banking with criminals II

have i said fuck j p morgan chase recently? if i haven't then i have been remiss and need to take steps to correct the omission...since their books have been terribly disfigured by all the asset-eating toxic and esoteric derivatives that are papering the walls of their titanium-lead alloy vault walls ( stylishly rendered in a neo-medici/borgia "vincenzo will eat your children" motif ) they have decided that among other asset regenerating schemes they will raise my house payment by twenty-six bucks a month for the next year...not because of a "bookkeeping error" ( nearly as i can tell the entire economy is the result of a "bookkeeping error" that and statistics cooked to mush by every fucking body who wants me to think there is someone who actually has a clue running things ) or a sudden, sharp increase in property taxes ( although that wouldn't come as such a surprise either)...no they just want three hundred and twelve more dollars to add to the somewhat diminished "fractional reserve" they have laying around for sundry beer bashes and trolling for wall street hookers...soon i will be out from under this mortgage...at that point j p morgan chase can kiss my ass goodbye...i will find a locally owned bank to be bilked by.

we all knew there was a bunker

"remember, in a system in which money is created through bank loans there is never enough money in existence to pay back all debts with interest. the system only continues to function if it continues growing...consumers can't create more money the way banks do and can't take on more debt if no one will lend to them...as we have seen , the actual inflation-adjusted income of american workers has not risen substantially since the 1970s, but home values did rise during the 2000-2008 period, giving many households a higher theoretical net worth. many homeowners used their soaring home value as collateral for more debt-in many cases, substantially more. at the same time lenders found ways of easing consumer credit standards and making credit generally more accessible....the result: household debt increased from less than $2 trillion in 1980 to $13.5 trillion in 2008.this borrowing and spending on the part of u s households was not only the major engine of domestic economic expansion during most of the last decade, but a major component of worldwide economic growth as well. but with the crash in the u s real estate market in 2007 household net worth also crashed...and as unemployment rose from 4.6 percent in 2007 to almost 10 percent ( as officially measured) in 2010, average household income declined. at the same time, banks tightened their lending standards , with credit card companies slashing the number of offers, and mortgage lenders requiring much higher qualifications form borrowers...less debt meant less spending ( household usually borrow money so they can spend it-whether for a new car or a kitchen upgrade). this is a potentially short-term problem, however, the only way the situation will change is if somehow the economy as a whole begins to grow again ( leading to higher house prices, lower unemployment, and easier credit). here's the catch: increased consumer demand is a big part of what's needed drive that shift back to growth."
from "the end of growth: adapting to our new economic reality" by richard heinberg.

i never used my home equity as debt leverage and as a child of people who came of age during the depression of the 1930s i don't enter into cycles of debt readily...in fact in the last 25 years ( since i sobered up) i have done so only when some critical facet of my existence would have failed with out it ( transportation mostly)..i am almost out of debt...a few more vehicle payments, clean up the last of the credit cards form the 1980s ( compound interest is usury and criminal...i would expropriate the expropriators ) a few years more on the mortgage and then i will be somewhat freer...so as a philosophical position i refuse to take on any more debt to bail fucking wall street out of the hole the greedy degenerates dug for themselves with all their esoteric derivatives...let the market work its stringent discipline on the avaricious shits... i have guns and a garden i don't need wall street...if it weren't for the innocent in the way i would hope irene would scrub the bagnio clean.

so it's been revealed that cheney had a bunker full of "electronic communications equipment" ( what? no semaphore flags or flare guns?) behind a "steel door" in the vice-presidential residence...joe biden probably stumbled into it in a drunken stupor one night and though it was the death star...well...we knew there was a bunker...it is standard fuhrer equipment along with bitter hatre4d and a penchant or violence ( remember the shotgun business)...old dick looks a bit cadaverous these days...the pasty-faced bastard has spent too much time in his montana shadow-fuhrer bunker...somebody should help him.

the n y times raises the bar for consumerist propaganda

the palpitations on wall street are a marker of capital's inevitable contraction in the face of resource depletion and a mass of debt that far outweighs the world gross product ( irregardless of joe bidens earnest assurances to the new mandarins) and by extension is impossible to repay...reliable economic sources place the outside date for hyperinflation of the u s dollar at 2014...the political landscape is a cesspit of manipulative degenerates, disbarred lawyers, defrocked clerics, and used car salesmen from pomona...and there is a miasma of political suicide hovering over the swamps of whoretown as the kendo sticks and nail guns are being cleaned and oiled in anticipation of the debt reduction battles and the foregone conclusion that the automatic cuts written into the debt deal will go into effect because there can be no ideological rapproachement in congress thus dooming all those shits to town council pergatory...despite all this the fall style magazine of the n y times has either raised the bar on propaganda or lowered the standards of acceptable journalism ( if indeed such a thing is possible) by running a howler of an article entitled "youth quake: what do you wear when protest and mayhem rock your world? reports form three epicenters of street style: london, cairo, and tokyo." ( top photo is one accompanying this goebbelistic nonsense) christ on a bike people..one would have to consider that those struggling for their political future on the streets of egypt or overcoming an unacceptable political reaction to disaster in japan might be more concerned with events than what the n y times thinks of what they are wearing ( i never thought the n y times assumed that i was anything but an automaton programmed to shut up, consume, and be fucking grateful for the opportunity...but what can you expect from a yellow rag that gives the incomparably smug and arrogant dimwit thomas l friedman column space?)...what looters and arsonists in london are wearing ( and let me distinguish them from the crowds of the underclasses that have legitimate grievances with the excessive use of police power in their communities...violence begets violence...some thugs just took advantage of the situation because they thought someone else would take the heat) is of little interest except to the stylistas at the times who are always up to hawk some dreadful crap labeled "style" to the unwary and impressionable among us...not since capital turned earth day into a marketing bonanza has there been such a transparent, low-life piece of subhuman manipulation...the census of denizens of the longed for lake of fire has just expanded.

everything's a business

"usury changes things. with interest money is no longer a simple and stable commodity that just happens to have been chosen as the medium of exchange. projected through time it multiplies, and this without any toil on the part of the usurer. a man can borrow money, buy a loom, sell his wool at a higher price. change his station in life. another man can borrow money, buy the first man's wool, ship it abroad, and sell it at an even higher price. he moves up the social scale. or, if he is unlucky or foolish, he is ruined. meanwhile the usurer, the banker, grows richer and richer. we can't even know how rich, because money can be moved an hidden, and gains on financial transactions are hard to trace. it's pointless to count his sheep and cattle or to measure how much land he owns. who will make him pay his tithe? and who will make him pay his taxes? who will persuade him to pay some attention to his soul when life has become so interesting? things are getting out of hand."
from " medici money: banking, metaphysics, and art in fifteenth cenntury florence" by tim parks


whoa! so many ways to go with this...a full bore assault on using religion as a vehicle to scare the sinners into opening their purses to the princes of the church ( or the swaggarts of tv evangelism ) and ease their earthly burdens through an upward redistribution of wealth ( and creating said cleric aristocracy)...financial speculation...selling short...bubbles...esoteric derivatives...credit default swaps...hedge funds...insider trading..currency manipulation ( or treason in the sick twisted utterly profane mind of the yahoo governor of texas...rick perry has to be close to the bottom of the political sump...the shit is thick down there)...how can one think of shady financial dealings with out dragging the whores into the discussion? plutocracy disguised as republicanism that calls itself democracy ...the dissembling reaches down even to the most general of labels...reality is somewhere else...waiting to kick humanity in its collective nuts...i can almost understand the messianic who lust for the end of days...sometimes people are just too fucking stupid to live..i really need a CULTURE...i am so weary of things being quantified and qualified by their monetary worth and knowing that the whole house of cards will collapse in chaos because it is an entire society based on an abstraction...the medium of exchange has traded places with the goods or services it is meant to represent and become the ultimate good...what is gold but shiny lead? insane...how do you eat that? there is no such thing as a post-agricultural society...we may be in for the real post-industrial....post-wal mart even...grow your own may take on new meaning as petrochemical agricultural inputs become exorbitantly priced or unavailable and food prices spiral upward ( have a look at index mundi or just stroll the supermarket aisles and think back a bit)...shadowstats puts the outside date for hyperinflation of the u s dollar at 2014...the next election ( not that it matters ) could be the last...the interest level keep rising.

shadowstats

http://www.shadowstats.com/


one for the one or two lost souls out there who thinks that anything political could possibly be honest...democrat...republican...tea party...lying scumsucking whores addicted to political expedient.

http://www.shadowstats.com/imgs/sgs-emp.gif?hl=ad&t=1312554111

class treason or just the truth?

"leading active members of today's economics profession...have formed themselves into a kind of politburo for correct economic thinking. as a general rule- as one might expect from a gentleman's club- this has placed them on the wrong side of every important policy issue, and not just recently but for decades. they predict disaster where none occurs. they deny the possibility of events that hen happen...the oppose the most basic, decent, and sensible reforms, while offering placebos instead. they are always surprised when something untoward ( like a recession) actually occurs. and when finally they sense that some position cannot be sustained, they do not reexamine their ideas. they do not consider the possibility of a flaw in logic or in theory. rather, they simply change the subject. no-one loses face in this club for having been wrong. no-one is dis-invited from presenting papers at later annual meetings. and still les is anyone form outside invited in."
james k. galbraith

jim is setting out to be the smedley butler of economists and i have to wish him well...anyone one who turns on the established doyens and doges of their particular societal niche is in for a rough ride...especially with a group capable of such wonderful self-deceit as economists...how they can continue to foul their own nests and still retain any shred of credibility is a tribute either to their refined and convoluted academic thinking or to their utter irrelevance to the real world...either way the come second only to the whore politicians in their disconnect from the rest of us...mired completely in an economic system that has seen better days and may be shuffling off stage to a dirge as the rest of us try to work things out...current economic structures are at the mercy of the sunk costs of their infrastructure and their need for continued growth...the inertia of these two albatrosses is steering them away from even admitting the seriousness of their ( and by extension our ) situation much less addressing it...when leadership fails you have to lead yourself and the failure of leadership is glaringly obvious... people are veering off into odd tangents because of it and that may not bode well if the sociopathic elemment garners some influence ( as i recall hitler rose out of some economic distress...check out the novel "it can't happen here" for an imaginative view of the possibilities that were rife in the last great economic upheaval in the empire)...time to build a community and an inclusive consensus of who we are so we have something to fall back on when all this comes crashing down...clearly we will have to do this ourselves.

i always wanted to be a generalist...

"these experts are all working within certain conceptual and administrative conventions that parse reality into bite-size chunks that journalists, researchers, officials, and policy makers can cope with . the specialization seems to help them get abetter grasp of the issues.

in a generalized system the opposite is the case; the compartmentalization that specialization brings with it precludes a clear overview, one that would tell us that things are far more dangerous , and the dangers likely more imminent than we thought. thus specialists can tell us that a 1 degree celsius rise in global temperatures will probably lead to a fall in global crop yields of 10%. but to calculate figures like these specialists have to make assumptions about the context in which a 1 degree celsius rise will happen. the normal assumption is ceteris paribus: all other things being equal or staying the same. however, in a general system crisis, most relevant 'other things' are not staying the same. they are changing and very often in an unfavorable way, because one problem exacerbates the others in a chain reaction that becomes a cascade of knock on effects. thus, for example, plants grown in warmer temperatures that they are acclimatized to will need adequate water to suit those altered conditions, and if there is a depleted level of fossil water to draw upon, then crop yields may fall a lot more. "
"danger ahead" prioritizing risk avoidance in political and economic decision making." by brian davey

capital is boxed in by its need to generate continued growth to insure continued profit. growth and profit are both centered in what is happening "now" which leads to a myopia in long-term vision. the focus on what is happening now is a root cause of the volatility in the stock markets, making them sensitive short-term events. since long-term vision is secondary it leads economists, analysts, and investors into what economic historian werner abelshauser calls a lack of "catastrophe consciousness". a more holistic view of economic activity, its limits and impacts, is missing. long-term events such as climate change and resource depletion are discounted or dismissed. inapplicable because of time scale or the placebo of a technological fix that may or may not exist. then again given their tendency to panic being mired in the short-term thinking may save them from simply giving up and going home...the end will be a surprise for them...something of a mercy in its own way...they have enough angst in their zeitgeist at the moment...why burden them with a wider view

radioactive nixon

"transcripts of the tapes were released on august 5 and the president went on television one more time, admitting that he had listened alone to the june 23 tape in may 1973, an admission that confirmed he had knowingly lied-to the nation, to the courts, to congress, to his staff and lawyers, to his family, and probably to himself day after day, month after month, for more than two years. 'whatever the mistakes i made in the handling of watergate,' he said,' the basic truth remains that when all the facts were brought to my attention, i insisted on a full investigation and prosecution of those guilty. i am firmly convinced that the record, in its entirety, does not justify the extreme step of the impeachment and removal of a president.' the statement was not true. it also came too late. on august 8 nixon went on television to announce that he would resign the next day at noon."
from "president nixon: alone in the white house" by richard reeves.

i missed nixon's resignation...i was camping in the colorado rockies southwest of denver and did not find out until the tenth that he had resigned ( see "nixon and the cowgirls" for details) i only marginally regret that...he was the last act in the destruction of any sort of respect for the presidency, the courts, the constitution, congress, politics, and the rest of the detritus of organized authority that began with johnson and the escalation of the war in vietnam...clearly authority was seriously deranged and delusional...they continue to reinforce that point...don't have a fucking clue..just arrogance and bluster...he had been exposed for what he was long before the endgame...anti-climax..a foregone conclusion...just another overgrown ward hack concerned more about his "historical legacy" than his ethics...you can find them on any town council.

"the first mass attack against tokyo put the city in a state of shock. with a maximum amount of coordination between their military and the diplomatic actions, the allies could have used this state of shock to offer concrete terms for peace. the only condition that they already knew the japanese would not negotiate-keeping their emperor- would also serve allied interests. there was no reason for either side to prolong the war."
from "a history of bombing" by sven lindqvist.

"japan would have surrendered even if atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. the hiroshima and nagasaki bombs did not defeat japan, nor by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war, did they persuade japan to accept unconditional surrender."
u s strategic bombing survey. july 1946

no...those people were incinerated to make stalin blink...all he did was build his own weapons...what has ( and what will ) all that time, effort, expense, fear, distrust, mendacity, and outright hatred cost? sometimes i wish i didn't read so damned much history...sometimes i need to projectile vomit rage and disgust...august is such a vile month.


the dow pukes up 634.67 points...pundits and politicians dither and point fingers..yeah..the degenerate wisdom of "leadership" is reassuring in interesting times...imagine my relief.

wall street has the fear...

"money, credit, and debt can be created with no underlying physical foundation whereas energy and scarce natural resources, not dollars are what we have to budget and spend...in a world increasingly constrained by energy and increasing environmental limitations, but with a growing human population, adherence to accounting frameworks based on natural capital will be essential for policymakers to assess water, energy, and other limiting factors. such a framework would help us discard energy dead-ends and, perhaps equally important, our time and effort. the world as a whole needs to build a renewable supply investment portfolio that achieves the highest return on scarce inputs rather than money that is based on nothing scarce at all."
nate hagens and kenneth mulder, "energy and water. the real blue chips."


...and a monetary system that is based on "enlightened self-interest" may be an impediment to our adaptive abilities as a species...mired utterly in the short-term...subject to irrational panic attacks ( was today a "relief rally"? there was one of those day before yesterday and you see where that got)and based on nothing but speculation geared toward self-aggrandizement it is only going to obscure the reality of the situations we face to favor a narrative that maximizes profit...a somewhat more collectivist and egalitarian mindset that takes the future's welfare into account is what is needed along with some grassroots education to overcome the institutional bias built into the system...systemic failure could be an ally in this, but only if there is a parallel system that is well developed enough to assume the responsibility...capital is resilient as long as events remain reasonably predictable...it is boxed in by its need to generate profit and pursue the holy grail of "growth"...that mindset has always ignored the finite nature of the planet and the financial system may finally be finding those limits without the ability to understand or respond to them in a timely fashion...next week should be interesting.

AT LEAST THEY WAITED UNTIL THE MARKET CLOSED
7:56PM 8-5-2011

so...standard and poors ( irony) downgraded the credit rating of the empire proving that perhaps the "american century" is finally over...we can join the euro zone now and the germans can bail us out along with the other struggling economies...it'll be good for us...i wonder how the day traders and hedge fund managers are going to spend the weekend...the vip lounges will see a lot of alkaloid lines cut and snorted as the economic elite go for the gusto before they're downgraded to pcp and morning glory seeds...stay tuned...there's still along way to fall

i call it vindication

"the widespread acknowledgment by market participants ( and governments) that peak oil is upon us, coupled with an understanding of its consequences, is likely to crash the global financial system. initially, just a few market participants will begin to question their faith in the overall stability and continued growth of the system and thus the likely value of their virtual assets. however, the transition can be very rapid from a few market participants accepting the idea that the system could break down permanently, to large-scale acceptance. a fear-driven, positive feedback conversion of a mountain of paper virtual assets into a mole-hill of resilient real assets could develop. this would help precipitate an irreversible collapse of the financial and economic system."

david korowicz. "on the cusp of collapse: complexity, energy, and the globalized economy."

"the economic crisis that began in 2007-2008 was both foreseeable and inevitable, and it marks a permanent, fundamental break from past decades-a period during which most economists adopted the unrealistic view that perpetual economic growth is necessary and also possible to achieve. there are now fundamental barriers to ongoing economic expansion, and the world is colliding with those barriers...from now on only relative growth is possible; the global economy is playing a zero sum game with and ever-shrinking pot to be divided among the winners."
richard heinberg. "the end of growth"

"most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crisis."
naill ferguson.

the dow pukes up 512.76 points as it implodes in a frenzy of fear and greed...that's over 700 points in three days time...the pundits are calling it a "correction" but the volatility that the market is showing could just be the spread of that doubt about the end of sustained growth that korowicz and heinberg are talking about...richard heinberg points out that there may still be room for periods of economic growth in the future, but the degradation of the climate combined with the growing scarcity of high quality energy doom economies to a downward trend..".people who are paying attention" is what the post-carbon institute calls those who subscribe to this idea and are searching for ways to ease the transition to a new earth..i am inclined to agree for the most part...natural economies are sustainable but not perpetual motion machines...you don't get out more than you put in...all the quantitative easing you can stand isn't going to fix this...there is no-one outside the global economy to buttress it with infusions of hard currency...all this may be beginning to dawn on the patsies play by the economists and wall street barons..click over to the garden blog if you want to see an attempt at a response to all this...catch it while the infrastructure holds out and pick up a copy of "the post carbon reader" "fleeing vesuvius" and "the end of growth" and while your at it you might want to read up on what john stuart mill had to say about a stationary economy in the mid nineteenth century...john's ideas time may have come.

i'd like to wish them the best of luck...but it would be wrong

"the committee of six republican and six democrats, which will do much of its work behind closed doors, will have until november twenty-third to develop a plan to resolve the budget deficit that must pass through both houses of congress before christmas. once they come up with a plan seven members agree to it will go to both chambers and can pass with just a simple majority. no filibustering and no amending allowed."
associated press 8-2-2011

and the dow pukes up 265.87 points in the greatest vote of confidence since truman fired macarthur ( and that arrogant fuck should have been cashiered, tarred and feathered, and then ridden out of whoretown on a rail after he let colonels eisenhower and patton run the bonus marchers out of their hooverville on the anacostia river mud flats...a patronizing and foul manipulator old doug posed with a jeep but rode around in a packard limosine...a true aristocrat)... all these clapped out whores have proven is an obstinate taste for partisan bickering in the face of even the most withering populist rage...and it will surely continue until the "automatic triggers" contained in the bill that will cut discretionary spending without congress's input...leaving us in the hands of the professional bureaucrats...the foul bottom feeders of the imperial strata...i believe i predicted closed door sessions in an earlier post because, just like the hamiltonian usurpers of 1787 none of the "super congress" ( politburo? cadre? coven? satrap? central control? the possible list goes on forever) none of these shit will want he folks back home to know who is proposing what imperial rape to what sector of the citizenry...remember the social darwinist degenerates that run the country hate the poor and working people...inferior sods to an individual in their view...they don't care what happens to any of us as long as their handlers and they themselves are covered...it's a good living if you can stand to sell your constituents out...the current crop are heartless bastards who would sell their grandmothers in tehran or istanbul if the price was right...have a look at "fleeing vesuvius"....i was utterly correct in my malthusian outlook...dust off those old copies of "decline of the west" oswald was dead on, if obtuse...optimism is cowardice.