The truest shit there is

Simply because this cuts so deeply to the heart of the present predicament of the undertrodden masses, it must be reiterated here:

The competition for jobs at the top is becoming intense. This is not going to change. It is a permanent condition. The era of sustained long-term economic growth relied on private capital. The governments of the world are now competing for this money. There is no way that the private sector will be able to compete with governments. They promise safety. They pay whatever interest rate they must to roll over their debts. Then their central banks intervene and buy.

Capital formation is the source of private-sector jobs. With percentage decreases in private capital formation, good jobs will become increasingly scarce. 

This creates a career roadblock to anyone wanting to move up. It creates an even bigger roadblock to anyone who has lost his job and who wants to keep both his career and his salary. 

When you are fired, you are stigmatized. You are regarded as a loser. This should not be the case, but it is. The person who is seeking a job after being fired is considered to be defective goods. To get a similar job, unless you have personal contacts in the hiring firm, you will have to take a pay cut. Employers are trying to save money. They will not pay a newly hired person what his predecessor was paid. They know they don't have to. The firm will use that money elsewhere in the system.

It is a matter of the division of labor. He who has money has the most marketable commodity. A firm has money. A laid off worker doesn't. The worker wants to exchange a less marketable asset -- specialized labor -- for the most marketable commodity: money. In this competition, money talks. The person offering money can offer less than before because of the intensity of competition for money by workers.

Your #1 safety net is your job. That net is being tattered by the rise in unemployment.

Mass impoverishment, here we come. I will list the various problems related to the rise of tombuckery and other gangsta lifestyles which follow from this in a future post.

Suction vortice

Public sector employees like to believe that they are integral parts of the economy, that they deliver "services" which are vital to society, that they comprise an important part of the larger economy, albeit the "public sector" component.

It helps the tortured psyche to believe the lie, for self preservation purposes if anything. The convenient delusion works to uplift self-esteem, to assist in momentarily hiding from the fact that they are participants in a monstrous criminal endeavor.

But what value is gained by that person who "works" in the employ of the State, who "earns" a salary performing "productive" labor for the "benefit" of the "public interest"?

Lots of euphemisms there, eh?

In truth, the public employee is no better than the welfare sow, mouth clinging firmly to the State trough, though far more lavishly compensated, comparatively speaking, for his "service" to the State. His salary constitutes an unproductive drain on productive persons and labor, drained from morally proper purposes through the legalized robbery of tax extraction to be put to use for morally nefarious ends. His labor is hardly productive - insulated from competition and the profit motive, the work of a public employee can hardly be described as arduous. To suck at the teat of the State does not constitute "earning a living."

And hardly is there benefit from all of this. Indeed, the overfed, indulged State bureaucRAT is the bovine colossus upon which many a productive venture is dashed, broken by the inane and arcane errata of mindless State regulation and other means by which the looter gang conspire to obtain their take of the profits of productive effort.

It goes without saying that no public interest is served, if indeed there can be said that a "public interest" even exists.

Indeed, if the public interest is defined by its most common understanding - the greatest good for the greatest number - what better means to satisfy this demand other than the goodness of unfettered, unrestrained, laissez-faire capitalism and free markets?

But don't tell Bernanke-bot this. His program might encounter a forbidden fatal error if these words of mortal truth pass his ears.

On the other hand, never mind.

Game over, Chrysler

Chrysler Corporation is now officially finished. The decades of sloth, complacency, mismanagement, and government bailouts have finally collapsed upon their heads like a house of cards. Hooray!

I wish this was the end of it. But this bankruptcy is not a liquidation as it should be, but a "reorganization" in favor of, as anticipated, the fatted interests. By the way, do not believe the government shuck and jive about this being a "surgical" bankruptcy that will take a month or two. These type of things never last that mercifully brief.

In any case, whether Chrysler survives or not for the short term (in the long term, it's finished no matter what), the game is up for them. As a functional, living part of a free economy, they are finished. They will no longer resemble anything appearing a private company - now the looters are running the show. Decisions will now be made by political functionaries for political reasons alone - no concessions to supply and demand here. The company now exists insofar as precious drops of wealth can be extracted and squeezed from its carcass for the benefit of the clinging parasites that leech from the dying corpse.

The ownership breakdown will be 30% private (Fiat), 10% State (USA and Canadian governments), and 50% band of looters backed by State guns (United Auto Workers) - a match made in heaven by parasites for parasites.

The manufacturing and sale of automobiles is now officially merely a sideline to supporting the suction of wealth down these parasites' reptilian throats. If auto sales cannot support this (which they will not), Joe Taxpayer will be called to cover any deficits between revenues and the parasites' required "standard of living."

We used to call this welfare. The Soviets made this sort of arrangement the basis of their economy and society. Now it's termed "restoring prosperity." In either case, it can only end in mass death and chaos.

It is Amerika's last gasp. These are the end of days. And as predicted, BO is the agent which has pushed a once proud civilization over the precipice.

History will not look upon this dark age kindly.

Just say no to the housing cult

Everywhere I go I have people telling me (including, most annoyingly, nearly all members of my family), "You really need to buy a house to-day!!" "Interest rates are lower than ever!" "Housing is a great investment!"

So far I have resisted their exhortations. Why, you ask? "You're missing out on a lifetime of gains by throwing your money away renting!" they declare - even after they have watched their net worth (mostly tied up in their homes) plummet dramatically, putting all their retirement plans to pot.

Gotta love baby boomers. They just can't deattach themselves from the orgy of overextension and moral gluttony that has produced this current crisis of civilization, and is sure yet to lead to much excess death.

