The Rub

Greetings good citizen,
The, er, ‘stress’ of acclimating myself to a reversed schedule has rendered me more ‘incoherent’ than usual.

Doesn’t help that my perspective is contrary to the BS you’ve had hammered into your head since childbirth. [A phenomenon I find extremely curious because once it is confirmed, you should see it for the ‘self-serving tripe’ that it is without my coaching.]

For those of you not so quick on the uptake I will be more specific, I’m talking about that illusion that increasingly makes less and less sense, money.

I was reading an article online the other night where this professional ‘money manager’ was telling his readers that he charges his kids ‘rent’ (forcing them to ‘save’) so they will learn about the ‘value’ of money.

Understand dipstick’s ‘lesson’ is centered on the no longer viable idea that money pays interest (although that wasn’t the ‘example’ he used, he was using his ‘savings’ to buy stocks!)

So he equated spending money with ‘firing’ his personal money making ‘robots’ (what he referred to them as.)

He went on to claim that he had ‘earned’ $3,000 in annual ‘dividends’ from his holdings.

Do you know how few stocks pay dividends or that companies are under no ‘obligation’ to pay a dividend AT ALL? (Even if they’re crazy profitable.)

Well if you didn’t you weren’t about to be ‘educated’ by this idiot’s article!

Which is to reflect just how ‘unreliable’ professional monetary advice can be.

Worse, the most prominent ‘risk’ when it comes to investing is listening to advisors peddling their own self-interest!

Naturally, you’d expect ‘financial advisors’ to focus on the traditional ‘backbone’ of investment, that of ‘savings’. These days ‘ordinary’ savings vehicles don’t pay spit, which is why chucklehead is ‘speculating’ in the market WITHOUT telling you…although he does ‘volunteer’ what stocks HE invested in (hoping YOU will be STUPID enough to buy them!)

Now, back to reality. Markets around the globe are bleeding from the eyesockets today (which has nothing to do with nothing. Wall Street is so far divorced from Main Street as to be on a different planet, as disturbing as that realization and what it implies means to the average citizen.)


Which leads us to this headline:

To Reassure Investors, Fed Stresses It Will Not End Stimulus
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Concerns about the effects of the Federal Reserve’s stimulus policy can dilute the policy’s impact by causing investors to doubt that rates will remain low.

What do you suppose the Fed is going to do when people realize the Fed is inflating away their purchasing power?

Can you say Banana Republic?

How are our two stories ‘related’?

Note the extremely poor ‘quality’ of what passes for ‘investment advice’ these days and how shamelessly the pundit uses his (probably already grown and gone) ‘kids’ as a ‘teaching tool’?

How bizarre is it good citizen that this is a perfect example of ‘what you don’t know’ causing insurmountable harm?

Once again your (deliberate) ‘ignorance’ only aids the grifters the government has failed to protect you from.

Not that ‘government the concept’ failed, it was (of course) the humans running it that have failed.

We’re back to ‘weakest links’…as you well know.

How can ‘The Bernank’ maintain this false façade?

Let us return to lesson one shall we?

ALL MONEY IS FUNNY!

I don’t mean just paper or coins, I mean ALL of it!

How ‘astonished’ would you be if I told you our financial system is based on Unicorns?

You’d probably think I was kidding but think about it.

You’ve seen money but you’ve never seen a unicorn so how can this be?

The whole concept of ‘debt’ is imaginary; that’s the first thing you need to wrap your head around!
The next step is really simple…there is absolutely zero difference between debt and unicorns…so there you are!

Even more disturbing is how prevalent the belief in Unicorns (debt) is.

Do you honestly believe Ben Bernanke has an endless supply of dollars at his disposal? (Especially after his masters have hollowed out the US economy?)

Of course you don’t!

But it works today because the price of disbelief is too stiff.

And there’s the rub!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

What?

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we have the corporate owned media using trivia to distract us from the real issues at hand.

JPMorgan Ignored Warnings in Loss, Inquiry Finds
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and BEN PROTESS 49 minutes ago

JPMorgan Chase ignored risk controls and withheld information from regulators during big trading losses last year, a Senate inquiry found.

A Senate panel report says that Jamie Dimon, chief of JPMorgan Chase, withheld details about the bank's daily losses.

Then our ‘guardians of society’ double up the information, attempting to confuse the matter even worse than it already is.

How inconvenient the very next article points to the real issue?

Pearl Brady of Brooklyn worries that it will be years before she will be able to put money away.
Younger Generations Lag Parents in Wealth-Building
By ANNIE LOWREY 49 minutes ago

A study finds that younger working adults are not doing better financially than the previous generation.

With ‘wealth management experts' opining we need to set aside at least a half a million dollars to retire ‘safely’ and with most workers earning less than 25 to 30 thousand dollars annually, the only way the majority can retire ‘comfortably’ is magic.

They’d fall short of the mark even if they saved every penny they ever earned!

In order to be a low wage drone for corporate USA, retirement must be an impossibility. (Not that this is news to the people being compared in this article.)

We have been saying all along we’d have to work ‘til we drop’ (IF we were lucky enough to find work after being ‘churned’ into pauper-dom!)

But the 4th Estate knows thinks YOU are STUPID.

How pathetic is it good citizen that a majority of the corporate owned media’s Blarney is insulting to the average person’s intelligence?

If we back up to our first post we have to scratch our heads and wonder what anyone is supposed to make of the banking sectors alleged ignorance.
Which is to point to what ‘everybody knows’. The crash of the financial system was deliberate and these clowns drove it off a cliff KNOWING the taxpayer was going to ‘bail them out’!

So what’s this nonsense about the banks ‘ignoring warnings’?

We’re talking the biggest heist of all time here!

It sure takes a lot of chutzpah to pretend (never mind actually assert) that they had no idea this whole situation was going to end in bankruptcy.

Sort of like this next headline…where once again we are played for ignorant chumps powerless to stop what’s going to happen next:

The drilling rig Kulluk was grounded in January 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Alaska.
Interior Dept. Warns Shell on Arctic Drilling
By JOHN BRODER 8:32 PM ET

The government wants a detailed plan on how the company plans to address safety issues before allowing it to resume exploration.

A REAL government would never have permitted this nonsense in the first place but we all know the political lapdogs are ‘going through the motions’ of pretending to protecting the public while they allow private enterprise to doom our civilization.

We don’t need MORE fossil fuels, we need to use what little there is left much more judiciously.

But the >One Percent doesn’t do privation well (if at all.) Isn’t it bad enough they have to ‘put up with’ the rest of us using THEIR stuff?

Speaking of which:

DealBook
Fed Rebukes Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase Over Capital Plans
By PETER EAVIS

The Federal Reserve cited “weaknesses” in capital plans of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, while Citigroup and Bank of America got a green light.

Doesn’t God ‘rebuke’ people? The rest of us get called on our baloney. How sad is it that the other two thieves got away with their ‘plans’?

We’re back to the ‘appearance of propriety’ as opposed to actual legal oversight.
If YOU were this incompetent you’d be on the outside looking in already!

BUT if this clowns did what they were elected to do they’d be ‘pushing up Daisy’s’ in a remote field somewhere.

You are right to fear a government that has suspended both your right to a fair trial along with any prohibition against executing you out of hand but you SHOULD fear the MEN who made this possible even more!

But I digress, what do you suppose the deal is with this story?

The Galaxy S IV.
Samsung Introduces New Galaxy Phone
By BRIAN X. CHEN and NICK WINGFIELD 7:31 PM ET

Increasing the stakes in the smartphone battle, the South Korean manufacturer showed off the Galaxy S IV, the latest version of its flagship device.

comment iconPost a Comment | Read (1)

Since this is YESTERDAY’S Business section you won’t be able to ‘backtrack’ any of this but there was an article this morning’s news about Samsung being a giant ‘pretending’ to be a scrappy start-up like Research in motion. Or that other tiny company…Apple.

Seriously, good citizen…

New Jobless Claims at a 5-Year Low
By REUTERS 7:38 PM ET

The report on unemployment added to a range of data that suggested higher taxes were having a limited impact on the economy.

Like the whole theme of today’s reporting is ‘insult their intelligence!

The most prosperous time the US have ever known came when the marginal tax rate was at over 90% of income over a million dollars…so employers paid their people instead of handing it over to Uncle Sam.

And what we’re seeing today is the ‘blow-back’ of that policy.

Which is to opine that there is going to be a whole lot of ‘punishment’ going on before we get this ship back on an even keel.

Last but not least we have a token of open rebellion on display!

