Friday, May 1, 2009

The Culprit, Revealed

Americans are in debt. Way too much debt. This much we definitely know by now, having learned it the hard way. What is less well known is.. why?

So, here is a VERY simple chart that should answer this question, once and for all.

Real Total Private Average Weekly Earnings ( 1982 Dollars, Chart: BLS)

Stuck with dropping real wages, but most definitely still dreaming The American Dream, we switched to borrowing it, instead of earning it.

The ratio of debt growth to GDP growth (i.e. the annual increase in total debt outstanding to the increase in nominal GDP) shot upwards. Our "growth" was, by necessity, debt-induced and debt-fueled because real earned income stagnated. After 2000 we were adding a massive 5-6 dollars of new debt for every 1 dollar of additional GDP we generated - see below.


Culprit found, case closed.
------------------------------------------------------
ABBY WARNING:
Goldman's Abby Joseph Cohen is at it again: she thinks S&P 500 will surge to 1,050. Don't say I didn't warn you..

77 comments:

  1. Very pedagogic, Hell.
    May I offer my own bibliography ?
    I reread Freud's article "Die Verneinung" (Negation) the other night. While I am more and more critical of some of Freud's ideological positions, should I say beliefs, I agree with him that in order to negate something, you have to postulate it first.
    Example :
    the number/idea -800,000 IS ABSOLUTELY DEPENDANT ON SETTING DOWN 800,000 FIRST, and then you do this little thingy, SO ABSTRACT, so cute, so neat that's called sticking a - sign in front of it, and bingo, presto, magico it's turned into...
    Well, in our minds, that little sign is just way too abstract. Much MORE abstract, in fact than the 800,000 that's set down after.
    That's why I continue to say that much or our problem derives from our symbolic systems, and just will not go away all that easily.
    Another extremely important fact, in my book :
    I don't know how many of us have perceived the really fundamental nature of the 4 arithmetic operations, addition, substraction, multiplication, and division, but I can tell you first hand that while addition and multiplication are not too hard to get a grasp on, substraction and division are, well, conceptually, but more importantly, psychologically difficult to swallow.
    Who wants to have something TAKEN AWAY ?
    And what the hell (no pun intended...) do you do with a REMAINDER ?
    We ought to keep these things in mind when talking about economics at any and every level.
    We are globally substracting ourselves into oblivion...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would suppose one can take 2 approaches to this:

    1. Increased inequity. Transfer of wealth from the wage-receiver class to the top. I suppose this is a reasonable assumption.

    But one can take another (supplementary, not contradictory) view on the issue:

    Americans and Europeans consume way to much for the carrying capacity of the planet (especially if others from outside USA and EU start to raise). So "earnings" will have to go down in any case (unless others continue in misery).

    As I see it the issue is two-fold: Increased inequality inside western societies (for me a bad thing) and increased consumption outside western societies (which might be a good thing, though the even bigger inequality on those other places might make that increase in consumption less virtuous).

    Our consumption patterns will have to go down. If inequality in the western world keeps rising at the same time, we have a recipe for full blown disaster as there is a limit for what "The People" will endure.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hell,

    I wanted to share my experience of income and cost of living in the 1970's. During what is now thought of as a difficult economic decade, one could work a few months a year at a minimum wage job and have enough to live, very basically admittedly, for the rest of the year - - in my case this was quite a bit better than basic as I went to Europe with my earnings where the dollar was strong.

    A number of things happened. The minimum wage stagnated as did wages more generally, the cost of living rose and probably by even more than the CPI allows and while society got richer the mechanisms of distribution failed to keep pace, concentrating the wealth at the top.

    The problem of distribution - - rather than laying people off - - is why I advocate generalized work and redistribution programs. In the 70s we imagined progressive gains in productivity being such that someday few people would have to work. Under our system, however, this would turn out very poorly as a few people would be left controlling all the revenue, buying power would disappear and the whole system collapse. This among other things is what is happening today. Note that globalization by shifting wage gains abroad has attenuated this phenomenon a bit but not entirely. A way must be found to allow the wage earner here to participate in the ownership of the capital and productivity gains his labor creates.

    @ Debra re.: chou, Lacan, female envy and sleep deprivation - see prior comment thread.

    SS

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Democratic Hall of Shame
    of those people who choose to represent their banks rather than their people. All Republicans are included by absence since they all voted on behalf of their bank. However the following Democrats should be especially named and rightfully defeated in the next election by their people whom they have failed to represent.
    Baucus (D-MT)
    Bennet (D-CO)
    Byrd (D-WV)
    Carper (D-DE)
    Dorgan (D-ND)
    Johnson (D-SD)
    Landrieu (D-LA)
    Lincoln (D-AR)
    Nelson (D-NE)
    Pryor (D-AR)
    Specter (D-PA)
    Tester (D-MT)

    ReplyDelete
  5. True, but the real problem is republicans and many democrates that are pawns for huge lobby groups and do not a care for a second about America nor Americans.

    Here is one simple article about the defense contractor lobby and one American's fight to correct a simple calculation saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

    Can't be don't according to congress because the contractor lobby does not want it.

    If you want to take back America you need to stop watching Fox News and vote all Republicans out of congress and most long seated Democrated senators.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30456930/

    ReplyDelete
  6. So, is it true that at some point additional debt will cause negative GDP to be created?

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. And I have a question for Debra.

    What's your positon on fractals?

    ReplyDelete
  9. @ jp said...
    "So, is it true that at some point additional debt will cause negative GDP to be created?"

    JP - if a hurricane can add to GDP because all clean-up and reconstruction activity is counted as adding to GDP but nothing is subtracted because GDP is not a capital account and what's destroyed is accumulated capital, than anything can happen, especially where economists are involved.

    SS

    ReplyDelete
  10. Homo SarcasticusMay 1, 2009 at 9:31 PM

    Actually, Hell, it may be even worse than that chart would suggest. Money is worth only what you can get for it, and nowadays it means quite a bit more stuff than 20 years before, which is not necessarily cheap. And those ever demanding kids with their ipods, PlayStations, Nokias', laptops etc etc. So, living a 'good life' is getting more complicated and expensive I guess. While I hope smart individuals are less susceptible, the mass of sheeple feels pressurized and seduced to live on borrowed funds...

    Then there is the greed, which is a bit sad in that it not only caused the bubble blowers to burn in a self-made hell, but also made the home part of the American dream that much more expensive for those who weren't speculating.

    Republicans? Democrats? Most of them look like carbon copies from my lair in NEurope :) They are no real rivals, maybe only for some old redneck declaring 'cos I'm a REPUBLICAN!!!'. Now the libertarians, that's another matter, those are probably tagged 'enemies of the masquarade' or something like that ;)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Our economic growth has heavily depended on our monetary system. The growth of our money supply exceeds our real GDP growth and thus necessitates that our monetary unit loses value over time (our dollars are losing value historically, at least recently). The GDP growth requires money supply growth that in turn requires larger debt growth to fuel it. The less wealthy are forced to become net debtors and the wealthier can become net savers. The wealthier can use their surplus income to chase yield and increase their net wealth. The less wealthy diminish their lifetime net wealth due to negative yield (interest). In the short term this system works by increasing economic activity. The less wealthy compensate for their proportionately low salaries relative to national productivity with debt, but only for the short term. Eventually the debt burden becomes too great and thus borrowing plunges, money supply contracts, economic activity must reset to levels that are not fueled by debt and great pain ensues, especially for the less wealthy. Asset bubbles only delay and worsen the outcome. So, Hell, how do incomes for the less wealthy rise appropriately when employers are conditioned otherwise? High living wages? Employers adjust wages upward when enough of their services/products are not consumed until a general rise in wages occur?

    Thai, you seem to have an interest in game theory. I have tried to conceive of a game theory scenario where people make decisions on wages that affect each other. For example, each party might set wages for employer/employee situations but might not know if they will be selected to be an employee or employer. I suspect people would select higher employee wages if they knew they could "magically" be forced to live their life as an employee. The employer position would have to be perceived by all as more difficult, time consuming, etc. Otherwise, everyone would likely equalize pay between employer/employee with everyone hoping to score the "easy" employer position with equal pay. This scenario would show the difference between what an employer pays "because they can" and what she/he would pay "because they might do the job". This is simply a silly thought experiment but would show the economic power an employer has, thus the existence of labor unions. BTW, i'm an employer and I would like to think that I pay my employees well. Perhaps I would pay more in a game theory scenario ;)

    ReplyDelete
  12. "... here is a VERY simple chart that should answer this question, once and for all."

    Simple and misleading. See a more nuanced discussion at macroblog.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Putting my 'lender' hat back on:
    the prosaic characteristic of debt is the collateral and the creditworthiness of the now debtor (as opposed to when they were simply an applicant).
    The magnitude of declines, or simply of changes, in both can trigger powerful responses from the creditors.
    Declining creditworthiness of debtors, and deflating values of collateral, are co-incident to the bursting of debt bubbles.
    But the primacy factors for declines in creditworthiness of a debtor are not identical to the factors causing the collateral to devalue.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "Simple and misleading. See a more nuanced discussion at macroblog."

    I didn't find the Macroblog discussion to be either nuanced or less misleading. Employer contributions to SS go to the government, not the worker. The worker *might* see that money some day, if he lives long enough, and if SS isn't gutted, either deliberately or be inflation. And employer health benefits have to be adjusted for inflation before it can be said that they contribute or deduct from total compensation.

    Even above all that, Hell's point has to do with money that actually comes to the worker, and whether the worker needs to borrow to "live the American dream". Wages are the proper metric to use for that, not total compensation (though I think median wage is an even better metric, because the average is skewed by the concentration of wealth at the top).

    ReplyDelete
  15. I would not blame the American middle class for borrowing in order to keep a middle class lifestyle.

    The real culprit is wall-street bankers that have taken over the country and destroyed the middle class. It started with Ronald Reagan and his de-regulation of banks that allowed for 50 years prior of steady American growth building the country.

    The real culprit is financial de-regulation which is code for NON-REGULATION allowing the bankings that country the Fed and money supply to enrich themselves at will.

    Corporate CEOs are also part of this top pryamid scheme which is why they pull down $100 million a year and a middle class worker get paid $40 per hr if luckey.

    ReplyDelete
  16. JP- what's up? You don't have to read the posts.

    Anon 3:20, I am having a little trouble following your game theory thought experiment but IF I follow it correctly, I think it would be a an infinite player tragedy of the commons.

    First two players would bid- one for the role of employee within a given business and one for the role of employer within that same business.

    But then another 2 players would bid on the success/failure of the underlying business itself.

    And still yet another two players would bid on the underlying market the business was in.

    But then there would be another two players bidding for the role of whether they wanted to underbid the first employee for the role of being an employee in the company after more information is known about the job and company.

    And still further there would be another two players bidding for the role of whether they wanted to take the place of the original employer and "steal" the fist employee away, etc...

    And these kind of "permutations" to the model would go on forever.

    And as more and more permutations occurred, they would all have complex interconnections in terms of the amount of information they know about each others' bids.

    ... I am sure you are aware the problem with these kinds of models is they only look at the problem as an isolated slice, and hold everything else constant.

    But you and I both know as employers this is never the case.

    Does this answer your question? I may have misunderstood...


    Shargash said "Employer contributions to SS go to the government, not the worker. The worker *might* see that money some day"

    The paradox of this statement is that it is true and false simultaneously- it only depends how you look at it. For the reality is they see the money every day as it is spent by elderly with SS within the economy and comes back to the worker in a myriad of ways. this is the paradox Hell has been pointing out to us for months.

    Are things really the same today as they were before or are they really different?

    It is all just a matter of perspective.

    ReplyDelete
  17. This is why I love the guy!.

    He should be strongly applauded (imo)!

    If Obama gets consensus to our tragedy of the commons around this issue you will have found your money for this debt issue and then some.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Night falls in France,
    While in Paris they dance;
    In Perpignan left to don
    A Faberge gown,
    The bell of the ball
    In a Romanesque thrall,
    The true Queen of Gaul
    In an Ubuesque shall.

    She hides from her suitors
    Who all in a squall
    Of late night cavorting
    Leave one to implore!

    Rise up dear France
    The Barbarians are nigh
    The Hun at the gate
    For the hour is late.

    America falls and the Euro is dead
    Only France can still save us
    Before we all go to bed.

    SS

    ReplyDelete
  19. The vast majority of website operators don't have the guts to allow this post, anything like it, any searchable lines, or links. They have been deleted more than 90% of the time. The vast majority of syndicated talk radio hosts are screening their calls and won't allow this topic. The vast majority of callers don't have a clue. We are in big trouble. The truth is so Earth shattering, that no public figure has the guts to acknowledge it. Very few have the guts to allow a statement anything like this in their forum. The truth is being suppressed. We are in much more serious trouble than we have been told by any public figure. Don't be fooled by fluctuating economic indicators or short term market stability. The entire foundation of our economy is crumbling. Get ready people. Get your affairs in order. Get your households in order. Get your communities in order. Be prepared. This is no 'correction'. This is no ordinary recession. This won't be just another Great Depression. This will be much worse. Save this post now before it gets deleted.

    Sometimes, I wonder why I bother fighting so hard for the little guy. Whats the point if they are too stupid to listen? Say that reminds me.

    Amazing. The worst economic and cultural crisis of all time will go down in history horribly misunderstood. What a pathetic bunch of ignorant fools we have become. Consumer junkie credit card morons. Perfect little victims.

