Archive for the ‘The Economy’ Category

The “Conservative” Mind

Monday, August 9th, 2010

The “conservative” need never provide evidence to substantiate the rationalizations of his/her irresponsibility for any and all social ills. He does not have to prove that the homeless choose destitution, let alone provide us with the reasons that might provoke such a choice. Because this would entail, first, the real work of investigation and learning, and “conservatives” do not work, but only delegate work; and it would further entail a response to the problem. The “conservative” is not interested in responding to problems, only in dismissing them (unless, of course, he can “respond” to the problem with his “volunteer” army, which is to say, shrug the responsibility onto someone else’s shoulders).

The “conservative” conserves only his own energy, for his own private, selfish, narcissistic purposes. He claims to have “ideas,” but all his thought boils down to one pathetic proposition: “I am not responsible.”

How Revolutions Really Begin

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

Of course, if President Obama takes the radical actions necessary to spare this country from revolution — such as issuing an Executive Order or Signing Statement abrogating AGI’s contractual agreements with its criminal employees, in the name of National Security and Domestic Tranquillity, of course — then revolution will not occur. Franklin Roosevelt took such steps in the 1930s, and thus prevented revolution in his time.

Barring this, here’s a likely scenario, involving white middle-class businesspeople.

John Q. Taxpayer — that’s his self-description, and not what I call citizens — finds himself unemployed and unable to find re-employment.

He exhausts his meagre unemployment “benefits,” and, unable to pay his many overdue bills, finds his home under foreclosure.  His home is also home to his wife and children, and none of them have any place to go.  The grandparents all live in those “retirement” places to which Americans consign the elderly, paid for by Social Security [sic] and not an option for John Q. and the Taxpayer family.

The Taxpayers, in fact, have now become, in the words of American business, the Losers.

Desperate and without help, the Loser family stays in their home, hoping for a miracle.  Instead of this miracle, they find deputy sheriffs on their doorstep, come to evict them and seize their belongings for auction to recompense the mortgage company, that is, the Winner “family of businesses.”

Then, Catch-22 rears its absurd and gruesome head:  John Q. is a Real American who has voted Republican since Reagan at least, and maybe since Richard Nixon.  Maybe since 1960.  His bona fides as a Real American includes an assortment of guns.  Seeing armed men in forbidding sunglasses that prohibit any human eye contact, John Q. panics and, armed with, say, his Glock 9 or a 12-gauge shotgun, or his AK-47 hobbyist knockoff, he blows away the lead Deputy Dawg.

Deputy Dawg’s pack lays seige to John Q.’s house and calls for reinforcements.

But the Pack has misjudged the situation.  John Q. has neighbors.  His neighbors dont know him, actually, but they know they’re unemployed and facing eviction themselves, with consequent homelessness and even foodlessness

The neighbors are also Real Americans, that is, armed and desperate people; in some cases, heavily armed.

So the Pack, for the first time, finds itself caught in a crossfire, and the forces [n.b.] of Law [sic] and Order [sic] have a bad day at black rock.  A totally bad day, as the young would say.

This incident alone would be only, as corporate television likes to say, “a random act of senseless violence” perpetrated by “disgruntled individuals.”  You know, “loners” who didn’t “talk much” and didn’t have many “friends.”

But multiplication transforms loners into an army and senseless violence into armed insurrection; in other words, revolution.

Sooner or later, after all, John Q. Loser and the Neighbors will seize — that is, liberate and restore to their rightful owners, We the People — television and radio stations of their own, and begin broadcasting stuff you’ve never heard on the airwaves before.  At that point, when the meaning of words changes, revolution will have truly begun in the United States of America — originally, the home of the Revolution to End All Revolution.

All things must pass.

Wizards!

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

The guy who gets it right is Peter Schiff.

Bailing Out

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

What would George H. W. Bush do if Prescott Bush had not made a fortune in the Thirties doing business with Hitler?  Manage a hardware store?  And what, in turn, would George W. be?  A periodic drunk clerking in a 7-11?

Such are our "leaders," paper tigers literally.  The people who told us Saddam Hussein could make a cloud over Manhattan in the shape of a mushroom, who talked about cakewalks and roses, who proclaimed in banners that the mission was accomplished, now tell us the sky is falling over The Economy and that we had better give them more and different royal powers right now, or else!

Or else what?  Credit will dry up.  What do the "leaders" plan, then?  To borrow, on credit, $700,000,000,000 (just to pick a number out of the air) in order to pay off the credit card debt of the "leaders" who by far make the most money off of The Economy.  This payment will "free up" more credit.  Rinse and repeat.

As for these "leaders" of finance, nothing happens to them except to get a little richer in spite of what they do.

We have got to pay The Piper and, sooner or later, so do our "leaders," one way or another.  They may pay in cash, or, like Louis XVI of France, they may pay in kind.  But they will pay The Piper.  He’s got the toughest union in history, and he always gets paid.

The Economy, by the way, is our economy.  We make it, and we make it whatever it is.  We write the rules, there are no invisible hands, Tom Wolfe is a stooge, and there is no Santa Claus, unless he’s us, too.

“The Vultures Have Come Home to Roost”

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke