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Guest Post: The Corruption Of America
Submitted by Porter Stansberry of Stansberry Research
The Corruption of America
The numbers tell us America is in decline... if not outright collapse.
I say "the numbers tell us" because I've become very sensitive to the impact this kind of statement has on people. When I warned about the impending bankruptcy of General Motors in 2006 and 2007, readers actually blamed me for the company's problems – as if my warnings to the public were the real problem, rather than GM's $400 billion in debt.
The claim was absurd. But the resentment my work engendered was real.
So please... before you read this issue, which makes several arresting claims about the future of our country... understand I am only writing about the facts as I find them today. I am only drawing conclusions based on the situation as it stands. I am not saying that these conditions can't improve. Or that they won't improve.
The truth is, I am optimistic. I believe our country is heading into a crisis. But I also believe that... sooner or later... Americans will make the right choices and put our country back on sound footing.
Please pay careful attention to the data I cite. And please send me corrections to the facts. I will happily publish any correction that can be substantiated. But please don't send me threats, accusations against my character, or baseless claims about my lack of patriotism. If I didn't love our country, none of these facts would bother me. I wouldn't have bothered writing this letter.
I know this is a politically charged and emotional issue. My conclusions will not be easy for most readers to accept. Likewise, many of the things I am writing about this month will challenge my subscribers to re-examine what they believe about their country. The facts about America today tell a painful story about a country in a steep decline, beset by problems of its own making.
One last point, before we begin... I realize that this kind of macro-economic/political analysis is not, primarily, what you pay me for.
You rightly expect me to provide you with investment opportunities – whether bull market, bear market, or total societal collapse. And that's what I've done every month for more than 15 years.
But that's not what I've done this month. You won't find any investment ideas at all in these pages. This issue is unlike any other I have ever written.
I'm sure it will spark a wave of cancellations – costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars. I fear it will spark a tremendous amount of controversy. Many people will surely accuse me of deliberately writing inflammatory things in order to stir the pot and gain attention. That's not my intention. The truth is, I've gone to great lengths throughout my career to protect my privacy.
I am speaking out now because I believe someone must. And I have the resources to do it. I am sharing these ideas with my subscribers because I know we have arrived at the moment of a long-brewing crisis.
Our political leaders, our business leaders, and our cultural leaders have made a series of catastrophic choices. The result has been a long decline in America's standard of living.
For decades, we have papered over these problems with massive amounts of borrowing. But now, our debts total close to 400% of GDP, and America is the world's largest borrower (after being the world's largest creditor only 40 years ago)... And the holes in our society can no longer be hidden...
We've reached the point where we will have to fix what lies at the heart of America's decline... or be satisfied with a vastly lower standard of living in the future.
How do I know? How do I statistically define the decline of America?
The broadest measure of national wealth is per-capita gross domestic product (GDP). Economists use this figure to judge standards of living around the world. It shows the value of the country's annual production divided by the number of its citizens. No, the production isn't actually divided among all the citizens, but this measure provides us with a fair benchmark to compare different economies around the world. Likewise, this measure shows the growth (or the decline) in wealth in societies across time.
So... is America growing richer or poorer based on per-capita GDP? Seems like a simple enough question, doesn't it? Is our economy growing faster than our population? Are we, as individuals, becoming more affluent? Or is the pie, measured on a per-person basis, growing smaller?
This is the most fundamental measure of the success or the failure of any political system or culture. Are the legal and social rules we live under aiding our economic development or holding us back? What do the numbers say?
Unfortunately, it's a harder question to answer than it should be. The problem is, we don't have a sound currency with which to measure GDP through time. Until 1971, the U.S. dollar was defined as a certain amount of gold. And the price of gold was fixed by international agreement. It didn't actually begin to trade freely until 1975. Therefore, the value of the U.S. dollar (and thus the value of U.S. production, which is measured in dollars) was manipulated higher for many years.
Even today, our government's nominal GDP figures are greatly influenced by inflation. The influence of inflation is particularly pernicious in GDP studies. You see, inflation, which actually reduces our standard of living, drives up the amount of nominal GDP. So it creates the appearance of a wealthier country... while the nation is actually getting poorer.
The only real way to accurately measure per-capita GDP is to build our own model. The need to build our own tools tells you something important – the government doesn't want anyone to know the answer to this question. It could easily publish data far more accurate than the indexes it puts out. But government doesn't want anyone to know. And it wants to be able to say "those aren't the real data" when studies like ours produce bad news.
So pay attention to how we built our charts. You can see for yourself that our data are far more accurate than the government's figures. Our data are based on the real purchasing power of the currency, not the nominal numbers, which are completely meaningless in the real world.
The question we are trying to answer is: What would per-capita GDP numbers look like, if we used a real-world currency, like gold, or a basket of commodity prices, instead of the paper-based U.S. dollar? What would the figures be if we measured GDP in sound money instead of the government's funny money?
Here's how we figured it out. We took the government numbers for nominal GDP and measured them first against commodity prices, and later (after it began to trade freely) gold. We used a standard commodity index (the CRB) up to 1975 and gold post-1975. The result of this analysis shows you the real trend in U.S. per-capita GDP, as measured on a real-world purchasing power basis.
Our analysis shows you what's actually happened to our real standard of living. The results, we suspect, will surprise even the most bearish among you.
America is in a steep decline.
Americans Are Getting Poorer – Fast
Let me anticipate the "official" criticism of our study. Many people will claim that our numbers aren't "real." They will say that we "mined" the data to produce a chart that showed a steep decline.
That's simply not so. All we've done is convert the government's nominal GDP stats into a fixed currency value that's based on real-world purchasing power. The fact is, our data are far more accurate than the government's because they represent the real-world experience.
That's why our data are far more closely correlated to other real-world studies of wealth in America.
Consider, for example, annual sales of automobiles. Auto sales peaked in 1985 (11 million) and have been declining at a fairly steady rate since 1999. In 2009, Americans bought just 5.4 million passenger cars. As a result, the median age of a registered vehicle in the U.S. is almost 10 years.
Our data shows that real per-capita wealth peaked in the late 1960s. Guess when we find the absolutely lowest median age of the U.S. fleet? In 1969. At the end of the 1960s, the median age of all the cars on the road in the U.S. was only 5.1 years. Even as recently as 1990, the median age was only 6.5 years.
Rich people buy new cars. Poor people do not.
Most important, our data "proves" something I know many of you have felt or perceived for many years. You've seen the decline of your neighborhoods. You've gone years without being able to earn more money in your job. Or you've seen your purchasing power decrease to the point where you're now substituting lower-quality products on your grocery list for the brand-name products you used to buy.
You can see how much harder it is on your children to find good jobs, to buy good housing or a new car. As a result, few people under the age of 40 have the same kind of "life story" as their parents.
And because they can't "make it," many have decided to "fake it." The average college student now graduates with $24,000 in debt... and by his late 20s has racked up more than $6,000 in credit card debt. Meanwhile, median earnings for Americans aged 25-34 equals $34,000-$38,000. (Source: Demos.org, "The Economic State of Young America," November 2011.)
Can you imagine starting your life out as an adult with a personal debt-to-income level at close to 100%? What does this say about the state of our economy? What does this say about the state of our culture?
Who Suffers Most
It's not only the young that are having trouble in America. It is also the old.
Debt levels among households headed by people older than 62 have been rising for two decades. The average mortgage size for this population is now $71,000 – five times larger than it was in 1987 (adjusted for inflation), according to William Apgar of Harvard's Joint
Center for Housing Studies.
Older Americans are also more reliant on credit card debt than ever before... credit card debt. From 1992 through 2007 (which is the latest data available) older Americans took on credit card debt at a faster pace than the population as a whole. According to USA Today, lower- and middle-income Americans aged 65 and older now carry an average of more than $10,000 in credit card debt, up 26% since only 2005.
Given average interest rates of 20% for these debts, it's a fair bet that these obligations will never be repaid. But they will have a terrible impact on the standard of living of these older Americans.
What in the heck is going on? Don't Americans pay off their mortgages before they retire? Don't they work hard during their careers, save, and invest, so they can move to Florida and spend their retirement in comfort?
Older Americans living with credit card debt! This doesn't sound like America, does it? Or maybe it does.
My bet is that most of my subscribers know that something has gone terribly wrong with America. It's not easy to figure out how all of this happened... but you know from your own experiences that these numbers aren't wrong. It might not be pleasant to think about... but these figures paint a sad but accurate picture: America is not the country it was 40 years ago. These changes are warping our economy, politics, and culture.
In this month's issue, I'd like to try to define a few of the core reasons we're in this situation. I can't possibly analyze all the factors that have led to this decline. But I want to document the growth of graft in politics. I want to demonstrate – with real facts and examples – how public company leadership has deteriorated. And I want to document some of the things that are occurring in the broader society, all of which I believe are linked to this fundamental decline in our standard of living.
You see, I believe the decline of our country is primarily a decline of our culture.
We have lost our sense of honor, humility, and the dedication to personal responsibility that, for more than 200 years, made our country the greatest hope for mankind. I want to detail some of the factors that gave rise to the current entitlement society. We have become a country of people who believe their well-being is someone else's responsibility.
I've labeled these problems: The Corruption of America.
These problems manifest themselves in different ways across institutions in all parts of our society. But at their root, they are simply facets of the same stone. They are all part of the same essential problem.
The corruption of America isn't happening in one part of our country... or in one type of institution. It is happening across the landscape of our society, in almost every institution. It's a kind of moral decay... a kind of greed... a kind of desperate grasp for power... And it's destroying our nation.
The Ethos of 'Getting Yours'
Americans know, in their bones, that something terrible is happening. Maybe you can't articulate it. Maybe you don't have the statistics to understand exactly what's going on. But my bet is, you think about it a lot.
For me, a poignant moment of recognition came this month.
Bloomberg news published an article based on confidential sources about how Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and the Republican U.S. Treasury secretary during the financial crisis, held a secret meeting with the top 20 hedge-fund managers in New York City in late July 2008. This was about two weeks after he testified to Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "well-capitalized."
I knew for a fact that what Paulson told Congress wasn't true. I wrote my entire June 2008 newsletter detailing exactly why Fannie and Freddie certainly had billions in losses that they had not yet revealed to investors – $500 billion in losses, at least. There was no question in my mind, both companies were insolvent – "zeros," as I explained.
And yet, in front of Congress, the U.S. Treasury secretary was saying exactly the opposite. Either I was a liar... or he was.
Then... only a few days later... what did Paulson tell those hedge-fund managers?
He told them the same thing I had written in my newsletter. He told them the opposite of what he'd said publicly to Congress. He told these billionaire investors that Fannie and Freddie were a disaster... They would require an enormous, multibillion-dollar bailout... The U.S. government would have to take them over... And their shareholders would be completely wiped out.
Here you had a high-government official, explicitly lying to Congress (and by extension, the general public), while giving the real facts to a group of people who represented the financial interests of the world's wealthiest folks. The story didn't come to the public's attention for two years.
This was the most outrageous example of graft and corruption I have ever seen. Certainly it involves more billions of dollars in misappropriated value than any other similar story I can recall. These managers had the risk-free ability to make tens of billions of dollars, if not hundreds of billions, by using derivatives to capitalize on what they knew was the imminent collapse of the world's largest mortgage bank. Who picked up the tab? You know perfectly well. It was you and me, the taxpayers.
(One of the investment managers present at this meeting was Steve Rattner, who by that point was already deeply involved in another bit of graft, his efforts to bribe New York state pension-fund managers for large investments into his hedge fund, from which he earned perhaps as much as $100 million. He later settled the charges for a mere $10 million shortly after Andrew Cuomo was elected governor of New York.)
The Bloomberg story... about a crooked Treasury secretary handing a room full of crooked billionaires inside information worth billions of dollars... hardly caused a ripple. As far as I know, no actions are being planned against Henry Paulson or any of the hedge-fund managers involved. No other major media outlet picked up the story. I saw nothing about it from the Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission.
What does that say about our country when even the most egregious kind of corruption – involving hundreds of billions of dollars – is simply ignored?
It seems like everyone in our country has lost his moral bearing, from the highest government officials and senior corporate leaders all the way down to schoolteachers and local community leaders. The ethos of my fellow Americans seems to have changed from one of personal integrity and responsibility to "getting yours" – the all-out attempt, by any means possible, to get the most amount of benefits with the least amount of work.
You can see this in everything from the lowering of school standards (revising the SAT) to the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional, college, and high school sports. Cheating has become a way of life in America.
I have an idea about how this happened... about the root cause of this kind of corruption and why it was inevitable, given some of the basic facts regarding how we've organized our government and our corporations.
Let me show you the numbers – the hard facts – behind what's happened to our country...
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schlemiel................
Shlemazol....
Peppered Rabbit Incorporated?
@ HPD, The Chechens are a brutally violent people, according to a book I read by John Gudick. I don't understand your point in using them as an example. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp0b5YYg9-0
The Chechnens are not nice people. However - When the food runs out and The Bernank's paper is worthless - you may be suprised how brutally violent people will get.
Make no mistake - if people are starving and you have a loaf of bread - they will not think twice about killing you and your family. People voted for this in 2008 and vote FOR IT - everytime they turn on their TV or give the media ANY money.
The American civil war was one of the bloodiest wars in history. The weapons today are a lot more sophisticated.
well war is hell, i guess is what i am trying to say. to put it bluntly that could happen here in the states, and if it did i envision it looking very similarly to that video........so just so we understand ,............that is all......and not only that but it would probably be worse. since the chechnyans were one race of people were we are many ..........so take of it what you may..........its not about the chechnyans per se. its about us...........and what could happen here. to be perfectly blunt, imho, we would have to go through this for two generations before someone crawls out the other side..............that is what i think........if any resistance of this type starts, it will not end quickly but will continue on and on and who is there here, that is willing to give up what they have under such circumstances..........at least they stood up and resisted and it cost them a lot. and still does. would we do the same? who knows. one thing is for certain. we are many countries within one country now. this does not bode well for liberty........no?
. too much info deleted
@ClassicalLib17
Jeeze... that video... right seconds before the kids were speaking of wishing for harry Potter to show up, or Special Forces, or the Terminator... I was thinking I wish I could have been there as Neo, and stop all the bullets and eveything. You want so much to step in and stop it.. and feel so powerless to do so.
This planet sucks sometimes.
Michael, a mathematical certainty how is that exactly if the sheep put up with the abuse it could take 25 years for this ship to sink..
Michael,
You are so right. At least if you mean a Soviet-style "Just Say No" that brings a peaceful end to a central government that has made a mockery of our vaunted experiment in federalism.
America is dead. Long live America.
I don't think so. Seems to me they cleaned up alot of their mess. Just get ready January is going to be epic.
@ wisefool
+ 1
That IS an important number, but there are others. $1615.00 for example. $15 trillion.
+ 100 Trillion $
(PV unfunded liabilities)
......every page of which reflects the lobbying of special interest groups at the expense of the people...
Which can never be removed. We still have tax law on the book from the Spanish American war. They will not remove a single element because it is the enshrinement of some "epic compromise" between two politicians while the lobbyists grouped. Americanized, Bastardized, Busybody, Shintoism. Sick Stuff.
"I dont wake up in the morning unless the tax code tells me to"
ah, stop feeding the beast in DC, if everyone did this, beast would die
Not before the [beast] retaliated...
I keep wondering why there isn't a Gault-esque tax strike.
People withhold their taxes.
They pay them only when a decent politician is voted in and promises to give the "tax withholders" amnesty upon payment of back taxes.
You cannot get people to turn off their TVs which enpowers the oligarchs. They use it to control the sheep. They will use it to demonize Ron Paul. The stupid fKks love their ball games and HD garbage.
Idiots talk about going Galt and are too lazy and soft to pull the plug.
with the digital television now, there is no telling what is embedded in the broadcast too.
When a country's tax laws are longer than the complete works of Shakespeare, and more complex than reading documents in the runic alphabet, then you know the government is taking the piss out of you, and there's only one possible course of action any sane man can take: Tell the fuckers to go to hell. Or change it by firing the whole lot of them as Dr.Paul is planning to do.
this number (stat) exceeded in importance only by the number who are willing to put their so-called freedom on the line to reverse the death spiral.
from the author: "We have lost our sense of honor, humility, and the dedication to personal responsibility that, for more than 200 years,...."
and the only reason i post on this blog and read it is because there are a few people that understand what i attempt to explain.
affection, pride, community, similar values. macdonalds and walmart and similar companys have destroyed that. nobody with a brain takes any pride in making a big mac - in the way that i used to be able to go to a butcher and ask him for a pound of chop meat, or go to any other family owned store and buy a product that they were proud to either produce, or have made a choice in what was available. so few people understand this, and that is why our country is destroyed economically, there is no employment, nor will there be any at any time soon.
they separated us from our past, and also our familys in the same way they learned to break up the slave familys 300 years ago. and then they dumped everybody into eternal debt - the same way they did 300 years ago with the coal miners that still might have had a better shot than the slaves. 'sold my sold to the company store'. that's reality- i'll get plenty of down arrows. i can deal with that. give me a town with a baker and a butcher and green grocer and a tailor on the corners, maybe a shoe repair down the street and human interactiion and maybe some of them are cheats and some of them are shoddy, but the most will be people with pride for what they and their family do, and then you'll have that also.
