Our sales down 10%......

Not bad in the Obama "Depression." Without a lot more stimulus we'll fall even further behind. Once you get people hooked on welfare, they stay hooked.

More cash for shit coming up.


Black Friday or Dead Friday? « LewRockwell.com Blog

Was Black Friday actually Dead Friday? By the looks of it, retail executives may go into shock during this upcoming holiday season. I think my experience in shopping this Friday may be similar to what a whole lot of folks witnessed yesterday.

This year I did something I haven’t done very often — I joined the throngs of people in line at 4am to try and swipe up a super deal on something I really needed to buy. I have been squeezing every last bit of life from my washer and dryer for a couple of years now, that is, until the dryer decided it had its own mind in regards to temperature, and the washer started destroying my clothes. So I waited months for Black Friday, betting on those annual appliance super deals. And the exact set I had my eyes on since last year appeared as a Black Friday Doorbuster SuperDeal at Sears. The pair sells for about $1,900, with past sale prices never getting better than about $1,500. The Doorbuster price was $850 – no strings attached. Now that’s a savings worth the hassle.

I arrived at 3:45 am, and all entrances seemed to have a line of 50+ people. I thought, “Wow, is this what it’s like?” The bulk of the crowd ended up in the appliance and electronic sections, looking to save $$ on big-cost items, just as I suspected. What I discovered was that the huge mass of shoppers were only there for the early-bird super-duper deals. By 5:15, they had processed all of our purchases, the store emptied, and the whole place was eerily quiet. There was no one around, at all. I talked to a small group of salespeople who were standing around with nothing to do, and they told me the scene was “highly unusual.” They seemed to be very perplexed.

The rest of the day that mall, which is close to me, was about as busy as a normal weeknight outside of the holidays. I noticed the only places with packed parking lots were the discount-cheap retailers — Target, Walmart, Meijers, etc. Everything else was barely business as usual. In years past, I would refuse to leave the house on Black Friday to avoid the crush. Today, which is usually another heavy shopping day, that mall parking lot was consistently 10% filled.

My view of this holiday shopping season – based on a host of personal experiences, observations, and following the news – is that people are buckling down and holding on to their money, partially because they have no choice due to home foreclosure, job loss, and the credit crackdown. Shoppers are going to gravitate to items of necessity, and they will be drawn to stuff they want (but admit don’t need) only when the incentives are huge. Look for retailers to get desperate this holiday season and possibly offer up some mega-discounts.

Back to the "Afordability Index"......

My point is that without government gimmicks broke dicks can't afford a house.

Period.

Subsidize interest rates, free money for down payments, tax rebates, and various other schemes just to keep the crooked elites in power and rich eventually comes to a screeching halt.

When everybody throws in the towel and demands this shit stops.

Good luck!


How much does the Average American Make? Breaking Down the U.S. Household Income Numbers.

I ran the numbers for a state with no state income taxes, Texas. A family at this level is only bringing in $3,215 a month. The national median home price peaked around $200,000. So let us assume this family purchased the median home:

5% down payment: $10,000

Mortgage 30-year fixed (6.5%): $1,200

Taxes and Insurance: $333

PITI: $1,533

Right off the bat, this family is spending 47% of their net pay on a median priced home. We didn’t even account for any pre-tax retirement account investing. Given the recent stock market performance and the loss of $50 trillion in global wealth, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. The bottom line is the average American family is being squeezed from every angle. What we need is a focus on jobs and our economy, not bailing out banks. That defeats the entire purpose. The average American family is struggling getting by and when they hear about these billion dollar handouts, they can’t help but to feel left out.

Walmart workers are in the same boat......

They, on the whole, are broke every payday. Lining up for their paychecks so they can buy smokes and gas to get home. I guess we have to buy more Chinese trinkets to get these broke dicks through the week. After all, Clinton and the Republican gangsters gave our manufacturing base away years ago.

Wealth comes from making things not selling other peoples junk. But I've been warning people about NAFTA for over 15 years.

I hate being right but we haven't sen anything yet.


Lining up at Midnight at Wal-Mart to buy Food is part of the new Recovery. Banks offering Mattress Interest Rates. The Invisible Recovery Outside of Wall Street.

The fact that you have people lining up at midnight just waiting to have their paychecks or government checks clear for food is probably something you are not going to see on CNBC but it is happening. This recession is really creating a split and is also flaming the fires of class warfare. Average Americans and working class Americans are still dealing with what is known as the Great Recession.

Wal-Mart is looking to meet the new market reality by offering items that meet the new austerity demanded by millions of American families:

“Among the steps Wal-Mart is taking to address the changes in shopping habits, Mr. Quinn listed an overhaul of the retailer’s private-label brand, Great Value, which is promoted in commercials describing how families can fix dinners with Great Value products “for less than $2 a serving.”

For less than $2 a serving means millions of families are now needing to stretch their dollar. So as you might have guessed, having the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve go on a path of dollar weakness actually hurts those at the bottom and middle class the most. Yet they are concerned more about the financial sector and the chips may fall where they may for the remaining group of Americans.

Punishing the Prudent Saver

Those that save and are cautious with their money, are now being forced to make difficult decisions. Even holding on to U.S. dollars is not a good move with the way the Fed is systematically devaluing the dollar. The Fed is artificially keeping rates at record lows so putting your money in a savings account amounts to stuffing it into your mattress. Take a look at three of the too big to fail (TBTF) banks and

Amen......

People believe anything. Next thing you know they'll be tellining us that Oba mama is going to get us out of our oil wars.......wait that's what he campaigned on.

Suckers!


The Charade of Left and Right by Jacob G. Hornberger

Recently Republican Senator Arlen Specter shocked the Republican-Democratic world by shifting to the Democrats. Yawn! What’s the big deal? With the exception of Ron Paul, every Republican and Democratic member of Congress could switch back and forth and it wouldn’t make any difference philosophically because they all share the same statist philosophy. The only difference it would make is with respect to control, which is what it’s all about.

Look at Barack Obama. Have you noticed any fundamental differences between his economic philosophy and foreign-policy philosophy and that of his predecessor George W. Bush? There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them. Obama has embraced every one of Bush’s foreign-policy programs and his infringements on civil liberties. He is also borrowing, spending, and printing as much money as Bush, if not more.

And why not? Like Bush, Obama believes in the socialistic welfare state and the planned economy. And like Bush, he believes in the empire and its right to impose its will on everyone else in the world.

The real ideological, moral, and economic battle in this country is between the lovers of liberty, on the one hand, and the lovers of statism, on the other hand. The lovers of liberty are the libertarians. The lovers of statism are the conservatives and liberals. Unlike the statists, who support and defend all those socialist, interventionist, and imperial programs, libertarians are committed to abolishing and repealing every single one of them. For libertarians, liberty and moral principles, not tax loot and political power, are the highest priority.

Government will save money.....

Over your old lady's body, that is. All you have to do is stop paying for cancer screenings. Early detection is expensive, I guess. Of course, you pay more if the cancer is detected too late. But everybody will have to stand in line behind all the illegals who clean the rich people' s toilets, right?


Thoughts On The New CDC Recommendations « LewRockwell.com Blog

All weekend, there was talk and analysis of the new recommendations put out by the CDC, which state that tests such as mammograms and pap smears should be delayed and done less frequently. The GOP is pointing out that this should be a warning about the kind of rationing that will come with socialized medicine. I agree, but as always, the politicians have selective reasoning; this is no more dangerous than the previous recommendations of more screening, which could be turned into totalitarian mandates.

It is noteworthy that radiologists oppose the mammogram recommendation. So, on the one hand, the old schedule was supported by a group that stands to profit directly. On the other hand, the new schedule would cut healthcare costs and was announced at a time when the GAO is crunching numbers for public plans backed by the current administration. That the White House denies any such connection only lends credibility to the GOP’s theory in my eyes.

Both the old and new recommendations are suspect, and this is the inherent problem wit centralized anything, including the mere existance of the CDC. Remember that the CDC’s stated goal is to protect public health first, not individual health. Even if the CDC was immune to politics and corruption, it would still be unwise to follow its recommendations blindly. Only you are concerned about your own individual health as a first priority.

Only the government can control your privacy......

You have none.

It will only get worse as the thugs scramble to maintain power. The voters have to be fooled or, better yet, bought, and kept under thumb so none of your money escapes their grasp. All financial, medical, legal, etc. records will have to be accessible.

