraging can do” and they changed their behavior. This is good news. We are not ruled by base instincts and impulse buying. We are rational and can make rational decisions about spending and debt.
SOURCE: IBTimes Aug 21st 2013 4:00PM
Yes, Janet, let’s not factor in THE biggest form of debt in the USA … MORTGAGES. We went from a historic average of about 0.7% of the public being under water on mortgages to one house in FOUR nationwide.
Now you can further embarrass yourself by telling all of us the PERCENTAGE by which total installment credit debt has decreased. We all need a laugh because even visiting this identity-theft cesspit is a spiritual drain.
E.
Doofenshmirtz said: “Maybe one reason people think we have inflation is because prices are rising. As Herman Kahn once pointed out, increased prices might not be due to inflation. Rather, they might be due to an impoverishing event.”
===============
The article per Deep Fried Kool-Aid’s link doesn’t deny inflation, it proves that the customary, nominal inflation (compared to the 70s and early 80s inflation in the U.S.) experienced for the past four years is not due to QE because QE doesn’t add to the money stock. The Fed is paying member banks interest on their excess deposits rather than the banks lending said deposits to potential customers thus keeping the money out of circulation and holding the money stock steady.
The trouble with all that “money” sitting in the accounts of the Fed and the banks which run it is that it represents a whole Lake Powell of power, lapping behind the Glen Canyon Dam of those banks’ balance sheets. Wherever J.P. Morgue and Gold-in Sacks et. al. decide to unleash that power when they open the sluice gates of excess reserves, it will drown anything in its path.
Right now, the liquid power represented by infinite free money from the Fed has been used to buy houses in the Hamptons, professional sports teams, the latest in-favour classes of artworks, and most importantly, politicians. There’s where your hyperinflation is! How far away are you from being able to buy a simple U.S. Congressman from even a backwoods district in Arkansas now, compared to the chance that you could have bought that ol’ boy in 1993, or even just rented him on an issue or two that concerned you? It’s so much costlier these days! No wonder robberbanks own Congress. They’ve bid up the price so much that no one else can afford to.
And in the future, when bankmaggots like Jamie Slimeon decide it’s fashionable to buy your liver for a transplant, or your daughter’s virginity, or your son’s life to be cannon fodder in the invasion of Colombia, they’ll be able to do that because their yachts are floating on that lake of money-power. They’ll be high and dry; you’ll be blowing up bubbles. And not the dot.com or housing kind — I mean the “last air out of your lungs from 6 fathoms deep” kind.
Bukko said: “or your son’s life to be cannon fodder in the invasion of Colombia.”
USA troops are already in Colombia. Colombia has allowed USA troops to to be stationed on Colombian military bases. USA troops have been aiding anti-guerrilla and anti-narcotics actions in Colombia for decades. The USA Dept. of Offense says it is providing “training support.”
http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=18209
“Military spokesman Frank Mora told the Associated Press that the United States would not maintain any “offensive capacity” at the bases. “There’s not going to be F-16s flying in or tanks or anything of the sort,” he said reassuringly. Yet the main problem is not that the few hundred U.S. troops newly stationed in Colombia will necessarily represent a direct threat to Colombia’s immediate neighbors, Ecuador and Venezuela. Rather, the threat is that the U.S. military presence will exacerbate tensions between Colombia and the rest of the region.” — U.S. Troops in Colombia: A Threat to Peace by Gregory Wilpert
What do you mean?
And Kool Aid ‘Why Is US Inflation So Low?’. Inflation is huge, if you
compare 1950 to now or 1980 to now.
CPI is a joke.
Once again, another moron only reads the title and not the article. If the idiots read the article they would have noted that the title questions why inflation is so low even though all this money has been printed with quantitative easing. The author then proves why by revealing that QE is not money printing. When quantitative easing was first announced several years ago, all the knee-jerk critics screamed that it would lead to hyper-inflation. It didn’t. Instead, the U.S. has experienced inflation at rates similar to what it’s experienced for the past several decades.
The trouble with all that “money” sitting in the accounts of the Fed and the banks which run it is that it represents a whole Lake Powell of power, lapping behind the Glen Canyon Dam of those banks’ balance sheets. Wherever J.P. Morgue and Gold-in Sacks et. al. decide to unleash that power when they open the sluice gates of excess reserves, it will drown anything in its path.
True, that’s one possibility, but there are many ways it could go. The Fed has the power to do pretty much anything it wants to do. It could eradicate the potential you have underscored as easily as it created that potential. We’ll see. I don’t think they will unleash it. Where would it go? As JHK said in his previous post, No Where to Run, Nowhere to Hide.
QUIT CALLING QE, “MONEY PRINTING”!
Here’s the proof of what’s true and why you are wrong and why I am right and why reality is what I say it is:
By my royal decree QE is only creating stuff where stuff never existed before and that stuff is not money cuz money has intrinsic value or not or is backed by something of value or not and besides, it’s really important to get our “facts” straight before I can’t find a single grub to eat.
Did I mention that blah, blah, blah is the new intelligence from twit central where the troll-base of banal attempts at self-aggrandizement have finally run aground on their own sandbar of silliness?
tripe
I had noticed that as well. Twit Central, eh? Pretty good.
I’m not an economist, so although I understand what posters are saying here, it feels kind of esoteric to me. I have a question: If the Fed pays out interest on banks’ excess reserves, where does the interest go? If it remains in the banks’ excess reserve accounts, then the Fed has to pay more interest for those accounts, and so on and so forth. Given that this is an exponential function, at some point this process becomes unmanageable. Does the Fed pay this interest in Treasury bonds? And who prints the bonds? The US government Department of the Treasury. Eventually the feds will go broke, us along with them.
My further question is, not being an economist, is my analysis wrong, and if so, why?
800 Billion went to Europe during the bailouts. That’s where the owners of America live. The sheep were sheared.
With their fake money created de novo (out of nothing), they get real assets, capital, and labor. Only God can create de novo. This is the biggest scam in history.
Janos you need to brush up on your Latin:
With their fake money created [ex nihilo]
You need to find a meritocracy, Janos. In a pure meritocracy, everyone must begin de novo.
Thank you Janet san for your correction. We do all need to keep a beginner’s mind. Alas poor Q.
Apparently there are still some of the super rich who refuse to leave their kids anything.
As per usual in the new fucked up CFN … the post above is NOT me.
You can tell because I *always* sign out on posts with “E.”
Ignore the above post.
E.
I feel your pain, E.
You once said you would not post again until the software was fixed. Obviously the software still allows duplicate name registrations. My identity has been stolen and someone is making posts as Janet.
CFN has lost all credibility and utility because the software allows for to much subversion of decent and intelligent conversation.
It is a shame the blogging software is so buggy because there are many people here who have good things to say, including you, E.
PS. Anyone can sign out as “E.” to assume your identity.
Beantown says: “Given that this is an exponential function…”
Exponential? Really? What does that mean, Beantown?
Let’s imagine a bank has $300 million in excess reserves. To get exponential growth, we multiply the size by some number in each time increment. If we multiply by two, and the time increment is one day, then the bank will have $600 million dollars in excess reserves tomorrow, then $1.2 Billion the day after, then $2.4 Billion on the fourth day. At the end of a week we would have $19.2 Billion in excess reserves. That’s very precipitous!
But suppose the increase is only one percent per day. Tomorrow we multiply $300 million by 1.01 and get 303 million. Day 3 — 306 million. Day 4 — 309 million. That’s still exponential, but no longer impressive.
Exponential has become a CFN drama word, so its real meaning gets lost. And, when that happens, we lose some of our ability to speak accurately.
Maybe the time’s come to go back and revisit our eighth-grade math class — that world where words like linear, logarithmic, and exponential once had real meanings.
Uh, you’re not really taking into account the time factor. Extend your little series to 30 or 40 or 50 iterations and see the numbers. Even if each time period is a year, that would represent 2 generations, ie your grandchildren.
Look at a graph of an exponential function. As enough time passes, the slope of the graph approaches infinity (or zero, if a negative exponent).
And how much does something have to increase to have a negative effect? 50 times or 50%?
Yes as it approaches infinity we will need all the theoretical resources of the universe to support our economy. We will be selling property on other planets even though we can’t get to them. Hell, if our reach does not exceed our grasp, then what’s a Heaven for?
Oy vey. I most certainly did take into account the time factor.
When did you become a terrorist, beantown? And why must the grandchildren be the whipping horse of your terroristic vision? When math fails you resort to a pathetic attempt at emotional manipulation. I object to your exploitation of the grandchildren.
Maybe the time’s come to go back and revisit our eighth-grade math class – Ja’Soka
You can say that again.
If you start with 300m and compound it daily at 1% you will wind up after 365 days with 11,222.8 million, 37.4 times more than you started with. That seems pretty “impressive” to me.
And should this come true, you will see a ‘take no prisoners’ reaction on the part of TPB. Do not underestimate the power of the powerful! Global collapse is not the menu anytime soon. This is just another step in the long emergency.
Just look at Egypt. It looks like the coup that disposed a majority elected theocracy will be replaced with an orderly military dictatorship. And they did not even have to resort to much violence to achieve it (compared to the total population).
BTW: I do not expect a wonderful future for the people of Egypt. They have a shortage of resources and too many mouths to feed.
Janos said: “With their fake money created de novo (out of nothing)”
Janos, you need to brush up on your Latin:
With their fake money created [ex nihilo]
You need to find a meritocracy, Janos. In a pure meritocracy, everyone must begin de novo.
My prediction: one ounce of Gold will buy 40 acres of farmland. But you must understand, the reason why farmland prices will crash is because the current owners have no clue how to farm without agri-cides. The land will be of no use to them. So if one or two of you are smart enough to have an ounce of Gold in possesion – post the BB production as JC – don’t bother if you don’t either (know how to farm without agri-cides), it would be a waste of Good Gold.
Every White Man of sound body and good character deserves 40 acres and a mule. And who will recount that hour of splendor in the grass?
Not to mention the infernos in Egypt and Syria. The Middle East is really boiling up like no time since the 1970s. But somehow the impact in the 70s seems to have been greater. The general attitude now appears to be who gives a crap what happens over there. I think one of the reasons is that people are under the impression that we are self sufficient in Petroleum to the extent we are an exporter, not an importer. That’s what the story has been in the business media for the past 2 years. Nothing could be further from the truth.
BRH
Looks like you’re going to get your war. McBrainless and the Zios is the band of the hour. As if they care about gassed Arab children! They’d kill every one of them if they could get away with it. How many hundred of thousands of children died in Iraq? And for what?
BRH said: “The Middle East is really boiling up like no time since the 1970s. ”
BRH said: “people are under the impression that we are self sufficient in Petroleum to the extent we are an exporter, not an importer. That’s what the story has been in the business media for the past 2 years. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
BRH, it doesn’t matter much what people think. What matters is this:
CAMARILLO, Calif. — The Aug. 23 U.S. average retail price of regular-grade gasoline dropped 3.99 cents in the past two weeks, to $3.5586, according to the most recent Lundberg Survey of approximately 2,500 U.S. gas stations. In the past month, the price is down nearly 12 cents. The current price sits attractively under its year ago point by 20 cents gal.
$3.56 … Average price of a gallon of gasoline in Aug. 2013
$3.76 … Average price of a gallon of gasoline in Aug. 2012
Trouble in the Middle East this whole past year and gas prices go down 20 cents a gallon. That is what matters to people. That is why Obama was re-elected.
Obama is keeping a lid on the military. We are not going to war with whoever displeases us in the Middle East. We are not going to war, period.
We can no longer afford to go to war. War is expensive. We don’t have enough money to go to war.
They’re talking about launching some Cruise Missiles at Damascus in the next few days or so. If I can recall 1 Cruise Missile costs about $800,000. I think they’re made by Raytheon down by Newport, RI.
–BRH
So now you are not talking war. War is boots on the ground. You are talking profits for Raytheon. A business decision.
In fact, we are not going to war with whomever displeases us in the Middle East.
Not whoever, not whomever. We are not going to war. Our president won the Nobel Peace Prize. It would be unseemly to go to war.
Our president won the Nobel Peace Prize. It would be unseemly to go to war.
You’re being ironic, or maybe sarcastic, right? You can’t be serious when you’re referring to the Destabilizer of Libya, the Continuer of Afghanistan, the Preznit Whose Farce Launched a Thousand Strikes (by flying killer robots, unlike the face of Helen of Troy, where merely launched a thousand ships.) Obama is smarter than Bush insofar as he outsources his overthrows to hirelings who start “civil wars” instead of simply sending the 101st Airborne. But realPresident Cheney would have told you there’s more blood money to be made for Raytheon, Halliburton, Blackwater (or whatever they fuck they’re named this week) in those straight-ahead invasions.
Anyway, good snark “Janet”! So subtle that some people might think you were being serious.
“Anyway, good snark “Janet”! So subtle that some people might think you were being serious.”
===========
Thank you. I hope people caught that I am as anti-Obama as you, because Obama is a war monger. He should be impeached for crimes against humanity.
IDENTITY THEFT ALERT
The post (janet August 26, 2013 at 3:46 pm #) is obviously not me. I am an Obama supporter. Somebody is stealing my identity and saying things I don’t believe. Obama is the best Black president the USA has ever had.
‘ironic, or sarcastic’. For the life of me, I can not tell the 2 apart!
Ironic is just a neutral observation.
Sarcastic is meant to cut, to hurt.
Anyway, good snark “Janet”! So subtle that some people might think you were being serious. – Bukko
No, Bukk, some of us think that comment was written by an imposter.
TRACKBACKS/PINGBACKS Said: “Kunstler gives a shout out – Precious Metals Forum – August 26, 2013”
This is too funny. White folks be scared of everything, including their own shadow. The PM Bugs comb the web looking for ways to pump the PM Market. In order to prime that market, they must sell fear. But it doesn’t seem to be working. With all that fear they’re selling, Au should be valued at $1M per ounce instead of its current feeble valuation. And, of course, since they can’t pump the PM Market as they wish, it has to be a conspiracy.
