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The New Normal Of "Anything Goes" And "Nothing Matters" Is Turning Lethal
Submitted by James H. Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
Nothing is stable, nothing is straightforward, everything is fixed, and nothing is fixed. O nation of busboys and WalMart greeters, awake and sing!
Can an empire founder on sheer credulousness? After last Friday’s jobs report, I think so. For a culture that luxuriates in statistical analysis (and the false idea that if you measure enough things, you can control them), it is rather amazing that we absolutely don’t care whether the measurements are truthful or not. Hence, an economist (sic) such as Paul Krugman of The New York Times might ask himself how it is that Zero Interest Rate Policy only trickles down to places where hamburgers are sold. PK was at it again in his Monday column, yammering about “rapid job growth,” “partying like it was 1995.” Wise men like him are pounding this country down a rat hole faster than you can say Romulus Augustulus.
Apparently the US Bureau of Labor Statistics missed the job bloodbath in the oil industry, especially over in Frackville where the latest western phenomenon is the ghost man-camp (along with ghost pole dancing parlors). It’s a veritable hemorrhagic fever of job layoff announcements: 9,000 here, 7,000, there, thousands of thousands everywhere — Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes — like an Ebola ward in the oil services sector. Not to mention the cliff-drop of capital expenditure, meaning even steeper job losses ahead, Casey Jones. But nobody notices, I guess because they’re out at Ruby Tuesdays eating things bigger than their heads. Are the portions getting smaller, or are their heads shrinking?
Finance is complicated, but not as complex as the wizards employed in it would have you believe. They would have you think it is an order of magnitude more abstruse and recondite than particle physics, when, in fact, it is often not much more than a Three Card Monte switcheroo. The whole ZIRP and QE game, for instance, can be boiled down to a basic wish to get something for nothing, that is, prosperity where nothing of value created. Now, that’s not so hard to understand, is it? Until the economics wardrobe team comes in and dresses it up in martingales and bumrolls of metaphysics and you end up in a contango of mystification.
More galling and worrisome, though, is the failure of anyone even remotely in authority to stand up and publically object to the tidal wave of lies washing over this dying polity, actually killing it softly with truthinesslessness. The code of anything goes and nothing matters is turning lethal and the more it is kept swaddled in lies, the more perverse, surprising, and destructive the damage will be. The more our leaders lie about misbehavior in banking — including especially the actions of the Federal Reserve — the worse will be the instability in currencies. The more central bankers intervene in price discovery mechanisms, the more unable to reflect reality all markets will become. The more that the US BLS lies about the employment picture in America, the worse will be the eventual wrath of citizens who can’t get paid enough to heat their houses and feed their children.
An economist (sic) named Richard Duncan last week proposed the interesting theory that Quantitative Easing can go on virtually forever in an endless chain of self-canceling debt. Government spends money it doesn’t have and cannot raise, issues bonds to “investors,” buys its own bonds and stashes them in a storage vault so deep that the sun will not shine on them until it becomes a blue dwarf — long after the cockroaches have taken charge of Earthly affairs. Duncan forgets one detail: consequences. The consequence of this behavior will not be eternal virtual prosperity, but rather a wrecked accounting system for the operations of civilized human life. We’ve stepped across the event horizon of that consequence, but we just don’t know it yet. My bet is that we start feeling the effects sooner rather than later and when it is finally felt, all the Kardashian videos in this universe and a trillion universes like it will not avail to distract us from the flow of our own blood.
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I am going to argue the American empire will end like all others. The rulers grow out of touch with reality and begin constantly making stupid mistakes. Society rots slowly.
Reality is a perception......
Buffett's reality is not like yours or mine.
Buffett fancies himself a modern-day king.
Isn't he?
A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?
Stephen Hawking
< Truth or consequences.
< Truth AND consequences.
<--- Bob Barker
<--- Happy Gilmore
Rules by which a great republic may be reduced to a broken one
“ II. The most useful of contrivances through which your end may be happily attained is the establishment of a centralized banking institution that might, if you so allow it, multiply the existing supply of paper money. First, however, the people must be led to believe in fiction rather than in fact. You are therefore to use whatever means to convince them that money is the symbol of wealth, and that an expansion of the symbol is an expansion of that which is symbolized. This will illicit the proper effect. The people, everywhere surrounded by the results of an increased money supply, will begin to realize that these symbols, of which they are now in bountiful possession, represent something quite the opposite of what they had supposed them to, and that the central bank which was to be their benefactor foments not fortune, but destitution.”
-Benjamin Franklin
So now ask why you were never taught this in school.
The Road To Serfdom, anyone?
They put gold and silver coin in article I of the Constitution for a reason! The war being waged by the oligarchs on the people is thousands of years old. Those in favor of a fair playing field have a few periods of victory to their credit, but the thieves Jesus tossed out of the temple keep coming back, again and again and again and again... this is just the latest battle with them.
"Reality is a perception......"
And perception of reality is a bell-curve distribution.
Oligarchs could be considered stateless monarchs.
You could take all of the money inthe World (Gold and Silver) and distribute equally and the end result would be the same in one generation.
Gold and Silver is NOT a cure to this problem. It will just transfer some wealth between the old and new paradigms.
Gold and Silver is not the answer to the disparity which is happening now and the coming disparity.
The same con game will be played in the future as many will have learned absolutely nothing from this experience.
I will agree with you if you want to argue that gold and silver are not the cure to the problem. The rules of the game and the way wealth and work are treated by society are far more complex than any single simplistic solution can cure.
That said, they would be a step in the right direction, because they require labor and capital to extract, and are thus tied to a "unit per time" constraint. With printed currency, there is no constraint on the amount printed other than the imagination of the thieves of the day. Restrained theft is better than unrestrained theft is my thinking. The work money represents should have a money that requires work to propagate. There's a better natural balance there.
Oh I am a Gold Bug. You can be assured of that. (I have been for about...wow...a year shy of a Half Century now? Wow. I began Coin Collecting at Seven Years Old.)
And I do recognize the energy expended to mine it from the Earth.
The problem with it is that the Banking Game, storing Gold and overissuing coupons for that which is stored, will just begin again.
By the way restrained theft is no better than unrestrained theft as both are immoral.
In fact I will argue that restrained theft is probably more damaging as the time in which it is carried out is continued for a much longer period and allows the victimization of generations yet unborn.
Sin is sin. That is rather simplistic and tautalogical but minimization of one sin over another, by degree, is just a vain attempt at justifyng sin.
The best option is that there is no theft allowed whatsoever. Now I understand that some may assert that is ideal and supposedly not "practical". But economies where trust has been eroded to the point where transactions are questionable at any level are not functional whatsoever. That is what is not practical, whatsoever, and the allowance of ANY THEFT has the result that this development will manifest.
You are correct that the problem is much more complex as it involves the instinctual DNA hardwiring of hoarding behaviors, which, were actually beneficial to species survival in our recent development. But as civilizations appeared and specialization of labor developed that genetic hardwiring which allows for survival actually serves to stymie progress. Yes Greed is hardwired.
I may not have the answers. But the first step in the exploration for the answers is to accurately define the problem, if not a predicament, which is set before us.
Thank you for your provocative and thoughtful response. While I may disagree it allowed me to present my own with clarity.
The sad part is when the oligarchy, themselves, buy into the same fiction, accumulating the currency, having fat bank accounts, and possessing little of any real value..
In their drive to become "wealthy" they merely guarantee destitution for themselves as well as most of the rest of us.
Most of the masses cannot differentiate between price, cost, value, and wealth. It is also true about many members posting here on these pages.
When stark reality erodes the fiction away, removes the facade, and exposes the truth then the wealthy, the truly wealthy, shall rise while most will wallow in destitution and want.
The emperor has no clothes. The Day of Reckoning approaches. Are you prepared? Can you recognize wealth when you see it? Can you take the opportunity and prosper?
The truly wealthy will end up as the winners. They do not necessarily have the fat Bank Accounts. Far too many have been financially oppressed. The pretenders will be exposed and wallow in destitution as they are amongst the most deserving.
Wealth is just a measure of somebody's access to information, imagination, ingenuity, the resources available, with the ability to put it together to achieve a beneficial goal. They are industrious.
Don't forget to have your pets spayed or neutered.
We'll make great pets...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSOHO3GwEPg
Spaying and neutering is already being chemically done...
Look at Japan, Europe, and the USA. We do not breed.
No need to see the veternarian.
<--- Mooch
<---Reggie
If some is good, isn't MOAR even better? Why not just print the money the government needs and abolish all taxes? Spend spend spend!!!
We are living in a cosmic lie.
.
These arent mistakes being made. Its impossible to make mistakes 10 Million times in a row...the game is rigged. This is flat out - on purpose.
.
We need to knock down one - just one false flag, one 'conspiracy' - and the whole fucking house of cards comes crashing down.
.
Planet Earth - is this really the best the Universe can do? Watching Karadashians?
.
When you realize its on purpose, down the 'rabbit hole' you go. Then, what does life mean? Hocus Pocus time.
All that matters is the poor get ENOUGH food to keep their pitchforks away from Penthouses...
Yes. When you realize what's being done is by design it is hard to continue the everyday grind. Acceptance gradually creeps in and you learn to be happy where you are with who you have.
Acceptance gradually creeps in and you learn to be happy where you are with who you have.
Yeah. You are a good un...
http://youtu.be/NpKDglMeeqQ?t=1h11m32s
Don't forget to take your ContrariTM
http://youtu.be/NpKDglMeeqQ?t=1h8m40s
It can be chemically induced you know.
See your veternarian today.
Enjoy your enslavement.
(And if you think that I support slavery or racism you cannot be more mistaken.)
.
Buffett's reality is silk Depends®.
Stephen Hawking is a total douche
Especially when he claims 'There is no God.'
.
Thanks.for.the.input.Stephen. Now stfu and stick to explaining about black holes and shit...
.
http://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-makes-it-clear-there-is-no-god/
"The rulers ... begin constantly making stupid mistakes"
I think that ship sailed long ago, sir.
On second thought, actually they've played their hands well. They've taken everything that they wanted.
The rulers are out of touch with reality
Murka may "fall" like Rome, but Manhattan will thrive.
Why US Cities Fell & New York Thrives http://wp.me/p2kmGE-jm
Carry ON!
And Keep
Partyin' on!
In his essay, The Fate of Empires, the soldier diplomat and traveler lieutenant general Sir John Glubb analyzed the life cycle of empires. He found remarkable similarities between them all. An empire lasts about 250 years, or 10 generations, from the early pioneers to the final conspicuous consumers who become a burden on the state. Six stages define the lifespan of an empire, the age of pioneers, the age of conquests, the age of commerce, the age of affluence, the age of intellect, ending with bread and circuses in the age of decadence. There are common features to every age of decadence. An undisciplined overextended military, a conspicuous display of wealth, a massive disparity between rich and poor, a desire to live off a bloated state, and an obsession with sex. But perhaps the most notorious trait of all, is the debasement of the currency. The United States and Great Britain both began on a gold or silver standard, long since abandoned. Rome was no different.
The Fate of Empires - Sir John Glubb
http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/092814_files/TheFateofEmp...
Everything is Wonderful.... LOL! We are SOOO Fucked!
"The rulers grow out of touch with reality and begin constantly making stupid mistakes."
That started fifty years ago.
...allowing illegal aliens to draw Social Security benefits. What could go wrong? What do you mean I'm out of money? I still have checks!
You need to research Social Security Administration's "suspense file" (taxes that cannot be matched to workers' names and social security numbers)
In 2010 alone the Social Security Administration estimates that a net $12 billion was paid in taxes on the earnings of undocumented workers.
We need to reclaim America now.
$12 Billion? Mr. Yellen might have that in pocket change.
What's to stop Americans from inventing undocumented workers and collecting several checks. If illegals collecting is not illegal, why should that be illegal? Disregard of law and order leads to chaos.
I'd say that you're just one baby sacrifice away from being eligible to run for office! sarc/
Truly, why not? There is no rule of law any more.
free education and medical too, plus tax refunds on taxes not paid. All hail Obama and the Chamber of Commerce.
They could be removed and then unemployed Americans could be farmworkers. Wait.... What's Plan B again?
"Wise men like him are pounding this country down a rat hole faster than you can say Romulus Augustulus"
There's absolutely nothing I don't like about that line. Except what it (correctly) portends for the future.
I rather liked the "Until the economics wardrobe team comes in and dresses it up in martingales and bumrolls of metaphysics and you end up in a contango of mystification." Classic!
How about the use of WISE?
Ah......JHK is back in form. I know, I know, he voted for Obozo twice. Nonetheless, he can still turn a phrase.
I was thinking the same thing. He does his best work when he's right on the edge of being pissed the fuck off (something I think happens to me as well). This one was particularly meaty with good phrases and analogies.
But through it all, you still get the point: We're being led down this disasterous path by our best and brightest, those who should know better, but apparently don't or don't care.
If the current denizens of DC represent our best and brightest, man are we doomed.
Not DC. They're puppets. The Fed and TBTF banks. The PhD elites.
I figure they have added it up just like most of us and figured they might as well live large while they can. If they get too far out of line (too truthy) they will be ejected from the party anyhow.
The only thing that scares me more than that thought is if they actually DON'T see the problem and really believe things are going just swimmingly. Imagine trying to choke that down as truth.
Yeah - that would have me in fetal position rocking back and forth in a corner pretty quick.
I think the majority of politicians fall into that camp though. Most academics who have any sense of what real science actually is I think know better but are playing along for the paycheck. Krugman for example... he plays a tight game of staying within the confines of particular models/rule sets wherein he really is not wrong. To know the boundaries so well can only really indicate he actually knows more but won't cough it up. Same goes for the Fed and major Wall Street/London players.
Let's try it again: If the current denizens of the FED, TBTF banks and PhD elites are indeed our best and brightest, man are we fucked !
Ask Kunstler what he thinks about 9/11
http://kunstler.com/mags_diary15.html
JHK is in a tight spot, the cognitive dissonance must be overwhelming. It is bad enough that he is surely aware that the theiving knaves he rages at for destroying America are his tribesmen. But 9/11 is an order of magnitude greater threat. JHK fears the awakening of the unwashed hordes of the bible belt as a potential source of a "cornpone fascism" which would spell the end for not just Blankfein, Krugman, and Yellen, but also well meaning innocents such as Kunstler himself. So consciously or more likely unconsciously, Kunstler knows he must toe the line and support the official lies about 9/11 - his survival may depend on it. Thus the paradox. Amongst the bagel Ferengi are many good souls. But if they fail to denounce some of the most heinous crimes of their tribal leaders, are they not accessories after the fact?
[+1] Werner ~ You covered all bases.
*swoon* I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Bagel Ferengi. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Best thing on the internet today...
How about those who voted the fucks into office?
Aren't they accessories BEFORE the fact?
Everything's a conspiracy, isn't it, Bob? :-)
best & brightest?
don't care?
really?
There will be no collapse. The diminishing state of the average person's life is the consequence of this financial insanity. The cost of maintaining the fraud has been passed to us. There is no coming consequence - it is already here.
Every empire collapses. We are no different. There is no such thing as "fading out" when it comes to an empire. The internal tensions required to keep the whole thing in place are too high to allow for slow transitions to a smaller entity. At some point there will be a sudden blow of sorts that will equalize said tensions. We are not there yet but, since we have no way to predict its timing accurately, we'll only know about it after the fact. To avoid "collateral damage" one can either go away, or keep a low profile and hope for a bit of luck.
I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with you. My question regards Britain. When would you say the British empire collapsed? WWI? WWII? It's an honest question.
Sofa Papa - Why empires collapse is the breakdown of the rule of law. In general excess attracts predators in biology.
The cycles of our evolution are growing shorter. Until we can defeat classic death and evolve back into energy there is nothing new under the sun and people must relearn the hard way how to defend against predation. Once we evolve back to energy there will be no reason for nut gathering or resource hoarding.
Pretending to work for pretend pay seems to be how many cultures dealt with empires but on an individual level now I think it is important to realize it is a barbell economy.
You either get good at contacting rich people and sell them things which is doable but takes time to scrounge enough pennies to start something and conduct research for a plan. You can download 'How to Master the Art of Selling'and buy Business Plan+ or other business planning software which guides you through it makes yourself answer the tough questions.
One could keep the credit clean, save up $20k and get a loan to buy into a franchise like Subway. I know guys who run three or four of them and make a killing.
Or work less, have some free time to contemplate the meaning of life, understand how the world works for a later time and share dwellings. Don't let anybody judge you for your choice.
If one can afford to live in remote places here or abroad and be out of the way is probably the best solution to be harrassed less but not possible for many especially those with a family.
"9,000 here, 7,000, there, thousands of thousands everywhere — Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes — like an Ebola ward in the oil services sector" - It's fine! Everyone will be able to trade stocks for a living
Tapeworm economy!
I remember seeing graffiti on a building on the way to my old house, burned out store front in a sad old neighborhood... Said "Rome did not fall in a day". Seemed a little premature, but maybe that's the point.
Best graffiti I ever saw was outside a polling station in UK many years ago.
Vote Guy Fawkes - the only man ever to enter the Houses of Parliament with honest intentions.
So Kunsler has no clue as to timing either...
....it will end when the demand on real things fail to match with the money used to obtain them....inflation will happen and it will probably come quickly and not on little cat feet.
No one has a clue on timing. That means you too.
Start building your bunkers now. Walking dead is coming to your city soon.
The Walking Dead is here, and they vote Democrat.
The walking dead are here.
They voted.
FIFY
I used to be convinced we would have an acute, obvious collapse. The ATM's wouldn't work, the internet would go down, dogs and cats living together; the works, all at once, in a big crisis.
Now I'm not so sure. I'm starting to think it's equally likely that the boiling water will just get hotter, and we frogs will become soup with few moments of recognition. I live in Minneapolis, a city in which things work very well in comparison to most cities (not that we don't have things to complain about, of course). And Minneapolis is in the USA, which is a nation in which things pretty much work, in comparison to most other nations. At least, we know our methods for getting things done, and they usually work, and when they don't it's somewhat unusual, or at least noteworthy, and we figure out a workaround.
By comparison, I've known people who've lived in Lagos, Nigeria; Mumbai, India; China; Greece; places where systems and things simply don't work, and people don't expect them to work, and many aren't even sure what the official story is of how to do things, because the expectation is that you have to start with the workaround and things degenerate from there.
But lately, I'm noticing even in clean chilly Minneapolis, stuff is starting to not work and nobody seems to know why. The Finance system just tolerates identity theft and fraud, and won't take the most basic steps to prevent it, leaving open Catherine Austin Fitts' suggestion that's on purpose to facilitate massive black market money-laundering. Good jobs are disappearing, replaced with multiple bad jobs. Prices seem to slew around wildly, without relation to market forces or news. People expect their bills to be all fucked up, to not get what they pay for, to have to get by numerous obstacles to talk to somebody on the phone, and to be shaken down by armed paramilitary troopers on the way to do the most mundane tasks.
Sure, we could all wake up in a "Mad Max" scenario and I wouldn't be all that surprised. But more and more I'm thinking we just continue a steady devolution into what we used to think of as a 3rd World society, where fraud is the only growth industry and we expect to be cheated and robbed at every turn without recourse. We'll probably call it "Freedom" or "Personal Choice" and it will be our fault for having been vicitimized.
Clearly the devolution has actually been going on for some time, so I tend to agree. Then there's simply numbers of growing global populations, resource use, planetary pollution and ecological breakdown. These forces act slowly but steadily. Eventually somebody will blow a nuke (bomb, not plant), say Pakistan or India. The world will be "shocked" for a couple weeks and then it becomes part of our reality. Life, such as it is, goes on.
The number of young people not leaving home in America says a lot right there.
Barring Iran or ISIS getting a nuke, my money would be on India/Pakistan exchanging nukes. To be perfectly honest, it's a small miracle India hasn't had a reactor go down yet.
The Sikhs had a plan to blow a couple of India's nuke plants back in the 80's. Something about cutting off the water supply to the plants, not actually using explosives.
That'd overheat the plant and cause a meltdown. Remember the 60 Minutes episode where they spoke to the head of India's nuke department? They had sections of concrete roof fall into the heavy water pools....LOL! High cancer rates in surrounding communities of reactors, etc. It's just a matter of time IMHO. It'll make Union Carbide at Bhopal look like walk in the park.
My money is on a good ol' USA false flag in a major city. I'll even narrow it down to Chicago, this year.
What you will wake up to, one fine morning, is the realization that WWIII started while you slept and now you, your loved ones, your neighbors, and your beloved city are all just clouds of radioactive dust
Problems solved.
Maybe TSHTF will happen when oil production in the USA begins to fall. Headlines that say it's rising don't talk about a slowdown much. Anyway, I don't expect headlines to scream rising production in October 2015.
http://headlines.ransquawk.com/headlines/eia-projection-indicates-baaken...
Long burgers.
The short, quick breaths and perspiration of frustrated gold holders is palpable here.
"D-d-d-a-a-m-m-n-n-i-t-t-t, when is gold going to up and equities down??"
In the Middle East...ISIS wants to go back to the 7th Century again.....here in the West we will go back to the 7th Century also with our financial games...when it crashes...
My first time in Afghanistan, was like walking back into the 7th century.
It was good, within an hour I'd made a friend in a chai shop and was galloping his unshod
stallion down the Herat high street.
Much to be said for a simpler life, where fraud is near impossible, because its simple.
There is a lot to be said for that. However, most people in the third world are tribal, and typically honor-bound (what a concept huh?) to follow through on their word. I honestly love living like that, but I'm comfortable with a whole lot less stuff. The trade off is that the number of interpersonal relations increases inversely--at least in my limited experience.
What we have here are "digital connections" which aren't really connections at all, because you're reduced to being an observer and not a collaborator. Eleventy million facebook friends, but no time to see who lives next door to you. It's as fake as can be, and all superficial. But, it's sure easy and comfortable.
The sad part is that as the water nears boiling, there does not seem to be anyone to hang or shoot - no one is to blame -sarc
A man who admits to voting for Obama not once, but twice, is a man of questionable judgement IMO. Not that we had great alternatives, but by the second time a person should have wised up, no?
How do they have authority to do shit like this?
http://www.cfact.org/2014/01/29/epa-ban-on-wood-stoves-is-freezing-out-r...
They don't. It is called legislation without representation. Ask old King George how that worked out for him.
From that quaint old document called the Constitution-
"All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,
which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."
Congress does not have the power to allow other agencies to make law without due process in both houses.
The states do have the power to change this for the better-
"The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose
Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds
of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either
Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified
by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three
fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the
Congress"
In other words, the states have the power to call a new convention to determine whether they should revise the Federal government or even terminate it, without any input or interference from the Federal government itself. The results become a part of the Constitution and are binding.
Our last chance to restore America without having to fight in the trenches.
I don't hold out any hope of that ever working out. You'd be asking people to be responsible for their own actions, and the welfare apparatus is simply to large (and our culture too degraded) to go back to simpler times. This will all be handled with lots of bloodshed, slavery for all or a combination of both.
Kunstler, kinda close to hustler; something about the guy.....
If there is one thing most people agree on it is that our economy is like a staggering drunk getting ready to cross the path of a semi.
the emperor has no clothes