The Long Cold Winter

[can't sit still]

Ms Crypto,,,, as usual, you're right again. I don't know why I short-circuited on that one. Manon des sources is obviously French. Emmanuelle Beart could confuse anyone

Bush and the plunge protection team have had their first acknowledged public meeting. The freezup is in the credit markets. The attempted remedies are applied to the banks. It's not working because the banks are not going to return to easy credit for anyone.
It does appear that the banks are having real liquidity problems,,,, actually insolvency problems.
Citi has limited the ammount that a person can withdraw,,, at least in New York ATMs.
Bush is looking at freezing loan rate increases. US contract law won't permit that. He's also looking at sending money to mortgage holders,,,, probably dropping it from helicopters.
The SOB fried the economy to do his wars,,, thinking that it would come home to roost for the next pres. Now, it's all stalling tactics to try to slide out of responsibility. If history is any indicator, employment and the dollar are going to take a good thrashing.
Buy silver,,, that's all I can say. 40 years ago , 1 silver quarter would buy 1 gallon of gas. Today, 1 silver quarter will buy 1 gallon of gas. The price of silver was stuck at <6> dollars for many years. The US GOV had 4 billion ounces of silver. The silver users association got them to sell it all. It all ran out 25 months ago. I bought silver 2 weeks after GOV ran out.
No paper currency has ever survived in the long run. Why do you think it says "In God We Trust"? Suppose it said, "In GOV We Trust"? We may be in a whole new "Electronic World", but greed still runs the show.

[can't sit still]

A couple trillion dollars that GOV forgot to mention. http://www.financialsense.com/editorial ... /0109.html

[can't sit still]

This paper has a very good analysis of where the US went wrong in changing from a manufacturing economy to a financial economy. http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/edito ... /0110.html

[can't sit still]

Well, now they're going to do a bailout with 150 billion and kick the economy into high gear. That's nice
Lets see; There are claims that 1 million jobs will be lost in construction,,, a few hundred thousand lost in the financial sector. As the economy slows even more, many jobs will be lost in most other sectors. It's a traditional negative feedback loop.
Add to that all the jobs that went offshore. The fascist PTBs send all the decent jobs away and then are shocked that people are broke. $150 billion is supposed to fix this??
The REPs and the DEMs are at complete loggerheads on how to do this. Last time they were presented with this problem [after 9/11], it took them 4 months to work it out. Bernanke, Bush and Paulson have said that this has to be done immediately. BBP are panicked.

The Reps want to cut taxes. GOV is flat broke. With corporate lawyers writing tax law, CORP's share of the imput to federal coffers has fallen from 30% to 3%.
GOV is flat-ass broke. They just don't collect enough taxes to pay the bills. They sell treasury bonds and inflate the currency to make up the rest.
The DEMs want to raise taxes. The economy is declining. Michigan has been in recession for 7 years. It's spreading to other states. Minnesota and Ohio are going down. Raising taxes when everyone is struggling doesn't seem like a wise move.

It would never occurr to them to cut expenses. They had expected a .5% rate cut at the next FED meeting. Now, they're talking about an even bigger cut. Treasury bills are now a negative return when adjusted for inflation. A .5% rate cut should insure that nobody buys our T-bills. GOV is now financing day to day operations out of the SS fund.

BBP are shitting bricks and unfortunately, they're not gold bricks. Most of our banks have proved to be insolvent. Our financial institutions are being bought up piecemeal with petro-dollars and Wal Mart-dollars.
Politicians have always felt that they could fuck the country and defer the payback indefinitely. It appears that the whole financial system is unwinding.
The numbers are BIG. They expect writedowns of 500 billion and housing equity loss of 2 trillion. They also expect that there will be 2 trillion fewer dollars available to loan this year.
The scary fact is that everyone has seriously underestimated or understated their losses. There is still a large chunk of loans to reset for a couple of years. More people will default. More people will walk when their house falls too far in value.
We've reached a state where much of this is a psycological battle. GOV is trying to reassure everyone that it's just a ripple and will go away if they continue to spend in a big way. It's going to be hard times for a lot of people. Families will suffer a lot
Dan

[can't sit still]