Media Decoder
Editor Charged With Aiding Hackers Group
By AMY CHOZICK 8:51 PM ET

Matthew Keys, a 26-year-old social media editor, was charged with assisting the hacking collective Anonymous in an attack on The Los Angeles Times Web site.

Perhaps someday we will be able to give Mr. Keys the medal he richly deserves for standing up to our tyrannical overlords.

But for now he’s going to have to live with being black-balled by an industry that insults your intelligence.

Maybe this one is a net win from a realist perspective.

How this landed in the business section remains a mystery but it is the ‘re-surfacing’ of ‘old news’.

Hoping to Save Bees, Europe to Vote on Pesticide Ban
By DAVID JOLLY 4:08 PM ET

European officials plan to vote on a proposal to sharply restrict the use of chemicals that have been implicated in the decline of global bee populations.

Once again good citizen we are witnessing the side effects of failing to prosecute the corporate guilty for playing God recklessly.

What do you suppose this ban on pesticide is going to accomplish?

Most likely it will result in a plague of pests! Then they’ll be spraying twice as much pesticide!

But you (evidently) aren’t smart enough to figure that one out…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Amazing!

Greetings good citizen,

The Dow is regaining yesterday’s losses (if only because they can) which is to point out the obvious, that NOTHING has been done to ‘fix’ the economy…although (apparently) YOU aren’t supposed to be ‘concerned’ about that…

Like my ‘economic desert’ scenario, a ‘broken economy’ spells disaster for the residents thereof.

Currently the global financial system is on central bank life support and is (thanks to ‘creative accounting’) doing much better than the ‘real economy’ as this article demonstrates:

U.S. Banks in 2012 Post Highest Profits Since '06 – FDIC
By REUTERS
Published: February 26, 2013 at 11:54 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. banking industry in 2012 recorded its highest earnings since before the 2007-2009 financial crisis, according to data released on Tuesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The FDIC said the industry's full-year earnings were the second-highest on record at $141.3 billion, an increase over 2011 of $22.9 billion, or 19.3 percent. But the head of the agency said growth would probably slow this year, and warned that bank profits could dive if Congress does not reach a federal budget agreement that prevents automatic cuts.

Bank earnings peaked in 2006 at $145.2 billion.

Much of the earnings growth in 2012 came from banks reducing the amount they set aside in case of losses on loans, the FDIC said. Banks also saw gains on loan sales and higher servicing income.

"While there is still room for further income growth, we don't expect the pace of earnings growth to continue at these levels," FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said.

Um, se habla ‘creative accounting’?

Why does it look to me like the predatory banks are looting the public treasury?

Facts on the ground tell us that banks should be shedding people like mad, they don’t have the ‘income’ to support the people they have because a vast majority of their customer base is a serious credit risk.

Again we bash into the solid fact that fifty percent of US families are on some kind of food assistance program…why is that? Because cheapskate capitalist employers won’t pay their people enough to buy food AND keep a roof over their heads!

[Have to ‘stay competitive’ you know!]

Followed by, “What does how big a bonus I got have to do with anything?”

Same thing in the financial sector…how can these criminals reward themselves for screwing up the global financial system beyond repair?

We’re back to the need to re-define why you get a bonus!

(Because these guys clearly don’t understand the concept.)

Worse, they seem to think we don’t either…

The world clearly isn’t falling apart (Because all money is Funny) but that’s the ONLY reason. (Otherwise we’d be up to our buttocks in reptiles right now!)

Let me explain it a bit more clearly…because you won’t hear this from one of their stooges or anyone else who can get within a thousand miles of a major media outlet.

The banking ‘business model’ is broken!

There aren’t enough customers to keep these monsters afloat.

ALL of the banks (around the entire world) went bust in December 2007.

And until the global economy is re-balanced, they’re NEVER going to be profitable again!

It’s simply not there to be had!

Interest rates locked at Zero are ‘self-explanitory’. There is no money in banking…So, how did the banks have one of their best years since the crash?

Can you say ‘Loot’?

Not that this really matters…what you SHOULD be losing sleep over is that sudden stop that will occur when they decide to ‘derail’ our existing civilization.

(And they’ll do this to throw the law off of their trail.)

Do we have weeks or days remaining good citizen?

The nasty problem here is even they don’t know.

You have to keep your eyes on the exits and even then there will be about a jillion ‘false starts’.

Like the market going up and down for no discernable reason.

I preach to the choir when I point out that our civilization is already ruined.

I was watching the run up to WWII on the Military channel last night and experienced serious ‘déjà vu’.

Nobody dares prosecute the criminals for fear of what they’ll do…

Well good citizen, they’ve already bankrupted us…And A Simple Plan can stop that in its tracks (because it only deals in real assets in real time, none of this derivative nonsense.)

But the decision to change from today’s predatory system to tomorrows equitable one remains to be made…

And guess who gets to make that choice?

YOU!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Burn

Greetings good citizen,

While some of you are appalled that the problems of the world CAN’T be solved with a spoonful of sugar. Let me offer the comforting thought that I designed the plan more so with an eye towards what most of you WOULDN’T like done to you rather than the conservo-whacko way which is we’ll do this, this and this…but ONLY to BAD PEOPLE.

Weirdly, everybody can get behind castrating a hypothetical stranger…but it’s not such a good idea anymore when you find YOURSELF on the receiving end of the bargain.

This is why A Simple Plan was designed to be ‘HUMANE’. We don’t ‘execute’, er, those who refuse to live by some pretty basic rules. We merely strip them of their right to live among us.

Not that playing ‘defense’ has helped. You either support the plan (which is holistic, it’s ALL or NOTHING) or you don’t.

If you take nothing away from this web page take that. You can’t ‘cherry-pick’ A Simple Plan and get anything even approaching the correct/workable results.

(And if you want the creator here to guide its implementation, you all had better shake a leg ‘cuz I haven’t got a lot of time left.)

Not much of a sales pitch but it is the truth.

Readership would rapidly dwindle to zero if all I did here was pitch A Simple Plan, I’ve taxed your patience enough.

today’s offering tackles the issue of the ‘dehumanizing’ nature of capitalist society.

The human body, with its need for rest, nutrition and hydration, is such an inefficient tool for capitalist production. But while machines are unlikely to replace human workers anytime soon, new technologies can deftly strip workers of their humanity!

The Irish Independent reports that grocery giant TESCO has strapped electronic armbands to their warehouse workers to measure their productivity, tracking their actions so closely that management knows when they briefly pause to drink from a water fountain or take a bathroom break. These unforgivable lapses in productivity impact workers' performance score, which management then apparently uses to terrify them into working faster.

"The devices give a set amount of time for a task, such as 20 minutes to load packets of soft drinks. If they did it in 20 minutes, they would get 100pc, but would get 200pc if they were twice as fast," writes the Independent. Although TESCO denied that bathroom breaks impact productivity scores, one former staffer the Independent spoke with said he got a "surprisingly lower" score when he took a bathroom break.

"Sometimes, management would call staff to an office and tell them they had to do better if their scores were low."

"I had really easy assignments and when I'd come back after a break, I would get a horrendous score and wonder why," he said.

The rational mind screams ‘how did we come to this?’ While the capitalist sees nothing wrong with ‘squeezing as much value’ as he/she can out of their workers.

What’s ‘wrong’ with this picture is why we do what we do.

We ARE NOT ‘machines’, tied to a specific task for certain number of hours BUT that is how our COLLEGE EDUCATED MORONS are taught to treat us.

When we ‘work for money’ the purpose becomes secondary…despite money being an invention, a tool.

It is tool that is all too commonly abused. More often used as a hammer than a reward.

What do you suppose management’s ‘complaint’ was when the employee took a bathroom break?

You’re costing me MONEY! When the correct employee response would be, ‘I was keeping your floors clean which, overall, saves you money.’

(Get a clue fathead, ALL money is FUNNY!)

Yet we are evicted from our homes and have to subscribe to supplemental nutrition programs for a lack of the ‘funny stuff’!

Which is to point out that our social model is broken and headed for collapse…because the bean-counters have decided to see how far they can ‘push it’.

Weirdly, they are pushing for riots in the street.

What would those charged with ‘protecting us’ from exactly this sort of treatment think if they knew what our self-professed ‘betters’ had in store for them?

You KNOW this ends with cops in body bags (more civilians than cops but still…)
All because ‘stingy’ wants to see how much he/she can get away with (and it secretly ‘tickles them’ to wield this kind of ‘raw power’.)

For some reason they don’t believe ‘The Horror’ lurks just beneath the (mostly placid) surface of a (‘desensitized’) modern civilization.

