Reverse Engineer
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AndrewP post=3323 wrote: QE3 will definitely NOT be Treasuries. The Fed already owns a large fraction of long term bonds. Bernanke will probably buy mortgages the way he did in 2008-2009, although he could surprise us by purchasing real estate directly, or even stocks.
For any QE to work, Helicopter Ben would have to buy Greece, Spain and Italy for a start. So forget it, unless he bails out all of Europe a QE is SOL as a fix.
RE
No idea why this posted as a separate thread rather than in the original thread I was commenting on. Ashvin, can you merge it where it belongs?
RE
I have Republished this entire Debate including the OP and sadly excluding the post Ashvin accidentally deleted as a Feature Article on the Diner Blog under the title Of Wildebeests and Wolves
RE
skipbreakfast post=3318 wrote: RE! I just know you’re intelligent enough–based on much of your writing–to see that it’s impossible to line up all those guilty of “knowingly enriching myself at the expense of others”. Every profit is at someone’s expense. That is inherent in the definition: one cannot have profit without another’s expense. If I sell someone a shirt I know he doesn’t need, maybe catching him at a weak moment, I’d be guilty according to this edict! That is insane. Unworkable. Dangerous. Scary. Nonsenical. And certainly not the well- considered doomsday plan I have come to expect from you. Your contributions are too valuable to waste on such distractions.
SB, I clearly state that the Inquisition CANNOT hit on every last little Pipsqueak out there who runs a Small Biz to extract some profit from the Earth or the Labor of Others.
At small Power Levels, this process while generally speaking isn’t very good (potlatch is better), it is more or less a level playing field until you get great accumulations of wealth and power. Once that happens, the whole system breaks down.
The Inquisition as I try to lay it out focuses down on the very BIGGEST Power Structures and the very LARGEST accumulations of the Wealth of Mother Earth, which in fact is God’s Gift to ALL Mankind, not the Koch Brothers or George Soros or Bill Gates.
The Top of the Food Chain PREDATORS simply have become TOO POWERFUL, and the Ecosystem is breaking down as a result. I am trying to lay out a means by which the Little Fish can take the Battle to the Sharks and CONSUME them by virtue of the Power of Numbers and the willingness to be JUST as Vicious here in the Consumption paradigm, except in this version 1000 little Fishies all gang up on One Big Tuna and EAT IT ALIVE.
Little Fishies of course cannot do that, they don’t have the BRAINS for it and they are not adapted to do so. Homo Sapiens though? Another Ball Game altogether. We CAN Gang Up, we CAN operate as Herd Animals as well as Pack Wolves. We CAN STAMPEDE, we CAN TRAMPLE the Wolves. ONLY though if we act in CONCERT and ONLY if we will KILL the Predators who threaten the SURVIVAL of the Herd.
This is NATURE in ACTION SB, and if you want to be Sheep consumed by the Wolves, that is your choice, but not mine. I am going to follow the Wildebeasts herein this parable, and I will do my best to get the rest of the Herd to STAMPEDE with me and Trample ALL the Predators in our Path. They simply will not know what HIT them when the STAMPEDE begins here.
Not in this Game to LOSE, in it to WIN. What are the High Cards I hold here? The POWER OF NUMBERS. Fratured though, separate the herd and hit on the Weak, the Predators win. Only when the Herd comes together as a WHOLE can the Weak be Protected and Defended from the Predators. The Biggest, the Smartest, the STRONGEST out on the Periphery, ready to do BATTLE with the Wolves, to STAMP and KICK and GORE them as necessary to defend the Weak. That is Nature, that is how the Herd WINS.
RE
ashvin post=3317 wrote:
Well damn… I may be guilty of #3 myself, seeing as how I regularly play poker.
As I made CLEAR Ashvin, the Inqusition is NOT concerned with Small Fry who play Poker for a Living. We are going after the BIG BOYS. Waste of time, energy and the Legal Resources of the Inquisitors to go after Small Fry like you. We will be busy with much BIGGER Fish for a good while here. Might be a good idea though to start weaning yourself off this dependency on the Weakness and Stupidity of others to make your living though.
I think you are over-estimating the number of the “Meek” here. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people could technically be guilty of the OMMP criminal code. All kinds of people who work for corporations could be guilty of #1, as long as they have authority over at least one other person at the company. #3 speaks for itself – of course no one will admit they were doing it to get rich, but it will be their word against the newly-appointed Righteous. And #5 could include anyone who has ever spent a penny on the products of those destructive corporations – why limit it to people who actually bought shares? I’m sure a good portion of the people reading TAE, DD and most other similar sites are guilty of #4 and #5 as well. When it’s all said and done here, OMMP may end up doing the Illuminati’s job for it.
No, I am NOT overestimating the number of Meek, since I am droping a cutoff point here on initial Prosecutions and keeping it basically to the Top Visible end of the Pyramid.
Low Level Criminals are not Targeted here. The Inquisitors are not after the Drug Users or even the Street Dealers. We are after the King Pins. if you are a Dealer, you may be pulled in by the Inquisition and asked to Name some Names. Your Punishment and Penitence will probably be light if you cooperate with the Inqusition, just a few years scrubbing Cesspools probably. Only minor Torture, like being forced to listen to Rap Music 24/7 for a few days, Read Aloud the Text from People Magazine, spend a few days in a Rehab Program with Lindsay Lohan or worst of all be forced into a Shotgun Marriage with Kim Kardashian. LOL.
I’m still waiting to hear an age cutoff… and what about the mentally ill? Do we have an IQ cutoff line too, do we follow the definitions of DSMIV, what?
You can’t make an arbitrary cutoff here, but it is not necessary to do so since Kids do not control large corporations like BP or TEPCO, and neither do Morons either.
If said kids happen to be Progeny of Vicious Criminals convicted of Crimes Against Humanity, they will be Orphaned and sent to Re-education Camps. Hoepfully they are not too far gone already. Long as they graduate their re-education and don’t pull the same nasty stunts their parents did, they’ll be fine.
And my argument is that a “clear set of criteria” for what you propose to do is an oxymoron, a paradox, impossible.
That could be said of ANY Legal System Ashvin. None of them are perfect without Loopholes. You do the best you can, eh?
Those people aren’t stupid, though, They didn’t get to those positions without knowing how to game the all of the laws, rules, and plans that were established to work against them. I suspect that’s exactly what they will do with the OMMP, too. Set up a bunch of patsies to take the fall. By the time you make it to 10 of the real bad guys, the rest will be in hiding and actively leading you to all the wrong places and people. Actually, I would be suspect of OMMP as soon as I heard about it, because it may have already been co-opted by them before it got off the ground.
I never said they WERE Stupid Ashvin, which is why it is necessary to OUTSMART them! I’m Volunteering here in the effort 🙂 I’m Certified Smart! I’d be happy to have you back me up also on this end as well. There are plenty of Meek out there with enough additional Smarts to make this battle on the Smarts level along with plenty to do the Fisticuffs necessary as well here. Once the force multiplier of Oil gets knocked down, should be a rout IMHO.
Fantasies about organizing it all quickly and implementing it simultaneously around the globe with an element of surprise are just that… fantasies.
Negative thinking IMHO. It probably cannot be done quick enough to Save the vast majority of the population, but it maybe possible to do it quickly enough to avoid an ELE. Gotta make the EFFORT anyhow.
Does He really work in mysterious ways? I think that’s just a catch phrase people like to use. By and large, if He exists, I imagine that He works in very straightforward ways. The Bible is replete with examples of God directly intervening in Earthly affairs and telling people exactly what He wanted them to do and when he wanted them to do it.
Biblical Stories are IMHO mainly parables which may or may not represent God’s will in all respects. For instance, all that stuff about how after 3 months a Slave Girl should willingly submit to her New master blah blah. Or Render Unto Caesar yadda yadda. Or Turn the Other Cheek. Representative of the time period, but not necessarily God’s Will in perpetutity. You gotta be adaptible here to changing circumstances and be able to write NEW parables which further define God’s Will at any given point in history.
Perhaps the OMMP is not God’s will, perhaps it’s the opposite of His will. Maybe he is allowing this rape and suffering to continue to test the faith of humanity in Him and his promises for the future and see if they will obey the teachings of Jesus even when it seems they would be better off abandoning those teachings and taking matters into their own hands. Isn’t that a possibility to consider, seeing as how it is a major theme of the Bible?
Perhaps, but weighing the odds here, seems unlikely to me.
Well, for all of the reasons discussed, I disagree. I think the chances are very high that more innocent lives will be lost with the OMMP than without it, and, on top of that, by pursuing it we may condemn ourselves to physical and/or psychological damnation, either here on Earth for the rest of our lives or in the afterlife for all of eternity.
OBVIOUSLY we disagree on this Ashvin, otherwise we would not be going to such great lengths to justify our opposing viewpoints on the topic. Up to the Reader to decide who made the better case here.
My conclusion is despite the risks involved and the potential for great suffering to emerge as Blowback here from the Inqusition, it is the Better Alternative to acquiesing to the continued destruction of Mother Earth and the continued Torture and Death of Millions and probably soon to be BILLIONS of people. Confronted with THAT, IMHO you take the risk.
Bring on the Orkin Man.
RE
They also define what the “law” is, how to determine who has disobeyed the law, what the punishment should be and how and by whom that punishment should be carried out. It is also almost always a function of centralized institutions of governance recognized by the people under their jurisdiction..
The point here is that there is no reason for us to call OMMP a “legal system”, as if that somehow mitigates the level of premeditated violence carried out in its name.
Did I say anywhere that the Inquisition should not make Legal Definitions here for what constitutes Crimes Against Humanity and what the appropriate Punsihments should be? I am all for developing a comprehensive Code to make these Definitions before beginning the Auto da Fe.
We can start on the Code of RE Hammurabi right here with 5 starter Principles:
1- If you were in a position of Authority with knowledge of the dangers of what you or the company you worked for were doing and did not Blow the Whistle on them, you are GUILTY
2- Corporate Shields are declared retroactively Invalid.
3-If you actively engaged in Economic Pursuits with the goal of Enriching yourself at the Expense of Others, you are GUILTY.
4-If you loaned money to others at Usurious interest rates defined as say anything above 1%/mo, you are GUILTY
5-If you Invested in Corporations which you had Knowledge were engaged in activities destroying Mother Earth and endangering the lives of others, you are GUILTYAnd you should recall that I agree with that conclusion. I was talking specifically about the Bill of Rights, though, which limits the arbitrary use of state-sanctioned force against the people. If OMMP is designed to circumvent the Bill of Rights, then it contains an implicit justification for its enemies to do the same.
I never said this would stop Violence from the Other Side of the line. They will commit Violent acts regardless of the Law anyhow, so this just provides for a Level Playing Field. Mano-a-Mano, and the Meek got the Numbers Advantage here. Once the Force Multiplier of Oil is out of the Game, the Good Guys WIN. Remember the Wisdom of Uncle Joe Stalin, “You Can’t Make an Omelette without Breaking a Few Eggs.”
Pray tell, how will the Court of the Inquisition (i.e. you and your cronies) do that? Is there an age limit? What about the 6 year old kid who seems to be a corrupted little brat? The Husband/Wife who materially supported the corruption without knowing, or that sat by and didn’t do anything to stop their spouse? Or perhaps they did do something, but they just didn’t do “enough”? How can we be sure that your torturous methods do not lead to false confessions, just like the Inquisition’s?
I have great confidence in the Integrity of my Cronies, despite some Out of the Box ideas WRT Aliens, Jews, multi-Dimensional Space, and the absolute Value of Gold floating around amongst them. My own Personal Integrity is well documented by my willingness to stick to my Guns despite getting booted off half the Collapse Blogs on the Internet. 🙂 Also, given the fact that I am about the ONLY Crony in the Crowd who supports this idea (with the exception of New Crony Karpatok, aka Xena, Warrior Princess) , there are Checks & Balances in the New Politburo on the Diner. LOL.
Far as Kids are concerned, they probably mostly can be Saved here by pulling them out of the Environment and doing Behavioral Modification, the Greed pathways are not so well set into their Neural Connections yet. Other older Family Members can be Individually Judged for the Level of their Complicity.
Far as Torture is concerned, that is only used once the Level of Guilt of the Individual has already been establishedby the Court of the Inquisition, and it already should be a pretty High Level of Guilt to warrant Torture. For instance, Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein almost certainly get the full 9 yards on the Torture end prior to being dispatched to the Great Beyond, unless of course they fully Repent, give up all their Wealth, agree to spending the rest of their lives scrubbing Cesspools in Penitence and Name some more Names. They ALL know other Guilty parties, so if they don’t Name Names its off to the Rack until they do. If on the VERY slim chance Jamie Dimon does NOT know any other Guilty Parties to name, this is unfortunate for Jamie but as I said before, you can’t make and Omelette without breaking a few eggs 🙂
Oh, another thing about legal systems – they should be designed to limit the use of subjectivity as much as possible. So if you insist on calling OMMP a legal system with “legal decisions”, then it is a really shitty one.
And you are not cleaning a Kitchen, you are torturing and murdering people. Since you are human, you are not doing that without being consumed by emotions. You cannot dismiss that fact by analogizing it to cleaning a kitchen.
I already stipulated that you do not go into the Auto da Fe at all without a clear set of criteria as to what constitutes Guilt and what the appropriate Punishment for that Guilt is. So it is not “Murder”, it is Capital Punishment if so deemed appropriate by the Court of the Inquisition. The Torture is just Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth stuff. I mean really, Starving People or people being Irradiated without their consent or people being Injected with nasty Vaccines loaded with Mercury are being Tortured all over the place here, Trit here documents that stuff all the time. Only the most complicit in this Biz get the Torture Treatment, and you gotta be pretty high up the ladder for it. You know, CEOs of BP, TEPCO, CEO of Goldman Sacks the Taxpayer, Chairman of Da Fed, POTUS, CIA Director, President of the EU, IMF and World Bank Directors, everybody who attended the Basel Conference in the last Decade, everybody above the level of Janitor who works for the BIS, the Trilateral Commission Members etc. The Inquisition isn’t going to go after the Small Fry here with the Hammer, you start with the OBVIOUSLY and CLEARLY GUILTY at the visible Top of Pyramid, and you use them to lever your way into the the folks Behind the Curtain. There are AT LEAST 10,000 of these SCUMBAGS to start with and that will take plenty of time to work through the Docket.
As for sin and penitence, is it not you who is committing the ultimate sin – putting yourself in the role of God? According to the Bible, God is the only one who can know with absolute certainty who is Evil, and who has been saved through penitence and a change of hearts. And, He WILL cast his wrath on the former when the time comes. It is not man’s role to dispense with that kind of Divine Justice.
RE wrote: You can assume that if such a plan is undertaken that you are operating under God’s direction and are so the tool of God in it’s implementation, you are not God him/hers/itself. Far as whether it is Man’s Role to dispense Divine Justice, that is a matter for God to decide. If God wants to use a man to dispense Divine Justice, it is his/her/its perogative to do so
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Uh, no, we can’t assume anything. Unless God speaks to us directly and guides us towards those actions, then we cannot assume we have God’s blessing simply because we have incorporated our human understandings of sin and penitence. If anything, since we never predicated the value of OMMP on its ability to obtain God’s approval, we can assume that we DON’T have it for the sake of this argument.
God works in Mysterious Ways, and exactly How He Speaks to us can’t be determined here a priori. Perhaps God is speaking in such a way as to encourage an Inqusition here? If we don’t undertake it, we would be Rejecting God.
In any event, in the ABSENCE of an Inquisition, stopping the progressive RAPE of Mother Earth and the endless TORTURE of the vast majority of the Population has not thusfar been possible through other more conventional means, so I suggest a change of direction here to hopefully align up better with God’s Will.
We do know some of the consequences – innocent lives will be sacrificed and at least some of the people carrying out the Inquisition will start operating with less than pure motives, or perhaps even at cross-purposes. This is what ALWAYS happens, without fail. So let’s not pretend that we don’t know whether some of those things will happen. What we truly don’t know is what the chances for success are, i.e. the chances of preventing future Fukushimas or Deepwater Horizons, but my educated guesstimate is that they will be slim to razor thin.
I never denied Innocent Lives will be lost here, in fact I explicitly said numerous times that “You cannot make an Omelette without Breaking a few Eggs”. What you have to make a Judgement on is in WHICH scenario will MORE Innocent Lives be Lost, and in which scenario MORE of the Guilty will be Brought to Justice?
Best Evidence right now is that if we do NOT undertake the Inqusition, EVERYBODY WILL DIE, as in Homo Sapiens suffers an Extinction Level Event and we go the way of the Dinosaur. If we have to break some Eggs to stop that, so be it. We all KNOW here that MANY Innocents are losing their lives RIGHT NOW, AS WE SPEAK. No more Mr. Nice Guy while this is an ongoing WAR against J6P.
Bring on the Orkin Man.
RE
I did not save the original comment. You might look in your software to see if it stores prior editions. If not, it is lost. You should delete the comment listed under my name and paste it into a post with your name, with a profuse apology at the top in bold italics with a Dunce Cap image for fucking up so badly. LOL.
RE
RE wrote:
No they aren’t. Legal systems prevent nothing, they merely define punishment for disobediance to the law.
They also define what the “law” is, how to determine who has disobeyed the law, what the punishment should be and how and by whom that punishment should be carried out. It is also almost always a function of centralized institutions of governance recognized by the people under their jurisdiction..
The point here is that there is no reason for us to call OMMP a “legal system”, as if that somehow mitigates the level of premeditated violence carried out in its name.
You should recall from prior conversations regarding the Constitution that it is my general conclusion that it was written by a bunch of Aristocrats to justify their Private property rights and doesn’t do much for the average J6P.
And you should recall that I agree with that conclusion. I was talking specifically about the Bill of Rights, though, which limits the arbitrary use of state-sanctioned force against the people. If OMMP is designed to circumvent the Bill of Rights, then it contains an implicit justification for its enemies to do the same.
Disagreed, scale does not make a difference in principle, only in the logistics for ferreting out the truth. More complex, certainly, but in principle still the same.
Far as families go, they are often complicit. For example, its likely Bernie Madoff’s Wife and Son were complicit. Also of course Bush1 and Bush2 both complicit. Its up to the Court of the Inquisition to determine how deep the rot of corruption is in a given family.
Pray tell, how will the Court of the Inquisition (i.e. you and your cronies) do that? Is there an age limit? What about the 6 year old kid who seems to be a corrupted little brat? The Husband/Wife who materially supported the corruption without knowing, or that sat by and didn’t do anything to stop their spouse? Or perhaps they did do something, but they just didn’t do “enough”? How can we be sure that your torturous methods do not lead to false confessions, just like the Inquisition’s?
No, my main driver is to clean up the kitchen. You stop when the Kitchen is clean. Granted this may take a while and the decision is subjective in the end, but that is true for just abotu all legal decisions.
Oh, another thing about legal systems – they should be designed to limit the use of subjectivity as much as possible. So if you insist on calling OMMP a legal system with “legal decisions”, then it is a really shitty one.
And you are not cleaning a Kitchen, you are torturing and murdering people. Since you are human, you are not doing that without being consumed by emotions. You cannot dismiss that fact by analogizing it to cleaning a kitchen.
As for sin and penitence, is it not you who is committing the ultimate sin – putting yourself in the role of God? According to the Bible, God is the only one who can know with absolute certainty who is Evil, and who has been saved through penitence and a change of hearts. And, He WILL cast his wrath on the former when the time comes. It is not man’s role to dispense with that kind of Divine Justice.
You can assume that if such a plan is undertaken that you are operating under God’s direction and are so the tool of God in it’s implementation, you are not God him/hers/itself. Far as whether it is Man’s Role to dispense Divine Justice, that is a matter for God to decide. If God wants to use a man to dispense Divine Justice, it is his/her/its perogative to do so.
Uh, no, we can’t assume anything. Unless God speaks to us directly and guides us towards those actions, then we cannot assume we have God’s blessing simply because we have incorporated our human understandings of sin and penitence. If anything, since we never predicated the value of OMMP on its ability to obtain God’s approval, we can assume that we DON’T have it for the sake of this argument.
We don’t know what the consequences will be here for taking these actions, but the likely consequences for not taking them are dire enough to warrant taking the risk. We know if we don’t gain control over this, we get more Fuk-U-shimas and more Macondos. I suggest that the consequences could be good ones. A clean kitchen empty of cockroaches is to the benefit of all except the cockroaches.
We do know some of the consequences – innocent lives will be sacrificed and at least some of the people carrying out the Inquisition will start operating with less than pure motives, or perhaps even at cross-purposes. This is what ALWAYS happens, without fail. So let’s not pretend that we don’t know whether some of those things will happen. What we truly don’t know is what the chances for success are, i.e. the chances of preventing future Fukushimas or Deepwater Horizons, but my educated guesstimate is that they will be slim to razor thin.I am gathering that THIS Aristotle is not the Aristotle of Antiquity, so if i messed that one up, ignore everythinng else I write here. I’m NOT going to go and review the rest of this at the moment on FOFOA’s Blog, I got plenty on my plate already and short of an all out WAR here where Ashvin gives me the BRAZOS call, I don’t see a need to go over there at the moment. Overall, Ashvin is plenty capable of standing down a lot of opposition on his own.
I will just contribute here in this tread some thoughts on AXIOMATIC PRINCIPLES put forth by Aristotle in the quote Ashvin posted.
Aristotle wrote: ]At first cut, people fall into one of two categories: 1) those who recognize the value of an honest monetary system built upon Gold, and 2) those who have not yet given any serious thought to the matter.
In the case of #1, there is an ASSUMPTION made here that an “honest monetary system” can be created with Gold. What is the basis for such an assumption? Far as I know, no such “honest” monetary system has ever existed in all of recorded history. Gold values get manipulated all the time through arbitrage against Silver and other commodities as well as control over Production and distribution. I do not see where anyone can establish that Gold based monetary systems are any more “honest” than any other ones are, from Cowrie Shells to Fiat.
Far as #2 goes, WTF? Is Aristotle suggesting that *I* haven’t given any “serious” thought to this matter, or that Ashvin has not or NUMEROUS other people who question the absolute value of Gold? We are all Chopped Liver here? What? Talk about HUBRIS! “Hey, it you haven;t come to the same conclusion me and my Friends of Friends of Another Firend of Another have come to , CLEARLY you have not given “serious” thought to the matter.” Give me a FB and stick that one where the Sun Don’t Shine, it is INSULTING beyond belief here.
Anyhow, the BELIEF you can create an “honest” monetary system out of Gold is about as Plausible as creating “equitable” Capitalism or “efficient” Communism or “Military Intelligence; for that matter. They are ALL oxymorons. None of them will ever exist, none have ever existed either. The historical record is just LOADED up with monetary collapses which occur JUST as often with PM currency as Fiat, in fact MORE often since Fiat is a relatively recent invention. “Honest Money” is a FICTION. Money itself is dishonest, always.
RE
skipbreakfast post=3300 wrote: What we are doing ain’t working! Totally agree! Oh boy, and is it ever NOT working.
Here’s an unsettling perspective: “The End Game: 2012 & 2013”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/big-reset-2012-and-2013-will-usher-end-scariest-presentation-ever
MAJOR DEBATE between me and Golden Oxen currently IN PROGRESS on this set of Graphs and Info at the moment in the Big Slide v2.0 thread over on the Diner. EXTREMELY ENTERTAINING! 😀
RE
ashvin post=3290 wrote:
You know as well as I do that this is a bad analogy to your systemic roto-rooter plan, or let’s just call it the Orkin Man Master Plan (OMMP).
The OMMP is operating at very large scales and at a much more complex level than your individual person shooting to kill a murderer and/or rapist in the act of the crime.In the individual analogy, your motivations are indeed much different than that of your targets. Actually, your tactics are different also, because there is not much premeditation involved and you seem to only be resorting to force when you just so happen to be in a position to directly save another person’s life, or at least save them from bodily harm.
I do NOT know as well as you do any such thing. Its merely a matter of scale, not principle.
I will give the example of Fuk-U-shima here. How many Deaths do you think will result from this catastrophe? 10K? Probably already done. 100K? Well within reasonable estimates given the proximity of the population to this disater. Even 10M is not outta da question.
Who is responsible for this? Somebody has to be held accountable. IMHO, its the TEPCO Owners and Managers and their lackey Pols who built this GUN and stuck it to the head of 10M Rape Victims.
Not only did they stick the Gun to the Population in the PAST, they currently KEEP the gun pointed at everybody ELSE. I SEE a RAPE in progress here, and I am gonna STOP it NOW by Gunning Down the who knows how many people complicit in this operation who AL are taking money out of the Cash Register at the moment. No more Mr. Nice Guy. This is a WAR here, and people are DYING as we speak. I am EVEN willing to alow these folks to OWN UP to their Sins and Repent and allow them to LIVE, an opportunity they did NOT give their Victims. So who is more Righteous here, eh?
I can make the SAME argument for the Owners and Managers and Pols who made the Macondo Blowout possible, and the same assholes who run Monsanto and push GMO foods out at the population and the SAME assholes running Big Pharma. They are KILLING people RIGHT NOW! BY THE MILLIONS. It has to be STOPPED, and pussy footing around here is NOT stopping it. No More Mr. Nice Guy now.
Just because they are protected by Corporate Personhood which allows the Individuals here to escape their culpability under this Legal System makes them no less culpable. Like anyone who willy nilly goes out and KILLS people for their own self-aggrandizement like the Liquor Store Robber they gotta GO here. Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth.
In OMMP, our tactics involve premeditation and targeting specific people for extermination. Our motivation is to rid the world, via tortures and executions, of a certain number of people who we believe are counter-productive to the ability of humanity to survive and thrive. We will not hesitate to cross any thresholds to accomplish what we set out to do, and will adopt an “if you are not with us, you are against us” policy. We are going into the OMMP knowing full well that many “innocents” will be killed/harmed in the process of reaching our end goals.
Do our tactics and motivations really sound that much different from those of the Monsters we are seeking out? And that’s what Nietzsche was talking about…
Sure it is “premeditated”. Any Legal System is, and I am advocating for a Legal System which holds these folks ACCOUNTABLE, ferrets them out and brings them before the Court of the Inquisition. Sorry, english Common Law is not WORKING. If something doesn’t work, you try something DIFFERENT. As Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.
RE wrote: Collateral damage? No doubt, but WORSE collateral damage if you don’t do it. Leave the vermin lose here, they’ll kill us ALL. Seriously. Now they want to mine Uranium in the Chesapeake Bay, as Surly mentioned in the Diner. How long do you take this shit before you get rid of this vermin, eh?
Ashvin wrote: You can’t know that for sure. For all you know, the OOMP will FAIL miserably, and they will still end up attaining their goals. Except now you will both have innocent blood on your hands. In fact, the odds are that the FAIL part is exactly what will happen. If they are going to fail also, it will most likely be because they end up destroying themselves through their own destructive actions, one way or another.
I don’t know anything for sure other than the fact what we are doing AIN’T Working. I advocate a change of tactics. May work, may not. if somebody comes up with a better plan, I am all ears, but IMHO here a few Perp Walks and Passive Resistance or “Active Withdrawal” is NOT a better plan with any greater chance of success, in fact I rate it lower in its possibilities for success.
Bring in the Orkin Man.
RE
ashvin post=3283 wrote:
[quote=Nietzsche]”Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
This is nonsense from the keyboard of Nietzshe. What’s his URL? Ill go troll his Blog. 😀
Easy example, 2 guns, 2 shooters, 2 victims.
Case 1: Shooter goes into liquor store, kills clerk to take register money.
Motivation: Evil
Case 2: Shooter sees rape in progress, kills rapist to save victim.
Motivation: Good
You don’t become your enemy by using the same tactics, it depends onthe motivation behind it.
Insofar as numbers are concerned, I doubt there are just 3 or 4 at the very top, the numbers are probably in the thousands. Its also a Hydra problem, where when you cut off one head, another grows to replace it. The trick in killing a hydra is to lop off ALL the heads simultaneously. A challenge, but not impossible to accomplish either.
Collateral damage? No doubt, but WORSE collateral damage if you don’t do it. Leave the vermin lose here, they’ll kill us ALL. Seriously. Now they want to mine Uranium in the Chesapeake Bay, as Surly mentioned in the Diner. How long do you take this shit before you get rid of this vermin, eh?
Karpatok post=3278 wrote: Furthermore, I don’t see how retiring to a Maybe Marie Antoinette was innocent for example, but she kept walking on by and refused to look. So it depends on what you call innocent heads that roll. If ordinary folk are complicit simply for being within the system, then what are the movers and shakers? I want to give them a face so I’ll know to aim at them and not their go betweens.
Marie Antoinette was GUILTY, merely by being complicit and a part of the French Arsitocracy of the time. From Wikipedia”
Marie Antoinette ( /məˈriː æntwəˈnɛt/ or /æntwɑːˈnɛt/; French pronunciation: [maʁi ɑ̃twanɛt]; baptised Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna (or Maria Antonia Josephina Johanna[1]); 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I.
In April 1770, on the day of her marriage to Louis-Auguste, Dauphin of France, she subsequently became Dauphine of France. Marie Antoinette assumed the title of Queen of France and of Navarre when her husband, Louis XVI of France, ascended the throne upon the death of Louis XV in May 1774. After seven years of marriage, she gave birth to a daughter, Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, the first of four children.
Initially charmed by her personality and beauty, the French people generally came to dislike her, accusing “L’Autre-chienne” (a pun in French playing with the words “Autrichienne” meaning Austrian (woman) and “Autre-chienne” meaning Other bitch) of being profligate and promiscuous,[2] and of harboring sympathies for France’s enemies, particularly Austria, her country of origin.[3]
After the royal family’s flight to Varennes, Louis XVI was deposed and the monarchy abolished on 21 September 1792; the royal family was subsequently imprisoned at the Temple Prison. Nine months after her husband’s execution, Marie Antoinette was herself tried, convicted of treason, and executed by guillotine on 16 October 1793.
You know, even if she never said “let them eat cake”, from all historical records we know of Marie never was penitent for the life of priviledge she led while the rest of French society was in the Toilet. A Monarchy is not deposed until after many years the pain for the soicety as a whole has become unbearable.
You take on great RESPONSIBILTY when you are Elite in your society for the well being of all. If your stewardship is bad, many people DIE. You must be accountable for that, and the only true accountability for it is that you ALSO must DIE. Marie Antoinette got what she DESERVED. In time, so will the Elite of this time period.
RE
The Rothschilds and Rockefellers present clear and obvious targets, but even they are just Tip of the Iceberg here.
“Ownership” of the world as it is constructed is tiered up through many layers of Holding Companies. The paperwork on this stuff in some cases is hundreds of years old and buried so deep in the vaults in the City of London it will take decades of forensic accounting to determine who actually owns what and how the money flow gets directed, if it is even possible to do that at all.
If *I* knew who all was at the pinnacle of the pyramid, I’d surely name the names, and surely also come down with Bullet meets Brain disease or an untimely Coronary.
IMHO, the only way to work your way to the Top of the Pyramid is to start with who by virtue of what is obvious you know have a connection to the next tier up the pyramid. You bring them in, one by one in front of the Inquisition and you give them a good reason to TALK. If they really do NOT know who is above them and have no worthwhile information, this is unfortunate but you can’t make an Omelette without breaking a Few Eggs, and besides that they are GUILTY in their own right anyhow of their own set of crimes against humanity.
Now, SB might consider such an Inquisition not to have worthwhile value, but IMHO it does. First off, even if they are not the TOP level VERMIN, they still make the Kitchen an unpleasant place to cook, so they need to be exterminated also. Besides that, on a social level, it is important to reinforce to people that Greed does NOT pay. Really, how many people do you think would strive to become Billionaires if on a Nightly Basis Reality TV was showing Pigman Executions? I know I would have a low motivation level to strive for that if I was a kid watching TV.
The whole problem we have here is that for Millenia we have acquiesced to the idea that Greed DOES pay, we never got control of the infestation from the get go here. Now the Earth is INFESTED with VERMIN so you can’t fix this just with a few Perp Walks here.
Now, I do believe that it is possible to Repent and do Penitence for your Sins, so any Pigman who willingly comes forward to divest himself of his ill gotten gains and agrees to do penitence for the rest of his life scrubbing out cesspools can be allowed to live. This is fair and IMHO GENEROUS, considering the fact prior to repentance said Pigman probably was responsible for the deaths of 1000s of starving children.
I do also suggest the Inquistion has some Cutoffs here in the early stages. You could set a minimum net worth of say $1B at the beginning of Criminals to bring before the Auto da Fe, this alone would fill up the docket pretty well with 10,000 or more people I suspect. That will take some time to work through.
Eventually here you will locate the top of the pyramid cockroaches. May take some time, but persistence pays off.
Bring in the Orkin Man.
RE
RE wrote: …Main problem of course remains all that nasty EXPOSURE Eurotrash Banks have to Greek Debt, not to mention all those nasty Derivatives set to EXPLODE as soon as Greece finally does miss a Bond Payment. So regardless of the fact Widows and Orphans might be starving in Greece, the ECB or IMF or ESM or some other cockamamie vehicle will pay off on Bonds FOR the Greek “People”, to “Help” them. No Euros will cross the Greek Border, but plenty will cross into the Vaults of JPMC, Goldman and Deutche Bank!
Anyhow, the nonsensical idea that the Euro problems or even the Greek MINISCULE ones were solved at any point in this long charade of Extend & Pretend is OFFICIALLY squashed here now, NO MEETING of Von Rumplestiltskin, Kukla, Fran and Ollie Rehn, Francoise Hollandaise Sauce or any other newly elected Eurotrash Pol is going to convince ANYBODY that ANY problems have been solved. They are SOL on Political and Economic Cards to play here now. The Clown Show has run its course here, so unfortunately the NEW Clowns will be sent in. The next bunch of Clowns are unlikely to be quite so funny as this last bunch…
Sadly, gaining the political leverage necessary to do those things which might ameliorate some of the oncoming pain is quite difficult to achieve.
The “democratic” institutions don’t WORK for anyone but the monied interests, and they really never have. Besides that you have the problem of Social Inertia. This Juggernaut we call the Industrial lifestyle with all the systems it has built up over more than a century can’t stop on a dime, except of course if it smacks into a brick wall in which case even Airbags probably won’t make a good Lifeboat.
Try to deconstruct these systems piecemeal in a controlled fashion over a much shorter timespan than it took to develop them is probably an impossible task, though certainly worth the effort if you could gain the political control necessary to do it.
Unfortunately, gaining such political control is nigh impossible when TBTB got the Big Ass Military and wave after wave of Gestapo beating heads all over the world at the moment. Nothing short of Revolution has potential to change that, and even Revolutions get easily coopted by the monied interests. (See Trotsky, see Egypt, etc)
So the goal of trying to ameliorate some of the pain coming down the pipe here for J6P is probably not going to happen, and you just have to wait until the Conduits of control are in such catastrophic failure that even the Gestapo and the Big Ass Military begin to fracture, and fracture they will.
Exactly how LONG that will take to happen is open to conjecture, but it’s pretty certain it’s going to happen in Eurotrashland before it happens here in the FSofA. Also unclear is when similar will occur in China.
Whether we can quickly salvage enough of current civilization to avoid a St. Matthews Island Die Off scenario once the catastrophic failure begins is an open question. It will only happen though if enough Cells of people are prepped and ready for the endgame. Prepped and Ready does not just mean having a Permaculture Doomstead either. It means being ready to FIGHT for the survival of Homo Sapiens against the Forces of Evil.
Lock and Load. The Big Show is Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You.
davefairtex post=3255 wrote:
It would appear that there isn’t enough senior (risk) debt out there to resolve this sucker without immense loss to the depositors. Roughly 60B of depositors are insured. The rest are not.Meanwhile, the ECB and the PBoC say they are not gonna print.
This should get interesting.
RE
steve from virginia post=3252 wrote:
The Europeans have brought this upon themselves by not closing insolvent banks and restructuring. Now, the countries themselves are insolvent and there is no entity able to provide capital. Who is going to make a good loan?Norway.
It is too late for the sovereigns themselves to issue currency as the collateral is simply more empty promises. The stage after bankruptcy and ruin is not ‘Iceland 2.0’ for these energy deadbeats, it is complete collapse. Not even dictatorship can save them.
If a Dictator can’t save the Eurotrash, why would a 3rd Party be able to Save Amerika? For those who haven’t been there yet, review the Topic for Discussion commentary on Economic Undertow.
The collateral here in the FSofA isn’t any better than in Eurotrashland, just the Circle Jerk between Treasury and Da Fed here makes it more possible to paper over the problems a while longer and outlast them.
The pace at which the Euro is imploding now though is pretty impressive. We’re not even getting the Daily Briefings from the latest round of FinMin meetings in Brussel Sprouts. You get the feeling here the Euroclowns have already capitulated and they are just running for cover. No more Merkozy Kissy Kissy, now its Merkollande Divorce Bickering.
Just waiting for the next shoe to drop and Societe Generale to go Belly Up. if they don’t pump in liquidity soon, its going to cascade quickly. What is Libor at now anyhow? Is there any interbank lending going on at all?
Anyhow, this should be pretty good by the time the Conventions start now to Crown Obama-sama and Catcher’s Mitt Romney as the respective Champions of the 1%. I am breathless with anticipation to see how that campaign develops. Not.
BAU. Until its not.
RE
ashvin post=3250 wrote:
Oh, no doubt they are terrified. And no doubt there will be immense pressure by US/EU/IMF officials on Germany to let the ECB monetize, even more than there has been already. But I don’t see how unilateral monetization could either a) happen or b) make any sense without that consent.
If Germany isn’t on board for the EFSF/ESM (a Spanish bailout would probably require at least half of funds pledged), and/or ECB monetization, then you are going against one of your biggest (and most credible) sources of capital, who may just choose to leave. What sense does the Eurozone make without Germany behind it?
I have a hard time envisioning how this could happen either, and unless the Krauts in some way acquiese to a monetization it seems impossible as well. However, I DO think it is still possible for large scale transfer payments to be done back door through proxies. I could see a methodology where Swap funds are pushed through the ECB and into the hands of Kraut Banksters at say Deutche Bank, with the proviso they support the Spanish Bond market a while longer. This could be done without the direct consent of Kraut Parliament, as it likely would take a bit of time for them to find out about what was being done here. Remember, ECB transactions are pretty much as opaque as Da Fed’s are.
That’s not say Merkel’s government will not cave in to the pressure – they might. But that itself raises other political/legal issues with the German people and the German Parliament, which the German Const. Court has said must be involved in all such decisions. Then you also have countries like the Netherlands who may resist, but I am less hopeful that they will hold out.
Merkel is on the ropes already, and she likely has little choice here but to cave, and same for the smaller Goobermints like Netherlands who easily can be pushed around with money threats. The Kraut Parliament then gets to debate the issue, dragging it out some more, but do you really think Kraut Pols are any better than their compadres down in Greece. Thumbscrews will be twisted, and if monetization is what the BIS wants, that is what they will get.
They have been papering it over, but the real economy has been deteriorating the whole time. Now Spain looks a lot like Greece in that regard, and the Eurocrats are having a hard time keeping GREECE within the bailout/austerity paradigm. If Greece ends up leaving, then the surplus countries have just thrown a lot of money down a black hole. What are the chances that they will agree to do the same for Spain, which is many times bigger?
No doubt, the continuing downward spiral of the Real Economy and the political issues pursuant to that play heavily into this equation. However, not being “on the ground” inside Spain right now I cannot make a determination just how BAD it really is for them yet. When I look at the FSofA Economy just by the Numbers, I say to myself “SHIT! How come there aren’t RIOTS everywhere already?” On the other hand, when I periodically hop a jet down to the lower 48, most of the cities I visit seem on the surface to be operating fairly normally. I suspect this is similar in Spain, in the sense if I flew into Madrid this week, the city would appear fairly normal to me most of the time. Systemically, they have not broken down yet completely. Probably see more Strikers and trai schedules might be messed up, but that has been the case in Spain always.
