Gone Til Next Wednesday

Monetary Theory and Debt

OK.

People always hold out that if you renege on your loan and default, you are harming your neighbor because he uses the same bank.  In other words,, you are effectively borrowing money from your friends and neighbors and if you don't pay it back, your neighbors will do without.

First things first.  To the best of my knowledge, this isn't true at any level.

We are in a fractional reserve system here in the US.  The Fed and the States sell the rights to run a bank to buddies (This statement may not be entirely true and if you take me to task for it, I will not be able to respond as vociferously as normal, but it sure appears to be true to me).  The buddies then deign to give you and your friends and neighbors a pittance for letting them hold your money.

Once the buddies have you money, they can work magic with it through the completely legal Ponzi scheme known as fractional reserve banking.  As soon as they convince the kid who mows your lawn to put his money ($20.00), in an account at 2% interest, they can go out and cut a 1-year loan to the kids mom for $180.00.  The deposit earns the kid 1%, the loan earns the bank 9.5.  BTW, I just googled Bank loan rates and this was number three on the list.  Checked the info against my Credit Union and it appeared to be pretty similar.

So, the buddy bank pays the kid $0.20 at the end of the year for keeping his money.  The kid now has $20.20.  The bank earns $197.10 for the loan, and they get to keep most of it. They pay the kid back his $20.20 and then the bank pockets $176.90.  You see, the bank gets to keep it.  The money that they create out of thin air is theirs.  That is the key point that everyone seems to miss.

Banks are nothing but a license to create money.  They aren't your friend.  They aren't respected members of the community.  They are licensed charletans.

Imagine running this scam with $1,000,000 as seed capital.  8.85 large is a nice way to end out the year.
So remember kiddies, when you don't pay back your loans to a bank, you aren't hurting your neighbors, you are preventing the nice buddy banker from buying his cherished Beluga.

A Good Read

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/09/cognitive-slaves.html

I have some trouble with Mr. Robb's logic, but I do feel that he makes a point.

Blogging, and it's retarded siblings twitter and facebook are, at their core, vanities.  The create spaces where individuals can have a small audience.  These are the dedicated core users that Mr. Robb speaks of.

But to say that these users create the value might be a bit of a stretch.  In a sad way, the social networks are the emotional equivalent of beauty contests and high school student body elections.  It is an arena where an individuals can carve out a readership and a following for their vanity.  I am not at all certain that it creates worth.

The Trap Mr. Robb falls into is the one embodied in a crude viewing of labor theory of value, where the labor that someone puts into something defines it's value.  There is no discussion of the skill of the labor, there is no discussion of the quality of the output.

I don't think that social networking is anything other than a fad.  It will go the way of cruising and disco, a monument, carried on by some odd enthusiasts, imbedded an a culture that has moved beyond it.

The Overarching Importance of "Mine"

When you boil down the debates about the economy and the perceived problems facing us, it is becoming more and more apparent to me that we are a completely atomized society.  Nature, red of tooth and claw lives among us.  Consider for a moment the pontifications of one of the richest men in the world.

Folk live in a house that the bank owns that they cannot afford.  For some odd reason, they consider the house theirs.  For reasons more evident to me, the bank considers the house to be it's property.  Now, the folks that bought the house can't really afford it, but since it is "mine", they can't seem to make themselves walk away.  The bank who loaned money to fools who cannot pay them back thinks it is "mine" too.  A sensible move for an underwater homeowner would keep the bank from reaping the "mine" benefits of a thirty year mortgage.

Pension plans are the same.  Groups that have negotiated pensions for themselves see the too-generous pensions as "mine".  All well and good when there is enough stuff on the table.  But when the cupboard starts looking bare, the pensioners who have planned on the gross mis-allocation, and the companies/governments who made the original agreement for the mis-allocation will both go the the mattresses to defend what they see as "mine".  My guess is that neither will be the same at the end of it.

We are negotiating a unique point in our country's history.  We have made far too many promises.  We cannot in any way, shape, or form, keep all of them.   But the few that are willing to at least recognize that the promises are worthless are written off as freeloaders (in the case of homeowners walking away), oppressors (entities that try to renegotiate their pension plans), or fools (folks who pull out their retirement early on the idea of a bird in the hand).  We pretend that these folks are abandoning some sacred contract.  But I want to know, when does a contract which is untenable and contrary to the blunt reality of the world become sacred.