Staying off the books by using cash is the only alternative. If you dare.


Why government cares about your bank account

Harry Browne
© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com

"Know Your Customer" is a proposed government regulation by which banks will be required to develop a customer profile that details your banking habits -- your pattern of deposits, withdrawals, cash transactions, and the like. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) wants your banker to have this profile so he can tell the government whenever your financial transactions deviate from your established pattern.

This isn't a new approach. Since 1970 the misnamed "Bank Secrecy Act" has forced banks to tell the government anytime you use a bank wire or cashier's check to pay someone $10,000 or more. Treasury agents pressure banks to ignore the $10,000 threshold and report ever-smaller transactions -- so today the government is likely to be told if you spend even $3,000 in an unusual way.

"Know Your Customer" is just one more step toward giving the government complete access to your financial affairs -- to assure that you don't deal drugs and enjoy your profits, even if you have no interest in drugs.

Four reasons cause government to intrude ever more deeply into your private affairs:

First, it's human nature for any bureaucrat to expand his empire. So if you give government the power to regulate someone's life, you shouldn't be shocked when the bureaucrats use the power to regulate your life.

Second, congressmen have to prove they are tougher on crime than their opponents. Thus they continually hand the bureaucracy new policies to appear to be fighting crime.

Third, government programs never accomplish their stated objectives. So when a program like the Bank Secrecy Act fails to stop the drug trade, it is continually expanded -- with more penalties, more surveillance, more reporting, more requirements of all kinds -- to try to make the program work.

Why do such programs fail? Because those at whom it is aimed make it their business to know the regulations and circumvent them. A drug dealer won't keep his money in the bank -- to have his transactions reported to the government and his assets seized by zealous DEA or Treasury agents.

But you -- secure in the knowledge that you're doing nothing wrong -- feel no need to know about new laws and regulations. So you do nothing to protect yourself from snooping in your bank account, from asset-forfeiture programs that can confiscate your bank account because of suspicious transactions, from informants making up stories about you, or from any of the other legal inanities. When the drug warriors swoop down on you, you're unprepared, vulnerable, and completely overwhelmed. As a result, you may lose much of your property or even go to prison.

This, of course, contradicts the politicians' standard reassurance: "If you're not guilty, you have nothing to fear." It is the innocent -- not the guilty -- who have the most to fear from the avalanche of laws and regulations.

I'm on the same page with this guy....

Takes time for government fiat money to flow through the system. Pretty soon prices skyrocket. Watch gas, food and real estate. Not your house, though. Only government financed companies. Bought and paid for, of course.

After all no such thing as a free lunch from this gang.

Commodity Bull Market: Inflaton Isn't Here Yet - Here's When You Can Expect It

This time around, should we expect things to move more rapidly or more slowly than average? My bet is on slow, which would push the peak inflation rate out toward the end of 2012. One reason for slow is that the government's rescue packages are delaying the process. Rescuing banks that are choking on bad loans postpones the day of reckoning for both the banks and the loan customers. It retards the pace of foreclosure sales (whether of real estate or other collateral) and puts the deleveraging that has been going on since last fall into slow motion. A wilting of the recent stock market rally would confirm this.

Investment Implications

The big plus about the Mayan calendar is that, right or wrong, it is very definite about things. Human civilization will come to an end, I'm told, on Dec. 21, 2012 – not on the 20th and not on the 22nd. There was no room for monetarists in those step-sided pyramids, but there still are few what-to-do implications from the monetarist findings.

Who needs tarp.....

This program is political suicide for too many Dems. Imagine these rich bastards bailing out these fat cat crooks again.

Not labeled TARP, of course.

Expect more 0 interest "loans", tax gimmicks, globalony carbon tax credits, and other rip offs to hide the fact that the system is set up to rob us like an auto repair joint.


The debate over extending TARP steps onto center stage -- DailyFinance

If all these economists question the effectiveness of TARP, their voices will just add to the chorus already singing in Congress that this program needs to end. Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, thinks leftover TARP money should be redirected to pay for road and bridge projects that would create jobs. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) wants to end the bailout program completely to keep if from becoming a "political slush fund," according to the Post.

The Obama administration is thinking about using most of the leftover funds to reduce the national debt, but it wants to leave TARP in place in case of future financial problems. About $139 billion in original TARP funds remain unallocated and available to the Treasury Department for spending. Banks have paid back $71 billion, and $10 billion has been collected in interest and dividends.

TARP by Any Other Name

In the program's early days, Treasury was collecting only about 66 cents on the dollar on the repurchase of warrants, according to the Congressional Oversight Panel. Thomas Seay, told me by email this morning that "their more recent repurchases of stock warrants, since the release that report, have been significantly closer to our estimates." So, at least the banks are repurchasing the warrants at a price fairer to the taxpayer.

TARP remains unpopular with the public because of the perception that it bails out Wall Street and leaves out Main Street. The public remains angry about the generous compensation packages that Wall Street firms continue to pay their executives.

Even CNN can't pass the buck......

Economy has nothing to do with government budgets in the long run. But governments budgets take money from productive activities and gives the money to pay  for votes. But voters have short memories and refuse to stay bought.

Need to educate your children? Government has money for that. Need a loan for a house..... Yep got that. Pay for your insurance for your smoking habit, no problem. Baby sitter, free food, right on. Lose your job, hate Moslems, want to control the seven seas? You name it, we got it.

As long as we can borrow the money . As long as the taxes come in. But what happens if everybody says....Fuck it, stick it up your ass.

Maybe we'll find out. Nah!!

 CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - CNN Poll: Blame for recession shifting from GOP to Democrats « - Blogs from CNN.com

Washington (CNN) - Nearly two years into the recession, opinion about which political party is responsible for the severe economic downturn is shifting, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday morning indicates that 38 percent of the public blames Republicans for the country's current economic problems. That's down 15 points from May, when 53 percent blamed the GOP. According to the poll 27 percent now blame the Democrats for the recession, up 6 points from May. Twenty-seven percent now say both parties are responsible for the economic mess.

"The bad news for the Democrats is that the number of Americans who hold the GOP exclusively responsible for the recession has been steadily falling by about two to three points per month," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "At that rate, only a handful of voters will blame the economy on the Republicans by the time next year's midterm elections roll around."

Thirty-six percent of people questioned say that President Barack Obama's policies have improved economic conditions, with 28 percent feeling that the president's programs have made things worse, and 35 percent saying what he's done has had no effect on the economy.


One reason for that, says Holland, may be the growing federal budget deficit: Two-thirds say that the government should balance the budget even in a time of war and recession.

The survey indicates that only 18 percent say the economic conditions in the country today are good, down 3 points from August. Eighty-two percent say economic conditions are poor.

"Some economic indicators may suggest that the economy has turned the corner - but try telling that to the American people," adds Holland. The number of Americans who say that the economy is in good shape - a number that grew steadily through the spring and summer - has now stalled, with fewer than one in five expressing a positive view of current conditions. More than eight in 10 say that economic conditions are in poor shape, with 43 percent calling them very poor.

Here's some good news......

Sears-K-mart only lost 127 million.

Go Sears!

Other than that Patti had her operation and both vehicles are in the shop. Patti fine, cars not. Oh well, shit happens.

DailyFinance

An improvement in sales at Kmart and cost-cutting overall helped Sears Holdings Corp. (SHLD) show better results in the third quarter.

The parent of Sears and Kmart stores posted a net loss of $127 million, less than the $146 million it posted the same time last year. That translates to $1.09 per share, or 80 cents per share after factoring out some one-time items, beating Wall Street's forecast of $1.09 per share.

The company's comparable store sales in the U.S. dropped 2.3%, with sales up 0.5% at Kmart, but down 4.6% at Sears. Kmart's sales rose thanks to better sales of toys and home items, while Sears was hurt by slow sales of appliances, lawn and garden items, tools and electronics.

Close the fuckers down......

You have to love the word "hubris". It fits everything we know about the gang that runs our financial-government system. (our gang is so important we don't know what to do with out them)

Shooting works.

