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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Plenty of nothin' (boy, this dude is good) The economy has already imploded and is now reinflated with volatile hydrogen-like fiat, just waiting for the right spark to bring the whole zeppelin crashing down in flames. Giordano Bruno, Neithercorp Press It is one thing to hold a theory that says something will happen, but it quite another to see it actually happening. Jesse, Jesse's Café Américain It's bad. Rigor and Mortis are running the housing industry, employment is still falling like a sack of concrete, finished goods prices are surging, the Treasury is borrowing back—with interest—the same dollars it gives away to the Federal Reserve, nuclear power plants are melting down and blowing up in Japan, month over month food prices shot up the most since Gerald Ford was President—that's before our western farm land gets dusted with radioactivity, inflation is spooling up big time, only antiquarians talk about 'consent of the governed' any more, and hefty pieces of the economy are dropping off as it lurches like a leper to its final pratfall. Yeah, this will turn out well. Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna says, The Western welfare state is built out of enormous, unthinkable quantities of debt. It is the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, and its demise is mathematically inevitable. The only question is exactly when the scam starts to unravel in earnest. Article, The Shadow Knows, Part 1 Meanwhile, our representative government is mainly representing itself. As Mat Negrin noted last week in Politico: President Obama's only event at the White House that isn't closed to the press on Wednesday is a ceremony in which he'll accept an award for being open to the press... he also probably won't talk about his aggressive effort to prosecute federal workers who leak information to shed light on wrongdoing. Or that despite his anti-lobbyist rhetoric, his aides are meeting with lobbyists just outside the White House, allowing the administration to keep the meetings off the books from public view. Article, Obama flaunts openness award Armed and Dangerous puts it this way: The value of political persuasion is decreasing fast. Political persuasion matters most when when policy options are relatively open and unconstrained by objective conditions that politics cannot alter. It matters less when policy options are more constrained, and not at all when there are no choices left. Article, Politics as usual is over The fix is too far gone for politics to unfix. The economy trends ever downward but the robo-market trends ever upward, mainly by surfing on the Plunge Protection Team and POMO Bucks—a subsidy for day traders and TBTFs alike, dipping and spiking on no news and less volume. It's Sim Citi or Grand Theft Apple or Fantasy Bourseball, with the score kept in wealth-effect points. The weekly charts could be posted Monday mornings and save a lot of people a lot of time. Alas, levitating the market is costly and precarious. As Charles Smith at Of Two Minds points out, The dynamic is clear, isn't it? Each new leg of the "permanent Bull market" requires a heavier dose of unprecedented intervention, denial, "stimulus" and obfuscation than the last one, yet the resulting Bull market is significantly shorter in duration than the previous run. Article, Volatility and the "Permanent Bull Market" Meanwhile, in the real world, productive folks live toe to toe with the worst kind of uncertainty, often close to destitution because they actually have to pay their debts and, oh yes, everybody else's too, foreign and domestic. It wasn't always this way. As a nation we once had plenty of money, plenty of time to fix what needed fixing, and plenty of plenty. And now we don't. Onliest things in the cash drawer are a stray button, some overdue notices and an i.o.u. The Big Money is sequestered in the entitlement plumbing, out of sight under the floor and behind the walls, so there's little of economic consequence to politic about. Jeffery Anderson at the Weekly Standard says, The White House Office of Management and Budget projects that in the current fiscal year (2011), mandatory spending alone will exceed all federal receipts. So even if we didn't spend a single cent on discretionary programs, we still wouldn't be able to balance our budget this year — let alone pay off any of the $14 trillion in debt that we have already accumulated. Article, Mandatory Spending to Exceed all Federal Revenues—50 Years Ahead of Schedule Unfortunately, mean ol' Mr. Reality has entered the building and he's of a mind to put the pursuit back into the pursuit of happiness, which also means he'll delete free-fo'-nothin' from the list of inviolable human rights, betimes. Have a care, Mr. Reality moves fast. What's impossible today is probable tomorrow and accomplished fact the day after. He knows the tipping point is in the rear view mirror. He knows we're living amongst airborne rubble-to-be. For those who are paying attention his warnings have gone from background beeps to