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Fear Mongering And Hysteria About The Fiscal Cliff
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com
It’s been a phenomenal circus, the screaming and hollering on all sides about the “fiscal cliff,” in the media, from lawmakers, from chieftains of our industries, particularly those that feed at the government’s big trough, such as defense contractors, which include some of the largest global corporations. Even NPR this morning postulated that it would cause a million job losses. Hysteria comes to mind.
The fiscal cliff is to the US what the Troika is to Greece: an unwelcome dose of self-imposed half-assed discipline. Self-imposed in Greece because they could send the Troika packing, default on the rest of their euro debt, revert to the drachma, and print themselves into poverty [Greece, Tell Brussels “To Take A Hike” And Let The Troika Bail Out The ECB Instead]. Self-imposed in the US because Congress passed, and the President signed, the laws that make up the fiscal cliff. And half-assed because it doesn’t mean that either country will ever live within its means.
According to the fear mongers out there, the US would fall off that fiscal cliff if (most notably):
- the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, sending us back to where we were before.
- the 2% Social Security tax cut is allowed to expire, sending us back to where we’d been all along.
- the beautifully named “sequestration” is allowed to trim discretionary spending a bit, including defense, whose expensive though cool and often deadly toys amount to a fat corporate welfare program.
To add some spice to the mix, there is the “debt ceiling” that Congress imposed. US Treasury debt might bump into it by the end of the year. If a fight breaks out over it, the world will scratch its head, having watched that silly farce during the spring and summer last year.
So, how dreadful is this cliff? According to the Congressional Budget Office, it would cut the budget deficit in fiscal 2013 by about $560 billion. That sounds like a lot, but during fiscal 2012, which just ended, US gross national debt jumped by $1.322 trillion—to end up at $16.159 trillion. So, if 2013 looks like 2012, the fiscal cliff would cut the deficit by 42%. But it would still leave a huge $762-billion hole. And gross national debt would break the $17 trillion mark.

The graph on the left depicts the skyrocketing US gross national debt from 1972 to 2012. Note the exponential increase since 2001. However, between 1998 and 2000, the trajectory flattened out; the debt still grew but at a slower pace. If Congress and the President want to, they can.
By jumping off that fiscal cliff—more of a mogul, actually—the US would see the trajectory of its debt flatten out similarly. The deficit might drop to 1.2% of GDP by 2021, according to CBO estimates. Still miles away from a balanced budget, a total non-starter in our free-lunch QE culture. The mountain of debt would be much higher still. But it would be a start. On the other hand, if the fiscal cliff is not allowed to work its magic, the exponential growth of debt will simply continue to its bitter end.
So just how much havoc does living within one’s means wreak? Households have gone through that. They had to stop living off their HELOCs and their credit cards, and they had to squeeze their budgets to match their incomes. It’s painful. But it’s prudent. Cities and states had to do it, too. It’s the only way to avoid financial disaster [if not... Next in a Tidal Wave of California Municipal Bankruptcies]. So why is it that Washington thinks it can’t?
The screams that it would cause a recession are deafening. But over the decades that the US has lived far beyond its means, it has lumbered from one recession to the next. Clearly, running up deficits does not prevent recessions.
And there will be recessions! They’re painful, but less painful than blowing up the system. Yet lawmakers, US Presidents, and CEOs—those who’re handicapped by a field of vision that doesn’t extend past the next election or reporting period—are hoping that the moment of reckoning can be pushed out of sight. For them, deficits and debt don’t matter as long as they can feed on that big trough.
President “Houdini’s” miraculous creation of 873,000 jobs in September magically drove down the unemployment rate to 7.8%. The last time a similar jobs increase appeared was June 1983 when the economy grew at an astronomical 9.3% annual rate. But behind the smoke and mirrors is the President’s July suspension of the “workfare” requirements for welfare recipients. Read..... President Houdini, The Employment Magician, by Chriss Street.
“Bullshit,” said Ferronickel, the general sales manager at the Ford Superstore, as he was penciling a deal. “The give-away capital is Washington. Here, we make money.” He is the anti-hero in TESTOSTERONE PIT , an edgy, cynical, and funny kiss-and-tell novel that will forever change the way you think about buying a car. Read the first few chapters for free on AMAZON .
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At what point does this insanity stop? The same old arguements are tiresome and Americans need to remember this is our money that is supporting this government, and the debt is our future tax dollars that are being spendt. But, then again this is the problem with America...Americans.
There is no intention to raise taxes to pay off the current and future debt pile... the purchasing power of the existing dollars is being dilluted by monetary inflation. The current monetary regime of money printing and ever lower interest rates guarantees that the elite can continue to funnel the national wealth upwards to themselves faster than monetary inflation can dillute their share. Come next election cycle, it will be the bottom 60% (not 47%) who are demonized.
Careful.
I've been hearing way too much of this kind of stuff lately from both the left and the right.
When you start down the path of blaiming the voters and the populace you start heading down the path of Facism or Communism.
What you say is aweful close to the arguments that the Facists in England were making prior to the second world war and came mainly from the elites.
The opinion you express is dangerously close to the arguments used to justify a lot of dictatorships.
It has already happened with the EU. The people could not be trusted so the elite lied and deceived the public. We now have a fascist dictatorship.
I tend to think it was more international bankers, taking back control of the American government, that was the core problem, not so much all Americans in general. It was organized crime creating a shadow government, and completely corrupting American instuitutions, with the destruction of money, and the substitution of the Federal Reserve Board, becoming runaway legalized counterfeiting, that became the crucial problem. After all, what does "America" mean after its constitutional framework has been subverted and destroyed? Examine the real history! Episodes such as international bankers paying politicians to destroy silver as money was one of the significant events, before the Federal Reserve Board put Americans in cement shoes to drown them with. Indeed, American history is full to the brim of Americans struggling with the international bankers, but, tragically, finally losing ... Indeed, without the earlier history of some successes by Americans in those struggles, there may never have been an "America" good enough to be built, so that it could then be subverted and so appear to decline, and probably fall in the foreseeable future ... The core problem with America is the domination of a shadow government, through applying the principles and methods of organized crime, taking control of government, and then using the powers of We the People to destroy those People!
What living within your means means when some societies ('american' societies) have reached global level, tapping the world resources to sustain their standard of life?
Especially after they are told to have lived for long beyond their means?
'Americans' aim for depletion of resources. As their grip on resources is global, the depletion of resources will operate on a global scale.
Living within your means/ beyond your means lose any meaning when the end goal is depletion of resources.
With such goal, the principle of the game is to consume as much as possible, as fast as possible.
There is nothing like living within one's means in such worlds.
Do 'americans' want to sell the fantasy that people who strive to live within their means (that is thoroughly balancing their consumption act) will fare better when depletion of resources hits on a global scale?
Any resources spared by people living within their means are resources made available for 'americans' to consume.
Anyone who strives to live within one's means will sooner or later find out that the resources that were supposed spared by self limitation, are gone, eaten out by 'americans'.
In the future, in this 'american' world, there will be two kinds of people: people whose ancestors massively consumed, boosted by debt and people whose ancestors did not consume massively.
As usual, in 'americanism', it will be all about being on the right side of it.
Just like in the future, two kinds of people: people who inherit from thieves, and people who inherit from thieved.
Best side is well known to 'americans' Just check their behaviours and actions.
speaky 4 me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4SmZkmLRjQ&feature=related
after u shooty nuns AnAnonymous
I pretty much never comment on here, just lurk and read... but today I had to login just to say this:
I've been reading your comments for at least 6 months, and I seriously don't have the faintest fucking clue what you are jabbering about, ever.
Seriously.... you sound mentally fucking ill. Like a schizophrenic homeless person that somehow has internet access.
More AnAnonymous crap:
AnAnonymous Chinese citizenism citizens aim for roadside excretion of resources. As their grip on reality is tenuous, their blaming of Americans will operate on a global scale.
Roadside is well known to AnAnonymousitizens. Just hold your nose and check their behaviours and actions.
AnAnonymous, do you know why you are such an extreme douchbag? It is because you do NOTHING but make sweeping, simplistic and bigoted assertions with utterly no facts, no arguments, and no logic behind any of them. Just repeating the same tired claims endlessly does not make them true.