    Don’t believe one optimistic word from any public figure about the economy or humanity in general. They are part of the problem. Its like a game of Monopoly. In America, the richest 1%, now hold ALMOST 1/2 OF ALL UNITED STATES WEALTH. Unlike ‘lesser’ estimates, this includes all stocks, bonds, cash, offshore accounts, and material assets held by America’s richest 1%. Even that filthy pig Oprah Winfrey acknowledged that it was near 50% in 2006. Naturally, she put her own ‘humanitarian’ spin on it. Calling attention to her own ‘good will’. WHAT A DISGUSTING SELF-CENTERED SELF-PROMOTING HYPOCRITE SLOB. THE RICHEST ONE PERCENT HAVE LITERALLY MADE WORLD PROSPERITY ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. Don’t fall for any of their 'good will' ‘humanitarian’ CRAP. ITS A SHAM. THESE PEOPLE ARE CAUSING THE SAME PROBLEMS THEY PRETEND TO CARE ABOUT. THE EQUATION THEY STAND FOR ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT WORK. Ask any professor of economics. Money does not grow on trees. The government can’t just print up more on a whim. There are serious concequences for doing so. Regardless, there is always a relative limit to the wealth within ANY economy of ANY size. So when too much wealth accumulates at the top, the currency looses value, the middle class slip further into debt, and the lower class further into poverty. A similar rule applies worldwide. The world’s richest 1% now own over 40% of ALL WORLD WEALTH. This is EVEN AFTER you account for all of this ‘good will’ ‘humanitarian’ BS from celebrities and executives. ITS A SHAM. As they get richer and richer, less wealth is left circulating beneath them. This is the single greatest underlying cause for the current US recession. The middle class can no longer afford to pay all the bills or sustain their share of the economy. Their wealth has been gradually transfered to the richest 1%. One way or another, we suffer because of their incredible greed. We are talking about TRILLIONS of dollars which have been transfered FROM US TO THEM. All over a period of about 30 years. Thats Reaganomics for you. The wealth does not ‘trickle down’ as we were told it would. It just accumulates at the top. Shrinking the middle class and expanding the lower class. Causing a domino effect of socio-economic problems. But the rich will never stop. They just keep getting richer. Leaving even less of the pie for the other 99% of us to share. At the same time, they throw back a few tax deductible crumbs and call themselves 'heros' or ‘humanitarians’. Cashing in on the PR and getting even richer the following year. IT CAN’T WORK THIS WAY. Their bogus efforts to make the world a better place can not possibly succeed. Any ‘humanitarian’ progress made in one area will be lost in another. EVERY SINGLE TIME. IT ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT WORK THIS WAY. This is going to end very much like a giant game of Monopoly. The current US recession will drag on for years and lead into the worst US depression of all time. The richest 1% will live like royalty while the rest of us fight over jobs, food, and gasoline. So don’t fall for any of this 'good will' 'humanitarian' BS from Hollywood, Pro Sports, and Wall Street PIGS. ITS A SHAM. Remember: They are filthy rich EVEN AFTER their tax deductible contributions. They get richer as we speak. They absolutely will not stop. Greedy pigs. Now, we are headed for the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time. Crime, poverty, and suicide will skyrocket. SEND A “THANK YOU” NOTE TO YOUR FAVORITE MILLIONAIRE. ITS THEIR FAULT. I’m not discounting other factors like China, subprime, or gas prices. But all of those factors combined still pale in comparison to that HUGE transfer of wealth from poor to rich. Anyway, those other factors are related and further aggrivated because of GREED. If it weren’t for the OBSCENE distribution of bottom line wealth within our country, there never would have been such a market for subprime to begin with. IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE OBSCENE, UNREASONABLE, ILLOGICAL, AND IMMORAL DISTRIBUTION OF UNITED STATES WEALTH, THERE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SUCH A MARKET FOR SUBPRIME AND THERE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A COLLAPSE IN THE HOUSING MARKET. Subprime did not cause this collapse. Otherwise, it would have done so back in the '90's. It didn't. It only delayed and then suddenly accelerated the inevitable. In fact, the market for subprime literally multiplied over the last decade as the concentration of United States wealth became more extreme. This created a false boom along with artificially raised values and then a sudden decline. Otherwise, the market would have tanked years earlier at a slower rate. Make no mistake. The housing and stock markets would have been in decline by now with or without subprime. Which by the way, was another trick whipped up by greedy bankers, executives, and politicians. IT MADE THEM RICHER. Along with many investors, developers, attorneys, and public figures. Including three of the most greedy, self-serving, self-promoting, hypocrite pigs that have ever lived. The credit industry has been ENDORSED for years by Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, and Dr Phil. Every interest rate. Every late fee. Every NSF fee. Every hidden charge. Every page of fine print. The industry as a whole was endorsed by them. They told their own loyal fans to run out and support it. In fact, they specifically endorsed Countrywide by name. IT MADE THEM RICHER. In order to fully appreciate this, you must realize what a rotten trick Countrywide had up their sleeve to begin with. How it was later ENDORSED by OPRAH WINFREY, ELLEN DEGENERES, AND DR PHIL. How incredibly irresponsible they were. How they betrayed their own loyal fans. How they were PAID FOR IT. How they contributed to the artificial rise and accelerated fall of the US housing market. Not only by concentrating so much wealth. Not only by flaunting their own extravogant multi-mansion lifestyles. Not only by promoting this unrealistic concept of 'bigger, better, faster, upscale' EVERYTHING. But also by endorsing subprime. Don't believe what you've heard from them or any other filthy rich public figure. THEY ARE PAID LIARS. It wasn't just about irresponsible lending, borrowing, local banker bonuses, or weak oversight. That was going on BEFORE subprime. It was actually much more cruel and calculated. Orchestrated from the top down. 'Predatory lending' is just that. Their plan was to give easy credit to millions while the housing market was high, inflate the market even higher in the process, reap a few years worth of payments from unsuspecting buyers, allow them to accumulate little or no equity, lie in wait as those homes increased in value, then jack up their rates making it near impossible for those buyers to make the payments on time. At which time, those buyers would be evicted, their dreams shattered, and their homes forfeited. Which by then, from the mid '90's until mid '07', would be even higher in value and re-sold for a higher price. The plan was to be executed primarily while the market was strong. They got away with it for a decade even before the talk show pigs endorsed it. Leaving thousands of buyers with NOTHING to show for all those payments made. This incredibly cruel and calculated plan was orchestrated in part by Countrywide. THE SAME COUNTRYWIDE ENDORSED BY OPRAH WINFREY, ELLEN DEGENERES, AND DR PHIL. IT MADE THEM RICHER. It also made many of their loyal fans homeless. What a rotten, disgusting trio of greedy, self-serving, self-promoting, hypocrite pigs. What a rotten, disgusting, immoral way to turn a quick buck. To make as many people as possible love you. Then tell those love-sick people to run out and buy a product or service because you say so. Because you were PAID to endorse it. Without the slightest regard for the downside or anything but your own obscene bottom line. Thats why they did it. GREED. Now, there are similar ties between every major industry, every Fortune 500 company, and nearly every public figure. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. It also drives up the cost and consumption for nearly every product, service, and resource on the market. So don’t fall for their ‘good will’ 'humanitarian' BS. ITS A SHAM. NOTHING BUT A CALCULATED, TAX DEDUCTIBLE, MARKETING PLAN TO RAISE THE VALUE OF THEIR OWN IMAGE. If you fall for it, then you’re a fool. If you see any real difference between the moral character of a celebrity, politician, attorney, lobbyist, executive, or card shark, then you’re a fool. No offense fellow citizens. But we have been mislead by nearly every living public figure. We still are. Even now, they claim to be ‘hurting’ right along with the rest of us. As if gas prices actually effect the lifestyle or bottom line of a millionaire. ITS A LIE. IN 2007, THE RICHEST 1 PERCENT INCREASED THEIR AVERAGE BOTTOM LINE WEALTH AGAIN. Most of these financial assets are on the books. Others hidden. Material assets aren't always disclosed. But make no mistake. America's richest 1 percent keep getting richer. On average, they are now worth almost $5,000,000 each. Thats an all time high. As a group, their net worth is over $20,000,000,000,000. THATS OVER TWENTY TRILLION DOLLARS. Another all time high. Which by the way, is much more than the entire middle and lower classes combined. Also more than enough to pay off our national debt, fund the Iraq war for a decade, repair our infrastructure, and bail out the US housing market. Still think that our biggest problem is China? Think again. Its the one percent club. That means every big name celebrity, athlete, executive, entrepreneur, developer, banker, and lottery winner. Along with many attorneys, doctors, and politicians. If they are rich, then they are part of the problem. Their incredible wealth was not ‘created’, ‘generated’, grown in their back yard, or printed up on their command. The lion's share was transfered FROM US TO THEM. Directly and indirectly. Its become near impossible to spend a dollar without making some greedy pig even richer. Don’t be fooled by the fall of the stock market, industry losses, lower profit margins, bank failures, or the occasional reported loss of a millionaire’s fortune. Overall, they just keep getting richer. They do so with little or no regard for their own industries or the economy as a whole. They are obsessed primarily with a desire to accumulate more personal wealth. They absolutely will not stop. Still, they have the nerve to pretend as if they care about ordinary people. ITS A LIE. NOTHING BUT CALCULATED PR CRAP. WAKE UP PEOPLE. THEIR PRIMARY GOAL IS TO WIN THE GAME. The one percent club will always say or do whatever it takes to get as rich as possible. Without the slightest regard for anything or anyone but themselves. Reaganomics. Their idea. Loans from China. Their idea. NAFTA. Their idea. CAFTA. Their idea. Outsourcing. Their idea. Downsizing. Their idea. Subprime. Their idea. High energy prices. Their idea. Oil ‘futures’. Their idea. The commercial lobbyist. Their idea. The multi-million dollar lawsuit. Their idea. The multi-million dollar endorsement deal. Their idea. $400 cell phones. Their idea. $200 cell phone bills. Their idea. $200 basketball shoes. Their idea. $30 late fees. Their idea. $30 NSF fees. Their idea. $20 DVDs. Their idea. $50 event tickets. Their idea. $30 books. Their idea. $400 PC operating systems. Their idea. $60 video games. Their idea. Obscene health care charges. Their idea. Subliminal advertising. Their idea. Commercial brainwash plots on TV. Their idea. Vioxx, and Celebrex. Their idea. Excessive medical testing. Their idea. The MASSIVE campaign to turn every American into a brainwashed, credit card, pharmaceutical, medical testing, love-sick, celebrity junkie. Their idea. IT WAS ALL THEIR IDEA. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. All of the above drive up the cost of living, shrink the middle class, concentrate the world’s wealth and resources, create a domino effect of socio-economic problems, and wreak havok on society. All of which have been CREATED AND ENDORSED by celebrities, athletes, executives, investors, developers, entrepreneurs, attorneys, and politicians. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. So don’t fall for any of their ‘good will’ ‘humanitarian’ BS. ITS A SHAM. NOTHING BUT TAX DEDUCTIBLE PR CRAP. In many cases, the ‘charitable’ contribution is almost entirely offset. Not to mention the opportunity to plug their name, image, product, and ‘good will’ all at once. Which is usually done just before or after the release of their latest commercial project. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. These greedy pigs even have the nerve to throw a fit and spin up a misleading defense with regard to ‘federal tax revenue’. ITS A SHAM. THEY SCREWED UP THE EQUATION TO BEGIN WITH. If the middle and lower classes had a greater share of the economic pie, they could easily cover a greater share of the federal tax revenue. They are held down in many ways because of greed. Wages remain stagnant for the vast majority because the executives, investors, developers, celebrities, athletes, attorneys, politicians, and entrepreneurs, are paid millions. They over-sell, over-charge, under-pay, outsource, lobby, re-locate, cut jobs, and cut benefits to increase or preserve their own obscene personal bottom line. They do so even at the expense of their own industries. Even after you account for the fall of the market and lower industry profit margins, the richest 1 percent still keep getting richer on average. Simply because their wealth is drawn from the majority in many ways. Not necessarily at the same rate, but still in their favor. They continue to reap more than they spend down or 'give back'. They have done so for many years. As more United States wealth rises to the top, the middle and lower classes inevitably suffer. This reduces the potential tax revenue drawn from those brackets. At the same time, it wreaks havok on middle and lower class communities and increases the need for financial aid. Not to mention the spike in crime because of it. There is a domino effect to consider. Caused primarily by a constant transfer of wealth from poor to rich. IT CAN’T WORK THIS WAY. But our leaders refuse to acknowledge this. Instead they come up with one trick after another to milk the system, feed the rich, and screw the majority. These decisions are heavily influensed by the 1% club. Every year, billions of federal tax dollars are diverted behind the scenes back to the rich and their respective industries. Loans from China have been necessary to compensate in part, for the red ink and the multi-trillion dollar transfer of wealth from poor to rich. At the same time, the feds have been pushing more financial burden onto the states who push them lower onto the cities. Again, the hardship is felt more by the majority and less by the 1% club. The rich prefer to live in exclusive areas or upper class communities. They get the best of everything. Reliable city services, new schools, freshly paved roads, new lighting, sidewalks, drainage, upscale parks, ect. The middle and lower class communities get little or nothing without a raise in basic service charges or a local tax increase. Which, they usually can’t afford. So the red ink flows followed by service cuts and lay-offs. All because of the OBSCENE distribution of bottom line wealth in this country. Anyway, when you account for all federal, state, local taxes, and fees, the middle class actually pay about the same rate as the rich. The devil is in the details. So when people forgive the rich for their incredible greed and then praise them for paying a greater share of the FEDERAL income taxes, its like nails on a chalk board. I can not accept any theory that our economy would suffer in any way with a more reasonable distribution of bottom line wealth. Afterall, it was more reasonable 30 years ago. Before Reaganomics came along. Before GREED became such an epidemic. Before we had an army of over-paid executives, investors, celebrities, athletes, attorneys, doctors, entrepreneurs, developers, lobbyists, and sold-out politicians to kiss their greedy asses. As a nation, we were in much better shape. Strong middle class, free and clear assets, home equity, savings, widespread prosperity, stable job market, lower deficit, ect. Our economy as a whole was much more stable and prosperous for the majority. WITHOUT LOANS FROM CHINA. Now, we have a more obscene distribution of bottom line wealth, and resources than ever before. We have a sold-out government, crumbling infrastructure, energy crisis, home forclosure epidemic, credit crunch, weak job market, weak middle class, weak US dollar, 13 figure national debt, and 12 figure annual shortfall. The cost of living is higher than ever before. Most people can’t even afford basic health care. ALL BECAUSE OF GREED. I really don’t blame the upper class in general. At least not as a group and not without exception. No economy could ever function without some reasonable scale of income and wealth. But it can’t be allowed to run wild like a mad dog. ALBERT EINSTEIN TRIED TO MAKE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND. UNBRIDLED CAPITALISM ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT WORK. TOP HEAVY ECONOMIES CAN NOT BE SUSTAINED. THEY ALWAYS COLLAPSE. Bottom line: The richest 1 percent will soon tank the largest economy in the world. It will be catastrophic. Like nothing we’ve ever seen before. The American dream will be shattered. and thats just the beginning. Greed will eventually tank every major economy in the world. Causing millions more to struggle, fight, starve, suffer, and die. Oprah, Angelina, Brad, Bono, and Bill are not part of the solution. They are part of the problem. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE HUMANITARIAN. EXTREME WEALTH MAKES WORLD PROSPERITY ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. WITHOUT WORLD PROSPERITY, THERE WILL NEVER BE WORLD PEACE OR ANYTHING EVEN CLOSE. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL. Of course, the rich will throw a fit and call me a madman. Of course, they will jump to small minded conclusions about 'jealousy', 'envy', or 'socialism'. Of course, their ignorant fans will do the same. You have to expect that. But I speak the truth. If you don’t believe me, then copy this entry and run it by any professor of economics or socio-economics. Then tell a friend. Call the local radio station. Re-post this entry or put it in your own words. Be one of the first to predict the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time and explain its underlying cause. WE ARE IN BIG TROUBLE.

    So what can we do about it? Well, not much. Unfortunately, we are stuck on a runaway train. The problem has gone unchecked for too many years. The US/global depression is comming thanks to the 1% club. It would take a massive effort by the vast majority to prevent it. Along with a voluntary sacrifice by the rich. THATS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. But if you believe in miracles, then spend your money as wisely as possible. Especially in middle and lower class communities. Check the Fortune 500 list and limit your support of high profit/low labor industries (Hollywood, pro sports, energy, credit, pharmaceutical, cable, satelite, internet advertising, video, and music, cell phone, high fashion, jewelry, ect.). Cancel all but one credit card for emergencies only. Call the provider and demand a lower rate. Be persistent. You may get it. (By the way. I gave this piece of advice long before NBC. I'm not looking for kudos. I'm telling you that NBC is directly affiliated with the credit industry. They could have given you this piece of advice years ago. Instead, they stood by and allowed their parent company, sister companies, and network sponsors to RIP YOU OFF. Even now, they give the occasional 'good guy' financial advice only because they are pressured to do so. They carefully balance every piece of 'good guy' advice with their primary goal to GET YOUR MONEY. Which is why their 'good guy' advice is so often followed by a plug for one of their sister companies, sister channels, network sponsors, or coorporate partners. For example: They tell you to pay down your credit card debt. Good advice. They should have given it years ago. Then, they tell you to GET MORE CREDIT CARDS and use them. Bad advice. One week Jean Chatzky tells you to avoid the 'free credit report' scam because it is always followed by a monthly service charge. Good advice. They should have given it years ago. The following week she stands by as her paid fellow advisor Carmen Wong strongly implies for you to have your credit monitered on a monthly basis and praises a caller for doing so. Bad advice. This is actually a plug for one of their network sponsors, coorporate partners, or parent company. The praise is nothing but a psychological trick. DON'T FALL FOR IT. Don't take ANYTHING they say at face value. Instead, read between the lines. Carefully weigh every piece of 'good guy' advice given against their primary goal. THEY WANT YOUR MONEY.). If you need a cell phone, then do your homework and find the best deal on a local pre-pay. You may be able to get one for as little as $10 a month. Don't text. The charge may seem low at the time but their profit margins are obscene. If you want home internet access, then check for a locally based provider. They can be found in nearly every city nationwide. Otherwise, use the least expensive big name provider, and share accounts whenever possible. If you need to search, then use the less popular search engines. They usually produce about same results anyway. Don't pay for any internet download. Their profit margins for such data transfers are obscene. Don’t pay to see any blockbuster movie. Instead, wait a few months and rent the DVD from a local store, borrow it, or buy it USED. Then loan it to a friend or family member. If you prefer the outing, then choose a film produced by the lesser known studeos with lower paid actors. If you want to see a big name game or event, then watch it in a local bar, club, or at home on network TV. Don’t buy any high end official merchandise and don’t support the high end sponsors. If its endorsed by a big name celebrity, then don’t buy it. If you can afford a new car, then make an exception for GM, Ford, and Dodge. If they don’t increase their market share soon, then a lot more people are going to get screwed out of their pensions and/or benefits. Of course, you must know by now to avoid those big trucks and SUVs unless you truly need one for its utility. Don’t be ashamed to buy a foreign car if you prefer it. Afterall, those with the most fuel efficient vehicles consume a lot less foreign oil. Which accounts for a pretty big chunk of our trade deficit. Its a reasonable trade-off. Anyway, the global economy is worth supporting to some extent. Its the obscene profit margins, trade deficits, and BS from OPEC that get us into trouble. Otherwise, the global economy would be a good thing for everyone. Just keep in mind that the big 3 are struggling and they do produce a few smaller reliable cars. Don’t frequent any high end department store, mall, or any business in a newly developed center or upper class community. By doing so, you encourage greedy developers, make them richer, and draw vital support away from industrial areas and away from the middle and lower class communities. Instead, support the local retailer and the less popular shopping centers. Especially in lower or middle class communities. If you can afford to buy a home, then do so. But go smaller and less expensive. Don’t get yourself in too deep and don’t buy into the newly developed condos or gated communities. Instead, find a modest home in a building or neighborhood at least 20 years old. If you live in one of the poorer states, then try to support its economy first and foremost. Be on the lookout for commercial brainwash plots on TV. They are written into nearly every scene of nearly every show. Most cater to network sponsors, coorporate partners, and parent companies. Especially commercial health care. In particular, high profit pharmaceuticals and excessive medical testing. These plugs are countless, calculated, and VERY well written. They have commercial brainwashing down to a science. DON'T FALL FOR IT. Get off the couch and take care of your own body the way nature intended. There is no substitute. If you must see a doctor, then DEMAND that he/she give you more than 5 minutes of their undivided attention. Otherwise, dispute their unreasonable charges. Be prepared with written questions about your condition and get them answered one at a time. If they refuse, then dispute their unreasonable charges. If they prescribe excessive medical testing then ask if they personally own the equipment or if they are paid a commission for each test. If they find nothing new or signifigant, then dispute their unreasonable charges. If they prescribe a pharmaceutical, then ask for a generic. Better yet, concider a change in lifestyle or simple tolerance. If they still recommend the name brand pharmaceutical, then ask about any financial ties or conflict of interest. If they get offended, then dispute their unreasonable charges and consider a new doctor. If you must drug away your sniffles, worries, jitters, aches, and pains, then at least do your homework. Be aware of the possible side-effects ahead of time. Don't be surprised to find yourself back a week or two later feeling worse. In which case, you should dispute their unreasonable charges. If you are diagnosed with another medical condition, then ask your doctor what he/she has done to rule out those possible side-effects. Otherwise, dispute their unreasonable charges. Don't let any greedy doctor treat you like a number, make you wait an hour, or rush you out of their office. Otherwise, dispute their unreasonable charges. Don't fall for this CRAP that doctors have no choice but to over-book their time or over-charge their patients because of a high overhead. ITS A LIE. YOUR DOCTOR IS MOST LIKELY A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE. So don't fall for their CRAP. Demand their undivided attention and respect. Afterall, they took an oath. If you have the opportunity before being admitted, then check the record of your hospital. Check to see if they have been investigated or sued for providing unnecessary treatment, excessive medical testing, or fraudulent billing. Dozens have already been caught doing so. Do all of the above regardless of your coverage. Don't force your employer to cover the obscene and often fraudulent charges of a corrupt health care industry. By doing so, you make the problem worse. Keep your guard up when watching ANY talk show. These people are not your friends. They are not your advocates. They are paid actors hired to get your attention and your money. Some of them are also executive producers (Oprah Winfrey, Ellen Degeneres, and Dr Phil.). Nearly every word, smile, and stupid joke is rehearsed ahead of time. Including those which take place so often during what appear to be 'technical oversights' (Today Show. Even their stage hands are mixed in behind the scenes so that you can hear them laugh at every stupid joke.). Its all fake. Its all calculated. These people are not trying to make the world a happy place. They are trying to entertain you only because their marketing studies have shown that you are more likely to drop your guard and support their sponsors. Nearly every segment is about marketing some over-priced product or service. They will use any excuse to plug a gadget, fashion item, travel destonation, credit card, university, drug, medical test, surgical procedure, movie, TV show, book, magazine, song, website, ect. Almost all of it over-priced. Almost all of it resulting in higher profits for their sponsors, partners, and parent companies. DON'T FALL FOR IT. Big business is fine on occasion depending on their product, ethics, employment, profit margins, and profit sharing. Do your homework. If they are screwing up our economy or society, then don't pay them for it. If you want to support any legitimate charity, then do so directly. Never support any celebrity foundation. Don't be fooled by the sale of baby photos, lies about percentage of income donated, or praise from other well known public figures. Celebrity foundations are CRAP. They spend most of their funding on PR campaigns, exotic travel, and super high end accomodations for themselves. Thats right. Filthy rich public figures have been jet-setting the world in the name of 'humanity' for years. Riding in personal jets, staying in super-exclusive resorts, and living it up in exotic locations around the world the likes of which most people could never afford even if their lives depended on it. They bring along agents, advisors, publicists, hair, make-up, wardrobe, lighting, and photo crews who are also in it for themselves. They are paid six or seven figures for their part to schedule, manage, document, showcase, praise, and publicize the 'good will' of said public figures and their respective industries. Every possible expense is passed of as 'incidental' or 'necessary' and billed right back to some 'foundation' named after said public figure and/or respective industry. Every possible tax deduction is claimed. Which are incredibly vague and diverse thanks to our sold-out government. Deals are cut with major networks who agree to praise the 'good will' or 'humanitarian' effort of said public figures and plug their latest commercial project around the same time. Others from around the world pick up the story and save these industries billions in advertising every year. Resulting in higher profits and paychecks for the 1% club. When its all said and done more wealth is transfered from poor to rich. NOT the other way around. So don't support any charity named after a living celebrity. Don't be fooled or inspired by any photo you see in a magazine, any clip on TV, any affiliation, or any short term short sighted progress report. Instead, go to Charitywatch.org and look up a top rated charity to support your favorite cause. Its all there. For example: 'Habitat For Humanity' is a top rated charity. They have been for many years. They operate with a low overhead, volunteer workforce, and donated materials. They have built homes for the less fortunate in nearly every city nationwide. Including New Orleans. They do so as we speak. No similar effort can match their progress hour for hour or dollar for dollar. So there is no legitimate reason to support a slower, less efficient effort represented by a filthy rich Hollywood actor who flies in on a personal jet, takes most of the credit, and makes a deal with a major network for plugs just days before the premier of his latest film or DVD release. By doing so, you support not only the inefficient effort, but also the filthy rich actor. Concentrating more wealth and dumbing down our society further in the process. Instead, support 'Habitat For Humanity'. Its not perfect. It is affiliated with some big business. However, it is MUCH more efficient, effective, and less corrupt than 'Make It Right'. The difference is profound. In general, support the little guy as much as possible and the big guy as little as possible. Keep your own greed in check. Don't play the big stakes lottery games, and don't invest only for profit. Don't believe for a second that you can get rich and still manage to keep your soul because you can't. Don't believe for a second that you can concentrate even more of the world's wealth and somehow 'give back' enough to make up for it because you can't. If you do come into a fortune, then give away the bulk of it to a legitimate cause or directly to others who have far less. Do it quickly before that big money turns your heart black. Find the courage and do it. STAY OUT OF THE 1% CLUB. Encourage others to do the same. Their standard is obscene, unjust, illogical, and immoral. There is no excuse for it. Do your part to reverse the transfer of wealth away from the rich and back to the middle and lower classes. Otherwise, there will be no economic recovery EVER. Unfortunately, there is no perfect answer. Jobs will be lost either way. Families will go cold and hungry either way. Innocent children will starve and die either way. But we need to support the largest group of workers with the most reasonable profit margins. We need to stand for a more reasonable distribution of income, bottom line wealth, and resources. We need to support LEGITIMATE charities (Check that list at Charitywatch.org). This is our only chance to limit the severity or duration of the comming US/global depression. In the meantime, don’t listen to Bernanke, Paulson, Bartiromo, Orman, Dobbs, Kramer, Pickens, Larson, O'Reiley, Limbaugh, Bruce, Ingraham, or any other public figure with regard to the economy. They are all plenty smart but I swear to you that they will lie right through their rotten teeth. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. These people work for big business. They are sponsored by big business. The ‘experts’ they cite also work for big business. They invest in big business. They are all motivated primarily by their obsessive desire to accumulate even more personal wealth. THEY WILL LIE RIGHT THROUGH THEIR ROTTEN TEETH. So don’t fall for their tricks. Instead, look at the big picture. The economic problems we face have been mounting for well over 20 years. All of them caused or aggrivated by a constant transfer of wealth from poor to rich. Soon, it will cause the worst ever GLOBAL DEPRESSION. Its not brain surgery. For the mostpart, Its simple math. Like I said, you are welcome to copy this entry and run it by any professor of economics or socio-economics. Go ahead and do it. Ask them specifically about the link between the distribution of wealth and economic stability. If thats not good enough, then look up what Albert Einstein had to say about greed, excess, extreme wealth, and its horrible economic and cultural concequences. Then call any syndicated talk radio show. Tell the screeners that you would like to discuss the concentration of wealth. Mention the views of Albert Einstein with regard to this issue. Your call will be refused. FLAT OUT REFUSED. The vast majority screen their calls and won't allow this topic. Try any local talk radio show. You will face massive opposition there as well but at least they will take your call. Be prepared. These people are very good debators. The vast majority are die-hard capitalists. If they take offense, they may insult you, talk over you, try to re-define your own statements, or call you a 'socialist', 'marxist', or 'communist'. They often use these words to refer to anyone who points out the flaws of unbridled capitalism. They may follow with the old "socialism/marxism doesn't work" line. Maybe, they should take a closer look at whats happening in the world and see that unbridled capitalism doesn't work either. The heavy concentration of wealth is it's fatal flaw. We need a compromise. A relatively free market system with a minimum wage, a maximum wage, a progressive tax policy, and caps on personal wealth. Any little step in that direction would be a start. If you get the opportunity, then confront any politician or public figure in any forum. Ask them to confirm or deny the concentration of wealth and the relation if any to economic stability. Watch them squirm. They will not give you a straight answer because most public figures are filthy rich. They simply will not acknowledge the ugly truth. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    Its already underway. A massive campaign to divert our attention. Trump, Buffet, O'Reiley, Dobbs, Winfrey, Pickens, Larson, Norris, Branson, Bohannon, Limbaugh, Coulter, Clinton, Hannity, Ingraham, Bruce, Bloomberg, Doyle, and several other well known filthy rich public figures have been running their mouths about the economy. Finally admitting a hint of severity after years of denial. They even have the nerve to FINALLY acknowledge the possibility of a US/global depression. Still, they refuse to acknowledge the single greatest underlying cause. GREED. Instead, they focus on policies, procedures, and circumstances that were born FROM the underlying cause. GREED. They ramble on about 'subprime', 'toxic debt', 'junk bonds', and 'risky investments'. As if somehow all of this could have been avoided if those transactions had never taken place to begin with. What a joke. Those factors don't represent the underlying cause of this global economic crisis. They represent the effect of a shrinking middle class and massive consumer debt. CAUSED BY GREED. A MASSIVE TRANSFER OF WEALTH FROM POOR TO RICH. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been such a market for subprime to begin with. The debt wouldn't have been 'toxic'. The bonds wouldn't have been 'junk'. The investments wouldn't have been so 'risky'. By focusing on such factors, they attempt to divert our attention, limit our hindsight, disregard the OBSCENE concentration of wealth and capital, that shrinking middle class, the high cost of living, and the particular form of evil responsible for almost all of it. GREED. Dancing their way around the big picture. DON'T FALL FOR IT. Remember: Our national debt was way up BEFORE subprime. Consumer debt was way up BEFORE subprime. The cost of living was up BEFORE subprime. Wall Street profits were obscene BEFORE subprime. The middle class were loosing free and clear assets BEFORE subprime. Our infrastructure was in bad shape BEFORE subprime. Loans from China were taken out BEFORE subprime. The dollar was loosing value BEFORE subprime. All of this took place over a period of many years under both Republican and Democratic rule. All of it coincided with a transfer of wealth from poor to rich. So don’t let these cowardly, hypocritical, sold-out, partisan, filthy rich public figures divert your attention or limit your range of thought. THE CURRENT GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS WAS NOT CAUSED BY A SINGLE POLICY, PROCEDURE, POLITICAL PARTY, OR ADMINISTRATION. IT WAS CAUSED PRIMARILY BY A MASSIVE TRANSFER OF WEALTH FROM POOR TO RICH. THIS ALSO REPRESENTS A MASSIVE CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL WORLDWIDE. OTHERWISE, THERE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SUCH A MARKET FOR SUBPRIME AND THERE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A GLOBAL CREDIT CRUNCH. MONEY DOES NOT GROW ON TREES AND IT DOES NOT JUST FLOAT AWAY. IT ONLY TRANSFERS FROM ONE PARTY TO ANOTHER. ALBERT EINSTEIN TRIED TO MAKE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    A word for those who respond with the usual ‘I know more than you. I spell better than you. I talk like an economist. Look how smart, knowledgable, and articulate I am’ crap. Let me say this in advance. I don’t claim to be an expert in this field. I never will be. I'm still learning and I don't claim to be infallible. But I did go on record with these predictions long before any public figure uttered the word ‘recession’. I've done so 'on the air' and 'online'. Millions of you already know my voice from various local talk radio shows in several states and one syndicated. My first call was in September of '05'. I tried to explain that we will never have world peace without world prosperity and that we will never have world prosperity without a 'fair and reasonable pay-scale'. I also tried to explain the link between 'extreme wealth' and 'extreme poverty'. My call was immediately followed by attacks from so called 'patriots' who felt that my cause must have been to promote 'socialism' or 'bring down America'. Not warn her citizens. You may also remember me from various chat rooms criticizing the 1% club and Hollywood humanitarians in particular. If you search long enough, you will find my early postings online from ‘05' and ‘06'. At first, they were written specifically to fit within a few hundred characters. Including the first draft of this rant. It started with one short paragraph predicting a 'total collapse of the US economy'. Others included phrases like 'game of Monopoly', 'recession is inevitable', 'global recession', 'greed kills', and 'the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time'. Some of which were eventually included here. From day 1, I have tried to explain the link between extreme wealth, poverty, and economic instability. My internet account was eventually cancelled for posting 'spam' in response to articles about the economy. In December of '06', I predicted market instability by spring of the following year. I did so 'on the air'. In January of '07', I called another morning talk radio show and spoke with a guest host who was filling in for a well known public figure. Again, I specifically predicted growing market instability, the current US recession, and the subsequent US/global depression.Which by the way, will be the worst of all time by far. In February of '07', Allen Greenspan acknowledged a 'one in three' chance of a US recession. I immediately called another talk radio show and guranteed AGAIN that it was iminent. I criticized Greenspan and tried to explain that it was not about 'odds' but instead a very simple equation with regard to distribution of income and wealth. I also gave credit to Albert Einstein who went on record with similar views in 1949. As far as I know, he was the first to do so. By late spring of '07', the market was rattled and the economic 'stimulus' in the works. Which turned out to be around $160,000,000,000. THATS ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY BILLION DOLLARS. Well over 1% of our GDP. Deemed appropriate at the time by our leaders. In fact, Bush went on record with a claim that it was based on a mathematical formula and proven strategy. They said it would work. I immediately predicted that it would have little or no effect. By summer of '07' the stock market was more unstable. The housing market in decline. Again, I predicted that it would get MUCH worse. In September of '07', I predicted that our government would have no choice but to acknowledge a US recession by October of '08'. I also assured the audiance that our economy would "go down in a ball of flames" because of greed and that no recovery would EVER take place without a more reasonable distribution of wealth and resources. I have made these predictions 'on air' and 'online' literally hundreds of times. The first call was in September of '05'. Made to a well known public figure with a large audiance. The first blog post a month or so later. Prior to that, I had never even seen one. In fact, my very first post to a blog was written specifically to warn my fellow citizens about the comming US/global depression. Which I was already convinced at the time would be SEVERE within a decade. That was in October of '05'. At the time, there were literally only a few of us worldwide posting any such prediction online. I'm talking maybe a dozen searchable links. This particular rant began with one short paragraph in '06'. Like the others, it was originally intended to fit within a few hundred characters. At the time, I was unaware of any blogs which allowed for longer entries to be posted anonymously. This paragraph was first written in early-mid '08'. Its been updated several times. There has also been a running debate on iVillage.com which began in October of '07' (don't click on their ads). In February or March of '08', I refered specifically to the bank failures of the Great Depression and predicted that it was about to happen again. At the time, I was one of only a few bloggers worldwide to go on record with any such prediction. This was still several weeks to months before Greenspan, Paulson, Bartiromo, Orman, Kramer, O'Reiley, Larson, Bohannon, Dobbs, Celeste or any other well known public figure had acknowledged even a hint of severity. It was also several weeks before Fanny May and Freddie Mac made the news. I also predicted in March that our markets would end the year much lower than they began. Which was still contrary to what we were being told by any public figure. I was allowed to post but when my predictions came true, the site operators went back all the way to October of '07' and deleted nearly every one of my previous entries (they missed a few.). Their motive was obvious. They wanted to 'erase' my credibility. IVillage.com is directly affiliated with NBC, GE, Universal Studeos, Countrywide, CityBank, Capital One, Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Ellen Degeneres, Dr Phil, and others who I persecute by name. All of which depend on the constant dumbing down of society. All of whom are partially responsible for the current economic crisis. None of which or whom have the GUTS to acknowledge the single greatest underlying cause. GREED. In fact, those who epitomoze it (all of the above) want my big mouth SHUT. For 3 solid years, I have been ripping on the 1% club for their incredible greed and hypocrisy. From day 1, my call has been for a more reasonable distribution of income, wealth, and resources. My warning that without it, we would face the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time. Since then, I’ve gone on record against people like Greenspan, Bernanke, Paulson, Laffer, O'Reiley, Bartiromo, Orman, Kramer, Larson, and Dobbs. So far, my predictions have been accurate. The public figures DEAD WRONG. Afterall, not one of them acknowledged even a hint of severity in '05', '06', or '07'. When they FINALLY did this year, they all said something to the effect of "None of us saw this comming.". LIARS. There were a few of us typing our fingers to the bone trying to warn people. There were a few of us calling talk radio shows almost daily trying to warn people. I was one of them. Again, I don't claim to be an expert in this field. But I do understand simple equations, basic economics, and cultural trends. I also realize that mainstream views are DEAD WRONG and based on LIES told by filthy rich public figures who will say whatever it takes to serve their own interests. GREED. Afterall, what kind of incredible MORON could even glance at the numbers and somehow think the equation could work? What kind of incredible MORON could possibly hope to sustain an economy based on a constant transfer of wealth from poor to rich? What the hell did they expect to happen when the middle class finally ran low on money to spend on over-priced crap like everything that I mentioned in that first long paragraph? What the hell were they thinking of? I'll tell you what. RICHES. FILTHY STINKING RICHES. Thats what. Now, they are spinning themselves dizzy trying to divert our attention. Mark my words: They will never acknowledge the obscene concentration of wealth or the negative effect had on economic stability. They will never acknowledge the downside of their own incredible greed. They will all come up with one campaign or strategy after another to blame the other guy, the other administration, the other politician, the other party, the other policy, the other industry, the other country, ect. Whatever it takes to dumb down our society. They will NEVER have the GUTS to acknowledge the single greatest underlying cause for this global economic crisis. GREED. They won't even have the guts to acknowledge the views or predictions of Albert Einstein made way back in 1949. THOSE PARTICULAR VIEWS AND PREDICTIONS. Instead, they will produce their own big money/big business/big celebrity 'experts' who have the same motive to lie right through their rotten teeth. GREED. Its not their knowledge I question. Its their character. GREED. Like I said. This is not brain surgery. For the mostpart, its simple math. When you concentrate the world’s wealth, you also concentrate its capital, and shrink the middle class along with the potential market for every major industry. Homes go unsold. Bills go unpaid. Jobs are lost. Banks fail. More products go unsold. More jobs are lost. More banks fail. and so on. and so on. and so on. It happened 80 years ago in that order beginning with a concentration of wealth. It will happen again. This time on a catastrophic global scale. Throughout the cycle, the rich will panic and tighten their grip. Concentrating the world’s wealth and resources even further, getting richer in the process, and ensuring the collapse of every major economy worldwide. Think it can’t happen? Think again. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    Another thing. I don’t want credit for any of this. Otherwise, I would have given my full name a long time ago. I havn't. IT DOESN'T MATTER. I'm not selling a book and I'm not looking for any notoriety. At least not yet. I do have a plan to go public when my parents die. In fact, I have BIG plans for my inheritence. Every single penny of it. In the meantime, I don't want them to know about it. I also don't want them punished for my big mouth. Which is why I've gone out of my way to remain anonymous for 3 solid years. When I do go public, it won't be for profit and it won't be for popularity. It will be for a legitimate cause and NOTHING ELSE. In fact, I hope to be just one of many. A face in the crowd. In the meantime, I don't care who gets to say "I told you so." IT DOESN'T MATTER. As far as I’m concerned, you can put this entire rant in your own words and take credit for all of it. I don’t care. Just spread the word. Otherwise, the greatest injustice of all time will go down in history unchecked.

    By the way. The bailout won’t work. IT WON’T WORK. The plan fails to address the fundamental problem. The middle class don’t need more credit. They need a reasonable share of the economic pie. They also need a lower cost of living and a chance to catch their breath. They need a break from all of the psychological marketing tricks and mass market BS. Most of all, they need to wake up, see the truth, and take a stand. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    10.01.08
    To my surprise, two public figures have found the courage to acknowledge this problem to some degree. On 11.07.07 former presidential candidate Ron Paul mentioned the massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich. He also hinted at the possibility of economic collapse. He did so on 'Face the Nation'. He was blacklisted almost immediately for doing so. On 9.28.08 former secretary of labor Robert Reich refered to the obscene levels of income inequality as part of a "recipe for disaster". He mentioned the richest one percent in particular. He did so on 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien'. As far as I know, Albert Einstein was the first to explain the link between extreme wealth and economic instability. He did so in 1949. He explained how the first Great Depression was actually caused by a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich. He predicted that it would happen again. He also predicted much greater levels of economic instability proportional to much greater levels of income and wealth inequality. He was right. Amazing. The prosperity of an entire world is about to be compromised. Almost entirely because of greed. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    Another word about the first Great Depression. It really was a perfect storm. Caused almost entirely by greed. First, there was unprecedented economic growth. There was a massive building spree. There was a growing sense of optimism and materialism. There was a growing obsession for celebrities. The American people became spoiled, foolish, naive, brainwashed, and love-sick. They were bombarded with ads for one product or service after another. Encouraged to spend all of their money as if it were going out of style. Obscene profits were hoarded at the top. All of this represented a MASSIVE transfer of wealth from poor to rich. Executives, entrepreneurs, developers, celebrities, and share holders. By 1929, America's wealthiest 1 percent had accumulated around 40% of all United States wealth. The upper class held around 30%. The middle and lower classes were left to share the rest. When the majority finally ran low on money to spend, profits declined and the stock market crashed. Of course, the rich threw a fit and started cutting jobs. They would stop at nothing to maintain their disgusting profit margins and ill-gotten obscene levels of wealth as long as possible. The small business owners did what they felt necessary to survive. They cut more jobs. The losses were felt primarily by the little guy. This created a domino effect. The middle class shrunk drastically and the lower class expanded. With less wealth in reserve and active circulation, banks failed by the hundreds. More jobs were cut. Unemployment reached 25% in 1933. The worst year of the Great Depression. Those who were employed had to settle for much lower wages. Millions went cold and hungry. The recovery involved a massive infusion of new currency, a World War, and higher taxes on the rich. With so many men in the service, so many women on the production line, and those higher taxes to help pay for it, the lions share of United States wealth was gradually transfered back to the middle class. This redistribution of wealth continued until the mid seventies. At the time, the richest 1% reaped about 10% of all private income and held about 20% of all United States wealth. Far less than previous levels. The middle class had home equity, free and clear assets, and money in the bank. Most American households were secure with a single full time provider. Most retirees could enjoy their lives, live in their own homes, afford basic health care, and not have to worry about going bankrupt. THATS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE. The tide began to change in 1976. Jimmy Carter was blamed for a recession that was actually caused by a number of global circumstances including greed. Then a short sighted little pig by the name of Arthur Laffer came along. Known for his famous 'Laffer Curve'. A simple and short sighted equation whipped up to increase tax revenues and profit margins without the slightest regard for ANYTHING ELSE. He convinced Ronald Reagan to campaign on and grant massive tax breaks to the rich and their respective industries. His half-baked theory was that by doing so, unprecidented levels of economic growth and revenue could be achieved. He was right. Unfortunately, he failed to see or acknowledge the big picture. He failed to understand or admit what should have been incredibly obvious after the first Great Depression. That 'economic growth' and 'actual prosperity' are two very different things. Jobs don't necessarily 'create' wealth. In fact, they almost never do. For the mostpart, they only transfer it from one party to another. The devil is in the details. Reaganomics, gave the rich and their respective industries the incentive to 'expand' and 'create jobs'. But those products and services were misrepresented, over-priced, and then sold or billed right back to the people. Often, without their knowledge, understanding, or consent. Certainly without a clue about how the economy REALLY works. All of this resulted in higher profits for those at the top and stagnant wages for almost everyone else. The cost of living went up right along with those obscene profit margins. The American people ended up working more hours just to maintain their standard of living. So with Reaganomics, the transfer of wealth from poor to rich was kicked back into high gear. Here we are 27 years later. Trillions in wealth and capital have been concentrated all over again. National and consumer debt are both at an all time high. The middle class are weak, the lower class flat broke, and the cost of basic living higher than ever before. The dollar is weak because too many of them have been hoarded and the government left with no choice but to print billions more backed up by loans from China. Its another perfect storm. THE BIG ONE. The largest economy in the world is about to go down in a ball of flames. Ground zero of a global economic crisis. CAUSED ALMOST ENTIRELY BY GREED. A MASSIVE TRANSFER OF WEALTH FROM POOR TO RICH. As a nation, we don't even see it because our entire culture has been defined by Washington, Wall Street, Hollywood, Pro-sports, and commercial health care. We have been lied to and led around like puppies by those with the worst possible motive. GREED. THEY WANT OUR MONEY. For the mostpart, we just bend over and let them take it. We have become their perfect little victims once again. A nation of consumer junkie, credit card, couch potatoe, drug and doctor morons. We spend most of our spare time on that couch getting brainwashed by greedy public figures who will say or do whatever it takes to get our money. Even worse, those public figures have re-defined any logical standard we ever had for 'good will'. Mother Teresa is dead. America's favorite 'humanitarian' is now a filthy rich multi-media pig who reaped a billion dollar fortune from the middle class by making damn sure they stay on that couch long enough to watch her show and read her magazine. Transforming them into pathetic, naive, love-sick fools who turn around and buy any product or service given away to a cheering studeo audiance or endorsed by their idol. The same goes for Ellen Degeneres, Dr Phil, Regis and Kelly, Rachael Ray, The View, and their respective demographics. Which by the way, are almost identical. Primarily, middle class housewives, retirees, and welfare mothers. Who have been shown through marketing research to spend most of their money and food stamps on over-priced CRAP advertised on TV or a TV show website (ivillage.com). Especially if that over-priced crap is endorsed by a 'hero' or 'humanitarian'. They are easy targets. Not like the rest of us are much less gullible. We're not. In fact, every filthy rich well known public figure and every major industry have followed suit with a similar marketing strategy. Dumbing down our society and cashing in on bogus promises to make the world a better place. They do it because they know it works. They also know that we are too stupid, short sighted, naive, smitten, and love-sick to take a closer look at the world and see that they are wolves in sheep's clothing. To see that what they are doing is FALSE. For example: In the fall of '01', Jennifer Lopez was invited to take part in a music video for charity. The effort was hailed as a benefit for victims of AIDS and 9/11. Well, Jennifer Lopez doesn't do ANYTHING for free. She DEMANDED AND RECIEVED the following for her exclusive use: A 45 foot trailer with a TV, VCR, stereo, an assortment of CDs, a white dressing room with lavish all white decor, all white furniture, and an assortment of exotic fruits and desserts. All of this was necessary just to get her sorry ass in the studeo for 30 minutes. FOR CHARITY. Of course, the organizers are partly to blame for selling out to a 'diva'. In fact, I have my doubts about the entire project. Charity just isn't what it used to be. Most of it has gone commercial. SOLD OUT. Even the UN has become a PR firm for Hollywood and Pro-Sports. Going so far as to allow George Clooney access to the UN headquarters auditorium with his own camera crew. A F$#@$&% CELEBRITY. Of course, that footage was plastered all over the media weeks later right along with plugs for his latest Hollywood blockbuster. Like I said, the UN has become a PR firm. Most of their 'good will ambassadors' are filthy rich, hypocrite pigs who dumb down their ignorant fans, take as much of their money as possible, buy up mass acreage and multiple mansions, flaunt their extravogant lifestyles, jet-set the world, burn through limited life sustaining resources like there is no tomorrow, drive up the cost of living worldwide, and then run their mouths about 'poverty' or some other 'injustice' everytime their latest commercial project hits the market. They do it for publicity. They even have the nerve to run their mouths about 'global warming', 'conservation', and 'green' living. As if the example they set is anything but obscene. As if a roll of eco-friendly toilet paper somehow offsets the clear cutting of a dozen acres to build another F%$#$@# CELEBRITY MANSION. Of course, they have NOTHING to say about greed or economic injustice. NOTHING to say about the obscene concentration of wealth and resources worldwide. NOT A SINGLE F%$#@#$ WORD. What a bunch of false heroes. These people have no real desire to make the world a better place. Their primary goal is to APPEAR as if they do. IT MAKES THEM RICHER. It also gives them a lame excuse to be such greedy, rank, filthy, disgusting, slobbering, squandering, hypocrite pigs. Amazing. EVERY big business, EVERY big celebrity, EVERY billionaire, and damn near every multi-millionaire on the planet have all taken up 'philanthropy' or 'good will'. Those with the most money, also have the most power, and influense by far. They own or influense every government, manage every major industry, and the lion's share of life sustaining resources. They literally rule our world. They always have. Still, every major problem of modern society gets worse by the day. The world's wealth is more concentrated than ever before. Her life sustaining resources are in high demand, more expensive than ever, and squandered by the rich on extravogant living. Meanwhile, families loose their homes, retirees loose their pensions, heroes loose their lives, crime is up, and red ink flows in nearly every community nationwide. The global economy is in a state of crisis. The prosperity of an entire world is about to be compromised. Still, those with the most power, money, influense, and 'good will' promise to make it all better. If only we continue to buy any product or service with their name on it. IT IS A SHAM. GOOD WILL HAS BECOME BIG BUSINESS.