What do I mean by ‘desensitized’?

Let’s just say ‘mercy’ isn’t one of modern societies strong suits.

They have shown none so they shouldn’t be too surprised when they don’t receive any in return.

Somewhat surreal to frame the coming debacle as similar to admonishing a child not to play with matches.

They do it and they get burned for their…impudence.

How sad is it good citizen that this time they are going to ‘burn’ us all?

Thanks for letting me inside you head,

Gegner

Cash, Credit and Crime

Greetings good citizen,

Took a mental health day yesterday but the madness just keeps on coming…with the difference being I didn’t write about it.

Hopefully today’s topic will prove therapeutic. Instead of just pointing to the problem, today I’m also going to provide the solution!

So we begin with something that has been drummed into your head since childhood, the concept of ‘debt’…and how others take advantage of this ‘mis-education’.

Thought debtor prison ended in the 18th century? Think again.
February 3, 2013 |

Editor's note: America has a long history of treating the poor like criminals, from legislation banning the transportation of poor people across state lines to anti-vagrancy laws that could land you in jail if you didn't have a job or a home. We've come to rely on the criminal justice system to deal with the poor, even as more and more Americans fall into poverty. The following is part of a series that looks at the diverse ways poverty is criminalized in America, such as laws targeting the homeless, the surveillance of welfare recipients, the re-emergence of debtor's prisons, and extreme policing tactics like stop-and-frisk.

Let’s consider for a moment something you have been taught was impossible, imagine (if you can) a world without debt.

It actually should be easy to do. MOTHER NATURE DOESN’T HAVE A CASH REGISTER!

The (alleged) ‘owner’ of resources doesn’t have to pay for them so why should you?

(Stupid question, the owner makes his money selling what you need to you! (If nobody needs it what’s the point in owning it? Talk about carts and horses!)

EVERYTHING ON THIS PLANET is ‘free’…but it is not ‘infinite’…and that’s where they get you!

Money is the ‘regulator’ that is supposed to insure everybody gets their ‘fair share’…but that’s not how it works, does it?

Especially when money is used to ‘penalize’.

[Note: This can get real confusing quite quickly so I’m going to intentionally keep the variables to a minimum.]

The truly insidious part comes in when pay is linked to the ‘class’ of a worker as opposed to the kind of work they do.

A woman is paid less than a man and a colored is paid less than a white.

When neither one has anything to do with anything except the prejudices of (…mostly, the personnel department!) Why they are not prosecuted for their crimes remains a mystery…

But the desperate need to redefine the term criminal is the subject of another essay!

Possibly the next essay.

So debt is created when one’s source of income does not meet one’s needs. Which makes for a pretty damning statistic when 45% of the nation’s households qualify for and receive SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance…program.)

But this isn’t the EMPLOYER’S problem…it’s YOURS! (For not preventing the employers from buying the politicians...)

And no, that time I didn’t digress.

So who among us treats you like a criminal if you owe them money? It’s the employer’s financial partner, the Banker.

Now the employer owns the politician and the banker owns the employer…which makes for a pretty ‘unholy alliance’ doesn’t it? Remember the politicians control public servants and public servants control the justice system along with who does (or doesn’t) become a judge.

Does anyone else see a problem here…considering current ‘conditions on the ground’?

So how do we solve this ‘daisy-chained’ problem? Lawyers are Judge wannabes and politicians are nothing more than greedy actors and bankers…let’s not go there because there’s no ‘reason’ behind a bankers actions that can’t be chalked up to a single motivation…greed.

Because money makes this whole circus go round, how do we put the brakes on this rampant corruption?

We put an end to ‘elected officials’. They only exist to keep YOU out of the decision making loop!

Now let’s ‘solve’ the debt problem (and unemployment while we’re at it.)

Since the ‘purpose of commerce’ is to provide ‘the public’ (and that means ‘all’ of the public) with the goods and services it needs to live as comfortably as possible. (Yeah, my definition is a little more ‘generous’ than the typical ‘more for me’ capitalist is comfortable with. But that’s what we’re trying to solve, isn’t it?)

Debt should be (and will become under A Simple Plan) illegal. You won’t be able to pay anyone for anything because there won’t be any cash to pay them with.

Which is to point out that we would also ‘solve’ crime in one fell swoop and marvel at why we didn’t do it sooner…and the method is to outlaw ‘cash’ and all of its ‘substitutes’.

If you’re caught using ‘script’ you’ll be exiled.

IOU’s, Walnuts, acorns, seashells…they’ll all buy you a one way trip to the badlands if you’re caught trading them! (Just don’t do it.)

YOUR MONEY IS FOR YOU! You will be paid to do what you do by the profession you have chosen to work for…just as EVERYBODY ELSE will be paid by their profession SO THERE’S NO NEED FOR YOU TO PAY THEM TOO!

The proverbial ‘stack of lumber’ will be a ‘gimme’. Maintained by the people who do that for a living…at no cost to you!

How can we do this? MOTHER NATURE DOESN’T HAVE A CASH REGISTER! It’s all FREE!

We do what we do because it needs doing…why oh why should we allow a few pinheads to get rich while the rest of us bust our backsides to make ends meet?

And it all starts with throwing the politicians out of office! [I’m all for making the lot of ‘em ‘take the walk’ too but throwing them out and making them all get honest jobs should be punishment enough.]

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Truthiness

Greetings good citizen,

Nonsense (stock) markets around the globe are bleeding red this morning (while the sneaks on Wall Street managed to ‘paint the tape’ and cause the Dow to have a positive finish at the very end of trading yesterday…

So much for ‘truth’ in financial transactions…in fact it is the prevalence of ‘truthiness’ in today’s business headlines that caught my eye:

E-Mails Suggest JPMorgan Knew Flaws of Some Loans
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

E-mails and employee interviews filed as part of a lawsuit show that JPMorgan Chase flouted quality controls as it bundled mortgages into financial instruments.

A trove of internal e-mails at JPMorgan Chase, filed as part of a lawsuit, offers a glimpse into how the bank bundled mortgage securities.

Are you ‘shocked’ by this ‘revelation’ good citizen or are you like the majority of the public and more than a little steamed that it’s been five years since this obvious fraud and NOBODY has swung for it…yet.

Which is not a declaration of the people’s justice so much as the Devil will indeed ‘take the hindmost’.

Who may not be particularly ‘guilty’ of anything except of being in the wrong place at the wrong time…like so many of society’s victims.

In yet another (non) shocker, we have the following:

European Central Bank Leaves Interest Rate Unchanged
By JACK EWING 10 minutes ago

The strength of the euro is a sign of confidence, the bank’s president, Mario Draghi, said after the announcement. There have been concerns about the rising value of the currency.

Bank of England Leaves Interest Rate Unchanged
Wall Street Takes a Step Backward 9:49 AM ET

The Euro zone is flatter than a pancake so I will remind you that we are discussing the ‘relative strength’ of the Euro as compared to other ‘lackluster’ currencies.

Which tells you something about what Mr. Bernanke is doing to the dollar (to make our stock market rise ‘senselessly’.)

Which is just what it looks like good citizen, the people who ‘own’ the world see their purchasing power increase while the people who work for them see their purchasing power, er, ‘watered down’.

This explains why there are 7 million people who call themselves ‘self-employed’. (It’s better to be the employer than the employee.)

European Leaders Gather for a Trillion-Euro Budget Debate
By JAMES KANTER 9:47 AM ET

The budget represents only about 2 percent of total public spending in the European Union. But it still involves furious horse trading.

The ‘debate’ (such as it is) must be over how long they can keep the shell game of propping up the banking system using the taxpayer’s money?

There is an ‘urgent need’ to return banking to profitability but it’s not going to happen in this generation.

Not much to debate really. Maybe they’ll discuss what might happen to them if they are found out but there really isn’t much point on dwelling upon such unpleasantness.

If the ‘jig were up’ good citizen I’d say the environment is ripe for a ‘hostile takeover’, something similar to how the Nazis swept to power.

I’m also going to predict that it is exactly what will happen…but none of my predictions come to pass. Not yet anyway.

DealBook
K.K.R.'s Earnings Rise 22% on Investment Gains
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 25 minutes ago

K.K.R. said on Thursday that it earned $347.7 million in the fourth quarter, as all of its businesses showed strong gains. For the year, the firm reported earning $2.1 billion.

DealBook: Lazard's Profit Surges as Deal Assignments Pick Up 9:17 AM ET

You know as well as I good citizen that there’s nothing ‘new’ under the sun so what we’re witnessing here is the simple consolidation of market share resulting in the consumer being squeezed ever tighter, while their purchasing power sinks into the basement.