Nor do you ever try to engage in any form of honest debate here --- you just monotonously dump your blanket anti-American accusations and generalizations in this forum and then run away like the anti-intellectual coward and troll that you are. And the few times that you do ever respond to other posters, we get nothing from you but circular arguments, evasion and diversion, with NEVER any attempt to either defend your blind assertions and accusations or to logically challenge other posters' condemnations or refutations of those same naked assertions. Clearly, you are here for no reason at all other than to spread your sick and obsessive anti-American hatred.
You idiotically attempt to blame Americans for every single thing wrong in the world today, while never acknowledging the role that your own consumption-mad nation of China, for example, plays in the madness that is the economic and political world of today. No, according to you, EVERYTHING that is bad in the world can be laid at the feet of the citizens (each and every one of them) of only one nation in the world, the USA --- never our sociopathic leaders in Washington, never our financial overlords, but ALL of us collectively. That kind of irrational thinking is known as prejudice and bigotry, and is your (only) stock in trade.
There are plenty of posters, most of them in fact (myself included) who are perfectly willing to condemn our psychopathic leaders in Washington, our hopelessly corrupt political system, and many perverted aspects of our US society and "culture" (such as it is). But you are not content with limiting yourself to such logic --- no, according to you, EVERY American alive today, or who has every lived, is responsible for ALL the sins of the world. That is collectivism in its most perverse, extreme and idiotic form.
You are dishonest, irrational, hate-filled and close-minded, and that is why no other sincere poster here ever agrees with you or upvotes your ridiculously bigoted and nonsensical comments.
As usual with 'americans', it is all relative.
Engage in any form of honest debate? With 'americans' going as far as denying that 'americanism' exists, 'americans' exist, claiming that Abraham Lincoln did not exist, neither did the Abraham Lincoln brigage?
Or even going as far as claiming that US Americans did not steal the land? This one was so overboard that some other 'americans' feel the urge to tell that this denial was too gross.
Debate can not exist in 'american' societies. For 'americans', it is all situational and facts are not things to be admitted but things to be agreed upon.
The 'american' approach to facts is led by the urge of assessing whether the acknowledgement of the fact is more profitable than the denial of the fact (and when one reads the previous comment with sentences like "why no other sincere poster here ever agrees with you or upvotes your ridiculously bigoted and nonsensical comments", one can easily see how packed with 'americanism' it is)
'Americanism' has killed debate and once known, 'americans' should face the fact they could no longer lure people into debate. But again, this is not possible for 'americans' as their nature is eternal.
As to sweeping generalizations, it is another funny effect of 'americanism': fine specimens of 'americanism' who keep display fine examples of the 'american' behaviours are led by the very virtue of 'americanism' to propagate they are not fine specimens of 'americanism' and that the characterization of their behaviour is just but sweeping generalizations.
Which could not be otherwise, when one knows of their nature. 'Americans' are trapped in their nature...
WHOA......Kinda a freak.
Take your meds and go back to your padded cell.
AnAnonymous, bravely running away:
Nice cop out, very good, very Easter Island citizenish. Hiding your fear through offuscation and denial, finding a convenient exterior of US Americans onto which you can place the blame for your own inadequacies, shortcomings, insanitation, and excremental illness.
Very telling indeed...
What cop out?
There is no cop out. Debate is based on facts and is not possible to found a debate when people like 'americans' weigh admitting or rejecting facts against the profit they could gain by doing that.
'Americans' do flee a lot from 'americanism'. They take shelter into propaganda or fantasy, inventing stuff like chinese citizenism as the example has been given on here.
But hey, apparently, when you do not pursue them in their flight, 'americans' consider that lack of running as fleeing.
The day 'americans' are no longer relying on fantasy to escape the reality of 'americanism', maybe, that day, I'll have to flee.
Wont be so soon though...
Debate is based on facts that I make up.
Signed: AnAnonymous
Hey...AnAnonymous - go FUCK yourself with a red hot poker - right up your leather ass.
Why do anything? When everything quits, collapses and breaks then throw the banksters into prison and lets move forward then. Things will improve immediately once they are out of the way. Having to pay 80% more to haul their parasitic asses around ain't gonna cut it. Fuck Bernanke and company. Soon as he quits paying or tries to pay the debt down he is outta there.
I quit smoking a couple of weeks ago, was convinced my life was dependent on it...it is not.
That chart of the total USA debt is probably more like the fireworks "rocket's red glare" about to explode at the top! It is unrealistic to believe it could ever come back down, within the established systems. There are no sane "reforms" to such runaway insanity. It must be headed towards an insane "revolution" to match the runaway insanity of globalized electronic fiat money, backed by atomic bombs. The fiscal cliff appears to me to be a possibly self-imposed detonator to the rocket ride of exponentially increasing debts. The point is that the basic system is money-as-debt. That is inherently insane, and a perversion almost beyond understanding, that has flipped "money" around to mean the opposite of what it meant before in history ... before the crazy cult of privatized fiat "money" was able to become our state religion.
It is NOT just the Federal government of the USA that displays this kind of exponential growth of debts from 1972 to 2012. The entire economic system, made of all the individuals and corporations combined, has done the same thing, on a far vaster scale than just that government alone. The whole country, and most of the rest of the world, has been dominated by a fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system, backed by force. We have been strapped to a rocket ride of exponentially growing debts, because of the BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE MONEY-AS-DEBT SYSTEM. That was a faith-based, backed by force, system of runaway triumphant FRAUDS. There was, and still is, a tiny minority of the best organized gangs of criminals allowed to legally counterfeit as much money as they wanted. On that basis, the entire American society has been built and built, decade after decade. That was runaway insanity, apparently reaching some possible point of psychotic breakdown. There is NO rational debate in the public space that is remotely possible, since that would have to be based on recognizing the social facts, that we are inside a combined money/murder system, and there is no sane way to talk about changing the money system without also talking about changing the murder system. Since, THEORETICALLY SPEAKING, the debt controls depend on the death controls, and those death controls are due to the maximum possible triumph of deceits, which then sustained the maximum possible fraudulent financial accounting systems, it is practically impossible to imagine a saner public debate about how to fix those problems. Rather, I would say that the more probable outcomes will be something looking like the space shuttle Challenger disaster. Just like that event was due to deliberate ignorance and systemic failures to deal with problems, the American economic system, I believe, is NEVER coming back for a soft landing, (without a series of political miracles, which, by definition are extremely improbable.)
The approaching fiscal cliff is more a symbol of the responsible people abdicating their responsibility. They are perhaps incapable of understanding what their system has been doing, and therefore, not capable of understanding what they should do to actually fix it. The reasons for that seem obvious to me. It is IMPOSSIBLE for any monetary reforms within the established systems to ever work. Only a monetary revolution could be theoretically enough. However, it is therefore plainly obvious that only some more or less spectacular explosions and/or implosions of the established systems are enough to prime them for their necessary transformations. Moreover, like I said, there is NO way out of the true task, which is coming to terms with a murder system with an abundance of weapons of mass destruction, being the means to back up a money system which has already become runaway triumphantly "endless" frauds, which have NO sane "end game" within their plans, or at least none that they will publicly admit ... Such a "fiscal cliff" is merely another possible trip point to tumble off the precipice we have been prancing along, while developing sciences such as physics and biology to become billions of times better, while our political science adamantly refused to progress, since, to do so, it would have to go through revolutionary paradigm shifts in its fundamental approaches to problems.
To repeat another truism in this post, warfare was the oldest and best developed social science, and success in warfare was based on being the best at deceits, and that success is what supported the money system that we are now inside. Thus, any real solutions to our current political problems require going through the practically impossible, in principle, political problem identified by Plato as "Who will guard the guardians?" The approaching fiscal cliff situation is merely another anecdote about the social situation that "NOBODY guards the guardians!" The only back-up system to the runaway insanity of our current artificial selection system, operating through fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting, is the collapse back to some level of natural selection, which will not be nice. All of the cruelty and stupidity of people is NOTHING compared to the harshness and indifference of nature towards human beings living their lives on the basis of believing in huge lies, too much, for too long. Natural selection is the back-up system that does not care if we were forced to live our lives according to frauds. That back-up system does not care that we have worshipped the Fraud Kings, inside of our state religion monetary system.
QEternity will NOT have eternity to play through ... and if this fiscal cliff does not trip us up, then the next one, or the next one, surely shall, eventually, in one way or another, sooner or later ... Since the American political system has become almost totally dominated by the Fraud Kings, and the corporations which they control, and everything they do is based on their bullshit social stories, that must diverge more from more objective realities, it is only a question of time until those realities, that they lie about, reach some critical points, somewhere, somehow, that cause them to both explode and implode, as the actually combined money/murder system goes through "corrections" by natural selection, outside of the system of fraudulent artificial selections that have been constructed on the basis of runway huge lies, backed by lots of violence ... I am NOT saying that the real world will stop being controlled by organized systems of lies, operating organized robbery. I am saying that the current system of those things has pushed itself far enough, to be near psychotic breakdowns, or will do so sooner, rather than later ... This fiscal cliff is not that big of a deal, in itself, except as a symbol of the much, much worse social sicknesses.
http://www.plata.com.mx/mplata/articulos/articlesFilt.asp?fiidarticulo=194
Good article. I liked this line best: Alas, in politics nothing is more permanent than a temporary measure.
Of course, what could happen is BOTH more destruction AND more creativity, than ever was possible before. The basic breakthrough of the scientific method has NOT stopped. The problem is that is now being strangled to death by the oxymoronic "scientific dictatorship" which has suppressed the develop of science, because the established systems depend on continuing their huge lies, and those triumphant lies use violence to keep their frauds going. ... IF, IF, IF we could breakthrough to applying design science systematically, which is THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE, then we could start applying the scientific method to social problems. However, at present, our society is locked in the death grip of being controlled by the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. Therefore, evidence and logic are not allowed to do anything. Everything ends up being indirectly and obliquely controlled through lies and hypocrisy. It does not matter if something is proven to not work. The people doing that get promoted by the Fraud Kings, for serving their ulterior purposes. ... Consider how electronic things constantly are getting better and cheaper, by leaps and bounds. Imagine if electronics was subject to being treated like a religion, in which there was bullshit that everyone was forced to respect, and nothing that contradicted that bullshit was allowed to be developed! That is what our social system works like. It is impossible to apply the scientific method to society now, because we would have to start with the concepts of subtraction and robbery. We would have to start with disrespecting the dominant big bullies, and everything they have built on the basis of lies, backed by force, in order to begin to do better design sciences. IN THEORY, we could apply intelligence to resolve our problems in better ways. There is no doubt that there are an abundance of creative alternatives, and that more could be developed. There is no doubt that those creative alternatives could be integrated into systems. However, the established social pyramid system operates by deliberately keeping most people ignorant and afraid, so that they can be controlled and exploited by the pyramidion people. Of course, the most extreme of all the problems is that any system of creative alternatives MUST have some system of death control, as the keystone to the integration of those alternatives. We can not assemble better solutions into a train, unless we have that lynch pin to couple them together. The money system we actually have now is the triumph of fraud, that evolved from the past triumphs in the history of war, predicated upon deceits. Now that our sciences have advanced by quantum leaps, we have the threat of weapons of mass destruction, being way, way too powerful to use in any old-fashioned ways, which have all become insane. However, the banksters, etc., who are inside the established, compartmentalized systems, intend to keep their system of lies, backed by violence, going, WITH weapons of mass destruction, which is utterly off the scale insanity!!! Therefore, I repeat, we are looking at BOTH more destruction, AND more creation, being possible, than at any time before, by orders of magnitude. I believe that the scientific method is worth much more than any gold or silver, or anything else! However, we must have breakthroughs in consciousness, as the value creating element, in order to realize more of that potential. Therefore, I repeat the obvious, that warfare is the oldest and best developed social science, and that it needs profound paradigm shifts more than any other science. IF we could work through that, then we could develop a revolutionized monetary system, that could begin to systematically do design science for the sake of building better human and industrial ecologies, that worked with the natural ecologies. I believe that those things ARE theoretically possible, but we are going to have to work through to that achievement in the hard ways, since the established elites will have to go mad, and destroy themselves first ... and how bad that gets, before we maybe turn that around, is wildly unknown, and unknowable at the present time.
Can you please explain how you define your use of the word "we". Is your thinking dependent upon an unworkable idealized notion of consensus? Reread each sentence you wrote while defining "we" in context. Are the most dynamic and productive systems the least structured? Is the apparent benefit of system structure an illusion? Can modern society function and prosper in decentralization?
T
Yeah, sorry, you are right. I was used the word "we" as a customary figure of speech, that less and less actually applies.