Burtynsky - Daily Digest - November 12 - Nov. 12, 2009 | Blogs at Chris Martenson - Burtynsky, Daily Digest, Economy, Energy, environment, Maass, Oil, Peak Gold, Peak Oil

Yes, of course every country needs a basic financial system to function effectively with letters of credit, deposits, and check writing facilities, etc. But as you move beyond that it is worth remembering that every valued job created by financial complexity is paid for by the rest of the real economy, and talent is displaced from real production, as symbolized by all of the nuclear physicists on prop trading desks. Viewed from the perspective of the long-term well-being of the whole economy, the drastic expansion of the U.S. financial system as a percentage of total GDP in the last 20 years has been a drain on the health and cost structure of the balance of the real economy. To illustrate this point, in 1965 the financial sector of the economy took up 3% of the GDP pie. The 1960s were probably the high water mark (or one of them) of America’s capitalism. They clearly had adequate financial tools. Innovation could obviously have occurred continuously in all aspects of finance, without necessarily moving its share of the economy materially over 3%. Yet by 2007 the share had risen to 7.5% of GDP!

The financial world was reaching into the GDP pie and taking an unnecessary extra 4%. Every year! This extra rent is enough to lower the savings and investment potential of the rest of the economy. And it shows. As mentioned earlier, the growth rate of the GDP had been 3.5% a year for a hundred years. It had proven to be remarkably robust. Even the Great Depression bounced off it, and soon GDP growth was back on the original trend as if the Depression had never occurred. But after 1965, the growth of the non-financial slice, formerly 3.4%, slowed to 3.2%. After 1982 it dropped to 3.1% and after 2000 fell to well under 3%, all measured to the end of 2007, before the recent troubles. These are big declines. It is as if a runner has a growing and already heavy blood sucker on him that is, not surprisingly, slowing him down. In the short term, I realize that job creation in the financialindustry looked like a growth driver, as did the surge in financial profits (which we now realize were ludicrously overstated). But in the long term, like a sugar high, thisstimulus was temporary and unhealthy.

The Stock market is a fairy tale.....

We make very little now. We sell Chinese trinkets and Jap cars to one another. Our children belong to the state and are fat, dumb, and ignorant of the way the world works. Our safety net is being bankrupted by fast buck artist and their whores in the political system. The elites buy Manhattan penthouses and complain about the lousy service they get from the cities.

No one seems to have a clue how to fix the rot.

keeping our heads down and saving our cash, ramping up our credit, and preparing for inflation to march on in the near future, is a the only protection we have. Big booms lead to big bust, lead back to big booms. Once the government gets to printing money in fear  not much else they can do but ride it out.

Expect a repeat of the 2003-2007 in houses and stocks as all these gangsters ramp up and reinflate the bubble. Then we'll see an even bigger bust..... about the same same time we boomers retire in droves and sell our assets to eat.

I'm going to have a business on the side to tide me over. Why give the fuckers my tax money?

How about you?


Guest Post: One Reason that the Stock Market is Rising While Unemployment is Soaring « naked capitalism

Don’t American Workers Win?

The fact that companies based in America are raking in profits from sales abroad is good for American workers, right?

No.

Gross points out that American workers don’t benefit because a lot of the goods sold abroad by American multinationals are made abroad:

If companies participated in foreign markets primarily by exporting U.S.-made goods, this shift would be good news for the U.S. economy and workers. But that’s not how it works. In fact, in the months after the global credit meltdown, U.S. exports plummeted. They bottomed in April, at $120.6 billion, and though they have been rising, the August 2009 total is still 20 percent below the August 2008 total. Globalization is changing the way we do business. It’s not a matter of U.S. companies exporting goods—burgers, soda, cars, software—made in the United States to Beijing but rather, making goods overseas and selling them overseas…

Ain't welfare wonderful......

These people would have to get real jobs instead of selling "real" estate. But as long as the gov can print money and the crooks can bribe the rulers this is what we get. pretty soon we all have to get in on the action just to survive.

This is what happens when empires collapse. A slow drawn out fizzle as every con artist gets in the action. Pretty soon they'll have to give everybody gas money and food stamps until they get run out of town.

Probably not in our lifetime. So kick back and watch or jump in and get yours.

Save some cash, pay your debts off, and apply for more and more loans until your credit is around 800. A few thousand at a time from local credit unions and small banks consolidating any loans you have into one payment.

 Make timely payments and pay them off over the next couple of years until you can buy anything you want unsecured. Using limited liability companies, for instance,  you can buy and sell real estate with no personal exposure.

Better yet, I suggest buying used mobile homes  and selling them on time to working stiffs for the price of rent. For example, paying $5000 cash, borrowed at $90 a month or so, and reselling for $10,000 at 10% interest, payments of $320 a month, for 3 years for a profit of $6500.

Of course, if you get into the middle  of the used mobile market, say $30,000, at 10%, the payments to your new buyer, would be $500 a month for 7 years. Paying $10,000 or so, including repairs,  you make $42000 in payments minus $ 10,000 equals $32,000  total profit after 7 years.

My landlord sold me the one I have currently for $20,000 furnished, $500 a month for 3 years. I'm betting he paid less than 10 for it and remodeled it.

He's 84. Including the one he's living in, He's done it 5 more times in the last 2 years that I know of.

Did I tell you he's 84!!! His wife helps him.

She's 86!!!

Depending on your finances and guts, there's room to make plenty of money in the Depression.

Considering everyone needs to live somewhere used mobiles are available everywhere without the hassles and expense of real estate . Also, no banks or finance companies loan on these anymore. The rip off artists got in then out because they couldn't sell the loans on the secondary market. Depreciating assets in inflationary times lose their profitability after several years which means we sell for 2 or 3 times our cost and collect the payments personally. With out big overhead we can out do most banks and finance companies in this niche. I can hire everything done under the table at half the cost and with complete anonymity. Not so with Bank of America. Putting it simply, it's the income stream that counts with me not reselling the paper.

Anyways, why sell the loans? Collect the payments and hope your buyers move out and gives you a chance to resell every 2 or 3 years. Collect down payments to make any repairs and live off the interest. After all, banks have been doing it for centuries. And as for the buyer?

Beats living in your car.

After all owning the roof over your head is better than renting or sleeping under a bridge, right? Just don't remind them that in this world you can't really own anything but must make a payment to someone or other for the rest of your lives.

Home sales hit 26-year high in September | Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/24/2009

Motivated first-time buyers racing toward the Nov. 30 deadline for an $8,000 tax credit propelled sales of previously owned homes in September to the highest monthly gain in 26 years.

Sales rose 9.2 percent over the same month in 2008 and 9.4 percent from August, the National Association of Realtors reported yesterday.

Since February, more than 340,000 qualified first-time buyers have taken advantage of the credit, which is retroactive to Jan. 1.

Recognizing how critical the tax credit has been to a market on life support since the end of the national real estate boom in 2006, the housing industry has been pressuring Congress to extend it for another year and make it available to all buyers except investors and second-home purchasers.

"We are hopeful the tax credit will be extended and possibly expanded to more buyers, at least through the middle of next year, because the rising sales momentum needs to continue for a few additional quarters, until we reach a point of a self-sustaining recovery," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors' group.

Economists agree that continuing the tax credit - estimated to cost the government an additional $1 billion - is key to a housing recovery, now forecast for the second half of 2010.

The Realtors' group report "raises almost as many questions as it answers," said Joel L. Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisers in Bucks County. "Clearly, the housing market is in much better shape than six months ago, when demand hit rock bottom. But aid from government incentives is disappearing, and how much demand will fall is somewhat unclear."

Unless the tax credit is both extended and expanded, economist Patrick Newport of IHS Global Insight said, sales will take a hit and "house prices, which have stabilized recently, will start falling again."

Newport says he expects the credit also will have boosted new-home sales when the September data are released by the Commerce Department on Wednesday.

Why is anyone surprised......

The government owns your kids, .....just try to discipline them.

They get taken away. Read what happened to this poor bastard.


7 Year Old Boy Removed from Father and Placed in State Custody Over mistaken Order of Hard Lemonade - Don't Tase Me, Bro!

7 Year Old Boy Removed from Father and Placed in State Custody Over mistaken Order of Hard Lemonade
By
Phil Leggiere
on April 29, 2008 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (93) | TrackBacks (2)
U of Michigan professor unfamiliar with Mike's Hard Lemonade orders his son a lemonade at baseball game. After boy is discovered by a security guard sipping the bottle police and child protective services remove boy to foster home.

Detroit Free-Press reports:

If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade.

And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.

The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.

Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.