You don’t suppose these guys could be on to something?

DealBook
Ireland to Liquidate Anglo Irish Bank
By MARK SCOTT 8:59 AM ET

The government passed emergency legislation to liquidate Anglo Irish Bank, one of the country’s largest, as part of a plan to restructure debt payments.

What do you suppose would happen if we tried that will ALL of the ‘troubled banks’?

If we listen to the pundits it would mean the end of banking as we know it! I, for one, would not be ‘upset’ by the demise of ‘modern banking’.

If I slip my swami turban back on for a moment I see that ultimately there will only be one bank and they will dictate to us how much it will cost to do business.

And if you can’t afford it, tough!

Or our next story:

Weaker Yen Helps Sony Trim Losses for Quarter
By HIROKO TABUCHI 7:13 AM ET

The earnings at Sony reflect a revival in the fortunes of other struggling Japanese electronics manufacturers, and its shares have surged almost 60 percent in 2013.

Funny how currency devaluation can be a two-edged sword, depending on how you ‘cook the books!’

Finally:

Alcatel-Lucent Chief Resigns as Company Posts Loss
By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN 8:10 AM ET

The telecommunications equipment maker said it lost $1.85 billion in 2012, and announced the resignation of Ben Verwaayen, its chief executive since 2008.

DealBook
Credit Suisse Returns to Profit and Plans More Cost Cuts
By JULIA WERDIGIER 28 minutes ago

The chief executive, Brady W. Dougan, is targeting hundreds of millions of dollars in additional cost reductions after Credit Suisse reported a profit of $436 million for the fourth quarter.

Okay so I snuck two in there. The first tells of what ‘globalization’ has done to the former ‘sole source’ of telecommunications equipment in the world.

Bet you’re all pleased as can be that hundreds of thousands of jobs and our future prosperity have been replaced with cheesy plastic phones that won’t stay on the table when you pick up the handset!

Oh and don’t forget, those old indestructible phones that stayed put were free with the service!

But the free market chuckleheads felt you needed to ‘buy’ your equipment!

Which leaves our final story and one comment...do you suppose they can return to profitability if they fire everybody? (It's the 'free-market way!')

Long live the free markets! (Read: death to capitalism!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Distrust

Greetings good citizen,

As we continue to watch the mess our betters have made collapse around our ears we shall examine some of the shakier premises instituted by our so-called ‘leaders’.

Let’s start with today’s top headline:

TOP NEWS
Governors Push Bigger Reliance on Sales Taxes
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Ambitious experiments in collecting revenue that are taking place at the state level could shape the national approach on taxes.

left unexplained in both our history and our civics texts is the ‘rationale’ behind ‘taxation’.

Why didn’t our ‘leaders’ just do what needed doing (since ALL expense is ‘artificial’?)

Worse, the idea of ‘taxes’ was born when those who lead us were the ‘absolute master of all they surveyed’.

Since ‘master’ had already declared ‘ownership’ of the land along with everything on it or under it, why ‘tax’ the people?

Well…Big chief hand on hip didn’t have any farmers working for him, if he didn’t commandeer some food he and his army were going to starve!

This is why taxation predates money!

They ‘converted’ taxes to money as a way to put an end to the earliest form of ‘tax fraud’ submitting spoiled food as ‘tribute’.

This leads us to another fact just as ancient as taxes and that is why BIG tax fraud is never prosecuted while the tax man chases the little guy for every penny and then some! (Remember, they don’t ‘need’ this, it’s all part of the ‘control fraud’.)

Once the royals took over the money supply taxes COULD HAVE BEEN ‘done away with’ but no, because the Royals were now beholding to their ‘peers’ for their power (often having ‘gifted’ them tax authority as the price of their fealty.)

Without the history lesson, taxes are not necessary today and they haven’t been since, well, history would look a lot different if we could roll back the pages and find A SINGLE ‘wise ruler’…

They may have existed but they aren’t the ones who wrote the history books, a major indictment of our deeply flawed character, despite years of ‘preaching’ and ‘holier than thou’ mumbo-jumbo!

A character that could still be redeemed if we wanted it bad enough.

That’s the question…do we possess the determination to change our ways, thereby avoiding self-extinction?

Time will tell but from where we’re sitting today, good citizen, it’s not looking to good and ‘forever’ is a mighty long time…

Moving on…

Towns' Next Hit From Hurricane Is to Tax Revenue
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN

As a result of property damage, localities hit by Hurricane Sandy cannot expect to reap the same property taxes from homeowners.

Funny how nobody sees the bear’s claws until they are ripping you to shreds. Yup, the once mighty USA now can’t seem to recover from a simple flood. For some strange reason ‘the government’ is unable to find the funding that will, er, ‘allow’ the private sector to rebuild.

We are, of course, leaving ‘private sector’ insurance companies out of this discussion. Did you know there isn’t a single ‘private sector’ insurance company that offers ‘flood insurance’?

And it’s NOT because they are prohibited from selling flood insurance, NONE of them WANT TO! (Mostly due to the chicanery in town halls across the nation that allow the well-connected to ‘twist’ the zoning ordinances to their liking for fun and profit.

Was THAT a ‘flood plain’? Who knew? Whoopsie…too bad you weren’t insured!

Some have (wisely) asked if we should even bother rebuilding storm ravaged coastal communities in light of global climate change.

I am of the opinion that we should, although we must rebuild ‘wisely’. The new structures should be ‘storm resistant’ capable of remaining watertight during flood conditions and storm surges.

But you aren’t going to see that under ‘shut up and pay me’ capitalism!

Only under an economic system based on general prosperity will the resources become available to build a world capable of withstanding the degradation heaped upon it by the selfish leaders of the past.

Moving forward one more time we find this story filed under the category of ‘it took long enough’, although ‘too little, too late’ may be more apt”

DealBook
S.E.C. Pick Is Ex-Prosecutor, in Signal to Wall Street
By BEN PROTESS and BENJAMIN WEISER

President Obama's choice to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White, a former United States attorney, suggested a resolve to hold Wall Street accountable for wrongdoing.

It’s been five six years, good citizen, and the only thing to come out of the ‘meltdown’ of the global financial system is distrust.

How many of you think this move is more than ‘symbolic’? If a prosecutor was going to change things then why didn’t they appoint one five years ago…oh, that’s right, because Bush was still in office five years ago! Well how about four years ago, when Obama first took over?

He had to ‘win the nation’s confidence’ and demonstrate he wasn’t going to do anything ‘rash’ like throw the criminals that elected him in prison! Or take away the punch bowl just when the party was starting to roar!

A world that doesn’t run on taxes, it’s about time, wouldn’t you agree good citizen?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Albatross

Greetings good citizen,

Looks like it’s that time again. It’s bad enough that our betters turn a deaf ear to our ‘petty’ (as far as they’re concerned) issues but when they converge on Davos to, er, difficult to find the proper word here…I’m torn between ‘discuss’ and ‘grandstand’ what THEY THINK the world's problems are...and nothing ever comes of it.

Pitiful to consider how ‘out of touch’ the elite are despite these conferences (which are intended to provide ‘the impression’ that they are listening and they care.)

While I have repeatedly accused the global elite of plotting to ‘thin the herd’, I suspect the desire to do so isn’t universal, so we have these conferences where the evil-conniving blend in with the clueless and pretend nothing’s going on.

Some of these powerful people still subscribe to traditional values of customer satisfaction and safe work places…how unfortunate is it for the rest of us that these people are old and on their way out the door?

Let us visit our ‘herald’ to learn what we can of this latest ‘invitation only’ gathering.

DealBook Column

Prophesies Made in Davos Don't Always Come True
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

Many influential people will gather this week at the World Economic Forum to make predictions, and some of them will be right, and some wrong.

And we all know words can sometimes have two meanings…so sometimes what was ‘predicted’ has merely been ‘mis-interpreted’.

And, unsurprisingly, Davos is so popular it has TWO headlines!

DealBook
At Davos, Crisis Is the New Normal
By ALISON SMALE

While global capital remains a driving force of our age, it won't solve big world issues. For those tasks, we must rely either on the nation state or on international institutions whose effectiveness is regularly questioned by the Davos crowd.

Is it from headlines like this that we get the meme that ‘private industry’ would solve ALL of our problems if government would just step out of the way?

Now government is ‘in the pocket’ of private industry and anything even smacking of regulation is nothing more than window dressing, routinely ignored by those ‘in the know’.

Is our civilization ‘functioning perfectly?’