We still live in the same physical world, made of the same atoms, and operate through the same DNA code, and so forth. However, from a cultural point of view, we have fragmented more and more, and social polarization is the dominant theme, whereby we can no longer agree upon basic facts. The mental models that we build regarding the world we live in are more divergent and irreconcilable now than ever before! There are multipolar splitting apart of human beings into groups that can no longer communicate, other than through lies, backed by violence. The ideal of scientific progress, whereby we follow scientific methods to attempt to agree upon better mental models of the world, is then merely something that I like to believe in. However, to be honest, I must say that the vast majority of people around me appear to NOT do so, and therefore, there is not much reality to any talk about "we" respecting efforts to understand things better, and changing our behaviour accordingly! Instead, about the only thing we still share is the money we use to buy and sell things, BUT that "money" is the biggest and most pervasive of all the social lies that are driving society into insane social polarizations.
Since you chose the name "Terrorist" to post on Zero Hedge, I would guess that you are probably up to speed that the terrorist events on 9/11/2001 were obviously an inside job, false flag attack, and that attack symbolized a great deal, including that whatever "we" there may have been has been deliberately destroyed. To return to the theme of basic science, and the idea that we share the same physical world, made of the same material substances, in order to believe the official story about 9/11, one has to believe in totally impossible and absurd ideas about the substance steel. That alloy of iron and a little carbon has lots of scientifically known and knowable charateristics, which are obvious to common sense. However, the official story requires one to believe impossible things about the steel in the three World Trade Center buildings, that suddenly collapsed on that day. One can watch videos about how those STEEL FRAME buildings were solidly constructed, and then watch videos about how they suddenly collapsed. As many others have done, in particular the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth have done, anyone who looks at how those buildings were constructed, and then looks at how they collapsed, is forced by common sense to conclude that that MUST have been by controlled demolitions, and therefore, those events MUST have been inside jobs, in an overall false flag operation. WE should be able to use common sense and science to perceive those basic and plainly obvious facts. To believe that those three buildings could have collapsed like they did from ordinary fires alone is the same as believing that one's barbecue grill routinely melts and collapses, or similar to believing in any other ridiculously absurd thing about the substance steel. Of course, the entire official 9/11 story is full to the brim of one absurdity and contradiction after another! However, everything that we have been doing since then has been based on believing in those huge lies, and backing them up with more violence, and that is now a runaway insanity!
So therefore, the "we" word I used, as a figure of speech, is more and more being destroyed before our very eyes by the psychotic breakdowns of a society controlled by huge lies, which are become more manifestly absurd, and more violently enforced everyday, and we are all inside of that runaway Orwellian situation on steroids. Inside of my circle of friends and acquaintances that I know personally and directly, which is fairly large, there is not one individual that still believes the official story about 9/11, but nevertheless everything that our governments do, on our behalf, in our name, as We the People, is based on backing up that huge lie with more violence, because, inside of our society generally, according the mass media that dominates it, and those people who still believe what the mass media tell them, we were attacked by foreign terrorists on 9/11, and thereafter, we responded appropriately to being attacked by them. Obviously it totally shatters the sense of We the People to discover that 9/11 MUST have been an inside job, false flag attack! That is so bad that the very word "we" is destroyed! In becomes practically impossible to have any rational political debates, when the realities of runaway lies, backed by violence, get that BAD!!! ... Obviously, I am just stuck inside of WISHING it was not that bad, when I still use the word "we" in the sense of We the People, when the powers of We the People have been betrayed that badly, and our government is actually being operated by the worst terrorists and traitors that there have ever been. Of course, after one learns more history, it becomes clearer that that horrible reality has been gradually unfolding for a long, long time, and has only picked up an almost exponential speed more recently. The Fraud Kings already took control of the government of the USA, through the Federal Reserve Board, a Century ago. The Fraud Kings already took control of an almost completely corporatized mass media, to advance the agenda of the fascist plutocracy, and thereby make it practically possible to stage events like those on 9/11, and get away with doing that. While we are lucky to be alive near the birth of the Internet, and that system is still a lot like it was originally designed to be ... We must expect that the freedom of expression and association through that Internet will probably soon be taken over and destroyed, rather than be allowed to do what it could do, if it was not stopped, which is awaken enough people to the social facts that their lives have been almost totally controlled by huge lies, backed by violence ... BUT, that is probably just me again wishing that "we" would not be destroyed in the ways that "we" probably will actually be. This approaching "fiscal cliff" situation is more a symbol of that, than of any reasonable hope for the future, since our politicians have been almost totally captured and controlled by the overwhelming triumphs of the Fraud Kings, and Mass Murderers, that ACTUALLY are controlling the use of the powers of We the People.
Of course, it is especially in the light of perceiving that the 9/11 events were a false flag attack (like so many before in history that were used to start wars) Fear Mongering And Hysteria About The Fiscal Cliff is nothing new, but the main thing that the mainstream talking heads were always doing! The drug war was Fear Mongering And Hysteria, as was the War on Terror, because the whole system was DEBT SLAVERY, BACKED BY WARS BASED ON DECEITS!
Although, today, the global elites appear to be so easily able to dominate civilization through their lies, backed by violence, nevertheless, I like to day dream of a kind of political science fiction that we will somehow survive to become more scientific, and no longer agree to base our behavior upon triumphant frauds, backed by violence, where those frauds are so blatantly absurd, but rather, our disputes are over reasonable debates, open to reasonable doubts, due to the limitations of measurement, or genuine issues regarding evidence and logic, which reasonable people could disagree about. HOWEVER, that is obviously NOT the case, since our reality NOW is the runaway triumph of huge lies, which are preposterous absurdities, nevertheless being able to dominate and control our society, through being backed up with violence. ... Basically, I still like to hold on to irrational hopes that things are not as bad as they ARE, and I still like to believe that some series of political miracles MIGHT be possible, rather than face the hard facts regarding how actually out of control INSANE our society has actually become! However, to be honest, there is barely any meaningful we that remains. There is an insane society, splitting apart, through psychotic breakdowns, because everything we are doing is being controlled by even bigger lies, backed up with even more violence. I guess I am just stuck in my own rut, still using the word we, as in We the People, when that word has had its meaning destroyed, in another typical Orwellian way, and the meaning of that word may never come back within my lifetime, since the powers of We the People are now almost totally controlled by psychotic Fraud Kings and Mass Murderers. Therefore, I must accept your criticism as valid, and that my use of language was just more thoughtless nostalgia.
To follow Muppet of the U, You sir, also did not mention ben bernanke, fed's interest rates, or banking... once in your post of 1,101 words.
But you did mention QEternity and Fraud King a couple of times.
In-sane-ly re-freshing.
Near the end of "The Lord of the Flies," the children get rescued by adults and get brought back to "civilization" -- Who's out there to rescue Humanity?
Thanks for helping me see more of the forest; most folks around here spend a lot of time bitchin' about tree branches smacking'em across the face...
Ferronickel - a rip off artistic critical of other rip off artists. How ironic.
jb
How scary. The fiscal cliff could threaten funding for the Civil War Centennial Commission, a $49K study on the sex life of the South American Sand Flea, $120 million in paychecks to dead Federal employees, $17.8 million in foreign aid to China, $9 billion in private jet planes for government employees, $10 million to subtitle Sesame Street in Pashtu, and $48,000 for a Hawaii Chocolate Festival. This is austerity!
If the fiscal cliff slows the economy, look for the Bernank to step up big time.
It depends on whose revenue stream would be interupted.
You sir, did not mention ben bernanke, fed's interest rates, or banking... once.
Now I might be wrong, but lemme take a stab at this: Interest rates go up from 0 and... SHTF
Mathematically expressed as:
Let:
Debt pile = rubber tire pile
Ultra low interest rates = kerosene
Raising interest rates = fire
Thus, expressed in equition form Rubber Tire pile + kerosene + fire = SHTF ... Once again I'm no Thomas Malthus, but the mathematics practiced here are precise...
Regardless of your expectations, the party is ending: just get some silver, land, and food, and some people you like, and relax. Everything will likely happen, more slowly than you originally thought: kinda like when ZH screamed hyper inflation back in 2009... Well today ZH is screaming SHTF, and it will likely be quite some time before it all manifests itself into a mess.
Anyways, it was a well intention article I give u 3-4 for it. PCE.
You are lacking in your choice of metals.
You need some PB.
I like to keep mine warm in nice shiny copper jackets.
Nobody shits on Wolf for peddling his books, not so much for poor Graham Summers.
That's right this is a fuck you to the people who waste away through life, never bothering to think logically and critically.
I love reading both WR and GS.