All You Need Is Cash

UPDATE: And so it begins...

There has been a lot of speculation and noise about the end of cash lately.  This is one of those staple conspiracies that has been around since at least the 70s, as far as I can remember.  However, now there seems to be a new push for it, as events seem to be heading is a rather alarming direction.

The old cashless conspiracy said that central banks want to rid the world of cash in order to track and trace every single transaction and ensure that every diddle of tribute is paid.  It would, they say, also eliminate criminal transactions, though no one ever talks about the subsequent rise of alternative currencies and/or barter that would then step in.

In any event, the EU and US are making rather serious rumblings about the end of cash, and nations like Denmark are moving rather swiftly in that direction.  Is this to end all privacy?  Or is there fear and loathing on the part of the "elites" that is bringing this issue to the forefront?

If you answered "fear and loathing," you not only made Hunter S Thompson happy, you hit the nail on the head.  The "elites" are freaking out, and ending cash is one of the last weapons they have to avert full and complete (and uncontrollable) economic meltdown.

One of great weaknesses of the "elite" is that they think they can control everything; all natural processes are fully within their control, as they have become so disconnected as to think of themselves as gods.  In their conceit, they set off down a course years ago to control the economies of the world to the point where everyone would be lulled to sleep because investments always made money, prices were always stable and everyone had their share of gee-gaws.  Yes, if every belly was full and no hand idle, they could siphon off our labor and build their dream homes in the stars.

One thing about pride...it always goeth before the fall.

One thing about Nature...She resists being controlled.

Things have gotten out of hand.  The "elite" have discovered that organic systems have all sorts of fail-safe buttons installed that keep them balanced to their own rules.  They cannot and will not be dictated to by anyone, no matter how much technology and money you throw at Her.

To the point: the global economy has begun to spiral far out of the "elite" control systems.  Economic systems are natural organizations and they will find their own balance.  For decades, indeed most of the last century,  a dedicated group of megalomaniacs thought they could control the world.  As with all natural systems, they can be held in check for a while, but the errors begin to build up until they are no longer controllable.  Furthermore, when the errors inevitably correct themselves, the result is far worse than if the system had been allowed to adjust itself all along.  At this point, the reset has been artificially delayed since at least the 70s.  The inflation that swept Reagan into office was supposed to run it's course, but artificial fixes were put in place.  Those fixes have been compounded for 50 years now, and the bill is coming due.

Over the past couple of decades, every trick in the economic handbook has been tried.  They confiscated trillions of dollars in taxpayer money.  They raised and lowered rates.  They adjusted policy and shifted blame, but the compounding errors in the system have built to the breaking point.  The only game the "elite" have left, besides outright confiscation of all private property (unpopular), is something called 'negative interest rates.'

Now, I don't know about you, but 'negative interest rates' sounds absurd.  I had to look it up to be sure it was a real thing.  Sure enough, this is one of those economic back-stops that is held in limbo as a theoretical means to halt deflationary spirals. They idea is that with negative rates, banks charge customers to save money, rather than pay interest.  This encourages spending, and of course banks are encouraged to be less restrictive with lending.  Just two insy-winsy little problems with this idea: customers pull their cash and stuff it in the mattress, and loose lending is what got us here in the first place.

Most importantly, when customers start seeing their savings being depleted, instead of running out and spending, most folks will withdraw the cash and horde it.  This compounds (again) the problem negative rates are supposed to fix.  Folks pull their money but don't spend it, and banks quickly nose-dive into insolvency.  The only way around this is to make sure folks don't have cash to pull out.  If all your money is electronic blips, then it is rather hard to store them under the mattress.  The end of cash ideally means that all money is visible to the "elite" and they can enforce their policies on us ruminant animals to force us to spend or save, whatever they need to save the world today.

The one thing none of the articles discuss concerning "negative interest rates" is that when folks lose faith in the system (e.g. - don't have cash to do as they please), then they create alternative "organic' systems to fix the problem.  We see this in the so-called 'black markets.'  Anytime something is made illegal, there is an immediate birth of an underground economy to supply not only the illegal items, but all the ancillary services that go into supplying it.

What it boils down to is this: economies have 'seasons' where things grow and die on a regular cycle.  When those cycles are interrupted, alternative channels open up, just like water running downhill.  And like the water, when it is dammed up, it will build pressure behind it until the blockage breaks and a massive wall of water continues it's trek to the lowest level.  The global economy has been dammed by central bank and "elite" meddling, and the resulting decades-long pressure has built to a devastating release.  Nothing can be done to hold back the result.

The current move to ban cash can thus be seen as a desperate attempt on the part of the "elites" to defy Nature.  Their control over society has been predicated on their delusional belief that they are gods and their technologies have given them the power to control that which cannot be controlled.

Those with 'eyes to see and ears to hear' should already be moving out of the way of the inevitable rush of Nature re-balancing itself, whatever that means to the individual.  Genies cannot be put back in the bottle, so what civilization has thus far achieved will survive in some form, but the overlords of society are about to be swept away by their own egos.  Unfortunately, everyone gets wet when the dam breaks, but those in the path of the resulting wave are sure to be killed by it.

On the dark side, rough times are coming.  On the bright side, the age-old "elites" are about to be destroyed by their own hands.  How we fill the resulting power vacuum will determine the centuries to come.

Denial Anger Bargaining Depression...

It's not easy watching a country commit suicide.  It's kind of like a car wreck: everyone slows down to look at the carnage before speeding off happy to still be breathing.

Usually, when folks kill themselves, they seek a little privacy and try to do things as quickly and painlessly as possible.  Occasionally though, you get the jumpers.  They get out on the ledge and wait for big crowds to gather and media to show up.  These big public shows are rarely serious, though.  What they are looking for is some attention - someone to save them.

The United States of America seems to be one of those exceptions.  Not only has it crawled out on a particularly precarious ledge, but it is absolutely defying anyone to help it.  Convinced of its own immortality and what David Byrne called "special-NESS",  Not only has it edged itself out in a very public space, it is tap-dancing on the ledge singing the Star-Spangled Banner and yelling to the gaping mobs below about how privileged it is.

It's a special kind of insanity, really.

There's an additional problem.  This gross display of self-delusion is compounded by the fact that the nation has crawled out on the ledge carrying a lot of weapons and seems hell-bent on taking out a few million folks before swan-diving to a spectacular end.

A lot of countries and individuals around the world are trying to distance themselves from the coming carnage.  The number of people giving up their citizenship or permanent resident status has reached record highs.  Legislation has been introduced in Russia to ban possession and trade in dollars.  A dozen countries have demanded their gold back from the Federal Researve (good luck - getting smack off a junkie is easier).  Many other countries are establishing trade agreements in their own currencies to by-pass the dollar.

All of this is going on fairly quietly so as not to agitate the loony on the ledge, but he's getting wise and starting to get that wild, haunted look in his eyes.  He's spying on everyone, friends included, out of sheer paranoia.  He's got weapons pointed in every which direction.  He's insisting that everyone sign his Trans-Pacific Pact or he'll by-God jump.  In fact, he's showing all the same signs the USSR did a while back before slipping and falling to its death in a rather spectacular way with a vodka-swilling Jew riding a tank into Red Square.

The world is pretty much resigned to the inevitable, and since the loony gets ever more belligerent with every passing moment, it seems a good idea to stand back and let the guy rush head-long to his demise, while making back-up plans for the inevitable time when the rest of us don't have to worry about his destructive behavior.

Americans, being for the most part provincial and self-centered, don't realize how their country squats on top of the world and, in spoiled child fashion, issues demands and decrees that are completely oblivious to the rest of the world or the harm that it does.

Having been so steeped in "exceptionalism", Americans are blind to the destructive tendency of their culture.  Raised on diets of pro-Cowboy/anti-Indian, the US continues the single-minded conquest of the world in the belief that there is no other way but the Anglo way, and the world must conform or die.

Civilization is something that is grown, not pounded.  It also recognizes that there are many paths to the same destination.  Americans, and America, must reform or face extinction.  No man is an island entire to himself.

