Crunch And Burn

60x24=1440
1440x60=86,400
86,400x365=31,536,000
31,536,000x3,000=94,608,000,000

Yeah, I know.  Doing math has never been one of my favorite pastimes.  Even when I want to know the answer, I prefer to let people who like that stuff crunch the numbers and I just happily accept whatever they tell me.  But bear with me for a minute.  There's a method to my cyphering here.

The last number on the list up there represents the number of seconds in 3,000 years, give or take a few leap days and dinner at Sardi's.  Why in the hell would I want to know that?  Because I needed a little perspective on things.

If you received one dollar a second all day, every day, for 3,000 years, you'd have $94 billion bux and change.  Heck, each day, you'd wake up with $86,000 more than you went to bed with.  At that rate, you could buy a McMansion every week, for cash.

So why am I lashing you, dear reader, with all these numbers?  Why have I chosen this Valentine's Day 2012, the fourth anniversary of my Asian adventure, to torture and main with mathematics?

Well, if you look at the bottom line, you'll notice that in 3,000 years, you'd only have about one tenth of one trillion dollars, meaning it would take 30,000 years of earning one dollar every second to get one trillion dollars.  Therefore, at this rate it would take 450,000 years to pay off the US national debt, assuming no compounding interest with repayment at 86,400 buckaroos every day.

According to the US debt clock, which I have conveniently linked in the side bar for your handy reference, says that consumer debt in the US is $2.5 trillion.  Mortgage debt (again US only) is $13.4 trillion.  The number which makes my eyes fall out and my brain short circuit is the total unfunded obligations for debt and social programs and pensions is...wait for it...$118 trillion dollars.

It would take an entire geologic age to pay that off with out $86,000/day, every day, 365 days a year (with leap days off).  Don't know about you, but I've never seen $86,000 at one time in my entire life, much less every day for a couple of million years.

To put it another way, if every man, woman and child on Earth (7 billion give or take a pro football team) forked over $16,714 right this very minute, the US would just get back to 0.

I don't know about you, but that astounds me.  I mean, there are Stone Age tribes here in Indonesia whose entire life imcomes per capita will never equal that much, and we haven't even gotten to the Amazon yet, much less Africa.

John D. Rockefeller

Look how much pain and suffering Greece's mere EUR345 billion has caused.  In fact, the combined debt of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) is less than a fifth of the US unfunded liabilities, and that's causing millions of people to lose everything and governments to become unstable, and riots in the streets, and the possible collapse of a currency.

The average US citizen with a bachelor's degree can expect to earn about $52,200/year.  That means with no interruptions and a 40 years career, he or she will earn roughly $2 million in their entire life.  Roughly 40% of the US population have a BA.  That ain't gonna cover it, sorry.

Even if you manage to get through your whole life and rack up a house and a car that are paid off, and stash away some cash and investments that get you through to a hole in the ground, your kids will have to sell all of it just to pay the onerous 50% death tax on your estate.  That hardly gives them a leg up on the next generation, and that's assuming lawyers and other bottom feeders don't descend on your scratchings to challenge this and claim that.  And if there's 10 cents left in your account, believe me, they will.

The question I have is: Why is anyone supporting and defending a system/paradigm that is in no way supporting and defending them?  You scramble all your life to build a family and an estate on the pittance that the banksters and government leeches leave after interest and taxes.  Then, when you die, it's all stolen at the point of a gun so that your family has to do the same for the remainder of their lives.

It's a vicious and cynical circle designed to maximize the amount of wealth stolen from you, and minimize the amount of services and benefits returned to you.  If at any point you don't pay the Syndicate's protection fees, they take it all and throw you in jail, thus likely impoverishing you for the rest of your natural born days.

Frankly, when you take a cold, hard look at this mess, why would anyone want to continue it?  Why not let it all fail and start over.  That's likely to be less painful in the long run than the endless bailouts and government buy-outs and welfare programs buying cell phones and service for those who don't deserve them using your money.  You're also paying for housing, health insurance and food for other people at the point of a gun, when you can barely (if at all) provide those things for yourself and your family.

The System is broken, at least for the vast majority of us in the Pile.  For those at the top, life's a gravy train of undeserved and unearned bonuses, holidays, vacations, and country club memberships paid for with your broken back.

Bammy's gotten in more rounds of golf in the past month than I've had in the past 20 years.  In fact, I haven't gotten in a single round since he became president.  And his rounds are paid for by us, as are his lavish family jaunts around the world on our airplane.

Congress gets rich retirement accounts, special health care and recreation facilities, tasty paychecks, and an entire phone book of other benefits paid for with our sweat and toil.

The banksters get grossly huge bonuses, Ivory Tower offices, Manhattan suites and upstate summer homes, and at least one paid day off every month for what?  Lending you a few bucks until payday and sticking you with disgusting interest rates that make pawn shop loan sharks look like upstanding members of society.

Let it fail.  It's not worth saving.  The System is corrupt and evil and is designed to benefit the very few on the backs of the decreasing number of truly productive members of this so-called society.

Athens, Greece

Since Bammy took office, the US national debt has gone from $10 trillion to $15 trillion.  The number of US families is 83 million.  They could have handed every family in the US $60,000 today.  Think what that would do for the economy.  Instead, it was all given to a bunch of vile, decrepid old men who ran the country into the dust in the first place, and then wanted us to bail them out when they screwed the pooch.  How much sense does that make, at least from the point of view of the vast majority of us.

You've seen the numbers now.  Do you really think this System is supportable?  Do you honestly think that this will all end in a bed of roses?  Do you honestly think that it can be sustained much longer?  The US debt alone is already at staggering levels, and it's only one of 190 or so countries, most of which are in the same boat to some extent or another.  And they all owe the same cabal of twisted, life-sucking greed mongers.

"Athens Burning," the headline reads.  Coming to a town near you, sooner than any of us would like to think.
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Today's Bonus Economic Read-N-Weep chart stars the Baltic Dry Index...

Shot Heard 'Round The Block

US: After you.
EU: Oh, no.  I couldn't.
US: I insist.
EU: Pleas, after you.
US: Oh, nonono, that won't do.
EU: Let's go together!
US: OK.
**CRUNCH**

The Battle of Brooklyn Bridge got underway over the weekend, with the owners of the bridge trying to cross, and the bankster henchmen, I mean NYPD stopping them.

My dad always said that when the revolution gets under way, you'd better have the cops on your side.  I don't think he envisioned JP Morgan blatantly paying a $4.6 million bribe, I mean making donations NYPD.

One ray of hope were the military types who are showing up to help out with Occupy Wall Street.  Of course, they are harder to bribe and their bennies are being ripped off by the very organizations being protested.

The unions are showing up, as well.  But, according to Drudge, they're chanting "Re-elect Obama!" Which can only mean one thing: there are political operatives and agitators infiltrating the ranks, most likely as agents provacateur, and certainly to steal the limelight from real people demanding something be done to curb the bandits in 3-piece suits.

The protests are spreading, to Boston, to LA, to Seattle.  Folks are finally targeting the real criminals, but it remains to be seen what the outcome will be.  I put NOTHING beyond the banksters to cover their Blessed Assurances.

Meanwhile, the EU corpse has already begun to rot, even though it's still in the midst of St. Vitus' Dance.  Folks are beginning to realize that there will be no resurrection from the grave.  Germany has already begun to rake in its marbles to go home.  France is pretending like anyone still listens to them.  The PIIGS are desperately trying to find a move out of checkmate.  And all Britain cares about is whether Kate is preggers or not.

In Asia today, the markets were whipped bloody, with Hang Seng getting hung snug.  Jakarta is senseless and bleeding.  The only one who escapes was Seoul, because they were on holiday.  But they've already been hit so hard that there's not much left to take.

Globally, everyone is holding their breath, both from the stink and from the anticipation.  Who will be the first to shoot.  You know it's inevitable.  These things always end in a bloody mess.  Anyone who isn't making contingency plans for that eventuality had better wean themselves off the Xanax bars.  Short of an alien attack or the Second Coming, there's no other way out of this mess.  Wherever you are now, that's probably where you'll be when the real nasty starts.

You can rest assured that if JP Morgan is willing to bribe the entire NYPD to get their way, then there are no holds barred here, folks.  Lines are being drawn and one should put serious though to which side of it one stands on.  In this next go-round, there won't be any neutrals or third-parties.  There will only be closer and farther away.  Sooner or later, every heart and every mind will be involved.

Most of us don't remember WWII.  Unlike most Gen Xers, my parents were Depression Era/WWII.  My grandfather was a SeaBee in WWI.  So where most of my contemporaries had parent of the Korean War variety, my second-hand education stretches back just a bit further.  And it's not a pretty picture.

My dad got his first pair of new shoes at 12 years old.  His toys, as a youth, were things that he and his friends made from found items.  One was called a 'nigger shooter.'  It was a pistol-shaped piece of wood with a clothes pin attached and a handful of cut-up inner tube.  Another didn't have a name that I remember, but it also used a clothes pin, a broken knife blade, and would launch a strike-ahywhere kitchen match a fair distance while striking it at the same time.

Dad served his time on the home front as a general's aide de camp, but his best friend and one of his brothers served under Patton.  Another brother was in the Pacific.  The third was in the second wave at Normandy.  All survived.  Between them and my grandfather, I got an earful about the gloom in those days.

What's coming makes all that look like spring training, and we don't have half the skills and inventiveness they did.  How many people do you know, including yourself, still save jelly jars for glassware?  How many know how to can fruits and vegetables?  Who can sew, or even has the tools to do it?  Anyone out there with a root cellar?  Does anyone out there know what an ice box is, or how to churn butter, or even where to get fresh whole milk to churn?  Do you know how to make farm cheese?  Can you hunt and field dress an animal?

If you answered no to most or all of these questions, you're in deep shit.

How about some other skills?  Can you navigate by the sun and stars?  Which side of a tree does moss grow on (in the northern hemispere)?  Which mushrooms are edible?  What medicinal plants grow in your area?

Believe it or not, I learned all of this stuff, mostly from my dad and his brothers.  The navigating I learned myself.  When I first arrived in Indonesia, I started studying the local flora.  I know that if I get dengue fever, I need to chew guava leaf, that sort of thing.

Yes, I'm strange, but I may get a bit further down the road than some.

What does all this have to do with protests in Brooklyn, you ask?  Well, that's the opening salvo.  It's the 'shot heard round the block.'  It will escalate, more than likely at the hands of the PTB, but folks will answer.  It always starts like this.  While you have a minute, go read up on Lexington and Concord.  See if you don't detect a few parallels.  Soon we'll have the Blockade of Charleston.  The only real question is "when".  My guess is it's close enough now that you can open the office betting pool.  Closest to the actual date wins 1,000 rounds of ammo.

Poppyboy and Dad used to go on about the coming revolution.  They would fill my head with signs and portends of the coming storm.  They would tell me which things had always worked throughout history, and which didn't.  In a way, Fate has prepared me for this time, if for no other reason than to be able to sit here and tell you, "Watch out!"

Perhaps not.  But that's beside the point.

The point is that IT has begun.  There is no escaping that conclusion.  You should be preparing your heart and mind and your household for the eventuality.  Wishful thinking and willful blindness can not and will not change the course of history.

If there is one ray of hope, it is that the PTB are genuinely afraid.  It is getting out of their control, and they eat control for breakfast.  Like any cornered beast, they will fight with a ferocity that I think most folks are ill-prepared to face.  Clif High at HalfPastHuman.com calls it the 'normalcy bias.'  Folks will deny their own senses until they are run over by the train at the end of the tunnel.

If you did not grow up in the Age of Political Correctness and were not taught that being male is wrong, then you probably played army when you were a strapling.  Remember how you used to strain your senses to catch any sign of someone approaching?  That's where you should be right now.

For God's sake, turn off the TeeVee.  You can't think clearly when someone is telling you what to think.  You must READ all your news.  Reading involves a lot of filters and engaged cognitive function.  It won't take long before you can start reading through the words.  Don't wait.  Start today.

Everything you know is about to change.  You can either stell yourself for it or let it smear you into the pavement.  Your choice.