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The Financial Con Of The Decade Explained So Simply Even A Congressman Will Get It
Sometimes, when chasing the bouncing ball of fraud and corruption on a daily basis, it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the millions of trees (all of which have a 150% LTV fourth-lien on them, underwritten by Goldman Sachs, which is short the shrubbery tranche). Luckily, Charles Hugh Smith, of oftwominds.com has taken the time to put it all into such simple and compelling terms, even corrupt North Carolina congressmen will not have the chance to plead stupidity after reading this.
Of course, to those familiar with the work of Austrian economists, none of this will come as a surprise.
1. Enable trillions of dollars in mortgages guaranteed to default by packaging unlimited quantities of them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), creating umlimited demand for fraudulently originated loans.
2. Sell these MBS as "safe" to credulous investors, institutions, town councils in Norway, etc., i.e. "the bezzle" on a global scale.
3. Make huge "side bets" against these doomed mortgages so when they default then the short-side bets generate billions in profits.
4. Leverage each $1 of actual capital into $100 of high-risk bets.
5. Hide the utterly fraudulent bets offshore and/or off-balance sheet (not that the regulators you had muzzled would have noticed anyway).
6. When the longside bets go bad, transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal guarantees, bailouts and backstops into the private hands which made the risky bets, either via direct payments or via proxies like AIG. Enable these private Power Elites to borrow hundreds of billions more from the Treasury/Fed at zero interest.
7. Deposit these funds at the Federal Reserve, where they earn 3-4%. Reap billions in guaranteed income by borrowing Federal money for free and getting paid interest by the Fed.
8. As profits pile up, start buying boatloads of short-term U.S. Treasuries. Now the taxpayers who absorbed the trillions in private losses and who transferred trillions in subsidies, backstops, guarantees, bailouts and loans to private banks and corporations, are now paying interest on the Treasuries their own money purchased for the banks/corporations.
9. Slowly acquire trillions of dollars in Treasuries--not difficult to do as the Federal government is borrowing $1.5 trillion a year.
10. Stop buying Treasuries and dump a boatload onto the market, forcing interest rates to rise as supply of new T-Bills exceeds demand (at least temporarily). Repeat as necessary to double and then triple interest rates paid on Treasuries.
11. Buy hundreds of billions in long-term Treasuries at high rates of interest. As interest rates rise, interest payments dwarf all other Federal spending, forcing extreme cuts in all other government spending.
12. Enjoy the hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments being paid by taxpayers on Treasuries that were purchased with their money but which are safely in private hands.
Charles' conclusion does not need further commentary as it is absolutely spot on:
Since the Federal government could potentially inflate away these trillions in Treasuries, buy enough elected officials to force austerity so inflation remains tame. In essence, these private banks and corporations now own the revenue stream of the Federal government and its taxpayers. Neat con, and the marks will never understand how "saving our financial system" led to their servitude to the very interests they bailed out.
The circle is now complete: in "saving our financial system," the public borrowed trillions and transferred the money to private Power Elites, who then buy the public debt with the money swindled out of the taxpayer. Then the taxpayers transfer more wealth every year to the Power Elites/Plutocracy in the form of interest on the Treasury debt. The Power Elites will own the debt that was taken on to bail them out of bad private bets: this is the culmination of privatized gains, socialized risk.
In effect, it's a Third World/colonial scam on a gigantic scale: plunder the public treasury, then buy the debt which was borrowed and transferred to your pockets. You are buying the country with money you borrowed from its taxpayers. No despot could do better.
As for part two of this epic con we are all living through, Charles explains as follows:
The Con of the Decade (Part II) meshes neatly with the first Con of the Decade. Yesterday I described how the financial Plutocracy can transfer ownership of the Federal government's income stream via using the taxpayer's money to buy the debt that the taxpayers borrowed to bail out the Plutocracy.
In order for the con to work, however, the Power Elites and their politico toadies in Congress, the Treasury and the Fed must convince the peasantry that low tax rates on unearned income are not just "free market capitalism at its best" but that they are also "what the country needs to get moving again."
The first step of the con was successfully fobbed off on the peasantry in 2001: lower the taxes paid by the most productive peasants marginally while massively lowering the effective taxes paid by the financial Plutocracy.
One Year Later, No Sign of Improvement in America's Income Inequality Problem:
Income inequality has grown massively since 2000. According to Harvard Magazine, 66% of 2001-2007's income growth went to the top 1% of Americans, while the other 99% of the population got a measly 6% increase. How is this possible? One thing to consider is that in 2001, George W. Bush cut $1.3 trillion in taxes, and 32.6% of the cut went to the top 1%. Another factor is Bush's decision to increase the national debt from $5 trillion to $11 trillion. The combination of increased government spending and lower taxes helped the top 1% considerably.
The second part of the con is to mask much of the Power Elites' income streams behind tax shelters and other gaming-of-the-system so the advertised rate appears high to the peasantry but the effective rate paid on total income is much much lower.
The tax shelters are so numerous and so effective that it takes thousands of pages of tax codes and armies of toadies to pursue them all: family trusts, oil depletion allowances, tax-free bonds and of course special one-off tax breaks arranged by "captured" elected officials.
Step three is to convince the peasantry that $600 in unearned income (capital gains) should be taxed in the same way as $600 million. The entire key to the U.S. tax code is to tax earned income heavily but tax unearned income (the majority of the Plutocracy's income is of course unearned) not at all or very lightly.
In a system which rewarded productive work and provided disincentives to rampant speculation and fraud, the opposite would hold: unearned income would be taxed at much higher rates than earned income, which would be taxed lightly, especially at household incomes below $100,000.
If the goal were to encourage "investing" while reining in the sort of speculations which "earn" hedge fund managers $600 million each (no typo, that was the average of the top 10 hedgies' personal take of their funds gains), then all unearned income (interest, dividends, capital gains, rents from property, oil wells, etc.) up to $6,000 a year would be free--no tax. Unearned income between $6,000 and $60,000 would be taxed at 20%, roughly half the top rate for earned income. This would leave 95% of U.S. households properly encouraged to invest via low tax rates.
Above $60,000, then unearned income would be taxed the same as earned income, and above $1 million (the top 1/10 of 1% of households) then it would be taxed at 50%. Above $10 million, it would be taxed at 60%. Such a system would offer disincentives to the speculative hauls made by the top 1/10 of 1% while encouraging investing in the lower 99%.
Could such a system actually be passed into law and enforced by a captured, toady bureaucracy and Congress? Of course not. But it is still a worthy exercise to take apart the rationalizations being offered to justify rampant speculative looting, collusion, corruption and fraud.
The last step of the con is to raise taxes on the productive peasantry to provide the revenues needed to pay the Plutocracy its interest on Treasuries. If the "Bush tax cuts" are repealed, the actual effective rates paid on unearned income will remain half (20%) of the rates on earned income (wages, salaries, profits earned from small business, etc.) which are roughly 40% at higher income levels.
The financial Plutocracy will champion the need to rein in Federal debt, now that they have raised the debt via plundering the public coffers and extended ownership over that debt.
Now the con boils down to insuring the peasantry pay enough taxes to pay the interest on the Federal debt--interest which is sure to rise considerably. The 1% T-Bill rates were just part of the con to convince the peasantry that trillions of dollars could be borrowed "with no consequences." Those rates will steadily rise once the financial Power Elites own enough of the Treasury debt. Then the game plan will be to lock in handsome returns on long-term Treasuries, and command the toady politicos to support "austerity."
The austerity will not extend to the financial Elites, of course. That's the whole purpose of the con. "Some are more equal than others," indeed.
h/t Andrew
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Simplified
What is all too clear is that while some government is necessary...too much of it causes distortions to a more normal, free way of life...
It is not natural....not to be free...
What is not natural...is an abomination ....whose occurrance was caused by human inducements and mandates...
What would be a good thing for society in general is far more freedom than it currently has....
This means changes to the basic parameters...
ie government should not comprise more than 10-15% of an economy ...period...
There should be basic government categories...and that's it....
.....................................
For democracies sake...the 10 to 15% allowance is voted on by society...and served by state not fed mandate....ie local needs would make up the largest portion....
Also keeping in mind what sovereignty really is...and is not...Sovereignty and globalization do not mix 100%....Globalization has its limits... Endogenous peoples have their limits...ie the EURO constituents are finding this out as we speak....
"some government is necessary"
Is that written in stone somewhere?
This is where it all starts from. Same thing in organized religion, which is why most are not pro-government, because it's competition. It's all about setting up a stage for a ruling class; those who are the only ones who know the truths, the ones closest to God...
I think all types of government evolve towards creating a privileged elite,"the only ones who know the truths". We've done the experiment with religion, political philosophy, raw power politics, oligarchy & others & it all turns out the same. Entrench your class or group & the hell with the rest. It's a natural function of human nature & the power that any level of civilization concentrates for the taking of a few. America has held out itself as the exception for the past 250 years; about the average & we are faltering. The classic essay on this truth is Woody Allen's, 'Sleeper.'
" Those rates will steadily rise once the financial Power Elites own enough of the Treasury debt. " i dont understand. the value of treasuries goes down when the rates increase...
I believe he means that at that point the elites will be in so strong of a position they will be able to force things to go their way. Not sure I agree, just saying.
The top can only give you back a percentage back of what you put in the system, when the pigs are no longer putting enough into the system to support itself, well nothing the top can do about that.
1944-2007 credit creation expand exponentially at a 7%+ rate
2007 peak of credit creation in dollar terms of $4.7T annualized
2008 unable to expand credit creation to support the equation
2009 start of the collapase of credit creation -$808B
2010 continue of the collapse
2011 and beyond - collapse will continue and eventual liquidation of the unfunded liabilities ie pigs
Once all the dead cat bounces are done and there is nothing left to short...the top will go into hibernation until the liquidation is complete.
funny funny video
be agressive, be be aggressive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2XGp5ix8HE
A long read but reality usually is...
Sleep, Dreaming, and National Suicide (guest essay) (June 26, 2010)
Longtime contributor Eric Andrews suggests we are experiencing not just a financial Depression but a psychological/spiritual Depression as well.
I am very pleased to offer this provocative and insightful essay by correspondent/essayist Eric Andrews. You may not agree with every idea presented here, but the diagnosis cannot easily be dismissed. Those of you familiar with the work of psychiatrist R.D. Laing may hear echoes of his ideas here.
Those of you who have read Survival+ will gain a new perspective on opting out, protected fiefdoms, when belief in the system fades, profound political disunity, plantation-like structures, derealization, radical self-reliance, asymmetric stakes in the game, induced amnesia and other ideas I have presented here over the years.
This is the sort of essay you will never find in any Mainstream Media outlet, even so-called "progressive" ones.
Sleep, Dreaming, and National Suicide by Eric Andrews
"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? …All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." --Abraham Lincoln
The news lately is a blizzard of destruction: wars, recession, the financial crisis, deficits, drugs abuse, and border wars, random violence, declining education, energy crisis and the Deepwater Horizon, national policy, corporate malfeasance, collapsing communities, bankrupt cities, states, and nations, the list goes on and on. How did we get here? What’s causing all this bad news?
To me it’s simple:
All these effects are symptoms of Depression.
Not Economic Depression, like the 1930s stock crash, but National Depression, the psychological state.
Let’s take them one at a time: what do people do when they’re Depressed? Shop? Overeat? Make themselves physically ill? Get doctors to medicate? Abuse drugs to self-medicate? Are they unable to care for themselves, others, and even their children? Are their tempers short, and prone to irrationally lashing out, even at the wrong people, both at strangers and with their own people?
And when confronted with a problem, they cannot muster the concentration to investigate, discover, and then enact changes to solve them, like our energy policy, but muddle about in listless thoughts and pointless actions, eventually dropping it?
When faced with imminent, deadly danger, financial, as with the financial crisis; bodily, as with the Mexican Border Wars and ceding a swath of territory from Mexico to Phoenix to the Drug Cartels; or with internal disintegration, as we see every day with law, contradictory taxation, sovereignty, what is the response of the Depressed? They don’t care. The Depressed have no sense of urgency to danger, no remaining sense of self-preservation.
Often, as we’ve read on various challenges, Peak Oil, our trade deficit that comes from the imports, our lack of common sense in law, I’m sure we’ve all asked ourselves:
Are we crazy? Are we trying to commit national suicide?
And I’m here to tell you in no uncertain terms the answer is "YES!", that’s exactly what we’re doing, complete with the panoply of symptoms and not-so quiet cries for help.
In the Hugo-Winning story “The Sandman” by Neil Gaiman, the main character is Morpheus, King of the Dream world. As a primary element, he cannot die, anymore than “Death” “Desire” “Despair” or “Delirium” can, for they’re not people, but ideas. (Warning: spoiler alert)
In the story, however, Morpheus takes years of novel-time to painstakingly and irreversibly arrange his death, his dissolution, his ending. He carefully made sure no one saw it coming. In that way no one could stop him. And he succeeds.
The United States has the same problem. A nation cannot die. For what makes a nation? It’s not a bunch of buildings, a collection of bureaucrats, a geographic territory; it’s not even a standing army: America is first and foremost an IDEA. And an idea can’t BE killed, not even by suicide. As long as anyone can read the Declaration of Independence and recite our history, America lives.
And as Lincoln says above, America is unique in that we can’t die by the normal means that nations fail. We’re not going to be culturally absorbed. We’re not going to be conquered by a larger neighbor. Even China isn’t powerful enough to do so, even if they could somehow get 30 million Chinese here in boats.
Yet the symptoms are all there: Lethargy. Incoherence. Blame. Violent temper. Drug abuse. Fantasy. Escapism. Empty consumerism, empty sex, empty eating, empty action, empty rhetoric.
Depression is not some random disease, a chemical imbalance caused by losing the genetic lottery. Depression has several causes, clearly-defined, clearly-traceable, clearly-provable, clearly-curable. The main cause of depression is simple: it’s cognitive dissonance. That’s a fancy way of saying, you have two ideas that don’t mesh and are at war with each other. It’s a way of saying, you’ve swallowed a lie or a pack of lies, and they’re poisoning you from within.
Consciousness is something we know the least about, but I think we all recognize that ideas are real, and that they have energy and power. If half that power is fighting with the other half, you’ll find yourself in an exhausted condition. Worse, you won’t be able to know, to choose, or to act. For which side, which set of ideas should you act on? Who’s right and who’s wrong? You don’t know, which is why there’s a civil war.
Like any other civil war, the two sides are wrangling for who is going to get control, who is going to have their ideas acted on. An exhausting, tiring, excruciating civil war. It’s no less than a real civil war, same as in distant fields with a gun, or ceaseless fighting at home with one’s family. You may not want to fight, you may avoid it, but every action, every decision only brings up the problem again. You may not want to lash out at people, but you’re in agony: taking drugs, shopping, zoning out in TV, video games, anything to mitigate the pain.
We may not be able to measure an idea, put it on a table and photograph it, but we know that they’re real. The pain is certainly real. And the actions we take to manage the pain are very real, for they're part of our daily life.
This is the state we’re in as a country.
II.
I can even tell you what the dissonance is:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Compare that idea of ourselves to where we are today: referring to ourselves as “Consumers,” a nation where a “Right” is anything we can get somebody else to pay for, and “Free” is something we use to advertise Checking Accounts.
Which nation are we? The America of Jefferson and Madison? Or the America of Gordon Gekko and Edward Bernays, father of modern advertising and propaganda?
This is not idle discussion—which we choose will have real, calamitous, and permanent consequences. Whichever we choose is likely to kill us, or kill the other. This is the same cognitive dissonance that was tearing the nation apart under slavery, and could easily have the same outcome: more men died in that one conflict than all American wars combined. Nobody wants to start it off. Nobody wants to throw the first punch. In fact, we are one mind, one nation and the finest display of grace is that we don’t want anybody to get hurt. We’re not taking it out on the Jews, the Blacks, the Mexicans, the Rich. It’s all us, and we’re killing ourselves with ignoring it, with trying to keep it all going.
But ultimately only one path can be chosen.
Want to know where this started? Look when the symptoms began. Sure, we had this with George F. Babbitt back in the 20s, but the real problems began with Reagan after Vietnam. We had a choice under Carter: would we face up to our limitations of failing oil and shrinking importance and become a smaller, humbler country, the spunky underdog of Mickey Mouse, a nation of “aw-shucks” stay-at-home farm-boys? That was the path of the 60s, back-to-the-land, hippie guitar-playing with your friends by the wood stove, of Carter in the sweater, solar panels on the White House. The American Reality: oil was declining. We’d have to work hard as ever, play nice and get nothing from it but to claim our own souls as men.
Or were we going to live the American Dream? The Big America. The leader of the Free world. The greatest might and right ever known, the John Wayne of nations, going to kick ass and take names Pilgrim, the world’s sole hyperpower. We could have it all: the new house, the new car, the fancy retirement, eat and flush 25% of the world’s resources, and what’s more, all for no money down, no work! Which would you choose? The reality, or the dream? Work? Or play? Eternal Sunshine? Or the Endless Hardship?
And we know how that went. American Reality was bounced out on its ear in favor of a glorious new “Morning in America.” A year later, Nancy Reagan started the War on Drugs, as Americans kept demanding medication in ever-spiraling quantities and ever-increasing strengths to stand the lies, the dissonance between what they knew and what they heard—always bad enough, but which then entered the transcendent levels that seem so quaint today. Consumerism turned from a modest enjoyment to an unreasoning juggernaut, the purpose of existence. Debt—personal, national, corporate--went from a modest load to numbers on a scale that now dwarfs the number of all stars in all the known galaxies.
But like any other depression, any other addiction, it didn’t cure the problem, it only hid it. The root disease remained down below, festering, eating us from within.
You want to know how easy it is to fix our problems? As the world's 3rd largest oil producer, we use 20M bbl/day in transportation fuels. Yet we only import 10M bbl/day altogether. Isn’t the solution to our oil imports and a therefore a major part of our trade deficit just to live twice as close to work? With 10M empty houses, can it really be that difficult? 1/5 of all electric power is consumed in vampire cubes and ready-on devices. Europe and Japan use 1/3 less energy than the US for an equal or higher standard of living. We've spent 30 years on a problem could be solved overnight.
You want to know why we won’t fix the problem of oil spills, of strip malls, of imminent energy crisis, of unsustainable finances? We don’t want to. We don’t WANT to keep going. We WANT it to end. We don’t WANT to be this kind of country. But we can’t stop it, we can’t die, because America is an idea, not a person. If we can’t stop it, we do what all addicts, what all the suicidally depressed do: we arrange our own destruction so it ends for us, without our having to choose. We use increasingly bad behavior to force the collapse so we can finally break free from the impasse, and make the radical, nation-shaking change we can’t face on our own.
That’s what we’re doing right now. At the bottom, with Millennial Apathy and dissipation, right to the top, with Katrina rescues and unwinnable Foreign wars. We’re committing suicide. We’re FORCING ourselves into a corner so we HAVE to change.
We hate this place. We Americans hate our empty houses, our empty jobs and our empty lives. We hate driving and not seeing our children. We hate not doing the things we dreamed of as children, making flying machines and pedaling free down tree-lined roads. We hate it with a burning passion but we don't know how to stop it, which is our fascination with Apocalypse, with catastrophe, with violence and disaster. We wish it would just blow up once and for all. Yet this place is us, our lives, our neighbors, our home towns: how can we hurt it? How can we condemn our own American Dream to death?
You have to understand, America is a very, very, very good country. It may not look like it right now, but you can still see it at every level. Who was there in hours when Katrina was hit, giving time, money, lives, everything for free? Who was there when the Boxing Day Tsunami came in, despite that 12% of our own people are on food stamps? We were. We fix things. We’re practical and we make it better, instantly, automatically, inventing a new world that’s never been. Even in our tangled suffering, we can’t help it. We’re a good people, a practical, hard-working people. That’s who we are.
III.
If we’re suffering with half-truth, half-lies, at internal war, where did the lies come from? Where are these lies coming from today?
This part is important, so listen up. You know how we all tour the web, upset, angry, frustrated as hell with people telling us the Fannie Mae bailout was for our good, we were going to make money on it, that the oil spill was under control at 1,000bbl/day, that deficits don’t matter, that unemployment is at 9%, and that 12% of the nation on food stamps and the annihilation of New Orleans and Detroit don’t mean anything? Who tells us those lies?
Let’s not even pick on this administration, or the last one, for this sort of thing goes back to President Wilson. Let’s be broad, let’s be generous. Was it both parties? Yes. Was it corporate advertising? Yes. Was it Television, including every major news outlet by the 5 controlling companies, every book released by the 5 remaining publishers, every textbook you’ve ever read, every teacher and professor you’ve heard? Yes. Was it every false, propaganda-addled government statistic released since Kennedy, each unlisted mortality of war, every vanishing job, every dollar of inflation? Yes.
Was it the total machine, every authority figure you’ve ever seen, convincing you that our life is forever better and better, that America is greater and greater, every day, from every office of power public and private, although this is has been measurably false since wages started falling in 1971? Yes. Is this the same empty propaganda they heard in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Serbia, East Germany under the Soviets? Yes. And it’s having the same effect on us: it’s driving us insane.
So. You’ve been lied to. You’re being lied to with every word you hear. You’ve consumed maybe 10,000 lies that are inside you, eating you up, warring, making your judgment faulty, your actions irrational, the results arbitrary, contrary to the expectations you’ve been told, the way we were told the world would work. You need to get them out, and to expel one per day will take 30 years hard labor. Only a catastrophe can make it go faster. The one we’re creating.
This is why we’re sick, and why we’re acting the way we do. The lies on TV are not a sideshow, they’re not a misfortune to be glossed over, they aren't harmless Spin: they are a condition that is fatal; they are specifically and measurably killing us, as people, as you, your neighbors, foreigners, the nation, and quite possibly, the world.
My question is: who is profiting by these lies? Sure, some lies are thoughtlessly repeated, but who is knowingly and serially lying, to the detriment and total destruction of us and our great nation? And why?
I think you’ll find a startlingly small layer of individuals profiting by the lies, made drunk as Gods on the wealth, power, and influence that gives them, unthinking and uncaring of the total collapse that faces us and them because of their acts. There is a slightly larger, but still-small group directly below them of insiders and hangers-on. They are the same kind of small layer that held the Soviet Union together and profited by it, instead of suffering with the overwhelming mass of people, and exist in the same way for the same reasons.
This insignificant few are using those lies, that sickness, and the Depression and lethargy it creates in us to cling to power and prevent any significant change that might save us from destruction. They fight all realization, all discussion, any challenge to their interlocking interests with astoundingly and increasingly draconian measures. No input is welcome, no change is allowed. No action of yours is wanted or permitted.
Want to know why people are Depressed, why as a nation, we’re diseased, unhealthy, addicted, over-medicated, over-incarcerated, committing suicide? It’s right here. It’s well-proven that hardship does not cause depression. People endure the most appalling things: the Black Plague, the 1918 Flu, the 1906 earthquake, hurricanes, tornadoes, dustbowls, violence, privation, starvation--anything at all as if it were nothing at al--as long as they have the freedom to respond to it. As long as they can choose what to do to change things, solve things, create a better tomorrow. As long as they have Life, as long as they have Liberty, and as long as they are allowed the Pursuit of Happiness as they see fit.
What we have now is a backlog of the usual challenges and hardships, and you are not allowed to do anything about it. Only they, our leaders, that thin, insignificant layer of influence at the top, are allowed to choose. Want to take water to somebody thirsty after a Hurricane? Sorry Amigo, federal roadblock, M-16s waving, and our federal prisons are eager to receive you. Want to close a critical estuary in the Gulf to save a corner of fishing for your children and grandchildren? Sorry, not allowed. Here’s a form to fill out and in 6 months we might respond, long after all hope is destroyed.
Want to grow a garden in your front yard? Get a permit. Want to buy a chicken and to sell six eggs? Be arrested by the FDA for food violations and the IRS for tax evasion. Want to start a business? Pay 50% of your income up front before you make that first dollar and maybe we won't run you out of business with regulations.
Heck, want to paint your house blue and change the height of your porch railing? Sorry, not allowed.
What do the people say then? You and me, and the Millennials who have lived their entire life under this regime of "safety" and "orders" under threat of violent, hysterical consequences? Fine. I can’t stop it. They can’t stop it. You can’t stop it. But I guarantee you, on my life, it will stop.
The people have stopped supporting the system. The system, the powers of coercion and violence can rush from place to place making them, ordering them, forcing them, but they refuse to save it, refuse to help, refuse to perpetuate it. Let it rot. It’s too big and too violent to take down and there’s no point anyway. Let it fall in.
There’s the apocryphal example of Soviet rail workers sitting on the station, bags of cement all around. And it starts raining. "A pity, Comrades," the workers said, "we didn’t get any orders to load the concrete onto those waiting boxcars." Too bad. Let it rot. They’d learned that if they took initiative, Khrushchev would be as likely to have them arrested. And they didn’t care if the system succeeded or failed anyway. What did they get out of it?
For that matter, what do we get out of it? If I work those extra 20 hours a week, if I get out there and make a new business, a new invention, create free energy, solve world hunger, will I get anything out of it?
No. It will be punished as a challenge to the system, taxed to penury, and stolen by insider lobbyists and given to an insider monopoly. Same as the bailout, deregulation, S&L, Enron, and a dozen more I could name. So fine. Atlas has officially Shrugged. They’re so big and important, they can run it by themselves without me. Let them turn every screw, load every sack, and personally make every tiny decision if they think they’re so big and smart. I’ll just sit here and watch because I don't need them for anything. But they sure need me. Who is Napoleon if nobody follows his orders? A lunatic. The power isn’t with him, it’s with us, just like the Declaration told you.
Would there be any point in preparing for the crisis, to be wealthy, well-positioned, well-stocked? No. If there were a dollar of wealth left anywhere, the government and inside powers will change the rules and steal it, devour it utterly and chase you for more. There is no point in physically preparing when there are no property rights remaining, no rule of law, as seen around us daily in eminent domain, ever-shifting bankruptcy laws, shaking down companies for $20B a pop, suspending bondholders without bothering with due process. This is how nations become poor. One simple way, one simple difference: rich nations have rule of law and property rights. Poor nations do not.
Do you see why we’re Depressed? When the reaction to the most mild challenges to power is irrational, hysterical violence, false imprisonments, frivolous lawsuits, IRS harassments, law changing at a whim, we know we can’t stop the system by pushing it, by any known challenge, or even involving ourselves with it. This was proven years ago, with the Indians, with the Rebels, with the Hippies, then the South Americans, the Arabs, the Asians. And the system that we turned on them has now turned on us. It’s gone categorically and demonstrably insane.
What is it to be insane? A danger to one’s self and others? Check. Divorced from reality? Check. Actively defending beliefs that are demonstrably false, even with violence? Check. Cannot be reasoned with by any argument, but whose beliefs and goals are an unalterable article of faith? Check.
The only answer when you have a violent, insane neighbor, who is protected by the world’s largest army of the world’s largest government, is to stay far, far away and let matters take their own path.
The only thing we can do is, slowly, methodically, over unending years, arrange our own irrevocable suicide to happen in its own time without being anybody's "fault"--not even our own.
Will we survive? Or will the crisis kill the idea of America forever? I don’t know. No suicide or addict does. If we could be certain we would survive, there would be no danger. All that will be up to us at that future time. All I can most assuredly tell you that we CAN survive it. We are a large country and even if stockpiling and creating wealth is useless, we can do many internal things to help ourselves at that time. We can transform ourselves into the people we once were and loved to be, or into some new people we have yet to imagine: all good, all healthy. But the first step is to know what is going on, what has happened to ourselves and each other.
The first step is to stop swallowing what is killing us and vomit up the poison that’s killing us all: the lies that are driving us crazy.
Morality is not a nicety, a pretty addition to life. Morality is what we DO: it IS life. And our decisions in life are fatal so you better pick well. It’s high time we started acting as if we mattered, because we do. The lives of you and everyone you know depends on it.
So what are you going to do about it?
"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts." –Douglas MacArthur
Ying-Yang
Dude, expect Cognitive Dissonance or his love child Ripped Chunk to bitch about the length. Mind you not the relevance.
Then again both are selective in who they attempt to bully.
Just post something slobbery about CD's five part Deepak Chopra new agey series and he should leave you alone.
It takes a long time for a swelled head to shrink back to human standard.
Nice post.
CD did a hell of a write up on EGO. I thought he shot the damn thing in the head. lol
merehuman
I think you mean his EGO would creep out of a hole in his head.
Hm....If the EGO could indeed creep out of a hole in ones head, then wouldn't that be considered EGO Loss, which according to some mystics is the state of mind that one needs to be in to see God?
If indeed this is the case I think you just paid CD a compliment.
Gully, not sure where this pissy little vendetta against CogDis came from - I seem to remember you were all over posting on his series, certainly you didn't think it was too "new agey" for you to add to then. . .
I'm guessing you might have been asked to observe certain "posting etiquettes" re: summarise and link, rather than copy 'n' paste full articles, however timely you feel they might be, hmm?
maybe let it go.
Just post a link next time K?
Sheesh!
This contradicts itself. It mentions solutions as in saving some system, when in fact, as clearly noted, the system itself is rotten. Why save something that's bad/rotten? Collectively I believe that people know that it's in everyone's interest for this system to collapse.
Further, cutting back on oil consumption isn't a cure, it's just a deferral. It's subtle hubris. It's like an article about some folks working on roads with solar panels imbedded in them; the idea is that these would be roads that would actually pay for themselves (it was in response to a decent article pointing out how much roads really cost us). If the irony isn't recognized, it should be. It's just another crutch of a failing paradigm- the transportation paradigm; the greatest means of robbery since the Silk Road (same principle!); give money/power/control to a select few.
'Oil' is a code word for hydrocarbons in general. Even if we can dispense with hydrocarbon fuels we can't retreat from our humble friend, plastics. They have rapidly taken their place beside wood, glass & metal as indispensable materials. Hopefully we can dispense with burning hydrocarbons to power things but plastics are here to stay. We still have much to do to develop & perfect this material but some of our best minds are working on it. Even fusion power is only a stop along the way. Unlimited power is the promise but what about the heat generated by ANY use of energy. Friction is not a law that can be argued or repealed. The ultimate problem is that civilization creates heat. The more advanced the civilization the more heat. Civilization threatens to roast the world alive.
Nice post, thanks.
I think this political cartoon says it all except it should be more accurately named as "US crony capitalist pyramid":
http://taylorsmurphy.com/images/new_capitalist_pyramid.jpg
+1000
By now everyone with half a brain is aware of the Halo effect used to manipulate the photos of our politicians. Someone, random sure, frames a shot where the head is back lit like a Halo. That shot hits the media and the subliminal effect makes us all gushy with reverence.
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/
They have a shot of Obama with HORNS! It may have been a failed Halo effect. I don't think so.
I keep saying that the next POTUS will be the Great White Hope. We are watching a significant change in the portrayal of Obama from saviour to sinner.
Next guy plays right into that.
The road to serfdom. If a foreign power had enslaved us like this, it would have been an act of war.
rofl, my comments were just deleted. apparently the citi and wells ads running on ZH trumped my pointing out they are running on ZH ;) Nice job ZH
More like 0.5% with checking account sweeps in effect.
apparently, you can post on ZH unless you direct attention to how ZH makes money from sponsors they constantly flame on the site...let's see, this post will also be deleted i'm sure...
Why is ZH taking money from Citi and Wells ads on the site? Isn't that hypocritical?
You are a PRIME example of the biggest argument against democracy: "5 minutes with the average voter".
Beat me to it.
At least ZH is recouping some of our "investment".
I click on the wells fargo ad everytime I visit the site. Wells fargo funding zh is an intriguing concept...
Same here.
When "mark to make believe" changes back to reality so will I.
Looks like it will take awhile what with BLS birth/death models, clap trap from heads of states about "wolf packs" when government's are the largest currency players, paper shorts on PM's that dwarf known DELIVERABLE quantities etc. ad nauseum.
Until then, I will remain, the enemy within ;-)
By the way...the Citi ad looks like they are offering you a red pill or a blue pill...LOL.
It's the simple things in life that makes it so enjoyable, if one just stops to appreciate the simple things.
Do tell...you have me perplexed as to what you were trying to say. I AM a democracy, in action, because I call out the BS of gov, politicos, banksters, and even ZH if I have to, when they cross the line in the name of profits...so grow up. Or censor/ban me. I could care less...
Honey, you being perplexed about this quote validates its meaning and your sheer stupidity.
Btw, it wasn't me who created that quote. The fact that you don't know that means you should follow his advice a bit more...
There is a good a saying about keeping your mouth shut and making others wonder if you are an idiot instead of validating their skepticism.
Google Adsense determines what ads to show you based on cookies you have from sites visited previously. It appears you have spent a good amount of time on Citi and Wells-related websites.
Homework is useful: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=100557
Also, your comments have not been deleted, but here is some advice: hit the save button after you are done "commenting" on something.
There is a good a saying about keeping your mouth shut and making others wonder if you are an idiot instead of validating their skepticism.
Oh, and you are welcome to donate and redeem us from the oppressive shackles of ad-based revenue models, which mean you are allowed to browse this site for...completely free
RE: "Google Adsense determines what ads to show you based on cookies you have from sites visited previously. It appears you have spent a good amount of time on Citi and Wells-related websites."
as is accurate investigation. I've never EVER been to a Citi website...
And, you have FULL control over adwords your site ALLOWS...so Tyler..step up an swing, or -100 credibility now. Keep censoring my posts if you feel that's preferred also.
I DO run payroll and business checking with Wells, because, if you run a business, you HAVE to use a bank to process payroll, unless you'd like me to lay off all our employees...
but I digress...YOU have control over what content is shown on your site. Period..No weasel words. Nothing. Keep up the good work, but reaffirm credibility...if you don't like the bankster ads showing on your site, step up and say so, and enforce it...
RE: "There is a good a saying about keeping your mouth shut and making others wonder if you are an idiot instead of validating their skepticism." ditto...
RE: "Oh, and you are welcome to donate and redeem us from the oppressive shackles of ad-based revenue models," yup, and I may, but i'm new to the site, so why would I donate to someone who profits from the very banksters you so despise? Do tell...
I am not Chumba Bumba Numba Rotumba or anyone else...
I kind of like the enemy paying for ZH. Your "smoking gun" observation is pedestrian and dumb. But that's just my opinion.
Why do you like it this way? Oh wait, I get it...so YOU don't have to pay for good advice? Nice, go back to kindergarten...assholes. You pay for what's important. If not, whatever...beware.
Well it's hard to argue with compelling logic like that. "Here's a good idea - have a POINT."
In war, which hurts an enemy more: ignoring them, or taking their capital and using it against them?
BS, you do NOT have to have a bank account with WF. I run a biz and I use my credit union. You are so hypocritical I want to vomit. ZH TAKES money from the banksters you willingly give it to them. YOU are part of the problem.
RE: "Google Adsense determines what ads to show you based on cookies you have from sites visited previously"...
Shame on you. YOU control what ads appear on this site. Your statement is just like saying "halliburton controlled what happend on the BP well site"...grow up...and stop being hyprotical. Sorry for being a dick, but I about fell out of my chair when I saw Citi and Wells ads on ZH today!!! like WTF?? are you KIDDING me...
Yes, Tyler, correct, homework is helpful: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/1206.htm
go for it.
and, since i'm NOT trying to pick a fight with you, or the site, which is great, why are you picking a fight we me when I point out hyporcacy (spelling?). Would you allow a BP ad on your site? WTF... contact me OB if you prefer...
Last retort, lest I be banned (which is fine if so)...
RE: "Oh, and you are welcome to donate and redeem us from the oppressive shackles of ad-based revenue models, which mean you are allowed to browse this site for...completely free"
Go for it, if your site is really that hot diggity slick (and it is) charge for the fucking content, and rid youself of bowing down to taking revenue from those who you so apparently despise...
I'd pay for subscription, So Tyler, Balls up now...or not...yes? Again, contact me OB if you prefer to discuss in more detail, and eliminate this hypocracy from your site, and make more money also (maybe) if you have the balls, and if your readers have the balls. If neither have the balls, then it's all a farce to begin with, so why continue anyway except you are making money...LOL
Sorry, soapbox off...
Good, take a breather and get off your high horse.
no high horse, just hipocracy, EVERYWHERE, and i'm sick of it. Just f-ing ban me if you prefer.
I see where you're coming from especially with the first hand loss you have experienced. Do like I do. I just unconsciously ignore them. I too receive the same ads even though I have NEVER deliberately/consciously searched anything remotely Citi but I did not even realize it until you mentioned it.
Consider this sight like you're driving in your car towards your destination. The roads are supposedly free but the billboards on the way (however offensive they are to you) have little to no bearing on your life or your destination.
Lame example, I know.
Yeah. lame. sorry. ZH/Tyler/Mgmt (whoever that is) could fix this in 30-60 mins. In fact, let's as a community ask where ZH DOES receive it's funding, now that it's in question. The guys here are ASTOUNDING on graphs and charts. let's see a breakdown, So we know who we are dealing with/listening to/reading from here...yes? Nothing to hide?
Ok, I hereby ban you. Don't post anymore. Also, to avoid further hypocracy, close your banking accounts with Wells Fargo. Also, sell your car, as its likely using petroleum and ethanol from a BP refinery.
Nicely done, but i'm not banned...bummer.
RE: gas...some things are EASY to change (e.g. ads shown on ZH) and some things are not (using a car)...
get a clue...if we can't even address and fix the EASY things, you now know how the HARD things will be addressed...
RE: Wells...i've considered it yet. WHen you email and confirm that all our employees will just accept checks in the mail, and you will run all our payroll reports, with ALL taxes, FICA, medicare and all other shit properly accounted for down to the $.00001, i'll give you the job of doing it.
Grow up guys/gals (lest I be gender indifferent), ZH/Tyler can't even fix a SIMPLE hypocracy, and now you know the future of all of mankind....it's not hard to figure out. and I get flamed for pointing out the hypocracy. I bet, if ZH were "in power" at the WH now, I'd be visited by goons tomorrow.
Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely....10000% of the time...rounded to the nearest .0000000000001%
Let's see how ZH ownership responds to all this. My guess: they will ignore it and it will just go away, and all the reader-sheeple-ship will just go merrily along...
Ah, I see, there are different levels of hypocracy. How many different levels are there? Sorry you're having to deal with the really tough ones. It must be frustrating when others don't fix the easy ones.
actually there are. Some hipocracy is easy to fix. Some not. When you stop driving your gas guzzler, let me know.
Does that affect ZH commentary on financial matters? not sure.
Does them taking MONEY from the FUCKING BANKSTERS ON THE SITE affect financial commentary...well, I think we all know the answer.
hypocrisy, go back, and get your GED
You are not important or influential enough...nobody cares.
and ONE more LITTLE tidbit of info..."Wells Fargo Private Bank" which I see just now on your site, right to the side of this page as I type, lost me 15% of my ENTIRE life savings in a period of weeks, before I nuked them. Good job...everyone, click on that ad, go for it, and tell Wells that ZH/Tyler sent you their way...and best of fucking luck. You deserve what you get and what ZH recommended by showing it.
and let me surmise/hypothesize:. Tyler/ZH now doing/thinking:
a) wtf is this, we're just trying to help, and posting on a sunday for christ sake
b) htf is this asshole redwood
c) should we ban him?
d) wait a sec, he's kind of right
e) wtf, wtf, wtf...thinking
f) shit, ban him (her?) or not?
g) shit again...him/her is right...but we make money from that shit
h) our readers will protect us
i) shit again...if we had itegrity we'd address what's being addressed
j) tick/tock/tick/tock...thinking/ Smoke coming from ZH mgmt
k) SHIT, we ARE taking money from banksters...god damn it (but man, it sure is nice).
l).....add steps here....
stay tuned for the results...I have no clue what they will be. Let's see
ROF
Tyler, Did I miss a step?
Wow.
What a great ego you have!
Hm....I read in a previous comment on this thread that someone's EGO crawled out of their hole in their head.
I think I may have found your EGO RedwoodTree...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq_TQ0aFlRk
No worries our buddy Kurt will take care of it.
Or you could say that ZH cons one of the TBTF cons that conned the masses by stinging them for add money while lamblasting them with the sting money.
When one enters the fight club they should expect a fight and be prepared to fight.
He's probably a great fan of democracy also ;-)
No, I think they're just letting you run your temper tantrum until you're ready for your nap. And it's spelled hypocrisy ffs.
.
@RT
m) Spain won in "extra time"... Yes TAWNY (Tylers "shapely assistant")... I'll have another cerveza & helping of palella...
n) METHANE BUBBLES? http://www.helium.com/items/1882339-doomsday-how-bp-gulf-disaster-may-ha...... Naw... Couldn't happen on MY WATCH...
"0")... Why? BECAUSE WE LIKE YOU!
p) ???? ???? ???? ????? ?? ????? ??????. ???? ?? ?? ???? ?? ???? ????? ????? ?? ?? ????. ???? ??? ???? ??????. (just for the SHEEPS perspective)...
Redwood... PLEASE.PLEASE!.. No really!
If you don't know all Private Wealth Management groups of major banks are the same, and are terrible...well, keep reading ZH.
And ZH is offered free so it can reach the most people possible. Information is power, and our best hope.
You are grating and bitter. But I wish you well and I am sorry you are so angry. I hope you see better days...
Why did you "invest" in ..."Wells Fargo Private Bank”?
When did you "invest", before or after you saw the "clicked on"
Is your "investment" strategy one that follows advertisements & "clicks on"?
You are an idiot.
You trusted that bank? wow -you aren't as bright as we thought.
Unless you have run a website, for free, and attempted to raise even a modicum of cash to pay for servers and costs, you are in no position to criticize the randomly selected 'adsense' ads.
Just ignore them if they offend your sensibilities, and concentrate on the information offered, which is outstanding. You control your own reaction to data around you.
I had a financial site with the word "Asylum" in the name, and I could not stop the plethora of ads for sleazy immigration attorneys which showed up, lol. Perhaps someone here might have been able to, but I never had the time to sort it out. I finally just deleted the "adsense" box, but my site didn't cost what this one must in terms of bandwidth and maintenance.
If TD can get the banks to pay for this site, more power to him! You should be congratulating him, not bashing him. We should all be emulating that model :). That kind of 'redistribution of wealth" I can get behind.
But I digress...
Unless we all are willing to cough up enough donations to allow ZH to cover costs, at some point, the good folk who run this site (FOR FREE - I might add), may decide to say "get your Kools off my carpets...and be quiet out there...my neighbors are asleep...they work too"
Heck, I might click on that Citibank ad about 20 times, just to bring some revenue to the site. What does it cost me besides a few finger push-ups, vs what is the benefit to all of us here?
Just my unsolicited and rapidly depreciating .02c worth of input.
agreed.
+ 100 anarchists.
with all due respect and empathy, what is hypocritical
is criticizing others for what you, yourself, do. deflecting
responsibility.
so,
it is hypocritical to invest your money in a fraudulent
bank or system and expect security. wamu was a
fraudulent investment. the investors there got taken
by jpm. that is where your money went so focus on
that. no? and then there is always the man in the
mirror.
Biggest con in finance? or biggest con job attacking nationalism, carried out through financials?
"Sometimes, when chasing the bouncing ball of fraud and corruption on a daily basis, it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the millions of trees (all of which have a 150% LTV fourth-lien on them, underwritten by Goldman Sachs, which is short the shrubbery tranche). Luckily, Charles Hugh Smith, of oftwominds.com has taken the time to put it all into such simple and compelling terms, even corrupt North Carolina congressmen will not have the chance to plead stupidity after reading this."
This should be the preamble to the next new financial regulatory bill...
1) pay down all your debt
2) if youre fortunate enough to have surplus cash , withdraw it from deposit accounts.
3) purchase some alternative assets to store *some* not all , of that surplus cash - gold , art , wine , invest in becomming self sufficient. This is the hedge.
4) when the system is at a tipping point , go on strike. Starve the system.
The point of no return long passed , we have passed Event Horizon. Its a matter of when not if we go through very hard times. Iceland did it 1 way , Greece another. So far America is not responding and the peasants are allowing themselves to be fleeced in perpetuality.
The early symbiotic relationship between the beast and its symbiont changed over time, as the beast became a parasite demanding more and more, and the symbiont became host. However, the host became weaker over time, as the beast grew stronger. The paradox was unsustainable. Eventually, for survival the host demanded more reciprocation. The beast had no choice, it too needed to survive.
The ultimate host, the mother earth, would have to suffer until it too had been drained dry. This was the final end, and the beast and symbiont sought out new host light years away; not all symbionts were invited on the trip.
Step three is to convince the peasantry that $600 in unearned income (capital gains) should be taxed in the same way as $600 million. The entire key to the U.S. tax code is to tax earned income heavily but tax unearned income (the majority of the Plutocracy's income is of course unearned) not at all or very lightly.
There is much truth to this statement. Sadly this was the whole purpose of the 16th amendment. It was to overturn the Pollock ruling and bring UNearned income back into the taxing fold. Why else would our elders have been so in support of such an amendment? Would they really have supported something that would tax the wages of labor? I think not, they atleast back then still had some sense of what the two classes of taxes were. Direct and Indirect. The 16th reveresed the Pollock ruling and returned unearned income back to a Indirect (excise) tax (a tax on privledge..ie alcohol, smokes, oil etc). Unfortunatly the 16th amendment was written so poorly that the powers now use it as the authority to tax any dollar that changes from one person to another. Study it, it will make you sick
A noble effort, but still too complicated for the average congressperson, imho.
"An obscure book about the collapse of the German economy in the 1920s has become cult reading among leading financiers, after a tip from billionaire investor Warren Buffett."...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/7883931/Obscure-book-by-British-adviser-becomes-cult-hit-after-Warren-Buffett-tip.html
Warren Buffett? Isn't he friends with Alan Greenspan?
These fuckers all need to expire!
Ta for that
CHarles Hugh Smith has been quite accurate over the years...worth reading and supporting.
