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The Informed Minority
Submitted by James H Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
The cynicism among the informed classes has never been so deep. Even the pompom boys in the cheerleading clubs like CNBC and The Wall Street Journal express wonderment at the levitation of stock indexes and bond values. They chatter about a “correction” of 20 percent being a healthful tonic that would clear away some dross and quickly usher in a new episode of “growth” — or growthiness, which, like truthiness, became an acceptable approximation of the real thing. The truth, as opposed to truthiness, is they no longer believe their own bullshit about growthiness.
The suppression of interest rates and pervasive accounting fraud has thundered through the financial system, and the deformities caused by it have emerged in currency war, currency instability, trade collapse, and political crisis. Years of central bank intervention have stolen the capital of the future to construct a Potemkin economy meant to conceal the sickening gyre of diminishing returns strangling business as usual.
Until it collapses by a great deal more than the wished-for mere 20 percent, more perversities will be piled onto the already existing burden. Is it not a wonder that professionalized interest groups like AARP have not screamed bloody murder over the suppression of interest rates which deprives its members of bank account and bond interest on savings? Instead AARP, like virtually every enterprise in America, has turned to racketeering. Don’t worry, they’ll be gone from the scene soon enough.
The next shoe to drop will be various forms of bail-ins and attempts to prevent bank account and money market holders from getting access to their cash. A withdrawal above $2,000 already can trigger a report to the IRS. The next step will be to put a simple ceiling on withdrawals. Will that trigger public ire? Who knows? Nothing yet has in the USA. The meme currently circulating is the fear that government would like to abolish cash altogether and put in a regime of all-electronic money. Being allergic to conspiracy ideas, I’m skeptical about this idea, but I really can’t dismiss it.
A cashless society would conceptually allow government much more leak-proof control of all citizen money transactions. Mainly it could funnel tax revenue into the treasury much more efficiently. It raises some obvious practical concerns, such as: would such a program lead to an enhanced colossal skim of credit card company off-creaming? And what about the percentage of poorer Americans who don’t have credit cards or bank accounts now, either because they don’t understand how it all works, or they’re forced to function in the “gray” economy for one reason or another (e.g. a drug felony rap). And what kind of as-yet-unknown perverse work-arounds would this new system provoke?
I put the question to a table of college-educated people last night and their response was surprising: utter complacency. They’re already used to paying for most things with plastic, they said, and their employer already withholds a big part of their regular paycheck for taxes, so what does it matter? They couldn’t grok the possibility that a cashless money system might easily deprive them of access to whatever reserves they have. Or perhaps, more specifically, the couldn’t imagine an economic or political emergency that might provoke such a situation.
They might find out sooner than they realize. As I suggest in the lede, apprehension is growing that some kind of “corrective” event is at hand on the financial scene. Even the supposedly salubrious 20 percent S & P drop could set off a chorus of margin calls that would make the trumpets of Jericho sound like a kazoo concert. What will Americans do if they can’t get their money out of the banks? The last time this happened, 1933, we were a hard-up but polite and highly-regimented society, and the automatic rifle was a novelty restricted to a relatively tiny army and Al Capone’s crew. Behind the financial jitters of the informed minority is the greater fear of social unrest.
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Corruption & greed cause cynicism, it really is that simple...
http://galeinnes.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-aftermath-of-corruption.html
Wrong picture...
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/sa5431b926.jpg
Head in the sand guy must be some kind of "denier"
"Even the supposedly salubrious 20 percent S & P drop could set off a chorus of margin calls that would make the trumpets of Jericho sound like a kazoo concert."
You gotta love Kunstler.
We can honestly say, they brought it upon themselves...
https://youtu.be/j6nCdlyuJ6g
May Saul Alinksy marry Cher.
The author doesn't need to entertain "conspiracies" or tip-toe on eggshells around them. Point to Citi ... Chase ... or now the SNB ... who all are joining the chorus. Nor does the author need to allude to a hypthetical calamity that might get the "meh" crowd to want full access to their funds in the form of cash withdrawls. Again, refer them to Citi ... Chase ... and SNB. The stated purpose of moving to a cashless society is quite explicit: so that negative interest rates can be imposed across all deposits, and you'll have nowhere else to go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g2JN2PrHJg
A cashless society is a move towards Technocracy Inc. style rationing. "We will muddle through".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul5oQ3wbstQ
http://www.technocracyrising.com/
Couple that (or perhaps the cause of it) with some massive defaults coming out of the frack patch and you got the formula for a eally healthy correction which could extend over the next 20 to 30 years.........
No you don't [have to love kunstler]. A few years ago I called him on his hypocrisy of diatribing on about lowly humans' glutton use of fossil fuels while he merrily flew from continent to continent so he could wag his mouth in front of a paying audience. The email he sent back was angry and full of self-righteous zeal. Ah yes, he believes he is above the masses. But, in fact, he is just another talking head unable to walk his talk and living to create controversy.
ZH should organize a bank run. Is that illegal? It will be!
I'm entertaining schizophrenic thoughts on that issue... on one hand I desperately want the scam to end yet still I don't want to be around see what happens afterwards.
Yeah, it's illegal. Everything fun is.
In today's times it's called QE silly....
That's where they run on the bank & you are left holding the bag of debt (Read worthless securities & cash)....
Nobody will participate. I have already had experience with this type of protest. People are too fucking apathetic to make change on their own, therefore change will always be thrust upon them by the Changemakers in charge.....
They hate us for what we have gained. And that is knowledge of their evil ways.
It's for your own good after all, now get back to picking that cotton.....
Picking our own cotton would have been a very good idea, but that's another story.
I think that contrary to common opinion, the Fed may actually have figured out how to permanently avoid crashes through computerized price control.
Most people are still under the delusion that there is a market, that what buyers and sellers do matters with regard to price discovery and that banks need or want capital from private sources. None of these delusions is true.
It is not a good system for the future of the human race. However, absent violent overthrow, it may be sustainable from dictatorial point of view.
I believe a 500% upswing of violent social unrest could provide a healthy market correction.
Unhealthy for main street is unhealthy for wall street, make sure you got that straight...
(Rioting can end a nation fast...)
Or tell me, would you really want to invest in say Venezuela or Baltimore right now?
Gold, Silver ( held personally ) and a little Agri Land which could be in any of the puppet countries you care to name.
You just don't get it do you? ~ http://galeinnes.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-aftermath-of-corruption.html
Armed Criminals EVERYWHERE....
If it's not the local militias, rioting citizens, or corrupt governments, the world is quickly becoming NOT SAFE...
(What do you think it will be like after the worldwide financial collapse? WHOOSH!)
From Jim Stone Freelance ~ http://82.221.129.208/
(Scroll down to this line....)
I wrote to Helen in South Africa asking if the movie "Chappie" was an accurate portrayal, and got a surprising response:I heard Alpacas are the future!
I don't know how anyone can suggest buying land in these puppet countries without reading a little bit of history.
Ever hear of that saying "You ain't from around here?"
Translate that to Spanish.
pods
+100 yeah, most of the pods won't get the genius (read subtle wisdom) in that statement...
Si! Alpacas have fur much softer than llamas!
Es bueno to read history, but it is much better to read history and travel also, speaking to the peoples who live en la otra pais. I have an amigo from Peru who's father had a good-sized parcel of Good Agricultural land but the government stole it from from him for "pennies on the dollar" in the 1970's... Then there were Real terrosists in the 80's and 90's and Hyper-Inflation to devastate the economy! When I say "Real Terrorists", I'm referring to the Sendero Luminoso, "Shining Path" Maoists, and the Tupac Amaru movement. They killed a Lot of peoples, but Presidente Fujimoro used his military to fight them and capture and imprison Guzman, their leader! The currency was Soles, printed in increasingly larger denominations, then Intis and then Nuevos Soles, etc... Today the economy has stabilized, expanding while the US economy is contracting. The changes in Peru resulted from registering the indigenous people as Citizens and giving them titles to the property they had lived on since ancestral times or, in the barrios, their lifetimes. They were able to start a business of their own and participate in the economy! That and the increasingly revolting brutality and tactics, (killing thieves, drunks or prostitues was not ingratiating them to the peoples in the smaller villages after a point), of Maoist terrorists, no longer held any attraction to the poor or indigenous peoples! Property Rights are the Key. Perhaps you need to study the history of Property Rights?
My amigo Peruano told me last year that the Peruvian Government is re-paying his father a substantial amount of money for the land that was taken almost four decades ago! It seemed unbelievable pero es Verdad! There is more Freedom there than en los Estados Unidos...
I'm not sure what you mean by "puppet countries"? Are you are not referring to Ukraine today?
Welcome to the Reservation, dude! - /www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LA-S64QY3o
Perhaps it is Best that you remain wherever you are and just keep reading your history, porque "Tú no eres de aquí"!
"Alpacas have fur much softer than llamas! "
True- but Llamas are larger than frogs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbwkkXGmFrI
Reading "a little bit of history."? But not enough to truly understand what you are saying!
Yeah, just barely enough to make "clever" remarks here...
MA i set the BAR way higher than rioting in WallyMart. I was thinking Coup-d'etat.
Mass graves for ALL treasonous Politicians and ankle-chain hard labour for BankCorp.
You mean like what's happening in Baltimore? The more the appeasement the worse it will be. There is no more "society"
There is a bigger issue than taxes, though I think that is important.
I think the bigger issue is that it gives the FED more accurate information about monetary movements around the US and the world. They can follow their Free Market replacement moves with more data to achieve their goals of a managed economy with no crashs and always 2.4% inflation....
