She did but the story that surprised me the most was about another mother - her daughter. I must admit that it still boggles my mind to think that she and my best friend from highschool are both grandmothers! I don’t seem old enough to have grandmothers as my closest friends. It freaked me out when I turned a Great Aunt a few years ago but I’ll go there another time. For now I am at Red Lobster having a lovely lunch and listening to my best friend vent.

It turns out that her mother wanted to take my friend and her daughter on a trip to Europe. Pretty nice offer if you ask me. My friend, however, saw it differently. She wants to go to Italy but her mom wants to go to Paris, a place my friend has already been to. And for the first time ever, I actually stood up for her mom. The bottom line is that her mom, who was born in Europe, wants to take a last trip visiting her home town and other places she remembers. She wants to show her daughter and granddaughter these places so that someone will know and remember after she is gone. Sorry girlfriend but you can go to Italy on your own time, this trip is for your Mom as it is doubful if this octogenarian will be able to make too many more big trips.

I’ve recognized a similar trait in my own mother lately. We hate thinking about it but they know that the clock is ticking. Time is growing more precious to them. Knowing this understandably makes them see and do things differently then those younger than them. I get it. I know my friend does too. Most likely it is because she does understand that she freaks out and gets very upset at the idea of this last “memorial” trip.

But it turns out there is another clock ticking. This one belongs to her daughter who is in her early thirties and who just informed her mother that she may not be able to go on the trip because she would like to have another child. OMG was pretty much my friend’s slack jawed response because her scatterbrained daughter already has three kids! Plus my friend then added that the last time she saw them her son-in-law commented how nice it now was with the last child finally potty trained, so no more babies in diapers. And now her daughter wants another one!

In telling me this story my friend wondered if she should council her daughter to ignore the baby craving this time around. I must have gotten a blank look on my face when she spoke about getting the urge to have a baby and how even she still occasionally gets the twinge to hold a baby again. Meanwhile I continued to have this clueless look. My friend stopped talking and I think she was getting a bit perturbed with me. Sure everyone knows I don’t like kids but I knew she was thinking that I was taking it a bit too far. Except this time it wasn’t an act.

I finally realized that I had to fess up. I joke a lot about my incompatability with children but in complete seriousness I had to admit that I never knew that the clock continued ticking even after women have had children. I thought that once you had a child then the biological clock turned off. Instead I now learn that even woman past child bearing years still get the urge to have a baby. Maybe that explains the cluster of women around any co-worker who shows up with her newborn. (I would either hide in my office or wave from across the hallway.)

Now it just so happens that last night I watched an old rerun of House about a woman who was a psychopath, someone who had no feelings at all. Well, I am not a psychopath but whatever piece of DNA that constitutes that maternity portion was completely left out of me. I never once heard that ticking clock and for my 40th birthday I had a hysterectomy so as to be done with all of that for good. So I truly never understood that ticking clock or the baby cravings that other women had until today.

My girlfriend finally got through to me when she equated the urge to have a baby as being similar to the urge to have a cigarette (we are both ex-smokers). Now that urge I can definitely understand for even after 5 years of being smoke free there are still times when I have a craving for a smoke. So apparently after having children, even when in menopause, most women still get cravings to have a baby. Huh, imagine that.

PS. Oh shoot. Should I delete this? Nah, hopefully my family will just laugh. You see that it wasn’t until I was editing my blog that I realized that I was surely putting my foot in my mouth this time. You see after three children (all girls), my mother also had that baby urge again and to my Dad’s delight had a boy. So I’m sorrry Mom and Mike, I didn’t mean to offend you. Just chalk it up to me being me. But I suppose you could say that at least I now understand why my little brother is around (and I am glad that you are!). ]]> http://hypocrisy.com/2010/03/20/strange-cravings/feed/ http://hypocrisy.com/2010/03/20/a-show-of-raw-power/ http://hypocrisy.com/2010/03/20/a-show-of-raw-power/#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 12:07:00 +0000 PC Fugitive http://hypocrisy.com/?p=10782  People I talk to area truly scared that the passage of this bill would change America, many of them fearing it is an irrevocable giant step towards socialism. However, if the news that the Democrats have the votes for the…]]>  People I talk to area truly scared that the passage of this bill would change America, many of them fearing it is an irrevocable giant step towards socialism. However, if the news that the Democrats have the votes for the health care bill upsets you, here are some things to think about.

For the past six months, ever since summer really, it feels as if the whole country has been paralyzed because of the health care bill. Republicans should actually be grateful. All this attention and effort on just one bill has meant that nothing else is getting done in Congress.

If Obama wins on Sunday and the health care bill is passed, it won’t mean that everything will go his way from then on; far from it. I keep thinking of the phrase “political capital”. Obviously with all the arm twisting and bribing, Obama and Pelosi will have used up all of their political capital. If a Congressman ends up voting for this bill I wonder how receptive they will be to future liberal causes, and threats.

