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We Are Strong: It is Our Institutions That are Crumbling [31]
By George Mantor
It is the beginning of the end of the way things used to be. Once reliable institutions are being destroyed from within and we cannot save them. Nor should we want to.
The “one big thing”, globalization, new world order…all failing.
Central Banks, Fiat Money and Fractional Reserve Banking…failing.
Political Parties, most governments, The Catholic Church, Universities…all failing.
And, no matter how much money they get from us they cannot reverse the rot of moral decay. Honesty, integrity, transparency, fairness, accountability, and justice are absent at every level.
This is what happens when you live a lie. You even have so called journalists like the Orlando Sentinel’s, Beth Kassab, arguing that justice is far less important than expediency. How’s that supposed to work?
“Right this way to the showers.” That wasn’t justice, but it sure got rid of a lot of Jews in a hurry.
Already, if you live in Florida and they illegally foreclose on your home you have one minute to make your case of the tangled web of fraud and forged documents. One fucking minute? How is that supposed to work?
We are literally making up money to give to big business and backing it with higher taxes on wage earners, the real bearers of the burden of taxes. How is that supposed to work?
The money system failed in 2008, but the American taxpayer provided more than $16 trillion to banks around the world so they could pretend it didn’t happen. But, the underlying problem hasn’t been resolved. It has grown exponentially.
If they had simply let the banks fail and distributed the $16 trillion in equal shares to every American citizen over the age of 18, we would all be safer, saner, wealthier, functional, viable, and sustainable. It is, after all, our fucking money and they can always print more. What am I missing?
I know it sounds crazy, but don’t you think giving it to bankstas is even crazier?
Iceland did a version of my plan, and boy, are they happy. And now they are prosecuting the bankstas. Iceland must have the only leaders left on the planet that have any balls or any brains.
Right now, the Federal Reserve Bank is buying worthless mortgage bonds to the tune of $85 billion per month on the lame notion that allowing banks to add nonexistent money to their books is better than declaring the bonds worthless. Folks, you just cannot make this stuff up.
It is simply a continuing, on-going, bank bailout with no end in sight. It’s called pumping liquidity into the system so that LOANS will get made, business will fire up, hiring would gradually improve as products are manufactured, distribution kicks in next followed by retail, and taxes get paid.
But, we are still creating debt that cannot be paid back because paying it back hurts bank profits. Few people seem to understand exactly how insanely lunatic the very notion is.
If we were given $16 trillion directly to spend, this is what would have happened.
We would have invested the money to our benefit, not necessarily in the best interest of the corporatocrocy and their high speed computer trading. We would have paid off debt, but that hurts the corporatocrocy because the entire money supply is based on debt. Debt is the only purpose of fiat money.
If we had been given the money, we would have donated some, sent kids to college, started businesses, hired people, bought cars and houses, and paid lots of taxes.
Bankstas buy Bugatti’s and Caspian roe and offshore the rest in secret accounts. They got $16 trillion of our money and what did we get? A $16 trillion national debt that will eventually bring us down.
What we are witnessing in Cyprus is the beginning of the real and final collapse. There is nothing left on the planet to borrow against.
Look at it this way. You maxed out your credit card but you still need to pay your bills so you borrow more money. You intend to pay it back but the debt grows while your income shrinks. It looks okay on paper until that day when you cannot borrow any more money.
Fractional reserve banking means that at least ninety percent of paper money doesn’t exist in any physical form, just zeros on account logs.
Not only is your money not in the bank, it doesn’t actually exist, and it isn’t even your money anymore. You become an unsecured creditor. You are loaning your money to bankstas who, when they assuredly lose it in that swamp apply named “derivatives” will say to depositors/unsecured creditors and investors/stock holders, “Tough shit!”
“But my deposits are insured!”
Is that what you believe? Really? The FDIC has said publically that taxpayers will not foot the bill for the next bail out
The FDIC isn’t planning on returning depositors money in the event of bank failure. Last December, the FDIC published a report entitled “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important Financial Institutions”.
The report carefully avoids any mention of the word depositor, but instead uses the legal description, “unsecured creditor”.
Paragraph 26: “By leaving behind substantial unsecured liabilities and stockholder equity in the receivership, assets transferred to the bridge holding company will significantly exceed its liabilities, resulting in a well- capitalized holding company.”
Translation: when the bank fails your unsecured debt is wiped out and they use your money to start a new bank without liabilities. And, you think it can’t happen here? This is the plan.
At the same time, it is primarily wage earners who make up the bulk of the unemployed because they are being shoved out of jobs to temporarily increase corporate profits.
Those translate into higher bonuses, although it is worth noting that the insolvent and tax payer supported Bank of America paid its CEO, Brian Moynihan, $6,450,000 to lose $2,238,000,000. The median employee income at B of A is $44,900. That means half of the employees earn even less. And, they are obviously much better at their jobs.
Once you get past the “WTF???” stage, it makes you wonder exactly how much money you’d have to lose to earn, say, $23.1 million?
Who could we ask? Let’s see, hmmm….ponder….ponder.
You know who might be a good person to ask? Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan Chase, who actually said something to the affect that he’s richer then everyone else because he knows the secret to losing extraordinarily large sums in a single trade, like the “London Whale” $6 Billion loss.
It leaves you wondering how it is that losing got to be so profitable. Silly me, I spent my whole life trying to succeed. Duh, what a bonehead, eh? Who knew?
Certainly not me. I never really paid any attention. I did my job and tried to put a little money away. I knew nothing of stocks and bonds or their fundamentals.
I know now that I should have sought professional advice, but I didn’t see why it had to be so complicated. Everyone around me said, “Just do what Buffett does.”
“Follow Buffett, he’s an oracle.”
So, that’s what I did. I remember thinking at the time; well what the heck, what do I know? And, I liked his gulf-western style of music. “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean”, man, it just doesn’t get any better than that.
Unfortunately, it turns out there is a “Warren” Buffett. On the bright side, everyone raves about my Margaritas. Fresh limes and agave nectar are my secrets.
As I have now learned, the real secret to success is losing money. Never mind the money, how do they keep their jobs?
When I was trying to go to college, I needed a full time job at night. I was the “assistant manager” (night clerk) of a 7-11. The till came up five dollars short…on my day-off. It didn’t matter; they fired everyone who worked there.
Isn’t it interesting that a bank could even lose money since the only money they should have would be depositors for safe keeping? But of course, that isn’t what’s going on at all. It’s a myth we can’t seem to shake.
It’s even worse than them gambling with and losing depositors money. At least their losses could be limited to just their depositors money, a finite sum. But, because banks create money out of debt, they were able to do four destructive things simultaneously:
1. Push unsustainable debt loads onto individuals, businesses, governments and institutions,
2. Leverage everything on the planet six times over,
3. Lose hundreds of trillions of dollars that don’t exist, and
4. Force these enormous losses onto tax payers who could never pay them back…ever.
They don’t get fired, they don’t go to jail, and they get paid like rock stars for fucking up the only business that you would think couldn’t possibly get fucked up if it were managed by mollusks.
As of 2011, Corporate CEO's made 340 times what the average worker made.
What makes them worth that kind of money? I watched a handful of episodes of the television program, “Undercover Boss.” Dear lord! Most of them were completely out of touch with the reality of their businesses and could not even function in entry level jobs in their own companies.
In 1980, CEO pay was only 42 times more than the average worker, but they managed to get by.
I believe a university professor should earn a comfortable living. But then, I also believe that an apprentice hod carrier should earn a comfortable living, as should a fireman, or a retail clerk, or a cobbler. They used to.
When you have college football coaches and administrators earning in the millions while professors rarely make 6 figures, things have gotten out of hand.
Collapse is coming. The world economy of the last one hundred years is just an experiment. Oopsie!
Economies are the result of the effectiveness of the distribution of goods and services. Clearly, the experiment, Keynesianism, Central Banking, Fiat Money, globalization, and corporatocrocy has obviously failed. The handful who have benefited have the incentive and power to maintain it.
And, we cannot see it. We are conditioned like the elephant held in place by a thread. We do not see that we can break free from corporatocrocy and fiat money.
We don’t need them and we never did. All we need is a leader. We cannot afford them or the system that brought us to this point, but it doesn’t matter. We couldn’t stop the collapse no matter how docile and indifferent we become. This isn’t going away.
They know that, and what we are witnessing during this period of high unemployment, falling wages, declining services and rising taxes is also a flurry of legislation designed to restrict the activities of individuals while bestowing unlimited power on corporations to steal, pollute, poison, and kill citizens here and abroad.
The reset button has already been pushed and the evidence is there if you look. Some of the first victims are already starting over doing things they never imagined. I know where the green shoots grow, and so I see the collapse coming with more of a whimper, than a bang.
The first part of the collapse will feel like a shipwreck. There will be confusion and bewilderment. The banks will quickly run out of the money that never existed and ATMs will be shut down. A bank “holiday” will be imposed which might last days or weeks as the treasury tries to actually print all of the money that depositors are demanding.
Cyprus isn’t different. It is the “canary in the mine shaft”. Keep no more money in the bank than you need to pay current expenses. Business owners be warned.
Like a shipwreck, the first step is to gather those things that will be useful to sustain your immediate survival. Prepare now, I implore you. A few simple preparations could make a world of difference, and there is no downside. Look to some of the recent natural disasters to gauge the response you can expect…maybe none at all.
For more on what you might need, go to: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-07-12/preparing-inevitable [32]
Slowly, things will evolve into a new normal. An economic disaster is no different than a natural disaster in many respects. Rebuilding begins from the ground up. Even without banks and money, people at the local level will network to provide for each other’s needs. Just like we actually do now, but without the overlords and their vigorish.
And, like a shipwreck, the more you know how to do for yourself and others, the more valuable you are. That’s important when food starts to run low.
Those in large cities will face the greatest challenges, particularly regarding food, because most food distribution is controlled by the corporatocrocy. If, like me, you can grow year round, plant something. Like Ron Finley, L. A. s “Gangsta Gardener”, says “Growing your own food is like printing your own money.”
Ron turns L.A.s vacant lots into lush vegetable gardens and fruit orchards. He is an example of a new beginning. South Central LA is a food desert. Big Agra and big pharma have decided that South Central doesn’t need healthy food; it needs dialysis centers and wheel chair lots. They have lots of liquor stores with their Frito’s and their Snickers. And they have lots of fast food with the chemical nuggets and the GMO fillers. Yum!
They feel strongly about forcing people to eat the crap they truck in. When Ron first turned his boulevard into a garden, he was threatened with jail. This happens all over the country. There was former and currently unemployed Oak Park MI City Planner, Kevin Rulkowski, who threatened resident Julie Bass with 93 days in jail for planting vegetables in her front yard.
The city code reads that front yards must be landscaped with plants “suitable” to front yards.
Rulkowski said that he looked up the word “suitable” in Webster’s Dictionary and that its meaning is “common.”
Nobody who covered the story thought to go to Webster’s and vet his statement. But, I did. He is a lying sack of shit. Nowhere, and I mean absolutely nowhere, in any of the definition’s list of synonyms, or examples of usage does there appear the word “suitable.”
Ironically, if you look up the word “common” one of the synonyms for common is the word “garden” as in an ordinary “garden” variety.
However, by definition, the word “suitable” would justify planting vegetables in the front yard if they would grow well there because they were suitable for the location. Many back yards are too shady to grow vegetables and wouldn’t be suitable.
If you think things have gotten out of hand with these failed institutions attempting to force their will on everyone, this is the perfect act of defiance.
Go plant some vegetables somewhere that is “suitable”.
In addition to food, we all need a means to sustain ourselves. That used to mean getting a job. But, jobs suck. They don’t pay anything, they don’t want to give you any benefits, and no matter how loyal you are to the job, the job will never be loyal to you. Besides, there are no jobs.
Large employers are unwilling to pay for the value they receive from their employees so they export jobs, create part-time jobs, and as a result, draw from only the pool of employees who have no other options, either idiots or the very young.
But the rest of us still have to earn our daily bread. We didn’t go away. We struck out on our own.
For ambitious, creative, energetic people, a door of unusual opportunity is opening.
The opportunity to choose an alternative to the go to school, get a job, retire and die model of life.
By necessity, people will find ways to trade their unique value for what they need. Already there is a renaissance of small, local, craft oriented businesses coming to life.
Big brewers sales are down, but local craft brews are exploding.
Chain restaurants are shutting down while food trucks and carts are bringing new tastes made with higher quality food to the community.
Farmers markets are growing both in number and the number of products available. Meanwhile Super-market chains struggle to stay afloat peddling poison to the people.
Swap meets are the new strip malls without the expensive overhead of bricks and mortar. The former manager of the Sun Glasses Store now has his own business without a boss. He knows how to source sunglasses and how to sell them to customers.
Wal-Mart has empty shelves and while big retail folds and strip malls sit vacant, the employees reinvent themselves.
For all of the resources devoted to it, the results of our health care industry couldn’t be worse. Alternative health and wellness practitioners are beginning to emerge as an alternative to slash and medicate health care.
For decades we have been shedding gate keepers and middlemen. Artists can now bring their creations right to the buyer. Justin Bieber created himself on the internet. He didn’t need a record company’s approval. Self-publishing is finally viable.
Now is the time to think about how you would live your life if your real value was appreciated and fairly compensated.
Local is sustainable, global is not.
We will need a new means of exchange to facilitate a return to real value. Once it was stripped from the gold standard, money devolved into a defacto tax.
One of the things that keep us slaves to the system is our lack of understanding of what money really is and its true purpose. It is a control that has been overlaid on private transactions.
A new monetary system is inevitable. In fact, it is the solution to the problem. Money isn’t real and it isn’t backed by anything but promises already ringing hollow.
Future money might be more localized or the means of exchange among peers, occupations, memberships, etc. There could evolve several different forms of money or means of exchange.
Bitcoin is the first foray into the new frontier of virtual currency pegged to some other measure of value. It’s that simple. Even if it is virtual, just like all of the money provided to the banks, but in this case, its value is actually based on some agreement of value among its users.
But then, you would not have CEOs earning hundreds of times what the average worker makes.
Bitcoin may or may not be the money of the future. It could be one of several different approaches to providing value for value, but fiat money has little future in the new economy.
Change is inevitable, cooperation is optional. Now that you can see where we are headed you can plan a better future than the one offered by our crumbling institutions.
As for me, I’ve got some fresh limes, I’m cranking up my Jimmy Buffett, and I have all of my excess wealth stashed in Tequila.