I still do not know what the TIPPING POINT is for a general population, how many and how far off the economic cliff do they have to fall before you get a real Political Firestorm, complete with the Coup d’Etat etc? Plitically, i do not know where Spain is for this, and I can’t make a good determination for it either just based on Numbers. Based on that, they should have gone Ballistic a year ago at least.
If financial/monetary officials of the $IMFS decide to unilaterally set up ECB monetization facilities for Eurozone peripheral countries, then I think they will need to make damn sure they have control of national military forces that are ready and willing to launch coups and suppress sociopolitical dissent. The only other way is do it all in secret, but I don’t see how that’s possible.
Of course, the Fed can beef up its currency swap operations with the ECB, and the ECB can launch another LTRO, and they can keep floating rumors about printing and/or Euro bonds, and countries can try to insulate their own national banking systems from contagion, but all of those things are unlikely to have much effect. We must also consider the possibility that the IMFS Owners actually want the Eurozone to break up, because they rightly or wrongly believe it will benefit them in terms of consolidating wealth/control in the medium to long-term.
I reviewed how I think it could be done “secretly” at least for a short time, but certainly it is true that in order to aintain Civil Order here as it spins down worse, they will need to play the military card.
I don’t know for sure what the “Plan” is, it may very well be to force the breakup of the EU. its quite possible those at the top see just what I see, which is that the only way to retain some power is to break up the conglomerate. Its quite reasonable to assume the NWO crowd has given up on a One World Goobermint and is now just in the process of carving it up to hand off the fiefdoms.
Regardless of whether it is planned or not, to me it is clear that this is not salvageable by any means, and the EU will fracture. What results from that is an open question.
RE
Ashvin wrote: When a financial institution such as Bankia is bailed out, make no mistake – there will be no one able or willing to bail out the Spanish Treasury.
Are you SURE about that Ashvin? I think Helicopter Ben could Swap out $1T with Super Mario Dragon in a nanosecond, and then SMD could go ahead and create the Spain Healthy Investment Tool (S.H.I.T.) to float his Krony Kapitalista Spic Buddies a microsecond after that.
Are these boys really going to let a piddling $50B Bank Failure pull down the whole Ball of Wax so easy? They are all TERRIFIED of the cascade and counterparty risk here involved.
Maybe this one is the one finally Too Big to Save, but I am not yet convinced of this. If the Spanish Banks and their Goobermint can Circle Jerk money creation to paper this over for a year, on a yet bigger scale so can the CBs.
This sucker doesn’t come down until the CBs themselves capitulate, and its not all that clear they are ready to do that yet. This may not be under control of the Krauts either. I think it is a canard to see the Krauts as controllers of the ECB. They are a big player to be sure, but they are not the ones in real control over this. A political decision here to Print or Not Print is supranational, and its occuring not in the Bundesbank, but in the back room of the BIS.
RE
davefairtex post=3237 wrote: RE –
I don’t think I’d call it passive resistance. I call it actively withdrawing my support for the system. Perhaps you see the two as identical; I feel there is an energetic difference. I’m not resisting anything, I’m simply choosing not to engage any longer. Although I must confess I do take delight in knowing my decision does impact the stability of the system in some small way.
Dave, if labelling as active withdrawal rather than passive resistance makes you feel more purposeful, feel free to label it that way. It still has virtually no effect on the system, and even if everybody else did it would not change things much. You pay taxes, right? If you don’t take out loans, your Goobermint will take them out for you and charge it to your tax bill.
Anyhow, for the time being if you are in such pleasant circumstances as you or I are, its a good deal safer to “actively withdraw” than it is to “actively FIGHT” and repudiate the debt. In fact, you may have no debt to repudiate at all, as I do not. Well, at least not debt with my signature on it anyhow.
For those in the trenches who accunulated the typical debt load in our society buying the McMansion and the Carz on Credit who now find themselves seriously underwater and out of a job, your “active withdrawal” simply does not cut the mustard. For them, FIGHTING and repudiating the debt is the real way to take the battle to the enemy here.
RE
davefairtex post=3233 wrote:
Simply positing that such a thing is possible and would be effective is quite a distance from actually engaging in making it happen. Its the old 99% perspiration rule – 1% is blog posting, and 99% is marching, bleeding, and dying.
Ultimately I feel it is better for me to take action on my own and stay focused on creating the world I want to see, rather than engaging with the forces of darkness in an attempt to destroy the world I dislike. I can respect the choices of others who choose a different path.
There is a time for every season. A time to Laugh and a time to Cry. A time to Sow, a time to Reap. A time to be born, a time to die.
This discussion of just what you can do and when is another popular topic amongst the Diners. Do you engage the Forces of Darkness now directly, or do you try a more passive form of resistance? You clearly fall into the passive resistance crowd, which is the most popular idea amongst Diners. Not me though. LOL.
I am of the mind that the Time of the Season is not quite upon us yet, but it is Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You. Whent he time comes, you will not HAVE a choice. You pick your side of the line to stand on, and then you go all the way. There are NO RULES in this Knife Fight, and this one is for ALL the Marbles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDYonGiCKZ0
RE
Karpatok post=3232 wrote: What can they get? You don’t have anything. You cannot get blood from a stone. They’re going to spend money to lock you up after years have past? Not only are there statutes of limitations, but it costs money to try and find you and take you to court. Flip them the bird, kick them in the balls and chock some more up for deflation. Especially if you were born and bred in the briarpatch.
Really, in the end having No Assets is your best defense against this kind of nonsense. If you have nothing worth repoing, your creditor is basically SOL.
Now, Ashvin will make the case at some point in the future you’ll be strapped onto a Chain Gang if they can find you, but I seriously doubt that since running such Slave systems incur their own set of liabilities.
The Statute of Limitations of course does not apply to Student Loans, which you are tagged with for the rest of your life. So if at some future point you do drop into the system again and have a wage that can be Garnisheered, it will be. At the moment however, there are also limitations on that insofar as how much can be garnisheered. If you fall below a certain income, none can be taken at all. Those laws may change of course, but again there really are much BIGGER FISH to fry than Student Debtors.
With many Real Estate Developers in BK, many McMansion Owners in BK, many CORPORATIONS in BK, just how much time does the BK court have to spend on chump change debts of students here? In fact the LAW FIRM of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe just filed Chapter 11 today:
Dewey files for Chapter 11 – biggest US law firm collapse
The crippled law firm Dewey & Leboeuf filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday night and will seek approval to liquidate its business after failing to find a merger partner, marking the biggest collapse of a law firm in US history.
Gotta LOVE that one. LOL.
RE
davefairtex post=3229 wrote: RE, skip –
Haha ok you got me. You are right, paying down debt is not the MOST revolutionary you can do. I admit it, I’m guilty of hyperbole! It was a moment of weakness!
But I still like it a great deal as a legal and peaceful way to withdraw your support for the current system.
Well, for the faint of heart who wish to make some kind of statement here, its better than nothing but it’s not going to collapse the system very soon. If everybody struggles to pay down their debt, it keeps the engine running here a while longer. If on the other hand everybody REPUDIATES their debts, BOOM! Game’s UP!
The question of trying to maintain “Legality” in your resistance is quite a tricky one really. As Surly’s Mammon post illustrates clearly, even being scrupulously legal is no protection, and your opposition here the Banksters clearly do not worry about such trivialities as what is “Legal” or not.
As I often remark on the Diner, you don’t bring a Knife to a Gunfight. You don’t win a fight where you Box by the Marquis de Queensbury Rules and your opponent Kicks you in the Nuts and the Referree doesn’t call foul on it. If the law presents no protection for you, then you might as well forget about Rules in the Knife Fight. There ARE NO RULES here.
Far as debt repudiation goes, at present time there are no “official” rules for imprisoning debtors, though as Ashvin has remarked there are administrative laws sometimes invoked to do the same thing. There are however many ways to extend out these things for quite a long time, and I suspect if you read up and do your own Jailhouse Lawyering, you could file countersuits and tie the whole thing up in court until the Sun goes Red Giant. LOL.
In the end of course the system is FUBAR as we all know, and its just a question of how long this gets dragged out here before some sort of reset is attempted. I seriously doubt they can keep the game running another Decade, Spain is now set to Ignite then Italy after that. Makes Lehman look like a cakewalk. When (not if) the Euro collapses, the Internation Banking system is just TOAST. It’s going to cascade through the system at the Speed of Light. Student Debt is the LEAST of the worries out there. There is a Quadrillion in derivative debts about to go up in SMOKE, in the Greatest Bonfire of Paper Wealth in ALL of Recorded History.
RE
skipbreakfast post=3228 wrote: I think your proposed scenario makes so much sense that…well…most students are already doing it! 🙂 Getting an interest-free student loan (available in some places) sure beats unemployment. With no other options, it’s definitely the way to go. I think your scenario highlights that not all debts are the same, and not all debtors are the same. For such a tactic to be advantageous, however, one really has to have NO other options. Even if one can get a minimum wage job now, or arrange room and board on a farm in exchange for work, the job would offer more advantages in my opinion. Student loans could dry up in a year or three, as I’m sure you’d agree. Then again, a year or three is better than nothing, and a savvy student can still be planning for the inevitable unemployment at the end. Who cares if you even pass the classes!
Well, passing the classes is important in terms of being able to continue onward with the game and be eligible for new loans. You also want to do well if possible so you can keep enrolling in further degree programs. You know, after the Ph.D., there’s still Law Skule and Biz Skule to hit.
As to when the Loans will dry up, well when that happens I suspect mass repudiation begins as well. The Universities will all have to shut down of course except maybe the Ivy League where the 1% will Pay Cash.
I did miss one other alternative here, said 20 year old could go and Enlist in the Military, Navy is usually pretty safe until the ships start sinking anyhow. If you can make it through a 4 year hitch, then the GI Bill should help with the college costs. However, taking this route you are of course becoming an explicit tool of the Fascist State.
The minimum wage job alternative if you can find one doesn’t pay even rental housing bills unless you triple up with friends generally speaking. It is also of course a complete dead end, and one becomes pretty nihilistic after 2 or 3 years flipping burgers with no better future in sight.