Ratte is a tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, which means that, on a given day, he's more likely to be excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey than watching "Dancing with the Stars" -- or even the History Channel, for that matter.

The 47-year-old academic says he wasn't even aware alcoholic lemonade existed when he and Leo stopped at a concession stand on the way to their seats in Section 114.

"I'd never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it," Ratte of Ann Arbor told me sheepishly last week. "And it's certainly not what I expected when I ordered a lemonade for my 7-year-old."

But it wasn't until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo's hand.

"You know this is an alcoholic beverage?" the guard asked the professor.

"You've got to be kidding," Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but the security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label.
Mistake or child neglect?

An hour later, Ratte was being interviewed by a Detroit police officer at Children's Hospital, where a physician at the Comerica Park clinic had dispatched Leo -- by ambulance! -- after a cursory exam.

Leo betrayed no symptoms of inebriation. But the physician and a police officer from the Comerica substation suggested the ER visit after the boy admitted he was feeling a little nauseated.

The Comerica cop estimated that Leo had drunk about 12 ounces of the hard lemonade, which is 5% alcohol. But an ER resident who drew Leo's blood less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats detected no trace of alcohol.

"Completely normal appearing," the resident wrote in his report, "... he is cleared to go home."

But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte's wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house.

Crooks still in charge......

Until Obamama rounds up the bad guys and jails them it will be business as usual. The economy will phase in and out recession until we run out of foreign suckers to prop up the deficit spending.

No change so far. No change in sight. And no change allowed.


The Coming Economic Depression: Historic Collapse of Consumer Credit

Note: A chart example of what else we are up against: A Return of OIL Prices
Banks, given trillions stolen from the taxpayer, are using their ill-gotten fiat to speculate in markets using quant computers and insider information, neither of which the taxpayer has access. Nor do they have access to national level politicians, their contributions simply are not as large. Thus, the banks hoard their trillions while cutting off lines of credit to the very taxpayers who bailed them out. What lines are not cut are charged 30% or more, rates that the Godfather could only dream of.
The consumer knows that credit is tighter than it was before. I’ve been saying all along that total money and credit are contracting, that the world of derivatives and leverage is contracting despite our government’s best efforts to flood the system with money. While it’s difficult to see the overall shape of the shadow banking world, clues can be found when digging. Again, I point to the OCC reports showing that JPM notional derivatives have shrunk by some $10 TRILLION in the past two years despite acquisitions. The OCC reports overall growth in derivatives, but that is only because investment banks, speculators like Goldman Sachs, applied for and were granted status as a commercial bank (to gain access to taxpayer money).
So, we have the money supply increasing, governme

Just in time.......

Since we can't afford to retire anyways, might as well come up with a justification. right? If we become welfare recipients who's going to pay for all those government handouts. After all we have millions of deadbeats depending on us. Hell, the government has millions getting ready to draw "guaranteed "payoffs.



BBC NEWS | Health | Complete retirement 'bad for you'

Giving up work completely on retirement could be bad for your health, US research suggests.

The study of 12,189 people found retirees who take on temporary or part-time work have fewer major diseases, and function better day to day.

The findings were significant even after considering people's physical and mental health before retirement.

The University of Maryland study appears in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.

The researchers examined data on 12,189 people, who were aged 51-61 at the beginning of the study.

All the evidence suggests that if your mental wellbeing is depleted it will affect you physically
Professor Cary Cooper
University of Lancaster

The participants were interviewed every two years over a six-year period beginning in 1992 about their health, finances, employment history and work or retirement life.

The researchers registered only medical conditions which had been clinically diagnosed, and took account of factors such as sex, education level and financial wealth

Ta da.....

Broke dicks don't need loans. They need to clear the decks and start over. Many of us have done it and have done just fine. House expense, as I and anyone who has sold real estate will tell you, is very easy to formulate:

3 times your yearly salary with payments totaling about 25 % of your monthly gross for your mortgage payment. Such as if you make 4000 a month you can afford 1000 a month.

Which means you can afford a house for around 150,000-175,000. Same with everyone else in the market. If average household income is 50,000 then the average family can afford a new home built for 150,000.

Not 300,000, 500,000, or 2222 million for God's sake. This is econ 101 in every college that I know of.

Since speculation generated by "free" money handed out by the Fed leads to "gambling" which leads to bankruptcy which leads to enormous poverty which leads to desperate solutions which always leads to ...

Guns!


The Warning Shot Fired Yesterday - The Market Ticker

Yes, this means interest rates will rise to a market rate.

We have spent more than two years trying to avoid recognition of fundamental mathematical facts - average home prices cannot exceed 3x average incomes, and on balance home prices cannot rise faster than income over long periods of time.

Mean-reversion isn't a suggestion, it is a mathematical reality. As a homeowner with a fully-paid-off house, bought with cash, I certainly would prefer my home to have a value closer to 2005's price than 1995's.

But what I prefer has nothing to do with what is mathematically sustainable or what can be supported by the broader economy, and my personal desire to be able to "flip" my house or use phantom "wealth" to extract a lifestyle I cannot afford does not and cannot change the reality of what stability in the economy, on balance, requires over the intermediate and longer term.

Property prices must contract to sustainable values. If this causes banks to fail, so be it. If this causes consumer bankruptcies for those who used their homes as ATM machines, so be it. If this causes me to lose half of the "value" in my home, so be it.

I believe The Fed sent a message to Congress yesterday in recognition that the wall is fast approaching at 120mph: do the right thing and do it now - or else.

Pretty obvious to me.....

As I ave beeen saying for years, Big foot, UFO's, Gnomes, Fairies, et al don't make "sense." Thousands of sightings suggests that we are over run with literally thousands of bizarre entities.

Which means everybody is lying, drugged, nuts, or a practical joker .

Or telling the truth as they see it. I'm betting many are only reporting the facts as they see them. They just don't make sense. Maybe this guy is on to something.

The Heavy Stuff » Blog Archive » Gnomes - A Sustainable Population?

Gnomes - A Sustainable Population?

One of the purposes of my posts on The Heavy Stuff (THS) is to provoke thought and critical thinking on any number of `issues’ of esoterica. And, in that regard, today’s post beckons the examination of the ludicrous - to be applied to what others would say is an `explanation’ of a viable sustainable `Bigfoot’ population out there `in the American Woodland’.

Yes, I know I’m already making enemies with a certain segment of my regular `heavy stuff’ readership by being a curmudgeon by doubting `first person’ accounts by `credible’ folks of all persuasions. BUT, I’m not doubting those accounts for one second - let me explain. You see, I think `Bigfoots’ in nearly all or perhaps all situations - are `temporary entities’.

To me, one must favor the overwhelming evidence that not one creature has ever been found dead or brought fourth alive - EVER. Nor have any `artifacts’ of this creature. Not even scat. Not in the last 10 years, not in the last 50 years, not in the last 500 years - not EVER. Never ever.

It’s something that those who have seen the creatures with their own two eyes will have to live with

Got my first credit card offer in over 6 months.......

 $39 yearly fee and variable rate, of course. So I threw it in the garbage and went to the credit union and borrowed two thousand on my free and clear car.
4.4 %.

On a 9 year old car as collateral. I also Have a free and clear truck  if I need more money.


Took 10 minutes and had the money in my savings account to tide us over while Patti is on leave for her surgery. If I ever get desperate I can borrow on my free and clear mobile home.

Maybe 20 grand at 200 a month.  Might be able to buy another and resell on contract like my landlord does.

Beats working for Walmart. Having a credit union on your side means:

 FUCK THESE BANK GANGSTERS.



The Coming Economic Depression: Insiders, Banks, Credit Card Companies Do Not Believe in a Recovery

Direct mail credit card offers peaked in Q3 of 2006 with approximately 2.1 billion being sent out. In Q3 of 2009 only 391 million have been sent out. In other words, credit card companies definitely don’t believe in the recovery and they certainly don’t believe in the American consumer. On top of this drop, credit card companies are now jacking up fees on good standing customers, adding annual fees for inactivity, and basically acting like your local loan shark. At times they are even charging 79.99 percent interest rates that would make Tony Soprano blush. If we really look at the data, the economy is doing anything but recovering. Actually, it is recovering but for those on Wall Street and the banks. The average American is merely subsidizing their party. By the way, the banks are largely the reason for the decade long housing bubble.
If you really want to see how much insiders believe in this rally, let us look at some details from last week. Insiders for the week with data from Thomson Reuters bought 8.2 million dollars worth of stock during last week. How much was sold? 184 million dollars. This pattern has been occurring the entire rally. Now wouldn’t you think insiders would have a better sense of the true nature of this economic recovery?