White folks thrive on fear. Gordon Gekko had it wrong, greed isn’t good, fear is good. Take, for example, white folks fear of Black folks. It’s preposterous. Blacks have more to fear from whites than the other way around. Tim Wise is aptly named because he is a wise man indeed. Here’s what he has to say on the matter.
http://www.timwise.org/2013/08/race-crime-and-statistical-malpractice-how-the-right-manipulates-white-fear-with-bogus-data/
Race, Crime and Statistical Malpractice: How the Right Manipulates White Fear With Bogus Data
……..And given the relative population percentages of whites and blacks, blacks are actually more likely to be interracially murdered by a white person than vice-versa. After all, as for homicides where the race of the offender is known, 447 B-W murders as a share of the white community is 2/10,000ths of 1 percent (0.0002) of all whites killed by blacks, which is 1 in every 500,000 white people who will be killed by a black person in a given year; meanwhile, 218 W-B homicides as a share of the black community is 5.5/10,000ths of 1 percent (0.00055). So although interracial homicide is incredibly rare in either direction, any given black person is more than 2.75 times as likely as any given white person to be interracially murdered, with roughly 1 in every 180,000 black persons being killed by a white person in a given year.
How anyone could fully examine this data carefully, either for violent crime generally or for homicide in particular, and conclude that there was a black-on-white crime spree underway is beyond the scope of the rational mind to comprehend. But apparently such claims are the stuff of professional scholarship to the likes of Walter Williams, which says a lot about the pathetically low quality of scholarship demanded of right-wing economists, or your garden-variety white nationalist on the internet. That such claims are taken seriously attests to the propaganda value of racist argumentation, and suggests how much work we still have to do to derail this counterfactual narrative before it does even more damage to race relations in America.
o ass oka, F you.
I’m pretty sure Janos did not make the post under his name (Janos Skorenzy August 26, 2013 at 2:23 pm # )
I suspect it was Carol (aka Asoka).
Just when some of us were having a decent and civil conversation, this duplicitous behavior by Asoka.
Janet Said: “I’m pretty sure Janos did not make the post under his name (Janos Skorenzy August 26, 2013 at 2:23 pm # ) I suspect it was Carol (aka Asoka). Just when some of us were having a decent and civil conversation, this duplicitous behavior by Asoka.”
===========
I’m pretty sure I did not make the post under my name (janet August 26, 2013 at 2:27 pm #)
I suspect it was Janos (aka Asoka).
Just when some of us were having a decent and civil conversation, this duplicitous behavior by Asoka.
“Of course, dining on turnip soup is not as sexy as driving to work in a Tesla to a hedge fund boiler room where you get to cream off millions every week by playing Where’s Waldo with the rehypothecated[*] accounts of the muppets[#] who foolishly entrusted you with their own ill-gotten savings.
*hypothecated – to pledge to a creditor as security without delivering over; mortgage.
2.
to put in pledge by delivery, as stocks given as security for a loan.
#moppet – a young child.
Greens are sexy in GA
IDENTITY THEFT ALERT
I did not make the post at (janet August 26, 2013 at 3:24 pm #)
I suspect it was alpha mail (aka Asoka).
Just when some of us were having a decent and civil conversation, this duplicitous behavior by Asoka (aka alpha mail).
Janet said: We can no longer afford to go to war. War is expensive. We don’t have enough money to go to war.
War is profit, not expense. There’s always enough money to go to war. If you run out, you just issue some more since money is debt. Telling the MIC that it can’t afford to go to war is like telling Oprah she can’t afford that designer purse. It doesn’t sit well.
Never seen Oprah with a designer purse or discuss designer purses on her shows*.
*Only seen a handful of her shows and magazine covers.
Message to BRH:
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has finally found something that Americans like even less than Congress: the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Syria. Only nine percent of respondents said that the Obama administration should intervene militarily in Syria; a RealClearPolitics poll average finds Congress has a 15 percent approval rating, making the country’s most hated political body almost twice as popular.
When are we going to learn we are not the world’s policemen. We should police our own borders. We should stop immigration completely and seal the borders completely.
I did not make the post (janet August 26, 2013 at 3:38 pm #) which calls for sealing our borders and stopping all immigration.
Someone is posting under my name and saying things I would never say. I am pro-immigration. I am for open borders.
I suspect it is the poster called “debt” (aka Asoka) who is fucking up the communication today.
Janet
Janet said: When are we going to learn we are not the world’s policemen. We should police our own borders. We should stop immigration completely and seal the borders completely.
Are you nuts? Immigration’s what made this country great. If not for immigration, you wouldn’t be here (in the U.S.). I wouldn’t be here (could be anywhere). The reformed racist Janos wouldn’t be here (who knows where he is or who he is these days). The only way to grow the economy is via immigration-friendly legislation that’s ENFORCED. Amnesty now for all immigrants who have been labeled illegal. Let’s get this show back on the road.
Is that you, ass oka?
This is anti dod (aka Asoka) putting words into BRH’s mouth that he would never utter, just to make this whole Monday even more of a Clusterfuck. Damn you, anti dod! We know you are really Asoka.
On a lighter note, JHK says,
“Of course, dining on turnip soup is not as sexy as driving to work in a Tesla. . .”
Oh, I don’t know. Have you SEEN some of those turnips?
http://www.funnypicsbox.com/odd-circs/17239.htm
OMG! There may be children accessing the links posted on CFN. As a mother I am concerned about such a wanton display by a turnip. 🙂
Janet said: CFN has lost all credibility and utility because the software allows for [to] much subversion of decent and intelligent conversation.
Oh my, this is pathetic. I expect better than this from you. As much as we disagree and as much as I loathe you, your prose and grammar are always practically perfect in every way just like Mary Poppins.
I know you know (or do you?) it’s “too,” not “to.”
I agree with BRH that there should be amnesty now for all immigrants and we need immigration friendly legislation that’s enforced. How else do I expect my retirement account to grow? Immigration will grow the economy and by virtue of that my nest egg will grow. Thanks BRH for setting the record straight. Great discussion, friends. Let’s keep this train rolling.
I know you know (or do you?) it’s “too,” not “to.”
—————-
Of course, I know.
Don’t you realize someone grammatically illiterate has been posting today as me?
I agree with BRH that there should be amnesty now for all immigrants and we need immigration friendly legislation that’s enforced. How else do I expect my retirement account to grow? Immigration will grow the economy and by virtue of that my nest egg will grow. Thanks BRH for setting the record straight. Great discussion, friends. Let’s keep this train rolling.
This is not Q.’s style or tone or political persuasion. This is someone, probably ozone (aka Asoka), who has stolen Q.’s handle to post things Q. would never say. Stop it now, ozone. You (aka Asoka) have singlehandedly ruined this forum by adopting so many identities. We get it: you contain multitudes… but you are destroying this forum. Not that you care.
If this identity theft cannot be stopped, CFN comments section should be shut down. This is ridiculous, having others make comments under false names.
White folks thrive on fear. Gordon Gekko had it wrong, greed isn’t good, fear is good. Take, for example, white folks fear of Black folks. It’s preposterous. Blacks have more to fear from whites than the other way around. Tim Wise is aptly named because he is a wise man indeed. Here’s what he has to say on the matter.
Ha! I love it, Janos. So true! And I like the rework of the Gordon Gekko message. It’s more appropriate. I highly respect Tim Wise and agree with his list of things white people can do to improve race relations. Here it is in case anyone forgot, or for those who haven’t seen it yet.
1.) Stop telling black people to get over slavery.
2.) Believe black people when they say they’re being profiled.
3.) Stop saying you have a black friend as a get out of racism free card
4.) Confront the long legacy of white denial when it comes to racism.
5.) Stop using statistics incorrectly to justify prejudice.
anti dod said: “I highly respect Tim Wise and agree with his list of things white people can do to improve race relations.”
I agree with you anti dod. And your writing ability has improved dramatically. Are you taking English comp classes at Santa Monica Community College? Nice to see you have recognized white privilege.
janet said: “I agree with you anti dod. Nice to see you have recognized white privilege.”
It doesn’t end there Janet. I’m overcoming my fear of the Department of Defense and currently I’m dating, and in love with, a cute guy who works for it. He’s a Snowden look-alike. He could be his twin brother they look so similar. He’s a great kisser. Hell, he’s a great lover all the way around. He’s made a sushi lover out of me. I used to hate that shit, but my hatred was unfounded because I never tried it. Now that I’ve tried it I can’t get enough of it, and I can’t get enough of Sebastian, my DoD lover. He’s also turned me on to Pinkberry frozen yogurt, and let me tell you, it’s the BOMB!! Sebastian and I share when we go. He likes peach and I like strawberry, although Pinkberry’s always changing up their offerings so those flavors aren’t always available. It doesn’t matter so long as I get to put my tongue to the spoon Sebastian’s tongue touched. Maybe that’s what makes the yogurt taste so good. It’s weird, Janet. I used to fear and hate spies, and now I love them and understand them. They’re no different than you and me. They have a job to do like everyone else. I respect that now. I’m changing in so many ways and I’m now committed to a lifetime of growth. Thanks for noticing. Every now and then I suffer a regressive spell, so if you see a post that contradicts this one, it’s because I’ve slipped back momentarily. Hopefully, with time, those regressive spells will subside completely. But for now, please excuse them when they happen.
Love and Kisses,
anti dod
Jim, this comment is not from me ‘the real adod’!
We all need to come to terms with the fact that we are all brothers and sisters in the eyes of , regardless of color. There is no need for fear and racist misunderstanding. We are children of the Earth. Earth is our mother and we must respect her. We have some awsome posters here, janet being the most intelligent, perhaps the most prudent of all. Even posters with whom I often disagree, have much to contribute to this venue.
We are in a recovery and we are not going to war. Sorry to disappoint those of you doomers. I agree with janet on this. Turn toward the light. There is no need for fear.
^…in the eyes of god^
Love and Kisses,
alpha mail
I am a self righteous white bigot who deserves to be put away for a very long time. Being a racist is going to get me raped in prison which I will probably enjoy very much.
The comments section has gone to hell because it has caught trolliosis, a very bad infestation of parasitic assholes. The patient should be getting a trollotomy, but it appears he’s not willing to go through with the operation, and hence, the prognosis isn’t positive.
I’ve been thinking of taking a little CFN vacation to get away from this silliness, but it rankles me that if I do so, the assholes win. Maybe this whole exercise isn’t even worth the expenditure of rankled energy, and who gives a fuck if they win or not. It’s immaterial, probably. I’ll decide what I’m gonna do in a while.
BTW, I am the real BTB, but how the hell can I prove it?
Maybe I should get my hacker friend to hack into CFN and find out who the trolls really are, then publish their names, or at least their emails. Hmmm. Not a bad idea, actually.
Great idea!
If we could just smoke out the troll and figure out a way to permanently ban him or her, then CFN would be as happy as Disneyland.
Whenever faced with a problem rapid violent threat suppression is the best way to handle it.
Asoka, janet,carol, karah!
Whomever posts another list of commenters, accuses commenters without evidence and/or tries to govern the board without consulting JHK (all of which has nothing to do with the CFN of the week) should lose public commenting privileges.
The only thing I think the list above has in common is being female.
I didn’t see a “NO GIRLS ALLOWED” sign anywhere on this website.
Forgers and imposters are types of online personas I have very little patience for.
http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/impostor.htm
Syntax, my dear Beans, syntax. I know it’s you because I tend to pay close attention to that.
The troll infections (indicated by the explosive diarrheal postings) are now dedicated to the destruction of trust (thus proving and fortifying everything I’ve said about its’ importance) rather than avoidable identifiable [scroll-by] assholes. The tactic has gone to the desperate rather than the clever. They’re not understanding that all that does is make us increase the magnification on our bullshit detectors. Very wrong move on their part.
Best of luck; seems we’re going to need it…
“Long story short: we’re in for some interesting weeks ahead. Keep your hat on.”
What may serve to compound the financial confusion could be an early and especially harsh winter. In the past weeks a rash of bear attacks was reported. Since shortly after Europeans started immigrating to America en masse bears somehow learned to be weary of humans and as a consequence bear attacks have not been commonplace. Could this latest rash of attacks be heralding an early and especially harsh winter?
If so, can we afford to keep warm this winter?
http://www.thesisa.org
Since shortly after Europeans started immigrating to America en masse bears somehow learned to be weary of humans
Yes, they were tired, worn out, exhausted, fatigued, sapped, burnt-out, dog-tired, spent, drained, prostrate, enervated, done in, beat, ready to drop, bushed, worn to a frazzle, pooped, and tuckered out.
Qshtik, George is a new poster here on CFN. We should welcome him and appreciate his comment. You are being rude.
Janet
I believe George has been around a couple of years although he doesn’t post often. I can help George by thickening his skin for rudeness yet to come from others.
beantownbill. said: “Maybe I should get my hacker friend to hack into CFN and find out who the trolls really are, then publish their names, or at least their emails. Hmmm. Not a bad idea, actually.”
This person is an imposter and has been using my name for a while now. Notice my name doesn’t have the dot after it. Who are you going to believe? You know I’m the real beantownbill because I don’t know any hackers and even if I did I would never suggest they do such an illegal and foolish thing.
But the other day someone saying he was the real Beantown told me the dot is because there was a glitch. He was spamming CFN with partial posts, followed by “apologies” for the incomplete posts.
Now it turns out the real Beantown (without a dot) is still here with us. This is getting stranger by the minute. Who knows who to believe.
I believe Carol when she says we should focus on the content, not the poster.
janet…
I really think we need to get our heads around this thing called exponential growth. To get exponential growth, you need to multiply the size by some number in each time increment. For example, If we multiply by two, and the time period is the same 24 hour period, then the bank will have many more dollars tomorrow, then even more the day after. I would think any child could understand this very simple concept.
The mostly good hearted, well meaning folks at CFN have made the notion of exponential growth a curse word. And when that happens, we lose some of our ability to speak accurately.
Should we consider that now is a good time to re-think what we should have learned back in our eighth-grade math class — that world where words like linear, logarithmic, and exponential once had real meanings.
Neon Vincent, maybe you need to concentrate more on the issues and less on identities. Someone stole mine and you don’t see me complaining about it, do you? Get back to the discussion, whatever it was. Oh yes, that’s right, the discussion is The Sky is Falling. Tell us about how the sky is falling, or when it’s falling, but not this distracting crap about identities. Maybe if more posters here got Lifelock per Rush’s suggestion, they wouldn’t have to hit hackers up for favors that won’t solve anything anyway.
Janet, you’re right, I should lay off George and quit being such an asshole. He’s new and I don’t want to run him off just yet. I have an odd way of showing my love, don’t I? It’s always been this way for me. I think I have Asperger’s Syndrome. It’s not easy being me. So George, now that you’re here, tell me about the rabbits please.
This post does not ring true.
Will the real ‘Q’ stand up?
I’m paralyzed from the waist down, you insensitive jerk. That’s like asking Stevie Wonder to take the wheel. Think before you type, you moron.
Not me. Obviously.
It’s immaterial, probably. I’ll decide what I’m gonna do in a while.