    The rich and famous do not want to be seen as 'pigs' or go down in history as 'villains'. They want to be seen as 'heros' and go down in history as 'humanitarians'. The market for their product has become global. The fan base has become global. Therefore, the 'humanitarian' effort and 'good will' PR machine has gone global. These 'humanitarian' efforts and 'good deeds' are not chosen to address the greatest need or injustice. They are chosen almost exclusively to appeal to the largest demographic for their respective commercial products. The largest fan base. Efficiency or effect is of little or no concern. Its all about PR, marketing, image, and fame. This is why so many of the rich and famous have taken up 'philanthropy' or 'good will' around the world. This is why so many have 'schools' or 'foundations' in their name. This is why so many play golf or appear on a TV game show for 'charity'. This is why so many sign motorcycles, other merchandise, or auction off their own 'personal effects' for 'charity'. This is why so many have TV shows with a 'charitable' gimmick. This is why so many arrange photo ops with wounded veterans, firefighters, or sick children. This is why so many have adopted children from around the world (Which they always pay others to care for full time. The hired professionals are sworn by legal contract to confidentiality. Not allowed to discuss or appear in public with the children they care for. Those 'photo' and 'interview' opportunities are reserved exclusively for the rich and famous 'adoptive' parents. Often sold for millions.). This is why every 'humanitarian' effort and 'good deed' is plastered all over the media worldwide. Its not about 'humanity' or 'good will'. Its all about marketing, image, fame, and PROFIT. This is why we are so often reminded of their respective 'good deeds' or 'humanitarian' efforts shortly before or after the release of their latest commercial product. IT IS A SHAM. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE HUMANITARIAN. GOOD WILL HAS BECOME BIG BUSINESS.

    The point about our government printing up more money was that it can't be done "on a whim" and that there are serious concequences for doing so (weak dollar, higher gas prices, inflation). I never said that it can't be or hasn't been done at all. Afterall, those loans from China weren't infused in the form of Chinese currency. They were infused in the form of our own. Some spent on legitimate government programs (This has been necessary as existing US currency tends to be hoarded by the rich.). Some diverted behind the scenes (Stolen by the rich.). The rest given to the banks in the form of credit (Run by the rich. Dividends paid to the rich.). Who in Reaganite theory, are expected to make loans and 'grow' the economy. Unfortunately, the 'economic growth' so far, has taken place almost entirely at the high end. Resulting in a net gain for the rich, a net loss for the vast majority, a much greater need for financial aid, and red ink nationwide. The later three of which have been further aggrivated by that weak dollar. So the printing of money can't be done "on a whim" without regard for serious concequences. So far, its done nothing but perpetuate the problem. It never has been and never will be the answer. Not without some policy in place to prevent that newly printed currency from being hoarded by the rich as well (Like higher taxes on the rich and caps on their personal wealth.). Sorry if I wasn't explicit enough the first time. The original draft of this particular rant was written in '06' and intended to fit within 300 characters. I've been updating it weekly for the last year or so. Responding to my celebrity junkie/Reaganite critics and a constant line of BS from the media. Inserting those updates where they seem most appropriate. I also realize how incredibly difficult it is to get through to a society which has been lied to for so many years. This is why I jump so often from one issue to another and back again. Anyway, I'm no English major. I have odd writing habits, I don't think in paragraphs and I find it difficult to write in paragraphs. So if any of you want to re-organize, re-word, or summarize this post feel free to do so. Whatever it takes to make people understand.

    11/05/08
    A new president will be taking office soon. Backed up by a heavily democratic congress who have all campaigned on a promise to raise taxes on the rich. Unfortunately, this will be too little too late. Nowhere near enough to compensate for the incredible corruption of both major parties. Nowhere near enough to pay for the bailout. Nowhere near enough to stop that runaway train. There will be no change for the better. Obama's financial advisers are pigs. Warren Buffet is a pig. Oprah Winfrey is a pig. Obama himself is a multi-millionaire politician married to a multi-millionaire attorney. He has already run the most expensive political campaign in history. Some of it squandered on a $400 lobster feast for his wife. Financed for the mostpart by ordinary people who can't even afford a $400 lobster feast. It happened on Obama's watch. Probably more than once. He even had the nerve to ask those ordinary people to help pay off the campaign debt of another filthy rich multi-millionaire politician PIG (Hilary Clinton). I will admit that Barack Obama seems to have more character than most of his colleagues. Certainly more than Clinton, Gore, McCain, Palin, Bush, Cheney, Romney, Schwarznenager, Palosi, Kerry, Guliani, Kennedy, Bloomberg, or Edwards. He was probably a very good down to earth man at one time. The same goes for Joe Biden. Not anymore. Afterall, John McCain was also a very good down to earth man at one time. A true American hero. NOT ANYMORE. Now, he is a filthy rich politician pig married to a filthy rich big business pig. SOLD OUT. Mark my words: Obama and Biden will do the same. Whatever moral character they may have left, will be lost or heavily compromised while in office. Like the others, their administration will be riddled with scandals of greed and corruption. Like the others, they will succumb to the greatest epidemic ever faced by modern man. By far, the most intoxicating element of modern society. Greed. Simply the desire to get as rich as possible. It has the potential to blacken any heart. Break the will of any human being. Influense any government. Corrupt any society. Those who succumb to it are lost forever. You can not get through to these people. You can not make them understand. No matter how bad it gets for the little guy. No matter how many families loose their homes. No matter how many people go cold and hungry. No matter how many innocent children starve and die. No matter how much blood is shed. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS. The rich will ALWAYS blame the other guy. They will ALWAYS say or do whatever it takes to secure their own extreme personal wealth. When they 'give back', its only because they expect more in return. They will NEVER compromise their own bottom line. They will NEVER jeapordize their position in the 1% club. They will NEVER stand for a more reasonable distribution of wealth and resources. They will NEVER acknowledge greed as a form of evil. They will NEVER acknolwedge the potential it has to ruin EVERYTHING. They will NEVER admit the simple truth. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    Ford, GM, and Dodge are begging the current admistration for some type of 'bridge loan' in order to avoid bankruptcy. The unions are begging for it. The people are divided. All because of a LIE. Again, we have been mislead. I'm not disputing their need. Its legit. I'm disputing the underlying cause. Competition my ass. China my ass. Japan my ass. Those factors are real but not fatal. They are also concequential. Not primary. Again, its GREED and CORRUPTION. Not only that of the auto executives and celebrities who demand millions to endorse the product (Toby Keith, Tiger Woods) but also within the health care industry. Thats right. Health care. The average doctor is a millionaire several times over. The average health care executive many times over. Both on average, are members of the 1% club. AGAIN, ITS THEIR FAULT. If it weren't for the OBSCENE health care charges, brainwash plots, and artificially inflated market, then the financial burden placed on Ford, GM, and Dodge wouldn't be anywhere near as high. They could easily match the labor of Honda, Toyota, and Hyndai who's workers are younger on average, more liberal, and not so demanding when it comes to 'health care'. In this case, the little guy is partly to blame for their incredible ignorance. They smoke, drink, get fat, fall for the most OBVIOUS health care scams, live by drug and doctor, kiss greedy doctor ass, drive up the cost of their own health care, demand full coverage, and then strike if they don't get it. Retired US auto workers on average are now causing their former employers to incur several hundred thousand dollars PER RETIREE in health care expenses over the span of their retirement. Those in the current workforce are partly to blame as well. Not for greed. Their wages are reasonable. But their health care demands are well in excess. If they would simply open their eyes, acknowledge the incredible greed and corruption within the health care industry, get off the couch, get off the pharmaceuticals, and take care of their own bodies, then their own cost of living would be lower, their health would be better, the market for their product would be higher, and the financial burden placed on Ford, GM, and Dodge would be MUCH lower. I'm not discounting other factors like gas prices, competition, and the US product line. But greed and ignorance wreak havok like no other elements of our society. They cause or allow the cost of living to rise and the middle class to shrink along with the potential market for every major industry. In this case, they also raise the financial burden placed on US auto makers. Mark my words: One or two of the big three US automakers will go bankrupt. They will do so regardless of any 'bridge loan'. Other well known foreign auto makers will follow. The entire manufacturing industry will become a shell of its former self. Millions of retirees will be cut off entirely. ALL BECAUSE OF GREED, CORRUPTION, AND IGNORANCE. The ripple effect is profound. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    12/16/08
    The feds have now reduced their interest rate to an all time low. IT WON'T WORK. The same goes for any potential bailout for the US auto industry, or any other. IT WON'T WORK. IT ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY WILL NOT WORK. I would bet my life on it a hundred times over. Again, our own leaders refuse to acknowledge the single greatest drag on our economy. The single greatest underlying cause for the global economic crisis. GREED. They all refuse to acknowledge the downside. Laffer, Greenspan, Bernanke, and Paulson refuse to acknowledge it. Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Gore, Palosi, Kerry, Obama, Bloomburg, Edwards, and Kennedy refuse to acknowledge it. Lars Larson, Mike Gallagher, Tammy Bruce, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reiley, Mike Savage, Maria Bartiromo, Suze Orman, Barbara Corcoran, Jean Chatzky, Carmen Wong, Jim Kramer, Rush Limbaugh, and Jim Bohannon refuse to acknowledge it. Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Jack Welsh, and T-Boone Pickens refuse to acknowledge it. The same goes for all of their billionaire friends. All of the above are filthy rich hypocrite pigs who don't have the guts to admit the simple truth. This is not brain surgery. For the mostpart, its simple math. WE ARE IN THIS MESS BECAUSE OF GREED. The world's richest one percent are now so incredibly rich that there simply isn't enough wealth circulating beneath them to sustain the global economy. Its finally on the brink of collapse. IT WILL COLLAPSE. We are now entering what will go down in history as the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time by far. You think its bad now? YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YET. NOTHING. Trillions more in wealth and capital will be concentrated (Not lost. Concentrated.). Many more banks large and small will fail. Tens of millions will loose their savings (Transfered from poor to rich.). Even some FDIC accounts will be forfeited (Yes they will. Yes they will. Yes they will.). Every major industry will become a shell of its former self. Unemployment will reach unprecidented levels. Millions of retirees will be cut off entirely. The lower class will expand further and become dominant. The financial aid system will fail miserably. The vast majority of those in need will have little or no access. Crime, poverty, and suicide will skyrocket. There will be riots and random acts of violence at banks, hospitals, and government buildings. The next generation will be left to fight in the crumbling streets over a shattered American dream. The rest of the world will have it even worse. So don't blame innocent people from other countries you idiots. Blame the rich. Blame the government. Blame the health care industry. Then blame yourselves for being so incredibly stupid for so many years. We have become perfect little consumer junkie, credit card, drug and doctor morons. We have fallen for every psychological marketing trick in the book. We have spent our money away without the slightest regard for where it goes, how it circulates, or how it accumulates. We have allowed a particular form of evil to grow out of control, intoxicate our society, consume our government, wreak havok on our own economy and culture, RUIN any chance we ever had at world prosperity, and jeapordize the very foundation of modern society. At the same time, we have allowed those who epitomize it to get away with calling themselves 'heroes' or 'humanitarians'. Putting a happy face on greed and dumbing down our society further in the process. THAT MEANS YOU. THE VAST MAJORITY. So wake up fellow citizens. Grow a spine. Don't fall for all of this 'good will' 'humanitarian' BS from the rich. IT IS A SHAM. NOTHING BUT TAX DEDUCTIBLE PR CRAP. Instead, look at the bottom line. IT'S F#@&#%$ OBSCENE. NOW GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLS YOU IDIOTS. WE ARE IN THIS MESS BECAUSE OF GREED. AMERICA'S RICHEST ONE PERCENT NOW OWN ALMOST 1/2 OF ALL UNITED STATES WEALTH. THE WORLD'S RICHEST ONE PERCENT NOW OWN OVER 40% OF ALL WORLD WEALTH. THATS WAY TOO MUCH. THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT HEROES. THEY ARE NOT HUMANITARIANS. THEY ARE DISGUSTING HYPOCRITE SLOBS. IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW MUCH THEY GIVE BACK. THEY STILL KEEP WAY TOO MUCH. IT CAN'T WORK THIS WAY. IT ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY CAN NOT WORK THIS WAY. IT NEVER HAS AND IT NEVER WILL. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    1% CLUB PIGS: I've said it many times and I will say it many more. Greed is not the desire to break the law or intentionally oppress another human being. Greed is simply the desire to take more than your reasonable share of wealth or any limited resource. By doing so, you reduce the value of currency and raise the cost of living worldwide. You shrink the middle class and the potential market for every major industry. You expand the lower class and the need for financial aid. You cause a domino-effect of socio-economic problems. You literally cause innocent people to suffer and die. YOU MAKE WORLD PROSPERITY MATHEMATICALLY AND PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. It does not matter how much you 'give back'. It matters how much you KEEP. This is why I will go to my grave with nothing but bleeding and burning hatred for all of you. Thats right. I hate you and I'm not afraid to admit it. Afterall, its OK to hate a rapist. Its OK to hate a terrorist. I do. But I also hate wolves in sheep's clothing. THAT MEANS YOU. In fact, I consider the equation you stand for to be the greatest injustice of all time. It makes my f$#@&$# blood boil. Jealosy my ass. Low self-esteem my ass. Self-pity my ass. Anyone who still thinks that after reading all of this is a F&#@%$# MORON. You disgusting hypocrite pigs. I've noticed the little shots you've been taking at me, a few others, and the cause we stand for. The psychological stunts. Thats right Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Today Show pigs, Regis and Kelly, Ellen DeGeneres, Dr Phil, Oprah Winfrey, Elizabeth Hasslebeck, Melissa Scott, Joyce Meyer, Lars Larson, Bill O'Reiley, Lou Dobbs, Ann Coulter, Tammy Bruce, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Jerry Doyle. I've noticed the crafty elusive statements you've been making about greed and subtle insults directed at those very few of us who stand against it. I also know that you're well aware of this campaign and that you're trying to shut it down. Of course, trying to do so in a manner that won't draw anymore attention to it. You've even gone out of your way to specifically attack 'anonymous' bloggers in general. As if we are somehow less credible without a registered account. I'm not the slightest bit intimidated by any of it. YOUR TRICKS WILL NEVER WORK ON ME. Mark my words: No matter what you say or do, I will spend the rest of my life persecuting all of you for the disgusting, obscene, unjust, illogical, and immoral equation you stand for. I won't break any laws. I won't harm one hair on your rotten heads. Its not that I don't wish you were gone. I do. But I would never jeapordize such an important cause with a criminal act. NEVER. My only realistic goal is to make as many people as possible understand. Including future generations. I hope they look back on these words and spit on your graves. Afterall, they won't achieve any degree of world peace or prosperity until after they acknowledge GREED as a form of EVIL. Not until they acknowledge it with a number or some type of material standard. In the unlikely event they ever do, I hope they FINALLY come up with a system that works for the vast majority. One with a reasonable pay scale and caps on personal wealth. Otherwise, their system will fail over and over again. Just like the one you stand for. It can't work this way. It never has and it never will. NEVER. NO WAY IN HELL. So mark my words: I will not make excuses for a single one of you. I don't care how smart you think you are. I don't care how talented you think you are. I don't care how pretty you think you are. I don't care how noble you think you are. I don't care what you think you've done to earn up to fifty thousand times the pay of a firefighter, soldier, farmer, teacher, cop, aid worker, cook, paramedic, truck driver, or garbageman. You're not worth it. I don't even care if your personal fortune fell out of the sky. If you're rich, I hate you. I don't care how much you 'give back'. I care how much you keep. Therefore, I will do everything within my power and within the law to expose your incredible greed and hypocrisy. If you want to break my will, then you're going to have to break my neck first. and if you pull a stunt like that, then a lot of people will know what happened to me and why. I've planned in detail for it. Most of you have no idea. Regardless, you pigs will not go down in history as 'heroes' or 'humanitarians'. Not if I can help it. We're in this mess primarily because of you. Its going to get MUCH worse primarily because of you. Thats what I believe and thats the message I intend to spread for the rest of my life. DEAL WITH IT.

    1.21.09
    A few more words about our new president and how certain public figures are using him to divert our attention, dumb down our society, shut my big mouth, and discredit the cause I stand for. I said it during the presidential campaign, I said it again in November, and I will say it again now. Our new president has more character than most of his colleagues. Much more. In fact, he puts Bush, Cheney, Rice, Clinton, Gore, Palosi, Reagan, Carter, Romney, Schwarzenegger, Bloomberg, Kerry, Edwards, and Kennedy to shame. He also puts nearly every living public figure to shame. Including those who claim to support him. By politician, public figure, and 1% club standards, he is an angel. That being said, he is still a politician. Still a public figure. Still a member of the one percent club. Just a man. Like any other, he is a product not only of genetics but also of his environment. Like any other, he is intoxicated by certain elements of modern society. Including three of the worst. Fame, fortune, and power. All three have the potential to corrupt the mind, the heart, and the will of any human being. I can name only one who resisted the influense of all three. Mother Teresa died in 1998. The amazing standard she set died with her. Since then, an army of public figures and false heroes have sold out the very concept of 'good will'. Capitalizing on bogus promises to make the world a better place. The vast majority, on day one. The rest, along the way. Obama will do the same. Its just pathetic human nature. Put any man or woman on a stage or throne and something about them is different. Make any man or woman rich and something about them is different. I said it in November and I will say it again. Barack Obama was probably a very good down to earth man at one time. That was before the corrupt influense of fame, fortune, and power. Now, something about him is different. The same goes for Michelle Obama. They have already begun to sell out. Not only as necessary during the campaign because of our ignorant society and the fact that we won't elect ANYONE unless they look a certain way, dress a certain way, talk a certain way, kiss our babies, cut our taxes, tell us what we want to hear no matter how unrealistic, believe in God, follow a certain religion, support a certain industry, and show up on our favorite talk show with a fake smile, stupid jokes, and lame dance moves. That was bad enough. A sell-out necessary to get elected by a pathetic, ignorant, naive, short sighted, half-wit, couch potatoe, love-sick, celebrity junkie society. But also for profit before, during, and after the election. I already mentioned the $400 lunchtime lobster feast. Paid for mostly by ordinary people who were willing to cut into their modest bottom lines in order to help get their hero elected. SHE ATE IT. That was bad enough. Another sign of the times. As expected, its already getting worse. I have no problem with the armor plated presidential limo, the extra security, the inauguration, or the speech. I have no problem with the concept of a public celebration. But I do have a problem with the $35,000 ring, the $150,000 dress, the exotic crystal, the exotic food, the coorporate plugs, NBC, MTV, BET, Beyonce, LL Cool J, Miley Cyrus, and every other filthy rich big business/big money/big celebrity hypocrite pig who had the nerve to fly in on their personal jets, stand there lavished in gold, and jewels, and fur, and $10,000 suits and pretend as if they and Obama share a desire to make the country and our world a better, more stable, more peaceful, and more 'just' place for all its people. Once again, promoting their own commercial interests, dumbing down our society, and dancing their way around the single greatest underlying cause for the global economic crisis. GREED. The single greatest threat to modern society. GREED. Filthy, rotten, disgusting, self-centered, self-serving, black-hearted, hypocritical GREED. By doing so, they divert our attention AGAIN at a crucial time when we need more than ever to finally acknowledge GREED as a form of EVIL. At a crucial time when we need more than ever to finally understand how it burns through moral character, spreads like wildfire, jumps from one industry to another, one person to another, and wreaks havok on society worldwide. IT ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY BEYOND ANY SHADOW OF A DOUBT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL. All of this happened on Obama's watch. I understand that he didn't plan most of the details. But he did know about many. He stood by and watched that event sell out to the highest bidder. He also bought the ring. He didn't even have a word to say about the double standards or many ethical contradictions. Afterall, he got elected. It was no longer necessary to kiss so much big business, big money, big celebrity, 1% club ass. SELL-OUT. Now, that army of filthy-rich, self-centered, self-serving, self-promoting, hypocrite pigs are using Obama's hopefull words against those very few of us who know better. They even have the nerve to belittle and villianize people like me simply because we don't float around with happy uplifting thoughts and smile on our face. They pretend as if our message can't possibly be legitimate if its expressed with anger, contempt, hatred, or fear. As if a 'positive' attitude is any match for that domino-effect of socio-economic problems caused almost entirely by GREED. I understand that Obama could never go on record with views anything like mine. He has no choice but to be tolerant of other filthy-rich and powerful public figures. I can even forgive the affiliation to some extent. I also believe that he truly does want some degree of government reform, ethics, accountability, peace, prosperity, stability, opportunity, and economic justice for all people. Like I said, by politician standards he is an angel. Which is probably the nicest thing I will ever say or even think about a rich and powerful public figure. I find it near impossible to hate the man. He is literally the only rich and powerful public figure on this planet that I don't hate. I also understand why he gave the uplifting speech. I really don't blame him for a single word of it. But I will not pretend as if a smile or 'positive' attitude is any match for that particular form of evil consuming our world. I will not choose 'hope' over 'fear' just because it feels nice. Of course, I want things to get better. Of course, I will try in vain to help make things better. Of course, I want something legitimate to celebrate. Something that we could all be a part of. Of course, I desperately want Obama to succeed. Of course, I desperately want all of my predictions to be proven wrong. I just don't see it happening. With or without Obama, we are still stuck on that runaway train. Its not going to be any better. Its not going to be alright. Not for the vast majority. Its going to get much worse and stay that way for a very long time. I fully expect to die knowing that I devoted myself to a cause which was lost from day one. Greed will always triumph over good will. The people will never take any real stand against it. The vast majority are pathetic, ignorant, naive, short sighted, brainwashed, pharmameutical, medical-testing, couch potatoe, credit card, love-sick, celebrity junkie, powderpuffs. Perfect little victims. I hate to say that about my fellow citizens but its the truth. Afterall, they didn't see this comming. I tried to warn them and they still didn't see it. Others tried to warn them and they didn't see it. Albert Einstein tried to warn them SIXTY F$#&#$# YEARS AGO. They didn't listen. They didn't see it. They did NOTHING to stop this or even slow it down. Even now, when the problem is so much more obvious. Even now, when the futures of their children are at stake. Still, they do NOTHING. Sometimes, I wonder if they are even worth fighting for. What the hell is the point? They will never listen. They will never wake up. They will never do simple math. They will never take a stand. There will never be economic justice. There will never be a more reasonable distribution of wealth and resources. Therefore, there will never be any degree of world peace or prosperity. Its only going to get worse. A LOT WORSE. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    The new stimulus won't work. The new bailouts won't work. The new money won't work. The new budget won't work. There may be a shallow revival later this year or next but it won't sustain itself beyond 2010. No way. It absolutely positively will not work. Obama's efforts are revolutionary but they are too little too late. The opposition too strong. Which by the way, is not about national debt. Thats a lie. Nobody cares. Its about inflation. The rich are throwing a fit over government spending because when more money is printed, their money looses some value. They have some damn nerve. They already have too much money. Leaving the majority with too little. They won't give it up. They won't tolerate higher taxes. The equation they stand for absolutely can not work. Still, they have the nerve to throw a fit over government spending unless its their own budget with their own pork, their own diversion of funds, their own tax breaks, and their own kick backs. Hundreds of billions worth. In which case, they are all for it. Afterall, inflation is fine with all of them as long as they end up with a net gain in buying power. Otherwise, they throw a bloody fit. This is why Democrats and Republicans always fight tooth and nail over government spending. Its not about 'patriotism'. Its not about 'fiscal responsibility'. Its not about the 'middle class'. Its not about the 'next generation'. Its about their own incredible greed. Of course the majority were better off under Clinton. They were also better off under Reagan. Even with a lower GDP, they will still better off. Only because that massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich was still in the early to mid stages. It began in the late seventies. It was accelerated under Reagan and again under Bush. Now, we have finally reached a tipping point. The majority can no longer afford to pay all of their bills and sustain their share of the economy. In fact, they are in debt to the tune of almost $2,000,000,000,000. THATS ALMOST TWO TRILLION DOLLARS. Obama's efforts are about re-distributing some wealth. He is one of the very few politicians to care about the majority almost as much as his own bottom line. Which is about the best we can hope for from any politician. Unfortunately, the rich won't give up anything. Even those who claim to support him won't give it up under any circumstances. This leaves Obama with no choice but to print trillions in US currency, water down all existing US wealth, raise taxes slightly on the rich, and tweak the budget slightly in favor of the majority. Hopefully, resulting in a gradual transfer of wealth from rich back to poor. Its a revolutionary effort. Very noble. Unfortunately, it won't be enough to stop that runaway train. The rich are too greedy. The opposition too strong. The government too corrupt. Obama himself will sell out before its all said and done. Mark my words he will sell out to the rich. That vital transfer of wealth from rich back to poor will not take place. Therefore, Obama will have no choice but to acknowledge a severe US depression by the end of his first term or shortly thereafter. There will be no economic recovery without a more reasonable distribution of bottom line wealth. The richest one percent must be willing to settle for less. A lot less. Otherwise, there will be no economic recovery ever. Not one of us will live to see it.

    3.04.09
    We are being fed a constant line of BS from the media about 'lost' market wealth. Similar to the line of BS we have been fed for years about wealth 'creation'. NBC and their panel of paid 'experts' (liars) recently took a question from a viewer (it may have been staged) about market 'losses' and 'gains'. Their answer was downright vague and misleading as usual. Stock values don't simply represent our collective 'productivity' or 'hard work'. Otherwise, Ford, GM, and Dodge would be doing fine. Afterall, the cars got built. If their answer had been true, then we could all just work a little harder, produce a little more, buy a little more, and revive our own economy. We can't. Its not that simple. Their answer was CRAP. Another stunt to make it appear as if we're all in this together. That panel of paid 'experts' (liars), also refered to stock values as 'phantom' wealth. Thats not exactly true either. Otherwise, those shares could never be traded for any actual product or service (They are. They always have been.). They also wouldn't give the majority share holders such authority. So what did NBC and their filthy rich trio of paid 'experts' (liars) leave out? The ugly truth as usual. Corporate stock values are not 'phantom'. They actually represent past profit margins, current profit margins, accounting scams, bailouts, and the potential transfer of more dollars FROM US TO THEM. The only 'phantom' elements involved are the shady speculation and accounting scams. Which do effect those values but they still result in a transfer of dollars from one party to another. Otherwise, those fluctuating values are based on real world events. In the meantime, they are traded like an alternative form of currency. Eventually cashed in for market value. Just like gold and silver. Like any other form of currency, the richest one percent hold the lion's share. They currently own about 1/2 of the entire US market. The upper class own around 1/3. Foreign investors own around 1/8. The lower 90% of us own the scraps leftover. This equation has contributed to a constant transfer of wealth from poor to rich. Its been accelerating for decades along with obscene, record setting profit margins for big business. These record setting profit margins were mathematically impossible to sustain with a shrinking middle class. The housing and stock markets were impossible to stabilize long term. They were on a crash course with or without subprime. Which is why in part, the rampant speculation and accounting scams took place. Also why the 'mark to market' rule was changed. Which basically allowed traders to take their profits and disregard the potential liabilities that inevitably came with a concentration of wealth and capital worldwide. These were all stunts whipped up by the 1% club to artificially inflate and sustain the market at a time when the very foundation of our economy was crumbling. To sell out their own industries and convert capital into dividends, bonus checks, and golden parachutes. Now, the cat is out of the bag. The market has finally crashed. Those artificially inflated stock values have fallen on average by about 50% in the past two years. They are down worldwide. Which may lead one to believe that America's richest 1% are finally taking a loss. They are not. Those values are down not only because they were artificially inflated. But primarily because so many people are finally running out of money to give them. This is the single greatest underlying cause for the global economic crisis. Unfortunately no public figure has the guts to acknowledge it. When the filthy rich pigs (Bill Clinton, Jean Chatzky, Bill O'Reiley, Jim Kramer, Suze Orman, Maria Bartiromo, Lars Larson, Lou Dobbs, Warren Buffet, ect) talk about 'lost' market wealth, they fail to acknowledge that much of that wealth wasn't 'lost' at all. It was transfered to various members of the 1% club. These transfers took place before, during, and after the height of the market in 2007. In many cases, 'junk bonds', 'toxic debt', or 'artificial values' were left in their place. Otherwise, those pigs are primarily refering to lost 'business'. A slower transfer of wealth. There is a HUGE difference. Actual wealth doesn't just float away. Stock values fluctuate but they still represent a transfer of actual wealth from one party to another. Unfortunately, that transfer of wealth has been in favor of the rich for too many years. THEIR CURRENT PROFITS ARE DOWN ON AVERAGE BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN TOO OBSCENE FOR TOO LONG. THEY ALREADY OWN THE LION'S SHARE OF UNITED STATES WEALTH. A SIMILAR RULE APPLIES WORLDWIDE. MARKETS ARE DOWN BECAUSE THE WORLD'S WEALTH AND CAPITAL HAVE BEEN CONCENTRATED. AMERICA'S RICHEST 1 PERCENT NOW OWN ALMOST 1/2 OF ALL UNITED STATES WEALTH. THAT IS MUCH MORE THAN THE ENTIRE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES COMBINED. THE WORLD'S RICHEST ONE PERCENT NOW OWN OVER 40% OF ALL WORLD WEALTH. THAT IS MUCH MORE THAN THE LOWER 90% WORLDWIDE. PROFITS FOR THE RICHEST 1% ARE DOWN ON AVERAGE BUT NOT GONE. THEY STILL GET EVEN RICHER AS WE SPEAK. THEIR INCREDIBLE WEALTH WAS NOT CREATED, GENERATED, OR GROWN IN THEIR BACK YARD. IT WAS TRANSFERED FROM US TO THEM. NOT ONLY THROUGH CORPORATE PROFITS BUT ALSO THROUGH INDIVIDUAL PROFITS. THE WORLD'S WEALTHIEST 1 PERCENT ARE NOW SO INCREDIBLY RICH, THAT THERE SIMPLY ISN'T ENOUGH CURRENCY CIRCULATING BENEATH THEM TO SUSTAIN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. ITS FINALLY ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE. ANYONE IN THE FIELD OF ECONOMICS WHO STILL WON'T ACKNOWLEDGE THE SINGLE GREATEST UNDERLYING CAUSE FOR THIS GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS IS EITHER A MORON OR A COWARD. ITS NOT BRAIN SURGERY. FOR THE MOSTPART, ITS SIMPLE MATH. THE RICH ALREADY OWN TOO MUCH OF EVERYTHING. STILL, THEY WANT MORE. THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT LET GO OF THEIR INCREDIBLE GREED. THEY ARE USING EVERY ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL TRICK IN THE BOOK TO AVOID TAKING THEIR LOSSES. THEY DO SO WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST REGARD FOR ANYTHING OR ANYONE BUT THEMSELVES. IT CAN'T WORK THIS WAY. IT ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY CAN NOT WORK THIS WAY. IT NEVER HAS AND IT NEVER WILL. ALBERT EINSTEIN TRIED TO MAKE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND. GREED KILLS. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    Another word about wealth 'creation'. That term is horribly over-used. 90% of the time, it is a LIE. Nothing but smoke and mirrors. Actual wealth can't be 'created' without harvesting a new resource or making more efficient use of one. Even then, there is usually a lagging downside caused or aggravated by a further concentration. A gain here. A loss there. For example: If you develop or renovate one area, then some material wealth is 'created' on site. Local property values increase giving the illusion of a much greater or widespread 'creation' of wealth. Those who invest, locate, and develop usually do so for maximum profit without regard for legitimate need. They almost always follow the trend and do so in newly developed or renovated areas. Drawing vital support away from others. Cities and states have been competing in a giant rat race for years. Fighting tooth and nail for these investments regardless of any legitimate need. Giving big business, developers, and investors huge tax breaks and incentives at the expense of ordinary people. Even going so far as to evict home owners under the rule of 'eminent domain', lease commercially zoned property for $1, or subsidize a giant portion of their investment on the backs of middle class tax payers. These deals are always cut behind closed doors under the guise of 'economic development'. Others have no choice but to do the same just to keep their own remaining business. Otherwise, those jobs, residents, and revenue are lost (relocated). Some, regardless. Of course, the entire system would be more stable and prosperous for the majority if we would simply maintain and renovate our industrial areas and develop others only as needed. But that wouldn't make developers, investors, and politicians filthy rich. So the rat race has been run not on need but greed. Resulting in a net loss for the little guy. One area is unnecessarily developed. Deals are cut. Investors, developers, and politicians get richer. The people get F$#&$&. Another area falls apart. Jobs and revenue are lost (relocated). Property values decrease. Followed by a lag in city services and a spike in gang activity or violent crime. Before you know it, another Wal-Mart, mall, factory, or housing development is built where it wasn't needed to begin with. Meanwhile, another area is deindustrialized and more innocent people can't find a local job or even take a walk in their own neglected communities without fear of being mugged, raped, beat up, or killed. This is only one general example. Others hailed to 'create' wealth also have their downsides. Simply because distribution, consumption, and sustainability are almost never taken into account. 'Wealth creation'. What a joke. 90% of the time, it is a lie motivated by greed. Otherwise, any wealth 'created' is gradually concentrated in the hands of the few as usual. Again, the potential benefit for the majority or society as a whole is horribly offset by the incredible greed of the rich. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    3.11.09
    The organized campaign to suppress the truth and divert our attention continues. Forbes has reported that many of the world's billionaires have lost bottom line wealth. They wen't out of their way to crunch all those numbers, draw their conclusions, and plaster them all over the media. Still no data for 2008 on the wealthiest one percent or the distribution of bottom line wealth worldwide. Why not? I'll tell you why not. Because they don't want us to make the connection. The current economic crisis was not caused by subprime, China, Japan, Mexico, the CRA, one bad policy, one administration, one major political party, or the other. These factors are only proximate at best. Not underlying. The current economic crisis was caused primarily by a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich. In particular, the richest 1%. I realize there is some debate in the US over their share of her bottom line wealth. Some recent studies have shown it to be as little as 40%. Others near 50%. Nearly all recent studies have shown about 40% of the world's bottom line wealth to be held by the richest one percent. However, most studies to date have not included 'everything'. They refer only to one reported set of financial assets or another. They often take no stab at material assets or hidden assets. It is well known that various currencies, gold, silver, platinum, jewels, and other holdings are being hidden in secret accounts and vaults around the world. Well known but impossible to calculate. Also, when it comes to greed, fraud, oppression, corruption, or any other form of evil, history has shown time and time again that its almost always worse than first reported. The watered down results by then, are usually a year or two old. However, there is very little debate that wealth is being concentrated worldwide. Virtually every study shows it. The rate at which that wealth is concentrated has increased over the last decade or so along with record setting profits. It is incredibly obvious when you look around. For these reasons, I tend to believe the higher estimates. Regardless, it has become an epidemic worldwide. IT IS THE PROBLEM. Mark my words: Bottom line wealth may be fluctuating at the very top but its not comming back down to the majority where it belongs. When a billionaire looses a chunk of his or her obscene fortune, it is almost always to other high ranking members of the 1% club. Not the majority. I would believe otherwise only with bankruptcy down, forclosure down, consumer debt down, unemployment down, home sales up, car sales up, middle class savings up, and a shrinking lower class. That would indicate a transfer of wealth from rich back to poor. Again, it can't be 'created'. It can't be 'stimulated'. It must be transfered from the rich and back to the majority. Otherwise, it won't work. That, unlike GDP growth, would indicate a healthy, stable, and sustainable US economy. On a global scale, it would be the single greatest step we could possibly take torwards world peace and prosperity. In which case, I would be thrilled to see my predictions proven wrong. I would gladly apologise for my rotten attitude. I would do so 'on-air' and 'online'. I would do my very best to apologise to every single critic. Including the filthy rich public figures I rip on. Its not going to happen. Wealth is still being transfered from poor to rich. Here in the US and also worldwide. Their stock values are down on average but their share of the world's bottom line wealth up on average. There is no doubt in my mind. There is also no doubt in my mind that the rich are converting and hiding assets around the world like never before. I don't claim to know half their tricks. But I do know they have many. They also have most of the world's leaders in their pocket. Almost all of whom will betray their own people on a whim and stop at nothing to get or remain as rich as possible. They absolutely will not let go of their incredible greed. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    A few more points about the 'loss' of bottom line wealth. The monetary values for material assets are defined by the market for those assets. When you concentrate the world's wealth and capital to such an extreme, you also shrink the market for those assets and ultimately their market value. A similar rule applies to stock and bond values. We are in a severe global recession caused primarily by an obscene concentration of wealth and capital worldwide. Nearly all material assets across the board have finally been reduced in market value. Even yachts, personal jets, exotic cars, limos, castles, and mansions to some degree. Those assets are now effected simply because the majority worldwide are finally running low on money to hand over to the rich. That transfer of wealth can no longer be sustained at the same rate. Its not mathematically possible. Too many middle, working, and lower class households have finally gone bankrupt. Profits for the rich are finally down on average. Their stock and property values are finally down on average. However, the rich continue to rule the world with the same government influense, obscene buying power, extravogant living, and consumption of resources. Wall Street, Hollywood, and Pro-Sports compensation packages are still obscene. Health care, energy, and finance charges are still obscene. Bailouts are being made. Favors done. Funds diverted. Assets hidden. So any 'loss' taken on paper by the richest one percent is part illusion and part fraud. An accounting biproduct of their own incredible greed. Another reflection of an ACTUAL loss already taken in the real world by the vast majority. A loss taken year after year after year as the world's wealth and capital was concentrated. Remember: The strength, net worth, and buying power of the majority didn't just float away. It was gradually transfered to the rich. Now because of it, stock and property values are down worldwide. Its not an actual 'loss' taken by the rich. Its an illusion. The division of buying power remains obscene. Bottom lines fluctuate but the pie doesn't lie. The richest one percent are still to blame. They still concentrate obscene levels of wealth in every nation. The world's richest one percent still own over 40% of all world wealth. That equation is obscene and vital to understanding. If and when their obscene share of wealth and resource is reduced signifigantly, the rich will FINALLY take a loss in the real world. Otherwise, its on paper only. Part illusion and part fraud. I'm sorry I didn't make this point earlier. Its a big one.

    The American middle class are not amoung the 'world's richest one percent". Not even close. Only multi-millionaires fall into that category.