and the large corporations - i was amazing to me to watch the transformation in advertising - ALL BASED ON THEIR UNDERSTANDING OF THE FALSE CREDIT THEY WERE ABOUT TO PUSH. from television promoting 'leave it to beaver', 'father knows best' perfect familys of daddy works and mom raises the kids and no promiscuity, to promoting promiscuity and divorce (because now, there have to be TWO things of everything, cars, homes, etc.) to the real 'breakdown' (and i'm ok with this from the sexual preference standard) - to when the corporations finally grasped that the really did love 'gay' - because again - two of everything, and nobody saving to put kids to college etc. - and it all became ok. broken.
i was out of work for a time first out of college. the old man that ran the last of the independent green grocers - probably an old italian immigrant born 1910 told me 'i haven't seen you for a while, what's the problem?'. 'i lost my job, didn't have much money'. 'you have to eat good - you can always come here and talk to me, you can have credit'. i was so embarrassed, i didn't go back. can you imagine that today? - you yeah. we've all got credit. lots of it. but not from the owner of a small business. and that, that is all the difference. because that man didn't make money offering credit, he was looking at human being and making a decision for himself and HIS business. not mastercard.
merry christmas too all and if you have other holidays to celebrate at this time - happy holidays to all.
even the poorest people in the country have a huge amount to be thankful for, and if they were thankful, we'd end a lot of the problems that we have.
I think you've hit upon something very profound here (and far more profound than the idiocy of the above article). There is very little room in a mechanized world for the craftsman. I have been in IT for thirty five years. I have watched automation disemploy typesetters, photographers, graphic artists, printers, have seen it reduce a four hundred person accounting division for a major department store and reduce it to four IT staffers. Sure, there are always new people who adapt to the technology and use it more effectively, but there's still something on the order of a 9:1 displacement factor.
Walk through a Japanese or Chinese automobile production plant. Most of the workers there are not building cars - they'd kill themselves doing that. They are there to repair the robots. There are still designers, of course, but where in the 1950s you' have a battalion of graphical artists working with Bezier curves to design the cars then prototype and mill them, today a single designer can create an entire car graphically in three dimensions, can change it on the fly, can test windspeed and aerodynamic flow and performance metrics, all without ever leaving a work terminal. The prototypes are built from extruded plastic, and the specific mill parts that aren't already componentized in a nearly fully automated supply chain are build from the appropriate CAD/CAM packages and then the molds are laser milled to spec.
I spend most of my time now working on archival systems. Even there the systems tend to cut down on jobs, but usually not to the same degree they do elsewhere - most archivists are actually more empowered by the automated systems than disempowered, because archiving is still a fundamentally human operation of classification and organization (and even then I get twitchy about advances in the semantic web).
The question I'd raise is this: Whenever a company brought a new automation system online, where did the money go from all the people that had been doing the work previously but now don't? With the exception of a possible short term severance package, it didn't go to the employees who were let go. It didn't go to the IT people who created the system (most of whom are generally paid about the same as other employees). Some of it no doubt went to managers up the line who "saved" the company tens of millions of dollars in the form of bonuses. Some of it went to the consultants who recommended the automation in the first place. The rest went as shareholder dividends, first to preferred stock, then the residue going to common stock.
The luckiest or most skillful employees might get hired up shortly thereafter (indeed, in IT, you ALWAYS keep your resume up-to-date, because any gig might last only a few months). A few might actually go to work for a startup that would then serve to automate more of the business ecosphere, and if they were lucky, they might catch some peripheral wealth via stock options. I have a whole drawer of stock options for companies that no longer exist, that flamed out or got bought up before going public. The rest went on to less well paying jobs, because that's what they could find, and maybe they were able to hold on long enough to leave the field with a modest retirement.
Now IT is running up against the very real problem of trying to find profitable problems so that solutions can be applied to them. Most of the real issues that our society has do not pay very well to solve. Ironically, that the technology that could in fact help solve many of the bigger problems of society aren't writen not because of technical factors but because there' no profit in a healthy society.
"So please... before you read this issue, which makes several arresting claims about the future of our country... understand I am only writing about the facts as I find them today. I am only drawing conclusions based on the situation as it stands. I am not saying that these conditions can't improve. Or that they won't improve."
"Never apologize, it's a sign of weakness". John Wayne, "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"
Americans will make the right choices and put our country back on sound footing.
Would you please pass the hopium? I need a good hit or three or a hundred.
Pure unadulterated bullshit.
Then again, it might happen with about 100 million to 200 million fewer people among our population.
So, all is not lost?
Save yourself, forget a dumb country. Its a lost cause.
if i sent this article out to various people i know, they would not read it. they don't care about it. they don't believe it or me........they call me crazy and a silly old man , lost in his own paranoid fantasies..........i show them proof . they laugh.......have americans changed that much in 200 years? sometimes i wonder...........
Okay now we know. You need help. Reach out, don't shut yourself in with computer. It's sunny day, go for nice walk or take yourself down sidewalk to park.
why don't you grow up boy?
What's with the personal attacks on high plains drifter?
I personally enjoy his contributions to ZH
What contribution? This post not so bad, but most are delusional racist musings of senile. No thanks, and it's obvious he's created more avatars here to back him up.
Obvious enough to name names? Or merely enough to speculate?
Max something, probably 3 or 4 more. Look this guys family thinks he is paranoid, and he thinks messages are embedded in TV broadcast. Rest my case. I talk this stuff to friends and family and they're not telling me I'm delusional. Do you think all support for Ron Paul is people buried in the sand? No, people know what's going on, if they think you're crazy old man, well, you might be crazy old man with paranoid fantasies. And it's time to take break and walk in the park.
Maybe he got meatwhistleblowers sister pregnant at the prom?
I think he made a movie with midgettrannyporn.
Your fucking avatar makes me laugh every time I see it.
the more we laugh
the kinkier the captain getz!
LOL! Anyone find whistleblower's avatar pretty - gay? Looks like some preening homosexual.
Don't take it too hard. Just because you're a crazy silly old man lost in your own paranoid fantasies, it doesn't mean you're wrong, or stupid.
just because everyone is out to get you - doesn't necessarily mean you are paranoid :) (just kidding)
It's true! And the voices in my head agree! (kidding -- one dissents.) ;)
My children, who worked hard in college and are out on their own don't like to hear this either. And I don't have the heart to tell them too much about it. I warn them to keep enough cash on hand to get back home if things really go south. Don't know if they listened.
They better buy a gun plus ammo and learn how to use it. The majority of the country is in denial. They are scared but they watch TV like dumb sheep.
I send stuff like this to friends and family too. So you're not alone.
I'll be 64 soon and I've been watching our culture and society go to hell since 1980 when I first read Ludwig von Mises, F A Hayek, Murray Rothbard, et al.
My nephew is a 30 something MIT PhD genius and now a Connecticut hedge fund guy. Bright guy but typical of what I see in the financial world now. His generation doesn't give a shit about anyone but themselves.
I used to feel paranoid too, but I've talked to many people here where I live in MT who are doing just what I'm doing...
Preparing for the final collapse, the final reckoning.
Hi Drifter - love your comments here and almost always agree with you. Not sure about the last 200, but if you read H.L. Mencken you'll find that nothing at all has changed in the last hundred years or so. (Not referring to you Drifter - I'm sure you know who Mencken is and have read his work - I am using the universal 'you' addressing mainly younger ZH-ers who may not know who he was and what he wrote.)
Good point. The government is not America.............WE are.
YES, we are. Thank you.
it is a statistical fact that the country continues to get dumber and fatter. and cars and tv's get bigger. see a relationship? not me (sarc). but - i'm unemployed and a bit tipsy and it's the holidays and i'd like to think the best for everyone. i was depressed for months, and somehow i snapped out of it. so happy holidays to all.
Jesus forgives them.
actually without confession and attempts to turn from wicked ways , no , no he won't.
more like "now where the hell is that Goldman Temple?" "Dad, can I borrow the master keys?"
He forgives them. Yes, He does. But that doesn't mean that punishment will skipped, forgotten or lessened in any extent.
And He really, really likes moneychangers. That's why He made the whip He used. Didn't buy one, didn't ask to borrow one, He wanted it to be Perfect, crafted by His hand for the Greatest of all Biblical Ass-Whippings. Well, at least the Greatest of all literal Biblical Ass-Whippings.
the Greatest of all Biblical Ass-Whippings
+1 LOL!
Very true.
Peter Schiff called this turd burglar right out. He did not warn of anything until 2009 at best. This is the type of guy that makes me nervous about taking the precautions that most people on here advocate taking.
I felt somthing was wrong in 2007 but denial is a strong force and couldn't admit it to myself until 2010 so i don't know what that makes me. A piss taker?
That makes you human.
Revising history to make it look like you told everyone around you to take precautions in 2007 when in fact you did not makes you any of these terms.
fair enough i see your point.
While he may not have been all over the TV until of late, I've seen him writing this stuff for years over at the Daily Reckoning (or one of Bill Bonner's other sites), so it's hardly new. As for his fight with Schiff... well, it looks like a dick measuring contest to me.
This isn't to say that Stansberry isn't a blowhard douchebag, but he sure isn't a new one, as I saw his stuff back all the way back in 2004, about the time I discovered Austrian Economics and sound money.
"This isn't to say that Stansberry isn't a blowhard douchebag", no, he's not a "blowhard douchebag", HE'S A FUCKING CROOK. There's no other way to describe this piece-of-shit. He's a fucking crook, PERIOD. And, one of the people he's conned, one day, will put a bullet into his forehead. End of discussion.
hey, guys
mr s_berry sez:
here's the scuttlebutt [or at least 1 version of it] on the agora flap Porter Stansberry investment scam in SEC fraud action
wtf? the SEC prefers pirates to porn? in 2007? L0L!!!
I was fat, dumb and happy until the Bank Bailout of November 2008...then dazed and confused for about another six months. I needed until late 2009 to learn why I should be pissed to the point of shooting.
Since then I've been getting angrier and angrier as I observe.
I am so disappointed in myself because I started looking around in the 80's when social security reform was being attempted. But I lapsed back into inattention and focused on day to day stuff. Foolishly trusting the law, government and regulators to keep things running smoothly.
Don't feel bad about minding your own business. It's what you're supposed to do, unlike all of those people who've chosen a career of minding others' while calling it "public service."
learning who & what to place your trust in should be an ongoing thing as one ages, deepening levels and layers until one finally realises. . .
that trust & truth is earned progressively, and should never be given without proof of merit.
I called this shit in 2008.
http://usa-wethepeople.com/2008/12/igor-panarin-predicts-break-up-of-the-united-states/
http://usa-wethepeople.com/2008/12/alan-greenspan-and-the-crash/
bitchez!
+1 for using turd burglar.
Putting the issuance of money into the hands of the government and getting out of anything to do with Agenda 21 would be a good start.
'The ethos of my fellow Americans seems to have changed from one of personal integrity and responsibility to "getting yours" – the all-out attempt, by any means possible, to get the most amount of benefits with the least amount of work.'
'Cheating has become a way of life in America.'
The analogy Keiser made this summer about the London looting spree being the nations business model for all classes is, I believe, apropos.
Doesn't matter if the economy grows or not. Or if the country is rich or not. If the government is corrupt, everything will be stolen.
See : Mexico, Russia, etc... countries rich in natural resources, yet people are very poor... why? Corruption.
"Kill the messenger" is what the machine tells us to do. So do the opposite. Kill the machine.
the machine is running out of fuel, so it is turning on human labor
turning humans into fuel, you mean?
Batteries, and Soylent Green.
For decades I've strongly suspected that the US was little more than an extremely wealthy banana republic where the skimming could take place unnoticed. Now that the pickings are thin and the skimming is getting even worse, it's finally noticed. We've been a crony capitalist country for a long time.
Please excuse me for being ignorance, why is DOW up 300+ and this article is telling us we're collapsing? Whats going on? Is the DOW 300+ only temp?
Magnix you have to seperate the economy from the market. They are disconnected at best. The market no longer is a thermomater for the economy. People are slowly going broke and things are getting worse. What you are watching is a bunch of aliens play in the stock market. Good luck playing along with them if you choose to. Otherwise don't let it bother you.
Ah, thanks!
And, Magnix, for gods sakes don't play the market unless you have a hyper fast computer with a direct link to the floor.
I think what we're seeing is a bit like a fisherman bobbing the bait, hoping to make it enticing to the fish.
A nice little rally after a couple of days MSN-hype about "Santa Rally's" to bring a couple more suckers to the casino table. And this casino has marked cards, rigged roulette wheels, and mobsters to fleece you of any winnings once you exit.
+1
This is what Jon Corzine did as CEO of Goldman plus the others like First Boston during the dot bomb craze. They took a thin float and traded the stocks back and forth with each other. This drove crap like furniture.com or pets.com or some of the worst of the worst "IPOs" from $15 to $150 on day one.
The suckers on Main Street saw this was a way to get rich. Totally manipulated. Anyone who doubts it knows nothing about venture capital and Sand Hill Road in Silly Con Valley.
This f**k Corzine has been cheating people all his life including taxpayers and his bankrupting of NJ.
You can tell how to spell the word "thermometer" because it has the word "meter" in it. Which is like, greek or something for "measurement".
Surprisingly enough, the "thermo" part is greek for heat. Like as in "thermos" or "thermal underwear".
If I am going to have my spelling checked for me I demand the definition of the word I spelled wrong as well as aCliff Claven like fact about it. Since you did both you get a thumbs up from me.
Thanks teach find the bamsters grades yet? We want to compare them to the teleprompter see whose smarter, if he can beat tpotus we will compare him to Bush.. You keep looking now..
"DOW 300+ only temporary" LOL Funny you asked. Give it a week or two.
From the author:
"Americans know, in their bones, that something terrible is happening. Maybe you can't articulate it. Maybe you don't have the statistics to understand exactly what's going on. But my bet is, you think about it a lot."
That feeling is cognitive dissonance. CogDis himself recently wrote that he will be publishing a new piece here at ZH. I really look forward to reading it.
Thank you for the blurb Do Chen.
It will be a two part series called "The Golden End Game – A Thought Experiment" and I am very excited to announce that it will feature more than a dozen exclusive limericks by Zero Hedge's own "The Limerick King".
If all goes well Part One will be posted after the market close today.
Where's the rest of the newletter? I'm hooked.
Ha! Becuase you're a ZH reader... $79.95 vs. the standard $150.
Ha. Not that hooked. I can read doomer porn on many sites for free ROFL
Here it is.
http://www.stansberryresearch.com/pub/reports/201112PSI_issue.html#continue
"The truth is, I am optimistic. I believe our country is heading into a crisis. But I also believe that... sooner or later... Americans will make the right choices and put our country back on sound footing."
Only after their games and circuses have disappeared. And once that happens, note that the vast majority will have no clue whatsoever about the actual causes of their pain and there will be no one telling them the truth any more then than they are now, even if they could UNDERSTAND the truth.
Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. Louis D. Brandeis said this a hundred years ago.
I appreciate Mr. Stansberry discerning the obvious, but perhaps he should be telling this to the boardrooms across this country. Money is not speech. Corporations are not people.
Actually, that was in Olmstead v. United States in 1928...close enough.
Thanks. I forgot the cite. It makes you want to weep when you consider the current crop of 9 sitting there now.
ugh, you really need to catch up, EVERYTHING YES THE MAN SAID EVERYTHING changed since 9/11/01.
Many didn't realize they were serious some did but were and are called doomers and loons and for heaven sakes un-american.
bhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
beetchez.
90% off sale coming soonest.k!
Around 460BC Confucius said "If you want the people to be compliant, employ upright officials. If you do not want them to be compliant employ crooked ones"
20 year dead cat bounce in 1980 on the chart.
Dead cat bounce is so anti PETA.
Tenderizes the soup meat.
As a former subscriber to Stansberry's newsletter, I don't think he's the one to tell us how the "root cause" of America's decline is how "we've" organized our government and corporations. And anybody who measures our decline by per captia GDP has already miissed the trees for the forest. If you look at per capita WORLD GDP, including that of Asia, you'll see no decline at all. That, my friends, is the cold hard truth of a world where capital knows no borders --- a world that Mr. Stansberry has spent the past 25 year profitably exploiting for his subscribers. Ergo, I suspect his reform ideas will have nothing to do with changing that world at all.
..."gunna lose 100s of thousands in subscrber revenue"...uh huh-for stating the obvious...I wish I had thos 3 minutes of my life back reading this....
"getting yours" – is the funda of Austrian economics - and the correct starting premise for any sane individual.
Unshackled from socialized loss and fiat penalty, I will decided the value of things to me - in competition with you.
Getting yours via cheating is not the fundamental concept that makes capitalism work. "Getting yours" through hard work, is. Cheating is not competing. It's breaking the rules because you simply can't compete for whatever reason.
I never utter the C-word.
Avoiding the cheat - that is a life's work - on each.
Rules you say.
Like that by which each sperm plays for the egg?
Or the litter around limited teats?
Only games stop for a call from the booth (also for commercials)
ugrev - naive. i live in nyc. i once saw the jacket that i had slung over the bar stool leaving on somebody elses back. i ran out and stopped mr junkie. i said - that's my jacket. he said - no this is MY jacket now. and i worked hard for it.
it's just a question of morals and ethics and that's what stansberry is addressing.
working hard to steal and cheat is still stealing and cheating; you're just putting extra effor into it and trying to rationalize it as "hard work". That is flawed logic...
>"getting yours" – is the funda of Austrian economics
Can you name one theorem from Austrian Economics?
disagreement = value <> agreement = price
Sorry. I forgot to ask you to write complete sentences rather than insane gibberish.
Sumerian/Assyrian Empire......now Syria
Babylonian Empire.....now Iraq
Egyptian Empire and the Pharoahs.....never the same after Moses and just a bad dream for Mubarak
Persian Empire.....now part of Iraq and Iran
Greek Empire......now Greece.....nuff sed'
Roman Empire....now Italy......nuff sed' part 2
Holy Roman Empire.....now European Union......a very bad 3D sequel.
Dutch Empire....now Red Light district and open heroin parks of Amsterdam
Spanish Empire.....now Spain.....nuff sed' part 3
French Empire.....now Sarkozy.....nuf sed'
English Empire.....now the sun really does set and just on the island
Nazi Germany.....well....remains to be seen.,,,,
Soviet Bloc......blocks all fell and went boom.....Vlad still wishes....
America......but this time is different because we have capitalism and a constitution....right.....RIGHT????????
One of the better posts seen here!!!!!!!!!!!!
So the Dutch Empire is the only good one that will last...
The hookers & coke all moved from Amsterdam to Wall Street...
no country that invented the MArx brothers and the Tramp can be entirely bad.
Hey! What about the 3 Stooges? (Forget Jerry Lewis and Adam Sandler though.)
things rot.
Outastanding Jumbotron! I agree with Rosie..one of the best posts ever....it says it all...
What happens to the cost of servicing 15 trillion + in debt if interest rates just move to historical norms?
I'm don't share in the authors optimisim.
Jubilee or default is what happens...take your pick.
I know! Then the cost of servicing the debt equals our 'defense' budget. However, if the FED can continue to monetize the debt, then the rate will never go up. A mark is a mark is a mark.
And the only way they can do that is by printing money.
$200 + oil will really fix America's problems.
In a roundabout way it will
Just think of the political mandate ZIRP4EVA will create.
MOST IMPORTANT PRESIDENTIAL SELECTION, EVER!!!111
Interest rates rising? That's for the little people and their credit card debt. Sovereigns, on the other hand, will buy each others' debt for nuthin'. (just a couple more non-club CBs left to kill first...)
I am sad to say, but everything that has been pointed out in this article is just a reflection of our greater society.
We have exactly the same problems on this side of the pond.
The Corruption of America.
Therein lies one of the fallacies. The belief that America - or more specifically Americans - are different than any other preceding nation that rose and fell in a fiery crash. The core issue is that people are corrupt. Not all of them, but frankly the fact that some/most aren't makes it easier for those who are to deceive the 'trusting.'
And so the belief carries on that America will somehow be different than other failed nations. The ideas coded in the Constitution make the American experiment perhaps the best ever attempt at sustainable civility...but, alas, those principles are long since abandoned.
To crib one great line from Titanic: "I assure you she can (sink). And will. It is a mathematical certainty."
>The core issue is that people are corrupt.
Governments are corrupt.
It is logically impossible to protect people's rights while simultaneously extorting "protection money" from them.
>And so the belief carries on that America will somehow be different than other failed nations
The US Constitution contains the germ that will bring about its ruin. Violently enforced monopolies that hamper economic calculation cannot survive in the long run.
The core issue is that people are corrupt.
Governments are corrupt.
That's right !!!! Time to deport all those pod-people who look like all those humans we've elected to ...well....Pod Person Land.
What an idiotic statement
The author discusses how American working people are suffering and then turns around and blames it on them via his "entitlement society" remarks. Which is it? Are working people be screwed by the powers that be or is it their own fault because they feel entitled?
Part of the rub is that "working people," "workers," "middle class," and "working class" are tossed around liberally - sometimes in reference to true, salt-of-the-earth working people and sometimes in reference to those who think their job is to demand handouts.
LOL! Police Commissioner? You are probably some govt worker in a union. I saw two fireman today who were probably management. Sitting around in their ties having a long lunch acting like they were hedge fund manager gods and big shots cause of their pensions.
F union workers especially govt union workers.
In the early 1970's Mao called the U.S. a "paper tiger" Right on target but for "Paper pussycat" in reality. Milestones
Thank god the 0.01 percenters are creating jobs.
Yes, but how long can we survive on the fumes of teevee shows created by the Jenners - er, I apologize, the Kardashians - and Donald Trump?
Eat the serfs!!!
You definitely highlight VERY real problems in the economy, but come on: "All we've done is convert the government's nominal GDP stats into a fixed currency value that's based on real-world purchasing power." I think it's pretty clear that (1) gold is not a fixed currency and I am also pretty sure that (2) I pay my bills in dollars, not gold (although when I was in Alaska I did notice that shops accepted gold as tender - maybe that will catch on with the rest of the country.) The "real world purchasing power" of gold has increased dramatically in recent years which puts a downward bias in your "GDP."
The US is pretty fucked, but your method of using gold is a little ridiculous. It would be the same as me going, "GUYS, GDP GROWTH WAS HUGE HIS MONTH," simply because gold sold off 10% but nominal GDP stayed the same. Why not measure GDP against a basket of goods that Americans actually consume? That seems logical right? Oh wait - then you'd be doing the same calculation as everyone else and you wouldn't generate web traffic with ridiculous headlines.
They say that 'character is who you are when nobody is looking.' Character and integrity are mssing from the fabric of our once great country. Until we replace corrupt leaders with people of character, then the corrupt crony capitalist structure will continue to gain strength until people stand up and fight. That will be a scary day, but it is coming. As long as there are two sets of laws, one for those who are wealthy and politically connect, and one set for everyone else, out country will be a banana republic. I have a difficult time understanding how people are so supportive of our president and his cadre of Holder, Geithner and Bernanke. Don't the people he swears hes protecting understand that he is protecting and growing the most corrupt and insidious system we have seen in our lifetimes? Unbelievable...
The problem is that only crooks run for office. The rest of us are too busy trying to do something worthwhile.
Everyone uses this wealth gap...but they never state the added 12 million to 40 million illegal aliens we have allowed into this country...that is a big drag on the economy..it scewed the base so it looks like rich are richer and the poor are poorer..but in fact take them out and we probably are doing okay...but we can´t take them out now..so they will be a drag on the economy..and will thirld world us...just one statistic...
but in fact take them out and we probably are doing okay
I think that argument is about 90% red herring. America's rot-from-the-core problems are indigenous.
BS. We have to pay for health care twice to three times because of illegals. F em. We pay our premiums, we pay higher taxes for free healthcare at the local emergency room and finally our rates go up because the insurance company has to subsidize part of the free care. This is paying THREE times.
F illegals and your little landscaping business who employs them and Wal Mart who caters to illegals along with Bank America.
We have to pay for health care twice to three times because of illegals.
Tell us, Mr. Rogers, what attracts illegals to the U.S. in the first place? Take your time, as you're answer will validate my original point.
Those illegal aliens are here because US corporations and US individuals hire them. Still, as much as I despised George Bush, I think he had the right idea when he wanted to grant them all amnesty and allow them to become US citizens. Why? 1. They would all get SS numbers which puts them on the tax rolls. 2. They would be protected by US labor and wage law meaning there would be little to no motivation for US businesses to hire them over other US workers. 3. This is the best one IMO. These new Americans would fight like hell to keep more illegal aliens from entering the US because it would threaten THEIR employment!
That didn't happen in '86. Look at all the groups that now espouse open borders and multiculturalism. MALDEF, LULAC, LaRaza, etc.
Illegal aliens help the economy, especially in times like these. When all the "good, legal white people" around me fall on tough times, they'll line up at unemployment lines and collect unfunded government payments. All the illegals I know don't and can't take these handouts - instead they're working for below minimum wage and letting the market price labor (although they are actually taken advantage of by businesses because of their illegal status.) If you want to complain about them "free loading" on our schools etc., it's not like the rest of the country isn't doing this anyways. The majority of Americans pay little or no taxes and receive more in government services than they pay for. A free market needs to allow free movement of capital AND labor. Open the boarders and make it easier for the eager workers to carry our economy and country forward.
If you didn't have a brain, I would let these false statements stand; otherwise I am laughing at your simpleton logic.
I actually think it should be simple logic (although simpleton takes it a step too far :p). I am 100% supportive of a free market and I gather that the majority of ZHers agree with free market principles. The U.S.'s quasi free market actions have bought these immigration issues to our doorstop. We subsidize American agriculture heavily and then with NAFTA break down trade barriers with Mexico. Guess what - we flood Mexico with subsidized ags and destroy their entire agriculture industry. Where do all the displaced workers go? Probably north to the US where there is work. At the same time the United States finds itself with ridiculously high labor costs relative to the rest of the world and we are losing jobs to places like China. Guess what - we have a huge supply of labor that would bring those jobs back to the States; we just have to let our wages fall so that we are competitive with other nations. American workers don't want to face the reality that we are not competitive on the international scene. There IS a demographic that WANTS to do hard, manual, low-paying work. Why not let them? They live in our communities, pay sales taxes, consume and stimulate more economic growth. It does seem quite simple. Now, it sucks for all American unskilled labor population because they are competing and facing lower wages. But I think 10 Americans employed at $5/hour is better than 3 employed at $10 and 7 collecting welfare. However, those three (and arguably the other 7) most definitely like the status quo.
you should run for government office, they have just the spot for you.
I think this is meant as an insult to me but I'll take it literally and use it as an opportunity to make a plug for Ron Paul... he'd be a far better president than I!
Ron Paul 2012.
Tinhats is basically correct. You would do well to be objective and listen.
"FAIR's report argues that there are two choices in the immigration debate: “One choice is pursuing a strategy that discourages future illegal migration and increasingly diminishes the current illegal alien population through denial of job opportunities and deportations. The other choice,” it says, “would repeat the unfortunate decision made in 1986 to adopt an amnesty that invited continued illegal migration.”
The report states that an amnesty program wouldn’t appreciably increase tax revenue and would cost massive amounts in Social Security and public assistance expenses. An amnesty “would therefore be an accentuation of the already enormous fiscal burden,” the report concludes.
The single largest cost to the government of illegal immigration, according to the report, is an estimated $52 billion spent on schooling the children of illegals. “Nearly all those costs are absorbed by state and local governments,’ the report states.
Moreover, the study’s breakdown of costs on a state-by-state basis shows that in states with the largest number of illegals, the costs of illegal immigration are often greater than current, crippling budget deficits. In Texas, for example, the additional cost of immigration, $16.4 billion, is equal to the state’s current budget deficit; in California the additional cost of illegal immigration, $21.8 billion, is $8 billion more than the state’s current budget deficit of $13.8 billion; and in New York, the $6.8 billion deficit is roughly two-thirds the $9.5 billion yearly cost of its illegal population, according to Jack Martin, the researcher who completed the study.
“The most important finding of the study is the enormous cost to state and local governments due to lack of enforcement of our immigration laws,” Martin wrote.
The report found that the federal government paid $28.6 billion in illegal related costs, and state and local governments paid $84.2 billion on an estimated 13 million undocumented residents. In his speech, Obama estimated that there are 11 million."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/02/immigration-costs-fair-amnesty-educations-costs-reform/#ixzz1h74pYP8Z