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The Great Backpedal: The World Has NOT Come To An End
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
Now that the “sequester” is in effect, horrid budget cuts will befall the US economy and tear it to smithereens. It would be the end of the world as we know it. 750,000 people would suddenly lose their jobs, planes would stop flying, orphanages would shut down, children would go hungry, the Navy would no longer be able to operate its ships, aircraft carriers would be called back, F-35s would be grounded.... Oh wait, didn’t they get grounded for technical reasons? It would be a nightmare for every American man, woman, and child, according to the media.
Fear-mongering that the White House drove to shameless heights. President Obama spoke again and again, using heart-wrenching stories of individuals and groups who’d suffer tremendous hardship. He explained with anecdotal creativity how the US would come to a grinding halt.
All this over nothing more than $85 billion in budget cuts, or rather reductions in planned budget increases this fiscal year. Had Congress decided to keep the 2012 budget level in 2013, there would have been no sequester. But in its infinite wisdom, it increased the budget and then applied the sequester as “budget cuts” to those increases.
For the gargantuan US budget, $85 billion is a rounding error. Since the beginning of the year, the US gross national debt has jumped by $254 billion ($254,559,129,646.20 to be precise) to $16.687 trillion. The result of two months’ worth of deficits.
Over the next seven months, the growth of these ongoing deficits will be slowed by $85 billion, or about €12 billion a month. If they’d been applied to the January-February budget, for example, the deficits for the first two months would still have been $230 billion. A laudable but barely noticeable effort. And the debt would still have grown at an alarming rate.
The winner? The media. The suspense, the deadlines, the Washington theatrics, the sound bites, the human drama.... The day-to-day frenzy drove people to read articles and watch or listen to shows. Advertising revenues were flowing with renewed vigor. That’s the business model of the media. You can’t blame them for the tsunami of hype and fear-mongering. But you can ignore them.
Now that the drama is over and the dire predictions far from reality, a new tune is being played. And President Obama struck the first chord when he let us know that the sequester, despite everything he’d said before, would not be “an apocalypse.”
The media too are dialing back their volume. The fake deadlines, the even more fake serial “fiscal crises,” it all came to an end with a whimper. The political theatrics seem embarrassing, the oratorical hyperbole silly. Instead, we’ve learned over the weekend that most people won’t notice the difference at all. At least not for a while. If ever.
Meanwhile, the Fed—or more precisely the New York Fed—continues to print $85 billion a month in fresh money that it hands to the “primary dealers,” namely 21 of the biggest banks, domestic and foreign, including such luminaries as Goldman Sachs (official list) so that they can buy assets with it, earn bonuses, and drive up asset values. It has created the most gargantuan global credit bubble ever, including the largest junk-bond bubble, a farmland bubble in the US, numerous other bubbles, and, to sort of quote Jim Cramer, a zombie stock-market rally that data has been trying to shoot, but it just won’t die.
The stock market is in la-la land, despite the economy, which is at best so-so. It seems immune to the Washington theatrics or anything else, as long as the Fed pumps out $85 billion a month. Or until enough people think that it might stop doing so in the near future—which hasn’t happened yet.
But for the media, a new day has dawned. To get away from their detailed predictions of an apocalypse, they’re backpedalling furiously. And so is the White House. If the “budget cuts” stick—doubtful over the longer term, given the bipartisan predilection for unbridled spending—we’ll suddenly be able to live with them. That’s the newest message. It changed from one day to the next. What an embarrassing chapter in US fiscal history.
It could be worse, as far as budget deficits are concerned: Michigan took control of Detroit on March 1st by appointing the equivalent of a bankruptcy trustee. Detroit committed municipal suicide through crony capitalism and union feather-bedding; it refused to cut spending and balance its budget. Perhaps Detroit’s downfall prods Congress to get serious about cutting federal spending. Read.... Detroit Gets Sequestered
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There were sure a lot of people on the freeway today since we lost 170 million jobs.
yeah i have been watching THAT indicator, and its as good as any i guess. but perhaps its has something to do with the madness of crowds. i know how i feel when i get in my car and there is no one on the highway besides me, i think, did they drop the bomb and no one told me? so there might be some comfort in just driving someplace when we are worried. when the collective mind gets stressed it heads out on the highway. so like all indicators the freeway traffic indicator flashes false signals, still it has merit if only you can read the mood of those people. how did those drivers seem to you rabbit?
Will the great forward fiat pump pedal save the world from the dire words, and maybe upcoming actions, of two Italian, populista rage bitten clowns, ready to send the bankstas and their political surrogates manipulated on puppet strings, to burn in Dante's inferno; aka demise of Euro and ensuing domino collapse?
Will the upside down revolution of people's will over Oligarchy fiat thrills become reality?
And what issue will it unfold if the bold take hold of the Oligarchy Bull's horns?
I know here on ZH the wishful thinking is that this meltdown is inevitable; unless the Oligarchy pulls out ALL the stops and sends the world to Armageddon, like in 1914; rather than lose its equity stake in this casino economy castle built on sands of potential mega meteor sink hole proportions, that could make the Saint Andreas fault look like meager dent, a pimple on Mother Earth's saddened face.
The moving hand writes, and having writ moves on ...nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
I agree it was a lot of hype.
But they did recall an aircraft carrier from deployment.
"The World Has Not Come To An End"
The Arctic is warming. Methane blooming is accelerating.
How about World Meltdown?
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/02/dane-wigington-arctic-methane-emerge...
No worries.....we can fix it with methane tax credits.
The short version of Obama's threats.
http://youtu.be/yietmUdqJos
"The short version of Obama's threats."
THAT was flippin' FUUUNNNYYYY!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYXsMF3PWMk
See "DHS LEAK ROSEBUD".Coming to a door step near you.
yup tune out, like the 60's man. find you a niche and enjoy; this shit aint gonna change...
This weekend I got through about half way in building a bookshelf/cabinet for my daughter. Go out and build shit. Fuckin' A.
This is a great point for a market crash. Blame it on budget cuts. Don't stop the music. Might as well take everyone's guns while you're at it.
I guess we won't have to worry about them laying off the guy that was going to arrest the banksters.
Oh he was shipped out to the West Buttplug ATF office on Bikini Atoll about 12 years ago.
Jump fuckers!
"The winner? The media. The suspense, the deadlines, the Washington theatrics, the sound bites, the human drama...."
The kabuki. Need to keep those eyeballs focused in the right direction. Money and power at stake. The internet has upped the ante, so MSM must up the volume.
Turn it off.
"Turn it off."
Ha...fat chance...not as long as fear sells big and the vampires have the power to ramp it up. Most people have been conditioned to love fear, and not to fear, fear itself. The new meme is, Obama started the fear of the collapse by telling everyone that it was all going to come crashing down. Everyone knows this as it takes a few weeks to really set into the mass mind. Is it possible that the people are being set up to sooner or later panic as prices soar and supplies begin to fall short?
What to do?
Please take a listen for a start, and then pass the last link attached here on after a good read. The leading edge sciences might become those of mere survival. Better to study now, rather than under stress and harsh environmental conditions. It's possible the most valuable things that are of the highest priority could become those you can carry with you in your heart and mind. All one can learn to help others is the Way to survive. Service is the Law of Life.
A great Sunday (3-3-13) PM Radio Show with Dave Hodges and Joseph E. Meyer:
Part 1:
http://216.240.133.177/archives32/Hodges/2013/03/Hodges_1_030313_210000.mp3
Part 2:
http://216.240.133.177/archives32/Hodges/2013/03/Hodges_2_030313_220000.mp3
***37 Survival Downloads and Handbooks:
http://12160.info/profiles/blogs/2649739:BlogPost:692397?xg_source=activity
What meme are you talking about?
I was talking to some random citizen yesterday. She had no clue about anything going on in Italy. The populace is clueless.
Both sides are going to maintain the histrionics until Seniors are begging for cuts to S.S. and Medicare to "save the children."
Then CONgress will have accomplished their goal of further milking of the middle class and destruction of their assets.
There are flocks of believers on both sides, but the leaders are only thinking of themselves and are happy to feed their own to the banking/crony capitalist wolves.
You either join the 1% by hook or by crook - or hide your assets and join the entitlement crowd at the bottom.
If you are in the middle you are going to be BLED TO DEATH.
Good article. Haven't followed the news for a few days. So they're pissing backwards eh? Probably some backroom deal to get the debt ceiling raised.
i'm sick of OBAMA. what a loser. my mom (god rest her soul) used to say that she wouldn't even walk across the street to meet him. it's all so sad, really. to the awake people, he's so transparent.
Lynnybee
I bet mom really said: I wouldn't walk across the street to piss on him if he was on fire....but you are trying to make mom sound less angry...truth up
"He's so transparent."
Not many ingredients in glass. Not a lot of flavor in water. No there there. Think Playdoh; while not normally transparent, you pretty much know what's inside, and you can do with it what you want if you've got it in the palms of your hands...
The Playdoh President.
Yeah but he's playing with our dough. :(
You didn't build that. You didn't make that dough. That's not your money. We have a monopoly on the dough making machine and all your dough belong to us.
"Yeah but he's playing with our dough."
Stealing it for his owners, like a typical mafia "enforcer" would. And when you look at him, it seems hard to believe he is doing what he is to the American People and the world, as he looks feckless; THAT...THAT takes some serious psychopathic underpinnings to pull off. I see Obama, and suddenly visions of the well scene from The Silence of the Lamb, with the howling "It rubs the lotion on its skin" psychopath floods my consciousness. The man is as sick a human as has ever been bought The Office. He is Hannah Arrendt's "Banality of Evil"; Eichmann in...D.C.
Amen lynny. I just returned to the US and there was a big picture of him at LAX with the words " welcome to USA" underneath as we entered customs. Damn near spit in his face. Probably would have gotten an anal search if I did it.
Miffed;-)
Big Brother
I hate the Fed as much as the next guy but how is that statement accurate? The fed spends half of that money on Treasuries and the rest on MBS. Arguablly the latter is "handing money over" although Bernankles claims the portfolio is "profitable."
The Fed buys the Treasuries through the Primary Dealers and they charge the Fed a commission on $45 Billion per month.
But ole Maxine Waters said 170 million jobs would be lost! Don't we trust our Congress anymore?
Maxine Waters = Black Undertow.
170 million lost jobs.....right up there with the tipping the island over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZczIgVXjg
This is super cereal! Why won't anyone listen?!
They are in total denial.
The first step when confronted with a problem.
Then comes anger and after that acceptance.
The media with a few exception are nothing but a bunch of boot licking lackey pussies.
But some of them have really cute boot licking lackey pussies.
Not that I care...
What is pussy licking boot lackey?
Now they're lacking boots.
I always picture frightened, bawling children when I think of MSM. Can you imagine them at home at night, empty bottles of Jack scattered around the living room floor, slobbering and blathering on to themselves, practicing the lies they will need to tell the following day in order to keep their jobs--of course, that assumes character and integrity; thus, I take it back. I always picture cocaine-snorting, sex craved, howling narcissists when I think of...used, dripping condoms...empty bottles of Jack...
Isvestia and Pravda, reincarnate
And the West always laughed with gusto at the originals.
Who's laughing, now?
They do not care Wolf.
Now the corruption will be funded federally.....errr, I mean, by you and me.