RE
skipbreakfast post=3224 wrote: It’s certainly plausible. It sort of suggests that one would be advised to accumulate as much debt as possible right now, since it would be a gargantuan windfall once the system implodes. The problem with that is that I think one has to be careful about personal debt because we simply don’t know how long it will take to go from today to the grand scale debt jubilee. Nor do we know what mechanisms will be put in place in that intervening time. I think you’ll see militia in the street protecting the status quo BEFORE you see a debt jubilee for everyone. I would rather avoid tangling with them, if I can. The status quo will not exit with a whimper. There will be a lot of bangs.
The populace is quite well trained. We won’t opt for the Mad Max scenario until our humanity has been completely obliterated. The rich and poor alike will sell out each other before we band together and repudiate all our debts at once. I just think it’s going to be much messier towards the bottom, and many of the penalties currently in place to punish debtors will increase before they vanish. Many people could not survive 6 months under such penalties, let alone 6 years.
I agree we’ll organically reach the hard stop you describe. But I think it will take a lot of people down with it first. We won’t all get our houses for free that easily.
Its a crapshoot of course, and also if you can get by without getting debt entangled its the safer alternative.
However, here is a scenario for you. Say you are 2 years out of HS and haven’t been able to land a job. You have been living in mom’s basement, but now she is getting evicted.
What are your alternatives now?
1) Live on the Street or out in the Bush rewilding
2) Get a Student Loan to go to Whatsamatter U?
Now, I will grant you alternative 1 probably best prepares you for the world to come. However, why live that way now if you don’t have to?
You can go 4 years for your BA, another 5 for a Ph.D. then do a couple more years as a post-Doc Fellow. So its probably a decade before you would even have to THINK about repayment.
At the end of this decade, there are no jobs for you with your doctorate, so NOW you go live on the street. You got a 10 year free ride. How are the dunners going to find you amongst all the rest of the Homeless? You got no cell phone, you live off dumpsters and roadkill like Daniel Suelo, etc.
If I was in this position, I suspect I would take the 10 year ride banging some co-eds along the way. Put off the street living for a while longer.
RE
skipbreakfast post=3222 wrote: I do think there are already signs of increasing arbitrary penalties, and if you’re seen to have any income, then those penalties will just increase. But still, they can’t throw ALL the students in jail who default on their student loan. Eventually, if ALL students simply refused to repay their student loan, the government might be forced to wipe the debts clean. Hard to know which way this will go.
The simple FACT of the matter is that in a world with ever decreasing job opportunities and real wages, the Students WILL default on these loans En Masse and in fact so will many if not most of the mortgage holders also. That which cannot be repaid WILL NOT be repaid.
The issue is, if the Hoi Polloi buy into the idea of TRYING to repay this Odious Debt, they’ll leave themselves open to being attacked piecemeal individually for it. On the other hand, if EVERYBODY simultaneously Just Says NO to Odious Debt, there is no possible way in HELL they could all be imprisoned.
It’s going to happen organically anyhow. The system is FUBAR. The main thing that a unified action would do is to stop the Extend and Pretend and bring the system down FAST.
You want Change You Can BELIEVE in? Stop paying your debts. BOOM! The whole ball of wax will crash in a matter of weeks at the most.
RE
davefairtex post=3220 wrote: RE –
Paying off debt is probably the most revolutionary thing we can do to destroy the existing monetary system. Its not always possible for everyone in society to do, but it is the kind of protest I like best. Quiet, local, and impossible to defend against.
No, Paying off Debt is not the most Revolutionary thing you can do. Repudiating odious debt is. Its also more possible for more people to do that than to pay it off.
You can’t do this alone, you’ll get trapped into the kind of Debt Slavery Ashvin talks about all the time. You have to do it En Masse, as in EVERYONE repudiates their Student Loans and Mortgages at the SAME time. Just how long do you think the Banking system lasts in that scenario, eh?
Paying off your debt is what the Banksters HOPE you will do, including all the interest and penalty charges of course. Screw them. Leave THEM holding the Bag on this one. You made a bad loan, SORRY EAT IT.
In fact, it does not and is not taking a conscious choice by millions to do this, it is happening organically anyhow. However, a conscious choice would certainly speed things up quite a bit.
RE
skipbreakfast post=3215 wrote: And I have a feeling you are of the opinion that the change will be so devastating that there will be no recovery of any kind to invest in. I think there will be some version of re-building that will present opportunity, though it won’t look like the growth and credit explosion of the past 75 years. In any event, it’s a prospect that can be used to convince some of the more reluctant people to make changes. I’ve found family and friends quite unwilling to give up the dreams of perpetual growth. It’s been hard to give up for me too.
You certainly cannot count me amongst the Pollyannas who think this is just a cyclical blip on the radar like a few of our past depressions. IMHO this is the BIG ONE, a crash so deep and pervasive that the very foundations of society will have to be rebuilt, from the ground up so to speak.
At the same time however, I do see how there are numerous plateaus possible on the descent available here and of course there are always opportunities to “capitalize” if you figure right on what is coming down the pipe. we likely will not be back to Stone Knives and Bear Skins in most of our lifetimes in most of the Industrialized world of the present.
In looking at it from this perspective, your “wealth” is not in what you “own” in a tangible sense, but what you own in terms of your knowledge and skills. I certainly think the ability to fix and repair things which are breaking down is an important skill to have (not one I am real good at myself unfortunately). Being flexible and mobile is an advantage (one of my strong points).
Certainly also, in the near term there are plenty of ways to make yourself useful to the Fascist State. They will be needing a whole lot of Gestapo here as time goes by, so if you are in good shape and have the willingness to bust some heads, you probably can make a living this way as a servant of Fascism.
We have had these debates already on the Diner, regarding Moral Hypocrisy and what you might or might not do to SURVIVE. How far are you willing to walk down this road? For myself, I could as easily write Propaganda for the Fascist state as I could and do write Propaganda attacking it. I can make arguments from any side of any question. Would I do this as a means to survive? I do not know the answer to that question for sure, I think not but I can’t say for sure until it is in my face and I HAVE to make the decision one way or the other.
Each of us will be faced with these moral quandaries as the spin down comes closer to our own doorsteps. Do you want to make PROFIT on Death? You can do that right now, short the living shit out of Greek Bonds and send Widows and Pensioners and Orphans right off the cliff here. Or invest your money into BP stock, so they can drill another Macondo Well this time on the Atlantic Seaboard and turn that fisherie into a stinking sewer also.
There is Profit to still be made here no doubt, but about none of it will come without great cost to somebody else, ever more directly allt he time. How far will you go here to SURVIVE? What is a Bridge too Far for you? Only you can answer that question, and only you will have to answer for your decision when you walk into the Great Beyond.
RE
skipbreakfast post=3213 wrote: [quote=Reverse Engineer post=3210[…] IMHO, our Iluminati Masters of the Universe are running around now like Chickens with their Heads Cut Off trying to figure out how best to protect their own “Wealth”, when in fact that wealth is ALREADY GONE. It’s floating around up there in the atmosphere as moelcules of CO2.
This is a lovely analogy. Very quotable.
Gotta give Steve from Virginia of Economic Undertow credit for this imagery. He used it in one of his posts and I glommed it. Its been part of my notion of energy and money for a long time, but he drew this image first.And as far as the notion that there is nothing left to buy, I think you touch on something that Ash and TAE have discussed before: the real change, and a positive one at that, to come from all this ensuing chaos is the shift in our desires. We must return to a celebration of community and self-discovery over consumption and material goods. I’m going to learn to play guitar one way or another! Used to be there was a musician in every family. We’ve lost touch with all the things that people need to enjoy. iPads don’t actually cut it, in the final analysis.
In truth, it is community and in your relationships with others that true wealth lies, and in this as in many other things the TAE folks and the Diners are of like mind. This of course is the reason we are cross posting so much these days.
My great hope would be to extend the relationship that is developing between TAE and the Diner to other Blogs and Forums, and to bring this very disparate discussion TOGETHER. I do not want to see the Cacophany of Pundits and Commentariat continue the way it has so far on the net. If we are to make a difference here, there must be a synthesis, not a cacophany.
RE
davefairtex post=3211 wrote: RE, skip –
I’ve really enjoyed this conversation too. I don’t really consider it a debate, since I’m really just looking to explore the space rather than prove that I’m right (or prove that you’re wrong) about something. Who cares about being right – I’d much rather see the truth instead.
To me, debates are about exploring the issues and challenging each other on the thought process involved in seeking the truth. I personally write much better in dialogue than as a pure Blogger, really I only came Kicking and Screaming into the world of Bloggers by necessity. Got Booted off too many boards for endlessly hijacking threads and monopolizing the conversation. LOL.
Who or what is “right” here will only be proved up over the long term. meanwhile, mostly we speculate on outcomes. I may be right or I may be wrong here in my view of the short, medium and long term outcomes of this spin down. My goal though always in a debate is to elucidate the truth, and for me the best way to do that is to bounce ideas back and forth with somebody else who ponders on them like I do. I have enjoyed this particular round with you Dave immensely. My thanks here for this.
I definitely don’t know Alaskan real estate. What you say about the pipeline sounds unpleasant. How much of Alaska’s economy depends on oil? I certainly have no idea. The idea that land is sitting around simply unused is definitely a bad sign though.
And if you have everything you need, then certainly there’s no urgency for you to buy something else. But I’d say you’re in a very small minority of people who think this way. Other rich people are fine with buying a London house (never know, might need one some day) or an Alaskan Farm, or a Miami Condo, especially if they think their bonds will vanish.
Why do people BUY things and attempt to OWN that which no man really can? I suppose it is because there is a measure of safety in being “in control” of things, making them “yours”. I suppose also I probably am in a minority, but it’s not so much because I won’t buy up property as it is because I don’t generally fit very well into any aspect of the society that I was born into. I manage to make it through, but I am always at odds with everything around me. I want a different world to live in, but sadly that world is not going to come in my lifetime. All I really can do is write my vision for a Better Tomorrow, punctuated unfortunately by the reality that what we have now will not go quietly or peacefully into this Good Night.
Focusing for a moment on HI, I do think its quite possible for the Fed to print enough money to cancel out deflation. Does the political capital exist for them to do this? It may, if Europe starts to burn for real and the US bankers convince the politicians and the public (who controls the media, again?) that we can avoid this outcome here if only we print.
Assuming the political capital for printing exists, there are several outcomes I see:
1) they can’t/don’t print enough, deflation starts to take hold, and then some event causes virtual overnight systemic failure bringing on that deflationary depression
2) they don’t print enough, deflation starts to take hold, and they change their minds and print more; time passes and another outcome is selected.
3) they print just enough. goldilocks. inflation happens, but its not too horrible. we muddle on through.
4) they print too much. inflation starts to take hold, and some event causes a hyperinflationary run out of bonds into real things.I think outcome #3 is the least likely. As for the others, I don’t have a sense as to their probability. I’ll be reading the tea leaves to see which one happens to be in force at the moment, and given the trend, which unpleasant event could be waiting in the wings.
For instance today it would seem that deflation is the primary trend, with a systemic failure (depression event) possible as a black swan.
Each scenario you delineate here is a Possible Outcome. Weighing the Probabilities is what we generally do when discussing or debating questions of HI vs “typical” Inflation or Deflation.
There certainly is motivation for CBs to “print” here to try to keep this system balanced out. However, to date amongst the MAJOR currencies, nobody has yet undertaken what I would really call “printing”, which would be the naked issuance of money without a corresponding liability being placed on some balance sheet somewhere. You cannot inflate away debt as long as you place corresponding liability somewhere else, all you do there is keep increasing the debt load.
The ECB or Da Fed can keep issuing “Cash for Trash” under this paradigm, but they just become more insolvent all the time doing so. Eventually the market will recognize this, then you can get your HI of the currency they issue when they fail. At the moment though, while the ECB is in reasonably serious danger of failing, Da Fed is not. They WILL be in danger of failing though if they try to issue enough Cash for Trash to cover notional derivatives. I am not sure this would be in the best interest of the BIS to let this happen. My take on this is that the weaker currencies will be pushed out of existence and an attempt will be made to salvage the Dollar at the end of the game. I don’t think it can be done, but that seems to me to be the most logical game plan for those running the monetary show here.
However as RE has said, in time this whole discussion gets trumped by the energy issue. All the stuff he wrote, I really can’t argue with. I’m not so certain about the whole “death trap” thing for cities; I’d be more worried about the exurbs, but that’s just picking nits.
Unless we find some clever new concentrated energy source, the power behind civilization will slowly melt away. I’m all for a Deux Ex Machina, but I do dislike the thought of having to wait so far into act 4 for it to appear.
Energy is the Name of the Game here in the end, and short of a miraculous arrival of the Ferengi with Space Trucks full of Gold Pressed Latinum and Vulcans arriving with Space Tankers of Dilithium Crystals to power Matter-Antimatter Engines, we are essentially SOL as far as maintaining any type of Industrial Culture and a functioning monetary system on a Global Scale. The monetary system candle may burn out with Deflation or Hyperinflation, but either way it will die here. Our only CHANCE for survival as a species now is to REVERSE ENGINEER our way back to a low energy footprint on Mother Earth. We will do that one way or the other, the main risk here is that if we do not do it proactively and with planning and pupose, we will wipe ourselves off the face of the Earth before we can fix it. Go the way of the Dinosaur, of course.
RE
Note: I reposted this comment as a new article on the Diner Blog under the title Avalanche Theory of Debt Cascade Failure.
skipbreakfast post=3205 wrote:
I don’t think the Fed has any illusion it can truly replace all the credit currently in existence, should credit actually start evaporating exponentially. In truth, the Fed doesn’t believe it will need to do that–it naively believed it could reverse the tide before such catastrophe. Maybe even the Fed is starting to wonder if things are now out of hand, however.The deflationists have persuaded me that the trickle of credit destruction soon becomes a torrent and the CBs are simply overwhelmed. They will have to change tact and embrace deflation at some point, by shoring up their own assets, once it suits them to do so.
One thing I think is not grasped well is the concept of Cascade Failure, best exemplified by an Avalanche or Toppling Dominoes.
What we have here is a MOUNTAIN of debt, which although it has been exponentially increasing at an obvious pace over the last decade, has in truth been growing exponentially right from the beginning of this supercycle, best pegged IMHO to the chartering of the Bank of England in 1692.
All through the ensuing years, one economy after another has been subsumed into this ever expanding Ponzi scheme. The whole Bizness isn’t REALLY managed by Da Fed, its managed by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland. Da Fed is simply the most powerful among many client Central Banks in this schema.
The snow falls over many years on a Mountain, and in fact you can to extent control Avalanches by setting them off on purpose periodically when you see the instability growing. So in fact it is likely that many of the prior depressions which followed events like the bursting of the Tulip Bubble or the failure of Credit Anstaaldt were to an extent “controlled explosions” which briefly brought down the snow and then collection began again.
This iteration is somewhat different, because in each of the prior iterations after the avalanche there was still surplus ENERGY to access, first by the theft of the New World from its original inhabitants, and then progressively moreso first through the Age of Coal which took us from around 1750 through to around 1900, then the Age of Oil which took us from 1900 through to present day.
The monetary pyramid here through this entire time has used as its Capital the ENERGY accessible from the thermodynamic application of fossil fuels, through a whole variety of neat inventions during the time period. So every time a new invention like say Edison’s Light Bulb appeared on the scene, vast amounts of new Credit was issued to build such things as a nationwide electric grid. In reality of course, none of these things could ever pay off, they always only existed through constant credit subsidization. It was possible to do this by seriously underpricing the cost of energy, putting off the Day of Reckoning hopefully long enough to come up with the Holy Grail of something like Fusion Power, with the “promise” of limitless and clean Energy. However, despite all the years of experiments with Superconducting Supercolliders and the like, Fusion Power remains basically a drawing board type idea to this day, though all the time we get reports it is “just around the corner”.
Anyhow, without such a last minute rescue by the Fusion Power Cavalry here, the Credit Mountain of Money built around accessing ever more amounts of energy per capita will come down, and the AVALANCHE is just beginning here. As I wrote in prior posts in this thread, there is little worth buying here anymore, because just about EVERYTHING is based on continuing sources of energy to power it. Even Farms are based on this in the current model. Much of the production off the Great Plains “Breadbasket” of the world depends on irrigation water pumped up from the Ogalala Aquifer. That pumping is mostly done with diesel pumps, and while you might substitute some with Windmills, the depth now that has to be pumped from is probably too great for a Windmill to handle except in a Tornado, in which case the Windmill is destroyed anyhow.
What you have here as a result is a Cascade Failure of IMMENSE PROPORTIONS, a Credit Collapse Avalanche such as the world has never seen in all of recorded history. IMHO, our Iluminati Masters of the Universe are running around now like Chickens with their Heads Cut Off trying to figure out how best to protect their own “Wealth”, when in fact that wealth is ALREADY GONE. It’s floating around up there in the atmosphere as moelcules of CO2. THAT is where all the “Capital” is now, and it’s not terrifically useful Capital in this form.
I suspect the various CBs will continue to print in concert here for a while longer, and the Funny Money will slosh around in Bank Reserves keeping the TBTF from going under immediately. In the end though, they will CAPITULATE to reality, and the reality is that a MOUNTAIN of Snow collected up here since 1692 is ALL going to come down the Mountain at the SAME TIME. You cannot stop this avalanche from coming down, all you can do is to RUN AWAY. RUN AWAY FAST! Run away NOW. Get just as far away as you reasonably can from the center of this collapse, the Big Shities all over the world built upon Credit and the Thermodynamic energy of Fossil Fuels. They are DEATH TRAPS.
skipbreakfast post=3204 wrote:
Great thread. And RE, this was a great comment and worthy of being an article in its own right.
Thanks SB. I thought so also, along with the rest of the debate Dave and I pursued last night, so I put them all up on the Diner Blog under the title The Concepts of Money and Capital: The Debate Continues.
Really good day for Diner dishes today with Surly’s Mammon article as well, which Ashvin reposted here on TAE also.
RE
Nothing more refreshing than to wake up on a Sunday morning to read a really depressing tale of the Collapse as it plays out with the little guy caught in the teeth of the Shark. Even MORE DEPRESSING when it turns up on your own Blog.
There was a time where our institutions weren’t corrupt with moral rot.
Sadly, I do not think there was ever a time like this, it’s mostly an Imagined Past that never really existed at all. You yourself have written about the Pinkertons and how they sabotaged the Unions, along with of course our friends the FBI. We all know about how Milk was poured down the drain to keep the price up during the Great Depression, by our friendly institution of Da Goobermint. All while children were starving and lined up on the Potomac River with the Bonus Army, to be ridden down and burned out by the Cavalry of Douglas MacArthur, kindly members of that other wonderful institution of the FSofA Military.
When was there a time our institutions were not corrupt with moral Rot? Was it in the Ozzie and Harriet years of the 1950s? The same years Joe McArthy was spewing venom fromthe halls of CONgress? Was it in the 1960s, when the National Guard shot 4 Dead in Ohio on the campus of Kent State University? Was it in the 70s when Tricky Dick Nixon sent his Goon squad into the Watergate Hotel? Was it in the 80s when Ronald Rayguns fired the entire workforce of Air Controllers to break that Union? The 90s when Bushsky1 rolled the tanks across Kuwait? The Naughties when the WTC came a tumbling down on its own Footprint?
Nay, our institutions have always been corrupt, and this society has always been ruled by Mammon. There has been no just society since the day Agriculture was born in the Fertile Crescent lo so many millenia ago now. We are just now paying the price for all of it.
RE
I have reposted the Debate Dave and I are pursuing here as a Blog Article on the Diner, under the title The Concepts of Money and Capital: the Debate Continues.
RE
davefairtex post=3193 wrote: RE –
Hmm, ok that’s convincing. You’re probably right about the Chinese, and likely the Japanese as well. Its tough to place a trillion dollars somewhere useful and at the same time relatively low risk.
But I’m not so sure about the actions of a bunch of rich people. They are seemingly better placed to individually make semi-smart decisions on buying stuff. They have big stashes of treasuries (like you do) and are wondering where they might put them. I wonder that about my small pile of bank deposits!
We are allegedly seeing this in London. Rich Greeks (and perhaps rich other europeans) are taking paper and using it to buy real estate in London. It seems absurd on the surface, but from what I hear, its happening.
I respect what you say when you claim that there’s nothing out there to buy. But try this thought experiment. If I told you that your pile of treasuries would be chopped in actual value by 75% through a default, would you still say “I can’t find anything to buy?” Maybe buying medium-sized chunks of Alaska might look more attractive than a 75% loss.
Would a panic out of bonds usher in a “freegold” world? Who knows. I’m a bit suspicious of claims that something (other than a property of basic physics) is guaranteed to happen. It just reminds me too much of Marx’s assurance that the state would simply wither away. But gold would likely benefit from a flight from paper, likely driven first by default and then by the monetization response – among other things.
Again, if the Fed (and ECB) aren’t allowed to buy up all that bad debt, we get deflationary depression. If they do have enough political capital to both monetize and buy up bad debt, there’s enough excess claims to real wealth floating around out there to really cause a whole bunch of price inflation if even a fraction of it decides it is better off in “real stuff.” Even Alaska properties, Florida condos, little gold bars, or Picasso paintings.
There are other problems the Chinese have besides the actual worth of whatever they might buy is concerned. If they try to dump treasuries, the value of those treasuries will drop faster than they can find buyers for them. Only Da Fed could buy them by printing, and why would they do that? Force the Chinese to hold them to maturity at low to nonexistent interest rates instead.
Far as non-Sovereign holders of this debt is concerned, like me the question is what is a better bet here? The Greeks buying London flats is the Real Estate equivalent of buying Facepalm Stock. That RE has nowhere to go but down, WAY DOWN.
To a lesser extent, the same is true for Alaska RE. I don’t know which will devalue quicker, USTs or a Farm in Palmer. You know, there is a very decent likelihood in about 4 years when the Pipeline has to shut down for lack of enough Oil to pump through it that the entire economy of Alaska will completely TANK, and 99% of the population will move out. Why BUY the farm if that is the case? I could simply walk in and squat it, along with numerous properties up here ALREADY vacant.
I really do not have anything worthwhile to BUY anymore other than Food really and Gas for the Bugout Machines while it remains available. Some folks keep Day Trading around their assets trying to make a Killing here or there, certainly shorting Faceplant is a decent way to make some Toilet Paper these days. I don’t bother with that though because it really doesn’t matter. In the end, just about all these “assets” are going to drop to near ZERO in value, and holding onto Real Property is going to take your own Army. Farms and just about everything else will likely be Nationalized under either a Fascist or Communist regime.
Up at the top, games are being played with comparative currency devaluations, I wrote about that over on the Diner. Overall, the Dollar is the best looking Dog in the Kennel for the next couple of years anyhow I think. Somewhere along the line we may reach a Tipping Point and hit a Sudden Stop event, or the Boiling Frog effect may continue through to the end of my lifespan, but either way there still really is not anything worthwhile for me to buy, I am as Prepped as anybody reasonably can be IMHO. You cannot truly “own” anything you cannot carry with you or anything you cannot Protect and Defend. You cannot count on the “Law” to protect you, as evidenced by today’s article from Surly on the Diner, “Mammon is Hungry”.
It remains to be seen what the Big Boys do as far as shifting assets go to try to protect and defend their own “Wealth” is concerned. I am reasonably certain though at this point that the final Battlefield for this will not be on the Economic Front. War is coming now, to be sure. Whether this will be an International War or Civil Wars on a Global Scale occuring simultaneously I do not know for sure, but one way or the other, a lot of BLOOD will be spilled to try to wash away this debt, that truly can never be repaid at all. Mother Earth herself has been scarred badly, and we all will pay the price for that.
davefairtex post=3191 wrote:
So my follow-on to that is, if the US Fed stops deflation from happening by buying up all the trash and pretending there’s nothing wrong, all it takes for HI to take effect is for some subset of paper wealth holders to decide they want to convert their claims into real wealth before its too late, and then the game is up.
See there is the rub here. CONVERTING paper claims into “Real Wealth”.
At the small scale, you can see how this can be done, sorta. For instance, I “own” many USTs. I could liquidate them and buy with the proceeds a decent part of Alaska at current valuations on the land here. However, this purchase is more a liability for me than an asset if I made that trade. I cannot control such a large swath of Real Estate, and I sure would not want to pay the Taxes on it since I only would be using a tiny part of it for myself.
On a much larger scale, the Chinese face much the same problem. They COULD in theory liquidate their holding of USTs not just to buy a piece of Alaska, but the whole fucking STATE. REAL WEALTH there, right? Except problem is, what would they DO with Alaska once they bought it? They can’t organize up and run their own patch of the earth in China all that well, do they really need a Headache of ANOTHER patch of land to run here?
I’ll make the analogy to a small Biz I worked for a few years back. The Biz I worked for had one location, run sorta well, and they bought up a competing Biz run in another part of town. Problem was, it stretched all the anagement out too much, and trying to keep the Sattelite running was a money loser. Closed up the shop after a couple of years.
Everybody is working on a BAD paradigm here, and further EXPANSION of a bad pardigm does not make it better, it makes it WORSE.
There is NOTHING the Chinese can spend their dollars on here now, they canot even buy Alaska without incurring more liability, and Alaska is a relatively GOOD purchase here all considered. Certainly better than Facepalm anyhow.
A flood of dollars has to come form somewhere from somebody who wants to try to liqudiate those dollars for something ELSE they think is a worthwhile purchase. On the GRAND scale here, not even fucking ALASKA is a great deal. Liquidity Lock Up. Nothing worthwhile to buy or sell. That is the problem.
RE
I excerpted and reposted Steve’s commentary and my own on the Diner Blog.
https://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/05/26/the-dollar-oil-nexus/
Ashvin, WHEN are you guys gonna fix the Avatars? I could go and substitute, but I left the defaults for the purpose of fidelity to the original commentary.
RE
davefairtex post=3187 wrote: RE –
Perhaps the CBs will monetize sovereign debt, which will be deficit-spent directly into the economy by the government via social security, medicare, medicaid, defense spending, AFDC, SNAP, and the like.
As long as the banks don’t end up going under and presenting FDIC with a massive resolution bill, cash for trash is a success.
Limping along collecting your salary & bonus beats the hell out of a deflationary depression – especially if you’re a banker with a big house in the hamptons.
Perhaps they will continue to monetize Sovereign Debt and continue to dribble out money in the form of various social welfare systems like Social Security and the SNAP Cards, but they are not pouring out GUSHERS of money this way to J6P.
If you take what is happenning in Greece as a Model, Pensions are being cut and Wages are being Cut and Goobermint Jobs are being eliminated. So you are not seeing Funny Money moved into the Main Street Economy this way there at this time.
I have said many times before that as soon as Da Goobermint starts pushing money out directly to the population, either by Make Work WPA projects or by expanded Social Welfare payments, THEN you WILL get serious inflation, though still probably not HI until all faith is lost in the currency.
At the moment here in the FSofA, public jobs are being cut while the SNAP card program expands. A portion of the population is being forced into a more meager existence this way. It’s stil not a Tidal Wave though here yet, it’s a more gradual process.
There is no indication at the Top that a massive WPA will be undertaken or that massive Free Money such as a National Subsistence Wage will be issued out. J6P is being gradually Squeezed out here in the deflation, and will continue to be squeezed until a breaking point is reached and there is a Revolt.
An HI can only happen here if the flood of liquidity hits the real economy, and this can’t come from J6P, he generally speaking has no savings to unload. It can only come from the notional dollars held by the Chinese and others overseas, but they cannot dump them without screwing their own pooch.
The status quo of a Boiling Frog is what TPTB hope to continue with. Unfortunately, people are not Frogs and there will come a social breaking point. Greece is at it. So will we be soon enough.
Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You.
RE
steve from virginia post=3186 wrote:
In this context, the gold-money argument presumes a specific post-modern industrial economic society that functions/trades a specific way … a society that has conveniently forgotten Bagehot (and have never bothered to look up Wicksell). This is argument in a vacuum: not a real argument at all.
What does come next? Hard to say but the constant will be ‘less’.
Well stated Steve.
Overall, it is a conceptual problem. The tendency is to accept axiomatically that even though the Fiat will crash, Homo Sapiens will continue to hold the same things valued and pursue “trade” in more or less the same manner.
This may however be one of those Roads that is a One Way Street, or even a Dead End One Way Street.
On the assumption (hope) it is not DEOWS, where will we go from here? What happens once we reach the end of this road?
It’s all speculation, because insofar as we know (unless Atlantis really had an industrial culture before) we are breaking new ground here. Nobody knows what a Post-Industrial world will look like. Though of course there is no shortage of speculative Imagery out there from Mad Max to the Children of Men.
Personally, I think there will be a “Scavenger” period during which the flotsam and jetsam of the Age of Oil gets repurposed to keep stuff like the Railroads still operational for a while. I don’t see a great future for money during this period, though if Goobermints of some sort hold together you may have some for a while. You definitely cannot have functioning “Money” without functioning Goobermint. After that it’s just barter, even Gold Coins are just Barter Items. To make them “Money”, you need a Stamped Value placed on them so they are always worth the same thing inside a given trading system.
Money requires a SHARED AGREEMENT system between all in the society on the relative values of things. When that breaks down, when some people no longer value a McMansion at all and others place preposterous Numerical Values on them, you have Mark to Make Believe which no longer makes any sense at all. That really is the problem here now, relative valuations based on the monetary system are not reflecting reality. In fact, McMansions are WORTHLESS, and so are the Carz. Helicopter Ben cannot MAKE a McMansion worth anything, he can only print Bills. Even if he gave you a Billion of those Bills, there still would be no reason to trade them for the McMansion.
Our Value System is changing, MUST change because the Oil which powered this value system just isn’t there in quantity enough to keep the engine running, not on a Global basis anyhow. Now we have to figure out how to value everything we still do have in the ABSENCE of Oil. That is quite a challenge.
