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Guest Post: Robbed Blind By A Lipstick Wearing Pig
Submitted by Davos
Robbed Blind By A Lipstick Wearing Pig
"No
one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records
for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by
underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain
people."
~ H.L. Mencken
Each and everyday I'm amazed by the sad amount of truth held within this statement.
I've
totally shunned TV, I have no cable, no dish, I've deleted every
mainstream news source from my iGoogle RSS reader and I am now weeding
out what I once considered to be the best 25 economic blogs.
Let’s visit the many ways that we are being robbed by the pig wearing lipstick.
Confusion and sexing up the ugly
Today, on a blog I used to hold in high esteem was an article entitled "Who's Afraid Of a Falling Dollar?"
Me.
That's who.
And it should scare you also!
First
we need to take the lipstick off the falling dollar pig and understand
what it means. If you have $100,000.00 in your account and the dollar
falls in value that $100,000.00 might buy you only $25,000.00 worth of
assets.
Would you put your money in a bank that offered you a
falling balance? Open an account today with your life savings of
$100,000.00 and tomorrow your balance will be $25,000.00.
The
incredible part about the article is that it was written by a senior
fellow at an institute that is trying to save Social Security.
Sorry
Grandma, your $500.00 Social Security check that used to buy you a
month's tuna caught by Japanese fishermen had a really bad fall and now
you'll have to eat saltines all month long.
No more tuna for you.
"A lower dollar is good news for US exporters and foreign importers and bad news for foreign exporters and US importers."
Really?
Well bad news here. We import 2/3rds of our oil.
Sorry,
when you fill up your SUV with your falling dollar you are now on the
cusp of bankruptcy because that dollar had a bad fall and only buys 1/4
the amount of gas it used to. When you go to the store and purchase
food that has been shipped a minimum of 1,500 miles and farmed in a
petrochemically dependent fashion you’re going to be in the same line
as Grandma buying saltines.
Bon appétit mon ami(e).
Confusion And Secing Up Inflation:
"The
fear is that a falling dollar would be inflationary." Right here I am
reassured that the author must a.) be Keysnian b.) have taught
economics c.) has worked for the "Federal" (a very private bank)
Reserve.
Or, d.) all of the above.
Inflation is defined
as the size of the monetary supply. The Keynesian economists have
convoluted this. The bottom line is if you have a trillion in 100's and
you create another trillion bucks while you have 2 trillion the reality
is that the 2 trillion has a value of 1 trillion. Your 100's are worth
50.
Your dollar fell.
Hard.
He then quotes two recent "Fed" papers. Well, I have short funny video for you…
Here is the Chairman of the Fed who got it 100% wrong.
"I don't buy your premise."
"We've never had a decline of houses in a nationwide basis."
Oh, I thought you studied the great depression?
Just what the heck happened from 1920 to 1945?
Confsion And Sexing Up Unemployment
"With US unemployment currently at 10 percent, there is no chance that inflation will rise in the near term."
Really?
First if you go to http://www.shadowstats.com/
and pay John Williams 89 bucks he will show you that unemployment is at
22%. He corrects the BLS's Birth Death Model, their Seasonal Adjustment
and even is kind enough to count the U3 and the U6 numbers and add them
up into one nice percentage.
Something the BLS seems challenged by.
And
by what economic model is unemployment a factor in inflation? Zimbabwe
had an unemployment rate north of 90% and here is a copy copy of a
dinner receipt…
Dinner for one: 1.2 billion.
I suppose that isn't inflation even by a Keynesian perspective?
I could go on for hours.
"Articles"
like these contribute to the success of the robberies committed on the
American people each and every day. The give validity to Mencken's
pathetic realization.
Worse, when good blogs publish bad
articles smart readers get confused by qualifications and titles and
prestigious think tank associations. Comments like: "Zimbabwe is a case
of corruption so naked that it defies comparison. Even comparing it to
the US is the height of silliness, since the US spent the last year
with NEGATIVE YoY price changes."
Corruption so naked that it defies comparison?
Really?
Well maybe we should consider this. The unregulated derivative market is now 55 times the size of all the world's GDPs 600 trillion in total (audio link).
According to Table 3 OCC.pdf
(from our Treasury) 200 trillion of this toxic mess reside here in US
banks. Tyler, over at ZeroHedge, ran a piece pegging it at 1,600
trillion (1.6 quadrillion). The subprime mess was 1.5 trillion. It blew
up the economy. We now have wave two of the Alt-A and Option Arms rolling to shore.
Another 1.5 trillion. A lot of this consists of NINJA loans. Those are
no income, no jobs, no documentation. I suppose putting down you make
100k when you don't have a job doesn't defy corruption?
Or maybe we want to discuss the stellar way these loans are given AAA ratings?
Naked Short Selling is another great topic while we are on the Bernie Madoff Zimbabwe discussion.
Or we could discuss how we hang those out to dry for uttering regulation and oversight.
Defies comparison?
Yeah.
The bottom line is that we have become numb to what "experts" and reporters tell us.
A
recent piece in Bloomberg discussing raising the debt limit is proof.
"Tactics such as tapping federal retirement funds would free up roughly
$150 billion - about the same amount as the interest payments that come
due on Dec. 31."
As one fellow blogger that I have the utmost
respect for put it: "Did you catch the bit in boldface about 'tapping'
federal retirement funds for short-term cash flow? Sounds so casual, so
innocent, don't it? Think about it, though. Unlike private pension
funds, whose trustees have a fiduciary duty under the ERISA Act to
safeguard the interest of beneficiaries, fedgov pension funds are mere
slush funds for politicians to grab at will. Under the sordid conflicts
of interest which are tolerated within our imperial government, the
managers of Social Security and federal retirement funds subserviently
hand over their reserves to our insolvent government in ad hoc, 'we'll
pay you back when we can afford to' transactions. In a private-sector
pension fund, such malfeasance would land them straight in jail.
But
then, government is all about granting itself the right to commit acts
which are illegal for its subjects -- such as the Federal Reserve's
96-year-long currency counterfeiting operation. When the sovereign
itself is dishonest, openly bilking its own pensioners, it is idle to
talk of 'reform.' Organized crime is not amenable to reform. Either you
end it, or you trust your security to the nebulous notion of 'honor
among thieves.' Good luck with that!"
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100% right on
my quote "99% of people are idiots who lack basic critical thinking skills" is still in tact.
The reason the "experts" at the high levels of gov keep spouting this is simple, they are robbing us. They are just trying to keep their victims calm while the pull off the heist. After all wouldn't be safe to steal from millions of armed people and let them get pissed off about it. I wonder where Ben has his retirement digs? Do you think him and Greenspan will retire to the same place? I bet they could write incredible adventure novels about how two old academics pulled off the greatest crime wave in human history, sure fire best seller!
I think the real reason isn't that it is some kind of elite conspiracy but because even average day citizens think that if what was obvious was true it would be unbeneficial to them for various reasons. A majority have so much investment/dependence in the continuation of the system financially and psychologically that they do not see an alternative.
I do also agree though that the FED and others are acting in self interest and self preservation at the expense of other citizens.
The pathetic reality is that it is a garbage in - garbage out system. If you have greedy, ignorant and selfish citizens, you'll get greedy, ignorant and selfish leaders.
This country isn't 'the shining city on the hill' it was for the 20 years or so after WWII, it's a steaming dung-heap that is about to collapse upon itself.
America at every level is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible and morally bankrupt.
America is not irresponsible. It has a lie for everything. That's highly responsive. Confront. Lie. Confront. Lie. Confront. Lie. It's responding it's ass off.
+1000...lyar lyar Fed on Fire!!
Don't want to set off the 100 monkeys pheonomon. You get that illegality too open and it catches on before you know it spreads from government to corporation to small town and it's everywhere.
http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm
The trick is letting it out of the bag enough to let the boom bust optimize spread and then slamming pandora back into her box.
I agree that the American public is largely at fault for not making a big stink about this. But lets face it the public is dumb, and this is across the board. I talk to my fellow grad students, some of whom graduated from ivy league schools with degrees in econ and they have no idea what the carry trade is. Most people have 0 knowledge about how finance works, and no interest in learning. I've been touting this site to peopel and most never bother to check it out. The dumb public is going to be screwed, but the problem is smart aware Americans are going to get screwed right along with them. About all we can do is invest in a way that profits from the corruption and stupidity of our leaders aka buy gold/silver.
You say it like it's an elite conspiracy, I see it more that it's systemic corruption. I don't know what level of conspiracy there is but I know at least some people are conspiring to steal and cover up for each other. I don't think any of us doubt that Paulson took care of his buddies. Anybody think that the former GS regulators are really looking hard at the alleged wrong doings of GS?
If the bulk of the public is in serious debt, exactly how are they going to be screwed? (is someone going to make them pay back all the debt?!?!?!....no, I didn't think so)
Only savers are screwed.
When the majority votes benefits from the Treasury, ....
F-ing A.
As long as there is no MSM to question them there will be no public outcry.
People are even more retarded here in San Antonio. I might be the only person in the entire city that knows whats going on and im dead serious.
Or you may be the only person in the entire city who ADMITS to knowing what's going on.
Widespread deception is only possible through a conspiracy to encourage and reward silence.....a subtle manipulation of the herding instinct.
Sounds like my old company!
++ 1 . LOL. Max, don't tell me you worked for Uncle Sam too ??!! It's a small world after all, ain't it ?
Excellent piece. The means are the ends.
Check the USD/gold chart (Figure 6) and Dow Jones Ind Ave/Gold chart (Figure 7) at http://tradesystemguru.com/content/blogcategory/54/88/ and then tell me that a falling USD isn't bad?
Whatever Joe Gagnon is smokin must be good because it has sent to some other planet...
Can you say fiat paper currency? Ask the populations of more than 400 jurisdictions in the last 100 years who have suffered through the aftermath of a fiat currency. Zimbabwe was the last example....
I still want to know if credit card machines can be reprogrammed to print landscape to cope with all the zeros that will be needed.
100% spot on. Our government today is nothing but organized crime. Gold trading close to $1130 as I write this, and blowing the "dollar-deflation" thesis to smithereens in the process. You don't need to do anything drastic to topple over the pyramid scheme that the Fed/Govt. is running to loot the public - just cut off their air supply by rejecting their fiat currencies and buying Gold instead.
Say you are a college graduate with 40K in student loan debt, 120K in mortgage debt. This is your only debt and the interest rates are fixed. You walk to work and fill up the gas tank maybe once a month at the most. You have no assets what-so-ever. You don't care for buying shit from China or the like. You avoid Walmart like the plague. Say somehow you manage to stay employed while the financial system implodes in the next couple years...
1) Could you expect that, due to the weakening dollar, your income would go up? (Or would plumeting demand for your skill surely crush that, in otherwords how weak will the demand for labor get?)
2) And if number one was true could you say that a weakening dollar could actually be good for at least some portion of this whole generation of college educated folks that have nothing but debt and shitty jobs?
I'm trying to think of one possible way where this fucking nightmare could be good for anyone besides those that are getting all this make believe money piped to them. This may sound sarcastic but I'm seriously interested in hearing some feedback.
Also will inflation of raw building materials eventually inflate the housing market? Or is it better to walk away from your upside down mortgage now (considering you already have no credit anyways)?.
Ok...One more question. Is it better to buy a ounce of gold or an AK47 and as many rounds as you can afford if you can scrape together enough cash? No, seriously....
-JTA
The only way inflation works to your advantage is if you exist outside of it.
"All we want is life beyond the thunderdome"
All opinions from one schmuck on earth.
You are in competition with foreign labor, most likely. I am not expert but I expect all of our salaries to go down on average, never to return again. Add in fewer hours, fewer days, no overtime, furloughs, part time only, and there will be less pay that way. Many folks are going in to work when they are not scheduled to keep up with other folks who are doing the same. They work free. Compete with that! No one wants to lose their job.
On walk aways, I used to think it was a cop out. The bank signed the deal, they knew better the risks than you did. If you have a no recourse loan, walk. A corporation would do the same to you, say "it's just business, nothing personal." The contract says they get the house if you don't pay, end of it. But lots of folks stay in their houses for a while free first, before the foreclosure. I have no experience with this but I would get a storage shed and have much of my stuff in that. I have heard others challenge who owns the loan. If they don't have the original papers, they do not own the loan. Consult a lawyer in your state.
72 hour travel food in a bugout bag ready to go with other emergency gear, then 3 months food, then AK, lead, then gold, then one year of food. We should have always been doing these things. We depend blindly on the system. It is too fragile and fallable, without the corruption. With it, egad. I think we will have spot Katrinas all over the country intermittently.People used to always lay up a year of food, Mormons still do. You never knew if the crops would come in.
Read Jim Kunstler's Long Emergency. It's as good as anything.
72 hour travel food in a bugout bag ready to go with other emergency gear, then 3 months food, then AK, lead, then gold, then one year of food. We should have always been doing these things. We depend blindly on the system. It is too fragile and fallable, without the corruption. With it, egad.
= Perfectly Succinct. AK may not be best choice, shop around for comfort. Just my 2c worth...but really well put.
Learn to garden- even if it's in containers.
+ Appreciate your posts Ms.
:-) Thanks.
I second that MsCreant. You're smart enough to ignore that twit next time. From a panzie Canadian.
Get an AK and plenty of spare parts, then a re-loading set up. The AK-47 utility value is worth 100 ounces of gold during an epic failure. You need to think about the basics, defend your home and loved ones, hunt for food. Inversly, what does a gold coin provide when the power goes out and the buses stop running? Sitting on a large cache of gold makes you a target if anything. Pick up roughly $500 face value worth of pre '65 junk silver coins for your "hard money" which is infinately more practical. 1 oz gold eagles have no place "beyond thunder-dome"
Hmmm, need to add the AK:gold ratio to my financial analysis. Right now it's about .3:1.
Spare parts for an AK, you say? What do you expect to break? Have you ever handled an AK?
Oh, and reloading, how quaint. Tried buying primers lately? And you do know that 99% of ammo made for the AK's standard caliber is steel cased and not really reloadable, right? More than half of it is Berdan primed and completely unreloadable. But I digress.
So how's that Airsoft thing going for you?
Yeah, I advertise in my front yard with a huge 400sqft sign that I have a pile of gold inside my house.
The utility of gold is that you buy shit with it, genius.
I am Chumbawamba.
AK-47 with spare parts and a re-loading set up is a far superior 'investment' compared to an ounce of gold, assuming the epic fail.
Utility value of the AK is unmatched, defend your property, hunt for food. Inversely, sitting on a gold cache would make you a target.
I still say get $500 face value of pre '65 junk silver coins for 'hard money' which is much more practical than gold when you need supplies from Bartertown. American Eagles have no place beyond thunderdome.
Of course, "that could never happen here".
Do you think Fed-ex will take silver coins in a C.O.D. transaction. Brown will need some Brinks trucks then ... made in USA baby.
Who hangs a sign saying "Gold Here"? Bartertown? I suggest you Google 'FerFal' and read up on what life is really like in Buenos Aires, post collapse. Sorry, it doesn't quite line up with your expectations, Rambo.
Yes, FerFal has an excellent blog. He also has a book out as well.
What exactly are you going to protect with all that firepower. A year supply of canned brown beans? A pocket full of gold? A home that will imprison you? Seriously if the SHTF you need to consider evacuating an urban centre where roving gangs will take delight in terrorizing the fearful. You're dependant on electricity and clean running water to survive. That's not freedom. At least in the country there will be a semblence of civility and self reliance. I have a home with 8 acres, surrounded by freshwater lakes and forests with deer wandering through my front yard. You won't be able to give me enough gold to sell that to you in a Mad Max scenario. I sincerely hope it won't reach that point.
Did I hear my name called?
Yes, we'll scratch and claw for todays wages...either go and work for the Gov. or hedge with the AK47 to loot the banksters palace.
Optimists buy gold and silver, pessimists buy guns and ammo, realists buy shoes and socks.
We don't make them any more.
Extremely good point. We don't make much clothing of any kind any more. And expect to do a lot more walking if oil prices spike.
I am realistic optimistic pessimist. I bought all of the above.
I am Chumbawamba.
"Learn to Garden"
I like that.
ak-47 and ammo over an oz of gold every time. once you get your ak and ammo then buy gold. of course gold will get you an ak, but an ak will get also you gold, and more importantly , keep your gold.
The government has been tapping the federal retirement funds since the beginning.
o.m.g. ......... god help us all ........ or, should i say, GOLDMAN SACHS help us all.
o.m.g. ......... god help us all ........ or, should i say, GOLDMAN SACHS help us all.
Concerning guns and ammo and the rest. I believe the first item for life is education. Education in the sense of knowing what do do with it all. Pointing and shooting a mindless animal is not the same as a mindless criminal. Living on the dirt is not as simple as it sounds. Try spending a week in a national forest sometime. How you think your mind will work and how it performs under pressure are 2 things unless you've taken time to think it all though.
"What exactly are you going to protect with all that firepower?" ---> AK47 first purpose would be to assist in my evacuation of the city in the event of mass rioting and lawlessness. The plan is to retreat to the family cottage in the upper peninsula of Michigan and reunite with my "tribe" (and their fire power...although we'll probably end up killing eachother with it ....ha ha). That's 2000K miles away. Then it's use would be to protect and hunt.
Another question: What exactly is the biggest fear right now? Is it that the fed is going to overshoot on replacing the evaporated credit with printed money and then rapid inflation? Or is it that the the printed money will never "trickle down", a huge shift of wealth (that has already been shifting for decades anyways)...or both? Or is it something else? Perhaps the mass awakening of working class folks to the fact that we've been had..and then lawlessness? Or is there still a chance of deflation due to political pressure for fed to stop the printing. I'm not a financial guy so hope I'm not sounding naive.
Hmmm, family cottage in Michigan's UP. And you live 2000 miles away from it. You really think you're going to make it to the cottage alive in that type of scenario? It's hard enough to live in the UP during current times - meth, angry locals, no jobs, huge distances to anything. Good luck with that. You might also want to check the length of growing season there, or at least look around next visit and notice the absence of farms in most of the UP.
It takes time to see what is what. One step at a time. It is overwhelming at first when you think of all you need to do you have never done because you are sooo dependent on the system.
I think if and when TSHTF it will start in the cities. Looting of stores etc. It probably won't start in all cities at once and probably not where I live. Yes, I think I could make it and if anyone tries to stop me along the way they'll get an unpleasant suprise.
I will be living off the land. Most of the U.P. is wilderness. Hunting & fishing, fire wood for heat during the winter. Green house & indoor potted plants for veggies. We have a private well. Would actually be a nice change from sitting in this damn cubicle.
I know the U.P. very, very well. The only thing that will be in abundant supply is firewood. There are many good reasons that few people live in the U.P.
If you really expect a collapse (ala Rawles' book) then I hope you have an airplane close to your current living arrangements, and a landing strip near your family cottage. The few major airports in the U.P. could get very exciting if a collapse were to occur. If you don't know why, read a local newspaper (for the relevant airport) for a week or two.
You talk as if the whole country will catch fire overnight and all the roads and bridges will collapse. There's plenty deer, bear, fish, ducks and geese and duck poop is just like guacamole. The U.P. has low population density because there are no jobs and the winters can be tough. Considering that I will not have a job and little to no hopes of finding one where I'm at I don't think that will be the issue. The truth is that most of the population will be in denial and I'll be the f out of dodge before the chaos even starts. If for some reason that's not going well I can always sneak into canada.
I want to say this gently, you do not sound reasonable. You assume so many things are going to go your way. Preparedness is planning for the worst and hoping for the best. You do not sound to me like you are planning, in a very detailed way, for the worst, at all.
I do not claim to have my act squared away either. Even if only parts of the country start to collapse, the ones leaving all at once will put pressure on the ones who have nothing going on, making them have "something going on" the hordes of you, coming through, depleting their reserves.
I would look for something sarcastic to say to shock you but I am not going that route. You sound like someone who has seen too many movies that turn out happily ever after and you assume that is how your story will go to. This is a form of denial.
Could be there will be no collapse in my life time. I am not banking on it. We have all kinds of plans, and we modify, here and there, when we realize we have slipped into fairy tale thinking.
I invite you to ask yourself how you will know when it is "before the chaos starts?" Do you know by what means people slip into Canada? Do you and yours have passports ready to go? One of mine is stubborn and does not.
I assume nothing.....you assume that I assume.
Inflation is defined as the size of the monetary supply.
Right. You're such an expert.
Austrian economics. Keynesian is what you see in the dictionary or learn in college today. Listen to Ron Paul, Md, Peter Schiff, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber or Jim Puplava or John Williams.
Or listen to the late Keynes who knew this would blow up and said, we'll all be dead.
Pick your expert. I picked Puplava et al.
a 22 cal semi-auto rifle is the most common sense first choice firearm. bullets are 2 cents apiece. good for small game hunting and security. plus they are very accurate at a distance, and not that noisy.second would be a revolver, ni spare parts needed. 22 cal is adequate, especially with a 9-shot. after that you might think about a shotgun. adequate for bird hunting, and defense. the problem may just end up being ammo availability. you can get 5000 rounds of 22 lr for a little over $100
I've travelled in some pretty unsavory areas. a lot of the time the way you carry yourself, and staying alert to your surroundings, makes you a much more unlikely target for predation. but not all of the time. like a boy scout BE PREPARED. you wouldn't hesitate to kick a wild dog that was trying to bite you.A man is no different, except for ont thing, he's smarter.