full-on flashing red lights and screech alarms. For those waiting for a 'breaking news' alert and "some sort of announcement" here's the metric equivalent from Chris Martenson at chrismartenson.com: It is with a heavy heart that I am now issuing the highest level alert to my readers than I have to date... The nuclear meltdown has led to a market meltdown. Market breaks can quickly lead to supply shortages and other unpleasant realities... The problem with these fast-moving situations is that everything shifts from beneath your feet and events fundamentally change so quickly that you do not have time to adjust properly before the next insult arrives. Article, Alert: Nuclear (and Economic) Meltdown In Progress Mr. Martenson goes on to say, "a market rout is on... Food, water, medical kits, shelter, cash out of the bank, and all the rest should absolutely be in place at this time. Get the basics done. Now." This may be an understatement. Most intend to remain where they are. If they don't have deep preparations by now it's probably too late. Good intentions and crafty calculations count for nothing, only preps count and only serious preps count for much. Thinking about doing it, knowing how to do it, making plans to do it isn't the same as doing it. Only doing it is doing it. Those planning to self-evacuate either have a prepared and provisioned bug out destination and proven, robustly redundant means to get there or they don't. It's going down. This wholly illegitimate regime and the putrefying, corrupt and outright anti-Constitutional establishment it serves has its beneficiaries and protectors but no friends. Loyalty is being bought, not earned. One obvious tell: illegitimacy obviates accountability, our rulers feel quite free to display put their contempt for the citizenry. And they do. Notice how transparency is all one way. Notice how national elections have devolved from auctions on our future earnings to an elaborate hoax, and why not, we have government by prank where legislation is passed, published and debated, in that order. What they don't need with no steenking electorate. It's just one of the many ways they've plugged those annoying "avenues of redress", and so the rage seethes and builds. Look around, it passed the crisis level some time ago. But, and it's a huge but, efforts to contain it are faltering and visibly so. They're losing control of the citizenry and they're losing control of events. It's end-game stuff, we know it and they know it. Nor is the economy failing by accident or bad luck or plain ol' poor decisions. It's a final act common in history—they're looting the place. Sure, they all want in now, but when the Götterdämmerung really hits, their cadre won't be able to run away fast enough and their hangers-on will turn on it like ravenous dogs. It'll buckle all at once, with historic finality. In weeks, not months. Perhaps there will be a transitional phase where one federal entity or another attempts to retrieve the irretrievable, but alas, they're all thoroughly corrupt, intrinsically or by long habit. Such neo-federalist concoctions will come to a bad end, a very bad end, and take down anyone stupid enough to sign on. More promising, several states are taking defensive measures, "Tenth Amendment" and "sound money" initiatives for instance, courageous steps given the ferocity of federal opposition. These may or may not stand up to the maelstrom. The indispensable Giordano Bruno of Neithercorp Press says, If there is anything good to come out of our present predicament, it is that Americans, from average citizens to elected officials, are beginning to understand the reality of coming collapse and are preempting it with measures designed to insulate their communities from the inevitable firestorm. Eventually, as this movement escalates, certain states will come out ahead of the pack, gaining a kind of “safe haven” status, and attracting liberty minded people from around the country to the protective shelter of their borders. Article, The Return Of Precious Metals And Sound Money Eventually, in one form or another, the sole legitimate authority—consent of the governed—will emerge but eventually can be a very long time, generations perhaps. The interim may make the Dark Ages look like Mardi Gras. When the unwinding goes critical, escape and evasion is the prudent first step for the near term, regrettably, near term commonly meaning a year or two but nobody really knows, nobody can know. For those who plan to bug out, "panic on the four-lane" may be less a less dangerous proposition than "wait a while and see for sure". The losers will be those who don't recognize the early phases for what they are. The winners will be those who decamp first, the meek as it were, the prepared who get out the door before the benighted stoics lose their nerve and jam it solid. Timing is everything, better a day too early than a minute too late. As always, get away from crowds and stay away from crowds.
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#3. To: christine, 4 (#0)
An excellent article - thanks.
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