No, sirrah, I have my reasons for staying as far from that turkey as possible. Purchasing a house, contrary to popular delusion, is actually a poor financial investment, and probably the most ignorant thing you can ever do with your money. To wit:

1) Precious few of us can hope to buy a non-ghetto dwelling with accumulated cash, given the wildly inflated value (still) of most real estate to-day; therefore to purchase housing we must borrow. If you are reasonably prudent (I'm not even going to mention the madness of subprime borrowing here), the standard option is to pay 20% as a down payment, and borrow the remaining 80% as a fixed 30-year mortgage.

To borrow such a sum of money for such a long period of time is sheer madness. I would carefully examine the mental comportment of anyone engaging in such an activity.

Consider. 30 years is the majority of an adult's working life. To enlist into an agreement to pay this amount over this length of time is basically making a promise to a borrower that:

- I expect that my source and level of income will remain stable and secure for three decades
- I expect that there will be no disruptions to my income
- I expect that the price of the real estate I am purchasing will retain the value of the purchase price

If you hold these assumptions, you are delusional. Between job security (or lack thereof) and the dwindling value of real estate (it doesn't always go up!) to make a promise such as this is disingenuous at best, delusional thinking at moderate, and criminal madness at worst.

Maybe some people can make this promise and be sure that they will fulfill their end of the bargain. (We call them "trust funders" in da hood.) But most working stiffs in good faith cannot do so. And so the rational of these rent, and the irrational lose their shirts when the housing market catches cold.

I shed no tears. They have been warned.

2) Real estate investment is not a sure bet. Read your local business page for details.

In truth, the rate of housing appreciation has always tracked inflation over time. Some great investment there.

3) I prefer not to be a slave to a bank for thirty years. A rental contract is much more short term (one year on average, give or take) and thus can be exited far more easily if you happen to experience income flow problems.

This applies not only to mortgages, but other long term debt such as auto loans and revolving credit. If I had to borrow, I would only string out payments for a year at maximum.

4) Closing costs - an excuse to burn currency if there ever was any. Gotta love the real estate industry, another parasite "profession" if there ever was any.

5) Once a home is purchased, somehow it induces additional expenses in the form of furnishings, "improvements", and other claptrap. In short, it becomes a money sink, which you pour dollars into, only to see it sell for less than a hot dog cart in five years. Nice.

Life is capricious and harsh, and curveballs can fly at us any day that can cause us to lose everything in an instant. Take that as free friendly advice from someone who experienced firsthand this nation's greatest tropical-borne natural disaster in history.

So do not get caught up in the housing charade. To dickheads, it is all one big gamble anyway, another method of obtaining something for nothing, which as we all know is the dickhead's favorite pasttime. So RENT for now!! I know it might stink, but it's better than dealing with the quagmire of the real estate industry, which is just salivating over the prospect of separating dollars from your wallet with an exertion of mimimum to zero effort.

If you must purchase a home, do it when you have the means and ability to do so.

Or you can just wait a few months, when the vast majority of housing will be worth less than a 1989 Celica.

Hoax day

April 1 is the day on which society celebrates and perpetuates hoaxes, tricks, lies, and scams.

Oh, if hoaxes and lies were only restricted to this single day. But alas our world has been shaped by the worst of hoaxes, massive frauds against truth which portend to swallow us whole into the inferno of immolation. The hoax of the moment is an old one, but lethally dangerous for our survival, the results of which we currently witness around us as our broken society collapses upon our heads.

That hoax is fiat currency.

A "store of value" backed by a zero, a valueless and worthless nonentity of nothingness, save a feeble, empty, and ultimately false promise by our Caesars to "protect and honor" those debts incurred by legal tender.

And yet this comprises the fundamental basis of our economy.

Fiat currency is the debauched "money" of a debauched age. It is the currency of a society where the predation of man upon one's fellow man is considered normal, moral, and even smart. Whatever "wealth" it comprises is a fiction, a fantasy, prone to dissolution and evaporation in an instant out of the ether of digits from whence it came, once the hoax of the fiat currency's "stability" and "value" are exposed for the lies they are.

It leads straight into the abyss of starvation, famine, and mass death.

Without a currency which serves as a store of value, such as gold and other precious metals, there is no capital accumulation. Without capital accumulation, society may as well return to the age of sticks and stones.

It is easy, indeed, to convince the sheeple to accept wholeheartedly this fantasy world of finance, given that the natural tendency of man is to loot his brother as opposed to making his own way in the world. But when the biggest lie of all is accepted hook, line, and sinker by the majority, the powerful find that anything is possible, thus bringing their greatest elite delusions to life (at least so far as the jig can be sustained).

What is that greatest lie?

The resurrection of Christ.

For the evidence is overwhelming that He died two thousand years ago, but a conspiracy of the powerful and deluded insist that his ghost remains around us, to offer us "eternal life" after an existence of economic rape, physical drudgery, and moral bankruptcy.

Only when we accept that HE IS DEAD and in his grave, can we commence the process toward picking up the pieces of what is left in civilization's smoldering and ashen remains.

For when the greatest lies are exploded, we go a great way to reducing
tolerance for the lesser lies around us.

Amerikan madness

The emperor makes a tour of his provinces, TelePrompter in hand as always, in his brazen attempt to fool the sheeple into supporting his policies of ruin, with a carnivalesque, campaign-like appearance on late nite teevee to boot. From the looks of it, the sheeple are not pleased. (No question that this will deservedly blow up in our Leader's face. But I digress.)

Meanwhile, the central bank resorts to printing press shenanigans so brazen that even the Noo Yawk Times likens the process to creating money out of thin air (guess Krugman wasn't around to proof that article, eh?). Like the good Keynesian he is, Crazy Ben follows his knee jerk gut reaction and starts warming up the helicopters.

Soon it will be a race between the printing presses and starvation, with starvation coming out ahead, as always throughout history when the elites see fit to devour the people in a fit of moral collapse.

Well the Leader himself is even getting into the spirit. Soon we will all be digging roots to survive. A vegetable garden is just advance preparation for the scavenging time.