Don’t think so…unless you’re a card-carrying member of the One Percent, then you’d opine things were ‘pretty-good-okay’ (if only for the safety of those you love.)

You gotta love the old ‘go along to get along’ routine. Step out of line and the next thing you know you’re on the outside looking in.

(And it’s cold out here!)

We can only wonder where our intrepid reporter has been, Disaster Capitalism has been all the rage since the Seventies!

Why would she infer that Crisis is the ‘new normal’? (Especially when the vast majority of the ‘crises’ our elite are so focused on are utter fabrications?

Not only do they know why it’s happening but they also know who is responsible!

That pandemic I mentioned yesterday? It won’t be ‘naturally occurring’ in case any of you were wondering…and if we knock around the right heads we could even learn who is behind it!

How many of you would be shocked to learn it was major contributor to the Republican party?

Which is total speculation on my part! I’m just spinning a yarn here and a peasant like myself has no knowledge of what actually goes on ‘behind the scenes’…but I can guess.

Might even call it following a ‘line of logic’ that goes like this: if you’re ‘demented’ enough to fund the party of the One percent it only stands to reason that you’d have an interest in ‘significantly reducing’ the threat posed by ‘the rabble’.

And while showering the rabble with money would accomplish the same goal, for some twisted reason these conspirators would favor a ‘more permanent’ solution.

Talk about ‘unintended consequences’…imagine a plague that wipes out everybody BUT the privileged!

It would be an extinction level event! The pampered few don’t know how to take care of themselves, they’ll be dead in a month! About the same time the lights go off and the phone towers power down.

Worse, planning ISN’T the oligarchs ‘strong suit’. You can bet they have totally ‘overlooked’ this rather obvious aspect of the plan.

While ‘a select few’ could rebuild civilization, most of us wouldn’t know where to begin. Like all puzzles, the pieces are greater than the sum of the parts.

So killing off what these dopes consider to be ‘the useless’ could very well condemn the rest of us to certain death.

We all have our albatrosses, how unfortunate is it that our particular albatross has it in for us?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Ruled by Fools

Greetings good citizen,

It is hilarious that the so-called ‘Progressives’ are accusing the conservo-whackos of living in a ‘permanent fantasy world’ when they persist in serving up tripe like this…

Before we begin this latest excursion into ‘wishful thinking’ let me repeat my ‘mantra’, there is NO WAY to ‘fix’ capitalism with capitalism! All of the fixes are ‘predatory’ too!

6 Economic Steps to a Better Life and Real Prosperity for All
We've got to break out of the old ways of thinking about the economy.

Step one.) A People’s Bank
One area where this logic can be seen at work is in the financial industry. At the height of the financial crisis in early 2009, some kind of nationalization of the banks seemed possible. It was a moment, President Obama told banking CEOs, when his administration was “the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” The president opted for a soft bailout, but that was not the only possible decision.

Banking is ‘personal’ yet the capitalists have turned it into a ‘profit center’ (for themselves) by forcing the rest of us to pay outrageous prices for what we can’t do without.

How do you think a ‘People’s bank’ is going to solve this?

It won’t because it can’t. Nationalizing the banks wouldn’t make them any less predatory. They would still operate on the principle of borrow cheap and lend dear.

The ‘real alternative’ to predatory banking is to make banking an internal function of the payroll process. Your money ‘stays put’. They don’t lend it to anybody (they don’t need to.) We won’t stop the capitalist ‘crazy train’ until we put the brakes on the insane practice of money making money!

Then we get banks out of the ‘lending business’ because all of the things you needed to ‘borrow money’ for are…‘gimmes’!

If you step back and look at it good citizen, the whole borrowing process is nothing but an elaborate extortion scheme…but what would you expect from CRIMINALS?

Moving on:

Step Two.) Move to Universal Healthcare

That austerity and failing reform might open the way to "evolutionary reconstructive" institutional change is also suggested by emerging developments in healthcare.

Cost pressures are also building up—and, critically, in ways that will continue to undermine U.S. corporations facing global competitors, forcing them to seek new solutions. The federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that healthcare costs will go up from the 2010 level of 17.5 percent of GDP to 19.6 percent in 2019. It has long been clear that over the long-haul cost pressures are ultimately likely to force development of some form of single-payer system —the only serious way to deal with the underlying problem.

Again, under a ‘sane’ system, healthcare would be FREE, but that’s not what dummy is proposing here, is it?

How sad is it that Plato’s ‘unimaginative worldview’ persists to this day? (He couldn’t imagine a world without slaves.)

But anyway:

Step Three.) Build Community Wealth

“Social enterprises” that undertake businesses in order to support specific social missions now increasingly comprise what is sometimes called a "fourth sector” (different from the government, business and non-profit sectors). Roughly 4,500 not-for-profit community development corporations are largely devoted to housing development. There are now also more than 10,000 businesses owned in whole or part by their employees; nearly 3 million more individuals are involved in these enterprises than are members of private sector unions. Another 130 million Americans are members of various urban, agricultural and credit union cooperatives. In many cities, “land trusts” are underway using an institutional form of nonprofit or municipal ownership that develops and maintains low- and moderate-income housing.

I find myself speechless with the utter ‘blindness’ the above bullet point displays. We’re talking ‘whales and tic tacs’ here! All I have to say is see my initial ‘mantra’ and hold that up to this (capitalism saving) proposal!

Those ‘pretending’ to be Progressives are in fact Libertarians, free-market lovers to the end!

But I digress:

Step Four.) Leverage City Assets [!!]

Yet another arena of institutional growth involves municipal development. By maintaining direct ownership of areas surrounding transit station exits, public agencies in Washington, DC, Atlanta and elsewhere earn millions, capturing the increased land values their transit investments create. The town of Riverview, Michigan has been a national leader in trapping methane from its landfills and using it to fuel electricity generation, thereby providing both revenue and jobs. There are roughly 500 similar projects nationwide. Many cities have established municipally owned hotels. There are also nearly 2,000 publicly owned utilities that provide power (and often broadband) to more than 45 million Americans, generating $50 billion in annual revenue. Significant public institutions are also common at the state level. CalPERS, California’s public pension authority, helps finance local community development needs; in Alaska, state oil revenues provide each citizen with dividends as a matter of right; in Alabama, public pension investing has long focused on state economic development.

Rope-a-dope has the whole situation wrong! The only reason the capitalists ‘gave away’ free internet and in some cases free electricity was to boost the sale of hand helds!

There have been some mighty expensive ‘ruses’ perpetrated on the public to 'mask' the gutting of our economy and this dummy is just keeps falling into the traps left and right!

Next!

Step Five.) Organize for the Long Haul

You can think of the slow buildup of democratizing strategies as the pre-historical developmental work needed to clarify new principles for larger scale application. Just as in the decades before the New Deal, state and local experiments in the “laboratories of democracy” may suggest new larger scale approaches. The new direction has four aspects; democratization of wealth; community, both locally and in general; decentralization in general; and substantial but not complete forms of democratic planning. Let’s take a look at each of these.

Follow the link to the main article…

Politics is largely ‘media driven’. Control the media and politics cease to matter…but these Ivory Tower types don’t seem to get that, thus do you get the above stupidity!

And lastly…

Step Six.) Cut Corporate Power Down to Size [!!!]

To deal with economic issues, ecological challenges and local community stability, we must also come to terms with corporate power dynamics. Public corporations are subject to Wall Street’s first commandment: Grow or die!” You can’t just wish or regulate that idea away.

If I could only remember where I put that magic wand…

What is this guy smokin’?
You are right to be wary of people offering to ‘save the world’ with a few simple changes…those changes need to alter the path of humanity and not just perpetuate what’s broken.

To his 'credit' he channels my proposal regarding a shortening of the workday/week to reduce unemployment...but he only proposes 'half of the package'!

You CAN'T reduce the workweek (and resultant paycheck) without corresponding cuts in the worker's expense picture!

Employers have NO PROBLEM with what are currently 'part-time' workers. They don't want to deal with doubling the workforce for the same amount of output because it is 'no win'. (In most cases it would increase cost/decrease profit but capitalism is goofy like that!)

Ironically, we return to the age-old debate where on the surface it appears we have a ‘money problem’ when in reality we have a massive ‘legal’ one.

Until we can truly institute a ‘lawful government’ we will continue to be ‘mis-ruled’ by man…and the likes of unimaginative types such as this writer who thinks more of the same will fix things, somehow!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Useful

Greetings good citizen,

Once again we find ourselves on the cusp of that relic of the New Deal formerly referred to as ‘the weekend.’

We still call them weekends but the week no longer ‘ends’ for the vast majority of us. For the unemployed the weekend represents two bad days to prospect for a job despite the best chance of finding work being in the 24/7 service/retail sector…where it is impossible to get forty hours, never mind forty-one.

So, yeah, the unemployed usually suspend their search for work on Saturday and Sunday because they retain hope that their new job will provide them with those two days off.

Call it ‘tradition’ but we have the Sabbath built into our psyches. (The fact that one is Jew and the other Christian is of no consequence, we have ‘become accustomed’ to having those two days off.

Ironically, our brave new world seldom provides ‘days off’ period.

Some of us are expected to report to work seven days a week but only for a few hours a day (usually ‘peak time’.)

So you only work 28 hours but you have to go back & forth 14 times to get even that little bit!

And you don’t have a ‘day off’…

Now, if you only work four hours out of twenty-four you have most of every day off BUT, in the relentless world of retail, the only days off you get (for now) are Thanksgiving and Christmas.

How ironic is it that you (as a part-time employee) don’t get paid for either of them?

Isn’t capitalism great? (All capitalists think so!)

363 days a year you must wake up and make yourself presentable. Drive yourself to the work place to perform your duties (as assigned that day.) Stay on the job until you are granted permission to depart…(can’t just up and leave come quittin’ time in retail!) and all of this for a minimum wage job that has absolutely zero loyalty.

Screw up even once and you’ll be out the door so fast your head will spin.

But that’s the (broken) ‘make yourself useful’ meme of capitalism. People are ‘disposable’. (And if the people you have disposed of become ‘troublesome’ you have the police shoot them down.)

Sort of going off the rails here when it was my ‘original intent’ to point out that weekends are rapidly becoming ‘a thing of the past.’

And this phenomenon is not restricted to the ‘rabble’ doomed to work short hours for shorter money, people who are routinely dismissed with the threat, ‘be happy you have a job!’

That threat extends to the ‘rank and file’ workers in cubicle land as well. Now the pay is slightly better and the atmosphere (slightly) more ‘professional’ than retail but the threat remains the same…or perhaps it gets turned on its head when the boss asks ‘how many of you can speak Hindi?’

Which might explain inexplicable stories such as this one:

Morgan Stanley's $481 Million 4th-Quarter Profit Beats Estimates
By SUSANNE CRAIG 42 minutes ago

Morgan Stanley reported adjusted earnings of 45 cents a share on Friday, driven by gains in wealth management and investment banking.

On a planet with a broken financial system, how the, er, heck does any bank ‘earn’ 45 cents a share without committing fraud?

Banking is (irretrievably) broken good citizen. The imbalances in the global economy CAN NOT BE ‘corrected’ without a complete overhaul that starts with a ‘clean slate’ (across the board.)

So ‘fictions’ like the one above are exactly that.

Which leads us to our next, er, ‘questionable data’:

Economix Blog
Lifting the Veil on the Fed's 2007 Discussions
By DAVID LEONHARDT 27 minutes ago

The Federal Reserve has just released the transcripts of its meetings in the pivotal year of 2007, when the housing bubble started to burst and the global financial crisis began.

Now that they’ve had five years to ‘muddy the waters’ naturally this work of fiction will have gaping holes in it but it will be downplayed as a side effect of the ‘whole truth’ being ‘unknowable’.

Here is another episode of 'the story that refuses to die' despite the corporate owned media not even hinting that globalization is responsible:

Praised but Fire-Prone, Battery Fails Test in 787
By JAD MOUAWAD and CHRISTOPHER DREW

Lithium-ion batteries are popular because they are powerful and charge quickly, but Boeing has had serious problems with the technology on its new Dreamliner.

Powerful Chemical Cocktail, With a Drawback

And anyone who didn’t see the ‘design-flaw’ card coming needs a serious reality check.

Of course it was a design flaw…but why did the design flaw occur?

Was it because the system was designed in Bejing and built in Seattle? It goes without saying that there was ‘no need’ to test it because it is ‘proven technology’…in the end, stupid is as stupid does.

Yet again, this old dog doesn’t need new tricks, the old ones still work fine!

G.E. Profit and Revenues Top Estimates
By REUTERS 7:40 AM ET

General Electric reported a better-than-expected 7.5 percent rise in fourth quarter profit and a sharp increase in its backlog of equipment orders, sending shares up in premarket trading.

Funny how profitability is easy when you’re half manufacturer and three-quarters bank! If you don’t ‘turn a profit’ from sales you just have the banking arm ‘cook the books’!

Speaking of cooked books and their ‘unintended consequences’:

Shell’s rig was grounded after being set adrift in a storm.
As Shell’s Arctic Drilling Hopes Hit Snags, Its Rivals Watch
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and JOHN M. BRODER

Shell’s drilling program, the subject of two federal inquiries, has had problems environmentalists say highlight the dangers of prospecting for oil in the severe Arctic environment.

Talk about your ‘common threads, for years environmentalist have been screaming about the dangers of arctic drilling BUT the ‘too stupid to listen’ crowd goes ahead and does it anyway!

Will they have the chutzpah to say they’re ‘sorry’ after they despoil the arctic chasing what little crude there is?

No, I doubt it, nor will anyone be executed for their ‘hubris’ as has happened here:

At Algerian Oil and Gas Fields Once Thought Safe, New Fears and Precautions
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Local oil executives said foreign oil service companies were in the process of quietly removing several hundred workers until they were confident that the security situation was stable.

Odd how the article implies there was some kind of intelligence indicating the security situation was less than ‘ideal’ but apparently that ‘memo’ was, um, ignored a few moments too long with hostages being taken and killed.

Well, we all know the capitalist credo, ‘profits before people!’ (Power to the shareowners! And oh how they hate the O word! Which is why I use it every chance I get!)

What O word is that, you ask?

The one they can’t defend, ‘Own.’

And for our last entry:

Chinese Economy Expanded at End of 2012, Data Shows
By BETTINA WASSENER

Though there was improvement, economic data also underlined the view that the pace of future growth is likely to remain well below that seen in recent years.

Geez good citizen, I was going to cut this and the story above it off but as it would turn out, they are the two most important stories in today’s offering.

Especially this last offering because it translates to the One Percent’s ‘acceptance’ that the economy as it exists today will constitute the ‘new normal’.

Unemployment will remain as it is as energy prices climb beyond the reach of marginalized citizen.

Which begs the more basic question of whether or not you are still a citizen if the capitalist can’t find a use for you?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Educate

Greetings good citizen,

How pathetic is it that many of the following headlines are either ‘spin’ or rely on accounting gimmicks for their veracity?

But the lead story belabors a point I have been making for decades:

The Education Revolution
Next Made-in-China Boom: College Graduates
By KEITH BRADSHER

China is making a huge investment in its universities, hoping to leverage its enormous population into 195 million college graduates by the end of the decade.

No irony should be lost that China has overtaken the US as the world’s premiere ‘economic superpower’ on the strength of its ‘blue-collar’ workforce.

Shifting back to our curiously missing OWS protestors, what does this (capitalist profiteering) mean to those who already got soaked big bucks, studying for jobs that will not appear anywhere near here?

I repeat, All economies are LOCAL and no amount of ‘koom-bye-ya’ can alter that!

Let me take it one step further and state unequivocally that it is ‘impossible’ to establish global capitalism as the world’s economic system because of its predatory nature. Resources must be ‘managed’ not ‘exploited’!

Global capitalism gives us stories like this one:

The 787 that made an emergency landing in Japan on Wednesday. All 137 passengers and crew members were evacuated safely.
Regulators Around the Globe Ground Boeing 787s
By CHRISTOPHER DREW, JAD MOUAWAD and MATTHEW L. WALD 51 minutes ago

The directives in Japan, Europe and India follow a Federal Aviation Administration ruling Wednesday that it was grounding the planes operated by U.S. carriers.

Design errors, easily corrected or the by-product of the decades long ‘global race to the bottom?’

This is what happens when you put psychopaths in charge of ‘shaking up’ your supply chain. All of the routine safeguards get thrown to the winds in an effort to ‘bull’ their way to a profit. (by bringing their part of the project in under deadline and under cost, thereby maximizing their ‘bonus’!
Seriously good citizen, these people have lost sight of the rationale behind the awarding of ‘bonuses’ (especially considering half the time management rewards itself for failure!)

And remember, THESE PEOPLE CONSIDER THEMSELVES OUR ‘BETTERS!’

They are ‘superior’ to us…at least in their own minds.