For those of you who are Michael Moore fans, you should think back to his movie "Roger and Me" It covered the de-industrialization of Flint Michigan when GM pulled out. Everybody pulled up stakes and went to better job markets. The city bulldozed miles of houses. 20% of the houses there now sell for $20,000
Imagine the de-industrialization of a much bigger area,,,say the continential US. Imagine comparitive house prices. Imagine everybody looking for a better job market. Well,,, are we living in a post-industrial America or are we not?
You can argue economics all you want. The bottom line is; how many people don't have jobs? The numbers from GOV are a farce. GOV claims that no jobs were lost in the financial sector last year. The numbers from GOV also don't reflect the job losses to illegals. http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... 16-on.html
Unemployment is going to be the heartbreaker and none of the candidates will be able to return well paying jobs to the US.
Dan

[can't sit still]

I don't like doom-and-gloom, but I feel that i should let people [especially Burners] know if there is something on the horizon that might affect them. JAN 12, the FDIC posted new info on the rules for reimbursing clients of defaulted banks; http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... a&aid=8033
The scary part of the problem is that the US has been hollowed out. When foreign investors decide to pull out, we'll be on our own. If the US declares "force majeure" and defaults on debt payments, we'll have a real mess.
It takes the sale of 2.5 billion in bonds every day to keep things running. In the last auction of bonds, 90% weren't bought. Also, foreign investors have been liquidating US bonds at the rate of 90 billion a month.
The main buyer of US treasury bonds is the social security admin.
For every 16 baby boomers that retire, we add one fresh new worker to pay into the SS fund.
The US has absorbed 80% of the savings worldwide,,,, and they want it back. Each of us owes $441.000 Someone is going to get shafted

[mdmf007]

Pathetic - Our economy is in shambles. A world of hurting is enroute.

[can't sit still]

It seems that the latest problem is a lack of money on the part of the banks. They're bleeding so bad that they won't loan to anyone. They've cut off private and commercial credit.
After the leveraged buyouts of a few years ago of any company with assets, many companies got rid of their cash and operated with a credit line to avoid being target for a forced buyout.
Now, their credit line has been cancelled.
This is gradually spreading to other areas. Last week, 90% of US treasury bonds went unsold. This week, nobody will buy municipal bonds. They're talking about interest near 20% http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... refer=home No municipality can afford 20%. It was 4.3% 2 weeks ago.
This has hit California very hard. They recently fielded 2 bond sales. They were cancelled for lack of interest on the part of investors. Ca then offered them on radio ads to individuals. 3.2 billion in bonds and nobody would buy.
There is speculation that GOV will have to buy everything http://www.reuters.com/article/email/id ... 12?sp=true. GOV can't buy squat unless they borrow from foreigners. The soverign wealth funds are starting to pull back. Foreign investors already got burned.
No problem, Bernanke will put the printing presses into hyperdrive.
Actually, GOV is restricted on printing money. They'll just creat it electronically.
China popped up a rubber coated sub undetected in the middle of one of our carrier groups. Russia just flew a bomber over the decks of the Nimitz. That should give the Pentagon good reason to demand 90% of the budget to protect us from communists and terrorists.
Plant a garden!

[thisisthatwhichis]

Knock it off..... that talk just suuuuuucks....... I hope not....

[can't sit still]

"Knock it off..... that talk just suuuuuucks....... I hope not.... "

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/books ... nted=print

[can't sit still]

GOV seems to be running out of money.

"The Federal Budget is careening out of control. Every week the Trashury auctions are blowing out the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee estimates of the government’s borrowing needs by huge and growing margins. NO ONE foresaw the need to do TWO massive 2 month Cash Management Bills totalling $49 billion this week, not to mention the $27 billion in new money in the 4 week, 13 and 26 week bills. Most of that settled today. While the Fed did a huge liquidity injection it did not come close to covering the market’s needs. If you want to know why the stock market melted down today, there it is."

[can't sit still]

A couple years ago Katrina made a big EFFING splash during Burning Man. This year a global research group is saying that the US and much of the west will collapse in september. http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-22-is-ava ... a1298.html
This could , concievably, be the last year of Burning Man. I want to be there. Like Woodstock or the Monterrey Pop festival, this years Burning Man could be a reference point in history.
It could just be a normal GREAT time but, who knows.
Looks like you have to cut and paste the whole URL.

[can't sit still]

The world economy is worth about 50 trillion. The world supply of derrivatives is about 780 trillion. How can one possibly get that much "heat" out of a fire that small? The banks all went into competition creating "money" out of thin air. For 300 years, the banks have all sung the same song; liquidity is the same as wealth.