The decline of the US is now well into the paranoia phase, in which it is lashing out to blame anyone and anything for its misfortunes.  In fact, the whole problem is as simple as a point of view, but one that is extremely hard to take, because it requires seeing the errors of the current situation.

Slowly but inexorably the American people are waking up and realizing what is and has been done in their name.  This is causing increasing dissatisfaction and distancing from government institutions.  Once the people have been lost, governments crumble  Like marital infidelity, it is extremely hard to regain trust, especially that which was built on complete faith in the goodness and morality of the system.

American paranoia says that the rest of the world is plotting against it, but out here on the Far Side, we know the end is near and it is prudent to prepare.

To Lance And Squeeze

Regular readers may recall that sometime back, we looked at the word 'sequester', as in the program the US government instituted back in January of this year, to cut costs.  If you look up the legal definition of 'sequester', it means to take possession of property from a debtor until the bills are paid.  Although no one ever seems to talk about this, the US government being chock full of lawyers would certainly have chosen that word for a reason, which is what lawyer types are paid to do - dissemble, prevaricate and obfuscate.

Given that the US government has been running a sequestration program for the past year, is it any wonder that it has shut down?  Is this really a "budget battle"?  Or is it instead the prime lenders cutting off the flow of money?  Is Ben Bernanke going out and Janet Yellen coming in because she has the longer curriculum vitae in public sector economics and her husband is a Nobel lariat economist able to handle things like entire nations in receivership?

The reader is advised to scan down the right column and find the links on this page.  The first one is the US National Debt Clock.  This sobering website tells us that the US has a total of $126 trillion in unfunded liabilities and total taxpayers of 115 million people, so that every man woman and child in the US owes $1.101 million on total assets per capita of $332 thousand.  Even if we remove things like Social Security and Medicaide (now Obamacare) and count only money already borrowed, then each man woman and child in the US owes $190 thousand. In other words, if you confiscated all the assets of all the citizens of the US, it would only pay one-third of the national liabilities.

That is the textbook definition of BROKE, referred to in polite circles as bankrupt.  No amount of lawyering will change the facts, only the terminology.

"It is not, perhaps, unreasonable to conclude, that a pure and perfect democracy is a thing not attainable by man, constituted as he is of contending elements of vice and virtue, and ever mainly influenced by the predominant principle of self-interest. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted, that there never was that government called a republic, which was not ultimately ruled by a single will, and, therefore (however bold may seem the paradox), virtually and substantially a monarchy."  - Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, (1854). Universal History: From the Creation of the World to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I. Petridge and Company. p. 216.

It is now the point in US history when things will continue to worsen until the people cry out for someone - anyone - to fix the problem.  As in every other instance, this 'savior' will not be beneficial to either the American people, nor the world.  Experience has shown that the person who ultimately gets tapped for the job usually ends up causing more problems than are solved.  In recent history, we need look no further than one Adolf Hitler.

It is important to keep in mind that, no matter what else may have happened, Hitler did a bang-up job of fixing the German economy.  The people went from abject poverty under the Weimar Republic, to living the high life and nearly taking over the world in less than ten years.

One can feel the moment coming when the US citizens will cry out against a do-nothing Congress.  They will search, find and install a powerful and charismatic leader who will assume the entire powers of government in a popular mandate to 'clean up Washington.  This leader will be wildly successful at reversing decades of economic mishandling and America will get back to work - only it will be at the sacrifice of liberty and the well-being of the rest of the world.

Things could be fixed by simply repudiating the debt and returning to some semblance of sanity, much as Russia did when the USSR fell.  It is now much healthier and able to dictate policy to the US, it seems.  However, given the American public's predilection for doing nothing out of fear and/or ignorance, it is safe to assume that within the coming decade, a new global menace will emerge at the helm of the most powerful and pervasive techno-dictatorship ever built.

The reason there is so much fear and trepidation over so simple a solution as repudiation is that Americans have enjoyed about 70 years of high living based solely on the fact that it was 'last man standing' after WW2.  That's it.  Because that represents roughly three generations of good times, no one can imagine what it will be like to tighten the belt and trim a little fat.  That, however, does not make it less necessary.

In order to keep the illusion - commonly called the American Dream - going, history tells us that Americans will chose the worst of all possible solutions.  They will rally behind a single powerful leader perceived as able to cut through the Congressional morass and make things work the way they used to.  Without thinking of the consequences, the people will choose the most destructive and dangerous path out of fear of pain.  They will not lance the boil because it will hurt.  In turn, the boil will fester, causing blood poisoning, organ failure and death.  All preventable had they chosen a little pain up front.

At this point, it all seems rather unavoidable.  The American people appear unwilling to take the necessary steps to fix the problem correctly because it will mean ending a system of largesse and lard on which they have grown dependent.  Suddenly taking full and complete personal responsibility for one's life, after years of shoving it off on government, is terrifying to the average American.  Decades of voting themselves a free lunch, couching in terms like "The Great Society" and "social safety net", they must now face the prospect of going it alone - the skills for which have been lost over the past several generations.

Very soon, we will see a leader rise up who will promise not to stop the gravy train, but only if he or she is allowed to side-step the usual channels of Congress and courts.  This leader will ask to be given extraordinary powers that will be returned when the 'Great Work' is done.

America must admit two things: it can not continue monopolizing the world's resources for its pleasure, and there is no painless remedy for the current problem - either it will hurt a little at first, or a lot at the end.

As for the rest of the world, we should be prepared for uncountable troubes ahead.  If Hitler's Germany destroyed a major part of the world to stop, how much more will it take to stop a far larger nation with many more resources and technology only dreamed of by the Nazis.  And if the US goes (more) rogue, this will encourage others to launch their own initiatives without any moral stops, such as Israel, North Korea and any of dozens of non-aligned interests.

It has already begun.  Iraq and Afghanistan were the Poland of our generation.  Obama was supposed to be our Hitler, but he fizzled out like a wet fuse.  The big danger is the 2016 US elections.  We should look for someone much like Obama started off to be, with 90% approval ratings, Nobel Peace Prizes and a sort of quasi-religious support base.

The new Hitler is likely visible, though low key just now, just as Obama was after making his big speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.  The person won't be entirely new, but won't be anyone with much of a track record to distract from the message either.  We can be reasonably sure that he or she will rise up out of the US, though.  The die has been cast in that regard.

Why not Obama?  Because if he tried to take the kind of control necessary, fully half the country would start shooting.  Bad public image for a dictator.  No, it will be someone fresh who can rally the masses on all ideological sides.

We still have the option to bite the bullet and allow the US to collapse in a controlled and contrived manner, or allow the scenario painted above to play out, with nothing less than the complete disruption of the globe as the consequence.

How desperate are you to pawn off your personal responsibility to Uncle Sugar?

Ekonomi Dan Kerobohan

 UPDATE: As yet another example of silly things to worry about, given the much more serious economic problems, a bunch of religious fundamentalists with too much time on the their hands have decided to protest the Miss World contest, for which the contestants are already arriving.  That's right...it's been planned for at least two years, involves multiple venues over two weeks, and these yutzes are just getting around to protesting the fact that the contestants won't be wearing bikinis.  Yes, you read that right.  If you look at the article, you can tell by the picture that the protesters know they're a bunch of yutzes, because they covered their faces so their friends wouldn't laugh at them.  Sheesh!  What's worse are the complete and utter nincompoops in government that are holding hearings over an event that has already been approved and licenses for at least a year and now the crowds are showing up.  At the very best, this circus is to elicit bribes from the producers to ensure things go on as planned.  If I were the KPK, I'd be watching the bank accounts of every government blow-hard involved in the debate.

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Sudden impacts with reality are seldom pleasant.  If usually involves folks who have been living in a dream world rapidly coming to grips with the murky fantasy they've been living in.

Source: TradingEconomics.com

Such appears to the be case in Indonesia as we speak. The country has been on a boom unlike anything in its history.  Though the late 80s and early 90s were high times, the economic benefit was not as widely spread across socio-economic levels as it is today.

The current boom has been fueled in part by the massive Chinese expansion and great gobs of foreign investment money created by the Western bailouts in 2008.  The fire was further fueled by low interest rates and prices domestically.  But the music shows all the signs of stopping and the musicians are looking a bit tired and ready to take a smoke break.

Among the many reasons I chose to move to Indonesia was the speculation that this country, and the whole region, were about to boom, and I wanted some.  I haven't been disappointed.  And I'm not alone.  Western companies, languishing in sloggy economies back home, have been buzzing around Indonesia for nearly a decade now, pouncing on any vague opportunity that came along.  And therein lies the problem.

The combination of loose money and Indonesia's long cultural tradition of corruption combined to make a lot of folks rich, but as money supplies have tightened up and speculators have become quite a bit more skittery, the mire of Indonesian business practices have chased a lot of the easy money away.

Here's an example: in an effort to encourage growth in various regions of the country, the central government gave the provinces a lot of autonomy in allocating mining concessions.  As a consequence, there was a great deal of confusion (must intentional) over who would issue and benefit from licenses.  Every village, county and provincial government got in on the act, with dozens of overlapping claims on any given concession.  As a consequence, lawsuits started flying and many foreign interests, having gotten burned since the courts invariably decide in favor of local folks, have been leaving the country in droves.

Source: TradingEconomics.com

This hase the double whammy of draining foreign cash out of the system, and shutting down hospital, school and other social projects that are typically part of deals made with outside operators.  The flight of foreign currency in turn has caused a crisis of confidence in Indonesian bonds sending rates steeply up and making it expensive for the central government to maintain the debt, which in turn sucks more money out of the economy.

Combine the above with the recent end to the subsidized fuel system, which has been in place since the days when Indonesia was a member of OPEC and a net exporter of oil and gas.  A combination of drying up old fields, insane one-sided policy and endemic corruption have all but shut down new development and production, leaving Indonesia a net importer or oil now.

Ceasing the fuel subsidy only two months ago has sent the price of everything through the roof.  From cab fares to food prices, everything has suddenly become much more expensive, with double-digit inflation on the horizon.  The only immediate action the central bank can take is to raise rates, which it has done, and which is further slamming the brakes on the economy.

While it's not entirely undesirable to cool off the economy, which has been growing at 6%+ for the past five years, having it happen all at once could send the whole country into a tail-spin.  All the loose money slopping around has caused a number of bubbles in things like housing and designer clothes and other useless stuff.  Folks, flush with easy money, have been turning into lite Americans, buying electronics and gee-gaws like they are going out of style, rather than saving and deploying money wisely.

The wildly expanding middle class here is now populated with folks who have four cars, two tablet computers, a half-dozen cell phones, 37 pairs of shoes, and three armoirs full of clothes they never wear.  Furthermore, everyone's become a real estate magnate, buying and flipping houses and apartments as a hobby at the breakfast table.

And that brings us to the crux of the problem: consumerism.

Consumerism is a pointless and empty pursuit.  A company puts out a product, saturates the market, prices run up wildly and then crash, and then some new product comes along.  Do this enough times with enough products and eventually the entire economy collapses - from sheer exhaustion if nothing else.  Everyone has bought all the crap they can store and prices have run up as high as anyone will pay.  All the new iCrap and BoobBerries can't pry open pockets.  Crash and burn.

Emerging economy appears to be just a polite way of saying a new group of suckers.  As fast as the corporate masters can heat up an economy, they launch the same old tired game: dangle gee-gaws and what-nots in front a people and get them to chase the carrot round and round until everyone just collapses.  By then, the greedy bastards have moved on to the next playground.

Every time, people are led in orgies of consumption until the Board Members pull their money off the table - right at the peak or greed and corruption.  Areas where the puppet-masters are just starting their work are called 'emerging economies'.  Areas that have been led round the consumption barn repeatedly are called 'mature or developed economies'.

They come into an economy where people buy a home for life, and mom can stay home with the kids, and life is simple and affordable.  When they are finished, everything is polluted, families are tapped out and both parents have to work just to pay the debt, as they sit amongst a pile of gee-gaws that no longer have novelty or usefulness.  Neighbors have been turned against each other as they competed to out-do each other with their toys.

Maybe, just maybe, in the coming train wreck that we will call the global economy, folks will learn that pointless consumerism is an economic dead-end that only empowers and enriches the 1%.  To them, we are nothing but rats in a maze, chasing imaginary cheese until we fall over from exhaustion.

Have Indonesians really received a higher standard of living?  Or have they traded a quiet and idyllic life for clogged cities, smog-choked skies and piles of garbage?  Have all the gee-gaws and what-nots actually improved life?  Or have they only made us more neurotic and selfish?

Source: TradingEconomics.com

The question remains can Indonesia turn itself around?  Can government and the people control their impulse to slide the knife between the 4th and 5th vertebrae to get an inch further than the next guy?  Can people pull themselves back from the precipice from which the West has jumped like so many lemmings?  Is it really necessary to buy just one more iFad or car or what-not?  Can we resist the urge to shackle ourselves with debt for the appearance of wealth and success?

It was just 15 short years ago that Indonesia fell into a dark moment of history, with riots, destruction and killing in the name of having more stuff.  It's important to remember that kind of behavior provides entertainment for the Money Masters who play us like so many rag dolls.

Is it too much to ask for a little restraint before we all leap into the Abyss?

Will They Never Learn

I just had an epiphany.  I finally see what's going on at the macro level of economics and geopolitics.  I have a bead on why the Western oligarchs are so panicked.  And the answer is really stupid and childish.  It also explains why China is pissed at the US, why Japan was rubbed out, and why things are about to change really fast, really soon.

To put it in a nutshell...

Back in 1998, the Eastern hemisphere was struck with something we in the West called the Asian Contagion.  If you remember, the Asian economies were hit with a major recession, led by Japan (China was still developing back then).

It was bad.  The folks I've met who lived through it witnessed the bottom fall out and things get really nasty in these parts.  Riots in the streets, houses being looted at will, banks closing and/or being mob-robbed.  The red-hot Yen and Nikkei tumbled down a black hole from which they still haven't recovered.

All across Asia, the socio-economic fabric was coming unraveled at an alarming rate.  Naturally, Japan and the lesser economies looked to the West for help, but the dominant Anglo-American empire sat on it's wallet and instead, used the situation to solidify it's position over the region.

Let's pause for a moment here.  If you look at the calendar, you'll notice that 1998 was 60 years or so after the end of WWII.  Now we turn to a decent economics textbook (if we can find one) and look up Kondratiev and Dewey.  These two men, one Russian and the other American, both came to the conclusion at roughly the same time and independently that there was a long-wave cycle in all economies of roughly 60 years in which the business cycle turned south and there was nothing to be done about it but ride it out.

Dewey noted that governments could take certain actions to lessen the pain, but the crash and burn was inevitable...like sunrise or waves on the beach.  Kondratiev said the same thing, though he didn't focus as much on state actors.  Regardless, he was put in front of a firing squad since he couldn't find a way for the almighty State to stop it.

Now, back to Asia.  In the 60 years since WWII, Japan had become a major economic powerhouse.  It dominated Asia and dictated the ins and outs of how things were going to be around here.  They didn't make a lot of friends (not that they ever have).

So when things started to fly apart, China tucked in, Korea started maneuvering, and the other Asian economies went through violent convulsions.  Here in Indonesia, Soeharto was dethroned after 30 years of iron-fisted rein.  Similar events took place all over the region.

Tokyo called on the Anglo-American empire to come to the rescue, but the Western oligarchs were too busy positioning themselves to come out on top of the fray.

Slowly, things started to come back, like electric service after a major outage.  When all was said and done, Asian nations had unwound most of their debt and a massive shift in wealth had occured, as is often the case after deep recessions, or to be intellectually honest, depressions.  If you think of it in terms of a vineyard, winter had come and the vinters had trimmed back the vines in anticipation of spring.

Except Japan...

Japan had listened to the Western oligarchs and taken steps to try and stop the wholesale destruction of its economy.  They didn't want to lose their privileged spot atop the Eastern hemisphere.  They reduced interest rates to less than zero and kept the yen on life-support with the gold-carry trade.  Japan survived, but at a cost.

By dong this, Japan accrued more debt, rather than trim off the dead vines.  It was the proverbial heart-attack victim who continued to eat pork, smoke cigars and sit on the couch.