But hey, after Wells Fargo made money producing mortgages, we have the (alleged) ‘dummies’ foundering in the same pond…so who are you supposed to believe?

DealBook
Profit Drops 63% at Bank of America After Mortgage Settlements
By BEN PROTESS 6 minutes ago

The bank’s widely expected drop in fourth-quarter profit comes after it settled legal claims over its mortgage business. It earned 3 cents a share, narrowly beating estimates.

Um, talk about lunacy! Here they are, bleeding from the eye-sockets, settling billion dollar claims against them (for mortgage fraud.) Somehow they still ‘beat the estimates’…and Wall Street is giving them a spanking anyway!

Seriously good citizen, if this story isn’t complete and utter, I don’t know what is!

Somebody’s getting robbed and I have a bad feeling about who that somebody is…

In a related story:

DealBook
Facing Legal Costs, Citigroup Disappoints in 4th Quarter
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG 9:30 AM ET

As the bank works to clean up its mortgage mess, it reported fourth-quarter profit of $1.2 billion, or 38 cents a share, significantly below analysts’ estimates.

Did Vikram empty out the main vault as part of his ‘separation package?’ You know how these ‘Master of the Universe’ types operate…

“Sure, I’ll leave…just make sure my golden parachute has a platinum liner!”

Apparently this is something ‘the analysts’ aren’t privy too.

And yet more ‘disappointment’ from the global stage…

DealBook
Rio Tinto to Book $14 Billion Charge; C.E.O. Replaced
By JULIA WERDIGIER and NEIL GOUGH 8:27 AM ET

The mining giant blamed challenges in the aluminum business and at its coal unit in Mozambique for the write-down, and said Sam Walsh would succeed Tom Albanese as chief executive.

I may have dubbed the local rag as the Daily ‘cops behaving badly’ gazette but the business pages of the world’s media are dominated by the details of CEO’s behaving badly (and getting fooked for it…sometimes.)

Then we have this last ditty that lead me to my previous musing regarding the veracity of today’s reporting:

Economic Data Lift Stocks
By REUTERS 52 minutes ago

Wall Street opened higher after some cheery economic reports on unemployment and housing starts.

It’s been two years good citizen and no change as far as my unemployment status. I’m still twiddling my thumbs as are many of my over fifty peers.

Seems the girls of the over fifty club have joined us recently and if you think that’s a coincidence, tell it to Santa Claus!

Part of what I do here is shine a light on the stories the corporate owned media ‘neglects’ and the other part is providing some much needed ‘food for thought’ that should be fueling public debate.

The corporate owned media is paid to ‘pretend’ that things couldn’t be better, our problems are largely in our heads…and they’d be correct about that because it is their fault our head isn’t pointed in the correct direction!

But that’s an issue for another day,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Idiots!

Greetings good citizen,

While it is still WAY ‘too soon to tell’ it seems you’re ALL voting for ‘gutter-gums’, so there is no need to leave the security of the opt-in firewall.

If you’re here it is because this is where you want to be!

All righty then, let’s have a look at where we are!

U.S. Consumer Watchdog to Issue Mortgage Rules
By EDWARD WYATT

In an attempt to prevent future housing crises, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is issuing new laws for lenders.

Um, I know this isn’t the ‘popular’ viewpoint at the moment, most are touting housing’s ‘recovery’ (relative to what we are still unsure.) But it is my ‘opinion’ that the housing markets are toast, houses are ‘all done’ as far as being an ‘investment’.

In order for banks to ‘make money’ originating mortgages, the borrowers need to be paid enough to ‘live on’…and with energy prices poised to hit ‘boing’ at any moment (today’s price is $94 a barrel) the question of ‘how much is enough’ will remain a ‘wildcard’ for quite some time.

The prediction of the ultimate demise of housing hinges, as few of you suspect, on how many will survive the energy crunch.

Without energy there won’t be a ‘housing market/mortgage industry’ left to save.

Although it is conceivable that our (foolish) capitalists will keep the housing industry ‘alive’ in the narrow zone where heating and cooking indoors aren’t ‘musts’.

Okay, not a particularly ‘promising’ start but maybe it will get better:

.
DealBook
Morgan Stanley is shrinking its once-powerful trading business, leaving more of the sector to its bigger banking rivals.

Deep Cuts Raise Questions About Morgan Stanley
By SUSANNE CRAIG

Whether Morgan Stanley can avoid shrinking further and revive its fixed-income trading business will have significant ripple effects in the financial world.

Um, considering Morgan Stanley ‘OWNS’ GE, I wouldn’t be too quick to write their epitaph just yet. Unlike the other ‘financial fraudsters’ J.P. Morgan has a real stake in the bricks and mortar economy…although that stake is run by idiots, it is still successful despite itself.

Moving on:

European Central Bank Leaves Key Rate Unchanged
By JACK EWING 7:56 AM ET

The central bank, which left its benchmark rate at 0.75 percent, appears to have concluded that a rate cut would be powerless to solve a credit crunch in countries like Italy and Spain.

Bank of England Leaves Interest Rate at Record Low 7:14 AM ET

In case any of you are wondering, raising interest rates now would obliterate the global banking network and stock markets around the world in a single day.

But our next story begs the question of just how vital the banking network really is?

Obama’s Pick for Treasury Is Said to Be His Chief of Staff
By JACKIE CALMES

President Obama will announce on Thursday that he intends to elevate Jacob J. Lew to be the next secretary of Treasury, officials familiar with the decision said.

Um, there has always been a patina of ‘patronage’ surrounding cabinet posts but one always assumed the Secretary of the Treasury had to be at least a little ‘knowledgeable’ when it came to the world of finance.

Although Timmy has done the job for the past four years and he doesn’t know anything, so how bad can it be?

How did we get here again?

Did I make my point?

No? Then I doubt you’ll see this one:

Bits Blog
The 2012 Patent Rankings: I.B.M. on Top (Again)
By STEVE LOHR 8:01 AM ET

I.B.M. was granted more patents than any other company in 2012, its 20th consecutive year in the top spot. But the big movement in the rankings comes from Google and Apple.

In THEORY ‘patents’ protect the ‘discoverer’s’ right to exploit certain information. How bizarre is it good citizen that absent capitalism there would be no need for such ‘protection’?

(Which is not to say that patents have protected anything from the suitably deep-pocketed, if you catch my meaning.)

One need only take a hard look at what patents have done to the field of medical research to be convinced it is time to end this counter-productive practice.

But who listens to me?

Finally:

Wall Street Moves Forward
By REUTERS 9:40 AM ET

Stocks rose as stronger-than-expected exports in China raised hopes for a more robust recovery in the global economy this year.

Unexpected Sharp Rise in Exports From China

So, share prices ‘jump’ on ‘unexpected’ rise in Chinese exports…does this sound like ‘sandbagging’ to you too, good citizen?

Which export do you suppose it is (because you know it isn’t ‘across the board’ although that is what the article would like you to believe…)

Think it might be a pick-up in ‘rare earths’ that China had threatened to ‘squeeze off?’

And, as of 10 AM the Dow was only plus ten points and headed straight, you guessed it, down!

So today’s lede may not be its conclusion…

Well, I’m have a ‘good day’ despite the absymal ‘status quo’ the thieves have created for us to wallow in.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Problem, what problem?

Greetings good citizen,

It turns out if you keep playing with the web address tool you can eventually get something it will accept…which is why the ‘new’ (firewall-less) site is not Civics 101 but Civics 202.

A Simple Plan remains behind the firewall for the moment while I let the new site ‘come up to speed’.

How ironic is it that A Simple Plan has twice the number of Russian readers than it has US?

They have seen the worst of both (economic operating systems) and are more open minded than the typical ‘patriotic’ US citizen.

Well, I’m going to see how the new site ‘draws’ before I open up the ‘main attraction.’

It is curious how those who have been ‘told’ they already live ‘in paradise’ are oddly resistant to new ideas, even new ideas that ‘fix’ long standing injustices in the old ways…

But we really start walking the tightrope when we get into determining ‘what is ‘injustice’ and ‘who decides’.

It is a mystery to no one that the One Percent decide, they are the sole arbiters of ‘what is just’

It is their viewpoint that YOU are incapable of understanding what it’s like to be them, you aren’t ‘smart’ enough (probably how wealth and brains came to be equated when they have nothing to do with one another!)

So what are to make of our first headline?

A Bold Dissenter at the Fed, Hoping His Doubts Are Wrong
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Jeffrey M. Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in Virginia, has warned that the central bank’s efforts to stimulate growth are ineffective.

Economix Blog: The Great Dissenters

One need not be the president of a Federal Reserve Bank to realize (5 years after the fact) that the Fed’s ‘stimulus’ has had zero impact on ‘growth’. But that would be missing the whole point of calling the exercise ‘stimulus’.

What the Fed has been doing has nothing to do with ‘stimulating’ the global economy, what the Fed has done is to stabilize a badly broken global banking system.

How sad is it good citizen that despite trillions pumped in (and billions leaking out as ‘bonuses’) it is still broken beyond repair!

So what are we to make of this Fed President’s assertion?

He’s correct, but what are they supposed to do?

Cut off the stimulus and the global banking system collapses, pretty much immediately.

In a related story we are asked how ‘credible’ this situation is:

James A. Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington believes that recent online attacks on American banks have been the work of Iran.

Bank Hacking Was the Work of Iranians, Officials Say
By NICOLE PERLROTH and QUENTIN HARDY

The skill required to execute the attacks convinced American officials that Iran was behind them, likely in retaliation for economic sanctions and online attacks by the United States.

After being, er, ‘hoodwinked’ into a ten year long war by one desk of ‘the office for strategic studies’ chasing imaginary ‘Weapons of Mass destruction’ (for which no one was ever prosecuted, by the way.)

We are now being presented with ‘Quid Pro Quo’; we levied sanctions on Tehran so they ‘retaliated’ by hacking the (decidedly corrupt) US banking system…

With all of the chicanery going on in the TBTF banking network, how the heck can they tell? (It was ‘hacked’ and not outright theft or fraud?)

Short answer, they can’t!

For our next trick:

Former Analyst Cooperates in Insider Trading Case
By PETER LATTMAN 9:57 AM ET

Wesley Wang, a former analyst at SAC Capital Advisors, the hedge fund, has given federal agents the names of about 20 people that he said engaged in insider trading.

Or ‘touche’ as they say in fencing!

Of course ‘one incident’ isn’t proof that our whole financial network is corrupt…but it’s been more than one incident, in fact it’s been a long string of them ever since Saint Ronnie (Reagan) ‘privatized’ the healthcare system, unleashing a juggernaut!

Fund Titans Battle Over Herbalife
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 29 minutes ago

Daniel S. Loeb’s Third Point disclosed that it had acquired more than 8.2 percent of the nutritional supplements company. That puts him at odds with his friend, William A. Ackman.

How sad is it good citizen that the ‘titans of capitalism’ have been reduced to squaring off over control of a MLM network?

Well, as they say, you just can’t make this stuff up. That said, how’s that future looking to you now?

HSBC Sale of $9.4 Billion Ping An Stake in Jeopardy
By DAVID BARBOZA and KEITH BRADSHER 57 minutes ago

The British bank HSBC’s bid to sell its stake in China’s Ping An group is in jeopardy after China Development Bank decided not to finance a large part of the transaction.

Um, not for nothing but 9 billion balloons is still a lot of cake even in these days when everything is measured in billions (millions are for pikers.) Worse, I’ve never heard of the Ping An group (but I’m going to assume it’s not the guys who make the popular brand of golf clubs…although I might be wrong!)

And speaking of trouble from across the Pacific:

A 787 had to be towed back to the gate Tuesday in Boston because of a fuel leak. On Monday, a parked 787 caught on fire.
Dreamliner Is Troubled by Questions About Safety
By JAD MOUAWAD 5:34 AM ET

All Nippon Airways canceled a domestic flight on Wednesday after a computer on board a 787 Dreamliner erroneously showed problems with the aircraft’s brakes.

Capitalism at its finest! Buyer BEWARE!!!

Once again we see the folly of ‘sold to the lowest bidder’ when it comes to producing complex objects that must work in harmony with one another!

The Dreamliner was 3 YEARS behind schedule due to the inability of the engineers to deal with problems continents away. Sometimes ‘tele-conferencing’ just doesn’t cut it.
But hey that’s capitalism for ya, if the product doesn’t float/fly it’s not management’s fault, they aren’t engineers!

Um, does anyone else have a problem with this?

I have no need to fly…and for that I am grateful!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

New

Greetings good citizen,

The stock markets are all bleeding the artificial gains they made during the fictional ‘fiscal cliff’ debacle so we’d opine ‘nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’.

On the other hand we have the ‘Platinum coin’, er, ‘threat’ pounding the gold markets.

There’s nothin like this sort of silliness to prove my point that all ‘money’ is funny! (And if we get any further from money’s ‘one useful purpose’ than we already are then our civilization will be swimming in money when it collapses…think Zimbabwe.

Do I need to explain that the collapse will be due to money being rendered ‘useless’ to a majority of society?

Dangerous stuff, especially when ‘mishandled.’

And speaking of ‘mis-handling’:

Rescued by a Bailout, A.I.G. May Sue Its Savior By BEN PROTESS and MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED A lawsuit claims that the rescue by the government deprived A.I.G.’s shareholders of tens of billions of dollars and took private property for public use without appropriate compensation.

Should AIG ‘win’ its case against the US, I propose the judge be lynched on the spot (along with the attorneys for the prosecution!)

You already know there won’t be a jury involved in such a ridiculous case, it will be a judges decision like it always is when the One Percent rapes the public with its frivolous lawsuits.

How ironic is it that some people (and we’re talking about the permanently brain damaged here) think suing the ‘over-reaching’ government is no less than it deserves.

That’s how ‘brainwashed’ the corporate owned media has the few who don’t possess the capacity to think for themselves.

The company would have been a smoking pile of ashes if it hadn’t been for the ‘taxpayer bailout’ it received. Would the jokers have tried to sue the government for NOT helping had that been the case? Sure looks that way.

Naturally, doesn’t this begs the question of who is the psychopath who thought this was a ‘good idea’?

Shouldn’t s/he be ferreted out and institutionalized as being a ‘menace to society’?

But wait, we have even more ‘bad news’ from the crippled and broken ‘banking sector’.

In Deal, Bank of America Extends Retreat From Mortgages By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and PETER EAVIS The problems at Bank of America have cut down its mortgage ambitions, ceding market dominance to Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase. DealBook: Banks to Pay $8.5 Billion to Speed Up Housing Relief

The only question remaining good citizen is how long will it be before the mortgage industry becomes so unprofitable that it is abandoned altogether?

The term ‘qualified buyer’ is a joke because today’s youth aren’t paid enough to buy a pup tent on a postage stamp. Add to that how motor vehicles hasn’t fallen despite a significant drop in demand...

Did I mention out economic model is FUBAR, as exemplified by the piddling figure the banks are contributing to ‘speed up’ housing relief’ vs. the $700 BILLION congress GAVE THEM five years ago?

We don’t even want to know what happened to that and several TRILLION more, it would only make your little head hurt.

This is way beyond WTF!

Speaking of which, what about that ‘recovery’?

Euro Watch
Unemployment Climbs in Euro Zone By DAVID JOLLY 9:30 AM ET The jobless rate in the 17-nation bloc rose to 11.8 percent in November, a month in which German exports, imports and industrial orders all declined.

What’s this??! It’s been five years! All of the economists are predicting 3 to 5 percent GROWTH this year!

How can the Eurozone be in the dink? Didn’t they get the memo?

Or maybe it’s time we stopped listening to clueless economic cheerleaders who are well paid for their totally unqualified opinions.

Yes, Bubba, they get away with being wrong 99% of the time because their fall back position is ‘it’s just ‘my opinion’…and they know they’re full of crap when they make these sunny ‘predictions’.

They literally get paid to…well, if it’s manure and you know it it’s a lie!

Last on today’s hit parade is this reminder of why our economic system is on ‘life support’.

Bags of contaminated soil outside the Naraha-Minami school near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In Japan, a Painfully Slow Sweep By HIROKO TABUCHI Much of Japan’s post-Fukushima cleanup is primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by scientists as effective in removing radioactive cesium.

Seriously good citizen, outside a school? Let’s hope for the children’s sake it’s outside an ABANDONED school! (The corporate owned media do love to ‘tantalize’ its audience by omitting critical details.)

While Mother Nature appears to have methods of ‘sequestering’ radioactivity from the environment that our scientists don’t yet understand, we can only wonder what constitutes an acceptable clean up of these extremely hazardous compounds? (Because the article infers such methods exist…)

Insanity aside, this post marks the start of my ‘cleaning up my act’ so I can reach a wider audience. It will also serve as the first post on a non-fire walled edition of A Simple Plan.

How sad is it that there will still be posts made to the fire walled version of the site…pig that I am! Hopefully my readers follow me for my insights and not just my colorful speech!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner