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Reuters: Eurozone Sources Say Ireland In Talks To Receive Emergency Funding From EU, Taxpayers Stuck With Full Bill
Here we go. European bailout #2. Eurozone sources say assistance to Ireland does not foresee any debt restructuring or 'haircuts' for bond holders. In other words, more strikes and riots in store, as taxpayers get stuffed with the full bill. Next up on the bailout wagin: Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, BeNeLux, Austria, and everyone else.
And now, Ireland denies it all, says it is perfectly ok with AIGIRI at 12,800 bps.
- IRISH FIN MIN
RESPONSES TO `LATEST SPECULATION' - IRISH FIN MIN
SAYS IRELAND IS FULLY FUNDED INTO MID-2011 - IRISH FIN MIN
MADE COMMENT IN E-MAIL STATMENT - IRISH FIN MIN
SAID THERE IS NO APPLICATION FOR AID - REUTERS CITES
`EURO ZONE SOURCES' ON IRELAND - IRELAND IN
TALKS ABOUT TAPPING EU FUNDS, REUTERS REPORTS - IRELAND WILL
`VERY LIKELY' GET AID, REUTERS REPORTS
»
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what a joke this system is
EuroPomo
Funny you mentioned that.
Where's todays POMO-spike?
If this shit is wearing off he Fed needs to double the effort.
LMAO
Discoteca!
For some funny reason they scraped the Irish national anthem television close down sequence many years ago.
Shame - it was such a beautiful sequence - I was never really a "nationalist" before given my liberal education but I can feel a burning emotion when I see what those bastards have done to my country - they want everything including our very souls and spirits.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wygzJtJwPnk
The controllers of Ireland, as with the controllers of the UK, hate the idea of the Westphalian nation state. National anthems will just not do.
I hope you get your country back someday.
Wolfe Tone, bitchez!
You have to take it back. As we need to in the US.
The structure that is being assembled seems to be deeply deflationary from a Irish perspective.
Ireland is not allowed to default on its bank debt , fair enough but if that is the case then future debt should be insured but no the future debt seems to be under a threat of default.
So Ireland will preserve huge historic debts and any more currency that the state needs to raise will have a default probability therefore the interest on new money will be extremely expensive.
I wonder has the ECB done a deal with the BOE / FED that they will insure that Ireland will reenter their sphere of influence as there seems little upside to this double pronged attack on our ability to create money.
Interesting, DOC. The video would suggest that there is a unique tie between the Irish character and the land itself. I hope that you and your brethren will soon feel the urge to once again fight for that land.
The neolithic blood line has been in Ireland since the end of the Ice age unlike continental groups such as the Germans who came from further east during the dark ages.
But successive Norse , Norman , Pictish and English population movements along with the very dramatic modern East European and African movements have changed this country dramatically over the centuries.
I hope the right men are sharing pints, DoC.
Ireland is a complex place with conflicting loyalties , perhaps not as complex and interesting as Scotland but a intricate mechanism none the less.
In some ways we are like a very wet Lebanon - there are risks here as we are a focal point between cultures.
Perhaps that is why Nassim Taleb is obsessed about risk - he should know about stirring up old demons.
Uh ohhhhh! Those fighting Irish are gonna be preeeeety pissed about this one!
Jim Sinclair, right again.
Fucked again.
Is this bad ?
Only if you are Irish and not a banker.
I'm Irish and not a banker :(
My condolences. May I suggest a move to Iceland?
Well if the IMF arrive I'm outta here
We should all move to Iceland and take a few lessons.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=cng.4090f16a5abf84c5a5adff0665cbc792.3a1
http://www.richmondteaparty.com/2010/10/icelands-politicians-forced-to-flee-from-angry-protesters-the-bankers-flag-reads-slavery/
I think you will like this guy - David McWilliams - http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie
Is this bad? It's like breaking a mirror, while walking under a ladder after spotting a black cat! Ok just joking, but to answer your question... it's the fuse in TNT bad.
Good bye, EU. China will miss you.
So first they were....they officials came out and denied it....now they really are? If it turns out Ireland is getting a bailout and initial reports were true. The credibility of any official that denied the original report is now completely shot. We can then assume everything is an absolute lie....
Officials have credibility. When did that start?
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.
dont you remember Greece and every other case ever before?
this is just the dance steps to the bailout tango
Son of a bitch!
Again the absurdity of it all astonishes me, instead of eliminating debt they are taking more on.
Race to the bottom!
Yep, and why would anyone need to take a haircut when they can print money.
om
Bingo. Banks keep on winning!
That is priceless! Globalization to Rogers and Hammerstein.
Light at the end of the Tunnel ?
dough is dear but there is none near
foul play, a drop of Goldman's fun
slave a name I call myself
Iceland, a long long way to run....
my interest rate is 16 going on 17....
[my interest rate is 16 going on 17....]--DaveyJones
Made me smile this morning. Thanks, Davey!
dough is dear but there is none near
foul play, a drop of Goldman's fun
slave a name I call myself
Iceland, a long long way to run....
Sue, a way to get some bread;
Law, the way to file a suit.
Me, a Yankee with some bread;
That will buy my land in
yo', yo', yo' country.
Wow we can redo the whole movie ;-)
dough is dear but there is none near
foul play, a drop of Goldman's fun
slave a name I call myself
Iceland, a long long way to run
So, I think I'm out of bread
Law, a thing for average Joe
Tea, a party wanted dead
That will bring us back to dough dough dough dough
let's do Mary Poppins next
even though the sound of it is simply quite atrocious
supercalifornia'sfallingstraighintotheocean!
(and at the end we'll make all the bankers go fly a kite)
Next up Spain and Portugal.
Off topic, but WTH happened to Mike Shedlock's blog? It's gone.
It may have deflated to nothingness.
His internet connection went off-line,
when his bunker's Faraday Cage came on-line.
That means it is working.
No, Mike would have a fiber optic uplink in his bunker. He's smart.
My god he was right all along.
Maybe he gave up when he discovered his deflation thesis was bunk?
How can the de~leveraging of the shadow banking system/assets not be deflationary this will go on for years ...
Serious? POMO for the next 28 days. and then again.
They have a lot of shit that needs to be cleaned out of system ~ Trillions
All of this is " off the books " 100-1 leverage
1995
-First Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and Collaterized Debt Obligation (CDO) structures created by JPMorgan, led by Blythe Masters.
1996
-ABS, CDS, emerging market debt all wrapped and sold off in tranches.
1998-99
-New CDS contracts allow hedging below-investment grade and high yield loans.
2001-02
-Volume of CDS contracts trading ($100 billion) far exceeds volume of cash bonds ($30 billion), creating a risk of price squeeze on defaulted bonds used for physical delivery.
-First cash settlement CDS terms used to avoid dangers of physical settlement.
Credit Linked Note (CLN) market in Europe grows rapidly, paving the way for rapid CDS growth.
2002
-Rise of Hedge Funds: Number of funds increases from 4000 in 2002 managing $2 trillion to 8000+ managing $4 trillion. This creates intense demand for new structured products with higher yields.
-Quiet deconsolidation wave begins with "outsourcing" of risky strategies by investment banks to separate entities formed for the purpose of generating higher yields. Also exposes the industry to potential wave of credit default risk.
2005
-CDS contracts are still an over-the-counter (OTC) market only, except for limited retail market in Australia.
-Dramatic rise in pooling, tranching and re-marketing risk using CDO, CDO-squared (CDO^2), Nth-to-Default, and other Special Purpose Vehicles. Extremely lucrative business for major broker-dealers and specialty fund managers.
2006 - today ...
-Industry-specific indexes developed: CMBS, ABS (ABX), High Yield (100 names)
-Counterparty risk expands to include broker-dealers, multinational corporations, hedge funds, insurers.
-Large money center banks with huge balance sheets no longer needed to anchor new debt issues due to the broad availability of credit derivative risk transfer products.
-Credit derivative volume has expanded exponentially to roughly $26 trillion, according to ISDA.
-BASEL II drives increasing compliance to minimize credit risk, market risk, and operational risk.
-FASB 133 and IAS 39 compliance emphasizes high dependence on credit default models.
-Consolidation of Guarantors drives up competition and drives down risk premiums in new bond issues.
-Increasing movement toward cash settlement/auction pricing of defaulted credits upon credit event to "avoid the squeeze."
-Markit, CDX, and iTraxx are now standard pricing sources, further enabling broad trading of credit derivatives.
-Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) considers listing standardized single name CDS contracts to create the first large retail market.
-DTCC clearing system development increases speed of trade clearing and settlement, reduces costs and operational risks.
-Notional value of single name CDS outstanding now $19-25 trillion versus $40 trillion in bonds.
-Dura default and auction in November 2006 goes smoothly, showing the value of improved standardized industry procedures and clear documentation.
-Hedge fund counterparty risk remains. Large broker-dealers still exposed, as they lend to hedge funds through their prime brokerage arms.
-Permanent Capital Vehicles (PCVs) are formed to invest in credit markets. Investment money is locked up for 5 years or more, which allows managers to do longer term arbitrage, capital structure, and cycle plays.
Doesn't matter. The fact is that prices are rising. Get over it.
Prices are rising in what ?Eggs , cotton ...
What about the housing/asset crash the leverage used was 100-1 are you crazy ??? It does not matter that trillions are gone, ohhhh ok.....
They have an abyss that needs filling ...
So you think the securitization market is going to restart and make everything better ?
Who cares about housing? The costs of all the food inputs have doubled. Housing can go to zero tomorrow, that won't make an egg salad sandwich any cheaper.
I don't but they still have to pay off old bets ..... Those just don't go away. This is just housing ...
Private sector securitization of housing mortgages alongside securitization done by Fannie and Freddie account for approximately $9 trillion of the $14 trillion total outstanding mortgages in the United States. Debt-securitization markets, which in recent years were the source of roughly 60 percent of all credit in the United States. Depending on the type of loan, certain securitization markets have fallen 40 to 100 percent.
he's working for somebody, probably posting there.
Still waiting to see if he replies to email. Would be a loss, for sure.
If Google yanked it I will set him up immediately on my dime. I built a platform to compete against Google and Wordpress. One of us out here in Internet blogger land had to start normalizing social news :-^}
Has anybody figured out yet what happened to Mish?
I just brought Mish back up (1:02 PM ET). Looked OK to me.
globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
I too hope that he keeps his blog rolling (but then again, bearings like rolling motion).
I probably missed it in another post, but who are the chosen who own the bonds?
I know full well who the hosen are.
They all own a lot of each other's debt, but the large net holders are Germany, France and the UK. Here's a graphic I found.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qA8QmxrSIpk/S98UEUmW8QI/AAAAAAAAAbI/u0kVzLNl2u...
Thanks!
When are these stupid fuckers gonna stop with the bail outs and hold them accountable? When the taxpayers finally stop taking it up the ass?
yawn..they've been telegraphing this one all week. equally predictable and on schedule G20 gold and silver takedown means a good dip, a cash withdrawal and a trip to Dave's Gold and Silver Exchange
I assume you are assuming Dave has any left.
A G20, swamp gas, weather balloon cartoon for the weekend:
Benron Signals President Hoo After Traditional Communication Fails
Very good, Hansel. I am starting to like Benron.
Well one assumes that most of those bonds are now owned by or pledged to the ECB, so of course there will be NO haircuts.
Next up to bat Portugal......followed by Spain.
One wonders at what point the Germans get tired of being bent over, probably when the K-Y supply gets cut due to austerity measures.
Germans are in to whips and chains. That whole Bismarck scene. Too bad they have forgotten Fred the Great.
This is so much better than watching the World Cup!
Good one! LOL
The FTSE and the DAX is positive....nothing to see here....move along.
Well I hope everyone really likes that soda bread and potatoes, that will be about it for a long damn time.
Another bail out, how unusual.
This no haircuts is retarded. They are BEGGING peopel to go long the trash bonds. Why on earth would anyone ever buy a Bund when all the trash bonds are backed up by Germany with no haircuts allowed?
Shameful, I believe theyre actually begging the people to start getting violent, govt's dont want to make the first move for all out world war. Has to be in response to people breaking things and beating and hanging folks.
Sending six billion people into the desert without supplies will have obvious consequences as we are now beginning to observe. Bankers run the world and bankers do not enjoy running fiscal policy but have come to enjoy earning vast sums of money easily. It is the Golden Calf effect but in our modern day story, there isn't a Moses to melt it down. Therefore, fiscal policy should be assigned to a B team of Save and Invest economists for VC funding into microcaps, using I.T. for Peer-to-Peer lending and rapidly determining underutilized value in the West.
I don't think it is an intended strategy for global revolutions to rage. World leadership of bankers views itself as it being their global playground not the publics. It is merely more like "screw you I have mine and it is going to stay that way." I don't think the people have a problem with wealth, they have a crisis of confidence in how the funds were earned and being told there would be "shared sacrifice" by politicians when the reality is far from such statements.
Long euro junk short Bund seems to be the a short term play.
That's just it! It seems like a risk free spread! It seems like nothing can be risk free but I cannot see the risk short of EU/Euro dissolution or Germany breaking for the door. As there is no mechanism to default or leave the EU I have no idea if/who/when such a thing would occur.
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
I wonder if Marx (a german) is smiling or rolling on his grave.
well he is buried in London so "probably yes." Not as much as the capitalist leaving flowers at his grave tho!
What's a little moral hazard between 27 "close friends"?
The deep irony is that the effects of the riots (see empty gas stations in France, burning banks in Greece, etc) end up being more deleterious to the EU-conomy than anything that would be seen with some moderate haircuts to creditors.
That bore repeating.
Why don't you guys get it: THEY DON'T HAVE A CHOICE.
All that debt is credit default swapped 6 ways to Sunday. If anything haircuts or defaults, everyone is going to default. Instantly. Nothing can be allowed to default or they all die. Literally.
They'll die anyway, but this would be faster -- by a few months.
The ole cascading cross-default scenario of Greenspan's LTCM bailout coupled with CDSes and HFTs.
So we are only milliseconds away from midnight, and Bernanke is on watch as town crier.
This isn't going to end well.
Exactamundo! Got to keep piling on the positions.
Then they DO have a choice.... end it now, or end it later.
Exactly.
Chart: YM
Fuck this market.
http://99ercharts.blogspot.com/2010/11/ym_12.html
Indeed, fuck this market!
And really THATS the bottom line to all this, they've destroyed the markets completely and no sane person would ever put a woden nickel within the reach of any of these lunatics ever again. Its all over, just hasnt been announced yet!
Wait, didn't they all just get $1T ?
Hey ale and soda bread is expensive...$1 trill just doesnt have the legs it used to!
The Masters of the Universe once again decide the fate of the morts.The continually gather in secret in closed door meetings at any number of locations annually be it Jackson Hole, The Bilderberg Meeting , Bohemian Grove and have decided to circumvent the people by sharing a dictatorship amongst themselves.
Is there even a point in holding elections anymore? Give me one recent example of an elected official in either the U.S. or Europe who has done something that favors the populace and not the elite.
No kidding. If politicians were just "stoopid" or "incompetent" you'd think their stupid decisions would sometimes benefit the little guy. Seems their "stupidity" only works in one direction, favor the superwealthy at the cost of the little guy, funny how it always works that way.
It's not that government doesn't know what they're doing and can't do it right. They know exactly what they're doing and they do it well. It's just that most people incorrectly identify the objectives.
Achtung! This is not the way the Bundesbank was run! Out of the Euro. Schnell!
Would it not be better to knock the Euro on the head now so that there's a chance of rebuilding a financial system in the EU? The other option is to wait until all faith in any currency has been lost.
Remember, its all just an illusion all this blustering like theyre trying to save economies. The plan is 1 world govt, 1 world currency. Things just need to be destroyed a bit more completely before that happens. Give it another month or so.
I have one ounce of silver to put against that bet. Straight odds.
By far the biggest scam/cluster fuck/fraud/theft ever committed by such a small group on on very large group. The only tool they have to prevent all out revolution is to fragment us all, divide us into small groups that bicker about whether or not gays should be in the military. Not to mention keeping the true extent of what is happening globally out of the joke that is main stream media. When the 99.999% of people start to realize en mass that everything is a side show to distract what is really happening, well lets just say it'll be "change you can believe in".
Here is an excellent article just published at Consortiumnews.com
***************************************
Angry Voters of a Decaying Empire
By Phil Rockstroh
November 11, 2010
Editor’s Note: The collective will of American voters, as expressed in Election 2010, to put corporatist Republicans back in charge speaks volumes about the popular delusions that continue to dominate U.S. politics and culture.
The message also is confirmation that the decaying American empire continues to corrode not only the nation’s strength but its collective sanity, as poet Phil Rockstroh notes in this guest essay:
Once again, partisan Democrats are reeling in shock and humiliation, boggled by a familiar scenario -- the sheer velocity of their reversal of fortune and the Republican right's perennial ascendency.
Although one is tempted to retort, anyone who votes for either one of the corporate/National Security State parties is closer to a half-senile spinster who still believes her prince will come.
For decades, middle and laboring class conservatives have been hoarding their resentments against phantom enemies, foreign and domestic, as the time-yellowed, eroded social contract, once, offering a better life for themselves and for their children, has crumbled to dust in their hands.
By the financial machinations of elitist kleptocrats and the Pentagon's multi-billion dollar money pit, they have been endowed with little else but this stash of toxic baubles they store against reality.
"The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens." -- Leo Tolstoy
Amid the casual brutalities and nettling banalities of the U.S.'s perpetual militarism and its entrenched culture of corporate oligarchy, two pernicious modes of being, seemingly unrelated, arise, converge and cross-pollinate: the collective compulsion to displace fear and rage intertwined with an aura of personal dislocation and collective anomie.
This has been the legacy wrought by the nation's collective will to beat its civic plowshares into the Pentagon's war machine (as well as those much needed accouterments of the commonweal such as the fleets of the tax-exempt, Gulf-Stream jets appropriated by corporate oligarchs).
As the people of a fading empire, our self-absorbed victim-swoon is only exceeded by our paranoia: We cower from phantoms and rage at realms of invisibles: Within this empire of Paxil, Palin and paranoia, collective fear of all the wrong things has made the U.S. and her people analogous to a car alarm that issues a shrill, electronic warning to an empty parking lot.
In reality, no intruder has attempted to invade the car’s envelope of steel, aluminum, and glass. A sudden gust of wind was the culprit. Yet it disturbs all within earshot, announcing the presence of imaginary marauders.
Attempting to cope with the degradations of a violence-prone, exploitive system and its attendant degraded social milieu, an individual can become susceptible to demagogic narratives that serve to displace overwhelming feelings of rage, shame, and mortification. Thus, around the clock, right-wing media haters -- human, hair-trigger car alarms -- admonish empty air.
Overextended empires, and the distracted and harried individuals within, will stand, bristling in a paranoid posture, with feet planted in stubborn defiance of changing circumstances, snarling at invisible threats and imagined affronts, as life moves on with indifferent grace.
A nebulous sense of anger, co-existing with free-floating ennui, has become normalized, leveling a sense of desolation and inflicting a hyper-attenuation of the will to freedom upon the psyches of U.S. conservatives of modest economic means.
What remains: brittle pride, paranoia, belligerence, and empty braggadocio -- each serving to occlude from their conscious awareness the reality of the nation's plummeting quality of life.
By any metric, other than military spending and armament production, the U.S. is nowhere close to occupying the top dog position it once held among nations ... maybe global junkyard dog.
In the U.S., it is astonishing to hear middle and laboring class conservatives defend their degradation by the present corporate order i.e., how they refer to the leash, held by their corporate masters around their necks, as their wings of freedom.
Thus corporatism, by its diffuse nature, avoids direct critique, as, all the while, it atomizes community. The money generated doesn't remain in neighborhoods; instead, profits flow back to corporate headquarters.
These practices of the corporate state (that go nearly unquestioned) have rendered U.S. culture bland and inflicted alienation in their wake.
The culture has been reduced to a center-devoid archipelago disconnected to community commerce and communal engagement. This is revealed, in microcosm, in the nature of the bland, uniform food proffered at corporate chain restaurants which is produced for quick profits in order to provisionally assuage the disproportionally large appetites of the denizens of the consumer state.
Hopes and dreams have been crowded out and marginalized by oversized, empty cravings ... My heart is bereft -- but I can fill my belly with giant burgers and endless varieties of donuts ... Buddhists term this state of being: existing as a hungry ghost.
As corporate chains conquer every block, waistlines expand and civic engagement shrinks ... Shuffling, bereft, through the consumer state's soul-denuded architecture of anonymity, we, in turn, have internalized the illusory image-scape of the mass media hologram.
The human being as consumer is not only clad in corporate chain clothes but wears its labels within.
Due to the banality, blandness and flat out ugliness of the strip mall/big box store/fast food outlet, prefab nothingvilles of the U.S. landscape, life under corporatism is as seductive as the glare of florescent tube lighting in a convenience store.
Our suburban architecture looks as though Socialist Realist architects of the old Soviet Union grew bored of the worker's paradise of Hell, rose to earth, and went into the prefab structure design business.
The difference between the Soviet Union during its last few decades and the U.S. Empire in its death swoon is the people of the Soviet Union knew it was all a fraud. In contrast, our corporate masters are too wily to display their corrupt carcasses on the reviewing stand on May Day as the fraudulent parade trundles past.
At present, the only reason voting is still permitted is to provide a wall of camouflage for corporate oligarchs. Their power remains hidden … provided the public believes, by voting, they are afforded any significant degree of mastery regarding the condition of their lives and the trajectory of their fates.
Extreme totalitarian policies such as Stalin's engineered famines aren't required under the hidden (loose knit) authoritarianism of the present system:
Our corporate commissars have more cunning, albeit less dramatic, methods of keeping people in their place: keep the workforce off balance with downsizing, arbitrary staff reductions, and outsourcing; inflict a famine of the mind by means of a class-stratified system of education, in combination with a constant and enveloping bombardment of inane mass media content; and provide food, plentiful amounts of it, but manufacture food products as high caloric, high fat, high sugar, growth hormone-injected, antibiotic-sodden, empty calorie delivery systems e.g., corporate chain death burgers and donuts of doom.
Although, in a traditional sense, the swag the privileged class mountebanks have made off with isn't actually money; in reality, they are in possession of a cache of weightless pixels funneling through a matrix of computer systems.
There is simply the illusion of money in the vaults of the nation's colossal banking entities. The only thing the financial elite didn’t steal for themselves was any sense of self-awareness, because if there was ever an honest audit of their ill-gotten assets the illusion would be exposed and the house of electronic cards would fly asunder.
And that time is approaching. Soon enough, the next black swan will glide into the picture. And this presents peril: Prolonged hopelessness breeds rage. When that rage is unloosed, the fabric of civilization unravels and is soon cobbled together as a death shroud.
Accordingly, right-wing hatred is a many-headed hydra that feeds on fear and desperation. It cannot be fought by attacking its spindling heads, each of its hissing mouths dripping black poison. Instead, one must thrust at the noxious heart of the raging beast.
But one cannot know where the heart of an external monster beats without gazing upon one's own ugliness. One's ugliness, with apologies to Emily Dickinson, must be public like a frog.
Apropos: How can it be, on a level of collective awareness, the populace of the U.S. can persist in avoiding blundering in to this steaming pile of the obvious: How can we have a modicum of empathy for the people of Iraq when we refuse to even glimpse our own degraded condition and our complicity therein?
What does it speak of a people who can be indifferent, inured, or ignorant regarding the following?
"The Battalion commander walked into the weight room where 3rd platoon was at, yelled out 'Listen up, new battalion SOP (standard operating procedure) from now on: Anytime your convoy gets hit by an IED, I want 360 degree rotational fire. You kill every motherfucker in the street'" -- former U.S. soldier, who served in Iraq, Ethan McCord.
The Military Industrial Complex/National Security State serves no one but the God of Death, munitions manufacturers and those politicians they bribe. War is a money train for the rich and connected and a death wagon for everyone else.
Regardless, the people of the United States owe the Iraqi people an amends. If we demure, we will remain caged by our ignorance. That will be our punishment: our fates, analogous to a mistreated dog that licks the hand of his cruel master and exists, restless and vicious, behind a fence, snarling at the passing world.
There are many worlds, many heavens and many hells -- and they are all in this one. Without a public accounting of, as well as, restitution made for our crimes, we, in the U.S., will remain in our own tiny, fenced-in hell, straining against the tether of our tiny view of the world ... barking and snapping at empty air in futile rage.
Because our sense of entitlement here in the U.S. engenders so much death and suffering overseas, at times, I feel like shouting in frustration:
"I don't give the hind quarters of a small rodent about the beliefs, feelings, consumer preferences nor fates of the somnambulant herds of big box store waddling, overgrown adult infants of this empire of the arrogant and the empty. Millions have been murdered worldwide so that these entitlement-maddened monsters can keep their SUVs topped-off with gas, and their fat brats' greedy gobs stuffed with Hot Pockets & Juicy Juice."
Yet as Hannah Arendt observed: "Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing."
Years ago, I had a friend, a struggling artist, who purchased an old, dilapidated, Victorian-era house. Upon moving in, he discovered the place was infested with cockroaches. Worse, the house sat close to railroad tracks and when trains trundled by, shaking the structure, its floors, walls, and ceilings would seethe with agitated cockroaches.
Since no amount of bug spray could lessen the infestation, he began zapping individual insects with glow-in-the-dark spray paint. After many months of this endeavor, when friends dropped by after dark, and, subsequently, a train rumbled down the tracks adjacent to the house, he would switch off the lights and all present were dazzled by his creation -- a moving, organic mobile of scuttling, multi-colored, living art.
At present, this is where we find ourselves as a people: powerless before the ugliness of the age. Therefore, we have little choice other than to light up the ugliness and turn the objects of our revulsion (personal and collective) into something resembling the truth of art.
Darkness must and will descend upon us. The absence of light must grow so unbearable that we’re willing to ask how is it we arrived in this place and begin to illuminate the darkness by revealing the scuttling, creepy crawlers of empire.
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com. Visit Phil's Web site And at FaceBook.
To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.
Poet, lyricist, philosopher? Rockstroh sounds like a retarded version of Kunstler. If he left NYC once in awhile, his brain might spontaneously reactivate.
What is this I don't even
Of course, you do know that Democrats made a HUGE mistake by supporting and embracing the same corporatist structure, allowing the fraud and corruption in the system to continue unabated.
At least all of us have healthcare now...
Phil Rockstroh is an unemployed former 7-11 night stocking clerk receiving welfare and unemployment checks and 7th grade mohawk warrior in World of Warcraft living in his mother's basement in in New York City.
There, I fixed it for you.
Ha! Wait til you see the brouhaha over whether "seniors" should retire 2 months later 75 years from now. Maybe that should be brou-ho-hum.
The primary wedge seems to be childish bickering between the middle-class haves and the downwardly mobile and institutional underclass. Look at the foreclosuregate divisions. It claims to be ideological, i.e., about socialism, free markets, etc., but it's just plain childish naive and incomparably counter-productive.
As even Buffet acknowleged, the real war is a Class War. And the rich are definitely winning.
Drug stocks are getting brutalized today.
Probably the best sector to be short right now.
Surprising...drug use should be way up for anyone actually in this stupid market. Well maybe all the traders of size have just gone to street crack, crystal meth, 8 balls of heroin FTW.
"bailouts cost money, too." As Europe "saves Ireland" something must be sold in order to "make it so." Time will tell if this a buying opportunity but this "forced selling by European governments" spooks investors. Don't worry "you're benefit package is safe, too" I think is the larger fear among both the citizens of Europe and of course in the US.
Is the American taxschmuck gonna pay for this one to?
In actuality, no. It's all just click and print nowadays. We don't have to pay anything, for anything- just click it into existence.
Until it all explodes. THEN we'll pay...
Actually I don't think Luxemburg and The Netherlands will need to be bailed out, they are on the other side: they pay for the others...
Ah, no. Look at the amount Lux gets from EU to the amount they put in. They are the big winners per cap of the largess of the EU bureaucrats.
Luxembourg to bail out other countries??? What's next, San Marino to bail out California?
Sorry, I thought Lux was a net contributor to EU, my bad, it seems to receive around 7b per year net:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_European_Union
(although they probably don't run a large deficit)
going to go out on a limb here and predict this won't fly. there's a little thing called term structure of debt. people are starting to understand that sovereign borrowing from a private banking cartel = debt enslavement. the aggregate (public+private) debt is too high relative to GDP vs. debt servicing costs. this is a math problem. the "bailout" is nothing more than a fancy term for stepping on the neck of 98% of the populace. riots ensue throughout the eurozone. bank police, meet the angry mob. will also go out on a limb and guess that the bankers have already anticipated this
I agree. And a bankster who doesn't own a very large island is going to rue his short-sightedness.
It would be a good play to go long private security firms. Should be a huge growth industry over the next several decades.
My sentiments too. All this talk of 'bailouts' is just a red herring for them squeezing us harder. We will pay it all back, as will our children, their children etc.
We are caught by the short and curlies.
There once was a banker from Dublin.
He thought the economic prospects were troublin'....
When prosperity halted
The bastards defaulted
Now the revolutionary cauldron is bubblin'
So he grabbed him his gun
Said goodbye to son
Locked loaded and got one!
said 'hey, this fun!"
And that's when the fight
for humanity
was begun.
Everythings ok, don't panic, just keep on moving...
@MGA
LOL--really. The curtains aren't on fire, that's just stage fireworks, part of the show...
the banks own this country and are destroying governments around the world. it is absolutely insane that our elected officials agreed to bail them out and bankrupt themselves. banks would be perfectly happy without government. corporations all over would be happy to have americans working for them until they die. do the people of this country not understand that this is and will become the new slavery? that we have spent the last 50 years building a way of life that will now, and in the future, be decomposed? doesn't everyone see where this is going? do something about it for christ sakes.
I love this site ! My kind of anarchists ! Obviously time to be long Irish banks ! what a Ponzi -
The Irish Govt showed their 'true colors' sending in the Thugs to beat-down teenage student demonstrators. Was sickening to watch. They were mostly peaceful exercising their right to protest and got their heads beaten.
Let it burn now not worth saving.
The Irish ministry is still claiming they haven't applied for rescue!
Translation: Please don't riot.
We kept hearing about Lehman Bros' denial of a bailout or even insolvency. We saw how that story ended. If they don't keep giving indications that they might get bailed out, the plug would have already been pulled on Ireland. We shall see over the next few days.
This is the kind of catalyst that would normally cause a "flight to safety". However, we have China submarines all over the place, China in the center of the room at G-20 and the Fed going to war against the deflation that would otherwise be the natural order of things.
Fascinating.
Stop the turban searches already buitchez !!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k
In other words, more strikes and riots in store, as taxpayers get stuffed with the full bill.
And like all the other riots, they'll fade away as the people realize there is no point and they'll file in line to let the government slap them around, as usual. Same shit, different day.
No. Some of us are trying to make the microscopic difference that one person can make. We are educating our friends. We are taking our money away from big banks. We are hoping for a better future while quietly preparing our family for the worst. We are shopping local. It may be a waste of time. It may already be too late. But at least if it all goes down in flames I will know that I tried. So on behalf of all the non-fatalists on this board, fuck you.
Government wins - that's how it works. Just ask all the "pissed off" French who took to the streets that now sit in the cafes and bitch after being beaten into submission. Just ask the "I'm entitled to everything" British students who now sit in the campus coffee shoppes bitching about how they were beaten into submission.
I'm happy to hear you're doing what you can but this ain't the old days, government wins - until they take "Glee" off the air. Then you might see some action.
They are still mortal men. You have a very narrow view of history. In hindsight it's often very difficult to determine when something termed a "revolution" actually started. And, in the end, do "they" always win? Perhaps. But it's the small victories in between that keep us going.
When the backlash comes, it will be a torrent.
No, I don't have a "narrow view of history". The only governments that topple from revolution are the ones with no distractions. Hell, the Romans kept it going forever with their version of the NFL.
People have way too many distractions to keep them "entertained" to pull off anything resembling a revolution these days. Revolutions happen in countries where they don't have open access to the internet, NFL, Glee or Dancing with the Stars. Sad but very, very true.
You are correct about the Roman comparison. But incorrect with the term "forever". Is there still a Roman Empire?
Maybe so, Harry, but did you ever see a US government (non-military) employee with a hot wife? Never. Trade offs. Government bureaucrats just aren't sexy. At least you have internet tranny porn, or whatever it is you are in to now.
LOL! I'll give you that. Can't argue a valid point.
Because you are into tranny porn. Whatever works.
Must agree with Harry on this one.
Unless riots lead to a coup, they're perfectly useless.
Tyler, we appreciate your work, but you should admit that there is a strong probability of taxpayers just accepting to be milked undefinitely.
One can only hope it is the EU taxpayer that gets stuck with the full bill.
A song for the Irish - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BmEGm-mraE
10:55AM JUNCKER: Ireland has not requested aid from the European Financial Stability Facility. Irish Finance Ministry reiterates this position.
Good night sweet prince.
Juncker spoke out of turn it seems. Mind you he may have read the begging letter that Lenny sent to Africa this morning.
http://www.thepropertypin.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=34180
My idea is that 'government' is in a bubble and the welfare state is the latest addition. It's beginning to lose money, it costs way to much to buy support, expectations are too high, image has become negative. It's dragging down it's 'investers' too. Either they sell gbonds or they go down with it. Then they resort to inflation but that has eroded too, many people are 'short' paper money with their mortgage. Soon they may move their savings towards metals. Plus inflation makes gbond investors poorer. The state is eating it's own support. Things are changing. So either 'the government' slashes welfare drastically and end their keynsianism or the whole thing goes 'pop'. Something like that and I'm having a slow day..fp