Meanwhile, China and the lesser economies had cleared out their debt and were building from a freshly leveled foundation.  When the inevitable long-wave spring came along, they sprouted forth with renewed vigor, creating red-hot economies from the ashes of the foregoing two years.  By 2000, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia were in position to launch forward.

And they did.  In the past decade or so, China has come to dominate global manufacturing and became an outsourcer to smaller regional economies.  The whole region experienced double-digit growth and exploding middle classes.

Except Japan.  It limped along, following the Anglo-American playbook with, at best, anemic results.  It watched as its once-vaunted engine sputtered along, refusing to get a tune-up because they didn't want to lose their status at the top of the pile.

Finally, Japan's electorate decided they needed to take action, since the leadership wasn't going to.  They threw out the political party which had run things since WWII.  They cleaned up the financial system and overhauled the banks.  But the biggest move was to tell the Anglo-American empire to go stuff its playbook.

Japan started taking action to uncouple itself from the Western train ride.  They stopped hanging on every word out of the Western oligarchies and even (gasp) told the US to close down its military bases, especially Okinawa.

Conveniently, Fukushima happened and put an end to that little uprising.  It got the Japanese focused on other matters and put it in the position of having to take hat in hand and go back to Uncle.

Meanwhile, China powered ahead, bringing the rest of Asia with it.

In the West, the same thing nearly happened at the same time.  In 1998, the milk started to sour a bit and Wall and Fleet Streets went into high gear.  They also found that nothing was going to stop the long-wave shift, but they weren't satisfied with following the laws of Nature.  They had enjoyed the greatest economic tidal wave in all of recorded history, and it had put the Western oligarchs at the top of the global heap.  They so coveted this position that they were determined to keep it at any cost.

Thus, the oligarchs took a page from the Pearl Harbor playbook and created a distraction.  It was big enough and shocking enough that it would be sufficient reason to create a war long enough to power through the long-wave negative cycle.  Everyone knows war is good for business.  It blows off assets and is cause to crank up the factories and dig a little deeper in taxpayer pockets.  But they hadn't figured on a couple of things.

Ramping up production when all of your factories are overseas does nothing to keep the home fires burning, and part of the natural long-wave cycle is the repudiation of debt and the transfer of wealth.  They are as inevitable as death following birth.

Because of the huge amount of wealth that had accrued to the West during the preceding 60 years, they have been able to float the boat for a short while, but they are quickly coming up against one of those glorious Natural boundaries that remind us that we don't know everything yet.

The vinter has tried to deny winter and keep the vines growing through the freeze.  As a consequence, the new growth is being choked out by the old, and instead of getting a bumper crop of grapes, there's nothing.

To use another metaphor, grandpa is on life support.  We can go visit him in the hospital, and all those bells and whistles and tubes and electrodes are keeping his heart beating and his lungs filling, but conversations are decidedly one-sided.

Shift happens.

Russia had its upheaval in 1991.  China/Asia followed in 1998.  They have had explosive growth.  The West has refused to relinquish its grip on the world's throat, and so America languishes and Europe looks a lot like Asia 15 years ago.

Only one Western economy has trimmed the vines and is now powering ahead with renewed vigor...Iceland.

In fact, we've seen this same thing happen again and again throughout history, which I suppose is the definition of a cycle, yes?  Because a handful of families refuse to let go of grandpa, we have to watch and suffer as the poor guy falls apart before our eyes.  Those who accept and live within the inevitable cycles flourish, while those whose hubris and greed lead them to defy Nature slowly wither and rot.

It's like Chauncey in Jerzy Kosinski's brilliant and profound novel, "Being There".  It doesn't take intelligence to see the repetition of the seasons and to infer that all life must follow those cycles.  Those who recognize it and live within the boundaries of the rules will rise to the top, and those who defy it and seek to supplant Nature will be destroyed.

The banksters know this and have done everything they can to kick and scream till the cycle goes away.  But everything is not enough to stop the waves from hitting the shore.

Years ago, a good ole boy in Texas running for governor named Clayton Williams made a rather profound, if inflammatory statement, "Rape is like the weather.  If it's inevitable, just sit back and enjoy it."

Ya know...he had a point.

Beyond The Precipice

If you count all the years that my dad brow-beat me with history, I've been studying the Problem for a long time. Decades, in fact.  I've entertained ideas and read tomes that have go far afield to try to make sense of the world we live in.  I've lived in monasteries (Catholic and Buddhist), spoken for hours with old folk, read mountains of books and websites, and I've come to one conclusion:

We've already jumped off the cliff and there's no way back.

The genie's out of the bottle, the cat's out of the bag, the bridges are burnt.  There's really no other sensible conclusion, as far as that goes.

So, here we are in free-fall, like the coyote in the Roadrunner series, watching the canyon floor rushing at us with a large boulder directly behind us.  The only possible question is, "What now?"

The one thread that runs throughout history, from the most ancient to the modern, is the problem of bansters.  Some joke that it is the second oldest profession, to which I add it is the only one without any redeeming qualities.  The most evil, destructive and predatory force known to Mankind is banking and the people behind them.  Every war, every destroyed society, every dark point in history can be laid directly at the feet of fractional reserve/interest-bearing financial systems.

To just take the last 250 years, and focus solely on the American continent, we can see the banksters behind every major downturn.  The colonists created real money based on the output of the state, so the Bank of England created egregious taxes and counterfeited the colonial scrip to undermine the economy of the time.  Andrew Jackson succeeded in vanquishing the Bank of the United States, and for that the banksters tried to kill him, and when that failed, began counterfeiting the dollar.  Benjamin Garfield, Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy all introduced real money to compete with the debt notes of the banksters.  All were brutally slaughtered.  Ron Paul proposes to do away with the Federal Reserve and return to real money.  Now they ignore him completely, but if he wins, they will kill him most assuredly.

Whenever a society becomes wealthy and successful, it is only because they have real money, completely free of debt and interest.  Every single one.  And every single one was undermined and destroyed by banksters.  Every single one.

The founders of the US tried to make it impossible for the banksters to take over, by stating plainly in the Constitution that only gold and silver were to be used as money, and only Congress had the power to regulate weights and measures.  In 1913, the Congress, in the dead of night on Christmas Eve, passed the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Act.  Both were illegal and both are still in effect.  Since that time, the American economy, which when based on real money, because one of the most powerful and wealthiest ever seen, has since crashed and burned.

The banksters funded and supported Hitler, who came to power and immediately started issuing real money.  The German economy, literally within a month, had completely reversed and went on to become very powerful.  So much so, that it took half the world's nations to defeat it.  And the reason the Allied forces were marshaled against Germany?  Had nothing to do with the holocaust or anything else.  It was only because the Germans had real money, and the banksters hate that.

Libya?  Real, debt-free money.  The United Kingdom at the height of its power?  Real, debt-free money.  Iceland.  Ireland.  Czarist Russia.  Rome.  Egypt.  Azatlan.  In every case, it was the introduction of fractional reserve banking and interest-accruing debt that destroyed them.

First, the banksters come in and start counterfeiting the money and debasing it.  Then, when the economy becomes unstable, they offer their solution, which is always debt-laden scrip and servitude.  Along come business cycles with booms and busts, recessions and depressions.  Slowly, by inflation (counterfeiting) the banksters amass the wealth of a nation, then by crashing the economy, they destroy what's left and loot the land.

Over and over and over and over and over...

And since no one reads or studies history, or when they do, it's highly controlled and perverted by corporate (bankster) interests, people are incapable of seeing this repeated pattern throughout history.  And so nations rise on the backs of real money, only to turn over their wealth to banksters who hollow out their country and throw the carcass on the pyre of history.

With that said, the only conclusion possible is that the world has leaped off the precipice and is falling rapidly into the void of debt-ridden destruction.

The most likely outcome is, judging by what the banksters have done on a nation-by-nation basis for centuries, they will now crash the global economy and start a war, the likes of which have never been seen before, at least since the era of myth and legend.  If we look at most modern warfare, the next war usually starts about where the last one left off.  Since WWII finished with atomic weapons, we can be fairly sure that's where we'll pick up.  We can also be reasonably sure that no matter how the sides line up, the banksters will be the ones behind all of it.  Their MO is to fund both sides and profit from the arms manufacturing and money-lending, so that they own both the victor and the vanquished after the smoke clears.