For example, there is my own first term Congresswoman, a Democrat who voted No on the first health care bill. If I am being bombarded by telephone ads from both left and right to call her I can only imagine what her life is like right now. Well, no actually I can’t imagine what it would be like to be browbeaten not only by my Speaker, dozens of Democrat leaders but also confronted by my President in his Oval Office, and all of them threatening to annihilate me in November if I don’t support my party.

Then there is the “pep rally” planned this afternoon for all Democrat Representatives plus Obama, now that he has cancelled his trips. Some analysts are comparing what is happening to the Stockholm syndrome which is when hostages begin to sympathize with their captors. I think it is more along the lines of mass hysteria. Remember the pictures of the crowds cheering Hitler over and over again?

I really can’t see my Congresswoman continuing to stand up to so much raw power. And that is what it is. Absolute raw ugly power against, in many cases, first term idealistic Congressmen and women. But once Obama and Pelosi have used this tactic they will have nothing left in their bag of tricks for the rest of the year, which is why I doubt that any other very liberal bill gets passed this year.

We all know that Obama came into office promising a laundry list of far left changes. He has now spent his first year on just one issue – health care. Once that is passed he will try to quickly move on to other issues, immigration is already next on his list, but I believe that he will find each vote to be a painful reminder of the damage he and Pelosi have done in order to pass the health care bill.

First, the passage of the health bill will result in dozens of law suits questioning the legality of forcing people to get insurance. Already over half the states are planning to fight this bill. There is also the “fixes” which Democrat Senators promised the House will be added but they might find it difficult to pass when faced with Republican opposition. The bill already isn’t supposed to force health care on us until 2014 and between now and then Congress will be swamped with law suits and delaying tactics making it difficult to implement this bill or to move on to any other bill.

I also think that what is happening is similar to any action movie. The good guys always take a real beating and then at the end they pull themselves together and finally succeed in defeating the bad guys. I have a feeling that as in any action flick, if the health care bill is passed then the people, the soccer Moms and racecar Dads, the elderly widows and the young family man, the single women and the mother of four, Republicans, Independents and Tea Party people of any and every color, age and creed will pull together in a tidal wave of anger, frustration and purpose to block anything else proposed by Obama and to win this November. And like any good movie, in the end the good guys will win. ]]> http://hypocrisy.com/2010/03/20/a-show-of-raw-power/feed/ http://hypocrisy.com/2010/03/19/obama-from-the-podium/ http://hypocrisy.com/2010/03/19/obama-from-the-podium/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:51:53 +0000 Chief Hypocrite http://hypocrisy.com/?p=10777 “This reform bill will be enormously important to the American people”.

If that importance turns out to be of negative consequences, will Obama have lied? Or just plain been wrong?

This potential new low of Obama looking the other way while Dems Deem will give rise to a new low for politics, this time in the hands of Democratic Ideology and the means are justified by the end. Toxic and a real affront. It will set a new low for future Republicans, requiring clever and dedicated hard work to beat it to the bottom.

In case you missed it, Bill Gates isn’t the richest man in the world anymore, nor is Warren Buffett.  Gates had topped the list since 1994 then lost the title in 2008 to Buffett only to regain it last year. Neither did too badly last year, both seeing their fortunes grow by over $10 billion. Problem was, the Mexican’s grew by $17.5 billion. Carlos Slim Helú’s wealth grew from a paltry $35 billion to $53.5 billion in just a year. While the propagandists will peddle the Horatio Alger myth of a self made man whose business savvy has brought him to the pinnacle of power, Slim owes his over the top success to an inheritance head start and insider influence.

Still drinking the Kool-Aid that teaches us that motivation, innovation and education sets one on the pathway to success? Funny enough, Fortune featured at article alongside their rich list which asked “Are You Born to be a Billionaire?” which stresses optimism and risk taking, when in fact one of the best ways to get on Forbes’ list is to be like Steve Forbes himself and be born onto it much like the Walton clan of Wal-Mart fame occupying the 12th, 15th, 16th and 18th positions on the list. Sure, you’ll find a useful proportion of productive entrepreneurs who have enlarged the economic pie but looking at the rest of the list, one gets a feeling that the invisible hand isn’t as important as the silver spoon in determining one’s financial fortune.

Still, Slim wasn’t granted the advantage of the Waltons, so how did the son of a Lebanese immigrant amass such a fortune in Mexico? Easy. You control the communication industry of not only your country, but an entire region. “Slimlandia” truly blossomed thanks to privatization of the Mexican telecommunications industry in the early 90’s, which brought about a monopoly instead of diversity. His purchase of Telmex, facilitated by contributions to then president Carlos Salinas, was the springboard which has led to a Mexican economy that “is highly inefficient, and it is losing its competitive standing vis-à-vis other countries because of people like Slim.” Almost every time a phone rings or text message is sent, Carlos pockets pesos from the 92% of subscribers in land-line telephony, while his mobile operator, Telcel, has almost 80% of users in Mexico. Oh, in the past five years his mobile telephone company America Movil has purchased most of the remaining mobile operators across Latin America, becoming the largest mobile service provider in the region. The reward for the people? Some of the highest phone hook up rates in the developing world. America Movil now has 201 million customers from Brazil to the United States. Slim also owns five insurance companies, a Mexican retail chain, a mining company, the Inbursa bank, the Cigatam tobacco factory, the Volaris airline company and the Progidy Internet provider. Oh yeah, chunks of Saks and Sears, plus he lent $250 million to the NY Times at 14% interest plus warrants convertible into 16% of the paper. All together, Slim’s companies have a value of half of the Mexican stock market, 7% of Mexican GDP, while much of the rest of the country gets by on a little over $4 a day per head (54-57 pesos).