    3.30.09
    Every major economy in the world will be in depression by 2015.

    4.11.09
    Fellow citizens: I've noticed many more of you speaking out against the obscene concentration of wealth/capital worldwide and the flaws of unbridled capitalism. I've been reading your blogs. Excellent work. Unfortunately, the massive campaign to divert our attention and suppress the truth has also been kicked up a notch. On 4.09.09, a current student of economics called the 'Rush Limbaugh' show with valid criticism of 'Supply side economics'. A view shared by his professor. Rush followed with an outright lie (cleverly disguised as a guess) about the highest marginal income tax rate of 79/80 and the same old BS about 'trickle down'. Theories which have been thoroughly tested in the real world for almost 30 years and proven DEAD WRONG. The ugly truth is being suppressed. For example: Between 1983 and 2004, the richest 1% of American households increased their net worth by 78%. That is a fact. Between 1983 and 2004, the bottom 40% of American households lost 59% of their net worth. That is a fact. More than 1 in 6 American households now have a zero or negative net worth. That is a fact. More than 1 in 3, now have less than $10,000 in net worth including home equity. That is a fact. More than 5,000,000 Americans have fallen below the poverty line since the year 2000. That is a fact. The middle and lower classes are further in debt than ever before. That is a fact. Trillions in bottom line US wealth have already been transfered from poor to rich. THAT IS A FACT. Wealth has been concentrated worldwide for over 30 years. THAT IS A FACT. Its true even after you account for 'economic growth' and all of this bogus 'good will' 'humanitarian' CRAP from the rich. So don't fall for the same old optimistic BS about 'supply side economics' or 'Reganomics' because IT IS A LIE. We don't need a bigger economy. At least not in the US or any other developed country. We need a more fair, ethical, moral, and just economy. We need a more reasonable distribution of income, bottom line wealth, and resources. Here in the US and also worldwide. If you agree, then spread the word. Call in, write, or protest in groups. You are welcome to re-post this document anywhere you see fit. For your own good, please do so anonymously. Your right to remain anonymous is protected by a federal law. If it is violated, you can sue the pigs.

    That call taken on 4.09.09 along with one of mine made in '08' are the only two I know of even remotely critical of Reaganomics or the concentration of wealth ever accepted on syndicated talk radio. Thats two calls accepted out of thousands that I have heard related to the economy. This topic is not allowed on syndicated talk radio.

    4.16.09
    Now, the syndicated talk radio pigs are bashing college professors like never before. Of course, that bashing is directed primarily at those who teach 'economics' or 'socio-economics'. Their attacks are downright robotic, shallow, partisan, and short sighted as usual. "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." -Mike Savage. If this is true, then how should we judge those who do nothing but write books, rip on the opposing political party, and run their partisan mouths on talk radio? Those who can't think outside of any political box? Those who won't acknowledge the real world stats in that previous paragraph? Those who can't even see the profound fundamantal differences between simple regulation, higher taxes, and full blown socialism or communism? Those who failed to predict the current economic crisis, failed to understand even as it was unfolding, still don't, and bash those who did and do? How should we refer to them? HALF-WIT HYPOCRITES. ROBOTIC IDIOTS. PREDICTIBABLE MORONS. PATHETIC FOLLOWERS. SOLD OUT LITTLE PARTISAN PUPPIES. PART OF THE PROBLEM.

    4.25.09
    Now, the syndicated talk radio pigs are defending the credit card companies and all of their rotten tactics. Once again, using "free market" ideals to justify greed, fraud, and corruption on a level never seen before. Big surprise. IT MAKES THEM RICHER.


    4.27.09
    Remember that line near the beginning about 'humanitarian' progress "made in one area" and "lost in another"? That line was written in '06'. The following is a quote from an article published this morning from the World Bank: "Developing countries, its main constituency, face "especially serious consequences with the crisis driving more than 50 million people into extreme poverty, particularly women and children," the bank said Sunday." Well isn't that great? What do you have to say about that Oprah? Are you still happy that you endorsed subprime? Did it make you rich enough? What about you Ellen and Phil? You hypocrite pigs. Not that subprime itself caused this global economic crisis. It didn't. You know it and I know it. But it certainly did accelerate this downturn. So what do the three of you have to say about it? Are you still happy that you endorsed subprime? What about the credit industry in general? What about their rotten oppressive tactics? YOU WERE PAID TO ENDORSE THEM. Did it make you rich enough? Have you done enough 'good' to compensate for this? What about you Brad, Angelina, Bono, Richard, Warren, and Michael? Do you still believe in concentrating the world's wealth? Is that what a 'humanitarian' should do? Have you done enough 'good' to compensate for this? What about you Bill? Are you rich enough yet? You alone literally have enough net worth to make a signifigant difference in the lives of those 50 million people. THATS FIFTY MILLION MORE INNOCENT DESPERATE PEOPLE YOU DISGUSTING HYPOCRITE PIG. If it weren't for that obscene concentration of wealth and capital that all of you stand for, there never would have been such a market for subprime, there never would have been a collapse in the US housing market, there never would have been a global credit crunch, and this economic crisis never would have happened. Thats 50 million more innocent desperate lives f$#@#$ in the course of two years. Not to mention all the others and the havok wreaked in every developed country worldwide. Yeah. I think its safe to say that all of that 'humanitarian' progress "made in one area" has been "lost in another". Thats 50 million more innocent desperate lives f$%$#@ in the course of two years. All because of greed. IT WILL BE OUR DOWNFALL.

    1% CLUB PIGS: You have been begging for it. Now, you are in for the debate of your lives. This issue is not going away. Neither am I. I intend to post, call in, and protest on a regular basis until the day I die. I have already planned ahead for any possible retaliation on your part. If anything happens to me, then a close friend will contact the authorities. A note written for them will be found in a fire-proof safe along with a copy of this document. A second set will be found with X XXXXXX XXXXXXXX. All of my research and belongings will be left to X XXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXX. In the meantime, my right to remain anonymous is protected by a federal law. If this right is violated, I will sue everyone involved and give 99% of the reward directly to my less fortunate fellow citizens. The rest, I will use to print and distribute more copies of this document. DEAL WITH IT.

    ReplyDelete
  20. As a Canadian, socialist to you Americans, I do enjoy watching you retards burn.

    We have free health care, almost free education and so things are pretty good up here.

    Not much consumer debt, a little but not like the USA retards.

    It always amazed us here in Canada how you vote for Bush Sr and then Bush Jr twice in a row, but then again we have a free press up here and so here the truth

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anon@9:28PM
    Do you have any idea of how stupid you are to post an 80+page entry? Nobody is going to read it and if you had anything useful to relate you can be sure it will remain safely buried and lost in that bottomless pit of prose you labored to compose.

    In other matters: touchy, touchy; wasn't he adressing the question to Debra?

    ReplyDelete
  22. Yoyomo. Do you have any idea how many people have read this already? How much progress I've made? Sure, I get a lame comment like yours every now and then. But I'm making progress. There are pages out there devoted to this rant. Others inspired by it. I am working on a summarized version. I will distribute both worldwide. You can't stop me. Deal with it. Now, get out of my face. I have work to do.

    Care to debate any of the points made? Oh of course. You didn't read it right? OK. Whatever you say. Now scram!

    ReplyDelete
  23. JP, I have no position whatsoever about fractals, as I don't know what they are...
    I'm not ready yet to dive in and wade through lots of abscons material to try to understand. I may, some day, but not now.
    To the last anonymous who has elected residence among us, for the time being, I can only say that I must admit, I did NOT read all the way through your post. I read quite a bit of it, and then scrolled through it. At "fault" : a combination of MY intellectual laziness, and your prolixity.
    I can see, and understand that you are very preoccupied with greed in the wealthier members of society. But as one who is not (yet) financially suffering from the current situation, I am not really able to rant on my own account about all the greedies out there who are depriving me of the possibility of pulling through.
    I have been using my mind, my intelligence, and my heart, for quite some time now to be able to understand things from EVERYBODY'S point of view, and that includes the Brad Pitt people, the CEO's, the filthy rich who I am not about to diabolize on this site, because in their own way, they TOO will suffer from what's upcoming.
    Their suffering may be less tangible, less visible to you, anon, but it will be there.
    Making sure that I walk two miles in EVERYBODY'S shoes is basically just good common sense, because we're all in the human experiment TOGETHER, and it will take ALL of us, working together to fix the mess that WE (not THEY...) have created. You can't pull yourself out of the human experiment, anon. It just doesn't work.
    I promise to read you COMPLETELY if you shorten the posts...
    SS, thanks for the poem. Did you read what I tacked on to the last post ? (I don't think you've read it yet because for some mysterious reason you seem to think that I live in Paris... No, you can be French, you guys, and not live in Paris, lol...) Yoyo, I also replied to your question.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Critics: Greed is the problem. It always has been. If you don't see it by now, then you're too weak, rich, blind, or stupid. I'm no genius but I have given this issue tens of thousands of hours of thought. More than you. More than all but a handfull of people on this planet. I've looked at it from every possible angle. I've considered hundreds of past and current events. I've read the words of hundreds before me including Albert Einstein and Mother Teresa. Both took a stand against greed in their own way. Albert Einstein tried to 'reason' with people. He did so with impecible logic and clarity. It didn't work. Mother Teresa tried to 'inspire' people. She did so with a lifetime of love and devotion. It didn't work. Greed has become an epidemic like no other. More powerfull, corrupt, intoxicating, and contagious than ever before. Pure evil. There is no 'nice' or 'polite' way to deal with it. I will not waste a moment of my time on a failed strategy. I will persecute those who epitomize it. I will rip on them and rip on them and rip on them without mercy or exception. I will do so without the slightest regard for race, age, sex, religion, health, appearance, or occupation. Not with the slightest hope to reform even a single one of them. They are beyond reach. But simply to expose them for what they truly are. I will do so right into the worst economic and cultural crisis of all time. Only then, might the majority ever look beyond the edge of their nose, learn to tell truth from lie, ponder something deeper than materialism or celebrity status, and consider even the most remote possibility that extreme wealth and consumption are just plain wrong for society. Otherwise, it will go down in a ball of flames. Thats what I believe. I've already been at this for almost four years. I will not shut up about it until the day I die. I will not be intimidated ever. Not a single one of you are going to come up with an excuse, philosophy, insult, joke, or psychological trick that I havn't already heard or seen before. If you think this rant is too long, than summarize it. If you think its poorly written, then write a better one. But don't think for a second that I will adopt a less contoversial cause or strategy in place of this one. I won't. I'll die first.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anon,
    Three points:

    A) Of course I didn't read it, only an extremely bored and idle idiot with nothing better to do would

    B) I have no desire to stop you and I probably agree with your general disapproval of the income disparity but you're not John Galbriath that I or any sane, sensible person would read 80 pages of anything you have to say; if you think what you know is so important to share then spit it out in something smaller than the size of a supertanker

    C) Once you get that call from the Nobel committee you can start work on your multi-volume treatise on social inequality but until then that summary you're working on would be a good place to start; hopefully it will be cogent enough to take a look at and then more people can judge it on its merits

    ReplyDelete
  26. That 6:40 post was of manageable size and reading it I can say I agree with it but I hate to be the one break it to you but this is not exactly a new revelation nor has anyone ever been able to come up with a cure for it but better luck this time.

    ReplyDelete
  27. @ All

    Interesting frontpage article today in the NY Times on-line on Alistair Crooke and an Islamic Dialog. Here is an excerpt that focuses a bit on what we have been talking about but I have not read the book:
    "He focuses on what he calls the core of the Islamist revolution, which he defines as a metaphysical resistance to the West’s market-based definition of the individual and society. He invokes European social critics like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, endorsing their critiques of Western thinking and arguing that Islamism offers a more holistic model."

    Have a Nice Weekend

    SS

    ReplyDelete
  28. Wow, what a diatribe. Not sure why but I think you are a woman, sorry if i'm wrong. It sounds like you might be from a privileged background and you are disillusioned with the human condition. I'm an admirer of Einstein, perhaps he got his idea from Plutarch (c. AD 46-120): "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailments of all republics" Bitterness and vitriol will get you nowhere and your kind of thinking on a large scale only leads to violence. Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr showed us a different way. Do you see yourself as a lone crusader in the wilderness (pride, we all have it from time to time)? Many of the posters on this board are sympathetic to your concerns about wage inequality, healthcare, runway greed on Wall St. Your bitterness and anger will consume you (a cliche, I know, but true). You life will be lessened by it.

    ReplyDelete
  29. To the anonymous who wrote the very long comment on this blog :
    welcome to the club. Thanks for shortening your posts so that we can get a handle on them. Please give yourself a name on this blog, in some form, so that we don't have to do the trip, anonymous at 6:40, for example (if possible).
    That gets a little old, and leads to confusion.

    Socrates was ranting about what you're ranting about.
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau ranted about it too.
    SOLVING this problem for the WHOLE human race, rather than addressing individuals and letting them decide for themselves, involves implementing totalitarian solutions.
    I am TOTALLY AGAINST THAT.

    What, by the way, are you doing about this problem other than writing rants about it ?
    Personally, I believe in practicing what I preach, so I am making concerted efforts to modify my actions all over the board. That's something that you can do to make yourself feel better about all of this, and I think that you need to feel better about it... DOING something about this problem, on a personal level, involves mucho use of neurons, great intelligence and... CREATIVITY. It is a great challenge, and one that you are up to.
    Ranting has its limits to making one feel better. Personally I think that it gets us all excited and/or depressed and THAT leads to... Well, you guess.

    SS, I agree with Cooke's analysis, although I have not read the article. I think that Islam, like the soon to be revived Christianity, are revving up to combat materialistic a-transcendant ideologies (I will name no names...)
    I also think that much of the fundamentalist American reactions are also against materialist, a, or should I say, anti-transcendant ideologies.
    We better get used to it. Religion is coming back en force...
    (One point to keep in mind AT ALL TIMES : there is NO ISLAM. Just what would ISLAM be, pray tell ? There are people of the Muslim confession. That's a totally different story. Let's not get confused about the fact that when we stick a name on something we automatically generalize it, and eliminate all the particularities, and people, behind it...)

    ReplyDelete
  30. Debra,
    You couldn't be more wrong, fundamentalist Christianity in the US is all about materialism; if Jesus loves you he wants you to be rich. Just look at what all the right-wing preachers of prosperity are telling their congregations, that Christ wants them to have dominion over the world and its resources by military means if necessary.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Yoyo, my parents were both Christians, and I was raised a Protestant. While I agree that Protestantism has equated being rich with being saved, a lot of Christian people who I know personally in the States are not satisfied with the materialist slant on things, and are searching in their own way, for a way out of the trap.
    The problem is that materialism is omnipresent. Even in the comment of the guy who shrugged his shoulders and asked me "what is a liberal arts education good for ?"
    That's a materialist question, yoyo.

    ReplyDelete
  32. @ Friends

    Thanks, for the comments. I've tried to accomodate religion all my life. After a thoroughly Catholic education primary, secondary, College, reading major religious texts, I have accomodated myself to the concern for the poor in true Christianity as taught by Christ, Muslim, Hindu and Buddist religions. As for the rest, the closer I get to death the more a farce it seems. We know only that we do not know and can not know, not even the eleven dimensions of string theory necessary to reconcile the world much less a god who transcends. Most religions are priestly farces, pious wishing by the weak and insecure. Buddism is somewhat better as a philosophy, more consequential in its reasoning but how could they know anymore than anyone else? Oddly enough the most complete philosophical. religious texts I've come across are the Upanishads, the ancient Aryan texts that serve as a basis of Hinduism but are much purer than religious Hinduism and much more philosopjhical. They too, however, acknowledge that knowledge is not of this world. Tommorrow's Sunday. Thanks for helping out Anonymous.

    SS

    ReplyDelete
  33. @ SS

    I haven't read many of your texts, and truthfully probably never will. But from what I get out of what you say, I suspect we may not be all that far apart.

    For have you ever considered faith as a necessary component of cooperation as a necessary component of evolutionary success within the confines of a zero sum world?

    If you have, we are very close indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  34. @ Thai,

    An older friend told me that when I was young, that he feared the decline of religion as it was religions that passed down the moral tradition to man. He was much older than I, an adult with a family and had as a small boy been prisoner at Auschwitz. His identification number was tattoed on his wrist.

    It's an interesting thought, one which I need to think about further.

    SS

    ReplyDelete
  35. Anonymous. That comment has already been made. It won't work. Debra. I'm not trying to feel better. I'm only trying to do something productive with my anger. Yes. I do see the bashing of greed as productive. I will never stop. But I can tell that you're not the type to agree (Let me guess. Oprah fan? Have a crush on Clooney do you?). You want to know what else I do? Fine. I'll tell you. I voluntarily capped my own pay years ago. Then, I voluntarily reduced it. I give to local, national, and international charities on a regular basis. I've voluntarily cut my energy use to far below the American standard. I voluntarily gave up air travel and my dream to see the pyramids. I stopped using air conditioning years ago. If its hot, I just deal. I turned down my water heater to luke warm. I got a smaller car, smaller refrigerator, and started living out of a single room all winter long just to save energy. I watch TV in the morning and listen to talk radio all evening and night only to keep up with the latest line of BS from the media. I use the internet almost exclusively to further my cause. At least 20 hours per week. I gave up dating because I won't compromise my stand against extreme wealth for anyone. If that means that I have to die alone and miserable, then so be it. I help out my aging parents and my neighbors whenever I can. I work out daily and treat myself to a video game once in a while. Thats about it. Thats my life. I also plan to give every single penney of my inheritance (This will include a house and car.) to a legitimate charity. Maybe, even everything I own. Not sure about that one yet. I'm no Mother Teresa but when I say I hate greed, I mean it. I do practice what I preach and then some. I don't expect my fellow citizens to live this way. I would never ask them to. I don't hold the middle class lifestyle against anyone. Especially those with a family to care for. Its the obscene concentration of wealth and consumption of resources I have such a problem with. I will not make excuses for ANY of them. But wait. Thats not exactly what you meant is it? Not what you wanted to hear is it? These efforts don't matter to you do they? Of course not. So tell me. What do you think I should do? Praise Oprah? Vote Democratic? Be happy? Plant flowers? Adopt a less controversial 'nice' cause in place of this one? ANYTHING just as long as I shut up about rich people right? FXXX THAT. If you want to plant flowers, you go right ahead. But someone has to go after the bad guys. Otherwise, they will come along and build another fxxxxxx mansion right where those flowers used to be. I can see this is another waste of time. People like you will never understand.

    Yoyomo. I agree with you on this one. Those TV preachers are nothing but greedy, hypocritical pigs. Scott, Meyers, White, and all the others. They slip that '$1000 seed', 'material harvest', 'get rich' crap into every single sermon. It makes me sick. They take in a fortune, throw back a few crumbs to the poor, then hoard or squander the lion's share of that funding on more high end CRAP for themselves or their church. Their followers are pathetic. They may as well hand over their life savings to a common street thug. At least, then it wouldn't be concentrated amoung the rich. TV ministries are a fxxxxxx joke. The only church worth supporting is the local church.

    I am about through with this debate. Say whatever the hell you want about me. I have work to do.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Sigh...
    Anonymous, I am not an Oprah fan.
    I don't even have access to American television.
    I don't vote Democratic, and haven't for a long time.
    I applaud and admire all the convictions that you are putting into practice in your life. But...
    Why are you SO SURE you know who/what I am ?
    I have a pretty good idea of who/what YOU are, for having already been there myself.
    YOU ARE A PROPHET. (Maybe without religion, but then prophecy has no need of religion to survive.)
    Prophets have been with us for a long time.
    They are the ones who stick us in front of what we don't want to see, and come back at it, time after time, after time. They are necessary to society, I suppose.
    But they ALSO get themselves crucified.
    I don't really want to be crucified, anon.
    Because I LIKE LIVING TOO MUCH.
    I like the flowers. I like PEOPLE. I find my life interesting, and exciting. I'm happy, even if the human experience could be ready to go down the tube and take me with it. I'm still happy right now.
    I have discovered how important it is to TRY to privilege MAKING MYSELF HEARD, and LISTENED TO, over being RIGHT.
    When you start doing that, life gets more interesting, and more challenging, as I have said on this blog.
    When I talk, people listen, anon. And this is what I want.
    And you ?
    Do you want people to listen to you, and hear what you say ?
    And if you don't, why are you talking ?
    I'm not sure I understand.
    And why not try having some fun ?
    We have FUN on this blog.
    You can play too, I feel like saying (because playing is fun...)

    ReplyDelete
  37. @anonymous with long comment
    Thats honorable, but pathetic of you. There's no meaning in cutting one's pay, giving money, living like a monk, yada yada. You have to create value (be it for yourself or for others) - and people who understand this concept, know and talk about what they do in their work. Ayn Rand classifies such people second-handers and prime-movers respectively.

    Slightly analogous to the crisis we talk so much about - people are dealing with secondary effects, trying to stem damage, rather than dealing with the root cause - money is being borrowed and spent on delaying the recession (ok, i know, it was initially meant to hold it out while repairs are being done, but it ended up worsening the issue), rather than improving the economy in real terms. Not that I need to describe any further, if people have been reading posts rather than trying to add their piece in long, dilatory comments.

    @Debra
    I have nothing personal against you, but I think it is better to be "right but unheard" than "heard but wrong". Your incoherence is an interesting contrast to hell's clarity of thought. I don't mind having fun, but lack a name, care to list suggestions?

    ReplyDelete
  38. Debra. I have heard that "What are you doing about it?" line so many times, it makes my blood boil. I can not think of any logical reason why someone who supports a similar cause about wealth distribution would even ask me something like that. As if I would obsess over all those human issues and do nothing about it but type. As if spreading this word were somehow not a legitimate effort even on its own. I can not imagine why anyone who supports a similar cause about wealth distribution would criticize me for it in any way other than to make the rant better. I've seen your optimistic 'be happy' attitude before. Its a good thing in its own way. But I have never. I mean NEVER known an 'optimist' who 'likes people' to acknowledge greed (That is the simple desire to be rich regardless of ANYTHING else) as a form of evil. Not even once. By process of elimination, that means you like celebrities like almost everyone else. Oprah and Clooney were just two examples that I chose out of thin air. I'm not saying that liking celebrities makes people bad. It doesn't. Otherwise, I would have no choice but to hate 99% of the developed world. I don't. But I have been criticized hundreds of times for ripping on celebrities. Those who criticize me for it always throw in those "What do you do?" or "How much do you give?" lines. As if my efforts pale in comparison to those of a celebrity pig. These people seem absolutely unwilling to acknowledge the incredible hypocrisy of their favorite celebrities. It makes my blood boil. Thats why I took a shot at you for it. It wasn't an assult on your moral character. It was an assult on that mentality that rich people 'give more' and 'do more' and that I shouldn't rip on them for it. I know that you didn't come right out and say it but it was close enough. That mentality of the vast majority is the very reason why celebrities 'give back' to begin with. ITS A SHAM. So whenever I hear that "What do you do?" crap, it really sets me off. If you're the rare exception to that 'optimist' 'like people (including celebrities)' type, then good for you. As far as my personal life goes, it doesn't matter. I should not have said a word about it. I appreciate the kind words but I will never let go of this anger. Its there for a reason. Its justified. It motivates me. Otherwise, I would not have found the time to make hundreds of calls to talk radio and post my rant online over 20,000 times in three years. I don't do this for fun. I do it because I'm furious inside. So I'm not going to have that "get over your anger" crap. In this case, its productive. I think you mean well but I really don't have time to get into a debate over every post. Whenever I allow myself to get drawn into one, I regret it. It takes too much time. Don't read too much into this. I'm fine and I have no intention to do anything crazy or illegal. I never will. It would only hurt the cause.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Anonymous. I didn't say that I cut my contribution to society. I said that I cut my pay and consumption. There is a huge difference. I read plenty. I really don't have time for this.

    ReplyDelete
  40. One suggestion to all of the anonymi who are currently confusing me over the authorship of their posts, and I will say it once, and not rant about it.
    READ FREUD. Period. End of comment.
    When you have finished, (or at least have started) then we can start discussing.
    Otherwise, I will point out that you are the complete product of precisely the system that you denounce so violently. Without knowing it of course.
    But then, that's no excuse, in my book.
    Don't understand ? Read Freud. AND, find someone to read him with.

    ReplyDelete
  41. I think it's only partly about people wanting to live high.

    In my experience most people get into debt because they didn't plan for unexpected expenses - getting sick, the car breaking down, roof needing fixing etc - and then solve the problem by paying for it by credit card. It's not that they were bad or extravagant, it's that they are poor planners.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Hey anonymous AKA The Mighty Wind (and I thought another contributor here was a windbag):

    Thanks for doing without large vehicles, jet travel and so on, you leave more resources for people who can enjoy personal safety and travel.

    Those entertaining the idea of religion as an aid in societal cooperation and equanimity seem the real fools.

    There is a good reason the first line of the First Amendment dealt with excluding religion from government: religions devolved into insidious forces that tear societies apart.

    To counter this statement:

    "For have you ever considered faith as a necessary component of cooperation as a necessary component of evolutionary success within the confines of a zero sum world?" Intelligent design?

    Replace "faith" with "mass-murder" and you have the reality of history and the one of the reasons for states.

    Should we embrace faith? Definitely, within the confines of laws, back-up by people with clubs and guns (enforcement), and jailers.

    There is nothing wrong with our system of cooperation (government) that a few new laws and efficient enforcement wouldn't fix.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Debt. Why is there so much of it at all levels of society? Why are there now so many U.S. debt slaves among us? It's quite simple really. Debt has been the chief emollient used to mask the fact that the U.S. economy has been in an engineered process of terminal decline for approximately three decades.

    Globalization:

    The process of globalization as we know it began to pick up steam in the seventies with the evisceration of unions and the concominant collapse of heavy industry, the only bastion of decent paying jobs for the great unwashed. Actually, the move towards what we call globalization, aka "find and exploit the planet's cheapest labor by playing off one hapless nation against another", had something of a precursor in the sixties with the woman's liberation movement, a movement whose raison d'etre involved women achieving equal status to men.

    Crucially, the benchmark, as it were, for equal status was defined as women holding the same jobs as men for the same pay. This presented no problem at all for the PTB. They were, in due course, happy to oblige, because, eventually, all wages, in real terms, would, by necessity, fall due to women's swelling the numbers of the work force. In fact, the capitalist elites initiated and nurtured the process since it was always in prospect good for business.

    An added benefit to the plan to transform society such that women would become less like house wives and more like proper corporate cogs was a falling domestic birth rate that would only be made up by, Voila! immigrants (aka cheap labor) from Mexico and Central America. However, as capital is inexhaustibly greedy, attaining this state of affairs was not nearly sufficient. So, with the active stewardship of the two party duopoly acting on behalf of their masters in the MIB (military, industrial, banking) complex, the process of globalization was further ramped up and subsequently completed (GATT, NAFTA, etc. etc.) by the end of Clinton's second term. This was also, as it turns out the high water mark of globalization.

    Final Chapter:

    Unfortunately for the puppeteers of globalization, a sort of suicidal master stroke was delivered to the movement by a number of erstwhile loyal foot soldiers just at its moment of supreme triumph. Messieurs Gramm, Rubin, Summers, etc. etc. (their activities all blessed by the Maestro himself, Alan Greenspan) passed a series of infamous repeals of long standing and sane legislation designed to keep finance from causing a terminal infection of banking specifically and the economy in general.

    So much debt was added to the system as the result of the machinations of the by now infamous aforesaid that the monstrous coup called globalization was dealt a death blow.

    So here we are, with all the uncountable debt added to the system over several decades and no healthy way to pay it off

    ReplyDelete
  44. "I really don't have time for this"
    - Anonymous

    Translation: Plenty of time to make others listen to me, no time to listen to them. Plenty of time to judge, no time to be judged.

    Perhaps someday you'll find the time to read about a guy named William Shockley. Bright guy; arguably should have become one of the richest men in history. But like most people you've probably never heard of him because his acidic personality made him impossible to work with. He was a bottomless ocean of hate that sucked the life out of everyone near him. Just sayin'....

    ReplyDelete
  45. "Brevity is the soul of wit." William Shakespeare

    Or, better yet, Anonymous of Longwind, please read the following story about accomplishing your aims:

    When the banished Samians reached Sparta, they had audience of the magistrates, before whom they made a long speech, as was natural with persons greatly in want of aid. Accordingly at this first sitting the Spartans answered them that they had forgotten the first half of their speech, and could make nothing of the remainder. Afterwards the Samians had another audience, whereat they simply said, showing a bag which they had brought with them, 'The bag wants flour.' The Spartans answered that they did not need to have said 'the bag'; however, they resolved to give them aid.

    H.

    ReplyDelete
  46. With or without globalization, that massive consumer/national debt was a direct and almost exclusive result of concentrating wealth and capital. For the last 30 years, It has been concentrated much faster than it could be created. Just like it was just prior to every depression in US history. It was done one deal at a time by greedy pigs who simply would not settle for any less. Otherwise, globalization wouldn't have been an issue. Neither would illegal immigration. Mexico's wealth has been concentrated as well. It has been concentrated in every nation that I know of. Certainly in all of the developed world. This is enough to convince me that we truly are on a path to destruction. Its not just a broken system. Its a serious flaw in human nature. It just happens to be much worse in some than others. In particular, those who rule the world, influense our society, and manage every major industry.

    This will be my last entry here.

    ReplyDelete
  47. WTF? Its not that I'm afraid to read, debate, or be judged. I just can't spend too much time on one site. I HAVE WORK TO DO. As usual, nothing but the same old psychological crap. Tell you what. I'll save all of you the trouble of judging me.

    I AM A JERK.

    There. You win. Happy now? Later.

    ReplyDelete
  48. "Its not that I'm afraid to read, debate, or be judged."

    Hey, genius: If you're so smart, MAKE IT SNAPPY.

    "I HAVE WORK TO DO."

    So do I.

    Hell: Looks like we'll be stagnating for a while.. my organization (one of the biggest on the E coast) froze wages for FY09. What's the reverse of the wage-price spiral? Good times!

    ReplyDelete
  49. Re: "Brevity is the soul of wit."

    I hear you and am working on it.

    Of course when I try to be brief, I have to read bonehead statements like "Intelligent design?" (no surprise considering the source).

    Marcus, I think I have made it VERY clear on MANY occasions I am not religious. Further I am most definitely NOT a proponent of intelligent design- an absurd idea if ever one existed.

    That you continued to fail to answer questions re: this does not mean the rest of us are as myopically 2 dimensional as you.

    Similarly, that you fail to see the obvious cognitive dissonance in a statement like "There is nothing wrong with our system of cooperation (government) that a few new laws and efficient enforcement wouldn't fix" does not mean the rest of us are so blinded as you.

    For no amount of laws will fix a system if the players within the system say one thing but do another, e.g. refuse to actually play by the new rules they pass (like Italians and new taxes or Americans and drug use).

    I am quite sure I would never trust a system of laws with someone like you at its head. I have no interest in a system designed for your personal benefit (confiscate Hell's wealth??? Please).


    And while statements like "replace "faith" with "mass-murder" and you have the reality of history and the one of the reasons for states" have a strong element of truth to them, they also grossly ignore the fact that the greatest crimes of the last 200 years have almost exclusively been done in the name of atheistic states.

    You make odd mental silos (at least to me) on certain themes/ideas that may work for your view of the world but some (many?) of us do not necessarily share that same view.

    You see good and bad systems (and I certainly agree with some of your observations about these systems), I ALSO see good and bad people within those systems.

    It is quite clear you do not understand religion. That you do not does not mean the rest of us are so cursed.

    And while I COMPLETELY agree with you that religion will never solve all society's ills and I ALSO COMPLETELY agree with you in a VERY STRONG separation of church and state (indeed I might even feel more strongly about this issue than you), I DO NOT agree with you that religion can not help many social issues.

    Even if it never helps you.


    @Edwardo, I certainly agree with your view that things have deteriorated for many over the last 30 years (they have gotten better for many too) but I think all the rest of your analysis is hogwash. America would not have been the dominant economic power it was in the 60s were it not for globalization, nor would you and I even be Americans in the first place.


    Why slice data in ways that looks most favorable to your views yet ignore other parts?

    ReplyDelete
  50. Homo SarcasticusMay 3, 2009 at 9:39 PM

    Well, but long posts are very common here, especially given the low width.
    However noone should EVER post 30+ pages of Word document.

    Then, respect for your commitment, however your spartan measures can do little but make you laughed at and misunderstood by most of your dimwitted neighbours. Better ease down a bit, because these global problems cannot be solved by individual sacrifice. It's not like piloting your X-wing vs a Death Star, more like starving to death while there are parties going all around.
    However, an EXAMPLE by an authority can make much difference. Is gathering followers what you are doing now?

    ReplyDelete
  51. most followers on twitter

    The Completely Automated Twitter Growth & Money Making System for
    People That Want to Set Up A System ONCE, Forget About It, and Have it
    Grow and Make Money EVERY Day!

    http://cb3fa4x6-40len95yhtx4f5211.hop.clickbank.net

    ReplyDelete
  52. OK, my angle on the problem.

    Some days ago I found this article:

    http://coloradosprings.yourhub.com/Briargate/Stories/Business/Story~578714.aspx

    Corruption and greed has indeed brought the ruin of many civilizations, so why would this one be different? Any poorly maintained system will fail sooner or later.

    IMO, in USA almost all it would take is 1) legalization of the illegal aliens - proposed, 2) gun confiscation by government - might be coming this year, 3) ever increasing fearmongering & propaganda - you betcha, 4) ever falling real economy - now, where did I hear it? And voila, now they have a mobocracy where sociopathic, 'beautiful' criminals fool the stupid plebes and the patriots cannot do anything about it. Even easier than it is today, and BTW the dumb crowd is pleased because it doesn't know who's footing the bill! So promising the most, talking smooth and being media darling is the way to get elected! (also, such system gives enormous power to the men behind the curtain)

    Anyone with intelligence should hate, dread and fight against mob rule, dictate of stupid but numerous sheeple. If full suffrage must be shed, so be it.


    It's funny how most blast Hitler, but many also praise Obama the liar. I have found myself wondering, hove would Nurnberg rallies look nowadays? Look and behold, some likeminded people have preempted me by making this video :)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS2rJP-udUs&feature=related

    In Europe?
    Well, post Soviet countries have serious corruption and moral issues and I must say my home country looks pretty bad in comparison with others. Without serious 'paradigm change' there can be no fast recovery.

    Also, most WW2 veterans are dying out, and those men knew bitter struggle for freedom and survival. Babyboomers probably know only boardroom rows, and it gets less and less glorious down the line. What happens when Europe is >60% poor, dark and muslim? Hmm, I'll leave that to the other readers.

    ReplyDelete
  53. http://coloradosprings.yourhub.com/
    Briargate/Stories/Business/
    Story~578714.aspx

    Herre's the proper link, remove the empty spaces.

    And since I be dumb around here, how does one post hyperlinks in blogspot?

    ReplyDelete
  54. Thai:

    Besides accuracy you seem to have a problem with comprehension:

    "Intelligent design?" is a question not a statement, look up the difference.

    Thai: "That you continued to fail to answer questions re: this does not mean the rest of us are as myopically 2 dimensional as you."
    The reason I never answered this question is because it falls under the tired heading of "Thai throwing bullshit against the wall in hopes something will stick"
    Here is the real "money shot" for me from your cited "research":
    "Scientists are trying to discern if there's an evolutionary reason for why our brains are so receptive to religious experiences. Religion might be a side effect of a developing brain; our brains needed ways to explain the world around us, so they may have created a belief system that could serve as kind of default place to turn in the case of questions. Religion could serve that purpose to early man, with its somewhat supernatural stories to explain cause-and-effect."

    That last sentence is telling, for me that is, maybe not for you of weak scientific fiber.

    Another one from your citing:
    "One study evaluated the success of various communes in 19th-century America. The communes with a secular ideology were four times as likely to disband in any given year [source: The Economist]. But in religious communes, such as modern-day kibbutzim in Israel, those subject to the strongest religious rules have been shown to be the most altruistic and cooperative of the bunch. In tests that examine an individual's generosity when the entire group is at stake, those living in these types of communities of faith are more likely to pool resources, which promotes the survival of the collective [source: The Economist]. "

    The "collective" didn't fair to well in fascist Germany did it? Won't write a dissertation on the problems of parochialism and tribalism but Western democracies have faired better that either other "collective."



    Thai: Similarly, that you fail to see the obvious cognitive dissonance in a statement like" "There is nothing wrong with our system of cooperation (government) that a few new laws and efficient enforcement wouldn't fix"" does not mean the rest of us are so blinded as you.

    "For no amount of laws will fix a system if the players within the system say one thing but do another, e.g. refuse to actually play by the new rules they pass (like Italians and new taxes or Americans and drug use)."

    Did you notice that word " enforcement"? Jaywalking and drug use are not serious crimes. Taking a country to war under false pretenses, war crimes, kidnapping, torture, and mass surveillance without warrants are serious crimes and should be prosecuted. Add to that falsely rating of securities AAA by the three big ratings agencies is a serious crime and should be prosecuted. That we are not enforcing our laws is a problem--but the system is in place.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Geez, you guys, have you noticed how tempers have frayed since the passage of the hurricane ?
    Let's get back to playing and having fun.
    We all have our own little ideas about what just hit us here, so let's calm down and play nice.
    It's over for the time being...
    Edwardo, the problem with your globalization analysis is that actually, globalization has been with us for a long time now : like since at least the Venetian spice trade, to cite just one example, but I'm sure there're others.
    I liked your story, Hell. It was fantastic.
    You have a great classics culture. (Much much better than mine, that's for sure...)

    ReplyDelete
  56. I would say let us get back to the basic's of our Perma-Growth-Society. The slave-state we find ourself in.

    I have watched 2 movies in the last 4 days that were 3hours long. A feat not realized in over 23 years.

    1. "V for Vendetta" circa 2006
    2. "The Big Country" circa 1958

    In both an enlightened man rose above the masses and affected change for the good of the people.

    Two movies set apart by 200years and the theme is the same. One enlightened man rose above TPTB control/corruption thread of Money/Power/Sex/Love and overcame for the good.

    We are here to become one with universe and ourselves and we are now on the edge of a paradigm shift away from the money maggots to a new way of life.

    Prepare for major change in the next few months.

    Joe M.

    ReplyDelete
  57. Re: ""Scientists are trying to discern if there's an evolutionary reason for why our brains are so receptive to religious experiences."

    Actually, there are quite a few theories that attempt to explain this observation- many more than the ones sited in this article (which I gave simply as an intro to the topic... I think the last one I gave was from Sci Am).

    I will repeat (having read a fare bit (but certainly not an exhaustive amount) on this subject), my personal favorite theory of all is "have you ever considered faith as a necessary component of cooperation as a necessary component of evolutionary success..."

    Personally, it makes the most sense to me of all the theories I have read/conceived. I am more than willing to entertain others (indeed have and do) and I will continue to keep an open mind on this topic.

    Re: which crime is more serious.

    While I certainly agree with your "serious" hierarch on some kind of personal "revulsion meter", I think from an actual monetary cost to society, we have already had this discussion once and you clearly lost. It is quite clear where society's money is being spent.

    Re: "That we are not enforcing our laws is a problem--but the system is in place."

    Agreement!

    AND the fact we are not says a lot, for actions speak much louder than words.

    Deb, you are correct- my apologies.

    Move on.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Hey Joe, I like that, instead of wearing a sign saying "The End is Near" it would say "The beginning is Near"

    ReplyDelete
  59. Thai:

    I write specifics countering your arguments using your own citation and you write this joke, it is a joke right?:

    "I will repeat (having read a fare bit (but certainly not an exhaustive amount) on this subject), my personal favorite theory of all is "have you ever considered faith as a necessary component of cooperation as a necessary component of evolutionary success..."

    So this is your favorite "theory?" This isn't even an assertion. This is a joke to ameliorate your decline of the challenges presented to you right?


    My apologies Debra, I consider myself a stakeholder in this little commons, and I can only take so much fouling of the air.

    ReplyDelete
  60. I clearly do have a comprehension issue going on. What challenge are you referring to?

    Of course this is a theory. Evolution is a theory.

    You have absolutely lost me.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Re: "I can only take so much fouling of the air."

    Go back and re-read the comment thread yourself Marcus.

    SS- "Most religions are priestly farces, pious wishing by the weak and insecure. Buddism is somewhat better as a philosophy, more consequential in its reasoning but how could they know anymore than anyone else? Oddly enough the most complete philosophical. religious texts I've come across are the Upanishads, the ancient Aryan texts that serve as a basis of Hinduism but are much purer than religious Hinduism and much more philosopjhical. They too, however, acknowledge that knowledge is not of this world. Tommorrow's Sunday. Thanks for helping out Anonymous."

    Thai- "@ SS

    I haven't read many of your texts... have you ever considered...

    If you have, we are very close indeed."


    Marcus- (In what I read to be his typically insulting tone)
    "(and I thought another contributor here was a windbag):... Those entertaining the idea of religion as an aid in societal cooperation and equanimity seem the real fools."
    To counter this statement:

    "For have you ever considered faith as a necessary component of cooperation as a necessary component of evolutionary success within the confines of a zero sum world?" Intelligent design?

    Replace "faith" with "mass-murder" and you have the reality of history and the one of the reasons for states.

    Should we embrace faith? Definitely, within the confines of laws, back-up by people with clubs and guns (enforcement), and jailers.

    There is nothing wrong with our system of cooperation (government) that a few new laws and efficient enforcement wouldn't fix."


    Thai- (angry and responding to the insult you have made about me personally and about religion) That you continued to fail to answer questions re: this does not mean the rest of us are as myopically 2 dimensional as you.


    At which point you seem to make challenges????

    Contrary to all that you may think, I do not enjoy arguing with you at all.

    Re: whatever particular challenges you are talking about tonight I am quite confused other than you just seem to like to insult to me.

    As for being a part of this commons, of course you!

    AND I fail to see why you continue to throw these (often quite vulgar) insults at me other than 1. you prefer I not comment so much (of course you needn't read my comments) and 2. You don't like what I have to say (and this tends to go both directions for I have NEVER read 1 statement from you in the history of your time commenting on this blog that suggests you contribute in any meaningful way to society other than to gripe about what others do).

    ReplyDelete
  62. Man, the shooting flares up fast and furious at Hell's Saloon sometimes. A West Coaster walks in late in the day and finds tables overturned, smashed bottles, empty shells everywhere...

    @ Joe M.,

    V For Vendetta was a good flick. Netflix sent us Slumdog Millionaire to watch last night. I thought it was going to be some love story/Bollywood/obnoxious musical.

    I'm still too in shock to give a decent report. It starts with a torture scene and then goes back in time to show a Mumbai orphan's unspeakable childhood. I'm going to have a hard time feeling empathy for anyone living in the "first world" for quite a while.

    ReplyDelete
  63. Thai- (angry and responding to the insult you have made about me personally and about religion)

    What insult did I throw at religion and why are you defending religion after this statement: "Marcus, I think I have made it VERY clear on MANY occasions I am not religious."

    Let us refrain from personal attacks, it wastes time.

    From you last comment:

    "You don't like what I have to say (and this tends to go both directions for I have NEVER read 1 statement from you in the history of your time commenting on this blog that suggests you contribute in any meaningful way to society other than to gripe about what others do)."

    I don't like bullshit (if this term is too vulgar for you I'll use another--nothing personal), especially when I see it from people who hold themselves up as learned authorities. This is my chosen contribution to this slice of society.

    "Re: whatever particular challenges you are talking about tonight I am quite confused other than you just seem to like to insult to me."

    One example: Your "theory" (comes under the category of bullshit, its not a theory is it?) "my personal favorite theory of all is "have you ever considered faith as a necessary component of cooperation as a necessary component of evolutionary success..."

    When I questioned you about this you referred me to an article about evidence of "religious" sections of the brain via brain scans during religious experiences. The article reached no conclusive statement of fact. An example of their "success story" (relating to your above statement) within the article, was that of a happy kibbutz in Israel. I gave the counter argument of the catastrophically unsuccessful " collective" (Jewish Ghettos) in fascist Germany. There's your challenge, back up your statement with concrete examples to counter my example or admit that you were spewing bullshit.

    ReplyDelete
  64. "But in religious communes, such as modern-day kibbutzim in Israel..."

    Most kibbutz settlements are not religious but built around a secular supremacist ideology AKA zionism. Of course members will fight harder to perpetuate a system that sanctions their theft of other people's land. And if anyone should challenge your agrression you get to claim that god said you could even if you're an atheist like David Ben Gurion, Golda Mier, Moshe Dyan, and most of the other founders of zionism. Neat trick, the god you don't even believe exists somehow came into being long enough to justify your theft of an entire country; when Hitler tried to get away with that in Poland he was called a Nazi.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Thai wrote:

    "I think all the rest of your analysis is hogwash. "

    I'm unclear just what part of my analysis that you think is hogwash?

    Let me review the salient points not necessarily in order of their appearance.

    1.) Debt has been used to mask the disappearance of decent paying jobs and to replace the living wages once paid to those who worked in industries that have since been removed to other parts of the planet.

    2.) Globalization began in the seventies and gathered steam over the next several decades. I'm sorry Thai, it did not start, as you seem to suppose, in the sixties.

    3.) It occurred by design so that industry could access and exploit cheap labor overseas and inexorably came at the expense of U.S. workers.

    4.) The Women's Lib movement was empowered and enabled by the PTB because it fit with their immediate agenda of cheapening U.S. labor's wages. The sine qua non of women's lib was conveniently defined as the ability of women to live and work as men did and to be paid equally. However, having achieved the goal of "liberating" women into the work force, capital, as is capital's wont, saw even greater opportunity elsewhere.

    5.) The birth rate fell more or less in concert with the advent of globalization and women's full immersion into the work force. Immigration from the third world, aka cheap labor, took up the slack of a falling birth rate. This is, by the way, factually true.

    6.) Both U.S. political parties were crucial to the ultimate triumph of globalization, but they went a bridge to far with the repeal of long standing banking regulations and concomitant evisceration of regulatory oversight.

    ReplyDelete
  66. Dink,

    The best thing that the first world can do for the third world is get the hell out of it. Settling their problems might be bloody for a while but then they would resolve. The war in Sri Lanka has lasted for thirty years because every time the govt was about to crush the secessionist LTTE (tamil tigers) western powers intervened and forced the govt to negotiate with LTTE. Aside from the hypocracy of forcing a sovereign govt to negotiate with a terrorist org while they won't recognize the elected govt in Palestine, this policy has led to three decades of interminal bloodshed. Now that Sri Lanka has cover and military aid from China the war should be over shortly and the west won't have an accomplice in place to destabilize a client state whenever it steps out of line.

    The same holds in Sudan, all the rebel movements are western instigated attempts to break up Sudan and dominate the resulting statelets. Without western sponsorship the level of violence would be a small fraction of its current size. Just look at Iraq; as bad as Saddam was, violence never approached levels under the American occupation.

    If any good comes from peak oil it will be the restriction of outside powers to meddle far from their borders.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Edwardo,

    WRT TPTB pushing women into the workforce to lower wages, have you seen the interview with Aaron Russo before he died where he talks about how Nick Rockafella tried to recruit him for just these sorts of efforts.

    This is one segment (sorry, don't know how to make hyperlinks):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz0f-TIc8A&feature=related

    As a bonus you might like to know that it made Thai's tooth buzz.

    ReplyDelete
  68. I agree with you dink about the shootout in the Sudden Debt corral. I also noticed that possibly the wiser people on this blog had retreated to play in previous posts while all this was going on, but true to myself, since I AM NOT A NICE PERSON AND NOT REALLY WISE EITHER and I love a fight (in my own idiosyncratic way) just as much as almost everybody on this blog (thank God we don't have GUNS over here... or there are no guns on this blog, right ? lol), I stayed here to spar...
    But there's no reason to spar NOW.
    And for a change, I feel like plugging the results of 20 years of psychoanalysis, and practicing as a shrink in my own corner of the world.
    I did not lose my temper here (during and after). (These days when I lose my temper, it lasts one minute, I take deep breaths, sometimes I write a long letter to someone, or I will even type a comment, get it PERFECTLY to my liking, and then press the button to ZAP it, not to post it.)
    I would not be able to do this if I did not have so much analysis behind me (literary and psycho) to bolster me up. And.... so much FAITH that my course of action (largely inspired by Jesus' teachings but not only...) was the right one for me, and enough of a good one for my neighbor too (I am an evangelist...) for me to want him to be able to HEAR what I'm saying. (Careful, I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I AM happy these days...)

    Comments from a psychoanalytic standpoint : It's amazing what even the smallest reference to religion can EXCITE in human beings. For me, there is an unescapable FACT in our individual makeup : the FACT that, when little, we considered our parents to be all-powerful, all-knowing deities responsible and entrusted with our infantile protection is the key to much of this. We never forget our infantile positions and attitudes. And they emerge when we feel threatened (like now, on this blog, and in our society). THEY NEVER GO AWAY.
    And if you need a demonstration, just take a look at the last two or three posts/comments here.
    And this FACT is at the very base of religion.
    If you think that society (and society is US, too, in all of those little catch phrases that many many repeat all the time, like "time is money", pouah) at some point missed the observation that religion got people excited, then think again.
    What do you think that Enlightenment thought is ultimately based on ? Society's judgment, after centuries of religious wars, that religion was just TOO costly, and thus, needed to be flushed down the toilet. So... bingo, the promotion of a casper milktoast "ideal" of reason, which has deteriorated so far in our own time to become "being reasonable".
    Not to mention the fact that religion ultimately is about that fraction of space (fractal ?) that separates our "ideals" from our "idols".
    Enlightenment ideals have become idols.
    And the Bible is right about at least ONE thing : idols never make people live, but they are really good at making them die.
    If I hadn't had a religious education, and if I hadn't studied the Bible, then I would NOT have had access to what I feel are valuable concepts to understand MY experience, and the experience of my fellow man.
    I agree with Thai on his statement about faith and cooperation.
    One last point : it would really be convenient IF we could separate faith in an all powerful transcendant being (modeled on our parents...) from faith in our fellow man, but I'm not really sure that it is possible. They are probably inseparable. Freud is right about this one : once we have tasted something, we NEVER forget it ; it never goes away, and waits to be reactivated at some point in time.

    For the PEOPLE in all of us : I just got wind this morning that Berlusconi's wife is going to drag him through a costly and painful divorce. That all of this is going to weaken the separation private/public even more.
    I'm looking forward to having Veronique Berlusconi drag Silvio through the mud, even though I will NOT follow the affair with any diligence.
    This divorce will be an événement, as we say over here.
    And it will possibly be quite instrumental in breaking up the Berlusconi empire.
    All the better, in my book...
    And in ITALY !! The "country" of the Pope ! (Spiritual country, I mean...)
    Parentheses : Hell, the sibyll has nothing to say about Chrysler's bankruptcy ? Is THAT an événement ?

    ReplyDelete
  69. Edwardo, I will address your comment on the status of women in our "modern" society.
    I am reading a book by Regine Pernoud, one of the first French women to really open up the study of Middle Ages society in France, starting in around the 1970's.
    It's called "Pour en finir avec le Moyen Âge" (To put an end to the Middle Ages).
    The incredible prejudice that was attached to the Middle Age (prejudice which is falling by the wayside these days with the publication of major books by Pernoud, and Georges Duby in France), is unbelievable. (Hindsight gives one 20/20 vision, right ?)
    Of course such prejudice is inevitable and constant : we belittle our predecessors, and regularly pick and choose our "ideals/idols" and models from the past.
    The way she dusts off our prejudices about the status of women is admirable. I'm sure that you know that women before the rather rapid rise of Roman law to take care of MATERIAL matters, like buying and selling, inheritance, etc, enjoyed much greater equality with men than what WE now enjoy.
    And it is EXTREMELY regrettable that many of US women seem to feel that equality means doing the same thing as men (i.e., buying and selling...), like regular little copycats.
    The current, and upcoming crisis is going to, is ALREADY seriously interrogating our IDOL image of women's roles : mucho unemployment puts pressure on getting women out of the workforce.
    This pressure, and these questions are salutary, in my book.
    They represent a NEW CHANCE for us to start thinking again about what we want the relationship between the sexes to be. Everybody doing his/her own thing in his/her own corner, or a REAL cooperation ? Personally, I favor a real cooperation, with much greater complementarity (hence DIFFERENCE) in OUR roles.
    And this development is a MAJOR part of our current crisis.
    We need to know the difference between men and women in order to survive, individually and collectively. And the difference is not purely biological, my friends...
    I also think that many of our Muslim friends' reactions to OUR way of life are an expression of precisely THIS conflict.
    PS. : US is not the acronym for U.S. by the way...

    ReplyDelete
  70. Yoyomo, LOL regarding the comment about making Thai's teeth buzz. I have seen the interview with Aaron Russo about Nick Rockefeller.

    On another note.

    I'm amused to hear that the oleagenous uber criminal Berlusconi is going to be subjected to a bit of divorce court fun. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

    ReplyDelete
  71. Yoyomo re: making links. I get a couple of teenagers in front of a beer bong when I past your link in my browser... And I am quit sure the last link you left was of a guy doing very weird things.

    Can you make me a proper link? This is how.

    re: first world out of third. I couldn't agree more (but I guess I should qualify it a little that "it depends what you mean")

    Would you please retry posting your link as an actual link? I will watch all of it IF is not some man doing bizarre things or kids with a beer bong.

    Marcus (and anyone reading this), with a day to cool of and absolutely no hostility in my response, my question to you is "did this all occur because you thought I made a theory up?"

    Why didn't you just say so or ask?

    Please understand that even re-reading the thread today, I find it hard to see this was your issue. Oh well, it is what it is.

    I did not make the theory up at all! Although I would be proud if I had been that clever... Although, I have absolutely paraphrased it to make it easier to understand.

    What you see as stuff to throw up against a wall and see if it sticks (definitely true at times), is not true in this instance.

    Evolutionary psychology (EP) and genetics, and the endless permutations of cooperation/competition (e.g. the prisoner's dilemma, the tragedy of the commons, etc... ) are amongst my very favorite topics of discussion, they always have been.

    I have had many conversations with others re: EP on this blog- how many times and with how many people have I discussed cooperation? Truthfully I have lost count.

    Anyway, re: today's variant of this same theme, e.g. evolutionary religious studies (ERS).

    There are 6 main hypotheses I am aware of.

    Three hypotheses look at religion as an adaption:
    1. Group level adaption
    2. Individual-level adaption
    3. Cultural parasite that benefited the culture at the expense of human individuals and groups (commonly referred to as the "religion is a disease" model)

    Three hypotheses look at religion as non-adaptive:
    4. adaptive in small groups of related individuals but not in our modern society
    5. Outgrowth of a trait that was adaptive in a non-religious area
    6. Random genetic drift

    You could say 3 and 6 are really the flip side of each other and have their strongest proponents to my knowledge have been Steven J. Gould and my own favorite, Steven Pinkert.

    The theory I prefer the most: "faith as a necessary component of cooperation as a necessary component of evolutionary success within the confines of a zero sum world" is basically a summarized paraphrase of the adaptive model- e.g. 1, 2 and to some degree 3.

    ... Although, depending how you look at it, it also really paraphrases theory 4 and 5 and 6- it depends what level of selection you are talking about.

    In fact the whole discussion can have an element of "are you a lumper or are you a splitter" to it.

    Further, please understand that ALL people who look at this field agree in the possibility/probability of many (or all) of these hypotheses being simultaneously correct-wrong (e.g. zero sum). This field rarely looks at these ideas in terms of "right" OR "wrong" if I am making sense. More "it supports the claim", "it contradicts it".

    Re: do others share this same theory?

    Absolutely "Yes" (especially those in the adaptive camp) while and others do not (although even this is kind of nuanced).

    Type for yourself into Google "Religion as an adaption for promoting cooperation and altruism", there is a ton of stuff on this)

    Here is Pinker talking about the pro's con's of some of these various hypotheses with no real conclusion although he does come down a little more in the non-adaptive camp, at least more than I am wiling to concede yet.

    ... And this discussion is getting WAY long.

    Yet I will go on if it is necessary to show I am not "making this stuff up" (if that is your issue).

    Have you ever look at the Power Point I produced on my blog re: cooperation?

    The zero sum aspect of evolutionary psychology is quite clear in the presentation (I think).


    Or are you simply saying this stuff is the silliest stuff you have ever heard?

    If so, I can TOTALLY respect that. Notice the tongue and cheek title of the award in the Pinker link. But realize, I read somewhere (but cannot now find the link) that something like 30% of all publications in psychology today are from an evolutionary psychology perspective.

    Or are you saying you do not understand what I mean with my paraphrase of the main theories of evolutionary religious studies?

    If so, which part do you not understand and/OR why do you think I have made a poor paraphrase of these theories?


    re: reputable evolutionary religious studies links.

    If you are interested, here are a few and I certainly would be happy to provide more if these do not answer your questions:

    link 1.

    link 2.

    link 3.



    PS re: the holocaust and how religion did not save the jews from the Germans (atheists).

    Agreed.

    I was not saying religion will save anyone (even groups), even if elements of the link I gave might have made you think this is what I was saying.

    I am a firm believer in the conservation of risk.

    It is a necessary necessary consequence of the conservation of energy within a bounded system.

    I thought I have always made it clear I have a "nihilistic" tendency and do not see any one winning strategy.

    And I do believe in cooperation, even where I can see it fail.


    @Edwardo- I am totally typed out. I really do want to respond but can it wait? My tooth is buzzing from all this typing.

    ReplyDelete
  72. Thai,
    I'll try to learn the hyperlink (Thanks) but for now this is the new URL, youtube changed the old one; it was working back in March (see our dialog on the 3/23 thread):

    http://www.youtube.com
    /watch?v=7nD7dbkkBIA

    BTW you completely ignored my comment @3/25-11:47PM on the above referenced thread(3/23). You asked for the Cliff Notes on Prof. Israel Shahak (as opposed to his book) and I gave them to you but you didn't read them.

    The material is not pleasant to contemplate but as you like to say; it is what it is.

    P.S. There is nothing alleged about the telephone incident, it was widely publicized in Israel at the time and the Rabbinic council issued a ruling validating and praising what happened. Read what I had to say and the 2 links (Wiki & Jewish Law) and only then tell me what you really think. Am I a rabid anti-semite or do I have valid concerns about Judaeo-supremacist ideology?

    ReplyDelete
  73. Thai, I agree with YOUR (congratulations !) theory about cooperation, but I don't see MY/Freud's hypothesis in there about religion. Where is it, in your book ? If it is NOT there, then I will claim authorship for it, because for me THERE IS NO PROBLEM IN INVENTING THEORIES (at least I'm not going to go into the less-evident problems of inventing theories HERE), so, let's be ORIGINAL and CREATIVE (to use words that modern publicity has fetichized out of existence...) on this blog.
    For both of you, there is a film coming out about the Rachel Corrie incident, a film made by a Moroccan born Jewish woman with Israeli/French nationality.
    I can't wait to see it. She sounds breathtakingly intelligent, idealistic, but still lucid enough to force Israeli society to take a long hard look at the atrocities that Tsahel is committing IN THE NAMES OF ITS CITIZENS. I read about it on Salon.
    When I have some time, and am not feeling so lazy/inhibited about the computer, I will wade through all your "stuff" about posting links...
    Cheers !
    P.S. I have FINALLY decided to bite the bullet and read Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (title in English ? In French, it's Malaise dans la Civilisation...

    ReplyDelete
  74. @Yoyomo re: "do I have valid concerns about Judaeo-supremacist ideology?"

    Is that what you have been asking from me all this time?

    Absolutely yes.


    I thought it has always been was quite clear from everything I have ever said on this blog that I am far more interested in how people behave towards each other than whether they wear Palestinian clothing or yamikas or bowler hats or Kimonos.


    @Deb- re: "I agree with YOUR (congratulations !) theory about cooperation"

    You are bad! ;-)

    Really, its not, but I give up.

    Re: "It would really be convenient IF we could separate faith in an all powerful transcendant being (modeled on our parents...) from faith in our fellow man, but I'm not really sure that it is possible. They are probably inseparable."

    If I am understanding you correctly and translate into the language of someone who plays with erector sets, this is probably adaptive hypothesis #1 butting up against the zero sum nature of advantageous mutations (e.g. initially the religious adaption is advantageous to a group of people who cooperate together using this shared "external" vision (kind of reminds you of the gold standard and money does it not???), but as the adaption become more wide spread throughout the population, it lose any advantage it has since everyone has the same adaption). In a zero sum game, not everyone can win (unless the actual boundaries of the system themselves are being expanded).


    Re: "Freud is right about this one : once we have tasted something, we NEVER forget it ; it never goes away, and waits to be reactivated at some point in time."

    Again, if I am translating into "erector set language" correctly, depending on what point of view you are coming at Freud's statement, it could be construed as ANY of the 6 hypothesis, just as my paraphrase does the same thing.


    Does this answer your question?

    If you want to take credit however, fine by me.

    ReplyDelete
  75. Well Thai,
    As long as you're in an open minded mood, here are a couple of links about the mythical, non-existent, must-never-be-discussed lobby and its control in American politics and judicial system.

    BTW, did you know the ADL was formed one year before the FedRes? Some would say this was less of a coincidence but was intended to stifle any discussion of its origins and the identities of its sponsors.

    This hyperlinking is fun.

    ReplyDelete
  76. Sorry Thai, but there is one more link I forgot.

    As someone with an opinion on almost everything, this repression of expression should make you more than a little nervous.

    ReplyDelete