We are in the midst of shattering promises.  They will be breaking around us for years to come.  But the promises that we so cherish are what will be dragging us down if we try to hew to them. The saddest part of this is that we are so intent on a that which is mine we will not be able to give up anything ourselves to heal the flaws in our Republic.  It is always someone else who has to bear the burden.  What is mine is sacred and cannot be compromised.

This idea is organic to our culture.  It exhibits itself in the political gamesmanship in D.C.. It shows itself in the ruthless competition shown by the Wal-Marts of the world.  It is exhibited in a military/diplomatic policy intent on keeping stuff flowing to the homeland.  I cannot see a way that we would ever be able to abandon it without extraordinary pain.

Guess what is coming?

Adrenaline Rush Idiots

Sarah Shourd is a moron.

Now, I am certain that she is well educated.  Probably speaks well.  Might even be fun to chat with at a dinner party.  But she is high-functioning, peculiar breed of moron endemic here in the West.

The, I-am-pretty-and-safe-and-anyway-I-can-do-anything-because-someone-will-save-me moron.

Up here in Oregon, we are forever fishing these idiots out of snow caves on Mount hood because they are too stupid to pay attention to the weather.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spend on dramatic helicopter and search and rescue efforts for save idiots.



Now, back to Sarah the moron.  First consideration will be a map.

 OK...here is the deal, they are saying that the Iranian border guards crossed "a few yards" into Iraq to illegally "kidnap" her and her buddies.

What the fuck was a woman (a sex the Kurds treat like shit) doing hiking in Kurdistan (which by the way, is a part of Iraq and definitely in a war zone) and then having the absolute and utter stupidity to get within ten miles of a country we are always in the mood to attack?

Idiot.

And the richest part of the deal is that this is a description of the folks who are the center of this foofoorah.

Differing Standards

The biggest problem with being an old geezer is that you remember the past.  This complicates things mightily.  A good, solid forgetfulness allows one so much more in the way of flexibility in thought.

For example, I remember reading the news about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas day, 1979.  I thought that it was kind of stupid for them then, but, I could forgive them because it was sitting on their southern border and was firmly in their sphere of influence. 

But the boys in Washington were too thrilled with their chess game (Brezhinski was, is, and always will be a controlling little dickhead) to let the thing be.  Even though Carter would be out in a couple months, he started making the moves to screw things up for the Rooski's.   Truth be told, there is a whole bunch of data that shows we were fucking around, stirring the pot well before Ivan got a bee in his bonnet.

So after the invasion, we spent a decent amount of time wringing our hands, and then we armed the Mooj (mujahaideen)  six ways to breakfast and thirteen to the dozen.  We trained them in Pakistan (with the F---- Chinese for God's sake), hell, we even kept captured Russians in a prison there.

When the Russians finally admitted that they fucked up and left Dodge, we fell over ourselves praising the Mooj.  Doughty freedom fighters one and all.  

Then they went back to their cherished hobby of killing each other on a retail basis, fighting over which tribe stole the other tribes goats and which tribe had the proper take on the somewhat opaque writings of Muhammad.   In other words, things were pretty much normal.

Then 9-11 happened.  It was in fact, the biggest sucker punch in history.  It came out of nowhere.  We did our usual take about how someone should have seen it coming, but anyone who says that can be safely dismissed as a moron.  No one could have seen it coming.  But Bin Laden had rented some property from one of the weirder tribes for the off-evening of pederasty and weapons training.

At this point, the doughty freedom fighters were re-branded as the Taliban and Al-Quaeda, who we funded at one time in the long ago, when it was convenient) and made to be a systemic risk to our safety.

So now we are nine years into it and no closer than the rooski's in keeping that shithole under our thumb.  

So, refresh my memory.  Why are we there?  

Jimmy

The more I think about it, Jimmy was the last of our adult supervision.

He told us things that we didn't want to hear.  He talked with people and even managed to stop folks from killing each other for a bit.  He didn't over-react when some of our folks got caught in the middle of another country's civil war.

He recognized that we were living beyond our means, he gave us a stern talking to which we ignored.  When he got ousted by a fool who told us we could have anything that we wanted, he didn't sit around and mope, he went and began doing serious charity work, helping poor people live in their own houses with work being done by their own hands.   He continued working for solutions that didn't involve bombing people.  He still showed us how a good man lived.

I would strongly recommend that you watch this entire video.  I would defy you to find any fault with what he says.

Didn't get the memo

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/american-businesses-and-consumers-are-not-deleveraging-they-are-going-one-last-binge
You know, this doesn't surprise me one little bit.  Most folks have a tendency of thinking that the lifestyle that they have is the lifestyle that they deserve.  I sometimes catch that bug myself,  it is good for a smackdown when it comes.
I think that folks are thinking that the good days are going to be returning.  I don't know where they get that idea.  When I was down at my Mom's, my sisters were joking about folks not getting the memo.  I think that there are a lot of folks out there who didn't get the memo.
The country and the world is changing.  The biggest change is that we are going into a world of resource constraints.  We have always acted as though the world's resources were infinite.  We are now finding out that they are not.  Oil is peaking (some argue that it has peaked), coal is questionable, phosphorous is looking a bit thin on top.  With these soon to be restraints in place, we will be progressively limiting the techologies that we have used for the past two centuries to spite Dr. Malthus' gloomy predictions.  Now we are starting to wonder if he will get the last laugh.
So now we see folks out there showing their colors, ant or grasshopper.  What always amazes me about stories like this is that the intent of the writer is to starve the grasshopper.  This proves that the loan-negotiations can be misused.  They must be stopped.  Well, that may be true, but that will hurt the faithful ants who are using them as they were designed.
But in the end, all of this is nothing more than a morality play for the future.  We are, as usual, showing both the bad and the good sides to our nature.  Read about it, keep it there for future reference.  Try to figure out which of your circle of acquaintances are ant and cling to them.

Guess who won?

Then Watch This

First Watch This

Oddly clueless

I wonder where Paddy Chayefsky is today?

I spent some time at a tea party get together.  I was bored.  I have never seen such undirected anger over the world's state and direction.  Everyone there was thoroughly and completed cheesed off about the economy, their retirement (or lack of the same), falling home prices, rising taxes, unemployment, etc. etc. etc.  None of the folks there really had any idea about how to solve the problems other than we should go back to the way things used to be and to "get government off our backs".

When I went around afterwards, trying to talk to folks about ideas, they were remarkably unwilling to talk about concrete ideas.  For the most part, they devolved into various groups of folks with a common recreation interest.  The fishing crowd was more interested in boats than ideas.  The hunting crowd was more concerned about guns than programs.  I found the off-roaders nearly incomprehensible.

Most of these folks just want their no-care, wrinkle-free lifestyle back.  They are all taking it in the shorts right now.  But the biggest reason they will fail isn't because they aren't angry, it is because they are bored with the give and take of politics.  They don't realize that all of this mess is a result of our democratic process, they just see the mess and want it to go away so that that they can return to their petroleum-fueled lives of recreation.

I think that the decisions that need to be made are beyond a lot of folks in this segment of the population.  They are not really interested in the democratic process.  They are interested in the preservation of their perceived perquisites and the maintenance of the status quo that has allowed them their status symbols.

Hence they are easy meat for those who are the biggest enemy of our liberties and our society.  These are the Sarah Palin's of the world.  Simplistic and ego driven, they pander to an inchoate demographic like the tea-baggers.  Simplistic solutions that will never work but are focus group tested are trotted out and turned aside just as quickly.

That is what I see happening next, these unsophisticated recro-commandos will buy into some manipulative, power-hungry demagogue who will promise them a return to the world that they want.  There will be an attempt to subvert the government to get more power.  It is my belief that the checks and balances of government may well be enough to hold off the attack, but they will be sorely tested.

Fall is here

I spent yesterday in a funk.  Got a bottle of red wine and spent a couple of hours on the phone talking to family.  As usual, this helped.

I think that it is normal this time of year.  Yesterday was a great indian summer day, so part of you is out in the sun, soaking up every erg of sunshine and trying to see how much of your daily supply of vitamin D you can manufacture.  Part of you needs to get inside and start the preparations for the fall and winter.   So the day was spent doing a little of both.  Neither were accomplished to my complete satisfation.

I just noticed that it is time to restock the freezer.  Gotta get some burgers and some more pork.  Might do me some good to get more frozen vegetables and if I read this article correctly, I might need to stock away a couple of cans of coffee.  I also need to stock up on malt for the winter brews so necessary for football season.  

So this next week I will probably be posting the fall cheapskate recipes.  Gotta fuel boys and myself in the fall.  There are things to accomplish.