O.k the fat guy wins....

William Shatner on Gun Control - It's How Well You Aim the Gun

In other words........

We are broke. You and me. Us. And broke dicks can't buy anything until we are no longer broke dicks. Giving us credit at below or at par with inflation only prolongs the coming misery. Printing money does not generate any real wealth. Only making stuff and selling it to others who are not broke will change things around.

Scrap Nafta and start building shit again that the world wants.


The recession is over but the depression has just begun « naked capitalism

So, what does this mean for the American and global economy?

1. The private sector (particularly households) is overly indebted. The level of debt households now carry cannot be supported by income at the present levels of consumption. The natural tendency, therefore, is toward more saving and less spending in the private sector (although asset price appreciation can attenuate this through the Wealth Effect). That necessarily means the public sector must run a deficit or the import-export sector must run a surplus.
2. Most countries are in a state of economic weakness. That means consumption demand is constrained globally. There is no chance that the U.S. can export its way out of recession without a collapse in the value of the U.S. dollar. That leaves the government as the sole way to pick up the slack.
3. Since state and local governments are constrained by falling tax revenue (see WSJ article) and the inability to print money, only the Federal Government can run large deficits.
4. Deficit spending on this scale is politically unacceptable and will come to an end as soon as the economy shows any signs of life (say 2 to 3% growth for one year). Therefore, at the first sign of economic strength, the Federal Government will raise taxes and/or cut spending. The result will be a deep recession with higher unemployment and lower stock prices.
5. Meanwhile, all countries which issue the vast majority of debt in their own currency (U.S, Eurozone, U.K., Switzerland, Japan) will inflate. They will print as much money as they can reasonably get away with. While the economy is in an upswing, this will create a false boom, predicated on asset price increases. This will be a huge bonus for hard assets like gold, platinum or silver. However, when the prop of government spending is taken away, the global economy will relapse into recession.
6. As a result there will be a Scylla and Charybdis of inflationary and deflationary forces, which will force the hands of central bankers in adding and withdrawing liquidity. Add in the likely volatility in government spending and taxation and you have the makings of a depression shaped like a series of W’s consisting of short and uneven business cycles. The secular force is the D-process and the deleveraging, so I expect deflation to be the resulting secular trend more than inflation.
7. Needless to say, this kind of volatility will induce a wave of populist sentiment, leading to an unpredictable and violent geopolitical climate and the likelihood of more muscular forms of government.
8. From an investing standpoint, consider this a secular bear market for stocks then. Play the rallies, but be cognizant that the secular trend for the time being is down. The Japanese example which we are now tracking is a best case scenario.

Not particularly uplifting, but hopefully well-documented. Your comments are very greatly appreciate

Only the government could dream this up....

Some reason we have to fuck with the clock twice a year.

Wht?



Unhealthy time change | Ron Paul 2012 | Campaign for Liberty at the Daily Paul

Although daylight-saving time was sold politically as an energy-conservation measure, it does no such thing. Studies conducted in Indiana prior to 2006, when that state operated under three different time regimes, show either no difference in energy consumption or a small increase in power usage during the months after clocks were moved one hour ahead.

The annual ritual of springing forward and falling back thus possibly produces no energy savings and may be counterproductive. It also requires those who live in places where daylight-saving time is observed to waste time twice a year adjusting their clocks and watches.

Yet the costs of switching between daylight-saving and standard time go far beyond the hassles of "losing" an hour in the springtime and "gaining" it back in the fall.

I am not a doctor and I do not play one on TV, but the medical profession as Dr. Osvaldo Bustos of George Washington University's School of Medicine pointed out to me recently has known for years that shifting time forward or backward has negative, and possibly deadly, health consequences.

A Swedish study published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Oct. 30, 2008, reports increases in the incidence of myocardial infarction (heart attack) after the beginning of daylight-saving time and the subsequent return to standard time. Depending on whether the shift occurred in the fall or spring, men and women were found to vary in the extent to which their heart attack risks were increased, but the study's authors concluded from the clinical evidence that time change triggered more myocardial infarctions in the two groups overall than they would have suffered otherwise.

Continue

My best guess.....

The future is not that complicated. Expect the depression to continue. Government will keep killing interest rates and force banks to trickle out their foreclosures. Which, by the way,  will accelerate starting next year as the more credit worthy buyers from the boom get clobbered with huge interest rate increases.

Eventually we hit massive sales in the 401k sector as the geezers sell out to save their asses and their kids homes  bringing down the printing press money fiasco.

Of course, the government then has to give everybody a check. To stay elected this is guaranteed.

Those of us living debt free and with good credit  and sufficient cash will be able to buy this stuff for pennies on the dollar

20012 maybe?

The recession is over but the depression has just begun « naked capitalism

So what’s next? A lot of the economic cycle is self-reinforcing (the change in inventories is one example). So it is not completely out of the question that we see a multi-year economic boom. Higher asset prices, lower inventories, fewer writedowns all lead to higher lending capacity, higher cyclical output, more employment opportunities and greater business and consumer confidence. If employment turns up appreciably before these cyclical agents lose steam, you have the makings of a multi-year recovery. This is how every economic cycle develops. This one is no different in this regard.

However, longer-term things depend entirely on government because we are in a balance sheet recession. Ray Dalio and David Rosenberg make this case well in the previous quotes I supplied, but it was a recent post about Richard Koo from Prieur du Plessis which got me to write this post. His post, “Koo: Government fulfilling necessary function” reads as follows:

According to Koo, American consumers are suffering from a balance sheet problem and will not increase consumption until their personal finances are back in order. The banks are not lending mainly because nobody wants to borrow and, furthermore, the banks want to build their own balance sheets (raise cash) and get rid of toxic garbage…

Again, when asked what would happen if the government cuts back on its fiscal stimulus, Koo replies: “Until the private sector is finished repairing its balance sheets, if the government tries to cut its spending, we’re going to fall into the same trap Franklin Roosevelt fell into in 1937 (a crushing bear market) and Prime Minister Hashimoto fell into in 1997, exactly 70 years later.

“The economy will collapse again and the second collapse is usually far worse than the first. And the reason is that, after the first collapse, people tend to blame themselves. They say, ‘I shouldn’t have played the bubble. I shouldn’t have borrowed money to invest – to speculate on these things.’

This view of a second, more serious downturn mirrors the one I wrote of when I wrote about high structural unemployment last week. And, again, it is predicated on what government does. I wrote last November that if government stops the support, recession is going to happen.

The U.S. economy cannot possibly work itself out of the greatest financial crisis in some 70-odd years in a mere 4 years and then expect to raise taxes on the middle class without a major recessionary relapse.

More welfare for the middle class will save us.....

Yea, what ever.
After a few years the governments going to have everyone "working" for them or at least getting a check, and I can't help wondering how long that can last. Just the idea that milions of people have been drawing unemployment checks and living in their government guaranteed mortgaged houses tells us  that it's planned.

Think the politicians want you scared and dependent on their" rescue plans"?

Congress fears risk of economic relapse - Washington Times

Fear that the economy might fall back into recession is compelling Congress to extend unemployment benefits and incentives for homebuying that lawmakers hope will help sustain growth.

The threat of a relapse in housing has prompted Senate leaders to start negotiating an extension of the first-time homebuyers' tax credit, now set to expire Nov. 30. They hope to attach the measure to legislation extending soon-to-expire unemployment benefits and then pass both by the end of the week.

Economists are telling lawmakers that, with unemployment approaching 10 percent, an extension of benefits for the long-term unemployed would help prevent a collapse in consumer spending. In addition, the housing market is seen as a key ingredient of the economic revival.

"Unemployment and housing conditions could face further deterioration" without further actions by Congress, said Frank Lee, an economic analyst with CreditSights Inc.

Texting?........

Or sexing.

Mighty powerful computers on board if it takes that long to realize they were past there destination. I think they were "busy", alright. Heh heh.