If BO spends about half as much time on the economy as he does being caught up in the dickhead prolefeed idiocy that is "March Madness", the country would be better off exponentially. But don't count on it. The Empire is always at the ready!

No, the only March Madness is the goings-on in Parasite City as of late.

As we bicker over tiny portions of subsidy largesse provided by our generous solons to their friends in Corporate Amerika, with the fingers therein pointed at a few irrelevant dickhead traders, millions starve as the Empire's own actions desolate what is left of the free market economy. Meanwhile, the looting commences as the first signs of civil disorder make their appearance among the bedraggled underbelly, for which empty bellies make right.

Not to mention a purely preventable and genuinely sad tragedy, likely caused by bureaucratic bungling by our medi-crat friends in the cold snowy north.

And finally, more bailout madness as new auto interests line up at the subsidy trough. (Who's next? The rental car companies???)

Gotta love how the bailout program shares the same name as the flimsy blue items which covered many homes after another State-made tragedy.

Truly the inmates are running the asylum, in this age of Amerikan madness.

If you merely sensed the chaos some months ago, it is well nigh impossible to miss it now, as it whips you broadside like a two-by-four. The sense is palpable that BO, his imperatorship only 50 days old, is already a failure. But why should you be surprised?

Rush Gasbag said of BO, "I hope he fails." I can tell you with no hesistation about BO: I know he will fail. My desire, or anyone else's, for him to fail or not to fail is entirely irrelevant in this matter. He will fail no matter what, unless he abandons everything which he supports, commits a complete turnaround, and embraces anarcho-capitalism and unfettered laissez faire in economic and all other matters.

The likelihood of that coming to pass is even less than finding life on Mars.

BO has already failed. He assumed the crown and diadem dead on arrival, a morally bankrupt and corrupt monster with only the tendency to centralize, nationalize, and destroy, lacking sanity, moral compunction, or any other genuinely human tendency save the thirst to wield power and deliver death. His erstwhile policies are anathema to life itself. To grow the State is to choose stagnation, desecration, and genocide.

See, even the allegedly evil Wal-Mart benefits the people more than the State ever could. And for that they continue to prosper (and retain my business) even in these dark times. What of BO and his cronies? Could they ever be seen to create wealth and induce productive activities in the economy through their old-school redistributionist schemes?

Darkness is our fate unless we repudiate the power elites and all their dark works. The time is riper than ever for a bloody revolution that will topple the powerful, upend the obese and overfed dickheadery, and wipe out the buffoons who presume to control our lives.

For if we choose to remain in the incapable hands of BO and friends, we are all on the late-nite express train to the mass graveyard.

Piled high and deep

The corpses, that is.

No telling how many excess deaths were assured for the future as Our Imperator affixed his Imperial seal to the Stimulus of Abominations to-day, while upon one of his tours of his crumbling, decayed Empire.

Like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of an earlier dark age, this will be remembered as the straw that sealed the path toward utter destruction and ruination.

Only this time, it is certain that after nearly a century of the counterfeit fiat money regime, this go-round at sterilizing the implements of productive activity will spell the end of civilization itself.

The sheep aren't quite grazing in the Forum yet.  But millions cling to State rations, perched on the precipice of homelessness and starvation, while the implements of industry fall idle due to the dark works of morons in high places.

There is so much work to be done; yet millions are put to pasture, with the danger that now and future Leaders will mark them as "surplus population" fertilizer, good only for the killing fields, growing by the day.

The moral bankruptcy of the State ranks boundless.

Welfarism is always followed by warfarism, as the elites rush to "stimulate" the failing economy with the mass destruction of material goods, as stimuli and bailouts (even those orchestrated by our ruling men-gods) fail to work their alchemic magic.

At least one profession will be in high demand before long: undertakers.

So it will be piled high and deep indeed.

Utter ruin

Hearing the Grate One's primetime pronouncements this very minute, I am reminded of the old saying "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Indeed, fools as always are pulling the levers of power, but in this case it can only lead to mass slaughter. There can be no better definition of pure evil.

B.O. has in twenty minutes proven himself to be the most economically ignorant and illiterate Leader of all time. (Not that this wasn't expected.) Given his predecessors, that's quite some feat.

His entire programme is standard Keynesianism, the ante upped per the ramped-up level of public fascism that runs rampant to-day. The only difference now is instead of billions we speak of trillions; but the ignorant and thoughtless "pump priming" ethos remains.

This can, of course, only lead to devastation, as only the few sane people seem to be aware. If B.O. and his powerful friends think's it's bad now...don't hold your breath, as the cities rapidly begin to resemble Port-au-Prince as they degenerate into chaos.

I quote the illustrious Lew Rockwell, who always translates exactly what I am thinking into the written word far better than I could:

I am listening to Boring Barack's economic plan, and thinking that Keynesianism, shorn of mathematics and academic jargon, even sounds stupid: print trillions in paper money, bail-out loser firms and banks, spend massively on political projects, and grow rich.

There was one fun moment when Obama noted that he was shocked that some some people (get ready for the outrage) question the efficacy of FDR's New Deal, a battle he thought had been won long ago.

Nope!

Welcome back to the 1930s. The abyss of starvation and death awaits us, our justly deserved fate as a country. With the likes of B.O. at the helm, it is becoming clear to even the dullest that the corpses are sure to pile in heaps.

---

And now they are talking about a "truth and reconcilliation commission" to investigate the late Bush regime, as if this was some dictatorship or something.

Oh, wait...

But dat won't fly when all the parties in Leadership have blood on their hands. So again, don't hold your breath.

Obamanomics

All will be explained regarding the new, fresh economic policies currently emanating from the Imperial Palace - the sparkling new theory of the ages known as Obamanomics!

The tenets of Obamanomics are as follows:

• When in debt, spend yourself further into a hole.
  
• When confronted with a liquidity meltdown largely caused by the fiat currency regime, print more of said fiat currency to break the "logjam" in the credit markets.
  
• In the event of an economic crisis caused by overspending and massive government intervention, expand government intervention massively in the guise of even more overspending to cure the problem.
  
• Do as I say, not as I do.
  
• Government failures can only be solved by throwing more resources (that is, tax dollars) at the problem.
  
• Redistributing money from the private economy into the public sphere, which does not "grow" the overall pie no matter how you slice it, will "stimulate" economic growth.
  
• The most important consideration is to protect the survival of the Corporate Power. After all, they're too big to fail.
  
• If we come up short, we can just print our way into prosperity. See how successful Zimbabwe is at doing this. Virtually everyone living there is a trillionaire by now!
• Damn the inflation! Full speed ahead with the printing presses!
• Saving is to be avoided at all costs. Economic prosperity hinges on massive spending and thereby enriching the banks and credit companies by expanding debt balances.
• Protect the dickhead way of life at all costs. Thrift and restraint are unAmerikan, and thus we can never ask for this from our largest base of political support.
• Buy now, pay later - preferably after the Sun King has left office eight years from now.
• Don't worry about deficits and debt, they don't matter anymore. The working man, and his children, and his children's children's children (sorry, Justin Hayward) will foot the bill.

Gotta love this bright new theory! Zounds!

Bombs away

In about a week's time the Divine Thugocrat will undergo the sealing and anointing of ointments and oils and will assume his immortal place in the temple of the Leaders.

Meanwhile the mortar shells of public idiocy continue to fly over our heads and wreak havor on the pillars of civilized society. The Keynesian redistribution of wealth to those who clamor the loudest for subsidy and unearned benefit is operating full bore, as Our Exhalted Leaders again pursue the course of greatest economic ignorance (for of course, amongst all men, politicians have the absolute least knowledge of real economics) and engage in a massive demonstration of destroying the village in order to save it.

The economic butchery that is Keynesianism can only lead to an extension of suffering as inefficiencies in the economy are artificially propped up by bailout fiesta funds so that the dickhead class and other parasite fellow travellers may sleep in (relative) peace at night. Of course the pain is redistributed on the backs of the working man, for which the hunt for decent paying work is seemingly a fruitless pursuit of a species going rapidly extinct.

As dollars are siphoned to Corporate Amerika, overpaid corn-fed unionized auto workers, "credentialed" white collar paper pushers, and other parasites, dollars are removed from the productive economy, draining the economic engines that generate jobs, real wealth, and rising living standards for all.

The government produces no wealth of its own, extracting all of its financial "resources" via legalized extortion (taxation) and the printing press. So all bailouts accomplish is removing good money from the economy and pouring it down the proverbial black hole, propping up failing zombie firms in a mindless dash to sustain the unsustainable status quo for those who matter to those in power.

And they call this a free market economy.

Not to mention the unsustainable public debt that arises from all this. Enshrined by his divine Maker with the light of economic brilliance, B.O. calls for trillion dollar deficits until the cows come home. B.O. assumes his ordained role as the new FDR, the new purveyor of a life of ease made by State action, a soma-ruled existence of all play, no work, and removing the consequences of consuming the seed corn to some future generation.

Failure in the market is rapidly socialized as the market players which have failed refuse to own up to their mistakes, take it on the chin, and assume the losses. Again it speaks to the moral depravity in this country. Extracting something for nothing. Having no sense of dignity or responsibility for leaving the fruits of this nation in good working condition so that future generations may partake in its riches. Shirking responsibility for actions, particularly negative consequences. And most importantly, having all forgiven and the status quo restored despite epic failure on a massive scale. Because for god's sake, the privileged dickhead existence must be sustained at all costs!

But it cannot be sustained. Natural laws cannot be repealed. The laws of economics are as immutable as the laws of physics. The present course can only lead to disastrous calamity.

The morality of the sixties, of nihilism, of self-indulgence, has run its awful course. And it shall terminate, as I have always held, in a pile of corpses.

Such depravity always does. Bombs away.

Ponzi schemes and legitimizing the State

In this mad rush to "save" the markets, the implicit assumption underlying the entire process is that the "vital heart" of capitalism - to wit, the hi-finanz shenanigans that are orchestrated by the dickheads in suits on tony Wall Street - is so essential to the nation's economic viability that it must be preserved at all costs. And this is a dangerous and ultimately ignorant and criminal assumption.

For Wall Street is a Ponzi scheme, as criminal and complex as any Tom, Dick, or Madoff could concoct, where guarantees of higher payoffs are supported only if an ever widening circle of hapless folks are tricked into the scam, based on the exhortions of retirement "planners" ("The best time to prepare for retirement is now!!") and other hustlers in paper and digits. 

The average Joe the Plumber places his cash on the table of the stock market, hoping to obtain something for nothing (as most Amerikans consistently fantasize about), and usually losing out in the end. For what does he, or anyone else, really know about the market? NOTHING. Investment is gambling, plain and simple. Even a great and shrewd market player such as J.P. Morgan understood this. If the House of Morgan's money was too valuable to play with, what of the little nest egg of Joe and Jane Sixpack, trailer denizens of the heartland? 

Oh, but they're just little people. They don't count. Of course.

"Oh, but the market must always go up!" Bullshit. As people have gotten wise to the scam and billions have been removed from Wall Street's tentacles, the price of stocks logically must fall with collapsing demand - as is happening as we sit. So the Ponzi scheme is exposed and the remaining traders' shirts evaporate.

But of course we mustn't allow the dickhead class to suffer much. After all, if privilege were demonstrated to be such a tenuous thing, then the dickheadery might be exposed as the quackery and fraud that they are: a group of overcredentialed, highly overpaid people who make big bucks in the paper pushing, financial fleecing, and other productive labor-avoiding trades.