Is there a solution?  Of course, but it is highly unlikely, at least on a global scale.

The financial and banking systems are the bread and butter of the banksters.  That much I think we can all agree on.  They have, by sheer trickery and indoctrination, made us all believe there is no other way.  History tells us that societies that don't opt in are wildly successful, and the very few who managed to opt out (ancient Egypt) were wildly successful and prosperous.

As we survey history, we see that the primary means that the banksters use to get a foot in the door is currency.  No matter what specie has been used, they have always managed to counterfeit it, except for one.

Barter is the antidote to bankster poison.  They can not inflate, control or saddle it with debt.  I have something you want, you have something I want, we trade.  Very simple, clean transaction without any other entity in between.  But extremely inefficient, since it requires the mutual coincidence of need.  If no one wants what I have, I can't trade.  Thus, money or currency always arises as a way of storing and transporting and converting wealth.  However, once you have a currency, then the banksters have the foot in the door.

Bernard von NotHaus tried a unique approach.  He embedded his DNA into each of his Liberty Dollars.  Novel approach and it obviously worried the banksters, because they threw him in jail and confiscated his metals for daring to tread on their sacred ground.

The banksters themselves have gone to great lengths to prevent anyone else from counterfeiting their counterfeits.  The US dollar is notorious for the difficulty involved in creating exact replicas, but it is quite doable and happens all the time.  They've tried micro-engraving, special papers, special inks, watermarks, translucent windows, embedded threads, and now ever RFIDs, which also lets them see how much you have in your pocket from a distance.

Gold and silver coins were popular, but one common way to inflate those was to shave off the sides of the coins.  So, they put those little ridges all around them to prevent that.  So counterfeiters simply used base-metal slugs with gold and silver cladding around them.

Which all brings us back to barter.  I have a dozen eggs and you have a gallon of milk.  We both agree that it's a fair trade and everyone's happy.  Great as long as you want my eggs and I want your milk, but gets really complicated when you want to buy a car.  A whole infrastructure has to build up to trade large objects and even real estate to buy large ticket items.  Very inefficient.

How, exactly, can anyone get out from under the banksters?  I mean, when Kennedy issued the US notes (remember those with the little red seal and no words like Federal Reserve?), folks would take them down to the bank and deposit them, and the banks would send them to the Fed, who in turn destroyed them.

In that paragraph is part of the answer.  Banks.  Allowing the banks to be bought up by mega-corps, who in turn are in bed with the central banks, is one of the major channels by which the banksters feed on us.

I remember a number of years ago, all Texas banks had to be Texas corporations.  They were owned and controlled by Texans in Texas, and could not be branch operations.  There was a massive effort on the part of mega-banks, back in the 80s, who pushed as hard as they could and convinced the Texas people (or stole the votes...you pick) to allow branch banking.  Until that point, each banking location had to be separately chartered and could not be foreign-owned (outside of Texas).  After the banksters got ahold of it, Texas went from being the 11th largest economy on Earth, to somewhere in the middle, with the banksters dictating policy at the capitol.

Here's what I propose.  Strip all mega-banks of their charters and corporate protections.  Change the laws to read simply that no group of people can be seen as an 'person' under the law.  Take away their corporate veil and make each officer of each corporation legally and personally liable for the actions of the company, as a whole.

Next, all banks must be domiciled and chartered in the jurisdiction in which they operate.  No more foreign ownership, branch banking, etc.  As part of this reform, all banks must have a minimum of 85% of all deposits on hand at all times.  Furthermore, interest rates may not exceed 1% for any transaction, anywhere, at any time.  Any loan may be charged a flat fee, but no interest at all, and terms less than 6 months can not charge more than 2% of the total loan amount.

Finally, take away the banksters' monopoly on money.  A government sets a regulated value, say $1 equals 1 troy ounce of .9999 pure silver, or one gallon of crude oil, etc.  Heck, we could even set a global value for money, since no one will have a monopoly on it.  Once that's done, anyone can issue money.  You neighbor, certainly the government, Bernard von NotHaus...anyone, as long as it meets the minimum regulations and values set by common agreement.  You can have paper or coin or even digi-bux, as long as they are convertible into some standard measure.

Of course, this all assumes that anyone calling themselves a bankster at this point in time be thrown in jail for the rest of their natural born days for crimes against humanity.

Will it happen?  Who knows?  Certainly, enough people are starting to wake up to the fact that the root of all evil is a bankster.  But, most don't have a solid enough grasp on history and/or economics to understand why all this is necessary.  You can tell by looking at people's faces when they listen to Ron Paul.  They look like the RCA dog.

Perhaps it will take yet another global conflagration to convince people.

The one thing we have going for us is that there are obviously insiders who are waking up, as well.  They are seeing that the world has reached the limit of the current paradigm and can not grow any more.  The entire model of the banksters is a self-defeating on, albeit on a massive time scale, since it has taken millennia to reach this point.  But there is no one and nothing left to exploit.  They are down to Algore trying to charge us for air and creating artificial scarcity, which only works until someone figures out how to make their own.  The massive infrastructure to maintain a global police state is untenable.  The system is collapsing under its own weight.

The smart insiders are seeing that the paradigm must change, and this is causing an invisible war among the banksters.  They are factionalizing and losing control even of themselves.  The problem is we must figure out a solution before they implode, or we will face a Dark Ages that will make Europe's look like a momentary loss of senses.

One way or another, the system is collapsing.  The banksters are trying to control it, or at least appear to be in control, but the simple fact is that the collapse is based on Universal Law, and no one can stop it.  The best we can do is plan for it, like anyone living in a hurricane zone.  RADAR shows the storm coming.  Satellite is giving us great pictures of its progress.  The weather center is giving us all their statistical landing sites.

Are we going to sit on the sofa and hope for the best?  Or are we going to run down to the store for batteries and drinking water?

If ever there was a time for some quick research and action, this is it.

Beware The Ides Of October

Can you smell it?

That's the smell of bullshit.  It's the odor of the Man of Peace getting his bloodlust up again.  The idiots are doing everything they can to pick a fight with Iran, especially now that the Fast and Furious fiasco is quickly going to pieces.  Gotta change the subject before it gets too close to Man O' Peace himself.

Need another excuse to frame up Iran using the Saudi ambassador?  The Palestinian UN vote.  They need a distraction to stop that steam roller in its tracks.  You see, on October 1, 1948, the UN promised to recognize the Palestinian state.  They lied.  The Palestinians have been a tad upset since then.  Israel can't afford to let that happen.

The SS Hill-arious calls it a possible act of war.  Hahahaha!  Guess she forgot about the US killing their nukes scientists, launching viruses into their reactor control systems, blockading their ports, invading their neighbors without provocation or legal basis, setting up the Shah, etc.  Seems to me that it is the Anglo-American Empire which has committed multiple acts of war spanning decades, if not centuries.  Iran has shown remarkable poise and patience, so  far...

Why the Saudis?  Bad blood with Iran (Shi'a and Sunni thing) and they're the Mideast lapdogs of the Anglo-American Empire.  After all, it was Lawrence of Arabia who helped to set up Faisal as king of all he surveyed, and cleaned out the Turks as a sign of good faith.  Iran is also one of the prime backers of Palistine independence.

Iran is also the last major wildcard in the Mideast.  They are as likely to back the Chinese as anyone else.  Certianly, they're in bed with the Russians, who have hitched their wagon to the Chinese.

If you've ever played the game Risk, then you know the whole Mideast region is the most costly to win and the hardest to hold.  And it's the key to choking off the Far East threat.

If that's not all, one can detect the distinct reek of banksters here.  There's some kind of Big Thing brewing and it's going to pop soon.  You can see it in the complete insanity of trading in the past couple of weeks.  The EU is falling apart in slow motion and the next play is in motion.

If you squint just right, you can detect the Hidden Hand tightening the vice, squeezing the last dregs of juice out of the western economies.  They're setting up the final push, or is that putsch.  The fatal flaw here is that the bankster class has become so maniacal, so impressed with their own power, so entranced with their slick marketing, that they have blinded themselves to reality.  They think they create reality, so they don't see that big slavering beast called Justice sneaking up on their flank.

They've put their agents in the midst of the Occupy Wall Street crowds, using change agents to instigate mind-control techniques.  It's very similar to the methods the Man O' Peace used in his campaign, or that TeeVee preachers use to sway crowds.  You can see it in the YouTube videos of the strange group hypno-chants and the strange 'People's Microphone' technique.  They're pulling out the stops.

OWS crowd is already lost.  Don't try to save them.  They're too deep under.

Watching the US presidential debates is a curious pastime.  The candidates seem listless and resigned to Fate.  They aren't coming up with solutions, just platitudes.  It's the exact same ritual, text and verse, as every other election.  Spend more money.  Create more programs.  Bomb more brown skins.  The only one even approaching real issues and real answers is completely invisible.  In fact, that's how you know you should vote for him, because the establishment is terrified of him.

And meanwhile, the media treat the whole thing like some perverse horse race.  They call the action like Derby Day at Dover.  The only thing they don't see, at least as far as us rubes are concerned, is who the jockeys are.  Solution: candidates should be made to wear jumpsuits like race car drivers, with sponsor logos on them.  That way, we can all see who we're really hearing from, and who we're really voting for.

Still more clues?  David Cameron wants to change the way folks get to be king/queen in England.  He's going on and on about how boys and girls are all equal now (coulda fooled me), so why do boys get special treatment when it comes to sittng in the Big Chair?  One has to ask one's self, why this, why now?  One thing is apparent.  No one wants Chuckles to be king, including Mumsie-poo.

Then there's the Canary Islands.  Kind of like a canary in the coal mine, isn't it?  In case you're not up on your geology/geography, the islands sit off the coast of Spain, and the entire side of one island is poised to slide off into the Atlantic.  The sheer mass of rock involved would kick up a wave of biblical proportions.  And guess what?  Volcanoes, earthquakes, dogs and cats living together!  Won't take much to start the avalanche.

The really strange news?  Two Amtrak trains collided in California!  First of all, Amtrak's still around?  Second, they have trains in California?  Will miracles never cease?

Just a couple of hours ago, there was a 6.3 quake in Bali.  Just spoke with my bud in that area, who reports a pretty good lurch around noon and an minor aftershock at 4pm (local time).  Doesn't seem to be a lot of structural damage, but 50 people hurt ain't child's play.

And so the craziness goes on.  The events are coming hot and heavy, and most of it is pure BS.  The elite want to keep us either doped or off-center, so we can't mount an effective defense.  What they never plan for is Universe's little jokes.  The great monkey wrench in the sky has a way of mucking up the best laid plans of mice and men.

The beat goes on.  Sometimes I wish we could just hurry up and get on with it, but at other times, I default to the status quo, since the devil you know is better...sometimes.

Certainly, if the Man O' Peace is willing to sell guns to drug cartels, hoping that they'll kill Americans so he can use it to futher his agenda, he's capable of anything.  Oh, that's right, he's already killed two Americans by remote control, not to mention all the poor soldiers totin' the barges.

It's the old alchemical razzle-dazzle...black is white, up is down, war is peace.

Heck, the word apokalyptos means 'revelation.'  The revealing of something that is hidden.  In other words, anyone who tries to generate fear of an apocalypse is trying to prevent something hidden from being revealed.  So churches and the elite have spent centuries telling us to FEAR the apocalypse, when in fact we should all be working FOR it.  After all, it's about damn time some of this hidden crap gets a little daylight.  The apocalypse would be a GOOD thing.  See how they control us?

Onward through the fog...

Just A Little Bit Closer

Reader Note: Our usual column on acupuncture for treating blindness in MS will return next Saturday due to a heavy work and travel schedule in the past two weeks.  Thanks for reading and for the information folks have been sending in.  Sampai jumpa!
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Close.

Interesting word.  Depending on how you pronounce it, you can be zeroing in on your target, or missing it altogether.

Denmark closed its borders.  Minnesota closed its doors.  Stauss-Kahn is closer to freedom.  And the Greatest Depression is getting closer every day.

You can be a closer and get brownie points at work.  Or you can be a closer and be the last man out when the factory shuts down.  Kind of the opposite of a Wally Mart greeter.

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades, but we all love to get close to our significant squeezes.

A lot depends on what preposition you put with it, too.  Close up, close down, close in, close out, close to, close with.  Close the door, close to the door.

Back to Strauss-Khan for a minute.  Looks like the New York prosecutors read this column, since they have decided, as we did some time ago, that the whole 'raping chamber maids' story didn't smell right.  Last we saw, he had slipped his house arrest, and the maid was headed for deeper water.  What's interesting to note is that as soon as a new head of the IMF was beknighted and ensconsed, Strauss-Khan found himself quite a bit freer.  We're smelling a different rat now.  This story got more exposure than Lady Gaga's not-so-interesting breasts, and now they're all standing at the boarding gate waving him good-bye?  C'mon.  Do you really think we're that stup...don't answer that.

Speaking of reading this here column, looks like Wisconsin schools are suddenly flush with money after they put the reins on unions.  Did we call it, or didn't we?  We have nothing against unions, per se.  At the time they were in vogue, they served a vital purpose.  However, they have become nothing more than fronts for mafia and gangsters, fat and bloated from their own success.

On top of that, the public service is no place for unions.  If you want better pay and bennies, get a real job in the productive sector, so your servants to rob you too.  Sorry, bub, but when you are living off of my dime, you should be grateful to have food on your plate in the first place.

We here at LFS are all for screwing the corporate giants.  Lord knows they've bent us over for far too long.  But government employees work for us and take our money (at gun point) to do it.  Collective bargaining on their part should be limited to begging to keep their jobs every fiscal year.

In other news, Texas closes the legislative special session by allowing TSA to get too close to your goodies.  That the Perry/Dewhurst team are a traitorous bunch of NeoCon scum is obvious, but what do they have on the rest of the servants in Austin that makes them lapdogs?

How anyone could submit to TSA's illegal and immoral groping is beyond us, much less willingly allow their wives and daughters to be personally violated in such a gross and public manner is indicative of mass psychosis.

Obviously, the American male has closed down his higher reasoning and is close to being extinct.

Washington state has closed its tourist bureau and is close to a Minnesota Mambo itself.  Florida has enclosed pink slips with many of its public servants' payslips.  Many states are closing schools and libraries, and California is close to splitting in two.  At the same time, the US is no closer to a solution to its fiscal stupidity.

Many countries are closing parts of the internet to their citizens because it represents a direct threat to the hegemonic sovereignty of government over every aspect of people's lives.  They are using the threat of cyberwar as justification, yet those same governments are the perpetrators of the cyberwar.  Makes close to no sense, or does it?  Perhaps they need more bandwidth to launch their idiocy into cyberspace?  Gives a whole new meaning to the term, "Grow a backbone."

Every day we move closer and closer to the inexorable demise of the prevailing paradigm.  We are in a bus careening down a perilous mountain road, completely out of control, and we are wringing our hands over whether the engine oil was recently changed.  This is very close to being textbook insanity.

It is akin to organizing a shuffle-board game as the Titanic goes down by the bow.  We are hoisting sails in the hopes of gaining speed while the ship's pumps are overwhelmed by the onslaught of water in the ballast.  We are tossing out the baby while fretting over the safety of the bathwater.

We love a good metaphor around here.

It's the closing days of Western Empire.  Our sun has set and our flag is lowered.  We have squandered our moment in history out of sheer greed and avarice.  Many say, "The elite would not endanger themselves, so we must stay close to them!"  Au contraire.  As personal witness, we have seen first-hand the ability of someone who has lost all contact with reality destroy themselves and everyone around them, by being trapped in a model of reality that is flawed at its very core.  Closeness to the perpetrators will only hasten the inevitable demise, not protect against it.

Megalomania causes one to envision a personal cloak of invincibility, so that one is blind to the many holes in the armor.  Throughout history, we see repeated examples of people drunk with their own success and imagining themselves incapable of error.  Just because the ladder of domination has withstood so far, does not mean that the next rung will sustain the weight, or that there is even a next rung at all.

The PIIGS are close to complete implosion.  Denmark is withdrawing into its peninsular nest.  Gross Britain is anxiously watching the subjects get restless.  The US is on the verge of a collapse that will be the grist of history texts for hundreds of years to come.

Even if we stop dead in our tracks, the precipice will continue to move ever closer.  Nothing can stop the Laws of Economic Gravity.

As a civilization, we have built a mountain by digging the dirt out from under our feet.  No matter how careful we are, we must inevitably fall into the pit, while admiring the product of our cleverness.

When we attend the funeral of a friend, whose profligate lifestyle led to their untimely death, we don't marvel at the tragedy of their passing, we nod our heads in knowing that their choices made the current situation unavoidable.  Perhaps we admire their achievements, possibly envy some of their experiences, but we still feel justified that our own reserve leaves us living while they are dead.

The weakness of any paradigm are the assumptions on which it is founded.  We have assumed that debt was properity, while closing our eyes to the repeated examples, both personal and historic, that this is not true.  Every mouthful of food we take is a mouthful denied to someone else.  Every dollar of debt we use is a piece of future properity that we will not have.

Remember the Canadian guy who started the jogging craze?  His name was Jim Fixx.  He died of a heart attack at 55 while jogging.  Brings you close to tears, doesn't it?

As we close this chapter in human history, there will be many who will bemoan its passing, yet the aware person will see that we have carved our own headstone.  It is difficult for the individual to conceive of things so much larger than the Self.  The scale of our hubris has outstripped our ability to deal with it, even on a conceptual basis.

The hardest thing for humans is to come to grips with their own failure, but if our progeny is to survive, we must do so and quickly.  Look at the way the Army Corps of Engineers has fought the flooding Mississippi.  Accepting the inevitable flood, they have calculated when and where to release the onslaught.

In dealing with our creation, we must take the biblical advice and pluck out the offending part, in order to save the rest.  When a physician is dealing with a gangrenous extremity, his choice is to amputate or risk losing the patient entirely.  The climber whose arm was pinned beneath a boulder had only one choice, cut off the arm himself or die.

We are closing in quickly on this singular choice.  Will we sacrifice everything to keep the paradigm whole?  Or will we chose to amputate the offending parts to spare the more vital systems?

Close.  Closer, Closing.  Closest.

Lining Silver

Anyone with half an eye on markets has noticed that gold, silver and platinum have shot through the roof.  In fact, all commodities are running for the Moon since they are priced on world markets in US dollars, and the dollar is dying a slow and public death.

The death of the dollar is not the whole story, though.  Especially when it comes to silver, there is a much deeper and darker secret that is driving prices faster than the PTB/W can beat them down.

Around the world, there are things called 'bullion banks.'  These are basically secure warehouses where gold and silver money is stored to back various things, like currency and futures trades.  In a perfect world, if I buy 100oz of silver on contract, then some bullion bank accepts and stores 100oz of silver with your name on it.  It's the oldest form of banking on Earth.

The way paper money came into being was as treasury warrants or certificates that showed that I had an amount of gold or silver stored in a vault, and if I gave you my warrant, you could go to that bank and claim your metal.  All US paper money used to be gold or silver certificates, and if you went into a bullion bank, you could claim the equivalent in metal coins.

The oldest banking scam became playing the odds.  The banksters noticed that people liked to leave the metal in the bank and carry the lighter and more convenient paper.  Because of this statistical trick, they could lend out a chunk of your metal for interest while you weren't looking.  If you came into the bank to claim your metal, they played the odds that they could cover with other people's metal, thus making it look like all your metal was there.  Thus was born fractional reserve banking.  The banksters only needed to keep a small amount of real metal on hand to cover for withdrawals, and the rest they could farm out and make money on interest from your money.

The only real danger was if the customers of the bank lost 'confidence' and showed up in significant numbers to claim their metal.  If the bank couldn't cover the claims, the owner was marched out and hung.for fraud and theft.  Of course, it's all 'legal' now (Federal Reserve), but they still need to measure Consumer Confidence to make sure you aren't getting ready to hang them.

So anyway, back to the bullion banks.  They've been running a scam for decades now.  Let's say you buy 100oz of silver on long-term contract.  You take delivery of the metal at a bullion bank and they issue you a certificate and charge you a storage fee, either monthly or yearly.  Here's the trick.  Of your 100oz, they only really put 1oz in storage and lease the other 99 from another bank or owner.  The bullion bank makes money for storing something that isn't there, and the lessor of the 99oz makes money by leasing his metal to several other banks, as well.

Now comes the Perfect Storm.  Inflation has driven the nominal price of metals up very fast.  This made people sit up and take notice.  Gold being very expensive put it out of reach of most people, but silver was still at reasonable levels.  So a lot of folks started buying.  What's worse, those who had metal in the bullion banks wanted to take delivery of the physical metal.  That put an immediate strain on the system.

As sales increased, the price rose, more people got interested, which drove up prices even more, which made more people interested, which drove sales, and the whole thing became a self-perpetuating cycle.

The banks are desperate.  They are scouring the Earth to collect all the silver they can get their hands on.  The are so desperate they falsely convicted Bernard von NotHaus, of Liberty Dollar, on trumped-up charges so they could confiscate his $7 million worth of silver, even though that amount is just piss in a bucket to save the system.

One solution they are trying is massive short buying on COMEX.  This has the effect of driving the price down, albeit slightly and temporarily.  It also has the effect of digging their accounting hole even deeper.  They are still playing averages, statistics and 'confidence' in a world that is quickly only trusting the real thing in hand.

When this thing unwinds, the price of silver will shoot through the roof.  When it does, probably sooner than later, then gold and platinum will unwind, as well.  In short order, the prices of the Big Three will soar to levels that are most likely double, if not more, of today's prices.

The math doesn't lie.  It can't end any other way.  It is written in stone and is as unavoidable as tomorrow's sunrise.  The first victim will be JPMorgan, which has a massive short exposure to silver.  When Morgan collapses, most of the major banking houses worldwide will follow, because they all have short exposure to metals.

This scan has been perpetuated for decades by playing a game where the financial world poo-pooed gold and silver, and played down the investment value of the metals.  They had to maintain this stance in order to keep people for looking too closely at the shell game they were running.  On top of that, they were making massive profits renting empty storage, and leasing the same pile of metal over and over again.  It's a great living, if you can keep it going.

Many people are becoming aware of the scam.  Many more don't know about the game, but they see the nominal value of the metal running away, while the purchasing value of their paper drops precipitously on a daily basis.  Even the Wally Mart CEO is saying publically that inflation is killing his business.  And Wally Mart made its fortune selling cheap goods at low prices to people with no money.  Now, even their market is drying up.

The death throes are obvious.  The whole system is collapsing.  And really, the value of the metals is not rising.  They have been the same for thousands of years.  It's the amount of paper it takes to hold some of that metal that is changing.  One ounce of gold has bought a fine, custom-tailored suit for hundreds of years.  But, the price of the suit in paper bux has risen dramatically, especially in the past decade.

The real interesting thing to watch is what will happen when JPMorgan starts to catch fire.  They've already raided the Treasury (your pocket), and there's not much left to take.  They'll be piles of 'too-big-to-fail' talk coming from the mass mind control.

The Big Question is how much shit will the American people put up with?  Do they have any fight left, or are they completely fluoridated and Xanaxed into submission?
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By July, most of us won't recognize the world as we've come to know it.  The PTB/W, in the guise of corporations (their current sheep's clothing), are making a play to take it all off the table.  But, they are teetering on the edge.  Their current actions belie a sense of desperation.  They have lost control in some key area(s).  They are flailing around trying to keep people from looking behind the curtain and see that having the whole system is NOT the end of the world, but actually the beginning of global peace and liberty.

They can't stand to have that happen.

It's a very important moment.  It's one of the pivotal points of history.  What remains to be seen is if they can pile enough weight on the backside of the Titanic to keep it afloat, or will the ship snap in two and sink despite their greatest efforts?

If you love liberty and want to live like a free person with the ability to amass real wealth and pursue happiness in your own way, then you have a very simple and readily available weapon against tyranny.

Buy silver.  Buy lots of it.  And only accept real, physical metal in your hand.  (oh, and this is NOT financial advice...just telling what I like to do for a hobby).

The Big Crash is not the end of the world, it's the beginning of a new one.

On Life Support

Most of the time, people feel guilty if they hope someone will die quickly, but when we see someone suffering horribly and there's nothing to be done about it, then our only wish is for release.

The global economy is our patient on life support. Right now, the body is lying there with tubes sticking out of every oriface. There are tubes pumping nutrients in and tubes sucking out waste. There are tubes pushing air in, and tubes delivering medications. There are myriad machines and monitors all around the bed, and the family has gathered on one side of the room to discuss what to do.

We see the body convulse with pain. We see the eyes flutter trying to tell us something. We hear the groans and gasps, as if the body is experiencing terror and severe pain.

It's time to pull the plug. It's time to remove all the tubes and wires, and let the body die a quick and merciful death. Keeping it alive for the sake of our unwillingness to let go is causing our dear one to die ever so slowly and miserably, and the level of care needed to maintain this horror show is outrageously expensive.

Let it die.

Another medical analogy is a patient with sever burns. The skin has literally turned to charcoal and must be debrided or massive infection will set in and the person will surely die. They are immersed in a chemical bath and stiff brushes are used to scrub away the dead skin, all the way down to muscle and sinew. The patient can't be allowed to pass out or they will slip into a coma. Stimulants are used to maintain consciousness. It is described as the most painful experience one can have outside of CIA black ops.

In the old days, economies just died when they had run their course. Nations died, people died and it was not a pretty sight. With modern technology, we can keep the lungs inflating and the heart beating, but at what price?

The organism has become so complex and entangled that it no longer threatens individuals or single nations. It now threatens the entire socio/political world, and a good chunk of the natural world, as well. But the fact remains: the old, dead flesh must be removed or growth will simply cease and the patient dies.

We have allowed, and we are all guilty of watching and not acting, a small group of astoundingly greedy people to rig our natural economy into a cyborg that makes the Few rich and powerful, and the rest of us its servants. Despite thousands of years of history to the contrary, we have allowed fiat currencies to become the norm, banks to become our leaders and our minds to cease imagining better ways to do things.

We allowed usury and corruption to infiltrate our public lives. We all looked the other way when it happened, because it appeared that we were along for the ride. The appearances were false. We were along for the ride alright, but we were the ones being ridden.

The time has come to let the patient die. If not, then we will all die with it. This grossly unfair and immoral system has left us all with a pile of cash and no wealth. Just spend a couple of minutes reading about the Weimar Republic in the years after WWI. Housewives burned money instead of wood in the kitchen, because it was cheaper. People carried bags and carts full of money to the store to buy just a loaf of bread. Restaurants didn't post prices because they would go up inth the time it took you to eat your meal. This nightmare is coming to a planet near you.

The result of crises like Weimar, or Zimbabwe, or many others, is dictatorship and slavery for the survivors. This is analogous to the burn patient in whose body infection and death have set in.

We, the people, whose natual bodies and vested self-interests do not match those in power, must take back what we gave away. We gave away our power because we were asleep, because we were tricked and because we were greedy and thought we would get a piece of the pie along with the bankers. The truth is ovviously far from that perception.

The question remains, how do we get out?

It's amazingly simple, but it will involve some fear of the unknown. We have been so conditioned to see the world from only one perspective that even when the view sours, we can't imagine looking from a different perspective.

You must sell all of your stocks and bonds, stop month payroll deductions for 401(k) and start buying hard assets, like heirloom seeds, gold and silver, and energy products. That last one is problematic, since most of us don't have a place to store oil and coal, but there are ways to go around it, such as solar and wind generators, etc.

I can hear you saying, "WHAT?! Are you NUTS?"

Well, yeah, but that's beside the point.

First of all, in 1999, I cashed out my 401(k), took the tax hit and bought gold. My money has made over 500% return. How's yours done? I have a large indoor garden under a skylight on the top floor of my house and several large barrels of water throughout the house. I could be completely locked in for more than a month without to much effort. The energy is a little more difficult. I have a generator and some gasoline stores, which will maintain communications for a time, depending on my usage. I don't own a single stock or bond of any kind.

Now here's the part where most people stop: cut up all your credit cards and burn them immediately. Even if you do nothing else, this one act will free you and put a knife deep in the heart of the Beast. The one thing the Beast most fears is that people stop borrowing from it and paying the ourrageous fees for the priviledge.

In my studies and thinking, I have come to the conclusion that the one point in history where things got off the tracks was in the 1920s, in America, with the creation of E-Z Credit and charge-a-plates. It's all been pretty much downhill from that moment, from what I can see. Usury is what feeds the Beast and makes us all servants to it. Hell, even the word 'mortgage' means 'death pledge,' in French.

We have all been hoodwinked and we need to extract ourselves. It has come to the point where we can't imagine another way of life, yet it does exist. I can personally attest to it. Yes, there is more perceived risk, but in the end, I control the risk, not some faceless bankers. My savings are not prone to some governmental or banking whim. I owe nothing to any institution (well, at least after May, but that's a minimal risk).

Try this experement: turn off the power mains to your house for one week. Not just an hour or a day, that's easy. I mean one week. It's easy here in Indonesia. Happens all the time. But, you folks in North America and Europe rarely experience such a thing.

Turn it off and then see what happens. How much of your food depends on electricity? How much time do you waste on things like TV? How much of your life depends on things like cell phones and lights? What sort of solutions and changes can you make to reduce your dependence?

Ask people in Brisbane, Sri Lanka and Brazil what they wish they had done while the sun shined.

Isn't your family's safety and well-being worth one week of effort?

Now, get on Yahoo or other financial site and compare the price of gold since 1999, to the absolute value of the stock market, where your retirement hopes have been languishing. If you had thought about it back then, would you still have stocks or would you convert it all to gold? Don't forget to figure in the inflation rate, because having a dollar then and one now are not the same.

Con artists will continue to play their games until they get caught at it. Once the mark sees through the grift, they walk away. The grifter hopefully goes to jail.

The only reason the scam keeps working is because we keep telling ourselves it's real and that we will get rich one day, or at least have enough to support us in our old age. But we need to face reality, it ain't gonna happen. Your only hedge against the inevitable is your own smarts and the support of friends and family working together.

That's it.

The end is truly nigh. The patient has been on lifesupport for decades, and it's time to let go and let it die. It's merciful not only to the patient, but to those who care for it.

Perhaps the easiest thing to do to get started in to unplug the One-Eyed Monster. The more time you waste passively 'watching,' the less time you are using for active verbs like: loving, creating, reading, working, thinking, and motivating.

The economy will collapse. That is inevitable, regardless of what all the powder-puffs and slimy bankers say. It is comeing, and soon. A leaking boat must sink unless something is done to fix the problem.

Fixing it is going to be painful. That, too, is inevitable. It will cause harm and people will suffer. There are no two ways around the problem. However, remember what you learned years ago. When you tear the bandage off, it hurts for a moment. When you peel it off, it prolongs and exacerbates the pain. It's a lesson to be applied now.

We can be pro-active and take the bull by the horns, or we can make like a bunch of Spaniards and run. Either way, it's going to hurt, but by meeting the problem head-on, we have more control over the variables.

This year looks to be a wild ride. It's only two weeks old and already the waves are growing bigger and angrier. We must either surf or drown, but for now, we have a choice. When the waters have you is not the time to look for a boat.

My uncle had an expression that always made a lot of sense to me: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

And now that I think about it, getting a horse wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

By the way, the real target in Arizona was the judge who had blocked an effort to nationalize 401(k)s and IRAs. All the other gore was to distract and cover up that one fact. THEY are attempting to take over all retirement accounts and pensions and replace the money (about $9 trillion) with government markers, much as they have done with Social Security.

Just another reason to cash out now and take the tax hit. Better that than lose the whole thing later.