Well, you know me, nothing’s immaterial. In fact, I prefer the immaterial to the material. Yes, I know, we’re living in a material world, but I don’t give a shit about that. I prefer to count the grains of sand rather than observe the tranquil serenity of a setting sun. I’ll sit up all night sometimes out back with my flashlight and watch mushrooms grow. It’s fascinating. Columns of numbers send a rush of blood to my pelvic region. My power of observation is so acute, I can guess the tire pressure of the tires on my automobile to within a minor fraction of the actual value.
Don’t take too long to decide, beans. Procrastination is not becoming, especially for an old codger like you with a rented heart.
Get back to the discussion, whatever it was. Oh yes, that’s right, the discussion is The Sky is Falling.
=============
Increasingly there is never discussion on CFN. It is as if Asoka waved a magic wand and now nobody can make a post with any kind of intellectual content, or a post that is at least relevant to what JHK has written.
I marvel at Asoka’s seeming ability to control all the posters here and force them to engage in sniping at one another instead of at addressing the serious problems that confront us. Need I remind what awaits us:
a Dow Jones industrial average at, say 3,847 around Columbus Day –JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER
Are we paralyzed?
Correction to “are we paralyzed?”
With no offense to Q. who is paralyzed from the waist down, are we incapable of taking action to prevent this clusterfuck from worsening?
I agree that we must believe Carol when she says we should focus on the content, not the poster.
Despite all my powers of amazing observation, I just can’t get past the fact that someone else copped “DeepFriedKoolAid” for a handle.
So I ate several groundhogs and now I’m off to my cave to go sulk for 7 -9 months.
Please come wake me up when you have figured out the whole air, land, food, water, thing.
And remember, only YOU can prevent forest fires.
“No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.”
— Lily Tomlin
“I ate several groundhogs”
Were any of them Punxsutawney Phil or Staten Island Chuck?
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/03/looks-like-groundhogs-were-wrong-and-i.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKOKjPpMUGI
http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/black-mob-in-training-bullies-3-year-old/
tp://clashdaily.com/2013/08/coverup-youtube-deletes-black-on-white-kiddie-hate-crime-videos/
Did anyone notice only made one post today under his own name before he began to steal other peoples’ identities and spam CFN with nonsense? I noticed. You are not getting away with it, ozone. We’ll put a hacker onto you and publish your details.
CFN isn’t the only place where fingers are being pointed. It’s happening here in Detroit. The candidates, city, and county are all pointing fingers at each other over how 18,000 ballots were counted by the city but not the county. The election was not certified and now the state is stepping in to re-tabulate the disputed ballots. It’s enough to invoke the Stalin quote, “it’s not who votes that matters, it’s who counts the votes.”
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/08/fingers-pointed-while-state-counts.html
You are much more motivated than I. You should look into voting anomalies in Volusia County, Florida. You know, Jeb’s state.
Once I had a job collecting and servicing punch-card voting machines there. I would say that about one third of them were so choked with paper “chads” that they didn’t even work. I never delved into how the votes were actually tallied.
I’ve never spoken of this before. I’m not sure why I’m doing it now.
Good luck, should you choose to research this.
If I were a Florida resident, I’d do that. However, I’m a Michigan resident and moonlight as a science and politics reporter. So, Detroit’s electoral weirdness is my beat, not Florida’s. Just the same, I did make reference to the 2000 election in my previous entry on the subject.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/08/detroits-version-of-hanging-chads.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDftx_epeNY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCHU7ohTNCs
Did anyone notice ozone only made one post today under his own name before he began to steal other peoples’ identities and spam CFN with nonsense?
Jeezuz…
ONE MORE TIME!
No but I’m always disconsolate when I log in here and see your bullshit proliferate like turds in a shitstorm.
E.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EiMUPdtFXI&list=TLz99CQbQqyrs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ryU-W-dkaI
Sorry, but “not being me” does me no discernible favors or accrue advantages. It’s not in a practical person’s interest to create or sow confusion. When the scales are weighted, I am nothing if not that.
I am sorry this is the way you dead-eyed fucks have to make your livings; you are hollow men/women who have forgotten the lessons of shame.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piU8rbCOg80
Kewl tune!
Did you post that for the musical content or the dead-eyed ‘slinger on the album cover? 😉
Neither.
It’s a suck-ass song on a pretty decent album.
I posted it to illustrate the concept of
ONE….MORE….TIME!
Now, let me sulk in peace.
Those groundhogs are not settling well.
Doncha’ hate restaurants that don’t stock REAL Tabasco?
Nah… no worries; embrace the globalization and get the good shit, rye-cheer!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriracha_sauce
Makes them groundy-rats slide right on down!
(I will have to look into that album, if this is a suck-ass cut off of it.)
Okay then, a sweet bit of Nelly will have to do as small recompense:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLDGaWqPlks
(Yep, that would be Nellie on the pianer. I hope I spelt it right this time so’s she don’ shoot me.)
This is a threaded reply to an ozone post. To prove it possible.
Janet is having an attack of paranoia. Please inform her that the medics are on the way with a very large syringe filled with some sort of phenothiazine. She’ll be happy soon though perhaps not entirely present. Here’s hoping.
E.
To Q: The lease on my heart is self-renewing, so I should be all set for years. I’m just following my mother with the same terms on her lease. She turned 100 two weeks ago.
To Janet: I was concerned about my identity, so I asked Mrs. BTB if I was me. She concurred that I really am. You can only imagine how relieved I feel.
Perhaps I should elaborate further on my handle. To keep it simple, I won’t describe why, but I have a different handle for each of my two computers: For the desktop I am plain ol’ BTB, and on my iPad I’m BTB (dot). Lately, I have been contemplating buying more computers so I can be multitudes like Asoka.
“Multitudes” is right, BTB! None of the comments made today are by me. NONE! It is, without a doubt, “janet” (asoka) who is a sick, perverted f_ck! Just got back from Portland this evening and cannot believe the sh_t “janet” (asoka) has done, grabbing others’ identities.
“janet” (asoka) is trying non-stop to destroy any and all relevant comment on this blog. I guess I didn’t give “her” credit for being such a sick, perverted f_ck!
This board has become like that old game show : Will the REAL poster PLEASE STAND UP! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYRM_KcS06I
alpha mail said: ““janet” (asoka) is trying non-stop to destroy any and all relevant comment on this blog.”
No, Asoka has succeeded in stopping you from posting any relevant comment on this blog. Asoka controls what you post.
No, clearly Asoka has been THE model for blog-hogging for you and Carol Newshitz. I see no evidence of Asoka-influence on any CFN bloggers save for you and Newshitz.
You two are the turds in the punchbowl of CFN except neither of you even float to the surface so we can scoop you out and toss you in the garden for the dogs to sniff.
E.
Why is there a “Federal Agent” at a Pee Wee football game?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKwQDC9X4F4
OZONE —
You seem to have the POWER to block direct replies under your posts.
Curious….
Anyhoo,
WHOA , Nelly! It’s been a long time since I had to pat down a date. The kind of singer that must be kept away from the more suicidal patrons at the piano bar.
So the “It’s Only A Movie” album by the pop – rock band Family…when the original 331/3 LP came out, it had an insert in the fold out sleeve that required some construction. When assembled, it was a cardboard and paper device called “The Banger”. It was to be deployed as a musical device during the album cut called “The Banger”. The instructions said that once assembled, hold the indicated corner of “The Banger” and raise the whole assembly over your head. During the appropriate pauses in the song (“The Banger”), sharply snap the assembly down towards the floor. The paper flap abruptly opens producing a loud BANG! (…get it?). I followed the directions to the letter. I was poised with my Banger waiting for the first pause…wait for it….BANG! Damn! That fucker was loud! Unfortunately, my banging was over enthusiastic and my Banger was severely damaged. I only got one good Bang out of it. I saw it’s remains later in the evening. It had been ingeniously re-purposed as a marijuana seed removal platform.
LOL!
And so we see that perfection is oftimes disguised in the mundane and clamorous!
I surely don’t know why any comment of mine cannot be ‘threaded’. No powers projected (although I’m in command of several). Weird.
Yes, Ozone is really Odin. A Norse God in our midst and only I, the great Eleuthero, can see him. 🙂
E.
Very perceptive… now just don’t let that get around,okay? 😉
Evidently you didn’t see the move Thor. Some of the Norse Gods are Negroes.
I check in here once in a while to see if I might join in a discussion about peak oil and the global social and financial ramifications. what was I thinking? This is the Internet: a thousand miles wide and an inch deep. Another squandered opportunity to elevate ourselves.
James Kuehl,
You’re interrupting our throwing of turds at each other in the CFN sandbox. This site calls into question whether there is life after birth.
E.
lol
…or whether there is thought after the electronic age.
what was I thinking?
The first letter in a sentence should be capitalized. 🙂
Apologies for the typo. I’ll punish myself harshly for my sloppiness.
Now hear this:
” According to legal scholar Saule Omarova, over the past five years, there has been a “quiet transformation of U.S. financial holding companies.” These financial services companies have become global merchants that seek to extract rent from any commercial or financial business activity within their reach. They have used legal authority in Graham-Leach-Bliley to subvert the “foundational principle of separation of banking from commerce”. . . .
It seems like there is a significant macro-economic risk in having a massive entity like, say JP Morgan, both issuing credit cards and mortgages, managing municipal bond offerings, selling gasoline and electric power, running large oil tankers, trading derivatives, and owning and operating airports, in multiple countries.”
Ellen Brown is still entertaining the notion that we live in a democracy, so she’s a bit shocked that the robes of oligarchy are peeking out from behind the curtain. Be that as it may, we wondered what “it was all about” [Alfie], and this article shows that the string pullers are going for the whole ball o’ wax, nine yards, enchilada, or whatever expression suits your taste for every-damn-thing. (So you beard-pullers will have to start looking to the ‘syria kerfuffle’ in this light too… I’m pretty certain it’s not the old freedom and democracy meme, reprised.)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35975.htm
There we go, Mr Kuehl, time to get our affairs in order, or our priorities straight, whichever comes first!
Another link:
http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/
Ellen Brown has some good ideas on public banks, but IMO it’s highly debatable that she/we will ever have the chance to implement them.
BTB,
I know you, for one, would like to see her ideas come to fruition, and I join you in that [perhaps tiny] hope. Why not? Nothing to lose on that front.
Ps. to Q.,
I’m sure you’re well aware of the ‘repurchase agreements’ of securities, but what the banks are using those ‘excess deposits’ FOR is pretty fascinating.
I’m waiting for Janos to weigh in on the incident of a 15 year old black boy who was running for Class Prez (or some such title) at St Peter’s Prep who received several racist threatening messages containing the N-word. Police determined he had sent the TMs himself. He’s no longer enrolled at SPP.
What is there to say? This kind of thing is very common on the Left. College Professors do it all the time. The Black kid is just copying his enablers.
James Kuehl, if you want to get at the root of the matter then I suggest you start with this astute analysis by Marilyn French entitled The War Against Women. I’ve read it and I have to say this gets right to the heart of the matter. This, as much as anything, is part and parcel of what is wrong with society. If we want to rectify anything, we need to start here. We need to set women free. They should be equal architects of the new world we need to create free of the tyrannical vestiges of this current world and the past world. Don’t you agree, James?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Against-Women-Marilyn-French/dp/034538248X
Men’s tendency to subjugate and abuse women operates on personal, institutional and cultural levels, notes novelist and feminist French ( Beyond Power ). Boys’ desire to dominate girls is instilled in childhood, while grown men see women as mothers owing them caretaking services, she observes. In her sharp analysis a major goal of male-conceived religious movements like Christian fundamentalism and militant Islam is to keep women subservient. Other examples of institutional suppression of women explored by French are discrimination in the workplace, biased divorce judgments and widespread rape, wife beating and male incest, a systemic pattern tolerated by society. On the cultural front she examines male sadomasochism against women in the arts and advertising. A landmark in feminist analysis, this powerful indictment reveals the global extent of men’s assault on women, drawing implicit connections between the drive to criminalize abortion, starvation wages paid to women by transnational corporations, genital mutilation in Africa, Third World brothel tours and sociobiology’s characterization of male aggression as normal, female aggression as nonadaptive.
Finally, ozone posts something worth reading.
Great feminist comment, ozone!
The war on women is the root of our problems.
Yes, I agree that women should be equal partners in what’s next. Don’t overlook the physical realities of the situation. Men are bigger and more physically powerful. I’m small at five-feet-seven and weighing about one fifty. I’ve had big gay guys hit hard on me and that’s a very bad feeling. Rare is the male CEO or politician under six feet. Physical size and power are linked to a larger extent then most men realize.
See my little picture there anywhere, Kids? Okay then.
Thanks, Ja’Soka; you’re making a pretty portrait of yourself with the fecal matter you’re smearing on the walls here.
Q. Shtik said: “I’m waiting for Janos to weigh in on the incident of a 15 year old black boy who was running for Class Prez (or some such title) at St Peter’s Prep who received several racist threatening messages containing the N-word. Police determined he had sent the TMs himself. He’s no longer enrolled at SPP.”
=========
What’s there to comment about except some people will do anything to attain power? If you’re thinking there’s some kind of race angle here, you’re sadly mistaken. Those who thirst for power, like most if not all politicians, will use any and all leverage they have at their disposal to attain it, and it just so happens the majority of politicians are white, but as I said, it’s not a racial consideration. Unethical behavior in an ambitious effort to advance one’s status and influence transcends cultures.
This is no way to improve racial relations, Q. Shtik. Please use me as a catalyst for change in your life. If I can change, so too can you. We can do it together. Let’s commit ourselves to growth for our remaining days. It’s the least we can do to atone for our racist past. I love you, brother.
Note to Janos:
You don’t need to tell us you didn’t write this. We’re hip.
I just watched the video, Fight at a Pee Wee Football Game and I’m saying to myself “What’s the big deal?” Kids have to learn what’s in store as they grow older. And the chubby blond complaining about a man “laying a hand on a woman”… she should consider herself lucky. 🙂
I know ya’ll saw it on the news yesterday…thick-haired Sec of State, Kerry said our intelligence made it clear the Syrian government had murdered its own people with chemical weapons and if Assad didn’t cut it out we might become seriously “cross” with them. That’s tellin’ ’em John.
Q. Shtik said: “Kids have to learn what’s in store as they grow older.”
This does not happen to all kids. It does not happen in all cultures. Kids do not have to “learn what’s in store” for them. You live in a sick violent culture.
You live in a sick violent culture.
In Brazil they have been known to kill a soccer player for missing a penalty kick.
