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Many are the obstructions to the so-called (mislabeled) deflation threat within the USEconomy. To begin with, falling asset prices does not constitute deflation. One of the primary objectives of the banking elite in firm control of the USGovt and USCongress is to confuse the public and investment community on the entire topic of inflation, what it is, how it is measured, and its risks. The same goes for deflation. All debate as to whether the Untied States will suffer from inflation or deflation is a horrible misdirected distraction that manifests the confusion. The US will suffer both higher monetary inflation and worse economic deterioration, not one or the other, but BOTH, and with steadily increasing intensity. Imagine a massive tornado building force, inflicting damage, and being fed to grow even more powerful by current policy. To argue on whether the high pressure or low pressure will prevail misses the entire storm, built upon the grand and growing differential in pressure. The storm is born of opposing pressures, each growing more intense. Human response to economic distress and banking woes ensure evermore pressures to be exerted on each side. The grand growing monetary expansion continues to collide with grand worsening asset price decline, while the Deflation Knuckleheads spout more nonsense. They miss the storm itself, how it is formed, and the dual nature of its tempest.
A very important point must be made, something few if any analysts or pundits or anchors are mentioning. In fact, the staggering direction of monetary aid for rescues of dead banks, for nationalization of dead corporations, and for stimulus to an insolvent nation guarantee more damage. The huge monetary growth guarantees that the asset prices will continue to fall, and that the great tempest will grow in magnitude and danger. Why? Because bad money drives out good money, because phony money undermines legitimate assets, because easy money encourages more bubbles. It acts like a cancer, one that has essentially destroyed the fundamental foundation of the nation. This extremely important point will lead to the ultimate downfall of the Untied States, as their inflation will destroy too much capital in determined yet mindless application.
There's a big difference between an inventory-driven recession and a credit-driven recession. An inventory recession is caused by a mismatch between supply and demand. It's the result of overcapacity and under-utilization which can only work itself out over time as inventories are pared back and demand builds. Credit-driven recessions are a different story altogether. They typically last twice as long as and can precipitate financial crises. The current recession is a severe credit bust of Depression-era magnitude. The financial system has effectively melted down. The wholesale credit system is frozen, the banking system is dysfunctional and insolvent, and consumer spending has tanked. The Fed's multi-trillion dollar lending facilities and monetary stimulus have kept the financial system from grinding to a halt, but the problems have not been resolved. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has chosen to avoid the hard decisions and keep the price of toxic assets artificially high with the help of $12.8 trillion liquidity backstop. That's why stocks have rallied for the last 4 months.
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
Individuals concerned with the unprecedented changes the earth community is undergoing tend to venerate America's Amish for their simple, earth-based lifestyle of frugality and solid commitment to caring for the other members of their community. There is much we have to learn from them, but more recently, there is yet another lesson they offer, and perhaps, not one we expected.
A Wall St. Journal article, July 1 entitled, "A bank run teaches the ‘plain people' about the risks of modernity", by Douglas Belkin, reports the challenges the Amish have confronted in the past decade, specifically those having to do with economic collapse. In 1993, Northern Indiana Amish established the Tri-County Land Trust, not unlike lending arrangements set up in many other Amish communities. Not insured by FDIC and based on its own bylaws, the trust now has about $40 million in assets. Until November, 2008, the land trust offered low-interest loans and provided other financial support for Amish homeowners and proprietors of small businesses. However, it suspended lending and has not yet resumed. Add to this the fact that, this past spring, the Land Trust literally had a bank run because the Amish began to experience the same consequences of economic collapse as the rest of the nation did. According to the Wall St. journal story, "...the Amish in northern Indiana edged into the conventional economy, lured by high wages of the recreational vehicle and modular home industries. And they wound up experiencing the same economic whiplash millions of other Americans did."
States that allow debt collectors to seize consumers' wages have sharply higher bankruptcy rates than neighboring states that prohibit or strictly limit the practice, an Associated Press analysis has found. This link highlights a dilemma for credit-card companies and other debt chasers: By going after wages — an increasingly popular maneuver since the recession began, lawyers say — they risk pushing consumers into bankruptcy court, where judges can reduce or wipe away all sorts of financial obligations. The apparent relationship between so-called garnishment laws and states' bankruptcy rates also bolsters the arguments of consumer advocates, who have long said that intercepting someone's wages to pay their debts only increases their financial vulnerability.
Everything is relative. Bernie Madoff has hired a "prison consultant" to help him figure out in which prison he would be best off serving the next 150 years of his life. Baruch Hashem, I did not even know there was even such a profession as "prison consultant" until now. I also did not know that prisoners get to choose which prison they want to spend their time in. One would think it does not make much of a difference. the courts will put him in a prison of a certain type and security level, and all prisons of that type must be pretty similar. I guess if you are going to spend the next 150 years of your life in the same place, even those minor differences make a difference, and best to get the best possible location in advance. Whose money from the Ponzi scheme did you use to hire your prison consultant? More power to you, Bernie. I hope you choose wisely and enjoy as much as possible your next 150 years...
Discussion of the 50% Retracement Rule,
potential future price levels, time studies, key dates, Fibonacci, Gann, Astro numbers, Robert Rhea's Great Depression analysis.
Homeowners across the country are challenging their property tax bills in droves as the value of their homes drop, threatening local governments with another big drain on their budgets.
“It’s worthy of a Dickens story,” said Gus Kramer, the assessor in Contra Costa County, Calif., outside San Francisco. “These people are desperate. They know their home’s gone down in value. They’ve watched their neighborhoods being boarded up. They literally stand in there and say: ‘When can I have my refund check? I need to feed my family. I need to pay my electric bill.’ ”
A political-economic oligarchy has taken over the United States of America. This oligarchy has institutionalized a body of law that protects businesses at the expense of not only the common people but the nation itself. CNN interviewed a person recently who was seriously burned when his vehicle burst into flames because a plastic brake-fluid reservoir ruptured. Having sued Chrysler, he was now concerned that its bankruptcy filing would enable Chrysler to avoid paying any damages. A CNN legal expert called this highly likely, since the main goal of reorganization in bankruptcy is preserving the company’s viability and that those creditors who could contribute most to attaining that goal would be compensated first while those involved in civil suits against the company would be placed lowest on the creditor list since compensating them would lessen the chances of the company’s surviving. This rational clearly implies that the preservation of companies is more important than the preservation of people. Of course, similar cases have been reported before. The claims of workers for unpaid wages have often been dismissed as have their contracts for benefits. But there is an essential difference between a business that lends money or delivers products or services to another company and the employees who work for it. Business is an activity that supposedly involves risk. Employment is not. Neither is unknowingly buying a defective product. Workers and consumers do not extend credit to the companies they work for or buy products from. They are not in any normal sense of the word “creditors.” Yet that distinction is erased in bankruptcy proceedings which preserve companies at the public’s expense.