Throughout history people in varous positions have said that they have "Now figured it out" only to learn that they haven't. This time will be no different a system based on BS will not stand because the foundation itself is built on BS.
They couldn’t grok the possibility that a cashless money system might easily deprive them of access to whatever reserves they have. Or perhaps, more specifically, the couldn’t imagine an economic or political emergency that might provoke such a situation.
no, they couldn't grok the fact that they would have any significant savings to be deprived of.
once you lower people into working poverty they forget what it was like to own and having savings.
impoverishing the public is something that is an artform and has been perfected over millenia.
Hey dipshit, the automatic rifle still is a relative novelty unless you have deep pockets or are a government employee........
Historians have the benefit of hindsight and will be fully aware of the big picture consequences.
The world is full of unsustainable debt the US, UK, Japan ...... Greece is a little further down the road.
Greece may default first but that there always had to be someone in a world loaded up with debt.
Historians will probably marvel at the stupidity of our age.
Finance was supposed to provide a solution, but bankers only have one product, debt (loans/mortgages).
What is the world supposed to look like after a financial/banking boom?
Everyone is loaded up with the banker’s only product, debt.
The banker’s product, debt, allows you to borrow your own money from the future to spend today.
The loans are spent immediately and the repayments come in the future plus interest.
Boom today, bust tomorrow,
Once the credit spigot starts turning off, the repayments over-whelm the system.
After a financial/banking/debt boom, come the defaults.
It is the inherent nature of finance/banking/debt, but no one could see the inevitable.
The end of the age of stupidity and the beginning of the age of reality.
Oh yeah, I remember how the bankers product, debt, works now ....... doh!
Banks and debt helped me build wealth and retire early.
Debt is a tool just like any other. It can be used for good or bad.
Most people have no clue how to use debt, which is their own fault.
Most people also have no clue when to avoid debt either.
"Most people have no clue how to use debt, which is their own fault"
Should 'most people' know how to 'use debt' as an instrument for good or bad...? Or, should most people simply (and rightfully) expect a return on their savings, earned out of prudence..?
'Most people' have no idea of how to avoid or escape a three point choke hold either. But that's their fault too...
Everybody's got their own preference for data and associated information, so instead I sat down and started creating some information from data I've collected myself and looked at the graphs I created. They resemble alpine skiing events.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/04/23/liz_warren_to_obama_we...
A 20% drop in the "markets" would shut them down for good. The sheeple have been so conditioned that a 2% pullback freaks them out.
"...they couldn’t imagine an economic or political emergency that might provoke such a situation."
I have maintained that it's going to be people's lack of Imagination that is going to kill them.
When you hear someone say;
"I Can't Imagine Them....."
"I Never Dreamed that it would...."
LACK of Imagination is deadly.
P.S. Grokk has two Ks
(as in Grokk in Fullness"
What's left to the imagination when the Nazis built an effecient killing machine? At this point in history everything is imaginable. It's a when, not if.
What's left to the imagination when the Nazis built an effecient killing machine? At this point in history everything is imaginable. It's a when, not if.
I disagree with Dr. Engali, "the people" would be fine with a 20% drop, though maybe a 50% drop or a 90% drop would make some peoples nervous.
It's the banksters who don't want to see their pipeline of free money cut 20% or 2%.
Bernanke advanced several reasons in 2008 why he was doing QE and ZIRP, and the psychological was just one, and judging from the results he got it mostly wrong, that part at least.
So, what happened to the Occupy Wall St crew?
They didn't have much staying power.
They were portrayed by the mass media as a bunch of face-painting, extacy-taking, drum-circling unemployed nitwits. Lost all credibility as a result and disappeared. The chicks had nice tits.
The mass media also discredited the Tea Party Movement. They were depicted as public-gun-toting redneck goofs attending rallies led by lunatics in three corner hats, waistcoats, and powdered wigs ringing hand bells and reading proclamations from parchment scrolls. Lost all credibility as a result and disappeared. The chicks had flabby tits.
Loony fringe movements on the left or right are for entertainment purposes only, not for serious consideration.
So, are you going to vote for Hillary or Jeb?
With interest rates at zero, are savers putting more currency in the mattress? It would be interesting to see some charts of the movement of currency outstanding.
Money under the mattress?
Just the usual few thousand for convenience.
I started my my own private mortgage business, and it's going great.
There's always money to be made, and a lot is made during depressions.
Thank you Rhett Butler.
i know i keep my account levels just high enough to cover bills. cash or PM's in the safe or more into paying off my land in the country with the rest...
Not really. Consider that in a ghetto near you, check-cashing joints usually charge a good 2.99 per cent to cash a welfare check (crack dealers don't take debit cards). Mainstream economists, at any rate, reckon that most people won't get serious about closing their accounts till interest rates get to at least negative three per cent
A welfare check? Are somehow posting from 1977?
Cash and gold are now best buddies. Thanks to robo dalla and nirp
Social unrest? What do you think the 10,000 who run everything in the States have second, third or fourth homes on every continent for?
Consequences are for proles, who'll lose what remains of their life savings along with their jobs, and be rendered so miserable they'll give up on ever reproducing if they don't blow out their own brains and be done with it. The people who matter have second homes and second passports.
The plan is to get firms to buy back stock at premium prices with borrowed money, move the loot to somewhere less infested with niggers (which is why Hong Kong's stock market is booming so much---housewives my grandmother) and sit back and watch the fun while the FSA take ten years to burn Rome to the ground in every sense of the word.
They'll be back to buy back everything of value at a heavy discount when gold is back to parity with the Dow and real US wages are safely at Romanian levels, with white birth rates to match, 1.3 per woman, max.
they say 20% as if that is the standard bearer for decent corrections, sure perhaps in normal times it was the bear market deliniation. Well, 20% from 18000 is 3800 and that only wipes out the effects of QE3. S&P was at 900 when the fed started QE1 and even lower when TARP went in to effect. history has shown us time and time again, that when markets are interfered with by governments, eventually those markets retrace 100% of that intervention. it may take time because the fed is much more activist and politically motivated, but this intervention is no different.
I had fun waking up a sheeple this weekend.
Showed him photos and videos from Sandy Hoax, especially "Robbie Parker's" little performance, and all of the unmarked police cars parked nice and neat in the school's lot. Moved to photos and videos in Boston of "Bauman" and friends putting on his fake prosthetics and then flashing hand signals to the coordinators.
The sheeple then said, "It's like it's scripted or something." So I showed him the video of the BBC's scripted reporting of the demise of WTC-7 20 minutes before it fell, with the building still standing in the background.
I went on to show him how, in Boston, the banners on the railings about 8 feet from the blast, and the flags on the street, miraculously went unmarred by shrapnel that supposedly cut off limbs and clothes in every direction.
Then I moved into highlighting the complicit-media's complicity and trickery.
Then he asked, "Why?" And I replied, "Let me introduce you to Zion..."
"Target sited, target awake."
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission.
Dear Zion, You lost another one to the light-side this weekend.
Anti-semitism is the oldest disinfo campaign the banksters have running. When the banksters are victorious in the class war, the Jews will be finished off along with the Gentiles, having outlived their usefulness even as slaves.
9/11 was the work of the House of Saud, the best friends in the Middle East of the banksters, who saw to it precisely nothing was done to prevent it (they wanted Iraq's oil too). If you heard somewhere that the Israelis did it, well, that's what elites from New York to Riyadh would prefer you think. The banksters make less effort to hide their hatred of Israel with each passing year. The reservation they made a big show of granting the Jews after killing half of them outlived its usefulness as postwar PR decades ago.
Nobody's ever explained to me what Israel, who these days can take care of herself and had enough nukes to reduce Iraq to radioactive ash any time it pleased her if she thought Iraq an existential threat, had to gain from 9/11. Not as if Dubya was ever really going to exterminate the sandniggers and opening their former lands up to Jewish settlement, the only way of solving the problem of Islamic terror and assuring peace in the Middle East that ever stood a chance of working.
@kchrisc
Citations? Links?
from the article: "I put the question to a table of college-educated people last night and their response was surprising: utter complacency."
Next time when you pose that same question, you might also ask any of those credit card holders if they have considered: a. how is your account standing when electricity thrashed with an EMP, or something like it, of which blackout may last 6 months, and do you really expect your money to still be there after such a blackout? b. how will the bank access your digitized money if 'the cloud' refuses you access. c. when you get hacked, or your cloud is hacked, or whatever, do you really think the cloud is going to make your balance good every time? or are ya expecting the FDIC to figure it out for ya? d. is it worth it too you, and merchants to fork over user fees, and percentages based on every purchase? e. does it bother you that 'the price of the day' is based on market algo's, and therefore the terminal at McDonalds can only quote a milkshake price for the next 5 minutes, of which a happy little ticker thing post you a message that says: gee whiz sir, don't bitch, if you had bought this flipping milkshake at 0:200 it would have cost at least half of what we are holding you up for, right now:)
wwxx
My bet? Diablo, and his generation, are the ones that feel this way; totally oblivious to the 'greater' reality...
They dream about a cashless society to reduce the friction in their blood sucking.
The horde of useless eaters we call .gov and their voting block are growing and rapacious. War making is expensive. Welfare is expensive. These will not stop so something has to give.
Printing and counting money is expensive. Storing money is expensive. All the friction involved in handling money is expensive. Cashless goes fully digital so they can take more with less expense... Simple really.