Updated DOW charts:
http://stockmarket618.wordpress.com
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/latest-market-outlook-1
Having read part I and part II of The Con of the Decade, it is now more likely than ever that my wife and I will choose another country to live in after the fallout. Costa Rica looks good still.
Volcano risk.
I know - been there and seen Volcun Arenal in action. With earth changes apparently actually occurring at an accelerated pace (for whatever cause), it is hard to know or guess where one might want to land for a prolonged stay. Good growing climate and soil, pure water and unpolluted air is where I start my search. Gonna stay mobile for the short term.
Hope to see you in Costa Rica Pura Vida! Im moving to Honduras in a month staying to teach for 10 months then moving permanently to Costa Rica!
Yup, ignore the fact the US just sent SEVEN THOUSAND MARINES to the country to combat drugs.
Retire in Peace. Keep 99.9% of your wealth to bribe local officials in case of, well, you can fill in the blanks.
I am not Chumba Bumba Numba Rotumba or anyone else...
:0
"Yup, ignore the fact the US just sent SEVEN THOUSAND MARINES to the country to combat drugs"
Perhaps you mean by "combat drugs" to destroy competition with CIA black ops program funding schemes etc?
Let's have a war on negative thinking. A war on doubt. A war on alternative medicine.
Just about as insane a plan.
Redwood,
You know I was really enjoying the comments on this article, winding down my weekend, until I read yours. Please don't come back. Yahoo needs you man!
"I am not Chumba Bumba Numba Rotumba or anyone else..."
You had me at "I AM NOT"...
-Dorothy Boyd
Agreed, not worth the time to educate morons...
Too humid. Go to New Zealand (if you are white and young enough or rich enough).
Low population (relaxed), western legal systems (honest cops), too small for anybody to pay much attention too, good food and wine, ok weather, and (best of all) the ration of "smart amoral scumbags" per square mile is lower than most places because the assholes tend to move to Australia, England, or - if they are super-assholes - to the US.
http://maxkeiser.com/
.
the real terrorists, who are they and where are
they? what is their main weapon?
our ignorance. ignorance has always been the
main problem, when it is addressed the problem
will be resolved. lies don't work and won't do and
have increasingly shorter half-lives.
.
great post and thread. this is how ignorance is
defeated, information and multiple perspectives,
integrated. it is as Light to the eye, and realities
become self evident. know ? / no?
yes.
"Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice": John Adams
.
and .... thank you.
.
The trouble is that even though this explanation is made in "such simple and compelling terms, even corrupt North Carolina congressmen will not have the chance to plead stupidity after reading this", it still requires a longer attention span than the average viewer of Sean Hannity or O'Reilly has.
This scam never penetrates the mainstream media because it's still too long and complex a story for the producers of the cable news shows to want to have anything to do with it. They assume their audience is stupid and ignorant, and they would be correct, of course. However, the audience is not even as dumb as they are assuming, and should know the truth. Instead, the MSM will focus on the titilating (think "Lebron's "Decision" or Tiger's escapades) rather than on the substantive.
I'm a longtime reader of ZH and this is my first comment. People here generally are "preaching to the choir" in these threads, but it's still a very small choir. How to broaden the knowledge of the masses to make them realize how they're getting scammed is the ultimate trick. And that's not an easy nut to crack.
Set the example.
I've seen way too many people who tell others what to do, many times not doing the doing themselves. Appearing far less stressed out than others one becomes a kind of curiousity, thereby attracting others toward you in seeking out information rather than yourself draining good/productive energy.
"Bread & Circuses", I flashed on a picture of Ancient Rome. Yes, they provided circuses for the sports & thrill seekers (also free theatre) but there were also forums to distract the amateur orators & troublemakers & keep track of them. Main stream media & movies are our circuses & we are right here in the forum now. Just so many pipsqueaks & ego cases, just like then. The real power is elsewhere folks. History doesn't exactly repeat itself but like music it does variations on the melody. Just as in Ancient Rome I don't think the citizens really want to know. I'll go one further; America will not be the new Rome (our secret wet dream). The world government being forged now by the Financial Elites will be. At first a virtual shadow government & then THE government. It will last much longer than a thousand years.
did you see android meme? the medium /
the mess age.
Humans are probably not going to survive another 1000yrs. Forget the name of the article, in Scientific American, a few years back. Some mathematicians calculated the probability of how much longer humans may survive. The highest confidence was around 200/300yrs. Probability for 1000yrs was very low. : )
As an engineer, I don't trust theories as much as applications, but have a feeling they are about right on that. : )
I might have to disagree with you. Humans are very capable survivalists. What disaster could come along and kill the entire population? Look at the situations that people currently are able to survive in, from the artic to the desert, there is no place we cannot survive.
A global nuclear exchange could make humans go extinct.
I doubt it. Nuclear winter is a myth. Check out how well things are going in the Chernobyl area. You wouldn't want to live there, but if you had to, you'd survive long enough to breed, and that is all that matters.
Re: you'd survive long enough to breed
Well, I think a nuclear exchange would be a bit worse the Chernobyl, but you are right about breeding.
Humans are natual dumbass optimists. As long as there's optimism, the DNA will survive (and that's all that matters, really).
Dude, is this nuclear winter cool, or what dude? Dude, how can it get any better, dude? Dude, like totally dude.
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~scranmer/SPD/crichton.html
This is a great article if you haven't read it, Michael Crichton explains the rise of consensus science, and yes, Nuclear Winter is consensus science. The fact is that nobody knows how much dust the bombs would kick up into the atmosphere.
. < The dup dot.
Humans are deeply flawed & now that we have the power we might well destroy ourselves tomorrow. On the other hand we are the product of a great Ice Age, very tough times. All animals become extinct sooner or later. Spielberg's (also Stanley Kubrick's) 'Artificial Intelligence' says that what we now call robots will be our successors & inherit our civilization intact & extend it.
Don't fret honey, when the time comes you'll get to see firsthand just what this species is capable of.
Cockroaches will go extinct before us....
There is no way to "broaden the knowledge of the" dumbasses.
The sociopaths (politicians and media) - on the left and right - have the perfected a few simple stories that occupy the tiny brains of the peasant dumbasses. "Those people" & "global warming" generate enough fear that all other problems are effectively erased.
Until the peasants are starving, nothing can change. The nobility won't let the peasants starve OR cut of their access to sports. So, you don't really need to worry about a collapse of society for many many years.
Great post and to repeat one final time: check out ELX Futures
http://www.elxfutures.com/About-ELX/Founding-Firms.aspx
me maties....
Nostradumbass,
goog comments on Smith, i've been visiting for some time as well. He should have lots more traffic now, after ZH.
I was pissed after reading it; but life goes on, see you in CR next week, if you are there for a little R&R.
What is the Difference Between a Sociopath, a Compulsive, a Pathological, a Chronic, and a Habitual Liar?
All of the above!!!
The smartest amoral scumbags rule the earth.
The ability to manipulate dumbasses with a good story is an evolutionary advantage. A person can't choose to be a peasant but a person can choose NOT to be a dumbass; and be manipluated by the sociopaths.
Sadly, most people are dumbasses, as Faux News & CNBS prove everyday.
GOOOoooooaaalllllll!!!!
Jeez, I wonder when the federal government will start labeling ZH as a terrorist platform. I'm not saying it is, but we sure are expressing views that threaten the current (malfunctioning) system...
Re: but we sure are expressing views that threaten the current (malfunctioning) system...
"We" are so small in number that "the authorities" have no need to do anything. What counts is who has control of the peasant dumbasses' tiny brains. There's power ONLY in numbers.
This site is no more (or less) influencial than any other intellectual bitching site.
Don't get too comfortable...remember, the last revolution only needed 5% of the population. The other part of the numbers we need will be forthcoming. We seed other websites, we do what we must. What we have on our side is the constant barrage of headlines re: corruption and outright theft. The grinding down of the population is not doing your kind any favors. Don"t try and tell us this is the way it is, and to suck it up. I'm an older lady in the boonies somewhere lamenting the fact I had no military training! Does that sound like intellectual bitching to you?
EXCELLENT
I've sent this on to a dozen others...who will challenged by the concepts, but really this is just about as simple as it can be spelled out.
MANY THANKS
This is a definition from 1989. Do you know the latest definition?
Primary Dealer, one of the three dozen or so banks and investment dealers authorized to buy and sell government securities in direct dealings with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its execution of Fed OPEN MARKET OPERATIONS. Such dealers must be qualified in terms of reputation, capacity, and adequacy of staff and facilities.
Barron's Finance & Investment Handbook Fourth Edition, John Downes
Who do you think these companies are? Who do you think approves them? How many make up the great bulk of dealer activity? What common thread exists in their ownership?
These are questions we should all be asking, and know the answers to. While it does not focus directly on the article, (which was good, but had some mistakes in my opinion) the answers offer a unique perspective in knowing what you're up against.
VERY IMPORTANT--SUNDAY NIGHT This Coming Sunday-- Set Your DVR for the Fox News channel at 9:00 PM eastern. Maybe this is why the White House has been discounting FOX. Sounds like this could be history in the making - someone may go down - either Obama or Fox News. It may be that Fox has been holding this information back due to the sensitivity of it and out of courtesy. But, Obama has taken on Fox and it appears they are ready to spill the ugly beans of truth about the background of this individual who has had an extremely radical past. This Sunday, Fox News is going to air a very important documentary about Barack Obama, Sunday night at 9 P M Eastern. The report will go back to Obama's earlier days, showing even then his close ties to radical Marxist professors, friends, spiritual advisers, etc. It will also reveal details about his ties to Rev. Wright for 20+ years, i.e., how he was participating with this man, and not for the reasons he stated. The report has uncovered more of Obama's radical past and we will see things that no one in the media is willing to put out there. It will be a segment to remember. Mark your calendar and pass this on to everyone you know: Sunday night, 8 PM CT; 9 PM ET. Democrat or Republican, this report will open your eyes to how YOUR country is being sold down the road to Totalitarian Socialism. If you care about the direction of our country, pass this notice on to everyone you know.
source... http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=178000
it's fake.
Have you toweled off yet? That was one helluva one-man thread you had going there.
Fox? Waste of life. Owned by Murdoch, run by the zionists. It's even less news worthy than a one hour special on LeBron James' decision to leave Cleveland.
Actually, I think Jesus had a clue about how it really is.
We all know that the bankers and all those mysterious cloaked
super-rich evil doers
are quite aware of ZeroHedge and read it assiduously.
They know how much anger and hatred there is out here,
and about all the people who are stockpiling gold, silver, rice, vitamin C, bottled water, and bullets,
and about how the system is in its very, very, very last days ...
They are scared shitless. They are of course all making private preparations of their own. But there is no place safe on this whole planet, especially not with all the satellites overhead taking pictures of everybody and everything all the time.
There is no place for them to hide, no way to survive.
They know that repenting now would not save them, too mnay people know what they have already done.
So they are not going to change, not until the knock comes on the door.
But constant, out-of-your-mind with fear,
does not make for a wonderful life ...
I think Jesus said "The dumbasses will always be with us" too, but this one didn't make the final cut.
I’ll make it very simple.
I have scanned through the comments (that’s right I didn’t read all of them).
Charles Hugh Smith is an honest man.
Charles Hugh Smith is an intelligent man.
Charles Hugh Smith has a soul and understands it.
Charles Hugh Smith is what I like to call a human being.
Others claim they are “doing the work of God”.
The God others worship is Satan (or Lucifer if you like light).
So this Charles Hugh Smith...
Do we start a church or just gun him down?
America is being transformed into plutocratic kleptocracy ruled by oligarchs.
And I thought I moved away from corrupt Latin America 20 years ago!
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You are scum.
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Gucci[/url] are not just simple leather embroidered carrier items necessary for the containment of girlie items like toiletries, make-up and spare change.
You are scum.
How is this scam even possible in a "free democratic society"? Has anyone bothered to ask this question? Until we are honest about the source of our collective federal government's corruption, it will not be solved.
IMO, the reason it's possible is that the U.S. constitution has a flaw in it. Basically, this flaw allows for a merging of the public and private sectors, and does not separate financial influence from the democratic process. It enables regulatory capture and the multi-billion dollar lobbying industry.
And it's why we now must live with the decision that the U.S. Supreme Court just made on Citizens United, entitling corporations with the rights of people. Corporations are not persons and should not have the free speech rights of people, but the Supreme Court disagrees.
Until America enacts a new Constitutional Ammendment, eliminating money from both elections and the legislative/regulatory process, we are screwed. Things will just get more and more corrupt, until we have a Corporate Fascist State, which we are damn close to having right now.
One more add: Congressmen or Senators cannot work for lobby group or major corporations five years after they leave office. Their taxes s/b audited for any deffered (hidden) payola as well.
Best Historic Quotes:
American Bankers Association, 1891, as printed in the Congressional Record of April 29, 1913 On September 1st, 1894, we will not renew our loans under any consideration. On September 1st wee will demand our money. We will foreclose and become mortgagees in possession. We can take two-thirds of the farms west of the Mississippi, and thousands of them east of the Mississippi as well, at out own price... Then the farmers will become tenants as in England.*
Representative Charles Lindberg (R-MN) To cause high prices, all the Federal Reserve Board will do will be to lower the rediscount rate, producing an expansion of credit and a rising stock market; then when business men are adjusted to these conditions, it can check prosperity in mid-career by arbitrarily raising the rate of interest. It can cause the pendulum of a rising and falling market to swing gently back and forth by slight changes in the discount rate, or cause violent fluctuations by a greater rate variation, and in either case it will possess inside information as to financial conditions and advance knowledge of the coming change, either up or down. This is the strangest, most dangerous advantage ever placed in the hands of a special privilege class by any Government that ever existed. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money. They know in advance when to create panics to their advantage. They also know when to stop panic. Inflation and deflation work equally well for them when they control finance. *
If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, where as the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.Thomas Edison
*
We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one the most completely controlled governments in the civilized world - no longer a government by a vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organize, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speck in condemnation of it. *President Woodrow Wilson
If one understands the socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead, it becomes logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately socialism, its not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite. *Gary Allen, author
These International bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or rive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. *Theodore Roosevelt, New York Times, March 27, 1922
The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state, and nation ... It seizes in is long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the pubic protection... ... at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interest and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties ... and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business... These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and magazines n this country. *John Hylan, Mayor of New York - New York Times, March 26, 1922
The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. The system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank sought to dominate its government by its ability to control treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.Georgetown University Professor Carroll Quigley in his 1966 book Tragedy and Hope
*
Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England in the 1920s Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money and control credit, and with the slick of a pen they will create enough money to buy it back again. Take this great power away from the bankers and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for this would be a better and happier world to live in. But if you want to continue as the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of slavery, let them continue to create money and to control credit.*
American Bankers Association, 1891, as printed in the Congressional Record of April 29, 1913 On September 1st, 1894, we will not renew our loans under any consideration. On September 1st wee will demand our money. We will foreclose and become mortgagees in possession. We can take two-thirds of the farms west of the Mississippi, and thousands of them east of the Mississippi as well, at out own price... Then the farmers will become tenants as in England.*
President James Garfield Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce... And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.*
Vancouver [Canada] Sun newspaper, May 4, 1934 Abraham Lincoln, the martyred Emancipator of the Slaves, was assassinated through the machinations of a group representative of the International bankers who feared the United States President's national credit ambitions - and the plot was hatched in Toronto and Montreal. ... There was only one group in the world at that time who could finance anything they cared to attempt without regard to cost, and who had any reason to desire the death of Lincoln. They were the men opposed to his national currency program, and who had fought him throughout the whole of the Civil War on his policy of greenback currency. They were the men interested in the establishment of the Gold Standard money system and the right of the bankers to manage the currency and credit of every nation in the world. With Lincoln out of the way they were able to proceed with that plan, and did proceed with it in the United States. Within eight years after Lincoln's assassination, silver was demonetized, and the Gold Standard money system set up in the United States.*
German Chancellor Otto von Bismark The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots ... I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America, and use it systematically to corrupt modern civilization. They will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into was and chaos in order that the earth should become their inheritance.*
President Abraham Lincoln The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.*
President Abraham Lincoln The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles ... the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.*
Napoleon Bonaparte The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency: their sole object is gain.*
Thomas Jefferson If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations which grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
*
Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international moneylenders. ... The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and ... manipulates the credit of the United States.*
Thomas Jefferson I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.*
Benjamin Franklin In the Colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one.*
Benjamin Franklin The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the Revolutionary War.
*
Thomas Jefferson I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.*
Representative Charles A. Lindberg (R-MN) The financial system ... has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of ... a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money.Now, an important quote from the Lord of the Rings, a riddle:
"This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town
And beats high mountain down.
The answer to this riddle is the most important commodity, the rich and poor have the same amount. Even with great wealth, you can only wear one suit at a time, eat one meal, drive one vehicle, and live in one home at a time and "money" deposited in a bank account can be loaned out for other worthwhile uses (in an ideal scenario).
I would add another four #'s to the list"
*Converting conjured up paper loans not based on deposits to real assets by foreclosing on homes and businesses. For the first time, banks own more real estate than individuals.
*Giving savers zero in interest while inflating by printing money and giving it to cronies reduces purchasing power and robs the people. This is important from a relative purchasing power perspective as this is a zero sum game and it puts non-cronies at a disadvantage when attempting to buy anything real. This was hinted at, but not comparative advantage.
*Bankers / Hedge Funds taking funds from the public and manipulating commodity prices (hiring all tankers, manipulating futures on oil) - $3 at the pump.
*Bankers / Hedge funds creating dark pools, acquiring the majority of all securities and then manipulating prices through round tripping, front running trades at micro-seconds, and scalping small percentages from all purchases.
The list is now complete.
First,... great list.
Some other nominations
"I have never seen more Senators express discontent with their jobs....I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices in doing something terrible and unforgivable to our wonderful country. Deep down in our heart, we know that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected." — John Danforth (R-Mo)
"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it's profits or so dependant on it's favors, that there will be no opposition from that class." — Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863
"I have never seen more Senators express discontent with their jobs....I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices in doing something terrible and unforgivable to our wonderful country. Deep down in our heart, we know that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected." — John Danforth (R-Mo)
Thanks Pike...Nice to know a politician is able to recognize their part. Unfortunately one of the characteristics associated with psychopathic behavior is:
Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them. Their skills are used to exploit, abuse and exert power. Since the follower cannot believe their leader would callously hurt them, they rationalize the behavior as necessary for their (or the group's) own "good" and deny the abuse. When devotees become aware of the exploitation it feels like a "spiritual rape" to them.
The Question is why do the American people allow themselves to continue to be abused?
Stockholm Syndrome?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
****Original post deleted so now my reply makes no sense**** but I think the gist was 'kill all the oppressors' or some thing like that...sorry!
Um - in the whole history of humankind has this ever actually worked?
You guys are the best research source out there - so please let me know - and by the way - TPTB are sitting on their Island somewhere laughing all the way to the(ir) bank(s) because the rest of us are their SLAVES (Bitchez) - and always have been!
However - Good is BACK (Spain - 1 Holland - 0) and you don't fight evil with evil because in any case they've got a serious head start on you?
“NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...”So as an entrée ...
http://news.techworld.com/security/3228198/obama-internet-kill-switch-pl...
Perhaps if everyone knew this - and the internet goes down outside of an International war - would this not hint at the existence of a shadowy cabal pulling all the strings?
It might...if everyone knew about the possibility - and thought about why this might happen (e.g. DISSENT from the free thinkers)...so how might that be achieved!
Hmmm?
@ above...
by JethroBodien on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 05:54 #462868 It’s much simpler than that. We are effectively paying a cartel of private banking interests (federal reserve)... interest on the money we borrow into existence. That is the greatest con the world has ever known. Of course every dollar brought into existence under such a system is debt which eventually needs to be repaid. This means for every dollar borrowed into existence there is an equal and corresponding amount of debt created. Now when one factors in the interest paid on the debt you begin to realize no amount of money can ever extinguish that debt. Therefore world monetary system = largest ponzi scheme ever conceived. Everything else is just noise. .reply flag as junk (0)
.......
by Mako on Sun, 07/11/2010 - 21:17 #463693
.
You have it right on the mark. It's really simple, what you are seeing now is "noise" and will be used to pass the blame. The excuse: It wasn't the foundation of the system you see, it's was a few bad apples making loans or creating derivatives, or (insert excuse here). Nice post. .reply flag as junk (0)
.
....................
.
. comment: you have hit the nail squarely. but... it is not a ponzi scheme, it is an enslavement scheme, as ponzi schemes are optional but this has the added element of enforced participation. ie. liberty has been eradicated. it is a perversion of the constitution and the result is intellectual and financial poverty for the masses. also, the citizen or taxpayer pays principal and interest on personal or business loans and taxes to pay the the interest and principal that the banking/financial sector "borrows" into existence. the bankers are paid interest to borrow money. the taxpayer must earn that and then cough it up to the government who then gives it to the bankers. and then the same taxpayer must borrow, in inflated bubble economies, principal at interest, paid to that same banker, and somehow earn or create value to pay back that debt. debt?
...
so all the good people must become criminals to satisfy these obligations of law and monetary dictates. this works out well for the bankers as the population has lost it's moral and ethical compass. that is, the survivors have been compromised and eagerly, but wrongly, accept the notion that the flaw is in the nature of humanity and society. . imo
Blindman...
Always liked the cut of your jib fella...but disagree in your assertion that
'the population has lost it's moral and ethical compass'
It's just that they have have been spoon fed some pretty evil shit over the millennia - and if there's no counterpoint - what else would they believe?
However - this internet malarky has provided an opportunity for people to do their own research - if only they could be arsed!
So how would a blindman show the way to those that aren't awake yet?
you stump me. i have not been able to discover
the answer to your question. i suppose suffering
is the first thing, as no one cares about stuff till it
hurts them personally, ergo the saying "youth is
wasted on the young"?
.
i didn't mean to say people have no compass, but,
the system requires one refer to it infrequently. or
, never. it seems to be a consensus and conformity
mandate and it is essential for "socialization". it is
a basic element of learning and culture. the rub,
Mind is much more than that imitation. conformity
is just the beginning of learning and the "system", as it
is, sees further progression and appreciation of mind as
threatening, wrongly and ignorantly. so systemics play
themselves out to failure , pain and suffering, and then
the obvious, that which even the blind know, is seen.
.
perhaps?
moments, people seek moments of satisfaction. the
momentum and trajectory of their activity is of secondary
consideration, as long as it leads to sustainable survival
for them, their offspring, and a habitable environment.
the two times united, eternity and perennity, joy and
wisdom, or "love and emotion"? in the mean time....
take a stroll .....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3kTKLkC6T4&NR=1&feature=fvwp
.
i don't know that i could show anyone anything that
they don't already know if they would just slow down
and look with their own eyes and heart and i don't
really trust leadership in general and avoided it since
i can remember. ultimately "it" is dis-empowering and
sets up the paradigm of conformity to ignorance and leads to tribal dispute, etc. imo.
i believe in the mind and heart of man, responsibility and
cooperation where agreement is sustained. i believe in the
universe and the physics of grits. .....and spiritual pursuit.
.
Vinny Gambini: Is it possible the 2 defendants...[looks at judge]
Vinny Gambini: went into the Sac-O-Suds, picked 22 specific items off of the shelf, had the clerk take the money, make change, then leave. Then 2 different men, drive up...
[Seeing Mr. Tipton shake his head no]
Vinny Gambini: Don't shake your head I'm not finished yet. Wait until you hear the whole thing you can understand what it is that I'm askin'. Then, two different men drive up in a similar looking car, do into the store, shoot the clerk, rob him, then leave?
Mr. Tipton: No. They didn't have enough time.
Vinny Gambini: Why not? How long was they in the store for?
Mr. Tipton: 5 minutes.
Vinny Gambini: 5 minutes? How do you know? Did you look at your watch?
Mr. Tipton: No.
Vinny Gambini: Oh, oh, oh, you tesitfied earlier that you saw the boys go into the store, and you had just begun to cook your breakfast and you were just getting ready to eat when you heard the shot.
Mr. Tipton: That's right.
Vinny Gambini: So obviously it takes you 5 minutes to cook your breakfast.
Mr. Tipton: That's right.
Vinny Gambini: That's right, so you knew that. You remember what you had?
Mr. Tipton: Eggs and grits.
Vinny Gambini: Eggs and grits. I like grits, too. How do you cook your grits? Do you like them regular, creamy or al dente?
Mr. Tipton: Just regular I guess.
Vinny Gambini: Regular. Instant grits?
Mr. Tipton: No self respectin' Southerner uses instant grits. I take pride in my grits.
Vinny Gambini: So, Mr. Tipton, how could it take you 5 minutes to cook your grits when it takes the entire grit eating world 20 minutes?
Mr. Tipton: I don't know, I'm a fast cook I guess.
Vinny Gambini: I'm sorry I was all the way over here I couldn't hear you did you say you were a fast cook, that's it?
Mr. Tipton: Yeah.
Vinny Gambini: Are we to believe that boiling water soaks into a grit faster in your kitchen than anywhere else on the face of the earth?
Mr. Tipton: I don't know.
Vinny Gambini: Well, I guess the laws of physics cease to exist on top of your stove. Were these magic grits? Did you buy them from the same guy who sold Jack his beanstalk beans?
Share this quote
.
and lots of great other quotes above, apocalypse etal., and other links available upon request.
it has to be a community thing or it dies hard. Mind.
.
thanks for asking!
Speaking of fraud and fireworks (we were, weren't we?) Dylan Ratigan had Congressman Kevin Brady (R-TX) on recently: here...
In 1864 Abraham Lincoln wrote these words:
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
The great issue of our time is not taxes, a balanced budget, social security or medicare. Those are all rather elaborate red herrings. The great issue that confronts us, as it confronted Jefferson's generation and Lincoln's generation and every generation to some degree, is this: Is America to be ruled by all of us and for all of us - or has the American government in fact become a government of, by and for a relative few?
Blindman...
Truly insightful and deeply human response (as always!)
To my feeble(ish) mind - this thread epitomises the triumph of the human spirit in that the truth IS out there - but you have to WANT to look!
IMHO - The planet appears to have come to a 'tipping point' as we speak
The Bad e.g. Macondo - man-made ELE's, global debt crisis, global 'terrorism', global corruption, global climate change, global 'slavery', pandemic flu etc
vs.
The Good e.g. Love, family, friends, justice, liberty, equality, free thought, the Arts, nature, invention etc
I would guess both are in approximate balance currently?
Given the choice - which list would you choose - for you and your children - which one would any sane person choose?
Perhaps the paradigm needs to shift (slowly at first - then let momentum take over) - and humankind can emerge blinking into the sunlight of actual wisdom, real happiness and true fulfillment
So - how do we humans communicate - can anyone see TPTB being able to control all of that - all of the time?
Charles Fourier, the French philosopher of more than a century and a half ago once declared that "the future of the world would grow out of the brain of man - shaped, controlled and directed by the desires and passions by which men are moved".
Going back to the lists - I know which one moves me - and I love a good scrap!
Just a thought ;-)
"feeble(ish)". lol.
Every morning I wake up and wonder is this day we will hear shotguns in the streets. When will open season on the Bankster birds begin? What number shot shell do you use? Do you use bird shot (#6 titanium) or greedy f'n bastard rounds (rifled 1/2 oz lead slug packed with 5 - 00 buck)?
Can a Bankster bird still fly if you knock off a wing?
The meek shall inherit the earth - in plots 1 meter by 2 meters, 2 meters under.
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The problem of high management wages isn't one that is integral to capitalism. It's caused by government. The causes are in the laws that limited hostile takeovers, and otherwise limited the ability to throw the bums out.
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On, Wisconsin!