Pilots caught computing while flying - Washington Times

down on texting while driving, it now faces the question of how to handle two airline pilots who admit to computing while flying.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Monday that the pilots of a Northwest Airlines flight that overshot its destination airport by 150 miles last week say they did not fall asleep at the wheel but were distracted while reading their laptop computers, in violation of airline rules.

"This may be the ultimate case of distracted driving, only this time it was distracted flying," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat and a member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee on aviation operations, safety and security. "The pilots should have been focused on safely steering Flight 188 home, instead of checking crew schedules.

NY Times is Pissed…

Kind of like… no it’s exactly the same, as any religious belief, we know that climate change is bad because…
Well, because…. all these government paid scientists say so. And by the Goddess, Gaia, we need to do something about it.

Like close down the oil industry.

These fuckers are nuts!!


Op-Ed Contributors - Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation) - NYTimes.com

CONVENTIONAL wisdom suggests that the prospect of Congress passing a comprehensive climate change bill soon is rapidly approaching zero. The divisions in our country on how to deal with climate change are deep. Many Democrats insist on tough new standards for curtailing the carbon emissions that cause global warming. Many Republicans remain concerned about the cost to Americans relative to the environmental benefit and are adamant about breaking our addiction to foreign sources of oil.

However, we refuse to accept the argument that the United States cannot lead the world in addressing global climate change. We are also convinced that we have found both a framework for climate legislation to pass Congress and the blueprint for a clean-energy future that will revitalize our economy, protect current jobs and create new ones, safeguard our national security and reduce pollution.

Our partnership represents a fresh attempt to find consensus that adheres to our core principles and leads to both a climate change solution and energy independence. It begins now, not months from now — with a road to 60 votes in the Senate.

Florida just got better.....

One less gangster. Need a few thousand more and we can start a new Republic and get rid of the fascist in charge of our money.

Change we can believe in.

The Associated Press: Palm Beach police: Jeffry Picower has died

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Authorities say Jeffry Picower, a Florida philanthropist and a friend of Bernard Madoff for decades, has died. He was 67.

Picower was the former New York lawyer and accountant alleged to have extracted billions of dollars from the Bernard Madoff investment scheme.

Authorities say he was found at the bottom of his Palm Beach home's pool Sunday afternoon by his wife and could not be revived by Palm Beach fire rescue workers. Picower was transported to Good Samaritan Hospital where he was pronounced dead at about 1:30 p.m.

Inflation was a whopping 4.5%......

Old Nixon pulled the plug on the Bretton Woods Agreement  bringing on the necessity of fiat money diplomacy in order to keep our military intact and in place everywhere on the planet. Unfortunately this requires a lot of money. More than we can generate with a tax base that consists mostly of working stiffs slaving away to buy "consumable" junk with little intrinsic value.

After the political left completely took over the Dem's party big business began to defend themselves by shipping manufactoring overseas. No taxes,  no "liveable" wages, no polution controls,no  unions, no nosy government regulators that don't stay bought, and you get tax free trips abroad.

Of course this requires big time "defense"spending.

Which leads to the Republicans and many old time Dem's scaring everyone to death that little brown men in sampans or, now days, clutching the Koran driving stolen airplanes, will invade and make everyone quit paying for  all this bullshit.

We know who has won the arguement so far. As long as the politicians play by the rules they stay in those cushy jobs . We must have a huge military based all over the globe to save western capitalism. The guys calling the shots have all the money.

Until the Commies take over through debt collecting, that is, heh heh.


Nixon Killed America « LewRockwell.com Blog

Nixon Killed America
Posted by Lew Rockwell on October 24, 2009 06:23 AM

Hans Hoppe makes the point in Salamanca that historians will look back on August 15, 1971, as the beginning of the end for the US empire. That was the day when Dick Nixon—by dictatorial fiat—severed the final tie between the dollar and gold. Nixon thus inaugurated a world monetary system that was unprecedented in the annals of mankind: pure fiat money, with central banks unconstrained in their money printing. It has lasted 38 years, but is clearly in its death throes, just like the US empire

You really have to root for this guy......

Finally a candidate who's quiet, unassuming, obviously not on the take.

What's not to like?


Finally, a Political Candidate Who Will Get My Vote « LewRockwell.com Blog

October 21, 2009
Finally, a Political Candidate Who Will Get My Vote
Posted by David Kramer on October 21, 2009 08:30 AM

BRIDGEPORT MAN TO STAY ON BALLOT DESPITE DEATH

The name of Jerry A. Nicola will remain on Bridgeport’s Nov. 3 ballot as the Republican candidate for mayor despite his death on Sunday of cancer, Montgomery County Voter Services Director Joseph Passarella said yesterday. The last day for withdrawing the name of a candidate was Sept. 17, the last day for naming a substitute was Sept. 21, and absentee ballots were sent out weeks ago, Passarella said. “We’ve already printed the ballots and programmed the machines – it’s too late in the game” for any change, he said.

Talk about the perfect political candidate for a voluntaryist.

[Thanks to Jonathan Pearson]

The World is awash in oil......

No incentive to get it. Politics. Global warming is in. Defending Israel is essential. Price drops too low and the big shots lose their ass.

What ever.

Your going to pay. If you survive Obamama economics.

An Update on Peak Oil from ASPO

Marcio Mello, the former explorationist from Petrobras (PBR: NYSE) and now independent petroleum consultant, electrified the Denver meeting of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO).

In a riveting talk that lasted well over an hour, Marcio detailed the immense petroleum potential of offshore Brazil, as well as the Amazon Basin. If Marcio’s estimates are correct, Brazil may be the location of near 200 billion barrels of additional petroleum resources. That’s well within the range of current resource estimates for Saudi Arabia.

For good measure, Marcio described the petroleum potential of offshore West Africa — another 130 billion barrels — as well as the Congo region, with 50 billion barrels or more.

Finally, Marcio described the “unknown potential of the US back yard, the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).” Marcio offered remarkable insight into the deep regions of the GOM, 100 miles and more offshore Texas and Louisiana. He showed early work he performed on a number of GOM areas, including the site of BP’s (BP: NYSE) recent billion-plus barrel find at the Tiber site.

Eventually the elites are wiped out......

Guillotines come to mind. Anyone remember what happened to Mussolini?  That guy in Romania? Yea, could get interesting. I'm glad I have a ring side seat.

Maybe you should grab a gun and join me, heh heh.

charles hugh smith-Survival+ : Chapter One

As they watch the Plutocrats in action, they learn the most effective ways to increase one's share of the income/wealth are looting ("gaming the system" of pensions, benefits, State entitlements, etc.), deception, fraud and embezzlement (accounting trickery, collusion, sweetheart contracts, etc.) and influence-peddling, known in the Third World as corruption, baksheesh, etc.

As the middle class increasingly runs afoul of the byzantine, Kafkesque regulations imposed by an ever-expanding State, they find that financial leverage and legerdemain is far more lucrative than actually producing goods and services.

(Unsurprisingly, the Plutocracy finds ways to gain exemptions, loopholes and special dispensations which greatly reduce the reach of troublesome regulations and taxes.)

As the middle class abandons thrift and production for financial speculation and highly leveraged debt (following the example of their Plutocratic overlords), tax revenues soar as leveraged speculation pyramids into bubbles, enabling vast expansions of a State which is inherently seeking constant expansion of its income and powers.

When these financial bubbles eventually deflate, then tax revenues plummet, as productive work and investment have declined. Why bother working hard when the big, easy money is made via leveraged speculation? Only fools would tolerate all the regulatory costs and high taxes imposed on producing goods and services; far easier to speculate in bubbling assets like housing, stocks, energy, etc.

What makes everyone assume that Obamama is not doing this on purpose....

Doesn't he have college boys with economic and historian backgrounds. Maybe he doesn't want the economy to recover. After all corporatism doesn't like Marxism either.

CV1

If you’d like a taste of what it feels like to be a libertarian, try telling people that the incoming Obama Administration is advocating precisely those aspects of FDR’s New Deal that prolonged the great depression for a decade; that propping up failed and failing ventures with government money in order to save jobs in the present merely shifts resources from relatively more to relatively less productive uses, impedes the corrective process, undermines the economic growth necessary for recovery, and increases unemployment in the long term; and that any "economic" stimulus package will inexorably be made to serve political rather than economic ends, and see what kind of reaction you get. And trust me, it won’t feel any better five or ten years from now when everything you have just said has been proven true and Obama, like FDR, is nonetheless revered as the savior of the country.

Everyone has to have a government...

Sure.

I Love My Country

This is called "Letting you money ride"........

In inflationary times you borrow to the hilt and pay back with cheaper dollars. Today is "not " inflationary, yet. Now you save and payoff debt. Maximize your credit score by paying small debts on time. Get ready to borrow big and often to stay ahead of the tidal wave of inflation. We ain't seen nothing yet.

 Every inflationary boom has it's bust. Every deflationary period has it's boom. Then inflation again. No government with a printing press can resist. Especially ours.

 We vote. We have guns,

Any questions?

The American Conservative -- No Easy Money

This “free money” phenomenon is also dangerous for homebuyers. Now that the loose lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been throttled by insolvency, the central planners are expanding operations at the two remaining state lenders: FHA and Ginnie Mae. Get your guaranteed mortgage with 3.5 percent down right here! While that is marginally better than zero, it sure isn’t 20 percent. In other words, the same old game of low downpayments and easy mortgage money is being played, sweetened by an $8,000 credit for new homebuyers. No wonder housing is “recovering.”

Is risk being properly priced when money is cheap and new loans are practically given away? Of course it isn’t. Eventually, the global bond market will become uneasy about the government game of printing money to buy its own debt and the purposeful injection of nearly free money.

Supply and demand still matter. According to analysts, global governments are borrowing $5 trillion this year to fund their vast stimulus packages. Then there’s private-sector demand for business loans, mortgages, consumer credit, local government bond issues, and so on. Considering that some $35 trillion in global wealth has vanished in the past two years and corporate profitability has plummeted, it’s fair to ask what happens if there’s not enough global surplus capital to fund the explosion of public demand for borrowing.

Multiply by 50 states and the Feds....

Every pension plan is going bankrupt thanks to promises for the future based on results of the past. Basing retirement payouts on "bubble" returns has caught these programs with their pants down. Promising, in writing, benefits that can't be funded is all it takes to bring down the system.

We just have to watch over the next 7-10 years as all these millions of people  hit retirement age. That's government employees who vote. Give big bribes to the politicians. Hell, many are married or related to the politicians. Where do you think they will find the money to pay for all this , Hmm?

Not from me. I won't have shit left to tax. Social Security checks will barely pay the "green electric " bill. Foreigners? Think they'll have any money left?

Right now the rich are buying gold to "perserve" their wealth. Since their paper assets  pretty much melted away. Throw in the housing losses and most are technically bankrupt. So these people will be chasing any "safe" investment. Even if that "investment" is the government inflating their losses into the future.

Wait! We've been doing that. Probably why the 25 ct beer is no longer with us. Or a McDonald's combo for less than a dollar. 10 cent Pepsi? Or my favorite the 25 cent pack of cigarettes.

Of course, it will all work out with Oba mama in charge over the next decade.  Right?

Read the whole piece below and see what you think.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Five Major Pension Problems - One Simple Solution

Unsolvable Problems

* Expecting 8% returns in a 4% world. When 30 year treasury bonds are yielding 4%, the dividend yield of the S&P 500 is 2%, and the S&P 500 PE is 140 (26 if you use operating earnings), 8% returns are from Fantasyland.

* Pension benefits start too early. People are living longer.

* Private employees do not receive these kind of benefits. Public employees should not either, especially at taxpayer expense.

* Indeed, continuing to chase high-yield in a low-yield world is a guarantee those plans will blow up again down the road.

* Pension plans are so underfunded that it is virtually impossible to catch up, no matter what risks the plan managers undertake. When asked how long it would now take for its investments to put the fund back on track, Ohio officials simply said: "Infinity."

Little early in the process........

Empires rot from within. Everybody is in on the take. Once people realize they can get free money or power over their neighbors by voting for it then it only becomes a self-fulfilling act.  Soon in order to survive we all have to get in on the action. We need to have government rob our fellow citizens just to survive our old age, educate our kids, protect us from bad guys, fix the roads, etc..

But the biggest problem is Social Security money is taken from people who work. Same with military and other government checks. Our workers  don't produce  much any more to earn enough to support all the dependents on government largess. It seems to me that robbing our children is a sure fire loser.

Right now we are depending on borrowing from foreigners to pay all these trillions of handouts, promises and wild schemes. How long will that last? Maybe 2013? By your next birthday?

Who do we riot against? Will we be shot down in the streets begging for bread? Will the next generation decide to take over another small oil producing country?

Stay tuned!

Gerald Celente explains ‘Obamageddon’ forecast amid call for The Great American Renaissance

Well, Gerald, you can gladly add Barello to the aforementioned list. As a fellow paesano I am going to join you – and break the absurd rules of politic correctness – by asserting that Wall Street and Washington D.C. are being run by psychopathic serial criminals. For those that feel this declaration is overzealous, please read the recent commentary of Jim Kouri, vice president and public information officer at the National Association of Chiefs of Police, wherein he likens the personality traits of politicians to serial killers.

The mortgage market collapsed due to massive, unprecedented frauds. More people would realize this if mainstream media outlets properly exposed such crimes; granted, investigative journalism has been pushed aside, and in its place, we find an array of pseudo-celebrity, nonentity imbeciles like John and Kate Gosselin, desperate for their 15 minutes of shame. Either way, most mortgage frauds were facilitated by both lenders and borrowers – many of whom knowingly agreed to terms they could not afford. Through the process of securitization, these bad loans have been turned into hot potatoes for tossing, often with the help of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae; this has allowed lenders to deceitfully transfer risky loans to unsuspecting counterparties. Ratings agencies aided and abetted the racket by claiming these junk assets are safe; accordingly, corporations, municipalities, and a plethora of worldwide investment vehicles have purchased toxic garbage, and many risk collapsing under the weight of such. As this has happened, unregulated, over-the-counter derivatives have allowed the same criminals to secretly hedge bets against portfolios – knowing full well that many of them would indeed go sour – and when credit events occur, they collect truly absurd bounties. Accordingly, Gerald is no fan of derivatives. “They are ponzi schemes,” he said, before quipping that the term should really be “Madoffs” from now on. “Ponzi was a piker compared to Madoff, [which] is more appropriate, because they make off with all your money.”

My favorite theory about "Paranormal"

The Blogsquatcher: LIVING ANOMALY excerpt continues..

