Zombies

Greetings good citizen,

Still ‘disoriented’ by this ‘backwards schedule’ (I’m up but I haven’t had breakfast yet because coffee will keep me awake and I need to go back to bed later!)

The posts are fewer but the message remains the same, the destruction of our civilization proceeds apace.

When it finally does collapse it will be swift and (insanely enough) unstoppable…mostly due to massive stupidity…but it is really just widespread ignorance.

Talk about your ‘dangerous games’, there will be no ‘recovery’ from the downward spiral our self-professed ‘betters’ have put us in until ‘justice’ has been served/restored.

And that is the one thing the guilty have no interest in…but they need to be tracked down and eradicated all the same.

Or they will serve as an example to a new generation of thieves, just as the ‘robber barons’ of old are the ‘heroes’ of today’s plunderers.

(You see, our grandparents thought they could ‘tax’ the robbers into compliance when letting them live [while keeping their plunder] was the original mistake.)

[And] justice won’t be restored until the link between prospering personally is severed from the exploitation of what we all need to live. (Forcefully creating a huge ‘underclass’.)

But I digress, let’s have a quick peek at today’s headlines:

Sponsors Now Pay for Online Articles, Not Just Ads
By TANZINA VEGA
The strategy of advertisers sponsoring or producing content that looks much like traditional editorial content has become increasingly common as publishers try to create more sources of revenue.

Who needs ‘truth’ when you can pay to have your, er, ‘point of view’ published as the ‘truth’?

How ‘Orwellian’ (and I’m thinking Orson and not George) when we see this kind of ‘abuse’ of the system we rely upon for our information.

War of the Worlds (the radio broadcast) was an ‘example’ of the power of the media. People believe what they see or read in the media because it is our ‘trusted source’ for news.

They aren’t obliged to advise you that 99% of what they publish as fact is actually the opinion of the paper’s management/revenue department.

So, as you now know (kinda) you should only believe half of what you see and even less of what you hear (because most of it is BS.)

More disturbing was an article on one of the ‘top rated’ TV shows on cable…The Walking Dead.

Besides ‘outperforming’ almost every other major broadcast in its Sunday night time slot, the scientifically improbable event is also used as an allegory for our current political climate…if not our society’s entire political philosophy!

[Leading to my earlier comment regarding the ‘ocean of stupidity’ our civilization is being drown in…thanks to the same ‘profit driven’ media.]

Moving on we have this ‘obvious outcome’ making headlines once again:

Greek Banks Suspend Merger Talks
By NIKI KITSANTONIS 9:45 AM ET
National Bank of Greece and Eurobank said they could not raise the necessary capital under the terms of Greece’s agreement with foreign lenders.

Remember when we actually worried and fretted over how we would ‘pay’ for things?

This is that ‘revisited’. How unfortunate is it, good citizen, that the scoundrels who (and remain at large) bankrupted the global banking system (with impunity) have proven what we all only suspected, that all ‘money is ‘funny’, essentially meaningless.

Why else would Geithner’s replacement be taking this position (given the US’s new found role as being ‘on top’ of the world’s remaining fossil fuel reserves?)

U.S. Treasury Chief Talks of Growth in Europe
By ANNIE LOWREY 11:53 AM ET
On his first trip to Europe as Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew met with European officials to discuss protecting the global recovery.

Difficult for me, after two years of being unemployed, to dismiss the nascent ‘recovery’…BUT, I returned to work by virtue of a skill that has all but disappeared from these shores, manufacturing.

I’m now in the position of being one of the few that knows how to do this stuff.

So my ‘good fortune’ isn’t due to a tide that is lifting all boats. I caught a lucky niche, bully for me!

Not so good for everyone else I’m afraid.

In our final snippet, let us examine yet another inescapable fact of the ground that is rushing up to meet us…

DEALBOOK
G.E. to Buy Lufkin Industries for $3.3 Billion
By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED 12:27 PM ET
The deal is the latest by G.E.’s oil and natural gas unit, one of the fastest-growing parts of the conglomerate.

So Mr. Dillenger, why DO you rob banks?

And he quipped, “Because that’s where the money is!”

Now how many of you are agree with Mr. Dillenger?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Hades:Circled

Greetings good citizen,

Largely because it’s the middle of the night and I don’t have to go in tomorrow I’m taking advantage of my ‘down time’ to create a new post.

Probably how it will go for the next couple of weeks until I adjust to a ‘regular’ 3rd shift pattern.

That said there have been MANY disturbing news items I have wanted to expound upon, including the typical beating of the war drums surrounding North Korea (and how the hopelessly stupid believe we are in danger of ‘eminent attack’!)

Seriously…but the same thing happened when W was drumming up support for an invasion of Afghanistan, followed thirty days later by a totally irrational invasion of Iraq!)

Which is to return to our main theme…the one where I belabor the obvious and point out the destruction of our civilization by the hopelessly greedy (and stupid.)

But let’s see what the ‘guardians of truth and justice’ have for us?

We’re One Big Team, So Run Those Stairs
By JED LIPINSKI
CrossFit, the workout fitness program, is viewed by some companies as a way to improve worker production and morale.

Yes siree, you are a ‘member of the team’ until it becomes more profitable to ship your job to Timbuktu (where your replacement will do what you do for two cents A DAY!)

Lying corporate America keeps insisting that they ‘value’ their employees until they don’t.

The rats have no loyalty.

Your circumstances hinge largely on their inability to replace you with a competent meat puppet that they will also tell what a valued member of the ‘team’ they are!

As long as stupid keeps getting the work out the door, they will remain a ‘valued member of the team’.

But if they start angling for a better, fairer deal, suddenly they are a ‘liability’.

Although complaining about working conditions will also result in ‘early termination’:

As OSHA Emphasizes Safety, Long-Term Health Risks Fester
By IAN URBINA
OSHA, the watchdog agency that many Americans love to hate and industry often faults as overzealous, has largely ignored long-term threats.
Video: A Dangerous Trade
Documents: Investigating a Chemical’s Hazards

Why do workers ‘hate’ OSHA? Because the typical capitalist will terminate employees who complain about unsafe working conditions, often telling the media those workers were ‘unwilling to work’.

In our ‘desperation’ to hold on to our paycheck, many people will throw their would be savior under the bus, ultimately aiding no one.

It’s not until the ‘true blue’ employee loses an appendage and gets terminated for being disabled that they learn who their real ‘friend’ was.

But hey, we have bigger things to worry about:

Oil Pipeline Ruptures in Arkansas
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ 11:16 PM ET
An Exxon Mobil crude oil pipeline ruptured near Mayflower, Ark., spilling as many as 10,000 barrels of oil, the company said.

Somehow I don’t think it is particularly helpful to point out that a barrel of oil only has 33 gallons in it. When it’s 33 gallons of black guk it still mighty nasty business.

But locally two water department employees were terminated for ‘dressing’ deer they had shot at one of the town wells.

Now the paper is saying the town may have to pay a fine for ‘contaminating’ the drinking water along with not reporting the incident to the state environmental protection agency.

MORE LUDICROUS is the fact that the town wells are over 1,500 FEET deep…long way for deer blood to ‘seep’ into a portion of the town’s water supply (and the well in question is just down the street from where I live. So theoretically I’d be drinking ‘contaminated water’.

Mind you, Exxon Mobil probably WON’T be fined for spilling crude oil in Arkansas but two town employees who happened to take advantage of a public water source got fired for letting deer blood run 1,500 feet above the town water supply!

You know what the chances are of that blood even reaching the water table, pretty much nil!

Soil bacteria alone will gobble that stuff up long before it even begins to get under the earth.

So why are our environmental police so stupid?

Oh, that’s right, they don’t have to know anything about biology! All they need to know is law, which is written by equally as ignorant legislators!

Did I mention we have a problem with the ‘maladministration’ of our society?

Which probably explains why this myth persists:

Freed From Its Cage, the Gentler Robot
By ANNE EISENBERG
New factory robots, designed to work and play well with others, no longer have to be fenced in to protect workers from accidents.

Let’s leave aside the reality that robots don’t consume the products they make. Once again the ‘trend’ (driven by the greedy and short-sighted capitalist) is towards ‘total automation’.

You no longer have to keep robots isolated if you eliminate humans from the factory altogether!

Thus do we continue to read ‘happy talk’ about robots learning to operate ‘safely’ around their human counterparts.

How many robots will the capitalists need when nobody has a job anymore?

(Or the ONLY jobs left are in healthcare and law enforcement…) It’s a bit too nightmarish to even contemplate a healthcare environment utterly devoid of humans, sort of re-defines the innermost circle of hell, doesn’t it?

It certainly redefines being trapped with no way out.

And this is from Saturday’s NY Times.

How bad does it need to get good citizen?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Self-Defense

Greetings good citizen,

Does anyone else find it curious that these clowns understand economics (some of the time) but do things they know will hurt (what’s left of) the economy anyway?

Let’s start with our top story from today’s NY Times:

Recovery in U.S. Is Lifting Profits, but Not Adding Jobs
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

Experts estimate so-called budget sequestration could cost the country about 700,000 jobs, but Wall Street doesn’t expect the cuts to substantially alter corporate profits or threaten stock markets.

.7 percent of the much-modified workforce will lose their income source but this WON’T affect the ‘bottom line’ of US based corporations?

Which is to point out that 700k is in fact a much smaller percentage of ‘working aged citizens’ but the workforce isn’t measured ‘rationally’ considering the bizarre idea of if you don’t have a job you don’t count skews the whole picture…

Is Wall Street ‘right’ about this assessment?

Sadly yes. Your job was exported and you were made ‘redundant’ to the new global economy. The individual they gave your job to ‘replaced’ you as a customer as well…making you totally superfluous.

The only reason there hasn’t been blood in the streets is because our ‘globalization is good’ cheerleaders haven’t been telling YOU the whole story.

They concentrate on the ‘lower prices’ part of the story (won through lower wages/benefits) as a ‘win-win’ situation.

The part where you lose is the few hundred million competitors who (completely) took YOUR place via the heavily manipulated ‘funny money market’ (which is about to collapse!)

In this respect it is more than a little amazing to see the corporate owned media laying this fact out in a way that shows everyone what capitalism has done!

How else can the US workforce lose such a large percentage of its workforce and not affect profits an iota?

This is where the rubber meets the road good citizen, If you have never considered yourself as ‘surplus’ before…it’s time to LOOK AGAIN!

Did I not point out that the policies of the past three decades point directly towards an effort to kill off as much of the 'surplus population' as possible?

Headlines like today’s TOP STORY should leave you with NO DOUBT who the cannon is pointed at…

It points at YOU!

If you aren’t a bona-fide member of the >One Percent, you’re toast.

Like things weren’t desperate enough, it gets more interesting:

Chinese Stocks Fall on Steps to Curb Property Prices
By DAVID BARBOZA 5:13 AM ET

China’s cabinet, or State Council, said home sellers would soon pay a 20 percent capital gains tax.

You don’t suppose Chinese equity prices are being ‘propped up’ by a ‘real estate bubble’ do you?

What do you suppose is going to happen when that little episode plays itself out?

Can you say ‘cascading systemic collapse’?

I knew you could!

For our last installment of ‘belaboring the obvious’ (seems to be the day for it.):

As Hacking Against U.S. Rises, Experts Try to Pin Down Motive
By NICOLE PERLROTH, DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

Motives for a cyberattack, which could range from industrial spying to disabling the power grid, remain obscure.

Given what we have already discussed, especially the part where it becomes obvious that YOU are being played for a patsy however you slice it, are YOU ‘mystified’ as to why ‘the capitalists’ are under heavy attack from the cyber-warriors?

I’d say it was ‘self-defense’.

The curious part of this unforeseen development is just how far will they let it go?

You know they’ve been looking for an ‘escape hatch’ for quite some time…could this be it?

Get out of dodge under the cover of a crippling (and likely self-inflicted) cyber attack?

We all know today’s capitalist/opportunists are a little light in the honesty department so I’d opine that it wouldn’t ‘surprise’ me.

But the corporate owned media is repeatedly astonished by such mundane occurrences as sunrise.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Deficit

Greetings good citizen,

Naturally the rhetoric behind these mysterious ‘budget cuts’ appears to be as ill-informed as the rest of us are.

Is what’s happening now the end result of not reading what you’re being forced to vote upon?

Common ‘trick’ in modern politics…funny how one of the ‘advantages of democracy' was its alleged ‘deliberateness’, that everything was discussed and debated BEFORE it was put to a vote.

But (like many Republican budget appropriation bills) they get slipped into other, unrelated legislation and voted into law…’unwittingly’.

And that SHOULD BE illegal…but under our current system of ‘anything goes justice’, it is not.

So we are faced with (apparently) ‘indiscriminate’ cuts across social welfare programs…(gee, wonder WHO would have done THAT?) while the civilian branches of the military (that provide oversight) are bearing the brunt of cuts to the Pentagon’s budget.

Once again it looks like the Conservo-Whackos have been (as they will undoubtedly claim later) 'framed perfectly' for this crime against civilization.

We all know it’s those commie, (code) pinko, One Percent lovin’ LIBERALS that want to slash social security and throw poor, defenseless old people out in the streets!

Sure…

Liberal isn’t quite right…it’s those never met a tax cut they didn’t like LIBERTARIANS that ‘sneak’ stuff into other legislation so it can get passed into law unread and undebated.

In fact, the Libbies are so unpopular they can’t get a candidate elected beyond the state level.

And this ‘underhandedness’ is the reason why.

Their ideas (that even their rank and file are ignorant of) are so radical as to border on criminal.

You’d never voluntarily live under Libertarian rule but the cannibal capitalists (who already own everything) think it would be ‘fun’.

That’s why our bought and paid for justice system ignores ‘irregularities’ like unread legislation being slipped in with legitimate business and getting passed ‘en masse’.

Again our much-criticized corporate owned media has ignored this issue completely because their corporate masters want it this way.

The evidence that our government has been hijacked continues to mount while the vaunted ‘4th Estate’ remains mute.

Even more bizarre is how if you read this fact on the Internet, it automatically becomes a conspiracy!

Only the paper you pay two bits for tells you ‘the truth’ (as our corporate masters see it…reality be…oh well.)

And somehow this is NOT a ‘conspiracy’…

Let’s set aside the fact that nobody knows/can explain where these ‘budget cuts’ come from (although we can guess fairly accurately.)

And turn our attention to ‘the deficit’ (that the Republicans have quintupled since Reagan took office.) [And somehow this escapes being a conspiracy too…curious, don’t you think?]

If we start from the basis that ALL MONEY IS FUNNY and compound that with the fact that MOTHER NATURE DOESN’T HAVE A CASH REGISTER we have to ask the obvious question ‘WHAT DEFICIT?’

Actually no such thing exists…it is ‘faulty accounting’ driven by capitalist economics but the ‘conservo-whackos’ like to pretend it matters!

How unfortunate is it that this whole charade is a power trip made worse by extreme mis-management?

Even more disturbing is how this entire ‘conspiracy’ to push our current civilization off of a cliff can be chalked up to ‘Social Darwinism’ by the very ones who have been marked for extinction!

Even more ironic is how they’ve marked themselves (although in most cases their parents did it for them.)

Naturally I’m hoping for a public debate…how sad is it good citizen that my chances of success are roughly equal with Bradley Manning’s chances of being acquitted (despite not having committed a crime.)

Once again I end a piece with the admonition ‘what happens next is up to YOU!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Shadows

Greetings good citizen,

It’s one thing for me to repeat (ad nauseum) that our civilization is on the verge of collapse and quite another to present the evidence that proves it.

Thus it is my pleasure to present to you the ever popular Shadow Stats!

No. 505: January CPI, Real Retail Sales and Earnings, Existing Home Sales, Subscription required February 21st, 2013
• Real Earnings Fall Year-to-Year • January Year-to-Year Inflation: 1.6% (CPI-U), 1.5% (CPI-W), 9.2% (ShadowStats)
• Aside from Not Measuring Constant-Standard-of-Living Inflation, The Chained-CPI Is Too Unstable for Setting Cost-of-Living Adjustments
• Outlooks Unchanged for Ongoing Economic and System-Liquidity Crises and for Inflation Crisis to Develop in Year Ahead More ...

Yes good citizen, while all of the picky pundits continue to insist the problem will be ‘deflation’ and not hyper-inflation, the central banks of the world are running the presses in ‘hyper-drive’.

WHEN (not if) the global supply chain shuts down we will instantly be faced with ‘too much money chasing too few goods’…typically notable by the frantic ‘bidding up’ of prices…also known as ‘hyper-inflation’.

No. 504: January 2013 Housing Starts, PPI and PPI and CPI Revisions Subscription required February 20th, 2013
• January 2013 Housing Starts 61% Below High of January 2006
• Annualized January PPI Headline Inflation of 2.5% Was 7.1%, Before Seasonal-Adjustment Muting
• *Revised Seasonally-Adjusted Inflation Data Suggestive of Instabilities in Monthly Headline Reporting More ...

Inflation is still in ‘runaway mode’ while the government continues too ‘cook the books’ (just like they do with the unemployment numbers.)

*Note Mr. William’s subtle nod at the accountant’s difficulties keeping the data, er, ‘credible’.

No. 503: January 2013 Industrial Production
Subscription required February 15th, 2013
• Annual Production Growth in January Slowed to Pre-Recession Levels
• Monthly Production Decline Was In the Context of Continued Volatile and Unstable Reporting
• Production Benchmark Revision in March Should Show Weaker Activity Than Previously Estimated More ...

‘Pre-recession levels’…so how’s that recovery (that nobody but the pundits and the financial sector has been able to see) coming?

You know as well as I good citizen that there is no recovery. There isn’t going to be one. The plunge stopped (temporarily) to let the economy ‘adjust’ to the new normal. Then it will plunge again.

In this case the ‘it’ in question is the economy and the global one if you want to be more specific.

No. 502: January 2013 Retail Sales
Subscription required February 13th, 2013
• Retail Sales Continued to Stagnate, Reflecting Intensifying Structural Liquidity Issues for the Consumer More ...

A single (harrowing) bullet point but what does it point to, eh, good citizen?

Anyone? (Bueller) Anyone?

(and the geeky kid in the back says,) “It’s pointing to the failure of capitalism!”

Does the teacher hand the kid an ‘attaboy’ or detention?

What would YOU do?

No. 501: December 2012 and Annual Trade Balance, Consumer Credit Subscription required February 8th, 2013
• Little Changed for the Year, 2012 U.S. Merchandise Trade Deficit Still Reflected [the] Cumulative Loss of 6.6 Million Jobs
• December Trade Reporting Suggested Upside Contribution to First Revision of Fourth-Quarter GDP
• New ShadowStats Graph of Consumer Credit Outstanding More ...

Not that there was much of a ‘choice’ (The whole system is designed to provide an ‘illusion of participation’) but where was this data during the run up to the election?

Or were conservo-whackos worried that bad jobs numbers would bite THEM in the backside…because we all KNOW who is responsible for destroying the economy.

No. 500: SPECIAL COMMENTARY U.S. Government GAAP-Based 2012 Financial Data
February 5th, 2013
• GAAP-Based Federal Budget Deficit Hit Record $6.6 Trillion in 2012
• Five-Year Average Annual Shortfall at $5.2 Trillion
• With U.S. Facing Mortal, Long-Range Solvency Issues, Hyperinflation Remains a Virtual Certainty More ...

I don’t know what to tell you good citizen, there is obvious fraud in the markets and impending collapse in the supply chain, both of which spells disaster for our species.

What needs to be understood up front is both are the result of mis-management…to the degree of criminal negligence.

There is profit in crisis and the capitalists intend to inflict the ‘long emergency’ upon the rest of us.

This WILL lead to civil unrest and revolt.

DUMP CAPITALISM NOW!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner.

Bucket

Greetings good citizen,

Nothing is more poignant than the daily headlines for driving home the point that our civilization is scroomed!

We need look no further than the top story in the business section for proof:

DealBook
Obama’s Nominee for S.E.C. Tries to Allay Skepticism
By BEN PROTESS

Mary Jo White, President Obama’s choice to lead the agency, is telling Congress she can avoid conflicts of interest despite her Wall Street clients.

I’m not kicking the poor woman in the shins but who do you place in a sensitive position like that who ISN’T an ‘insider’?

My ‘problem’ with this choice is not the chosen but the chooser, who has proven to be Wall Street’s boy from day one.

We have already witnessed some well qualified appointees resign in frustration…and if this woman has integrity it is likely she too will go the way of her predecessors.

But it gets better:

The budget cuts scheduled to start taking effect on Friday would affect all facets of the federal budget, including aviation and military spending.
Austerity Kills Government Jobs as Cuts to Budgets Loom
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

The federal government is cutting back at a pace exceeded in the last half-century only by the military demobilizations after the Vietnam War and the cold war.

Graphic: Austerity Is Here

Um, that last headline is a bit deceptive considering the government has been spending at an ‘unprecedented clip’ since this whole ‘War on Terra’ thing got started.

How ironic is it that if they were serious about reducing ‘terrorism’ in the world they’d make their most promising progress by slashing their own budget?

Not only has the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan lasted TWICE AS LONG as WWII but it has also been TWICE AS COSTLY!

Yet you don’t hear the conservo-whackos screaming to cut the Pentagon’s budget, do ya?

No, instead we get headlines like this:

Durable Goods Orders Drop as Aircraft Demand Falls
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 47 minutes ago

A sharp drop in demand for commercial aircraft caused overall durable goods orders to drop 5.2 percent last month, but orders for core capital goods like machinery, equipment and software rose 6.3 percent.

How ironic is it that the same sort of ‘phenomenon' accounts for the recent ‘surge’ in home prices (after years of flat lining.)

When the whole economy is deader than a door nail, a 5% reduction in orders for commercial aircraft really spanks you in the bottom (line that is.)

Housing prices are up ‘relative to what they were last year’ (and not 6 years ago when things were booming.

It may be ‘the biggest increase’ SINCE then but what are they really saying?

I saw some twit last night proclaim that if they could keep up the pace the current ‘inventory’ would be ‘sold out’ in just 4 months.

What a crock! Guess who’s buying all of the houses?

Why it’s our old pal Flipper, (betting he’s finally going to find renters at long last!)

Guess what?

Flipper is…WRONG AGAIN!

And like the last ‘bubble’, Flipper is going to ‘walk away’ when the renters fail to materialize.

But our next headline shines a light on the current state of economic affairs:

DealBook
Regulators Block Ryanair’s Latest Attempt to Buy Aer Lingus
By JAMES KANTER 19 minutes ago

As the European Commission blocked the attempt by Ryanair for competitive reasons, the Irish carrier reiterated that it would appeal the decision in court.

In a ‘saturated market place’ the most you can do to boost the bottom line is ‘buy market share’ (by buying our the ‘competition’…then sticking it to the customers!)

Turning down this merger is the right thing to do…however, it isn’t over yet.

If you can’t soak the public you can always take the sure route of soaking the government:

EADS Profit Soars 19 Percent
By NICOLA CLARK 7:28 AM ET

The company says it made about $1.56 billion in 2012 thanks to commercial aircraft sales, even though its military segment struggled amid budget troubles in the United States and Europe.

What’s the old saying, ‘war is good business.’

Wrecking stuff then getting paid to rebuild it…can’t beat that racket.

It’s a ‘self-reinforcing circle’.

Better shake a leg here, we’ve still got a lot of ground to cover.

Fed Defends Stimulus in Testimony to Senate
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Ben S. Bernanke told senators that the central bank saw its campaign as necessary and effective, reassuring them that its benefits outweighed any risks.

Economix Blog: Does Bernanke Have the Best Inflation Record? | By Unemployment, Not So Good
Home Sales and Bernanke Calm Market

How does Helicopter Ben justify bailing out the world’s financial system (to the tune of 22, we don’t have ‘em, trillion) to a financially incompetent legislative body?

If there were a half a brain between the 500 plus of ‘em, they’d know the system was bankrupt without even asking ‘the Bernank’…

The only reason the home sales are calming the market is because they (the corporate owned media) believes the average citizen is too stupid to figure out there is no ‘recovery’ in the housing market (nor will there ever be!)

And again we are expected to be shocked by this latest revelation:

News Analysis
Italian Deadlock Rekindles Anxiety About Euro Zone
By LIZ ALDERMAN and JACK EWING

The apparent political gridlock signaled by its elections raises new fears that the euro crisis may be far from over.

European Markets Dip Amid Uncertainty
Italian Parties Maneuver After Electoral Split

Does ANYONE truly believe the Euro-zone crisis is over, seriously?

Then we have this ‘gem’:

Officials have recommended that nuclear plants like Nine Mile Point in New York install new safety equipment.
Post-Fukushima, Arguments for Nuclear Safety Bog Down
By ERIC LIPTON and MATTHEW L. WALD

A dispute is developing between the nuclear industry and regulators, and among the regulators themselves, about the necessity of more safeguards at power plants.

Graphic: Tasks Remain for the American Nuclear Industry

Let’s ‘cut to the chase’…the only ‘safe’ nuke is a cold one…but if you shut down the nukes without first installing adequate renewables the entire grid would shut down in less than a day.

Better to let the candle remain lit than to curse the darkness.

And finally:

DealBook
Wall Street Pay Rises, for Those Who Still Have a Job
By SUSANNE CRAIG 6:39 AM ET

The average cash bonus for people employed in New York City in the financial industry rose by roughly 9 percent, to $121,900, in 2012, the New York State comptroller said.

U.S. Banks in 2012 Posted Highest Profits Since 2006,

The Litany of Woe was quite detailed today, a rather good ‘capture’ if I must say so myself.

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

Cinderella Liberty

Greetings good citizen,

Among the many signs that our civilization is rotting away from the inside is the return of crippling interest rates.

As I mentioned yesterday, the Republican’s ‘repealed’ anti-usury legislation just prior to the economy collapsing. how opportune?

Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent.

[Enlarge This Image
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Subrina Baptiste of Brooklyn says JPMorgan Chase allowed payday lenders to seize child-support funds in her account. ]

With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps on interest rates.

While the banks, which include giants like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, do not make the loans, they are a critical link for the lenders, enabling the lenders to withdraw payments automatically from borrowers’ bank accounts, even in states where the loans are banned entirely. In some cases, the banks allow lenders to tap checking accounts even after the customers have begged them to stop the withdrawals.

Laws? We don’t need no stinking laws!

Did I mention that our (global) banking system is already F.U.B.A.R.?

Understand good citizen, the emphasis in that statement of fact rests in the ALL part. There is no way to ‘repair’ the banking system without totally re-wiring how it works.

[Like A Simple Plan does.]

How hard do you have to be whacked over the head good citizen? This is war (and they’re holding all of the ammo!)

They have ‘spy in the sky’ while all you’ve got is a Zippo and a can of fluid.

How ironic is it that you have a lot less to lose?

Even more ironic is how ‘fire cleanses’…cuz we could sure use some ‘cleaning up’ around here!

Once again we confront the question of how did it come to this?

And the answer is our government was ‘hijacked’ long ago by the very people it was established to protect us from.

EPIC FAIL.

Now how do we prevent that from happening (again) because it HAS HAPPENED EVERY TIME, sometimes even before the revolt is over!

That’s why revolt for the sake of revolt is stupid.

YOU, the average citizen, needs to know AHEAD OF TIME, PRECISELY what you’re buying into.

Which is why A Simple Plan is laid out for you examination, so you can learn the specifics of what’s at stake BEFORE a single drop of blood is spilled.

Not that Mao’s ‘little red book’ did anything to preserve the purity of ‘the people’s revolution’. But capitalism has a way of ‘perverting justice’, as today’s headlines show.

You should all find it most disturbing that the first ‘constitutional convention’ was an ‘invitation only’ event.

Worse, our ‘representatives’ to that historic event were ‘self-selected’ (and thus did they do their utmost to protect THEIR interests…to the doom of the rest of us.)

The idea behind gaining popular support for a new way of running things is so the ‘assassins’ can’t kill the revolution’s leaders (another ‘curious’ historical phenomenon) before they can alter the people’s situation too radically.

Yes sir, things are the way they are because the ‘entrenched interests’ will murder anyone who attempts to change them…

Which should give you some idea as to why you are being denied your right to ‘due process’ (again) after 900 years.

Worse, according to the deceptively named Libertarians, you are endowed with NO Rights. None what so ever.

What gives you ‘rights’ under a Libertine banner? Money.

How STUPID IS THAT? (Considering ALL money is FUNNY!)

So the, er, ‘authority’ who coins the money has a monopoly on rights!

Can you say Seig Hiel?

How ironic is it that the absolute dictatorship championed by the ‘Libertarians’ is indistinguishable from monarchy?

Which is to point out that today’s royal wannabe’s hide behind a ‘mask of liberty’.

Liberty for them; tyranny for you.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Workie-workie!

Greetings good citizen,

Today’s topic is the world of work. While some, er, ‘freethinkers’ argue that work is unnecessary, they can’t argue their way around that fact that if nobody works, nothing gets done.

And you’d be amazed at how few people want to participate in ‘productive ventures’ (at least on a ‘trade basis’.)

They’d rather ‘decorate’ rocks and trade those for food than do the actual hard work of tilling the soil and growing crops or tending to the needs of the livestock because if someone doesn’t do either, there won’t BE any.

But our ‘why workers’ point to nature shows like ‘Yukon men’ or ‘Alaska the last frontier’ and their ‘self-sufficient’ lifestyle and claim that’s how it should be.

When the shows themselves focus on how as the population rises, it becomes harder and harder to bag enough game to make it through the 8 month long winters.

Yet each episode demonstrates how Mother Nature herself is a cruel taskmaster. You’ve only got so much time to get the job done and if you don’t finish or if things are a little ahead of schedule, too bad.

Which is to say every one of our ‘frontiersmen’ works their ass off just to survive.

Mind you, nobody ‘pays’ them to do what they do. (Well, the TV crew must pay ‘em something but there isn’t anyplace up there to buy the stuff you need.) So the money buys fuel, ammo and tools like ATV’s, new boats and bigger guns.

Most of us grew up in a society that doesn’t make us work ‘hard’ (Compared to what our ancestors had to do to survive.)

The miracle that is ‘money’ enables us to live comfortably without having to do EVERY LITTLE THING for ourselves.

So it is that we have encountered a different, er, ‘situation’ than the one our ancestors faced…although, truth be told, this situation is far from ‘new’.

Now we have more workers than work…what a happy situation because now everyone can do a smaller chunk of the task at hand and everybody wins more ‘free time’.

But that’s not how it works under (more for me) capitalism.

Worse, more for me capitalism is extremely wasteful…now that the population is approaching the ‘carrying capacity’ of the planet, don’t you think it’s time we start addressing the inefficiencies and inequities of the ‘more for me’ mindset?

Yes, ‘need’ drives the entire picture…and it’s what keeps the ‘more for me’ crowd living in the lap of luxury.

How, er, ‘frightening’ is it that the already filthy rich don’t need but a fraction of the wealth they have gouged out of the rest of us?

It SHOULD scare you spitless.

Because if money were being used ‘correctly’ the more for me bunch wouldn’t have the lock they have on our species survival they have now.

The very fact that the uber wealthy exist demonstrates the main flaw in capitalism.

Sadder perhaps is the >One Percent’s ‘legalization’ of their unjustified avarice.

When the giants of our society had the Supreme court (which they own, lock stock and barrel!) declare that the purpose of commerce was to enrich its owners!

Whereas the original and most commonly accepted definition of the purpose of commerce is to serve society’s needs ‘at a reasonable profit’.

How much trouble do you think ‘we’ (as a species) are in considering the conservo-whackos did away with the anti usury laws? (Never mind stripping you of your right to due process!)

Um, boys and girls, the >One Percent have declared ‘open season’ on us and there isn’t a darn thing we can do about it! (I was going to say they declared war upon us but that would imply we have the ability to fight back…which we don’t!)

The real riddle is what these weasels are going to tell our sons and daughters when they order them to open fire on us?

Now here’ s a scary thought. Considering the basic theme of most video games, how many of ‘em will even hesitate?

We aren’t ‘The Family of Man’. We are a collection of (pseudo) ‘rugged individuals’ a la John Wayne or Captain Kirk.

And guess who has fed our children THAT particular illusion?

While we did nothing to stop them.

Which is to point out good citizen that there are some real ‘monsters’ loose at the top of our society.

And they should be made to PAY for their CRIMES.

Illegal and immoral are two separate concepts and you can only wonder why…because immoral SHOULD BE illegal. Yet these sicko’s are going to use the ‘I’ve done nothing illegal’ defense as they stand amidst the smoking landscape that their actions turned to scorched earth.

Then, the real coup de grace, they’re going to ‘apologize’.

And we will respond with ‘take a hike mac!’

So let’s recap, shall we?

We have a world that we have ‘tamed’ and COULD BE working a lot less than we currently do…but we have been saddled with a system of commerce that doesn’t need all of the available workers.

Now the, er, ‘beneficiaries’ of this twisted system are trying to keep things from changing, which HAS RESULTED in the collapse of the commerce system.

(In case it looks like I went screaming off the reservation towards the end there…I did not.)

The question, good citizen, as always, is ‘what are we going to do about it?’

Anyway,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

M & A

Greetings good citizen,

As it has for the past quarter century, the global marketplace continues to shrink and the capitalists continue to call this ‘progress’.

Now let’s conduct a thought experiment to see how many of you understand what’s happening.

You all know what the objective of the game of monopoly is, don’t you?

And nothing yet invented demonstrates capitalism in action better than this straight-forward board game!

The objective is to ‘bankrupt’ all of the other players.

Now marvel for a moment, once over the game’s popularity and marvel again that it is the WORLD’S primary operating principle!

NOT that you had any say in this…our self-professed ‘betters’ laid out the ground rules and have ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ regarding who gets what, when so nobody (except the hired help) really ‘loses their shirt’.

What do you make of this headline?

TOP NEWS
DealBook
With Confidence on an Upswing, Mergers Make a Comeback
By PETER LATTMAN

Merger activity has suddenly roared back to life, with the latest megadeal being the Berkshire-led acquisition of Heinz.

Berkshire and 3G Capital in a $23 Billion Deal for Heinz

Are you ‘happy’ that you are being pushed closer to insolvency by being denied yet another choice?

The Heinz ‘merger’ is bad enough but after losing Eastern and United now we see American Airlines ‘merging’ with US Air…and what do you suppose the first thing they’ll do will be?

Why it will be ‘eliminate redundancy’!

Tens of thousands will lose their jobs and my, oh my what a fine job market it is to be cutting thousands of ‘service industry’ jobs in!

What do you suppose corporate controlled Washington will do about this?

Same thing they’ve always done, of course…launch more drones and have the cops beat more protesters!

Here I am, protesting ‘monopolies’ when, under A Simple Plan there will only be one, er, ‘airline’ (But you can fly for free! Restrictions apply…) just as other public utilities will be operated ‘monolithically’ to better serve mankind.

The difference between monopolistic ownership and no ownership is the ‘profit’ angle.

Under A Simple Plan, public utilities (like Airlines) exist to ‘serve the public’, under capitalism they exist solely to enrich the capitalist.

The ‘affordability’ of airfare never even enters the calculation (under the current system.)

If you’ve gotta get there quick, they’re the only game in town and you’ll pay what they tell you to pay…until the pool of paying customers shrinks to the point where it can no longer support the industry, then the industry will collapse catastrophically!

But that’s capitalism for ya!

(Actually it isn’t ‘for you’; it’s for them!)

Back to the original question, does the sudden appearance of the Heinz merger mean the M&A drought has ended?

HA!

Seriously?

Well, you can believe what you like but Bubba, there isn’t enough ‘market share’ out there to fill a thimble, but knock yourself out…try to buy more!

We can only assume the ‘logic’ behind the take-over of Heinz is not only is it a condiment, it can double as a soup!

Heck, hit it with some Italian seasonings and you’ve got spaghetti sauce, who knew!

Which represents the ‘danger’ of capitalist tampering. The drive to maximize applications often ruins the product across the board.

Which is to say after ‘cost reducing’ the production process the product will taste like watery tomato juice and there will be no ‘going back…’

Am I belittling one of the fundamental processes of the free market? You bet I am!

If you’ll allow me the liberty I would backstep to yesterday where we discussed money’s one useful function.

And yet Heinz will be ruined in a futile attempt to squeeze more ‘money’ out of the basic set up.

If you like your ketchup, best to head out and buy a few cases now, before they wreck it chasing ‘imaginary’ gains.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pillars (1)

Greetings good citizen,

It is not unusual for the news cycle to ignore the issues we should be discussing, so it was today when I couldn’t find an ‘appropriate’ article that would allow me illustrate (one of) the pillars of A Simple Plan.

Thus today’s ‘lecture’ will be on ‘what are the ‘pillars’ of A Simple Plan?’

The first pillar is equality, without equality there is no justice…

Naturally, nature doesn’t do ‘equal’ and NOBODY is qualified to ‘adjust’ perceived ‘natural inequalities’.

So it is, for our purposes in this discussion, 'equal' refers to the principle of ‘equal treatment under the law’.

This is not ‘new’ however, like anarchy it also has never been tried, never mind achieved.

Because the concept of equal treatment (under capitalism) stops exactly there, at the courtroom door…because that’s where ‘equality’ under capitalism (allegedly) exists…in the courtroom, everywhere else, class war reigns.

(And you KNOW our current inoperative economy is the way it is because the elite ‘own’ the courtroom too…so there goes ‘equality’…)

Which would be to opine that equality is non-existent, under our capitalist rubric at any rate.

Thus the base of the first pillar under A Simple Plan is the Human Anti-exploitation law.

How does equality figure into ‘anti-exploitation’?

What applies to one applies to ALL, that is equality.

So the Human anti-exploitation law makes it illegal for one human to make his/her living from the ‘sweat’ of another human.

This, in fact, outlaws the entire employer/employee relationship.

It also bans selling as a means of making a living. (Your ability to buy cheap and sell dear exploits the buyer.)

So if you can’t buy and sell and you can’t hire anyone (for a profit) how do you make a living?

You cut out the middleman and work for society.

Yes, good citizen, humanity is the customer and the resources to make what humanity needs belong to all of us…so this ownership nonsense should have gone out the window with the collapse of monarchy…but it didn’t.

Now we have a worse situation on our hands…we may have rid ourselves of ‘absolute rulers’ of the lands we live in but we still have them ruling our places of employment!

Worse, this is happening in a time when there aren’t enough jobs to go around!

How do we fix this?

Under (every owner a king) capitalism, we can’t! (Short of the Lord Creator [of Christianity] appearing in the sky and commanding it, it ain’t gonna happen!)

Imagine if Allah appeared in the heavens over Washington DC? What do you think the Israelis would do?

But I digress…(although certain ‘thought experiments’ are irresistible! I also feel compelled to remind you that Gegner is an atheist so the only thing Gegner expects to appear in the sky is rain…in its various forms.)

While the capitalist defends the indefensible by insisting it’s not their fault there isn’t enough ‘market share’ to drive ‘full employment’, this merely flips the problem on its head.

Their unwillingness to pay their employees is what is driving the global ‘demand drought’. (We need not even go into the massive mismanagement issues that are evident through out the commerce system world-wide.)

So how ironic is it that the solution to our broken economy lies in the ending of predatory capitalism?

What the clueless among you (and those damn Libbies really are clueless) need to understand is much of what we do NEEDS DOING (and we’d do it regardless of if we got paid to do it!)

Again, STUPID Libbies would interpret that as an argument against paying because they don’t understand money’s ONE (count ‘em) ‘useful purpose’.

Money is a ‘regulator’; it restricts access.

Without money you’d never get within a hundred yards of a restaurant…although the ‘lack of help’ (nobody would work there for any amount!) might make you give up your booth.

Ironically (again) the (stupid) Libbie’s solution to this problem is slavery, which they are perfectly cool with (until the chains are slapped on THEM!)

Then it’s ‘tragically unfair!’

So under the pillar of Equality, you would work ‘for society’ and your money would be for YOU! When you went to procure the necessities of life NOBODY (not even society) would receive your ‘money’, it would simply be erased from your account, having served its one useful purpose!

Um, I didn’t intend to expend an entire essay on a single pillar but the first is the ‘foundation’ of A Simple Plan.

Without ‘equality’ there isn’t a civilization that is worth squat…and the only way we know that is by the ‘success’ of past races.

While our education is ‘Euro-centric’ in this nation, the most successful civilization on the planet to date was the Native (North) Americans.

Native American history is an embarassment of riches yet we shun it in favor our blood-thirsty European heritage…at the behest of the capitalists among us.

(Full Disclosure, Gegner is NOT [to the best of his knowledge] even ‘part’ Native American, my admiration of their culture is completely unbiased.)

No irony should be lost on the fact that the Native peoples used banishment as a punishment for bad behavior, so Exile is rooted in ‘custom’ as a sensible solution.

And then, like now, the assumption was that you couldn’t be ‘fixed’…so your genes were excluded from the gene pool.

Sort of makes you wonder where humanity would be today if it had adhered to this passive ‘process of elimination’?

How sad is it good citizen that the genes that should be eliminated from our society belong to the powerfully stupid?

No irony should be lost on the fact that this is where the idea that criminals were ‘salvageable’ was born.

Which opens a different door, many of today’s criminals have done no wrong, while many who have done wrong haven’t been prosecuted for their crimes (Thanks to their criminal relatives!)

Which is all leading to the second of our three pillars, justice.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. We cannot address the world’s problems if we are unwilling to face the world as it really is.

While it appears I advocate certain unorthodox beliefs, it is the casting out of these beliefs that coincides with the disintegration of the fabric of human society.

Like the Libertarian/Republican insistence that there is no such thing as a human social contract.

Peculiar because this is how slavery became widespread.

While the capitalist points to our (ever) diminished ‘faith in God’ (as the reason our society is failing), the realist points to Justice!

Funny how the capitalist is the first one to defend and invoke ‘god’s right’ to retribution.

If I’ve done wrong, let God punish me! (Knowing full well it won’t happen.)

I say it’s time we give the capitalist God the helping hand he has always needed.

When the capitalist is thirsty for justice he has no patience with God. When the shoes are reversed, it’s the other way around.

Government

Greetings good citizen,

In our ongoing series to highlight how we can change the world we discussed (briefly) the economic changes that need to be made in order to return society to prosperity.

What we didn’t do was touch upon the social ‘third rail’…not out of fear but due to the great degree of ‘ignorance’ that surrounds what politics should be about.

We have a landscape populated with starving, unemployed homeless people and all our politicians can talk about is gay marriage and gun control (along with Federal subsidies to get more cops and build new schools.)

Worse, politicians (and people with political ambitions) don’t see the need to change the conversation from what it was 200 years ago when the hot button was States rights Vs Federal rights.

Our new government, er, (bear with me) will be (as opposed to ‘should be) centered on Human rights.

How did our (Slaving) founders get it wrong? They had to avoid the issue of human rights so as not to offend the ‘monied interests’.

Worse, the founding of the US was seen as the birth of a ‘capitalist utopia’…which they rapidly learned would not work! But you have to give the capitalists credit, they are persistent if nothing else…(like intelligent, for example.)

Here it is two hundred years later and they are trying to pull the same stunt in China (which I predict will go horribly and catastrophically wrong.)

They tried to ‘capitalize’ the former Soviet Union and it blew up! (Just to give you an idea how toxic capitalism really is.)

So if capitalism is so toxic, how have we survived it for two hundred years?

Well, not all of us did. The death toll keeps rising as capitalism continues its death spiral.

Make no mistake about it, 99% of the murder rate is tied directly to capitalism.

And while it (again seems like) I am digressing, I am not. Capitalism is so ingrained in how we manage our society as to be inseparable.

And THAT is what I mean when I point to ‘ignorance in politics’.

Politicians regularly separate politics from commerce when, under capitalism, they are the same thing.

Ironically under A Simple Plan there are no politics…and political parties will be illegal.

I’ll go you one better, the ‘lie machine’ will be shut down too.

People who make their living molding public opinion will have to find a ‘real job’.

But now I digress, the ‘fourth estate’ is the subject of its own essay.

Under the new way of doing things we will have ‘direct democracy’…which means YOU will get to decide what is or isn’t illegal (within reason.)

Understand that our ‘leaders’, who will ‘earn’ their positions, will be in charge of the day to day business of keeping our society running. YOU will get to decide on the guidelines they’ll operate under.

Unlike today, leadership will NOT be in charge of the justice system. It will be an independent body charged with protecting society with a focus on preserving personal liberty.

These days money buys favorable legislation while ‘short-circuiting’ existing prohibitions. That will no longer be the case because we will not have ‘elected’ officials.

Our leaders will ‘win’ their positions by demonstrating they are the best candidate for the job via the tests!

Better! The tests are open TO ALL!* (Yeah, there is an exception that needs to be included here despite this being a far from definitive layout of A Simple Plan architecture.

(* You will not be permitted to test IF you are accused of an exile offense…and since false accusation is an exile offense we would hope nobody would bring such charges ‘frivolously’.)

IF we are to get ‘money’ out of the management of our society we need to put an end to political process designed to make candidates ‘beholden’ to the money interests.

And if we are to put human rights where they belong (number one) we must eliminate the influence of greed that routinely crushes compassion and understanding.

Spoken like a ‘true liberal’ wouldn’t you say?

Makes me wonder how many conservative heads explode reading my exhibits?

Because a true conservative doesn’t care about humanity or an uneven playing field, all a true conservative cares about is themselves.

Well our streets are full of hungry, homeless, unemployed people who are the ‘by-product’ of ‘compassionate conservatism’.

“We’re gonna end these folks suffering by farming out their jobs!”

Then we’ll cut their welfare and let them eat Democrats!

This, good citizen, is what ‘politics’ in the US has devolved into.

If you think it’s time for a change, I’m pointing the way.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

White-washed

Greetings good citizen,

As I have opined before, nothing will be ‘fixed’ if we rely on the fools who broke it in the first place to cobble up the repairs.

So we have this story, served up cold by the Corporate Owned Media, thereby making it suspect from the get-go…

Fair Game
Making Them Pay (and Confess)
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Mary Jo White, the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has a chance to scuttle the practice of letting companies settle cases without admitting fault.

Talk about your voice in the wilderness, I haven’t hear that complaint from any sector of the C.O.M. over the past couple of years, even while there has been a rash of ‘wrist stinging’ fines doled out by federal regulators. Who let the perps just walk away afterwards without admitting guilt…although since they paid, I don’t think anybody needed to sign a ‘confession’, the check is its own guilty plea.

Which is to ask, is saying ‘sorry’ enough?

I mean if sorry was enough we wouldn’t have anyone in prison! They’re all ‘sorry’ (they got nailed, ‘dead to rights’.)

Which is to go one step further and opine that we won’t see ‘justice’ done until the ‘responsible parties’ are handed STIFF prison terms.

(Or in the case of a simple plan, which doesn’t condone imprisonment (It’s inhumane.)

Exile, which is a sort of ‘you made your bed now you’re gonna lie in it’ deal.

This is justice, served very, very cold.

Exile is one-way trip that you make the same way you arrived in this world, buck-naked.

The theory is most people won’t survive exile because exiles are usually lacking in the ‘cooperation’ department.

The concept of having to be a friend to have a friend is lost on them. These rugged individuals try to go it alone.

And should they try to win the cooperation of their fellow inmates, they have nothing to offer in return and these people usually don’t have a ‘normal’ sense of value. If you could smuggle some gold in one of your body cavities you may be able to strike a bargain…So, how much gold can you stuff up your poop chute?

But the guards would have to be mighty dumb not to scan you before placing you on the departure table.

Did I mention exiles are rendered unconscious before being released into a world where they are free to do whatever they want?

How did you think we were going to get ‘em naked? We’re going to cut their clothes off and scan (and surgically remove if necessary) any metal from their bodies before they are placed in the release pen.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, am I not?

Our reporter with her thumb on the pulse of global business has asked that the newly appointed prosecutor MAKE THE CRIMIANLS ADMIT THEIR GUILT!

Apparently this will be enough. All we have to do is ‘SHAME’ a few of them and the rest will fall into line!

Now I can sympathize with her position. She can’t be too aggressive because the criminals she’s railing against cut her paycheck.

I have already pointed to the ‘propaganda machine’ as a ‘primary target’ come the revolution.

Those whose power relies on lies NEED the re-enforcement of officialdom!

Without the lie machine the criminals are lost!

But I digress again!

The focus of the article is the White-washing of Wall Street and they have wheeled out a hand picked patsy to do the job.

The people responsible for breaking the global economy have no interest in fixing it. At best we will see some mock trials and some small time players thrown under the bus while the investigation leaves criminals like Paulson, Geithner and Greenspan unmolested.

Worse, it will also stop well short of the politicians who executed the orders of the captains of industry and swept their dirt under the rug of National Security.

How sad is it good citizen that the goal of creating (and sustaining) a nation where justice prevails and freedom reigns remains so elusive?

How successful were the founders, who met in secret to draft the constitution? You don’t think they realized even back then that they were dooming their heirs to live under a web of lies?

Which leads us to wonder what the ‘original’ constitution actually says as opposed to the one we’ve all read that doesn’t seem to have any basis in reality?

Why do these elected chuckleheads keep defying the constitution they are ‘sworn to uphold’?

Maybe the real deal is so contemptuous of the common people that it has never seen the light of day.

Because sometimes it sure seems just like that…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Accountable

Greetings good citizen,

Yesterday’s ‘milestone’ for the financial markets appears to be more evidence of the criminal’s favorite pass time, fraud.

IF you think the economy has ‘recovered’ I’ve got some nice ‘drainage challenged’ real estate you’ll be interested in…

In the meantime, to consider stories such as this one anything more than ‘jaw-boning’ is a tragic error.

TOP NEWS
As Worries Ebb, Small Investors Propel Markets
By NATHANIEL POPPER

After millions of people all but abandoned the markets after the 2008 financial crisis, individual investors are pouring money into stock mutual funds for the first time in years.

Left to our imaginations is precisely who this ‘small investor’ is? He certainly isn’t the newly re-employed worker, stoking up for retirement. We already know 90% of ‘new jobs’ aren’t even full time and 80% of those pay minimum wage! So WHO is this ‘small investor’ they are referring to?

Could the answer be as unfortunate as Wall Street, in it’s usual fashion, is merely transferring funds from real estate hedging vehicles back to mutual funds, ‘ringing the cash register’ so to speak?

Because you don’t need me to tell you that this is not cause for rejoicing! This is sticky fingered Wall Street churning (and helping itself) to money that was already there.

So, small investor recovery? Hardly, small investor fleecing is more like it but Wall Street has this ‘truthiness’ problem where honesty only creates hard feelings.

Just because the ‘deterioration’ of the employment situation has slowed doesn’t mean it is ‘improving!’ (But that’s the message the meatheads would have you believe. That ‘less-worse = better!’)

It’s the same idea of when the economy contracts, that return to stability is sold by the pundits as ‘recovery’ when in fact after ‘leveling off’ for a brief period, it falls again and the talking heads pretend it’s a mystery.

But it’s not. There was a headline in the local rag the day before yesterday that one of the city’s largest employers is laying off half of its workforce AND sending the work to its plants in China and Mexico.

Still feeling ‘optimistic’, Bunky?

It seems every time they declare ‘the recovery is at hand’ I feel compelled to jump in and cry foul!

And it looks like they got me again.

The question is did they get you?

For every nineteen people who reject hogwash like this there is one who embraces it. Maybe not as quickly as they used to, they are starting to catch on to the fact people are laughing at them behind their backs…

Understand good citizen, the corporate owned media HAS TO report the economy is on the mend, even if it isn’t in order to quell social unrest and dampen ‘animosity’ towards ‘our betters’.

But as I am tiring of pointing out, no amount of jaw-boning is going to alter the facts on the ground.

Our economy (or that limp dishrag that passes for our economy) is broken and nobody has done a single thing to repair it…nobody!

So ‘recovery’, such as it is, amounts to a lesser rate of descent. We merely aren’t sinking as fast as we once were.

What do you suppose should happen to the employer who cut 70 out of 150 jobs and sent the work off-shore?

One of my other ‘hobby-horses’ has been the need to redefine what constitutes a ‘crime’.

Under our current goofy calculus, the owner can send the work wherever he pleases. He is seen as ‘owning’ the work.

But isn’t he also a citizen and doesn’t that citizenship carry a responsibility to the society he lives in?

He’s quick enough to demand justice (or the protection of society) when disaster strikes…so how come he feels no obligation to keep the society that protects him healthy and vibrant?

Because, until such feckless acts like the global race to the bottom are criminalized, our ‘global’ economy (and all but it best connected participants) is doomed.

Not the kind of world I want to raise my kids in and I’m sure many of you feel the same way.
This ‘competition’ baloney is all fake. Worse, it is the old canard of ‘I can teach a monkey to do your job’ writ large!

Which is to point out that the ‘quality problems’ that served as an excuse to cover early job exports have resurfaced in the cheaper there, indicating the problem didn’t lie with the craftsman but with management.

Which tells you what, good citizen?

It’s time to hold management accountable.

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

Disgusted

Greetings good citizen,

The destruction of our civilization proceeds apace but the top of my head exploded when I read this nonsense!

The New Tao of Trade: Don’t Just Import from China. Sell There.

Like many American businesses fighting to keep their prices competitive, Vision Quest Lighting turned to China about six years ago. It now imports about a sixth of the two dozen to three dozen parts required to make its lighting fixtures from there. Recently, however, the Long Island company began to see China in a different light: as a sales target. The growing economy of the world’s most populous nation made it ripe for Vision Quest’s architectural lighting fixtures, many custom-made for hotel and restaurant chains like Hilton and KFC.

When one such client, a clothing retailer, ordered 1,500 lights for five stores, Vision Quest’s chief executive, Larry Lieberman, decided it made sense to start manufacturing lights in China. Other American clients, he reasoned, would no doubt begin placing similar orders as their chains sought to capitalize on the world’s fastest-growing consumer market. And with high-quality products from the West coveted in China, Mr. Lieberman also imagined his products on display in Chinese showrooms.

And yet, selling goods in China is not easy. Mr. Lieberman made the 1,500 lights only to see them gather dust in a warehouse in Guangzhou for more than four weeks because he had not yet established a local enterprise approved to process sales.

Pssst! We wouldn’t need to listen to IDIOT SUGGESTIONS LIKE THIS if we castigated (as well as castrated) our legislators for letting work that was originally here to migrate there!

And guess what? Once energy becomes scarce, the ‘cheaper there’ vanishes…and the ‘silent majority’ will be standing here, holding on to an empty bag, unable to afford the goods we ‘used to make for ourselves’.

What seems to be the main problem here?

Looks to me the problem is men like Skippy, who the moment things get busy, the first thought that pops into his teeny little mind is “I could really rake it in if I could farm this out to China!”

Take it from a manufacturing man, 1,500 pieces ain’t nothin, most shops would turn the work away. You also aren’t going to see appreciable saving in those quantities. You aren’t buying enough material to take advantage of the volume discount.

How will Skippy ‘get lucky’? He’ll be directed to a manufacturer who is subsidized by the Chinese government to do work that originates in the US.

That’s where Skippy will reap his profits from and the Chinese shop owner will make his off of the government…and the government will get theirs by charging the Americans more interest as they subsidize predatory capitalism around the globe.

As our ‘standard of living’ descends into the basement and we start moving back towards the trees, the shrinking mindless and clueless ‘middle class’ will continue to wonder why their purchasing power keeps shrinking.

I must admit, I started this post in an ‘agitated’ state, marveling over how we have gotten this far with 20 CENTURIES OF FAIRY TALES being passed off as history.

We are either A.) incredibly STUPID or B.) unbelievably tolerant…(to the point of stupidity.)

I think we’d all be at least a little cranky when the only two possible answers arrive at the same conclusion.

I got started on this (what’s wrong with my species) jag considering the ‘gold paradox’.

True, the stuff is ‘rare’ but it is also ‘useless’ if we consider its electrical properties weren’t discovered until the advent of the electronics age in the 1950’s. It’s been considered ‘precious’ since pre-historic time, a fact that has given rise (and a degree of credibility) to ancient alien theorists.

And this preciousness is based solely on its resistance to oxidation! Shiny gold stays shiny! Whoop-de do!

Well, look at where this ‘silliness’ has landed us?

A global economy on the verge of cascading systemic collapse…because boneheads like Skippy think farming things out to China is a ‘good idea’!

FULL STOP!

What does Skippy’s desire to make pockets full of cash through outsourcing and the value of gold have to do with one another?

Our value system is bankrupt! We have been ‘hoodwinked’ into pursuing ‘representative wealth’ while others step in and simply take the stuff worth having from us.


This is like the people ‘upset’ by Russia’s sudden ban on the adoption of Russian children by US citizens…don’t they think there are enough kids right here in the US that need a good home?

[They’re going to Russia so they can adopt White kids, as sad as that is.]

Perhaps this would be a good time to bring up the issue of not knowing anybody who ISN’T in some kind of fertility program (because they squandered their prime reproductive years chasing their capitalist enforced goals?)

Why isn’t the media paying any attention to this crisis…or does the corporate owned media think (the rabble being unable to reproduce) is a ‘good thing’

I’m too disgusted to continue…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Sanitized...

Greetings good citizen,

Instead of the usual run down of the financial headlines, what jumped at me this morning but this article, written by one of the most clueless economists ever to hold a seat on the Federal Reserve Board.

I only clipped the end of the whole article to give you an idea, a ‘taste’ if you will.

Financial Collapse: A 10-Step Recovery Plan

The meek won’t inherit their fair share of the earth if they are constantly being fleeced. What we learned in the crisis is that failure to protect unsophisticated consumers from financial predators can undermine the whole economy. That surprising lesson mustn’t be forgotten. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should institutionalize it.

Mark Twain is said to have quipped that while history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme. There will be financial crises in the future, and the next one won’t be a carbon copy of the last. Neither, however, will it be so different that these commandments won’t apply. Financial history does rhyme, but we’re already forgetting the meter.

Alan S. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve and the author of “After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response and the Work Ahead.”

His advice in the snippet is surprisingly ‘sound’ (if you believe, as he obviously does, that capitalism can be ‘salvaged’.)

And you already know my position on that particular topic, it can’t and there is no sense in trying…or worse, pretending that there is ‘no alternative’.

Although you won’t find a capitalist who believes such a thing exists, how ironic is it that the part these people love the most about Capitalism is the ‘my way or the highway’ part?

Should you click through to read the article you will find that bullet point number one blames the consumer for ‘regulatory capture’ by making the point ‘Remember that People forget’.

Worse, there is a whole generation coming of age that has no idea what a moron/‘tool’ Ronald Reagan was.

All they know is how dysfunctional our current political system is and they’ll (hopefully, for the usurpers sake) be eager to embrace a ‘more traditional’ form of governance.

(And the elites who were ‘disappointed’ when Washington turned down the crown will have their day!)

There is a reason why the role-playing video world is dominated by medieval culture. It was the time of ‘kings’ and who but our Royal Wannabes wants to step out of their nations' treasuries and ‘take charge’ of the kingdoms their (alleged) great grand-parents walked away from so long ago.

And it's been the video game industry that has 'glorified' monarchy and popularized the notion that a commoner can, through noble deeds, become an accepted member of the 'noble gentry.'

They want to ‘help’ us good citizen but first you have to want their help and be willing to surrender you’re ‘right to choose’ which you weren’t using ‘properly’ in the first place.

(I wonder why we weren’t ‘using it properly’? Could it be ‘the framers’ put power safely out of the citizen’s reach?)

Rumor has it there were some ‘arguments’ over this decision but the proof is in the pudding and we can plainly see which side ‘won’.

Central to the dominance of the criminals over our species is the idea that we CAN’T rule ourselves, we NEED them to tell us not only what to do but how to do it.

This is just what it looks like, a self-serving lie.

How unfortunate is it for the rest of us that only a few need to be, er, ‘persuaded’ to go along with this outrageous idea while the rest of us are forced into bloody revolution to throw off the yoke of the criminal tyrants?

Take a hard look good citizen, the only missing piece is naming (and subsequently crowning) the ‘new king’.

In case you were wondering, there will be no ‘elections’…worse, discussion of the monarch’s ‘fitness to rule’ will be ‘strictly prohibited’.

But wait good citizen, the nightmare is only beginning! The ‘new monarchy’ will make a big display of putting every ‘royal decision’ to a public vote…but, and this is the but that caused the original downfall of monarchy, we will have the return of the ‘infallibility of the monarch’.

What good is being king if it’s not ‘my way or the highway’?

So the monarch will modify whatever policy proposal is before him 'to his liking' regardless of what YOU think of it. Which is to point out the whole voting thing will be a mockery to beat you over the head with!

And don't even entertain the notion of not voting. It will be mandatory.

Worse, the King (or Queen, if they think a female will be more malleable/easily embraced by the public.) will still be subject to that age-old nemesis ‘intrigue’.

For those of you unfamiliar with this term it basically means your relatives, especially those in line to 'inherit' the crown, will kill you if they think they can get away with it.

Remember, once you’re king you can derail royal investigations with the snap of your fingers…(or the wave of your hand if snapping is too much for you.)

After everybody moves up the ladder, the ‘next in line’ clan does whatever it can to pin the former regent’s death on the new one…if they succeed, Yachtzee!

But people are ‘buy-able’ as our current ‘cleptocracy’ has proven repeatedly.

Meanwhile, the culprit in the last regent’s untimely demise has been made a Duke, making them virtually unassailable.

And under the ‘law of unintended consequences’ we find ourselves faced with the classic “meet the new boss, same as the old boss!” scenario.

All because today’s kids are ‘unaware’ that Ronald Reagan (and by extension, W.) should never have been president.

This is what happens when money contaminates the electoral process.

Worse good citizen, it is already ‘too late’.

The ONLY way to ‘fix’ this mess is to flush it down the toilet and start over (while the criminals learn to cha-cha with the Gila monsters!)

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