Well, they reached a point where they believed their own bullshit. As far as they were concerned, they were creating wealth.
We now have about a half quadrillion dollars that is floating around the globe like,,,,the V guy. It has spirit or essence, but, it was made out of thin air. Like the V guy, it is looking for something to make it tangible.
It alighted in housing for a while. It gave faux life to CDOs and SIVs and a whole zoo of acronyms.

It's breath poisoned munis and auction rate securities. It touched down on commodities but it wasn't a good fit. It's life is in the aether and it doesn't sit well on the ground. Everything that it touches gets inflated and poisoned. Rice and copper, nickel and soy.

The father-figures,,, the funds and banks that created this monster have all been burned by it's touch.
As all the dominoes fall, it's looking for a parasitic or at least symbiotic home in US treasury bonds. Now, it is poisoning treasuries. They pay less than inflation. Long bonds do even worse. Investors are willing to take a smaller loss if it means that they can dodge a much bigger loss when the derrivatives blow all to hell.

Derrivatives are like a big damn snowman left out in the sun on a hot day. Like the V guy, they're desperate to preserve their existence.
Unlike the V guy, they were created out of thin air,,,, and will return to thin air.
The 2 smartest investors think that over a half quadrillion "worth" of derrivatives and other instruments will just fade away.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/d ... t=printTop

Like the V guy, they won't go peacefully. They'll drag down whatever they can.
Dan
Post script; Dan, you won't ever see me complaining about something being off-topic. I hear Tribe has this problem. Why would anyone go to Burning Man,,,,, and then demand conformity here?

[mereth]

Like Voldemort, they're desperate to preserve their existence.
Unlike Voldemort, they were created out of thin air,,,, and will return to thin air.
The 2 smartest investors think that over a half quadrillion "worth" of derrivatives and other instruments will just fade away.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/d ... g-time-bom b/story.aspx?guid=%7bB9E54A5D-4796-4D0D-AC9E-D9124B59D436%7d&print=tru e&dist=printTop

Like Voldemort, they won't go peacefully. They'll drag down whatever they can.

I'm just trying to figure out where the horcruxes fit in...

Sorry. We now return your to your serious broadcast of serious issues...

[BitterDan]

Stop saying He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named's name!!!!

[BitterDan]

Speaking of... did you hear about them splitting the last movie into two parts? Double your profit, double the fun.

Sorry for the derail.

[CrowSpirit]

Isn't voldy umm, moved on, if we say his name will his ghost attack us?...cause I totaly hate when that happens...

[can't sit still]

Mereth, serious is for people who eventually slit their wrists. Eat drink and be merry. A bummer attitude nver helped anyone.
Dan, don't be bitter,,,, I'll delete.

[BitterDan]

I'm not bitter. People read way too much into that nickname. Please don't delete me.

[mereth]

Awww. But I LIKE derailings off of boring (but nevertheless sometimes important) political threads...

They were gonna split the 4th movie until JK gave an OK to drop the S.P.E.W. subplot in effort to focus on just Harry's overall story arc.

When I read the last book I knew right after reading it that they would have to make two movies to fit it all in. Unless you want a "10 Commandments, the Extended Director's Cut" sized movie. (I don't think kids are gonna sit through that long of a movie, but then again, the maturity level of the last HP book is soooo beyond little kid level - hell it got there at the 5th book, 3rd movie point which coincidentally came out around the same time, but that's another topic for another thread... )

ANYWAY, we now return you to your regularly scheduled politiblog.

You want some silliness with your politics?

Well, here ya go.

[can't sit still]

Mereth, this threead is leaning more towards survival than politics. Just as the credit system has frozen up,,, banks and GOV are expected to freeze up. GOV will look after itself and you,,,, will look out for yourself.

[Rabbi Dali Rick]

this threead is leaning more towards survival than politics.

but aren't they the same?.....



http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=5863








the rebbi

[can't sit still]

Rabbi, it depends. In the US, the poor live in a single-wide, drive an old dodge and eat hamburger-helper.
In some countries, they live in a hut built from sticks and plastic sheet, walk and eat rice. When times get rough here in the US, we cut out luxuries. In other countries, they cut back to one meal a day. It's all relative.

[Rabbi Dali Rick]

Looks like we were off by a coupla months, but gas is almost 4 bucks, and no matter how low you make the interest, if you don't have a job, and broke it can't get low enough. They stated on CNN (I think) they announced that for the first time in 40 years more people were crossing back into Mexico than were coming in, and it looks to be a trend. With no work here, and things getting worse, with the tightening of the political noose, the rats have begun to jump the sinking ship. The dictum on the new, low interest loans are that you can not be in "Forclosure" to qualify. (the rich keep getting richer). With gold up past $900, they started a gold rush, pasted it all over the news to prime the pump, and then dropped the price $100 to those not watching the metals market. Don't worry, as soon as all the "loose" gold is accounted for the price will go back up for those who were smart enough to have money to buy the gold others are looking to make a quick buck by dumping it.



and the big news is I suspect Bush to announce a troop withdrawl from the middle east. This will take the wind out of sails of the Democrat's big push to end the war, as their platform to win the race. He will be hailed a hero (by himself of course) and go down in history as the imputense to end the war of all wars.



there was also some talk of another big mucky mucky meeting to end the right to bear arms..... but this time it was successful (?)










the rebbi

[Rabbi Dali Rick]

British authorities try to quell damaging financial rumors

They were heavly vested in the American Morgage Debacle with and have quietly tried to dump it's investments a cutrate prices, but as with all things that go on in the dark it soon comes to the light. Their investors were not pleased, and it appears they were not alone, four or five other major British banks have been "caught with their hands (empty) in the cookie jar. So estimates is as much as 2/3 of their net value may have been vested. Boy the fleecing of the poor Americans with those super-high interest loans must have just been to good to pass up. And just like all their couterparts, they to sing the same song, "Deny, Deny, Deny!"


Linky ( http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/19/ ... ukbank.php )




the rebbi

[can't sit still]

Rick, the mucky-mucks are the supreme court. It's a big zionist push to disarm America; http://judicial-inc.biz/83gun_control.htm
The economy is on the roller-coaster ride of the century. Commodities were the latest thing to blow.
J P Morgan now has 77 trillion of derrivatives. How long do you think that that will hold together? http://www.rense.com/general81/trill.htm
This guy says that it will be the worst since the great depression. What does he know? Just because he has a Nobel prize in economics; http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Int ... 881608.cms

The big financial institutions just did a run on the banks. When John Q Public wakes up and tries to do the same, he'll leave empty handed.

The stock market did a jump on the interest cut. It will be very short lived. It just gives a few people a chance to get out. Fortune thinks it's all over for Wall Street http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/17/magazin ... 2008031718

Gold is expected to go past $2,000 this year. It's not that gold goes up. It's more of a reflection of how the dollar goes down.

The simple truth is that GOV sold 2.5 billion in bonds every day. Foreigners have quit buying them; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.j ... iew117.xml

The painful part is that 50% of Americans work directly or inderectly for GOV. GOV lost it's income= American workers lose their income.
GOV has no money=GOV defaults on it's debt obligations.
Default=oil import reductions.

These things are expected to converge in Sept,,, as I already posted.
http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-22-is-ava ... 75e7836f8f

The other tiny little problem is food. It's getting more expensive. If we spend all our money on food, we won't have money to keep other parts of the economy rolling; http://www.endtimesreport.com/Starvatio ... erica.html

If our oil supply gets cut back, I imagine that the military will get first cut. I seriously doubt that there is a plan in place to insure that the farmers and food distributors get adequate fuel.

As far as the exodus back to Mexico, that might be temporary. 55% of Mexico's income is from oil. Their "elephant" field Cantarell is expected to be depleted in just a few years.
It's a sad, sad time, Dan

[Rabbi Dali Rick]

The US is becoming a pass through to Canada for or emmigrant workes. With their 2 year process they are the new promised land.



BTW, When are you planning to pick up your trailer? No hurry, just asking ....








the rebbi

[Rolan Headon]

can't sit still,
You sure do read a lot (refreshing), do you do it standing up?

quote, MoisturePup:

"The thought of relieving pressure on the real estate market through high density residential high-rise construction is very comforting to 30 year-old home renter me. The fact that the self centered BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) are finally loosing their grip on city governments is a welcome change to me. I mean, my god, the population growth of the state (and the whole country for that matter) is far outpacing the new home starts. Buying a home is one of the biggest and most important financial decisions any of us can make and even though I make good money I still can't afford to buy a home in San Francisco. Demand is far outpacing new homes and that is a crime against my generation and it's ability to create a long term stable financial situation. Fucking self centered hippy assholes."

A little heavy on the scorn, aren't we?
Never was a hippy. They were middle class welfare spongeing tpes to me but I WAS a long-haired freak.

Sure, MP, I know what you're talking about, 'not in my backyard types" who often have a fresh huge house on the skyline or on just drained wet lands but...

to equate anyone opposed to unrestrained growth in the housing market with self-centered assholes is a bit self-centered as well. We can't just build anywhere according to (endless) housing needs without fucking the future.and it's generations. Part of the problem is our half a million dollars or more house types of dwellings, made of forest-clearing lumber (and noxious chemicals). We could have cheap prefab add-on-rooms, stackable like dixie cups and easily shipped around by train or something, with composting toilets and minimalized water needs a lot less invasively or better yet, some bee-hive type high-rises of communal life that left the surrounding environment somewhat untouched (to regenerate the air and clean water the planet needs, while sharing it with the rest of earthlife gene pool).

We know a lady, active in PETA, who lives in a large house in Marin county. While she's very concerned about white rabbits suffering medical -research abuses she lives on a hillside half-acre plot of land cleared forever of all it's natural myriads of natural state-of-the-art-DNA creatures (grey foxes, red-shouldered hawks, mammals, owls, etc, down to all the tiny animals above and below the soil, not to mention all the state-of-the-art plant forms) and all their millions of future descendants. None of this is even remotely in her consciousness,

sorry, but unrestrained growth sucks. (I'm a life-time long renter as well, perhap enjoy the "turrtle-with-no-shell-on-it's-back freedom?) It wouldn't really help if I added some insulting acronym for your viewpoint, like DPIT (Disposable Planet Idiot Thinking)

[theCryptofishist]

We know a lady, active in PETA, who lives in a large house in Marin county. While she's very concerned about white rabbits suffering medical -research abuses she lives on a hillside half-acre plot of land cleared forever of all it's natural myriads of natural state-of-the-art-DNA creatures (grey foxes, red-shouldered hawks, mammals, owls, etc, down to all the tiny animals above and below the soil, not to mention all the state-of-the-art plant forms) and all their millions of future descendants. None of this is even remotely in her consciousness,

About par for that course.

[can't sit still]

More entertaining every day. Last night, KITCO had silver at $17 but people were still bidding $20 on E-bay. Today, reports coming in from all over OZ and the US are saying that none of the silver dealers have any silver. You just can't buy it.
The problem, dear reader, is that there is 6 times as much paper silver as there is physical silver. Now that some of the suppliers are caught naked, more people are going to demand physical delivery.
There is also a group of 4 large investors [banks?] that have shorted the silver market by 170 million ounces. It is going to get ugly!! The silver just isn't there. I've read that the same is true for gold.

Recently everyone with a brain deserted derrivatives. After the commodities dropped the biggest correction on record, the last safe place left was treasuries. Now, people are taking a good look at the fiscal health of GOV. It doesn't look good.

Foreigners are only buying 6% of treasuries. Americans are catching on as to the reason for this. The SS fund is being used to buy these failed bond auctions.

"ACRES U.S.A. What happens to the Social Security savings that people are allegedly making?

HUDSON. A few months ago President Bush quite accurately said there really isn’t any money in Social Security. It’s only a bookkeeping fiction. We say that the Social Security system has been holding U.S. Treasury securities, but the Treasury is no more going to repay the Social Security holdings than it is going to repay the foreign central bank dollar holdings.


ACRES U.S.A. But at the same time it is enlarging the tax burden of the lower income people from 30 percent to maybe 45 percent."

The current, combined US debt is 37 trillion. The unfunded liabilities are 56 trillion for the next few decades.
The 3 frontrunner candidates have all said that there are going to be big tax increases. The US has survived on foreign money flowing in. Now that that has stopped, who are they going to tax?
If US workers have to compete at the global wage level, how will it be possible to fund a bloated GOV and military?
As taxes go up, what will keep capital from fleeing the country?
We need a trillion for infrastructure but, the tax base is shrinking. GOV has lost it's external funding,,,, 50% work directly or indirectly for GOV. What or who will fund the safety net?
How impovereshed does the populace need to be before the military funding is cut back?
There is a vid on Rense of treasury Sec Paulson. He's ashen and shaking.

In the US, we work for luxuries. We just can't compete with people who are willing to work for survival.
I wish all you Burners a Happy Easter

Rabbi, I haven't forgotten about the trailer. I'm real close to buying the steel that I need to convert it to a flatbed.
Rolan, you're right, I read a lot. sometimes, I can connect the dots,,, other times, not.