Sure, your probably saying to yourself, “Yeah, sounds like Mexico, poor and corrupt, nothing like that happens in the developed world, after all they’ve got a drug lord on the rich list.” Yet one could easily argue that Gates billions are largely thanks to the monopoly position he attained in his industry, but I won’t. Or maybe bring up the culture of war that his seen a transfer of wealth measuring in the trillions to defense contractors’ whose growing use of offshore subsidiaries from 2003 to 2008 resulted in the loss of tax revenue and unemployment benefits for workers. How about you take a noble idea, say, granting health care coverage to your people, then twist it into an evil package that will deliver guaranteed profits to the insurance industry? I suppose I could point out that the entire financial industry was given trillions of dollars to keep them afloat in order to hand over billions in compensation to the guys who drove the world economy into the ground, but that would be too easy. How did capitalism turn out so corrupt?

Unlike the last depression when the gilded fortunes of most plutocrats dropped precipitously, along with the banks the rich have been well taken care of by the system. The government printing presses have been working overtime to maintain the illusion of stability in order to artificially propel stock and resource prices. This has clearly benefited Warren Buffett who has gorged himself on the buffet of buying opportunities that the crisis presented resulting in a $10 billion increase in his wealth. Sure, the “Oracle of Omaha” does his bit allocating wealth through Berkshire Hathaway while taking home a reasonable salary, but what has he produced? One can ask the same of these other 33 hedge fund managers on the list. How did they improve the world?

And who else’s wealth is your tax payer money, along with your children’s and children’s children’s children, going to support? Only 16% of the new members of the elite thousand were from the States while Asia added 104 moguls giving them just 14 fewer total than Europe, 234 to 248. The 4th and 5th richest people in the world are now from India, Mukesh Ambani and Lakshimi Mittal moved up from 8th and 7th respectively. Soaring resource prices helped the biggest gainer on the list, as Brazil’s Eike Batista saw his wealth increase by $19.5 billion(!) thanks to his mining interests, moving him up to 7th at $27 billion. Russia rounded out the BRIC countries fine performance. As oil and gas prices bounced back, so did oligarch fortunes. Of the 164 returning members to the list, 28 were Russian, giving them a tally of 62 billionaires. Taiwan tripled its number of billionaires to 18 and Turkey more than doubled its own to 28. For the first time China, with 64 billionaires, has the most outside the US whose residents now command 38% of the collective net worth of the world’s richest, down from 44% a year ago.

It wasn’t until I read the BBC version of the story that my ears pricked up. You see, apparently the latest Forbes list is good news for everyone: “In a sign that the global economy could be improving, the average net worth of the world’s billionaires is now $3.5bn, up $500m from last year.” You hear that everyone? Yep, it’s a good sign for the global economy that the super rich became super richer last year. It was just a year ago that the Beeb was lamenting “Rich list hit by economic crisis“. Yesiree Bob, 2009 was a much better year for the world than 2008, a year that saw 332 names wiped off the rich list leaving a measly 793 billionaires who saw their wealth plummet by 23%. Things are much better now as the billionaire list is back in quadruple digits with 1,011 members.

The pursuit of wealth has clearly become an end in itself, with the wealth rankings taking on the importance of an Olympic medal table (yeah Canada, New Zealand or more likely India). Much of the rest of the list is being celebrated and debated over national lines with many cheering their country’s inclusion (Finland and Pakistan got their first members) while others lament their nation’s totals on the list. National pride seems to be at stake as we’re fed the meme that having more billionaires means a better country and world.

Though they’ve convinced the apologists that this may be true, they couldn’t be more wrong. We’re seeing the fruits the system planted by Nixon in which the treadmill of debt allows a nation to sell future generations into indenture in order to buy stuff made cheaper by the future slave owners, the price of which is held low thanks to the artificial peg maintained by the purchase of debt in the first place. Does that make sense (I mean the sentence and the system)? To my way of thinking, a world where hyper-wealth is celebrated has two basic flaws: a system that creates winners also breeds losers to scale, resulting in massive inequality and even more fundamentally, more stuff means more unhappiness.

As it stands, the US and much of the world suffers from more inequality than any time in over 100 years. We’re taught to believe in this evil Gilded Age that existed before capitalism kicked in and distributed wealth away from the kings, queens and Rothchilds. Yet today these fat cats do more than throw off the standard deviation of wealth distribution. When a ruling class becomes entrenched it follows that mobility between classes inevitably declines - a lethal ailment for economies. Sadly, the tea partiers will believe it’s the government control of the economy that destroys innovation but in reality it’s the gilded class and true enough, the government is enabling their control. Funny how those Nordic ’socialist’ countries feature much more intergenerational movement than the US (Italy and the UK are even more stagnant).

Whether you invent something or inherit your cash, there is no doubt money is an innovation driver, but 10 digit wealth takes a lot of cream off the top. Could this loss of incentive to move up have led to the decline in median wages in the US between 1998 and 2008? Yet it’s facilitated by a tax system that has seen a fall of the highest marginal tax rate from 91% in the 1950’s to 28% today (well, the IRS says that the top 400 richest tax filers actually paid a rate of just 16% in 2007 thanks to loopholes, a lower rate than your average Joe). In 1970 the compensation ratio of the top 100 CEOs compared to the average worker was 45 to one. By 2008 it was 1,071 to one. You think they got that much smarter? If given the choice of giving our money to these guys, the banks, the military industrial complex or health care it seems like you would choose door number four, no?  We’re sold image of the first man from the developing world to become the world’s richest along with slumdog billionaires, but they’re just replaceable cogs in the machine. It’s the machines they operate that control the world’s markets, employing armies of lobbyists to influence government, and a network of spies (yes, real spies, CIA, MI5, ex-KGB) in order to maintain their stranglehold on global wealth.

Finally, here’s the kicker. More money and more stuff don’t make you happier. Building upon the ideas of Thorstein Veblen, who in 1899 coined the term “conspicuous consumption” in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (google books here), two professors of economics, Curtis Eaton and Mukesh Eswaran, believe they have shown through economic formulas that more things make us less happy. Veblen’s work is considered to have been the first critique of consumerism where he argued that our modern division of labour began in tribal times when the “higher-status” group monopolized war and hunting while farming and cooking were considered inferior work. Veblen’s ideas were discarded by neoclassical economists as he cast people as irrational creatures who chase after social status without regard to their own happiness, an idea that should be gaining more traction in light of the financial crisis. In the Middletown studies, for example, researchers learned that lower-class families were willing to go without basic necessities such as food or new clothes to maintain a certain level of conspicuous consumption, in particular, car ownership. The concept of conspicuous consumption has been carried forward to this day, and is often used to criticize advertising and to explain why poorer classes have been unable to advance economically. His views on the uselessness of “businessmen” have been adopted in modified form by none other than third-ranked Warren Buffett, who has harshly criticized the growth of practices such as day trading or arbitrage, which makes money solely through abstract means.

Well, according to Eaton and Eswaran it seems our drive to own more stuff is really a sort of zero-sum game, where the owners may feel happier but the rest of us are left feeling worse off. They state that once society reaches a reasonable standard of living and consumption shifts towards the purchase of status symbols with no intrinsic value, average wealth may rise causing people to be richer but unfortunately not happier. Worse yet, as people yearn for more status symbols they have less time or inclination for helping others. This, the authors argue, damages “community and trust”, which are vital to an economy because they ensure the smooth running of society. They conclude: “Conspicuous consumption can have an impact not only on people’s well-being but also on the growth prospects of the economy.” Huh, sounds a little bit like what’s ailing the west these days as we mortgage our futures in order to buy more stuff today, thus sacrificing our growth prospects.

Well, seems I’ve managed to ramble on quite a bit again. As usual though, these arguments will fall upon deaf ears of the true believers as the cognitive dissonance created between reality and their beliefs cause them to fall back on tired, disproven arguments. They’ll blame my Karl Marx beard for my socialist rantings or accuse me of tall poppy syndrome while ignoring the words of even their idol, Adam Smith who warned

Of the corruption of our moral sentiments, which is occasioned by this disposition to admire the rich and the great, and to despise or neglect persons of poor and mean condition

There is little question that our current form of capitalism is failing us, while those in positions of power are doing all they can to protect and propagate their wealth. There’s a frightening increase in momentum about it as the rich become richer and the poor poorer. In the meantime, panem et circenses will be fed to the masses while ensuring the next generation will be dumber than the last as places like Texas reinvent the history books and Kansas City closes half of its schools. Knowledge is after all nearly as powerful as the dollar.

In his first year, Obama made every rookie mistake in the book. He let the other team knock him around, right out of the gate, and he took it. He should have brushed them back with a high, hard one at the earhole, but he didn’t. He started nibbling, instead.

“Let’s compromise, let’s have a meeting, let’s water it down, can’t we all just get along? Kumbaya?” Ball, ball, ball, take your base, and no, we can’t.

Spring is almost here, the second spring of Barack Obama’s presidency. I don’t know if realizes it yet, but this might be his last shot. Politics is a tough game.

If I were his manager, here’s what I’d tell him. Throw strikes, Obama. Tell your congressional teammates it’s time they scored you some runs. Stop being timid and reasonable, be a stud. Throw strikes.

You want to end “don’t ask, don’t tell?” Fine. Don’t wait for a military commission to dither its way through some minor-league report; blow right past Congress and the stupid laws they’ll never get around to repealing. You’re the commander-in-chief, you’re on the mound. Throw strikes. Tell the Pentagon you’re suspending all dismissals under “don’t ask, don’t tell” for the duration. If the umpires on the Supreme Court say that’s against the rules, spit some tobacco juice at their feet and issue pardons to every soldier they try to toss with that ignorant, outdated policy.

Throw strikes, Obama. Blast a health care bill right down the middle, no more waiting. Trash talk your sissy Democratic teammates into getting you a tax bill that takes some of the steam out of the bankers and fat cats who are eating your lunch, and ours. Jam a jobs bill down their throats. Hire a bunch of unemployed construction workers to put up a skyscraper in the damned Rose Garden; shame them into action if you must. But do something, throw strikes.

Mr. President, you made a mistake when you let congress drive the agenda. There’s no drive in them, they’re a bunch of meek followers, even their so-called leaders. America shakes in economic fear and loathing, the unemployed cry for work, Tea Baggers take cash from the conspiracy-theory right and use it to whip up hatred and racial animus, militias are mobilizing the weak-minded into 21^st century Brown Shirts. And how do your Democratic teammates respond to those challenges?

They don’t. They’re still waiting for the CBO to score the umpteenth version of a health care bill they should have passed last July. If and when they get health care done, maybe they’ll get around to putting America back to work, cracking down on credit card usury, busting the new cartel that owns Wall Street and trying to bring a modicum of economic justice back to the land, the way Democrats are supposed to do. But I doubt it.

If they meant business, the Senate Democrats would have gone to DEFCON 1 last summer. No more polite pretend filibusters, make them talk till they blow a larynx, no more waiting for Olivia Snow to melt, she won’t, no more bowing to the false god of bipartisanship, that god is dead.

Without you to lead them, Mr. President, they’re dead in the water. Only you can save them from themselves. Only you have the ball.

Throw strikes, Obama. You’re not facing the ’27 Yankees. Don’t give your opponents so much credit. I’ve seen these guys before, I’ve seen what happens when they’re at bat, we all have. They will do what they always do. “Swing and a miss!”

But you’re getting killed out here, kid. They’re laughing at your soft stuff, they’re beating your brains out without having to swing the bat. You came up here with the best fastball I’ve seen in a generation. Use it. Trust your stuff. Throw strikes.

It’s now or never. The game’s on the line, full count, bases loaded. Walk another guy and we lose. Throw strikes, Rook. Or we’ll bring in someone who will.

We’ll start with the Wall Street Journal where March kicked off with:

Milton Friedman has been dead for more than three years. But his spirit was surely hovering protectively over Chile in the early morning hours of Saturday. Thanks largely to him, the country has endured a tragedy that elsewhere would have been an apocalypse.

I’ll save you the trouble of reading the rest of the WSJ article. After rattling off a few stats about the power of the latest Chilean earthquake, the writer, one Bret Stephens, goes on to thank none other than Milton Friedman, Uncle Milt, for the low death count in Chile relative to Haiti who sustained a much more powerful earthquake. Why? Well, according to the deluded, it was thanks to the Chicago Boys that Chile adopted strict building regulations which resulted in their housing being built of bricks instead of straw. According to rightwing mythology all the concrete and rebar came thanks to the economic policies adopted by the Pinochet regime under the advice of Uncle Milt.

Without knowing the reactionary press victim’s condition it would seem inexplicable that one could think the man partially responsible for the slaughter of thousands is in fact owed thanks because he made building codes stronger in Chile. Responses to this assertion should begin with reminding the nutter of Richard Nixon’s response to the democratic election of Salvador Allende - “make the economy scream” (hard to read copy here, 7th line of the semi-legible scribble). This was Tricky Dick’s order September 15, 1970 to his CIA director Richard Helm, launching the soft line campaign to undermine Allende which paralleled the hard line Pepsi fuelled military coup.

But I digress, read more here. Back to Friedman and Chilean building codes. Even if we ignore the fact that the Chilean seismic building code was adopted in 1972, the year before the CIA assassination of Allende, there’s the matter of Uncle Milt’s view on government legislated building codes. Hint: He didn’t like them. In fact, Chile’s earthquake had the curious effect of destroying a disproportionate amount of modern buildings and highway overpasses. So, if anything Friedman is to blame for much of the destruction as building code standards and enforcement degenerated after Pinochet took power. Whether you’re building highway overpasses or entire economies with only private sector oversight, both tend to collapse when the big one hits.

Next up, McCarthyism is in again. Last week’s ‘news’ cycle featured media stalwart whore Wolf Blitzer giving air time to Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol’s view that lawyers who aided Guantanamo Bay prisoners legal defense are unpatriotic. They went even further, suggesting the Department of Justice be renamed the Department of Jihad (get it DOJ, J for Justice or Jihad, sigh). Of course this is nothing new for the likes of Kristol or Cheney, but it gets ugly when it spills over to the main stream of CNN. The Kristol’s and Cheney’s of the world need to be kept in their boxes, not given forums to create perceptions of American patriotism. The hubbub arose when Liz’s Keep America Safe propaganda unit made this ad which instead of getting them tarred and feathered has even reached the floor of the Senate:

If you’re a NY Post reader, you don’t read that as a lawyer, John Adams defended British soldiers accused of brutal crimes committed during the Boston Massacre calling it “one of the most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.” Instead you get 9/11 scaremongering day in, day out. Oh, and they conveniently forget that the Bush/Cheney DOJ and Rudy Gulliani’s firm also employed these same horrible types of people providing constitutional protection. Hat tip to Glen Greenwald, the timeline of events showed he was most prescient in his warning over watching how the media would play this story. Unfortunately, the (brain)damage is already done for readers of the Weekly Standard, they think witchhunts are a good thing, but don’t hear about how 34 of America’s 50 largest law firms represented detainees or filed amicus briefs on their behalf as Senator Grassley had to be reminded. Thanks to Wolf, while passively watching CNN many were exposed to the contamination. I hate Wolf Blitzer. Oh, and anyone named Cheney. There I said it.

Seeing as the Jim Bunning crusade to kill the unemployed is over, just one more shocker this week. Bunning may have had some success making people forget that the nation’s debt problem is mostly due to Bush and Republican congress era unfunded wars and Medicare prescription drug benefits that came along with two of the biggest tax cuts for the rich in history (all of which he voted for). If people can be made to forget all that along with the fact that the bank bailout was mostly Bush’s, they will also now believe Sarah Palin is smarter than Barack Obama. Yes, it was only Sean Hannity saying it, but remember Faux News controls the minds of many zombiefied conservative neanderthals you may run into. Sorry, I know it’s painful, but you gotta get to just past the 2:00 minute mark:

Keep in mind that their definition of smart is obviously different than the traditional one. For them, smart means writing down answers to supposedly unscripted questions on your hand. Your smart when you can only name one of the founding fathers of your nation while claiming to revere their ideas. Yes, smart is calling single payer health care socialist and then admitting that your family used to slip across the Alaskan-Canadian border in order to receive some of that commie medicine. I don’t even know what to say, no matter, Zirgar says it better here. Just remember how the Inca were proved right when American’s are mulling over the Palin/Cheney vs. Obama/Biden decision come 2012.

The misinformation rolls around the planet with Tsunami-like destruction. Is there any wonder why Canadian officials support torturing brown people in Afghanistan? How the only way Obama can improve national security standing among much of the electorate is to kill more people in a country he’s not at war with remote control indiscriminate killing toys. You have to remember the information that these poor creatures are fed with the goal of retarding society. Gnashing your teeth about illegal Israeli settlement construction will get you nowhere without remembering why the right hates brown people. In a world where America is destroying itself like 18th century Poland while I’m living in a 21st century Poland still trying to imitate the States, it’s not only the language that’s hard to translate. Having a dictionary can help you understand the words coming out of the right-wingnutter’s mouth but you’ll never comprehend the meaning oozing out of their mind without remembering they get most of their ‘information’ from Rupert Murdoch controlled sources. Wow, didn’t even mention Rush Limbaugh once in the inaugural installment of wingnuttery. D’oh!

U.S. Credit Turns to Debt, Will The U.S. Devalue The Dollar?
Article by Darryl R Schoon

The ability to wage war on credit gave the West an insurmountable advantage over the East. The West’s credit, however, has now turned to debt and the West has lost its advantage. But the return to parity will not be easy.

The three hundred year economic expansion fueled by debt-based capital markets is coming to an end and with it, the hegemony of the West over the East. During that period, debt-based paper money propelled first England then the US to world dominion because of the ability to wage war on credit and to print money ad infinitum.

That era is now ending because the critical balance between credit-driven expansion and debt-driven contraction has now shifted significantly in favor of the latter; and in 2010, both East and West now find themselves on the edge of a growing deflationary sinkhole created by the sequential collapse of two large US bubbles, the dot.com and US real estate bubbles.

The US caused the 1930s deflationary depression and is again cause of the current contraction; and although similarities exist between the two, the differences between them insure a far more consequential outcome today than in the 1930s.

Global demand is again falling as credit contracts, a sign that debt-driven deflation is back but, today, there is an additional danger as well. Since 1971, because of the US default on its gold obligations, money no longer possesses intrinsic value and the consequences will soon become apparent. Deflationary depressions and a collapse in the value of fiat money have happened before but never simultaneously. Soon, they will.

We are in what Stephen Roach, Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, calls the end-game, the resolution of past monetary excesses and imbalances, excesses and imbalances that reached never-before-seen heights in the last decade. The long awaited day of reckoning has arrived.

THE PROBLEM

Capitalism cannot function unless its constantly compounding debt is serviced and/or paid down. Today, the US, the world’s largest debtor, can no longer pay what it owes except by rolling its debt forward and borrowing more, what the late economist Hyman Minsky called ponzi-financing, financing common in the final stages of mature capital systems.

The amount of outstanding US debt has now reached levels that can never be paid off:

“… the United States government and its agencies have, by far, the largest pile-up of interest-bearing debts ($15.6 trillion), the largest accumulation of unsecured obligations (over $60 trillion), the largest yearly deficit ($1.6 trillion), and the greatest indebtedness to the rest of the world ($4.8 trillion).”

Martin D. Weiss, www.moneyandmarkets.com

The unpayable levels of US debt are not just the problem of the US. Because the US dollar is the lynchpin of today’s fiat money system, US debt is everyone’s problem. The US dollar is the world reserve currency and a default by the US will have far-reaching consequences, especially in China, its largest creditor.

INFLATE, DEVALUE AND TAX

Bill Gross, co-founder of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund and an expert in matters of debt, wrote in 2006, the way a reserve currency nation [such as the US] gets out from under the burden of excessive liabilities is to inflate, devalue, and tax.

Inflation destroys the value/cost of liabilities by eroding the value of money. Debts are paid back with inflated currencies, a process which benefits the debtor and injures the creditor. This is why reserve currency nations usually inflate their way out of debt by printing what they owe.

Devaluation is another option afforded reserve currency nations. By devaluing the value of their currency, the value of what they owe falls relative to other currencies. Again, the benefit is to the debtor at the expense of the creditor.

Taxation is another option but is no longer available to the US, as its liabilities are now too high. It would be like forcing the elderly and morbidly obese to engage in strenuous exercise to regain youth. Of the three, inflating away debt is by far the preferred option but it is one the US can no longer choose.

Managing Director and Chief US Economist at Morgan Stanley, Richard Berner, recently discussed the reasons in We Can’t Inflate Our Way Out, February 24, 2010. http://www.morganstanley.com/..

It’s tempting to think that the US can inflate its way out of its fiscal problems. A faster, sustained increase in prices would erode the real value of past debt, and higher future inflation would - other things equal - reduce the real resources needed to service and pay back the promises we are making today.

However, inflating away US debt won’t work because as Richard Berner points out nearly half of federal outlays are [now] linked to inflation, meaning that increments to debt would [also] rise with inflation.

Inducing monetary inflation would also raise aggregate US debt resulting in a self-defeating cycle of higher prices and higher debt. However, there is also another more fundamental reason why inflating away US debt won’t work, to wit: Inflation is almost impossible to induce during severe deflationary contractions.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke understands this difficulty quite well. Bernanke’s late mentor, Milton Friedman, theorized the Great Depression could have been prevented by sufficient monetary stimulus and so in 2008, faced with the possibility of another deflationary depression, Bernanke put Friedman’s theory to the test. It failed.

http://jutiagroup.com/..

Unfortunately, when tested, Friedman’s theory didn’t work. Despite Bernanke’s massive monetary expansion, global credit is still contracting and lending is drying up.

The Telegraph UK reported on February 17, 2010: lending has fallen by over $100bn (£63.8bn) since January, plummeting at an annual rate of 16%. “Since the credit crisis began, $740bn of bank credit has evaporated. This is a record 10% decline,” he [analyst David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff] said. The article continues: The M3 broad money supply – watched by monetarists as a leading indicator of trouble a year ahead – has been contracting at a rate of 5.6% over the last three months. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/..

Inflating away debt is virtually impossible in the presence of deflation, but if US monetary expansion is sufficiently large, it could result in the hyperinflation of the US money supply, which would destroy both US debt and the US economy as well.

DEVALUING THE US DOLLAR

Devaluation is the US’ only remaining option. But, on February 25th, Comstock Partners’ special report, The Cycle of Deflation, Impediments to Debt Relief, pointed out the major impediment to a US devaluation to reduce debt—China.

“…there is a stumbling block to the normal competitive devaluations that typically take place. In the past, a country that incurred too much debt just did what they could to devalue their currency in order to export their way out of the dilemma by exporting their goods and services to their trading partners. ..[But]The Chinese have linked their currency to ours, so as we debase our currency, one of our major trading partner’s currency is also declining and China becomes the major beneficiary of the debasement of our dollar.” http://www.comstockfunds.com

The China peg to the US dollar thus prevents the US from altering its trade deficit by currency devaluation, but it does not prevent the US from devaluing the dollar for other reasons. If the US does devalue the dollar, it will not be to reduce debt—it will be to maintain its advantage over the world in general and China in particular.

YESTERDAY JAPAN TODAY CHINA

In 1985, when Japan was challenging the US for economic dominance the Japanese economy was in danger of overheating and Japan signaled the US its intent to raise interest rates.

The US responded by threatening Japan with trade sanctions, cutting off Japan from US markets. During the 1980s, the US badly needed Japanese savings to fuel Reagan’s multi-trillion dollar debt-based military buildup; and if Japanese rates were raised, Japanese savings would stay at home.

Threats of US trade sanctions forced Japan to keep interest rates low but at a perhaps fatal cost to Japan. Low interest rates combined with inflows of burgeoning trade profits ignited a speculative frenzy in stocks causing the then largest stock market bubble in history; and when the bubble collapsed in 1990, Japan fell into a deflationary trap from which it has never fully emerged.

Today, US dominance is again being challenged, this time by China. While it is not possible to know what the US will do, it is naïve to believe the US will do nothing; but whatever happens, US debt and the US dollar will be affected.

China has now significantly reduced its buying of US debt leaving the US with growing deficits and a virtual boycott by China of new US IOUs. This will impact future US/China relations.

The tentative but mutual benefits of the past are being replaced by self-interest as US spending and consequent debt is increasingly perceived as being out of control by China. That perception is correct. Since the 1980s, America’s focus has been on borrowing more, not spending less and the implications are clear.

With China moving away from increasingly risky US debt, the US is now far more likely to treat China as a challenger than as a needed creditor; and, while devaluing the US dollar would have minimal impact on overall US debt, it would have a significant impact on China.

In December 2009, total foreign holdings of US government debt equaled $3.29 trillion. With total US obligations now close to $100 trillion, a 30 % devaluation of the US dollar would impact only that debt held by foreigners—but the losses to China would significant.

China currently owns at least $1.7 billion in US dollar denominated securities; and, if the US devalued the dollar by 30 %, China’s losses on its investments would be in excess of $500 million.

As stated earlier, it is not possible to know what the US will do. But since WWII geopolitical considerations have always outweighed economic factors in US policy decisions and there is little reason to expect this to change—even as the end-game approaches.

THE END GAME AND SOVEREIGN DEFAULT

The US is trapped. Caught between rising expenditures and the need to borrow more, outstanding US debt is incapable of ever being repaid and should the credit rating of the US ever reflect its actual state, sovereign default, not devaluation would be the result.

In 2008, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart in This Time Is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crisis reviewed the history of sovereign defaults concluding the then dearth of defaults was in actuality a warning of more to come. They were right.

Then, Rogoff and Reinhart mistakenly described the US as a “default virgin”, belonging to a small group of nations that had never defaulted. But on February 26th Rogoff said that the US had, in fact, defaulted during the Great Depression by changing the price of gold from $20 to $35 per ounce.

While technically a default, the US action was actually a currency devaluation. The real default occurred in 1973 when the US officially reneged on its gold obligations under Bretton-Woods, leaving other nations holding US paper dollars that could no longer be converted to gold.

Professor Antal Fekete noted the significance of that default when he wrote in 2008,

“Thirty-five years ago gold, symbol of permanence, was chased out from the Monetary Garden of Eden, replaced by the floating irredeemable dollar as the pillar of the international monetary system. That’s right: a floating pillar. The gold demonetization exercise was a farce. It was designed as a fig leaf to cover up the ugly default of the U.S. government on its gold-redeemable sight obligations to foreigners. The word ‘default’ itself was put under taboo even though it punctured big holes in the balance sheet of every central bank of the world, as its dollar-denominated assets sank in value in terms of anything but the dollar itself.”

As the end-game progresses it is impossible to know what the US will do. It is likely the US doesn’t know itself. What the US does know is that it is now trapped by increasing levels of mounting debt from which there is no easy exit.

Great empires have come and gone; Mesopotamian, Mongolian, Persian, Roman, et al. America has led the free world and been the ne plus ultra for morals for more than 150 years. It has been a touchstone for all to aspire to. Is the great nation’s reign over? Are we to fall by the wayside as so many other great cultures and civilizations have? What is the answer?

Bill O’Reilly calls them secular progressives, while Glen Beck refers to them as just progressives. However, it goes much deeper than that. It is aristocrats and plutocrats of yesteryear on a quest to take the world back to the feudal system; they the lords and us the vassals. Once America, the last bastion of goodwill, has fallen the rest of the world shall go with it.

Americans, as well as the peoples of other nations, have to wake up. They have to pull their heads out of the sand and see what’s going on around them. Do not fall prey to the demagoguery and pandering of these unctuous pundits and political mouthpieces — Obama being the grandest Macdaddy of them all.

What’s not realized are the far reaching ramifications of total takeover. The ruination of a culture or civilization and how it portrays to all aspects of existence. Once you are beholden, once you are dependant, and when you become controlled by the likes of these perfidious men, it will be likened to the old man of the sea; onerously burdensome, difficult to take and almost impossible to get rid of. Far greater cultures have fallen before men of this ilk.

People turn a blind eye to such activities, unwilling to confront or acknowledge that there is such evil in the world. It was too late for Germany, too late for Russia. Venezuela is in the throes of such evil and Cuba has endured it for decades. China, the great suppresser of people, has a imperialistic government that rules by wealth and an iron fist. These blackguards and provocateurs are propagating and proliferating that control throughout the world. Look out America, it’s time to stand up and fight. Are we less willing to fight for our freedom than Iraqis? Go to the polls and let your voices be heard.