And instead of building and growing our industrial capacity, this is how we have decided to deploy "the best and the brightest" minds in the country. Such a waste.

--

Another bastion of the dickheadery is real estate. And with the fortunes of that insipid arena, too, sinking (as so much else is to-day), the dickheadery is entering a bit of a credibility crisis. 

That king of the dickheads, GWB, is on his way out (finally). More than anyone he has exposed the dickheadery's fundamental moral, intellectual, and spiritual bankruptcy - in fact maybe aired these things a little too openly, which goes a long way toward explaining why he's not so popular right now. But that's another post.

Back to real estate. Like stocks, this is the proverbial land of something for nothing, a Ponzi scheme where values increase so long as more suckers are scammed into the system, suckered without compunction into loans which even the lenders know can't, and won't, be repaid. But when wallets clasp shut and demand drops, look out! Some dickheads and their trailer class victims are now getting hosed.

Don't buy property. The rate of overall average appreciation for the long term only matches inflation. Those higher property values are illusory as your fantasy girlfriend and your pretend office job that actually doesn't exist (for all you losers out there who were such obvious easy walking targets of the real estate jihadists).

And remember that in the end, you don't actually own the land. The State does.

What's that? Come again?

You know that annual bill that you receive at the end of the year called property taxes, the only household bill which you must pay on pain of imprisonment and death?

Yeah, that's right. How does the State get away with extorting a cut of your land value each year? Simple. The implicit assumption among all parties is that all land belongs to the State, and owners in "fee simple" arrangements are simply leasing the land.

But it's my land, you say! Oh really? Ever heard of eminent domain?

I once knew someone who owned a house that was later razed for a highway extension. (All in the "public interest" as our comfortable espresso sipping yuppie friends like to say.) He paid a substantial sum (by his modest standards) to become a homeowner for the first time in his life, after years of hard work and savings toward that glorious day when he, too, could join the ranks of tract home drones. Not to criticize here; it was his dream and his money to spend, and that's to be respected no matter what.

But lo! the State's minions came to the neighborhood and took his property away from him, for literally pennies on the dollar. (Dat's what happens when you lack dickhead clout.) In the end he had to declare bankruptcy, his life spiralled out of control, his wife and children deserted him, and then he ended it all by placing a revolver in his mouth.

Don't you love the "public interest"?

To own property, and thus acquiesce in this scheme, is to legitimize the workings of the State.

The final resolution to take from this is not to engage in activities, so far as you can, that lend credence to the legitimacy and moral righteousness of the State. For the State can only survive, long term, if its victims provide it the moral sanction to continue in its depraved murderousness, by bovine cooperation, doing nothing to arrest the machine, permitting its bloody, lethal rampage all over the face of the globe.

Regrettably, that's what most folks do today.

And in particular, the dickheadery, the bane of the social pyramid who made a deal with the Devil and cut all the right moves for a life of comfort by playing the game right, but in the end shed their souls, their consciences, and their independent thought. (And they call the dickheadery "the creative class." Sheesh.)

So go ahead and sip all the lattes you want. Nothing to see here. Land of the free, eh?

Dearly departed retailers of 2008

The sharks circle. Blood is in the water. Livelihoods are being hemorraged in hemophiliac fashion. Companies are disappearing. Wealth evaporates.

Even in a healthy economy, businesses close down, go bankrupt, fail. It is a natural part of capitalism. In a depression, the trickle becomes a torrent, as the malinvestments cascade one upon the other, as the most carefully laid business plans are slain by the twin armies of empty pockets and internal corporate inertia.

The retailers that went down the tubes in 2008 will not be missed. After all, capitalism is a dynamic process. Inefficient and insolvent firms fail or are absorbed by other firms, causing temporary severe pain and dislocation but also rendering capital more productive over the long run. The depression is a necessary healing of misallocations and gross distortions of the market caused by the fiat money induced boom.

And this year was the tip of the iceberg. Depressions have historically been most unkind to the retail sector. In this depression in particular, retail is especially vulnerable to the reaper, as the structural members of the cheep credit fiesta that propped up the economy over the past two decades have finally imploded, rendering the retail sector forever changed. The nation has far too many shopping centers, plazas, strip malls, and lifestyle centers for the consumer base to support. It is time to permanently downsize.

So here is the rundown:

• Mervyns: Believe it or not, I was a dedicated Mervyns shopper during those rare times that I deigned to crack open my wallet to purchase clothing. For all practical purposes, Mervyns disappeared from my world in 2005 when the chain disinvested from Louisiana. This means more business for JCPenney, as that is where my clothing dollars have been directly transferred.
  
• 
  
• Steve and Barry's: From what is known it appears that this retailer's business model was identical to the now-deceased bankster front Washington Mutual - big up-front profits upon acquiring assets (that is, store locations), long term losses on nonproductive assets (that is, store locations). I shed no tears.
  
• 
  
• The Sharper Image: This was a store? More like an infomercial in my book.
  
• 
  
• CompUSA: Permanently stuck in 1995 upon my last visit, it shocked me that this store actually survived into the present.
  
• 
  
• Circuit City: Yeah, I know it's not liquidated yet. But in the words of Yoda, give it time.
  
• 
  
• Linens n' Things: I know my mother will be so sorry to hear this store is dead and in its grave.
  
• 
  
• Bennigan's, Steak and Ale: Yes, restaurants are retailers -they sell food and spirits. And look for this to be the first of many bankruptcies of those odious and omnipresent "casual dining" chains. Every single one I have had the misfortune to visit have been truly awful, in terms of food quality, service, and atmosphere (all of them attempt, poorly, to create faux 'character' by sticking copious amounts of ersatz-vintage shit on their walls). Nothing beats local establishments, folks. Support your local po-boy (or hoagie, or hero, or whatever) shop!
  
• 
  
• Levitz Furniture: They vacated Louisiana a long time ago so I could care less.
  
• 
  
• KB Toys: Perennial mall staple. Hard to believe, yet not so illogical. Wal*Mart-saurus Rex strikes again!!
  

And alongside these entities in retail heaven, a bumper crop of failures awaits us in 2009. Get ready to rumble.

Predicted 2009 failures:

• Circuit City (no brainer there)
  
• Sears/Kmart (I can only dream)
  
• Dillards
  
• Ruby Tuesday
  
• Gottschalks
  
• Boscov's
  
• The Bon-Ton (may survive, but only in truncated form)
  
• One or more office supply chains (fewer dickheads to go around, y'know)
  
• And much, much more! Stay tuned....
  

Crisis! Crisis! Crisis! Crisis! Crisis! Crisis! Crisis! Crisis!

Is that not the leitmotif of our age?

The sheeple act as if this calamity were caused by some strange and mysterious forces beyond comprehension and human control.

Of course, if people were actually literate in economics, all would be plainly crystal clear and obvious, and the cries of chaos in high State places would be hardly audible. Of course, if people were literate in economics, this depression would not be happening. But that's another story.

Yesterday Chrysler announced a month-long furlough of its productive capacity, with the explanation that buyers for their product are stymied by lack of credit availability, due to the "freezing" of the credit markets.

Now this is pure ignorance on the surface. Credit availability actually expanded during the last quarter. If credit is truly unavailable to erstwhile auto buyers, perhaps such a state could be traced to the simple reason that most auto buyers are inherently uncreditworthy in the first place?

Remember, during the boom the banks and financiers would lend to anything with a pulse. There were "liar loans" and "ninja loans." I'm sure you've heard of these by now.

This is how we got into this mess in the first place.

So if fewer buyers merit credit (remember, an automobile is an expensive purchase), then perhaps loan originators have returned to sanity as the grotesque effects of the Fed-sponsored monetary boom become increasingly apparent.

In any case, most folks to-day are so overextended as to be in hock through the end of the millenium. The monetary overhang created by fractional reserve banking and the moral and intellectual fallacy of fiat money has run its course, as we have reached the point where there is not enough hard cash in circulation to pay the collective interest and finance charges on the virtual wealth that exists only in digits and electronic ledgers, a hollow digital vapor backed by nothing and redeemable for nothing.

The systemic structural weaknesses of our fiat money regime are finally being exposed for what they are. Is this a crisis? Hardly. In truth, it is the first step toward the restoration of liberty. The emperor has been shown to have no clothes; the empire is exposed as backed by nothing except insipid rhetoric and blarney.

With the collapse of old failing systems, new dynamic systems take their place. The same process begat the demise of the Soviet Union. It will swallow us whole, and lead to many excess deaths. But such is the final result of the moochocracy throughout the ages. On the other side of this mess, however, it is unsure what weeds will spring through the cracks - but what weeds there are will be fertilized by freedom.

Even now the powerful cling to their declining positions even as they are cleaned out by the worst elements of their own. (Boo hoo.) Now B.O. is condemning the "greed" of those who were "responsible" for the crisis.

Look in the mirror, Golden Boy - you are referring to your scrawny self, and your power elite fellow travellers.

It keeps you running

It is said that the ongoing economic hardship will be over and done with in a flippantly short time - 18 months or whereabouts is the general estimate.

But depressions of this sort do not simply come and go overnight.

Thanx to the late deeds of our Exhalted Leaders in Parasite City, we have the Damocles' sword of $7.7 trillion of new "free" bailout induced money conjured up from thin air out in Fed-land now hanging over us. The absorption of this debased currency into the economy is unquestionably bound to produce severe inflation, if not hyperinflation. Look for the hyperinflation to begin its ravaging and lethal effects about six to twelve months down the road from now.

When the hyperinflation begins, look for the economy to dissolve into nothingness. This will make the Great Depression look like a mild recession in comparison.

That bailout Congress intends to send the automakers (don't worry, even though the bill failed, the Small Three will no doubt eventually obtain their taxpayer extortion)? Don't think that will solve any problems. There will not be an American auto industry in a year, all that bailout money poured down a rathole and evaporated like the melting snow (to use an analogy of late).

The 1970s are looking pretty appealing right now.

No, you couldn't mean that decade of stagnation, inflation, unemployment, Watergate, bad fashion, disgusting morality, pathetic political leadership, urban decay, underclass expansion, and excellent music?

Yes, I do mean the 1970s.

The years from 2001 onward have been a cesspool of moral turpitude and uncertainty for this no longer great country. And from 2008 onward, the economic collapse will have been added to this mix.

Much like the 1970s, but of course a lot worse, since the stakes are higher and the dickheads more fully run the show now. And of course the police state is more fully advanced and developed, with the creed of nihilism complete and enshrined as the national religion to justify any and all of the capricious actions of the all powerful god men who rule over us via this mechanism.

It is time to face reality. I am ashamed of America and am no longer proud to be an American.

Diss me all you want, police state worshippers. America is officially an evil and wicked nation, in the same manner that Soviet Russia was at its peak.

But that does not mean that the American people are inherently evil. Many are, but (hopefully) the majority are not.

The only way to reverse this trend is to destroy the American State. The nation should be fractured into its smaller polities, at a size where they are too small to do much harm - say, counties and smaller states.

Only with this step can we somehow avoid the chaos that portends to swallow us whole.

Staring at death's door

The economic news continues to play out in grim fashion. Productive activity is shriveling right and left as economic contraction strands millions high and dry, blocked from the ability to sustain themselves and facing certain starvation.

Now the dickhead class is feeling the pinch. Uh oh.

No income, no cash, no food, no ability to survive. Death comes after two or so weeks without nourishment.

So what for a dickhead to do with no job, no income, no hope?

Consider this: if you are a certified dickhead and you have been laid off, it is likely because a) you were a poor worker, b) your job produced nothing of value, c) you made a bad choice and took employment with a marginal or otherwise failing firm which has now disappeared, d) your type of work has been made redundant by easily followed trends such as technology advancements and/or macroeconomic forces such as outsourcing, or e) some or all of the above.

So a good part of this is actually your own fault. Blame Bush and the state of the economy all you want, but even with all his faults the reality is your fate is in your own hands. You blew it.

Not to mention that you probably have a good tens of thousands in debts to boot. Credit cards, student loans, auto loans, mortgages - yeah, you lived high on the hog, beyond your means, while you coasted, thinking that tomorrow would never come. Guess what, it's now tomorrow.

So if you starve to death in the coming lean times, I can't say I have much sympathy for you. So sorry.

Line for the trough starts here, please

The next set of fools to squat at the federal feeding pen is the automobile industry.

And wouldn't ya know it, it's election year and Michigan is a swing state. Whoopee! Let the fiat money roll.

Throwing good money after bad is generally not a welcome idea. The Amerikan auto industry's anemic performance and bad reputation overall will not improve because of this. What do politicians know about economics that we don't?

(Sound of crickets chirping) Exactly.

Propping up rotting sheathes of wheat in this manner will only delay the implosion and needed market asset reallocation. Ideas like this don't help, either. I mean, both GM and Chrysler are bankrupt shells, and they want to join forces to create one even bigger bankrupt shell? The Kool-Aid must be running wild in Detroit.

Let the foreign companies take over Detroit. It is only fair for them to reap the success of scraping what assets they can from a vanquised competitor. After all, they seem to know how to produce and sell a better vehicle than the welfare agencies-disguised-as-companies known as Ford, GM, and Chrysler.

The not so Big Three have done this to themselves - by caving in to the bloodsucking unions time after time in periods of good, and letting innovation, foresight, and intelligence vanish among the salaried ranks as dickheads jockeyed for comfortable positions in increasingly bureaucratic, government like organizations where work was only a nebulous concept, but the paychecks were fat and secure. It has been a race to the bottom, predicated on subsidy, big business style.

These companies were once the largest in the world. At one time, if you can believe it, GM had 50% of the market to itself (in the 1970s, when American cars were cool and actually well-made). They have been gutted and garroted like fillet of fish - the parasites leeching off their fattened carcasses until we have reached the point where a company like GM is hemmoraging $1 billion in cash annually, just to stay alive.

So now it has come to this: it is estimated that at minimum the companies could cashier one-quarter of their remaining workforces, or even file outright for bankruptcy and be sold off in pieces.

This is again the end result of arrogance, stupidity, and the exceptionalist mentality. Typical Amerikan sitting on one's ass and playing dumb (since Amerika is rich, White, and entitled to it!) while the thrifty nations of color play end run around the once towering American dominance.

"This is America! We're the best in the world! We're too big, rich, and White to fail! Fuck yeah!"

Fuck yeah, indeed.

If anyone has been to Detroit lately, they would know what kind of a basketcase and wasteland the place is.

And anyone expects innovation and wealth creation to somehow evolve from that??

Throw in the towel, Detroit. The game is up. Your parasitism has reached its endgame. Now bear your final starvation like the maggots you are.

Ghetto economy USA

The current implosion of credit markets has, as always, much to do with the forces of pull and subsidy. One of those forces, among others, is an insidious piece of crap disguised as legislation, laughingly referred to as the Community Reinvestment Act.

The Community Reinvestment Act is, of course, the political class's monstrous gift to their subsidy-gilt constituents of the dumb mass demographic, and as with any piece of Federal legislation, is designed to transfer wealth from one group (the producers) to another (the looters/moochers). Basically, the Act forces banks to loan whatever is deemed by the solons on high to be a "fair" proportion of its assets (that's your deposits and mine, by the way) to clients who belong to officially designated victim classes (the poor, persons of color, etc.). Most of these folks have a credit rating that might qualify them to purchase a used and heavily abused tenth-rate 1978 Pinto, but nothing more.

As this article demonstrates (so prescient for an article written in the distant year of 2000!), these proceedings are nothing more than a gigantic scam built on lies, deceit, and political dickcockery. The late credit boom was founded on a core of dishonesty from lenders and debtors alike, participating jointly in a scam of immoral credit expansion on a monumental scale which was all but certain to end in chaos, and aided and abetted by free flowing Federal Reserve Notes which the Regime saw fit to reproduce like rabbits in order to (literally) buy support from the public and finance its policies of elite enrichment and wars of imperial aggression. 

As proved by Austrian economics theory, once the central bank ceases the currency inflation and expansion all booms turn into a bust as the malinvestments deriving from too-loose credit and all its attendant moral hazards become evident and positions swiftly are liquidated.

The best position to take in a bust is to let the events proceed. Government needs to get out of the way while the market undergoes the painful but prompt process of cleaning itself out and shedding the malinvestments.

With laws like the CRA on the books, coupled with the plutocracy's burning desire to save itself from the raging fires of economic desolation - for the mess is so bad this time, the fires consuming the towers of finance are burning at the brightest and hottest level in history - this process is stunted.

This means that a depression is all but certain. The nation is bankrupt and in hock into the next millennium. Let the corpses fall.

The candidates for dictator offer nothing but more of the same - more protections for the powerful, more subsidies for the incompetent, more extractions from the nearly bankrupt productive class to pay for it all, more budgetary and currency shenanigans to make up the difference between anticipated revenues and realizing the aims of their fantasies of power. They preach death and worship it with every fiber of their collective dark souls.

Thanks to the greed of the subsidy classes - the underclass monsters for which subsidy is a birthright, the power classes for which a gift of a million here and there extorted from the taxpayers (or their customers thanx to extortionary corporative bureaucracy backed by State guns - that means you, Entergy) is equally viewed as a right, the dickhead aiders and abetters who themselves benefited from the loose credit regime to finance their DickMansion and granite countertopped kitchen in some far-flung exurb - this nation is finally, truly fucked.

Y'all've done a heck of a job, folks.

There will be blood

The continuing economic chaos portends to swallow us whole.

All indicators point to severe depression, hyperinflation, mass destitution, evaporation of all fiat-regime stores of wealth, and the certain death of millions.  The auto has already careened off the precipice and there is no going back. The free fall about to commence will be swift and sickening. It remains to be seen if any part of civilization survives the coming chaos.

Right now Amerika is that auto, suspended in mid-air for one brief moment as it flies off the cliff edge, caught between the forces of inertia and gravity for a miniscule spell, preparing to descend toward a certain gory death.

The baliout can only be financed by massive increases in taxes leading to mass destitution, or inflation of currency leading to its destruction and mass destitution. Guess which road our solons are going to pursue.

Of course there is always a third option, if the sheeple really, really want this bailout as badly as the corrupt and self serving souls in high places do. We could evacuate our imperial bases overseas and cease the prosecution of wars we can no longer afford to pay for. But the chances of that happening is the same as Jesus returning from the dead.

The point of no return has passed. The corruption in the system is too great and the government has taken the actions which will assure a brutal end. This is the end game of a morally and financially bankrupt society that petulantly demanded and received a perpetual free lunch. The seed corn has been consumed and winter has arrived to a bare pantry.

Shortages of basic goods, currency devaluation, and wholesale economic collapse is the next step in the process. The affluent society - hell, all of society - is finished.

Get ready to die.

I told you so

The economic turmoil approaches a cataclysmic turn of fate and fortune.

State actors work to make whole their elite power backers by picking the pockets of working folks in a thousand communities across the heartland. Meanwhile, the average non-dickhead, fully exposed to the capricious whims of market forces in a socialized economy that is rigged to favor the few, struggles to cope with the evaporation of jobs, income, housing, businesses, and looks to face full bore the disintegration of communities, families, commercial concerns, lives.

The market has fallen by several thousand points during the past week. That goes beyond a mere "correction"; it is a crash.

The history books will mark October 2008 as the moment when the market finally collapsed and spiraled into a major depression.

Governments lie impotent in the face of the crisis which they created. The market actors have become wise to the scheme and have finally come to understand that State action does much more to prolong and deepen the crisis than anything else.

In the face of Federal "commitment", stocks tanked. Trillions of dollars were wiped out in moments and the future life plans of millions were desolated as the stored paper wealth of their collective retirement accounts evaporated into the same thin air from whence it came.

Apple Annie will reappear with a vengeance.

The entire system is collapsing because it is finally becoming clear to those not in the know that the entire apparatus is based on lies and deceit, and backed by a zero non-entity - that is, fiat currency. Trillions of loans remain outstanding with the implicit assumption that they will never and can never be paid back. The loans were made with the full knowledge of this fact.

It was known deep down that the system of credit being constructed in the Greenspan-Bernanke era was predicated on lies - liar loans, easy credit for deadbeats, NINJA loans, etc. etc.

Now those lies are being exposed, and the trillions of "assets" that depended on the non-exposure of these lies are dissolving like salt before the driven rain.

For those who recognize this, the collapse is no surprise, and clearly inevitable. For the dolts in the heartland who played along to get along, the cries of shock ring hollow to the ears of those who refused to suspend their abilities of observation.

The solution is free markets, sound money, and elimination of government. But you won't hear that from the 'best and the brightest' any time soon, I assure you. Too many 29 year olds with Maseratis may have to reconcile themselves to reality in that scenario.

America, RIP

As the economic conflagration reaches crisis proportions, the alarm bells sound in the halls of power and privilege as even their shirts are threatened by the collapse of the financial establishment. Of course, if these masters of the universe had actually been as intelligent as they claimed, they would have seen this coming. So much financial rot is bound in the system now that only a truly insipid person would be unable to predict the coming cataclysm.

This bullcock which is sold to us as a "bailout" is really the last ditch effort of the power elites to protect their rapidly evaporating positions at the expense of the taxpayer - you know, the rest of us. The presidential candidates and even the Leader himself go into crisis mode as their hi-finanz playa friends in high places cry havoc.

(What, you actually thought that the politicians were suddenly all concerned because you are hurting? Spare me the idiocy of your thought process.)

With that, say goodbye to fiscal sanity, as the elites pocket the profits while the rest of us go to hell, in a long ordeal of mass starvation, murder, and destitution.

The elites are growing aware of the social nightmare to unfold. So lo, open fascism is making a comeback, in the form of State-sponsored sterilization.

It will be a elite's paradise, in this future coming Amerika which will resemble Brazil more than the U. S. of A. which the folk currently recognize - a land of high prices, low wages, slavery like conditions (or just plain slavery), and capricious two tiered justice. The Hobbesian nature of the existence of the bedraggled underclass morass will become the grim and lethal norm - existence as nasty, brutish, and short. The brutishness of man which civilization had tamed will be given free reign as that civilization evaporates into memory.

Expect an exodus from the cities as people escape in desperation from sure starvation, to trade their civil liberties for a tiny plot of land, to trade their status as free men to fill their stomachs and live under the protection of the lord of the manor. Welcome back to medieval times and another thousand year dark age.

(Cuz when the time comes, no State will be there to protect you from the raving rabble of highwaymen and criminals that can be found in the wake of the destruction of any society. Slavery is freedom.)

Then what will the dickheads in their Beemers say? Will they be able to claim with any semblance of a straight face that they are simply 'superior' people, when it is clear that even the most hard working folk are doomed to starve in this maelstrom?

It will expose the dickheadery for what it is - connected, privileged, unworthy of their exhalted position except for their fortunate luck in life to know the right people and attend the right institutions.

Color flows downhill, you know.