Well, my parting comment is this;
I have never seen a more fucked up site in my many years of blogging/posting in my very old life.
The clusterfuck that is Cluster-Fuck Nation is beyond words; congratulations to one and all.
JHK; what ever you have to say is wasted here; and I no longer give a shit.
You have grossly, exceeded the limits, of my expectation…
Ya’all have a good one, hear?
Well said, Arn. This is a snarky dumpster. Bye.
“I know ya’ll saw it on the news yesterday…thick-haired Sec of State”
Is that the one married to the beautiful and intelligent Heinz woman?
I love the way that woman speaks!
What about Argentina?
Argentina is Spanish for SILVER and has a GDP in the hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars. They have a socialist republic wherein the government has mandated corporations pay for annual vacations, healthcare, public education, housing, etc. – all the middle class amenities. Therefore, there is no way they can pay all their sovereign debt at once and have managed to “re-hypothecate” it down from tens of Billions of USD to $1.3 Billion since their massive default 11 years ago.
Side note:
“…sovereign debt owed to commercial creditors in the late 1980s was principally held by bank syndicates. This was the result of the petrodollar crisis of the 1970s when oil earnings were recycled into bank loans. The syndication of debt among banks made recovery impractical as a fund intending to litigate had to buy out the entire syndicate of holders or risk having the proceeds of litigation attached pursuant to sharing clauses in the loan agreements.”
– [Wikipedia.org, italics added by me]
Most of the lenders have written them off at 30 cents on the dollar except for NML Capital and Aurelius Capital Management (“vulture” hedge funds held by Washington Mutual 1889 – 2009 sold to J.P. Morgan Chase – the largest bank in the U.S.and owned by some guy named Elliott who’s been in this business since 1977) who have gone so far as to seize assets in the form of ocean going vessels but have been unsuccessful at keeping the ships because laws/clauses governing these debts are too ARCHAIC.
The female president is looking to Buenes Aires (IMF has been tapped out) to get through the next year until the U.S. Supreme Court will hear its case, after several state supreme courts have reasoned that sovereign debt can not be cancelled, re-structured by third parties (swapped).
Sovereign debt is different from all other debts because it is syndicated debt.
Countries, especially large countries like Argentina, have to pay for the continued operation of their country. Therefore, they are a good investment if the governments can negotiate a deal. So far, the legislators have helped smaller countries avoid “vultures” and not bigger ones.
I just emailed JHK as follows:
Jim,
Of all the complaints about what is happening to the Comments Section of your blog I think this one sums it up as well as any.
Arn Varnold August 27, 2013 at 11:00 am
Well, my parting comment is this;
I have never seen a more fucked up site in my many years of blogging/posting in my very old life.
The clusterfuck that is Cluster-Fuck Nation is beyond words; congratulations to one and all.
JHK; what ever you have to say is wasted here; and I no longer give a shit.
You have grossly, exceeded the limits, of my expectation…
Ya’all have a good one, hear?
Jim, if you are at all interested in identifying and eliminating the imposter(s) you would hardly be wasting your time by checking out “Carol Newquist” and “janet” in my humble opinion.
Regards,
Q. Shtik
Returning to Solar as a topic… see this blurb from Seeking Alpha today:
LDK Solar dives on worries about debt, cash burn; peers also lower • 11:06 AM
•Citing insufficient cash, LDK (LDK -8%) says it will delay a semi-annual debt coupon payment due tomorrow.
•LDK’s cash/bank deposit balance fell to $285.4M at the end of Q2 from $342.5M at the end of Q1. Meanwhile, its debt balance was north of $2.65B at the end of Q2.
•Raymond James’ Pavel Molchanov: “LDK’s balance sheet makes it a ‘zombie company.’ It only survives due to continued bailouts from local or provincial authorities.” The Suntech saga suggests Chinese authorities aren’t as quick to embrace solar bailouts as they once were.
•While many Chinese solar names are now reporting fairly healthy gross margins, LDK’s remain bleak. Q2 GM was -46.9% vs. -57% in Q1 and -39.1% a year earlier.
•LDK’s balance sheet and cash issues are a big reason it has largely missed out on this year’s giant solar stock rally. Nonetheless, the company and its peers are heading in the same direction (TAN -4.3%) today. YGE -6.9%. CSIQ -5.8%. SPWR -4.9%. CSUN -4.5%. SCTY -4.3%. TSL -4.2%. SUNE -5.7%. FSLR -3.2%.
•JA Solar (JASO -4.8%) is also among the decliners, even though it has announced a deal to develop 300MW worth of Chinese solar plants.
•LDK’s Q2 results: I, II
Arn Varnold said: “Well, my parting comment is this;”
Don’t leave, Arn Varnold. You were the only only openly transexual we had on CFN, like that Navy Seal war hero.
Obviously that last comment was not mine.
We should all take Q.’s example to heart and flood JHK’s inbox with letters about how dysfunctional CFN is. It is a Clusterfuck.
My guess is that both of ^these^ comments were written by Ja’Soka. That’s how devious s/he can be.
I remember Asoka. He was polite, made intelligent comments based on scientific evidence, and talked about positive solutions. I think Asoka was the only Black poster CFN has had. He presented a unique perspective on CFN.
The way Asoka was treated was appalling. He was mocked, ridiculed, and attacked. There were exceptions, like Dee telling Asoka to continue holding up his mirror of love, but name calling and hate was the order of the day.
Then Asoka left, after years of being the target of hateful and vitriolic treatment. CFN’s misdeeds, it turns out, did not go unpunished. A hateful community cannot sustain itself. It turns on its own. Now CFN is not a place people want to be, as Arn Varnold testified today.
You reap what you sow.
“Then Asoka left…” yeah, right!!!
Some say he died. I don’t know if he left or died. Point taken.
I don’t know what it is that makes someone like you abandon one, well established, anonymous persona and adopt another that we can all see through like clean glass. It would make for a great case study in shrink school.
I DO know this… whenever I have come across such a person in real life, i.e. someone who has legally changed their first and last name and abandoned all ties with their biological family, that person has invariably proven themselves to be ONE FUCKED UP DUDETTE (they’ve all been females).
tte
Fred Reed has a good commentary on how Affirmative Action has destroyed the credibility of an education and a college degree. Here he describes how opening the doors of universities all over America resulted in what we now see as the gross dumbing down of an American education:
“Freshman chemistry amounted to P-chem lite, heavy on quantum theory and endless, endless, endless solution of laboratory problems of the sort encountered in the real world. It was hard. A remedial student would not have lasted thirty seconds.
Such was schooling in 1964. Then came the Sixties, which actually started in mid-decade and didn´t have their full effect for some time. But everything changed.
A proletarian egalitarianism emerged across the country, urging that everyone should go to college. A tidal wave of the dim and unready washed onto campuses. To facilitate their entry, admission standards had to be lowered and, to keep them in, academic standards. Colleges, which began calling themselves “universities,” discovered that there was money in these unstudents, and expanded to house more of them. (The students ceased to be college kids and became “men” and “women,” while increasingly acting like children.) To recruit politically desirable black students, affirmative action arose and, when these recruits sank to the bottom, “black studies” were instituted, having no definable standards and teaching nothing. “Women´s Studies” followed, allowing girls who lacked scholarly interests to enjoy indignation without suffering the unaccustomed pangs of thought. These quickly became departments of virtuous hostility to men and whites (for who is more sexist than a feminist, or more racist than a black?”
alpha mail: “To recruit politically desirable black students”
Qshtik: “Kids have to learn what’s in store as they grow older. ”
Janet: Diversity is strength. White kids need to learn they are a minority of the world’s population and will not longer have white privilege, i.e., they need to learn what’s in store as they grow older. Thank god for affirmative action. It is helping the white kids.
Don’t let Ja’Soka give you the impression that Fred’s screed is only questioning the wherewithal of blacks to succeed in college. Here’s what Fred said:
It was then [pre mid-sixties] believed that higher education was for the intelligent and the prepared, for no more than the upper twenty percent, perhaps fifteen ore (sic) even ten percent of graduates of high school.
As I look back 50 years I realize I was barely on the borderline.
Funny you should mention freshman chemistry. The thing I remember most about it was that I had an afternoon chem midterm on November 22, 1963. It wasn’t cancelled or postponed. I had to take the exam.
I can’t help thinking that if November 22nd happened today, all college classes would be canceled for days, let alone a few midterms. Wimps!
See my comment below. It was meant for you.
As Abraham Lincoln said, “I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal.”
Hey alpha mail, you nincompoop, that’s my profession you and that racist numbskull Fred Reed are talking about. For countless years I’ve helped turn out sycophantic catamites for our corporate overlords and I’m damn proud of it. My pension rests on that process extending in perpetuity, so don’t attack it as though it’s now something we didn’t want. It’s exactly what we wanted and it’s exactly what we’ve gotten and I’m not ashamed of a little, or a lot of, self-adulation when it comes to my contribution. You and Fred Screed can shove your misplaced criticism of our fine system of higher education where the sun doesn’t shine in proximity to your cloacal fundament.
E.
^This^ post has “Carol’s” finger prints all over it.
Q. once said that no one changes as a result of CFN posts.
Yet, over time I have witnessed radical changes in Janos, Q., and alpha mail. And now E. has changed. E. now says he is “damned proud” of ” turning out sycophantic catamites for our corporate overlords.”
janet said: “Yet, over time I have witnessed radical changes in Janos, Q., and alpha mail.”
__________
Thank you for noticing Janet. Remember that old Freedom Rider song/chant Buses Are A-Coming? Well, they’ve arrived and they’ve been coming ever since and I’m now glad they have. See, if they hadn’t, I never would have changed on my own. Also, without you helping me “see the light,” I’d still be a racist clinging to a world that no longer exists and never should have existed. I play this every day now to keep me centered and forward focused. We’re going to change this world for the better. This world is changing for the better. My transformation is proof that THIS can happen. Let’s keep this train rolling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRPRprE1p1Y
alpha mail said: “We’re going to change this world for the better. This world is changing for the better. My transformation is proof that THIS can happen.”
That’s the spirit alpha mail! Forward!
Also Janet, I fully support, as a taxpayer, my tax money going to support Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning’s hormone treatment. It’s the least we can do after torturing him for doing the right thing. His treatment is yet another example of this sick violent culture, but like I said, the buses keep “A-Coming” and I’m a Freedom Rider on one of them. They’re going to keep on “A-Coming” until we have a new world.
GO CHELSEA!! I love that name! It reminds me of Chelsea Clinton, and she’s a real class act compared to those slutty lush Bush daughters.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/27/216084400/manning-would-pay-for-hormone-treatment-lawyer-says
Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning is willing to pay for estrogen treatments that would lead to breast development and other female characteristics, the lawyer for the former Bradley Manning .
According to the wire service:
“Attorney David Coombs told The Associated Press on Monday that Manning hoped the military prison [Fort Leavenworth] ‘will simply do the right thing’ based on the request for hormone treatment so the soldier will not have to sue in military or civilian court. Coombs said at this point, Manning does not want sex-reassignment surgery and expects to be kept with men in the prison where she’s serving time for leaking mountains of classified material to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.”
The 25-year-old Manning, a former intelligence analyst, was to 35 years in prison for giving WikiLeaks more than 700,000 documents and other materials. The records included copies of diplomatic cables, battlefield reports and video footage of a U.S. helicopter attack in Iraq. The earliest she might be released on parole is the year 2020.
The day after the sentence was handed down, , “I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.”
, “Manning’s struggle with gender identity disorder” was an issue at the court-martial. Manning’s attorneys presented evidence about the issue and raised questions about why the Army allowed Manning to stay in Iraq.
Since Manning’s conviction and sentencing, Army officials have said that Fort Leavenworth does not provide hormone therapy for its all-male prison population.
Can you believe this is the 21st century? Here we are, already in the 21st century, and we can’t even provide hormone therapy to an all-male prison population. It’s cruel. It’s sick. It’s about the institutional perpetuation of paternalistic violence. Let’s keep the buses “A-Coming” and change this bullshit once and for all.
sex-reassignment surgery
There are people with doctorate degrees concerned with labels. Jen lived with us for six years while getting her doctorate in that very field. Drunks and druggies are now “struggling with substance abuse.” Notice, they are always said to be struggling.
Sex reassignment surgery used to be known as having a sex change operation but “reassignment” is a longer and fancier word that somehow is meant to remove any sense of the crass. What’s more, it has somehow become the financial burden of society. At 20, straight as an arrow and hornier than a horned toad, I would love to have had society pick up the tab for a 20 dollar hooker every other day or so but alas…
The hoops we jump through as a society to avoid harming the sensibilities of certain people are amazing.
Is this like the recent post where Q declares that:
“ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE?”
Oh, man. It still cracks me up.
How come nobody ever hijacks my handle?
I feel….so left out somehow.
If you want me to stop posting, that will do it.
Fred Dweeb makes a great case against the GI Bill which was fomented after World War II. According to Fred, since these yahoo soldiers were not “intelligent and prepared” they never should have been given free college educations. Hell, according to Dweeb, they shouldn’t have been allowed in college at all since most of them weren’t college material. Maybe we can claw all that money back since the program was a fraud and flop and only served to diminish the quality and standards of our system of higher education. Take it out of their social security, and if they’re dead take it out of their estates if they passed anything along. Thanks Fred for setting a straight. How silly of us to think the GI Bill was a good thing.
Interesting, this imposter-written comment spells beantownbill without the dot.
Thanks Fred for setting [a] straight.
…or a flush
or a straight flush
or a royal flush.
“…the program [GI Bill] was a fraud and flop and only served to diminish the quality and standards of our system of higher education.”
Not to mention it gave us the 1950’s Jim Crow segregation. ‘Nuff said.
This is very important and germane to this week’s essay by JHK.
(I’ll post it again and see if ja’soka’s diversions pop right up.)
Ellen Brown is still entertaining the notion that we live in a democracy, so she’s a bit shocked that the robes of oligarchy are peeking out from behind the curtain. Be that as it may, we wondered what “it was all about” [Alfie], and this article shows that the string pullers are going for the whole ball o’ wax, nine yards, enchilada, or whatever expression suits your taste for every-damn-thing. (So you beard-pullers will have to start looking to the ‘syria kerfuffle’ in this light too… I’m pretty certain it’s not the old freedom and democracy meme, reprised.)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35975.htm
I’m compelled to add a little note here on the maliciously diversionary posters here on CFN.
The above article is about their paymasters, whether or not they’re actually aware of it. (Likely it’s beyond their pay grade to be aware of it, due to bureaucratic layers, but it’s just as likely that there’s a list of topics or a daily briefing on where to set up the smoke screens.) To divert from these issues is to reveal what they’d rather you not see. One simple strategy at the moment is to try and corrode trust in each other for the typical divide-and-conquer dodge. “Why should I go to that link when I can’t trust who is really posting it?”
JHK is pointing out the rickety structure holding up BAU, and then we see that beneath the cover of that steadily and rapidly weakening facade, the same actors are snapping up every REAL asset in sight so as to retain control when the massive frauds can no longer be sustained or papered over.
“We own it all, and we’ve got the contracts right here to prove it!”
They are STILL not considering that anyone might have the temerity to tear up those contracts and laugh in their faces while uttering the phrase, “Any last words?”.
Private security anyone?
Thank you for saying oligarchs and not fascists. All fascists believe in oligarchy but not all oligarchs are fascists. Our oligarchs are anti-fascists since they are anti-nation. Globalists in other words. Muslims are Globalists of another stripe all entirely.
An hour and a half to go in today’s trading, the DOW’s down 150 and circling the terlit bowl.
What’s it doing now?
Don’t worry Ja’Soka, it’s a lonnng way to 3,847. But a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
“…we can’t even provide hormone therapy to an all-male prison population.”
The USA Army does give hormones to women soldiers in theatre to manage menstruation. During deployment, menses is irregular and heavy, (don’t ask me how I know) and symptoms (e.g., cramps, flow, odor, emotional lability, premenstrual syndrome [PMS], fatigue and pelvic fullness) are magnified. Islam is a religion of peace and we don’t want to send women suffering PMS into battle against Muslims.
A dozen reasons why women don’t belong in battle.
“Muslims are Globalists of another stripe all entirely.”
Muslims are peaceful globalists because Islam is a religion of peace. Ask 1.2 Billion Muslims. If they were not peaceful, we would be in trouble. Fortunately, Islam is a religion of peace and the majority of Muslims are peaceful.
…and the majority of Muslims are peaceful.
51 out of a hundred?
We really shouldn’t go there; picking on people because of one characteristic, their religious association or ethnicity, is not a good thing for anyone. In the end, it makes you look like really stupid. Alas, our government is guilty of that 10x over. Just like they were guilty of quarantining indians, asians, germans, etc. because someone decided the declaration of war on a governmental entity encompasses everyone who could possibly be associated with said entity. People don’t work this way! America has proved that 10 x over as well.
Yo BTB, I happen to agree with “Fred on Everything”. Being a fellow Baystater I can’t agree with your liberal underpinnings. We gave away the farm in this state. The middle class is taking it in the shorts. My great-grand-parents built this state. Free health care, free phones, free everything, all on the middle class. Let the good times roll. Buy my vote.
Liberal underpinnings?
No, no, no.
Anarchistic, maybe. But even that seems too organized.
So, it looks like capitalism will be the last system to completely fail. It’s finances are run by the completely corrupt and they brazenly TRY to get the victims to believe in their delusions.
It makes them feel better about themselves.
The victims are now unable to believe in the delusions of the corrupt and can no longer ignore the crimes perpetrated in the open. I think that the corrupt know this and are in the process of stealing everything that isn’t nailed down before ropes start getting thrown over tree limbs.
The victims know that tree limbs seem to be spontaneously combusting all over the world and that they are running out of time to discuss what to do.
PEAK LIMBS!!
“Likely it’s beyond their pay grade to be aware of it…”
Negative. It our job to be aware of terrorist threats like some on CFN.
I’ve been protecting our nation long enough that I’m GS-15 Step 10 (if that means anything to you). I would rather no live in Virginia, but the benefits are great.
We hardly work at all what with annual leave, sick leave, mandatory furloughs, excused absences without loss of pay, compensatory time off (in lieu of overtime pay), family and medical leave (up to twelve weeks for childbirth), time off as a form of performance recognition (thank you, CFN!), unscheduled leave due to adverse weather conditions (thank you, global warming!), leave sharing (arranged through leave banks), leave without pay (with supervisory approval, you know, to go to Hawaii), military leave (when called to active duty training), etc.
Then there are all the holidays, health benefits, retirement benefits, etc.
God Bless the USA!
[It] our job to be aware of terrorist threats like some on CFN.
Ebonics’ greatest challenge is the verb to be.
Somebody tell me what Islam and hormone therapy for da tr’oops has to do with rapacious money manipulation.
Plutocrats buying up the entire world through newly-legalized theft would seem a bit more of an urgent topic. (Even the Mafia has to provide some value for their takings; not so these psychopathic spawns of psychopaths.) Thus we see what we’re forbidden from contemplating…
“Somebody tell me what Islam and hormone therapy for da tr’oops has to do with rapacious money manipulation.”
Rapacious money manipulation? Prove it. How’s it hurting you? You want to discuss that topic? Let’s have at it, ozone. Put up or shut up.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35975.htm
There you go, “JANET”. (Poor asoka, from proud, [pointedly ‘black’] thrifty mud-hutter to Disney-indoctrinated soccer mom. Does it make him/her/it more of a sympathetic character? Uhhhhhhhhh, nope, still just a shadow, a diversion, a LIE.)
Now go earn your fucking blood money, you slimy paid prevaricator.
You see. Everyone take note. This is how distraction is done. Ozone says he wants to discuss important issues. Then you immediately goes ad hominem to avoid and distract from any real discussion of what the fiat funny money is doing. Won’t talk to a “spook,” will you, ozone. Convenient out. You are a phony. Your word cannot be trusted. This does not bode well for you in the near future, round about Columbus Day.
Then [you] immediately [goes] ad hominem
Groannn.
BTW, if anyone had to ‘prove’ anything, that would be “janet”, proving that they were real.
But that would be quite impossible, now wouldn’t it? (‘Classified’ and all that shit…)
“proving that they were real.”
Really, ozone, is that all you’ve got? If I’m not real, then who are you answering? You think I’m a robot? You think I’m being paid to post here? You don’t know anything about me. But I know plenty about you. Is that real enough for you?
Rapacious money manipulation? Prove it. How’s it hurting you? You want to discuss that topic? Let’s have at it, ozone. Put up or shut up.
Yeah, put up or shut up you bloviating authoritarian. You just want to see your brand of authoritarianism implemented versus the current brand on display. You don’t want real change. Get out of here. Everyone’s sick of your bullshit. Go somewhere else where you’re wanted. You don’t agree with JHK even though you pretend to with your catamite act. “Oh, great post this week, Jim. This part was particularly excellent…blah, blah and more blah.” What a sickening sycophant. You’re a spineless fawning weasel. And you’re incoherent. Nobody knows what you’re saying half the time with your half-baked indecipherable prose (if you can call it that).
Deep Fried Kool-Aid has established that money is not being created or printed with QE because it’s not being put into circulation, and more than likely it never will. It was never intended for circulation. You remained silent during the ensuing conversation concerning QE. Speak to that subject since it’s part of this week’s post or shut the hell up.
Q. said: “Deep Fried Kool-Aid has established that money is not being created or printed with QE because it’s not being put into circulation, and more than likely it never will. It was never intended for circulation. You remained silent during the ensuing conversation concerning QE. Speak to that subject since it’s part of this week’s post or shut the hell up.”
Ozone, the gauntlet has now been thrown down by Q. and by me.
Do you or do you not want to talk about “rapacious money manipulation”?
A market talking head just mentioned the “syri-yer” impact on the market. A Bostonian, New Yawka, who knows. I groaned audibly.
What if, you know, it had, like, you know, been, like, an adolescent girl, you know, like, with uptalk and vocal fry?
I’d mute her in a nano-second.
“Disney-indoctrinated soccer mom”
BTW, Ozone, I am not a Disney-indoctrinated soccer mom. I go to Disney resorts because my children enjoy them. I know it is an emporium, but I love my children and have the means and time to go where they want to go.
but I love my children and have the means and time to go where they want to go.
So then that $12,000 a year from social security, the mud hut, the permaculture, the one meal a day…and Mrs Asoka is all bullshit, right?
“So then that $12,000 a year from social security, the mud hut, the permaculture, the one meal a day…and Mrs Asoka is all bullshit, right?”
No, that was Asoka you are thinking of. I am Janet. Big difference! LOL!
Do you even know how much Disney resort accommodations cost? Let’s just say Asoka could not afford it. But then Asoka did not have children, so why would he go in the first place. The whole mystique of Disney revolves around kids.
Did you see any Star Wars characters running around, other than around Star Tours? Now that Disney owns the franchise, Leia can hang around the other princesses. That’s not the worst thing about the arrangement. With J.J. Abrams directing the next film, will the lens flares on Tatooine be doubled?
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/01/will-lens-flares-on-tatooine-be-doubled.html
‘Soaky can post all it wants from this point on. It’s done. There’s no “there” there. (There, there now; don’t cry, Mickey’s here.)
Ozone, answer the question.
Is QE creating/printing money?
Quit distracting from the discussion with your incoherent, insane rants. (Stop your fakery… Asoka has not posted here for months)
If barry had sons, they would look a lot like these perps:
http://angrywhitedude.com/2013/08/question-of-the-day-which-crime-irks-you-the-most/
Okay folks…here are some other examples for you to check out:
1.) Pizza Delivery Driver Stands His Ground During Robbery – Thug Dead
2.) The White Emmett Till – Jonathan Foster: The Mona Nelson Trial – National Media Avoidance Continues
3.) NEW WORD: 3 Black Teenage Girls Face “Ethnic Intimidation” Charges After Brutally Beating White Woman
4.) SCREW THEM: Spokane Cops Blame WWII Vet’s Death on ‘Fighting Back’, Says No ‘Racism’ Involved
5.) Heartbreaking Video of Toddler Being Bullied Leaves Father ‘Disgusted’: ‘Hit Her Hard and Slap Her’
6.) Yet Again – Memphis Tennessee: White Man Shot By Three Black Suspects, Motive? – Trayvon Retribution
7.) 77 Year Old Man Chased and Attacked! – Another Day, Another…..
8.) W-W-W-O-A-P-S Walking While White On A Public Street – Brutalized By Thugs… Media Ignores Race (Stop me when you’ve heard this one before)
9.) Honoring The School Bus Students – “My son ain’t never been no bad person, he just got mixed [up] with bad people, that’s all He’s sorry.”
10.) Race Crime Against Elderly Man In New Haven!
11.) She Is 93-years-old…. A Very Brave Lady, Amelia Rudolf, Spoke Yesterday – Raped By 17-Year-Old Attacker, In Her Home
.
. .
RT,
RT,
blank post
Yep, that’s the real BTB. The one who spams CFN with incomplete posts.
RT? Do you want some news from Russia Today? Here is a side-by-side comparison of RT America and CNN covering the same event, the March Against Monsanto.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/05/cnn-and-russia-today-cover-march-on.html
RT, someone appropriated my handle. The comment I think you responded to was not made by me. I am the real BTB.
I was looking at my Sunday metro newspaper and saw an ad for “Levi” denim bluejeans for $58. They were “on sale” for $50.
The last time I bought Levi bluejeans they were eight dollars.
Can some one compute the rates for inflation if a given value multiplies “6 times” in a 40 year period??
How does that work – is this on shadow stats somewhere?
It’s called the Rule of 72. To find out how long it takes for a quantity (population, your bank balance, or prices) to double, divide 72 by the annual rate of increase. The same math can be run in reverse to figure out rate of increase by doubling time. Since the price has doubled 2.5 times (that’s what a 6x increase is) in 40 years, that means the doubling time is 40/2.5 or 16 years. 72/16=4.5. That’s the average annual rate of inflation for blue jeans for the past four decades, 4.5%. It’s surprising what a modest rate of inflation does over time.
And now, an inflation link.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2012/08/economix-blog-forgets-energy-prices.html
The last time I bought Levi bluejeans they were eight dollars.
Shit, what are you, 150? A quick search of Amazon shows Levi’s men’s blue jeans ranging from $32 to $75 depending on cut and style. I imagine when you bought them there was only one style; Witch Burners, or was it Hang Man? Using the CPI Inflation Calculator and plugging $8 in for the 1940 value, we get $133. Levi’s are a bargain considering the top end is half that CPI value, and they have more styles available compared to those homogenous burlap sack cutouts you used to wear in the 40s.
Yes, clothing has been one of the items that has held the CPI down recently. Offshoring production will do that.
When jeans were made in the USA, they were MUCH less expensive than they are now, even though now they are no longer made in the USA.
My last pair of DISCOUNT designer jeans were made in Egypt.
I never bought designer jeans before this and I never will again.
ozone said: ‘Soaky can post all it wants from this point on. It’s done. There’s no “there” there. (There, there now; don’t cry, Mickey’s here.)
I see what you mean, Q. about this nut not making any sense. What does this even mean? What does it have to do with the topic? Answer the question. Is QE creating/printing money? Quit distracting from the discussion with your incoherent, insane rants.
the beautiful and intelligent Heinz woman?
Third in the world behind Joan Rivers and Cher for plastic surgery procedures.
I was commenting on her beautiful facility with English.
Ozone, answer the question.
Is QE creating/printing money?
Quit distracting from the discussion with your incoherent, insane rants. (Stop your fakery… Asoka has not posted here for months)
I don’t care what Deep Fried FOOL Aid said. Of course QE is creating (not printing) money. Why do you think the Fed spends so much time figuring when and by how much to “taper” and ultimately to reverse the trillions created. Even Paul Krugman knows this. Stop being so naïve Ja’Soka.
“Of course QE is creating (not printing) money.”
Q., money has three functions: a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. Bank reserves are a store of value; they may be a unit of account; but they are definitely not a medium of exchange. Until the banks start to lend out the reserves, no money is created and no inflationary pressures build. The proof that QE is not inflationary can be seen in Japan. Japan ran a QE regime from 2001 to 2006, and yet is still in deflation.
Money is fungible. By creating money to serve as a reserve that did not exist before, it allows banks to loan out their non-QE money *that otherwise would not have been loaned out*–leading to inflation. Without QE, a significant portion of the pre-QE money (now being loaned out) would have had to serve as the reserve. And when loans go bad as they sometimes do, that reserve certainly does kick in and becomes the medium of exchange you’re looking for.
This argument reminds me of those who want to give food aid to despotic regimes to help their starving citizens. Well, if you give the regime food aid, then the time/effort/money that might have gone into food cultivation can now be used toward more weapons and oppressive controls. And that’s assuming the food aid even reaches the masses and doesn’t instead feed the regime’s military (e.g., Somalia).
The DOW dropped 170.33 today. If it drops that much every market day from now till Columbus day (33 days) we’d be at 9155, 5308 short of JHK’s 3847 target.
The only way we get to 3847 by Oct 14th is the mother of all Black Swans (nuclear destruction of a major US city) where we lose, say, 10,000 points in one session. Just sayin’.
Do you think I’ll wind up on an NSA watch list due to the bracketed words above?
Q. asks: “Do you think I’ll wind up on an NSA watch list due to the bracketed words above?”
No. There is nothing anyone has ever said on CFN that has merited NSA attention. CFN is not a threat. NSA has more important things to do than monitor CFN.
Well, thank goodness for that.
There is nothing anyone has ever said on CFN that has merited NSA attention.
But how would they know that CFN doesn’t merit their attention unless they pay us attention? Ha ha HA, riddle me that!
Because opinions on a blog are not a national security threat: “go ahead and talk among yourselves” as Bush famously said. There is no need to pay attention to words on a blog. Are you dense or what?
JHK says that “America’s major export these days is economic uncertainty.” While perhaps true, I believe that the US primary export is, and has been, War.
Agreed.
Q. said: “Of course QE is creating (not printing) money.”
Q., money has three functions: a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. Bank reserves are a store of value; they may be a unit of account; but they are definitely not a medium of exchange. Until the banks start to lend out the reserves, no money is created and no inflationary pressures build. The proof that QE is not inflationary can be seen in Japan. Japan ran a QE regime from 2001 to 2006, and yet is still in deflation.
Q. said: “But how would they know that CFN doesn’t merit their attention unless they pay us attention? Ha ha HA, riddle me that!”
Because opinions on a blog are not a national security threat: “go ahead and talk among yourselves” as Bush famously said. There is no need to pay attention to words on a blog. The NSA also does not do surveillance on kindergarten crayon drawings. Why? Because they do not represent a national security threat. The opinions expressed on CFN have equal weight to children’s drawings. There is no need to monitor or read it. Are you dense or what?
Are you dense or what?
Amazing that a fart smeller like yourself doesn’t see the flaw in the argument you have just made. Namely “Because opinions on a blog are not a national security threat… There is no need to pay attention to words on a blog.”
If this were true Al Kay-duh would conduct all their nefarious communications via blog comment sections. How dense can you be?!
For some reason (maybe the NSA?) my posts are double posting. Kind of like what BTB does except he leaves his first post undone. Sorry for the software glitch. Maybe ozone can explain why it is happening.
Black children being coached to abuse White toddler.
http://www.amren.com/news/2013/08/shocking-facebook-video-of-white-toddler-3-being-racially-bullied-by-her-five-year-old-black-neighbors/
Here’s a link for those who are a little slow in understanding QE. Is it a failure? Pretty much so, but not for the reason the knee-jerk reactionaries believe. In fact, it’s pretty much a failure for the opposite reason; It’s not creating money.
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2010/11/quantitative-easing-explained-badly.html
What do you think the point of increasing reserves is if not to increase the credit money supply? Increasing reserves does not increase the credit money supply because reserves are not lent out. You are ignorant of the facts, as are most people and that is why we have such a big problem. Reserves are not lent out. Reserves are not lent out. Repeat after me. Reserves are not lent out.
Do you think the Fed’s goal is to decrease the credit money supply by increasing reserves? The Fed has come out publicly and stated that they think that price inflation is too low. (This is like the New York police force claiming that the crime rate is too low.) They are deliberately pursuing an inflationist policy. But the fed is not creating inflation via money growth. They want to increase demand in the economy by reducing interest rates. This does nothing for demand because interest rates are already low enough. So its all a facade.
It’s true that sometimes banks do not create new credit money with those increased reserves, but isn’t that because the Fed is paying those banks a higher interest simply for holding those reserves than the banks think they can get by making risky loans? Lending is not reserve constrained. Banks make money by making loans. Period. Lets get our facts straight before we bash. There are some real smart guys that post here and on Warren’s and Bill Mitchels site. Lots of recent posts on QE expalaining how it is useless because no money is actually created or lent out.
Q., see 79iron’s post: August 27, 2013 at 6:59 pm #
Ozone, cat got your tongue? Didn’t you want to discuss “massive money manipulation” … do you even know what money is? Are you being manipulated? How? Can you prove it?
Let’s discuss important things instead of engaging in ad hominem.
I apologize if I gave the wrong impression in my last post. My point is that the media and white racist organizations and their associated blogs (one of which I linked to) do not want to admit that race relations in the U.S. are not declining but rather are improving. They’re doubling down rather than celebrating the good news of improving race relations. Yes, we still have a long way to go, but we can get there much quicker if the aforementioned would quit running interference. The Buses Are A-Coming. They’ve come. And they’re continue to come until racism exists no more. Hallelujah!!!
http://www.mediaite.com/online/race-relations-in-america-improving-every-year-and-the-media-hates-it/
Race Relations In America Improving Every Year, And The Media Hates It
Many readers of this post clicked through only because they were appalled at the implication in that headline – that racism in America is on the decline. This empirical, undeniable reality provokes predictable expressions of disbelief, rage, and frustration from those who wish to believe it is not true. They are the predictable reactions one would expect to follow any expression of heresy which contradicts canonical “truths.”
Those who insist that race relations in America are on the decline are provided with ample, anecdotal evidence on a daily basis from the news media which supports this article of faith. But the overwhelming preponderance of evidence contradicts this assertion. Even merely asserting that there has been undeniable progress in relations between blacks and whites in the U.S. over the course of a single generation is greeted with horror from the establishment media. Much like the prosecutors in the trial of George Zimmerman argued that the jurors needed to decide the case with their hearts rather than their heads, the media asks its audience to emote and disregard the facts when discussing racial politics in America. This is a tragedy.
In a post last week, I noted that political commentators – on the left and right – predicting civil unrest in the event that Zimmerman was found not guilty were displaying an offensive lack of faith in or knowledge of the black community. That verdict came and, with some small-scale exceptions, that event was not characterized by a violent response from African-Americans. Unsurprisingly, though opinions about the correctness of the verdict varied, the vast majority of all Americans internalized the jury’s decision rationally.
This prediction was not a difficult one to make. Any historical reading of the progress of race relations in this country suggests that they are far better today than they were in 1992 – the last time a shocking trial verdict resulted in widespread rioting.
Gallup polling over the course of the last 50 years measures the trajectory of how blacks and whites view one another. Since Gallup started recording data on race relations in 1963, the trend has been an undeniably positive one.
The wells that supply India’s farmers with irrigation water are drying up. As the wells are driven deeper, the bottom of the water table comes closer.
A couple of years ago I read a book called “When the Rivers Run Dry”. The author takes the reader on a world tour and explains the why and how of the world’s water crisis. (There’s some interesting stuff about the Colorado River and the Salton Sea). In a generation or less, he says, India will face famine, a famine far worse than the one she’s experiencing now.
India is supposed to be a coming world power, a rival to China. Maybe it will happen. But to achieve such a position with a starving and sickening population will be a very neat trick.
Janos, I am so happy at your change of heart in renouncing racism.
Thank you for sharing the article: Race Relations In America Improving Every Year, And The Media Hates It
Expect a lot of shit from people like ozone for posting something positive. Although as far as ozone goes, there is no there there.
No, no shit will be given because that’s NOT Janos.
E.
What a rube because just five or six posts higher he shows a link he calls: “Black child coached to abuse white toddler.” Then he “apologizes”. Buh huh ha ha haaaaaaa!!!!
E.
“‘Soaky can post all it wants from this point on. It’s done. There’s no “there” there.” ….ozone….
Yeah, ozone, you’re correct.
This comment thread is done, JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER.
You have GOT to shut it down or fix it. As it stands now, this thread just makes you, and anyone who enjoys your writing, look futile and inept. (And yeah, I just teed up another insult for Ja’Soker, your primary Troll – we ARE futile and inept. haha you jackass.)
And the only way to fix this thread is to permanently ban one, maybe two at the absolute most, poster(s).
==========================
This will be my only post for the evening – so ignore all imposter posters.
Ozone, let’s get in contact by email. Maybe we can come up with something to persuade JHK to end this mess.
Titchfield, the rest of the world is taking action to guarantee water supply. The Saudi Kingdom seems to have opted so far for the expensive option of photovoltaic cell electricity generation to run the new solar desalination plants rather than the simpler, longer lasting and lower maintenance Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) alternative. Commercially viable CSP plants are already in operation in California, France and Spain — all with lower sunshine hours — and are feeding electricity into the grid.
The Saudi government is tackling the building of desalination capacity actively and has allocated $6.4 billion for water and sanitation projects in 2013. Saline Water Conversion Corp. SWCC, (which supplies 50 percent of the municipal water in the Kingdom and produces 18 percent of the global total) for example plans to build the world’s largest water desalination plant in Rabigh and will have the ability to pump 600,000 cubic meters of desalinated water per day.
Armchair Egyptologists here in North America who’ve been putting off their on-the-ground research are going to have to put it off a while longer. The pyramids, the temples and tombs at Luxor, the Nile itself, are sights indeed. But to get beaten up or killed for the sake of seeing them? The upheavals in Egypt–and Syria–separate the serious traveller from the mere tourist.
Of the two categories above, I fall into the second. For years I’ve dallying with the idea of a Syrian trip–Damascus and the Mediterranean coast are all I really want to see. But the debacle in Syria has put paid to all that.
Sound selfish? Sound like I see the Syrian civil war as nothing more than an impediment to simple indulgence? I know it’s the fashion among decent people to go all heavy-hearted and sympathetic over the problems of faraway countries, countries you’ve experienced second hand (television, newspapers) but have never actually set foot in. I’ve never been good at that. My sympathy– and charity–extends to the two beggars who hang out on the nearby street corner, and even farther. But it can’t fly to strangers overseas.
110.21
Change
+1.20 +1.10%
“Not only is everyone waiting for some other shoe to drop after Labor Day; they’re waiting for it to drop on their own heads.”
Jim, you left out the elephant in the room: the imminent war with Syria. Which will most likely start BEFORE Labor Day. Ah, it will be an interesting week indeed.
New Book, ‘This Town’, about what a corrupt cesspool Washington, DC has become. Haven’t read it yet; I saw the author interviewed last nite — I think his name was Mark Lebovitch, a NY Times writer — by Bill Moyer. A few posters here, Ozone and Being There, describe the whole left right, Republican Democrat construct as a scam and a dog and pony show. They are right! They are all part of the Ruling Class, living in a bubble, divorced from reality. DC is the richest area in the United States, people who go there as congressmen, staffers, senators etc never leave but stay on and grow exceedingly rich as lobbyists and senior executives at companies they were charged with regulating as members of congress. Wall Street, Hollywood and Big Media are in there too.
I found the whole interview pretty depressing. What can you do about it? Nothing really. Write a letter to your congressman who already has a lucrative job lined up a Goldman Sax? Word that letter a little to strongly and the FBI will be knocking at you door. Maybe this type of system we live under has run its course. The situation this book describes seems unsustainable.
I notice someone, probably Asoka, has usurped one of my old handles, ComradeDytopia. Have at it. Its a pretty good name. I got it from a book on Stalin. One of his henchman disagreed with an economic policy, saying it would led to disaster. Stalin called him ComradeDystopia before he had him executed.
–BRH
BRH,
Thanks for the suggestion. Got a lot on my to-do list at the moment, but I’ll at least try and get to that interview.
How are the ol’ termaters coming along? We got the timely rains, and with the daytime temps looking to be consistently in the 80’s, it should speed those scarlet globes to ripeness in no time… I see BLT’s in your future! Mmmm, bayyy-con.
(That was pretty funny seeing your old CD handle used in an attempt to beat me over the head. Somebody thinks we’re incredibly unobservant or just plain stupid.)
Unfortunately the situation in Syria is far more complicated than your simplistic reasoning. The Assad family has for years pissed off half his own countrymen, not to mention half his neighbours. He has finaced and supplied Hiz, allowed the Iranians to do the same thus destabilising the Lebenon. He financed and trained the North Sudanese killing squads ( quaintly called militias by the western press) who killed some quarter of a million South Sudanese Christians and animists. Supplied just about everyone with a grudge against the Israelis. The Saudi’s loathe him because he’s from the wrong islamic sect. In short he has a lot of ill will directed his way.
The AQ element of the rebels have their ideological hatred for him. Many Syrians oppose him for the same reasons a lot of Iraqis hated Saddam and will fight to remove him.
Chuck in Russias frantic efforts to retain its only naval base in the Med and you have a huge quagmire! We could even note that it appears Putin is supplying both sides with arms. If you note most of the arms the rebels have are new, the AKs are fresh out of the box as are the RPGs. The Avomet Kalasnikov stamps and stickers are clearly visible and the stocks completly unmarked. So unless we are meant to believe that Putin’s FSB is so incompetent that they don’t notice the export od some 30,000 rifle and thousands of RPGs one can only conclude Putin is hedging his bets as well as working on his retirement fund ( a 401AK perhaps).
Then you have the Israelis who are saying as little as possible because despite the antipathy between the Assad regime and themselves, there is no doubt that they have no desire to seea well armed bunch of islamist fundamentalists as their neighbours.
All the above though give us no real reason for joining in other perhaps than americas desire to give Irans proxy a bloody nose. Quite frankly if we leave them alone they are quite capable of doing that to themselves anyhow.
Hey Trean any chance Russia will deploy its own destroyers to the Med, and challenge ours?
Remember the Yom Kippur war. The Russians threatened to put boots on the ground to aid the Egyptians and the Syrians. Your lot ( assuming you are American) upped the defcon alert and started loading the bombers and missiles. The Russians baulked and backed down. Putin is a pussy cat in comparison and his actions always follow what is good for Russia.
Its not a tactic that would work with the Islamics. If you believe in martyrdom, brinkmanship always leaves you in front!
Plus unlike the old politburo Putin actually depends on votes, dead troops or sailors is not a vote winner especially protecting any islamic nation. Chechenya, Afghanistan and things like Beslan have made the Russian people somewhat prejudiced!
I also suspect that Putin knows that his navy would struggle to match yours. Jane’s give extensive analysis of the two sides and the Russian navy does not fare well.
But then that assumes someone would be dumb enough to start a shooting war.
Ya I’m American, and a Navy Vet. In my time we always figured the Russian Navy as a pretty good match for ours. Of course, back then, there were no women on warships, and open homosexuality was not tolerated.
One point I would disagree with you on is that Putin is a pussycat. I think he is a pretty tough guy; at least that’s the image he likes to portray. However, I watched closely the news reports when Russia invaded Georgia 4 or 5 summers ago, and wasn’t to impressed with the Russian Army. It seemed undisciplined.Some of the soldiers interviewed by BBC were obviously drunk, others were disheveled with unbuttoned tunics and in t shirts, others were not wearing their helmets in a combat zone. Having said that, I’d never underestimate the effectiveness of the Russian Army and Navy. Hitler and Napoleon found that out the hard way.
–BRH
Gotta disagree with you there. Compared to the old guard of the politburo Putin is a pussy cat. Look up operation Lentil. Stalin’s dealings with the chechens demonstrate the difference.
The soviet navy suffers from the same problems of alcoholism, coupled with poor maintenance, training and budgets that have been severely limited for 20 years.
Economically the Russian economy needs an oil price of over $100 a barrel to balence the books. They must sit back and laugh at all these shenanigns driving up the price.
The Russians were smart to make an alliance with the Shia. We are using terrorists to try and overthrow them. Bizarre. The Shia are much less vicious than these Sunni terrorists.
While I’m here waiting for economic collapse in Sept., or no later that Halloween at least, I hear on the local news this morning that housing starts so far this year in CT exceed any year in the past 20, and that a self driving car, one that you just ride in and do whatever, is right around the corner. But then WTI Crude is approaching $110 per barrel, and WW3 is getting ready to break out over Syria.
–BRH
Yes, but those self-driving, personal conveyance pods will be electric, so no problem on that score, right? 😉
Yeah, regarding Kerry, chemical weapons, and Syria. Exactly WHO (WHOM?) is this big PR show designed to impress. “They” say that US news is strictly for a US audience, but damn
Even the French and the Brits seem to want to attack Syria.
And not to accomplish any long-term goal, but just to “punish” those Syrians – whichever Syrians are actually guilty.
So, over the objections of the Chinese and the Russians, we are going to kill a bunch of Syrians to punish Syrians for – wait for it –
killing a bunch of Syrians.
Just 87 years ’till a new century.
This one’s not making sense, so far.
Why Should Chemical Weapons Be A Red Line?
Does it really matter what kind of weapon is used to commit mass murders?
90% of inter-racial crime in America is Black on White. Rape? Far, far more than 90%. And remember, Hispanics are considered White for these statistics. But as victims they get their own category. White are not attacking Blacks 10% of the time in other words. Most of that is Hispanic.
http://www.amren.com/news/2013/08/a-discussion-on-race-crime-and-the-inconvenient-facts/
It’s all comin’ down. Maybe Yellowstone. Maybe Aliens. Maybe Blacks. Maybe Nukes. Maybe Feds. Maybe some or all of them. Get out of the Cities. Flee to the Fields you fools.
http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/bracken-alas-brave-new-babylon/#comments
Chris Martenson seems to agree with JHK about a “market correction” coming very soon.
Some bullet points:
** A crisis rooted in too much debt cannot be ‘solved’ by creating more debt.
** Prosperity cannot be printed out of thin air.
** Rigged systems and markets destroy trust.
** Nothing can grow exponentially forever, except for the number of zeros printed on your currency.
(Article from two days past.)
http://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/82748/periphery-failing
When you try to come to grips with the American psyche , from the position of reality, you soon realize it’s an elusive exercise. The psyche is of such a high entropy state ,that it’s anxiety ,rage and excitations can only spiral into a dark vortex .
You can see this state expressed in the nature of it’s economy. Difficult to imagine a higher entropy way of distributing goods and services and now omg the fast food service workers want a living wage. As the pseudo-system becomes undone even chaos theory can’t predict whether it goes into manic inflation or catatonic depression.High entropy feeds on itself, hating rational order ,peace joy and life. You can palpate the excitement amongst the members of the military industrial complex as they get ready to shock and awe.
Bob,
You always give me a new/different perspective on our various quandries. So I have to say thank you, although sometimes it may lead to the darker rooms of our imaginings.
(I have to admit that my mouth dropped open when witnessing the absurdity of fast-food workers demanding the right to organize, at the EROEI moment when that mode of ’employment’ is about to come to an abrupt end.)
The nervousness out there is palpable and epochal. Not only is everyone waiting for some other shoe to drop after Labor Day; they’re waiting for it to drop on their own heads. The most visible result, I think, will be a shocking flight into precious metals, of which there is precious little to meet the kind of demand soon to overwhelm that teeny-weeny market corner of the financial universe.
yeah, right, *everyone* is *just waiting* for the hypothetical other shoe to drop. in truth, virtually *no one* is *waiting* for anything except their triple burger and fat-ass fries.
let’s see if jhk’s oh-so-vaunated ability to presage events works out this time – via the massive flight into gold and silver – or if he remains 1 for 245 at the prediction plate.
kunstler always makes the mistake of thinking his prescient ‘analysis’ is anything other than just him wanking off to his own vocabulary and know-it-all attitude.
that’s all it is. he reminds me of guys with 3 phd’s that can’t do much in the real world, because they’re stuck in their own academian constructs.
world’s pretty fine and getting along just nicely, exports surging, everyone eating aplenty, travelling galore, and basically laughing at charlatans like jhk with their mayan calendars.
peace peaceniks
Chris Martenson seems to agree with JHK about a “market correction” coming very soon.
let us in on the secret of what ‘very soon’ means. i love these guys that say the market might go up, down, or hold steady, somehow they’re always so prescient.
also, what precisely, in terms of %, is a “correction”?
jeez, what soothsayers martenson and jhk are, where do i subscribe to their newsletters, now that the DOW has sunk to 4,000
‘soon’ (as in 2009, according to jhk), vindicating their predictions?
martenson/jhk/prechter= the 99 cent losers’ bin at B&N.
peace peaceniks
90% of inter-racial crime in America is Black on White. Rape? Far, far more than 90%.
Vlad, you’re one of the few commenters that speak mostly the truth, I will come and stay at your place in Idaho for a few weeks & we’ll pow wow, I want to listen to what you have to say, you remind me so of my very old friend Jules G. (are you he?)
You and my man Asoka, whom I sometimes castigate, despite which we remain brothers.
peace peaceniks
No soy Jules G. But thank you. Asoka doesn’t exist though.
Yessiree!
It’s all booming along just peachy in the great unrecovery. Why worry?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/16/mcdonalds-walmart-low-income-shoppers_n_3765489.html
Oopsie. I don’t think losing your customer base while having your workers demand a living wage would have a thing to do with your company’s bottom line, do you? (Appearances are everything today, so if we just have ‘confidence’ in the brand name, the stock should hold its’ value just fine; no problame-oh!)
“Workers are not doing well,” said Elizabeth Ashack, an economist at the BLS. “They’re losing ground because wages are not growing in real terms.”
Well, chris-christie, ‘Liz, ya THINK??? I kinda doubt you’re living in a shack…
(Thanks for stating the stunningly obvious though. We do appreciate it.)
americans put massive effort into, and are highly successful at, being uneducated, uninformed and lacking in sought-after skills, which translates into unemployability and low-wage, dead-end jobs.
lots of foreigners put massive effort into, and are wildly successful at, being educated, informed and replete with sought-after skills, which translates into high desirability on the job market and high-paying, great careers.
it’s baked in the culture & discipline.
“all generalizations are useless, including this one” – O. Wilde?
If Cash Is King Then Credit Is God
http://chartistfriendfrompittsburgh.blogspot.com/2013/08/if-cash-is-king-then-credit-is-god.html
CF,
Thanks for the link to your blog page.
I can understand a few of the charts, but Q. would find these especially fascinating I think.
Some great quotes on the Syrian crisis. We are taking sides in a thousand year old war between the Sunnis and the Shia. The Shia, correctly, make no distinction between Israel and the United States. They promise an immediate attack on Israel and terror brought to the United States. Is it really worth it folks? My favorite quote is from Dennis Kuchinic, “So what are we Al Qaeda’s air force now?”
http://www.wvwnews.net/content/index.php?/news_story/25_quotes_about_the_coming_war_with_syria_that_every_american_should_see.html
Some writer at Forbes says http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/08/30/if-the-nsa-really-let-edward-snowden-do-this-then-someone-needs-to-be-fired/
“fired.” “Fired?” THAT’S the worst thing they can think of for the $50 Billion NSA data fuck-up?
Jeeze!
So, the Forbes article may be a little weak, but some of the comments are fascinating. It’s like a nest of former and present sysadmins were asked to state their opinions and offer solutions.
And one of the commenters raised a very salient point, as follows:
(We, US citizens should be)…”even more concerned about the NSA data collection for a reason not yet heard: the fact that no data is ever 100% secure from malicious code or bad act.”
======================
Speaking of system security, I got a nice little email from JHK himself, a couple of days ago.
Did anyone else get one of those?
I feel especially *special*, getting a personal response from *THE MAN*. I’m essentially banned, but not quite yet. One must admit (JHK), tho, that 15 poasts in 48 hours is much bettah than 300 *HIJACKED* in 36 hours [sigh]…
He wields a heavy hammer – I mean, I get why he deleted me – but everyone else in *proximity*? I’m sure that doesn’t leave a warm/fuzzy…
As I already said (deleted?), this Syria affair is a farce. Pretenders with drone bombs that take out 10 civies for every target (accepted collateral rate) are looking for *NEW* destinations. And the “Disclosure Project” is completely legitimate, whether *YOU* delete my poast (and all surrounding it) or not.
Those Syrian chemical weapons are the same ones we gave to Iraq/Syria back in the late 70’s – no wonder they didn’t kill everyone (exponential decay)…
And as I also pondered, I suspect we’re already beyond 8 million acres burned in forest fires this year – surpassing the *WORLD RECORD* last year of 8 million acres burned. WHAT GLOBAL WARMING?!?
As a final spooge in *MY* face – check out PCR’s poast about ’60’s 6-8MPG guzzler autos – he knows JHK rippin’, and slaps him in the face (two-tone pastels)…
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/29/20234171-snowden-impersonated-nsa-officials-sources-say
More fascinating comments to a relatively goofy news article.
Our Government is going into major damage control mode!
I begin to wonder if the Syria brewhaha* is part of all this.
Interesting times, indeed.
*And that’s not how you spell it, I know. I’m just trying to wake up Q.
Surely JHK didn’t tell you to stop spell and grammar-checking, Q.
That would just not be write, IMO.
Does anymone know of any very short courses (like 6 months?) that I can take that would allow me to become certified as a Chiropractor? I weekend seminar in Las Vagas would be ideal. Thanks.
Pucker,
Most of what we see now as ‘official policy’ is either utter madness or just slightly crazy. I believe it’s what happens when profitability is serviced above all else. We now know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.
Your descriptor of “Psychic Collapse” rings true.
As it continues to spread through what’s left of this society, will New Yorkers finally have had enough Bloomberg for a lifetime and let the Mafia take its’ rightful place as the arbiters of trade and politics? (That’s how a certain fictional Albany played out, a la JHK.)
As regards Syria, I guess 10 years is now considered the distant past. The exact same playbook has been pulled off the dusty shelf, marked “Iraq”, while official pronouncements deny that such a thing has occurred. “Gassed his own people”, sounds vaguely familiar. John Kerry is now the mouthpiece of a higher morality of killing people to expunge the killing of people; the means are different, so I guess that’s okay.
Crazy much?
One aspect of this whole mess that is extremely important is what will Congress do? We are supposed to have three branches of government. If Obama goes ahead and attacks Syria, how does he do it? Does he give advance notice to Congress and risk a leak? Or does he just order a military action and then notify Congress?
How a decision is carried out, whether to go forward or not, determines the future course of our very governmental structure. Will Congress become entirely irrelevant or not? Will the Executive Branch lose a lot of power? We’ve already become a joke on the world stage. Hoe does that affect our future?
Beans,
Did you hear the justification speech by Mr. Obama today?
Listening between the bromides and assurances, I heard that he’s going to order an attack at whatever time of his choosing (he’s had a lot of practice with that from the droning of ‘our enemies’), but he’ll politely request the approval of Congress first. (“Constitutional democracy” and all that pretended shit.)
…Then he’ll concede to the men behind the cash registers of the MIC and do it anyway, whether he gets approval or not.
Lawyers are busy cobbling together just the right “legalities” to bomb the hell out of some helpless populations as we chow our burgers, dogs and ‘tater salad. (Don’t forget the Frito-Lay products, or your pic-a-nic will be an abject failure.)
Suspicious me, I wondered [squinty-eyed] why they’re pulling this shit (excuse me, “limited engagement”) on the ‘Murkin people on the weekend of celebrating the [former] workers of the greatest nation the world has ever known.
I hope the arm-twisting and the actual votes of our duly-elected congress persons will be public knowledge. I want to know who’s on board with this insanity of destabilization of the entire Middle East. Gawrsh, I can’t guess why “they hate us”.
Ps. Future? We can’t handle the future.
If this goes down, we’re headed into one hell of a mess! (Or maybe it’s cover for the hell of a mess that our representatives already full well know is coming. Economic collapse, closely followed by “psychic collapse”.)
Has anyone noted the scarcity of ammunition these days? Now just why would that be/
O3, do you think Obama would attack Syria if CONgress doesn’t vote for it? If so, he’s going all-in on this one. Or maybe another Syrian “incident” occurs, allowing him to attack. As of now, I think Congress will ok an attack, for obvious reasons. If I’m wrong, things will get mighty interesting.
I was in the Bass Pro Shop at Patriot Place in Foxboro this afternoon, and the ammo shelves looked pretty empty to me, except for shotgun slugs and buckshot. I was looking for 357 mag ammo. There were a few cases, but not much more. What got me, though, was the ammo cost over a buck a round. WTF? Have I been asleep the past eight or ten months? Gee, I wonder why the price has gotten so high.
PCRoberts:
“Obama’s destruction of US credibility goes far beyond diplomacy. It is likely that this autumn or winter, and almost certainly in 2014, the US will face severe economic crisis.
The long-term abuse of the US dollar’s reserve currency role by the Federal Reserve and US Treasury, the never-ending issuance of new debt and printing of dollars to finance it, the focus of US economic policy on bailing out the “banks too big to fail” regardless of the adverse impact on domestic and world economies and holders of US Treasury debt, the awaiting political crisis of the unresolved deficit and debt ceiling limit that will greet Congress’ return to Washington in September, collapsing job opportunities and a sinking economy all together present the government in Washington with a crisis that is too large for the available intelligence, knowledge, and courage to master.”
This is all referenced inside an article pointing to the dangerous path the President is treading toward Syria! (And I’ve not yet gotten to the week’s podcast with Michael Klare! Man oh man, things are tilting to the seriously clusterfuckian at an accelerating pace… train wreck ahead.)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36036.htm
Bill,
I’m really not sure if Obama would go ahead without approval, I was just a bit freaked about his certainty that HE was going ahead. But I hearken back to Clinton’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Yugoslavia, and he managed to step around precedent to ‘git ‘er done’ all nice and legal-like.
(Those who supply the world with weapons would sure love to see this ramp up to a big payday, without doubt. Maybe we’ll get to see who the POTUS works for, after all is said and done.)
As to this:
“I was in the Bass Pro Shop at Patriot Place in Foxboro this afternoon, and the ammo shelves looked pretty empty to me, except for shotgun slugs and buckshot. I was looking for 357 mag ammo. There were a few cases, but not much more. What got me, though, was the ammo cost over a buck a round. WTF? Have I been asleep the past eight or ten months? Gee, I wonder why the price has gotten so high.”
You can’t say JHK and some here didn’t try and warn you.
What are the most tragic words in the English language? — too late
(Buy some buckshot anyhoo = trade item, or [soonish] get an expensive club in which to insert them.)
Ammo? For what? Are you afraid of Blacks? I don’t blame you and no one here will judge you for it. It’s prudent.
Just being cautious – of every group, not just Blacks.
Yeah O, As I was saying on another blog:
Being There
September 1, 2013 at 11:49 am
Yes, what we’re looking at here is a strange new form of global fascism or inverted communism. It’s all about making the world safe for McDonald’s and at the same time syphoning money to the monopolistic transnational private contractors who are the real winners of these wars. Just in case you’re wondering why it doesn’t matter whether we win or lose…..
Yes, we lose our jobs, get reamed by the non-existent inflation and huge medical prices and yet we are expected to be the consumers of last resort. All the surveillence we are enduring by the NSA is mainly going to the corporations and banks……
I seriously doubt our presidents have much say in the giant game of Risk. I think they are there to do the Orwellian dance we all watch with shock and amazement at how crazy these decisions are.
As you all know…My favorite Orwell quote of 1946:
We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
—-Orwell said it best. Our economic and military model is a sham–used to redistribute wealth the world-over.
Syria? Who cares about that? (Although you have to feel for those sailors aboard the 5 DDGs on station in the eastern Med, steaming in concentric circles, waiting for word to launch their payloads. Its got to be monotonous.) No, the big news today is Johnny Football Manzell having to sit out the 1st half against Rice, and coming in to throw 3 TD passes in the 2nd half. Then he got kicked out of the game for taunting opposing players. Now that’s a character! We love following the crazy antics of this young Heisman Trophy Winner. We never know what he’ll do next.
I notice the 100,000 or so fans at the Temple-Notre Dame game looked well fed, well dressed, and having fun. Nobody seems too concerned with ‘the scramble for the World’s Remaining Resources’. At the end of August the air is thick and heavy over the land, summers’s last throw. September starts tomorrow, the month when it all falls apart, when the dollar becomes worthless, when we’ll hear gunfire in the streets. Not just Jim is saying this; even mainstream pundits have made similar claims. As for myself I’ll be laying low and staying close to home, keeping my ears and eyes open, awaiting events, and resting up before I have to rake 2 acres of maple and oak leaves starting around Oct. 1.
BRH
I suspect there’s plenty of ammo in these United States to go around.
The problem, of course, is that it’s hard to buy more.
When I go to the local Wal-Mart (which is about the only general merchandise game-in-town within 20 miles of my house) I always ease my way through sporting goods. They are now having AR-15’s stay in stock almost continuously, at $1200/copy. But I haven’t seen a box of .223, there, since right after the Newtown shooting. I’m not sure what meaning this has – but it does have some.
Way more than once – I have found that standing in front of the ammo case at Wal-Mart is as good as standing around the proverbial water cooler -for hearing things.
So, I’m standing there Thursday afternoon, gazing at overpriced, oddball ammo in sizes that won’t fit any of my weapons, when another guy sidles up.
“I don’t know when we’ll ever see a 500 round box of ,22 hollow point again,” I say to him and the glass.
“On-line,” he says
And that’s all he says.
And we both go our separate ways. But this has meaning.
Yes, but what’s the meaning? I suspect you mean that the demand for ammo is so high that one can only get the stuff online. There’s more to it than that. If you want anything, you have a better chance of getting it online. One can see it in holiday shopping, where there have been ever increasing online sales for the past four years and Cyber Monday is now as big a deal as Black Friday.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2012/11/cyber-monday-forecast-and-black-friday.html
As a humorous way of addressing your point about firearms, do you know you really can put a gun rack in a Volt?
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2012/02/newt-gingrich-on-volts-and-gun-racks.html
Speaking of resilience, or independence, or survival, or something.
Here’s part of a Facebook post from the Sheriff in the county right over the ridge from mine:
“Remarking on “worrisome times,” Sheriff Stacy Nicholson of Georgia’s Gilmer County wrote on Facebook earlier this year that “I, along with a large number (which is growing daily) of Sheriffs across the state of Georgia as well as the entire United States, have no intention of following any orders of the federal government to perform any act which would be considered to be unlawful or a VIOLATION OF ANY PART OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OR THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF GEORGIA, nor will we permit it to be done if within our power to prevent it.””
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2013/0831/Mississippi-indictment-highlights-pitfalls-of-power-for-sheriffs
Interesting times?
We’ll see.
Hey P2C, along those same lines … last week Obama issues an Executive Order banning re importation of Military Rifles which had been given to allied foreign governments in past conflicts. Almost immediately Senator Dick Blumenthal D CT hailed it as some great move that will ‘save lives’. Most of these guns were old Springfield 03s, Krags, and Garands, good shooters but collectors items, guns never used in crimes. What’s going to happen now is that the Civilian Marksmanship Program, which dates back to President Teddy Roosevelt, will have to be cancelled, because these were the type of guns the program relied on.
–BRH
I thought the Civilian Marksmanship Program pretty much relied on .22LR for obvious reasons of economy. I have seen some resold government model (no-frills, cheap wood) Coopers online.
The Civilian Marksmanship Program is a quaint memory anymore. I had the benefit of it growing up in Western Pennsylvania when firearms training was pretty much just that and airsoft and computer gaming weren’t competing.
Most of the old bulk resold military rifles lately have been ancient Mosin Nagants with metric calibers, not M1 Garands.
It’s now the Appleseed project.
It would be more interesting if the Sheriff could apply his statement to something going on right now. What is the Federal Government asking him or could ask him and others to do that would be in conflict with the Constitutions. What exactly is their scope of “power”? They aren’t a legislative body, they just enforce laws. So, in essence, he is stating he would not enforce certain orders from the Fed or his State Government. He is stating he works for “the people” of Georgia first and “the people” of the United States second.
How does he feel about immigration laws and asking certain people for proof of citizenship?
How does GA deal with concealed weapons?
Should a Sheriff use Facebook to speak in an official capacity?
Or
should Sheriffs only use specific official channels of communication with the public advisable by the District Attorney’s Office?
Are there National Associations for Sheriffs as well as for Mayors?
Wow. I just tried to find Q’s post where he quoted an email from JHK.
It’s gone.*
So – I just deleted the post I was working up.
Interesting times here at CFN, too.
*Or maybe I just couldn’t find it because of the way these comments are now paginated. Is that by design, to curtail conversations here?
Take care, folks.
I’m going outside.
2 more people shot to death on the streets of Hartford this week, not with WW1 Springfields, but with stolen handguns. There is some kind of drug turf war going on down there, and the bodies are piling up. The main currency that funds the war is the value of Food stamps, now called SNAP cards. Our state cities have a program that gives all kids 18 and under free breakfast, lunch and dinner, 365 days per year. Parents in Hartford do not have feed their own children. The Govt. does it for them. So food stamp value is excessive wealth, to be use on such commodities as Heroine, Crack Cocaine, Marijuana and illegal handguns, and sneakers (which people have been killed over).
BRH
Makes sense to me. Crack, heroin and weed make for great barter items in bad times. And who doesn’t have a need for a handgun on the mean streets? In this current era, federal reserve notes are no longer the only currency game in town. Is this a preview of the future?
Tweeker
BTW, no one has commented on the recent absence of Carol, Janet, et al. Procon, I would have thought you, at least, would ecstatically note this. Perhaps they are on vacation during the Labor Day season. After all, everyone needs a paid vacation from time to time. Will they (it) come back after the weekend ready to go with a renewed vigor?
I miss ’em, Bill.
GOOD RIDDANCE!!! (Let’s be *totally* honest)
It’s one thing to be intelligent, it’s another thing to be intelligent and disturbing. I have to say it’s a bit disturbing to read most of the comments; however intelligently delivered, between the two. It got too personal for one thing. Having 300 plus posts a week by only a few individuals is simply ridiculous. They seem to forget this place is about JHK and his writings and opinions and NOT theirs or ours. Sure, we can explain our stand but it doesn’t take 300 posts every week; spells “obsession” and a lack of self control.
Also, I think it’s bad form for posters to promote their blogs on someone elses blog without the initial bloggers consent. To me, that is as annoying as posting “first!”. All this stuff reflects the tendency of all INTERNET communications to become a competition for attention instead of a public progressive conversation. If you comment, you acknowledge you’re on someone elses public property or doorstep and should conduct yourself accordingly. This is not a place to paste links in order to divert the conversation elsewhere. A simple citation is sufficient.
I still believe most publications are meant for reading and not public comment. People need time to digest and ruminate on ideas to which they might not have previously been exposed. Obviously, if one disagrees with something written, they should discard it or write a letter to the editor. It’s up to the editor to include those negative comments or criticisms in the original publication. Comment sections create a lot more work for the blogger. So they have the option to leave it out.
Really, most people only care about or give serious attention to what a handful of people (professional peers, sponsors and wealthy patrons) have to say about their work. I fall into neither of those categories.
Come up *SCREAMING*!!! Oh, poor ol’ St Claire bit his *NUTZ*…I’m too tired for this *SH!* Sunday PM (15 in an hour?).
Your (i’m) banned for sure. Why? How could you do that to all *surrounding*. (DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME)… Sad and *SICK* facts R just that – we can’t really turn back the *HANDS OF TIME*…I’ll leave you all with the following (since I’m *BANNED*)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu2_CxKrhVU
OMG you din’t *DELETE*?!~? Hehe, nice *CONCERT*.
In *STEELTWN*…
OMG you deleted it all but *THIS*!!! nice *concert*!!!
OMG – *LOST PASSWORD* – killer!!!
Hah! the *PENULTIMATE* placeholder?!… Last weeks blog got a 2nd re-read – best *EVAH*!!!
What else is there? Farmland. Les vaches. Les oeufs.
Hahaha Cows and eggs – Comment dit *PIGS* en francais…
“BTW, no one has commented on the recent absence of Carol, Janet, et al. Procon, I would have thought you, at least, would ecstatically note this.” – beantownbill –
I would have, Bill, but I received an email from JHK specifically asking that no further reference be made to the primary CFN Troll.
JHK even mentioned this poster by name – using the handle that that poster used to identify himself for over three years on CFN.
So, I’ve assumed that poster has been permanently banned,by some mechanism.
As to what will happen if that poster resumes Trolling under a new handle and (presumably) a new email login – that remains to be seen.
Also uncertain is the relationship (if any) between JHK and the aforementioned poster. Very interesting, eh?
Ahahaha! *NICE*!!!
“Having 300 plus posts a week by only a few individuals is simply ridiculous. They seem to forget this place is about JHK and his writings and opinions and NOT theirs or ours.” – “karah” –
That’s hard to argue with, especially if the primary thrust of those 300 posts is to negate or belittle JHK’s body of work – and those who happen to enjoy it or agree with it.
I’ll disagree with you about comment threads, personally I find reading them very rewarding – adding understanding about how different minds engage with the same story in different ways.
And I’ll also disagree with you when you say,”most people only care about or give serious attention to what a handful of people (professional peers, sponsors and wealthy patrons) have to say about their work.” This may be true for research writers or academics, but somehow I suspect that writers for popular culture need to consider how their real readers feel.
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In his email to me, JHK also said not to “quarrel.”
I’m still not sure how to stay off of that slope.
Peak Oil wasn’t popular when JHK started writing about it.
Peak Oil is currently unpopular and will continue to be unpopular.
Peak Oil and all the ramifications outlined by JHK and obviously apparent in the world (including Main St. U.S.A.) is very unpopular.
The “real people” consensus continues to be that America will continue finding progressive ways to survive on recycled peanut oil and beer cans while the rest of the world implodes on themselves.
What are “real readers” anyway? Is that like “real fans”?
Do we have to be “fans” about intellectual bodies of work?
JHK is not proposing a system of beliefs, he’s publishing news outside the mainstream media like the social conscious, clear headed, articulate and humorous journalist he is!
And I don’t see the problem with links to people’s personal blogs, as long as they are somewhat “peak” related.
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And my post about sheriffs was intended to pose the idea that the sheriff-based system of law enforcement might (in some areas) arrest the slide into total anarchy that some feel inevitable in the case of TEOTWAWKI.
And the sheriff I referenced is probably most concerned about 2nd amendment issues – at least for now and in public.
In reply to Janos. You are very wrong. Chemical weapons can be devestatingly effective. The Marsh Arabs as well as thousands of Iranian troops could testify ,they were alive that is.
Out of all the Iranian casualities in the Iran Iraq some 5 to 8 per cent were caused by the use of gas!
In WW2 the Germans despite having developed nerve agents, mainly by IG Farben, never used them because German intelligence wrongly believed that the British had also developed them. They feared the retaliation, with good reason. In 1943 the USS John Harvey was bombed whilst in the Italian port of Bari. It was loaded with mustard gas ready for use in retaliation should the germans use theirs. There were thousands of casualties with out even allowing for the Italian civilians who were never officially counted.
By Goerings own admission they did not use the stocks they had on the Atlantic wall on DDay because and only because the German army relied heavily on horse transport. Despite their best efforts they had been unable to develop a gas mask for horses that allowed sufficent air through for the horse to work whilst wearing it.
Hundreds of tons of Gas Blau were found around the supply areas of the Atlantic wall along with the equipment to deploy it.
The Germans did deploy gas at the battle of Kerch in the Crimea. There were thousands of dead .
I would not advise to do anything like that by yourself; instead, ask a therapist for advice, as this is a grave case. I was in treatment before and I know that professional assistance needs to be sought. You will help and advise you on what you can do best. Among other things, it was hard for me to focus. All worked through psychologists; I couldn’t find it difficult to communicate on line with a Individual Therapy and I am grateful. Now, even when you’re home, you can get help because this is your only chance. I’m hoping I could help somebody.