For a good portion of the populace -- well, that is, of those who are even aware of bigfoot at all -- the creature in question must either be a large primate, fully flesh and blood, or it doesn’t exist. But there are as many different explanations for bigfoot as there are people willing to explain it. I have gathered a few theories for our perusal here, each considering the question from a different point of view, and only one of which requires bigfoot to be a simple animal.
These different viewpoints are largely philosophical, and to really examine them would send us down a rabbit hole from which we might never emerge, and even if we did, we’d not be much wiser than we are now -- indeed, we’d be much more puzzled. Such is the nature of philosophy. But, speaking broadly, the four categories of explanation for bigfoot in which I am interested are psychological, flesh and blood, paranormal, and trans-dimensional.
The psychological explanation is most often offered in passing, usually in skeptical articles and publications, but it does not seem to be a well developed theory within bigfoot research. It certainly does not seem to have a champion. Note that the psychological explanation does not posit that bigfoot experiencers are crazy, only that the experience is not what it seems to be.
Briefly outlined, the psychological theory holds that humans have a need to believe in large hairy primates, and that this need will cause them to, in some cases, misinterpret encounters with ordinary animals, and in other cases, imagine the encounters entirely. This explanation has the advantage of explaining just why bigfoot-like creatures are seen the world over. Wherever people are found, there is bigfoot too. But it does not deal very well with physical evidence, nor with certain other features in bigfoot accounts. If it’s all in the head, then why do we find footprints, hair, scat, and other physical signs? The usual rebuttal is that such evidence as is found, and admittedly it is not much, is faked. I do not think this rebuttal is very persuasive. But it’s a serious objection and it must be met. In meeting it, I think of researchers like Peter Byrne (I had him playing the villain earlier so I’ll have him as hero here), who tells the story of going, on a whim, up high in a mountain range and finding footprints there. Since he had not planned to go, and no one could have guessed that he would go there, if they were faked, the footprints cannot have been faked for his benefit. Someone would have had to have gone there, very far in the wilderness and very high up, and planted the prints, without leaving any other evidence of their fakery, and without being sure that anyone would ever find them. This is but one example of many I could use.
It would seem the existence of physical evidence would be pretty much fatal to the psychological theory. This is true for the sense in which the psychological explanation is usually offered. I can imagine a line of reasoning that descends from Jungian archetypes that would dispose of the “evidence” objection, because the namesake of that theory, famed psychologist Carl Jung, proposed that archetypes are real things that can actually interact with our reality.
There is some evidence that something like Jung's system of archetypes really does exist somewhere in our minds, and that we all share similar symbols, even in the forms of animals, or half man, half animal beings. I'm talking about the effect brought on by certain drugs and substances, such as DMT or Ayahuasca, as has been described in books like Rick Strassman's DMT: The Spirit Molecule, or Graham Hancock's Supernatural. Since the experience with these drugs also includes encounters with strange creatures, it is not a stretch to suppose, or at least speculate, that bigfoot experiences, which often have markers of "high strangeness" anyway, might be a result of altered states of consciousness, where our minds call forth an archetypal image, in much the way that fortean researcher John Keel used to theorize. They are here for fleeting moments, and then gone, called forth somehow by our own minds, and having their reality mostly inside it, but somehow also participating in the physical, however briefly.
This is an interesting diversion, but I really see this as little different, in a practical sense, from the trans-dimensional theory, so I will not include any of this Jungian business in my designation of the psychological explanation. And it must be said that the people who usually offer the psychological explanation would not have any traffic with Jungian theories anyway. Without something akin to Jung’s collective unconscious, however, I see little hope for the psychological theory in the face of physical evidence. Proponents will no doubt see the fact that such physical evidence as is found is remarkably weak as enough to keep their theory alive.
The most popular theory among enthusiasts for bigfoot’s existence would be, of course, that bigfoot is a living, flesh and blood creature with quite ordinary characteristics. An animal like any other animal. There are difficulties with this theory too. It does nothing to explain some of the odder characteristics of bigfoot encounters. Recently bigfoot researchers have found that adding a capacity for bigfoot to use infrasound can cover many of these. (We will discuss this in more detail in just a moment.) But infrasound will not help in all cases. For one thing, it probably does not account for the self-luminous eyes that bigfoot is commonly reported to have, and it has no answer for how a bigfoot can leave a line of footprints that stop in the middle of nowhere, with no sign of how the creature progressed from that spot, and many other anomalous features of many bigfoot reports. The theory likewise has no easy explanation for why we should not have convincing evidence of bigfoot’s existence by now. As was noted, we have had more than fifty years of searching and have very little to show for our pains. So that is our second category, and in drawing it up please note that I have been silent on whether bigfoot would be an ape or more closely related to humans. That's an interesting question, but we're not close to being able to answer it yet.
A small but not insignificant number of bigfoot researchers believe that bigfoot is a paranormal creature. They hold that bigfoot has magical properties that allow it to appear and disappear at will, to read our thoughts and speak to us telepathically, and to change physical form. This belief descends from folk beliefs the world over, but is particularly reflected in Native American beliefs about bigfoot. If the paranormal theory is true, this would suggest to me that the universe is not actual, but simulated, like a vast video game. As crazy as that sounds, there are theories in physics that postulate that this could indeed be the case. But those who hold to the paranormal theory do not, in general, go so far as to construct a theory of how the world could allow such things. They simply believe there are creatures with god-like magical abilities, without attempting to explain how that would be possible.
Those who hold that bigfoot is a trans-dimensional creature have slightly firmer theoretical grounds to stand on, at least in terms of accepted science. This is not surprising, as the trans-dimensional theory is essentially the paranormal theory with the added benefit of a scientific explanation. As Clarke’s third law postulates, “Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic.” I find that Michio Kaku's book Parallel Worlds has a concise illustration of the "extra dimensional" theory and it's implications. (Before we get to Dr. Kaku’s elucidation of the theory, we should recall that the current form of string theory, called "M Theory," posits that reality must have 10 or 11 dimensions, not just the 3 plus time that we experience right now. String theory may not be correct at all, but I think at least it shows that scientists take multidimensionality seriously.)
Kaku begins his discussion by recalling the famous HG Wells novel, The Invisible Man. In it, Wells shows that having access to the 4th dimension would allow one to become invisible. And Kaku goes on to say: MORE

"Wartime president" wins the Nobel.....

Why not? the moron carter got it for going to Israel. Look what a success that is.

Obama Accepts Nobel Peace Prize as 'Call to Action' - WSJ.com

President Barack Obama said Friday that he is honored to win the Nobel Peace Prize and will accept it as a "call to action" to work with other nations to solve the world's most pressing problems.

Appearing in the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama acknowledged he was "both surprised and deeply humbled" to win the award. In a surprise pick, the Norwegian Nobel Committee cited the president's creation of a "new climate in international politics" and his work on nuclear disarmament.

Mr. Obama said he doesn't view the award "as a recognition of my own accomplishments," but rather as a recognition of goals he has set for the U.S. and the world. Mr. Obama said, "I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize."

But, he said, "I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century.''

The Nobel decision makes Mr. Obama, 48 years old, the third U.S. president to win the prize while in office, after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Mr. Obama's win comes 45 years after the prize was awarded to Martin Luther King Jr., the last African-American to win it

This is for my brother Al.....

And you thought the Depression was bad!

'2012' Trailer HD

Told you so.....

It's not much of a danger of stealing your money but your id. Most people can't live without their credit.

Of course if you have lousy credit use any browser you want, heh heh.

Paypal SSL Certificate Hole | Technibble

Paypal SSL Certificate Hole
Your Blogmaster is:

Lee

Lee is a computer enthusiast and technology writer.

Paypal users are being advised to switch browsers if they are using either Internet Explorer, Chrome, or Safari. They should use Mozilla’s Firefox instead to protect themselves from an SSL Certificate vulnerability.

The bug was reported nine weeks ago but Microsoft has not fixed the problem yet. The hole exists in CryptoAPI. The article at The Register notes that a tool called SSLSniff can cause all of the three browsers to display spoofed pages.

“We’re working to see if there are any technical workarounds on the PayPal side which can be put into place,” said a Paypal spokeswoman.

I'm using Windows seven today.....

Kind of weird after using Linux Mint for so long. But since i found a free download to try, I couldn't resist. I'm still trying to figure out why anyone with a internet connection or a library card would ever waste money on this junk. Plenty of operating systems out there for free. Linux being the most well known.

Other than new people in computing, most people realize they can do anything on the computer for free. It used to be that you couldn't play games without Windows but now it's cheaper and easier to buy a PlayStation and go at it. Everything else (play music, browse the web, office stuff, printing, etc.) is available.

Maybe they just need viruses and spy ware to keep computer techs busy? I haven't had this problem in quite a while since I prefer to use non window systems to use on the internet. In other words, to browse websites , especially banks, is asking for it.

Something called Identity theft, if I remember correctly.

But in order to run Magic Jack for our home phone I need to leave windows running on Patti's computer until they port it to Linux.

Oh well,  how's the Oba mama's recovery working for you?

No!!! Didn't I tell you so?..

Heh heh.

Putting the car industry on welfare sure is working. Next thing you know our insurance industry will get it.In the Roman world this was usually referred to as  "Cui Bono", who benefits. 

In other words, who gets the payback for bailing out these political favorites. Why else would the gang who runs our Empire go through all this bullshit.

In order to keep their cushy jobs (and cradle to grave insurance coverage) and a guaranteed position in life for their children they sell you and me down the river.

Of course we need to make continuous war and have constant crisis to keep it going. Eventually the rot sets in and they get murdered and a new gang takes over.

Nothing new here. Just politics as usual.



No Cash for American Clunkers « LewRockwell.com Blog

No Cash for American Clunkers
Posted by Karen De Coster on October 1, 2009 08:20 PM

Apropos my article on Cash for Clunkers from yesterday, here’s some follow-up to support my points. September sales for GM were down 45% and for Chrysler the number was 42%. When the government stopped subsidizing the purchase of cars, people stopped purchasing them—a point made very clear in my article. I also pointed out the distortion in the used car market. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported on the rise in prices of used automobiles—that is, the ones left over that weren’t destroyed by government decree:

One widely followed measure of used-car prices, the 14-year-old Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, will likely hit a record when data for September are released in early October, says Thomas Webb, chief economist for Manheim Consulting, a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc.