Well, That's Over

     It wasn't the outcome I expected -- but I wasn't expecting it very strongly.  Hope is for saps, as the Greeks warned us in the story of Pandora.  One side or the other opens up the box every election, and what comes out is rarely never rainbows and unicorns.

     On social media, a few people have written, "This fundamentally changes my understanding of the American people," or similar notions and that's what hope gets you -- it was our response to the pandemic that put a spotlight on the American psyche for me, mostly our reactions to the measures that tried to limit it: a slim majority of us are ignorant idiots, suspicious and resentful of expertise and willing to ride "You ain't the boss of me" all the way to the ground like Slim Pickens on an atomic bomb, even when reason and logic clearly shows that going along leads to the best outcome (and you can kick the would-be bosses to the curb later).

     So Mr. Trump won, both in the Electoral College and (so far) the popular vote.  A majority of us chose anger over joy, rants over laughs, an inarticulate man over an articulate woman, a promise of mass deportation and high tariffs over taxing billionaires and oligarchs while providing paths to citizenship for sincere immigrants, the government (of mostly men) controlling women's bodies instead of minding their own business.  

     As I write, control of the next U. S. Senate will rest in Republican hands by the thinnest of margins; the balance of power in the House is still undecided but it, too, will be on a knife's edge.  That's not a mandate; it's a great big caution flag.  I doubt it will be heeded.

     If Mr. Trump gets his tariffs, look for economic hard times before the middle of his term.  Look for higher prices; tariffs are paid by the importer, not the exporter, and are passed along to you and me.  Even when tariffs succeed in encouraging domestic production to replace imports, the heavy thumb of government remains on the scales, impeding the workings of the free market: the version made here only needs to be cheaper than the cost of the import plus the tariff.

     And about making that stuff here?  If Mr. Trump gets the mass deportations he and many of his supporters long for, it will rip out the bottom of the labor market.  Those low-wage workers will be gone, and it was never that they "did the jobs Americans won't do," it was that Americans won't do those jobs for such low pay.  Assuming the now-open jobs can be filled, they're not going to be filled as cheaply as they were, and you know where that shows up?  Mr. CEO and his Board of Directors aren't going to take a haircut over it!  You and I will pay more for those goods and services.  Of course, we'll want raises too, and when wages and prices chase one another, you know what you get?  Inflation.

     The darker side of mass deportation is that if it is carried out as described, the result will be a horror that will shame this nation for generations; the scale of the effort and the incarceration required will inevitably produce tragic results. 

     Between people who glory in chaos and violence (and/or grift), like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, between nutjobs like Robert R. Kennedy, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, between "Christian Nationalists" and "Dominionists" who are hoping to ride the multiply-divorced convicted felon to cultural control (look up what they say; the language is Biblical but their intent is clear: he's a means to an end), between men like Vivek Ramaswamy and J. D. Vance who have made themselves willing tools of democracy-skeptical oligarchs, Mr. Trump's second term will be fraught with wild notions, fringe theories, and cliques with interests greatly divergent from those of the country as a whole, if not downright inimical to them.  Elon Musk is brilliant promoter and a good judge of when to get into a line of business, but he couldn't manage or engineer his way out of an oversized boot with the instructions on the heel.

     A majority of my fellow citizens have chosen to run this experiment at full scale.  The party they voted for won the election.  That does not automatically mean it was the right choice.

     Time will tell. I remember how things were four years ago, how things were from 2016 to 2020, beginning with lies and ending in insurrection.  It was not a halcyon time, dripping with milk and honey.  Don't count on any nourishing sweetness this time either, not even if you're pale, hale, well-off and male.

Uh-Oh

      The past weekend was busy.  Lovely, too.  I did a bunch of laundry, got a fair amount of housekeeping done (even vacuuming!), cleared the back yard vegetable garden plot (once the site of the big hackberry tree) and planted several tomato and pepper plants my niece had left over from her garden around the sage plant that survived last winter (and has flourished), weeded the front yard flowerbed with Tam's help, added a couple bags of dirt to it and planted some wildflowers.  Even made a kind of vindaloo/pot roast* using my roasting pan on the grill for Saturday dinner and Sunday leftovers

      It was a lot of stuff.

      I woke up at 1:00 this morning in no little pain from my right knee, with a full bladder and not lot of hope that I would be able to walk to the washroom.  I did manage, and staggered into the kitchen afterward for a couple of acetaminophen pills.  Woke up again at 5:00 and thought, gee, where's my knee brace?

      Location unknown.  I went back to bed for an hour, until the cats came to my room and demanded breakfast.  Coffee, toast and a half-hour of ice has me feeling a little better, but it'll be a day to use my cane if I have to walk.  Still in pain (aspirin next) and not walking well -- and my cane routinely lives in the back of my car, where it's available if I need it at work but awkwardly distant just now.

      At least I got the garden planted.  Fresh tomatoes were a real treat last summer and I am hoping for more this year.  But oh, that knee!  It's stabbing at me even as I type.  I thought I was safely past this.
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* A big slab of inexpensive beef, marinated overnight in balsamic vinegar (plus a touch of white vinegar) and tamari with garlic, ginger, togarishi, fresh-ground mixed peppercorns, Indian spices and a few other things, then slow-cooked in a covered pan on the grill, fat separated and broth added back, and turnip, celery, carrot, mushroom, canned diced tomatoes, canned chilis and shishito peppers added over the course of several hours of cooking.  It's tasty and fall-apart tender -- and, for the chap who snarked at turnips in e-mail, they are far more flavorful than potatoes would be and add texture, going in first and cooking down nicely.  On Saturday, I served the meat sliced with the vegetables on the side and broth over all; Sunday, I sauteed more carrots, celery and shishito peppers, added the leftovers and cut up the meat for a lovely thick stew.  The grocery had huge briskets for $3.99 a pound (!) and I am tempted to buy one, freeze it in quarters, and make versions of this stuff for a month of weekends.

MAYDAY: Federal Reserve

     "Mayday, mayday, mayday.  This is your money, calling mayday.  Location uncertain.  Losing value fast.  Gasbag reinflation attempts have only made situation worse.  Mayday, mayday, mayday. I suspect Navagator Bernanke may have succumbed to hypoxia.  Mayday, mayday, mayday...."

     It is, you know.  May Day, that is.

Tinfoil Hat, Not: Copy Or Scan Money?

     I guess you can try -- but those bills are cryin' "Stop!" at the machine.  Link goes to the EURion Constellation, and that's just the one that got found out; there are other schemes, count on it.

     The battle between coiners and counterfeiters is at least as old as money and if you count buying a pig in a poke only to let the cat outta the bag, it's probably older.  In the case of mediums-of-exchange, ain't nobody spozed to water it down but Teh Gummint.  They get bent all outta shape when there's competition.

Economics Made Animated

     John Law (there was a real John Law?  Who knew!) and the Mississippi Bubble.

John Law and the Mississippi Bubble by Richard Condie, National Film Board of Canada

     (May not work.  If not, follow the link.)

     Relatedly: Eric S. Raymond on why he doesn't blog about politics very often these days: "The big-state system is like Coyote run off a cliff, frantically windmilling its legs in the air. The moment it looks down it’s going to fall, long and hard. Nothing I could write is going to make any difference to that outcome, any more."

     Ouch.

     (Unrelatedly: I swan, this year I will make time to visit General Lew Wallace's study.  How could one live so close and not?)

Sequester, Sequester--

     I'm just not feeling pestered by this supposedly dire threat, or no more than is usual.  Congress and the Executive are playing Chicken again.  Unable to settle on a budget, the two have nevertheless managed to spend money the Feds don't have at unprecedented rates and will keep on doing so even after (or, I suppose one must say, if) the "deep and painful cuts" in everything from Head Start the Department of Defense the sequester invokes take effect.

     In fact, those cuts will hardly slow it down, since big, popular vote-getting programs will scarcely feel the pinch.  Cut back the military and air traffic control and let TV newsies tell you just how much more dangerouser your world is?  Sure thing!  Cut aid to disadvantaged children, who are then used to tug at your heartstrings?  Absolutely!  Touch Social Security?  Er-- Only to the extent of a small furlough for workers.  Medicare will be facing cuts: all of two percent (This source --PDF warning! -- says they're both exempt.)  See, if it'll get a solid chunk of voters riled up, they ain't a-gonna do it.

     Bread.  Circuses are free but oh, the Empire does hand out bread.  We have built our New Rome and now we're stuck in it.

     And it doesn't appear that dancing with bankruptcy even begins to get their attention on the Capitol hill.

     (Bonus!  "Women, poor hardest hit."  Um, duh.  Trot out the widders an' orphans, Senator, and threaten them some more; and could you please 'splain me how it is moral to use a client class largely of your own creation as a hostage to support your unrestrained spending of the funds with which the electorate has entrusted you and continuing to spend long after those monies are gone?)

     ETA: Y'know, it would be paranoid to suggest that Feinstein, et. al. want you disarmed before the bottom drops out -- which the PDF linked above puts at 2027 - 2028 -- but it sure is interesting how Congress has had all manner of free time to spend plotting and attempting to justify infringing a fundamental, Constitutionally-protected right with the sequester rising up before them like a tidal wave.  Priorities send a message.  What does theirs tell you?

Election: Like It or Lump It

     It's what we got.  If Mr. Obama is a dedicated hardcore gun-grabbin' Marxist, you don't need to sound the alarm, he'll go all Shirker's Paradise an' start after your ARK-1547ses.  If he's a fuzzy-philosophied narcissist with jerk friends (like most Presidents), he will continue muddling on, blamin' Big Business and Wall Street (while bailing them out just like he and his total opposite Mr. Bush already did); the fed.gov will continue to have an indefinite-detention prison camp at Guantanamo and the .mil will still be boots-on-the-ground in Iraq and Afghanistan (just like he and his total opposite Mr. Bush already did) and the claimed right to kill anyone, anywhere, by frikkin' robot drones or a uniformed-services guy with a dedicated look in his eye and an M-4 or a long, heavy needle (just like he and his total opposite Mr. Bush already did), possibly based on secret hearings in a secret court (just like he and his total opposite Mr. Bush already did) or possibly mere Presidential whim.

     And you wanna tell me you're all het up about healthcare* and the different-length-fused time bombs of taxes, deficits and Federal entitlements?

     The first would've been a mess either way, just a different kind of mess and a different fight in Congress depending on how the elections turned out.  The problem there isn't the Presidency so much as it was the Senate, where the GOP threw away two seats over the social-conservative non-issue of abortion after having lured themselves into a game of where-to-draw-the-line with pro-choice folks.  Yes, a non-issue: very unlikely to change in the next six years, and certainly a non-issue here in Indiana, where strong pro-life Republican Richard Mourdock lost the Senate race to strong pro-life Democrat Joe Donnelly.  The stink Mr. Mourdock and the biologically ignorant Mr. Aken† gave rise to may have cost their party other seats, too; I'll leave that for the pundigentsia to dope out.

     The other issues are also a mess either way and for blame, you have to go back to FDR and Ponzi.  Like John Maynard Kenynes, they're safely dead and probably sniggering.  No Congress or President can work it out, it still will go over a cliff and the only questions are how soon and how far it will fall.  (At worst, the U.S. will go the way the USSR did; I expect this will happen in my lifetime, probably in time to reduce my retirement savings to wallpaper.  I still don't know if I should work on paying off this house or try instead to buy acreage with a good well, water running downhill, and room for a good-sized truck garden, but I'm going for tangible assets instead of paper and so should you.  You can't eat a 401k.)

     Elections are over, we got what we got, and if there's any true colors to be shown while the leopard refuses to change his shorts, you'll see 'em.  You don't make much headway if you keep riding out night after night claiming "The Brutish are coming!" unless you wait for the light to show in the belfry of the Old North Church.

     No matter who won, the relentless march of the Feds towards a police state would continue unabated -- albeit one with happy-face stickers and some degree and manner of the trappings of the former rule of law.  I have never seen a year when the noose did not grow tighter -- usually in a direction most people either weren't looking or had convinced themselves was oooooo-tay.

     Maybe it's time to re-examine your priorities; I will be checking over mine.  And, Republican Party?  Its not about being "too moderate" or "too conservative" on any conventional axis, it's about the being hit and miss on basic, hardcore issues that directly affect the greatest number of potential voters.  That party has a lot of sorting-out to do and I have no hope it will undertake any of it before the next round -- and until they do, they will continue to lose elections.  (See also: Claire Wolfe.)

     I'm done with 'em.  I'm voting a straight LP ticket.  No more handouts to GOPpers (and the rare Dem) who look as if they might stink a little less bad than their opponent. Might as well lose while backing an ideologically consistent group with real answers; the elephant and the donkey refuse to give up their fairytales, no matter what it costs their parties -- or the country.
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* Which reminds me, if you are pro-life, do not stand there and tell me how you want government out -- totally, completely 100% O-U-T -- of me and my doctor's healthcare decisions, because you don't; you just have a different, shorter list of matters in which the .gov can interfere.  It's smaller but it's still a camel's nose, no matter how much you dress it up.
 
† I suppose it's unfair to single him out; most politicians are ignorant of everything except how to solicit a bribe without saying anything chargeable, accept it gracefully when it arrives, what fork to use and who to use it on, and when to say "ain't."

Not Going Gentle Into The Good Night

     Or even the bad night.

     When my maternal grandmother -- schoolteacher, mother of five daughters, one son and a somewhat ADHD husband* -- was quite old and widowed, she became very outspoken.  A proper Victorian, she had raised her children to be modest in their public utterances, so her daughters were horrified.  They would chide her, "Mother, you can't talk like that!  Not at your age!"

     Her reply?  "At what age, then, will I be able to speak my mind?" 

     Y'know what?  We don't have forever.  Missed chances are often lost and never come again.  The old books and gadgets I like are fewer and more fragile with every passing year.  I am not going to wait until I'm silver-haired and frail, only to reap a harvest of regrets.

     Plus I'm just about certain the U.S. will suffer an economic collapse before I check out.  (I'm not cheering it on; I'd love to see us dodge it but bedarned if I know how).  Even if that doesn't happen, inflation has already turned what was a respectable amount of money in my youth into pocket change.  "Use it or lose it" has never been more true.

     So I'm writin' stories, even though it doesn't pay.  I blog about politics and whatever else I fancy.  I bought a motoscooter, broke my leg, learned to ride.  I'm piddling about -- whoops, pedaling about -- on pennyfarthings; I have learned to shoot, climbed sheer rock walls in the Grand Tetons, seen Niagara falls, bought a house, owned an MGB, stared at airships, flown a light plane and helped launch a digital revolution in your TV set.  I'm not gonna end up rocking on the porch, wrapped in a shawl, watching the kids zoom by in their jetpacks, wishing I'd Done Things back when I could.  If I've gotta buy lions secondhand, so be it, but I'll buy 'em if I want 'em just the same.
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* In the very best way: schoolteacher, coach, superintendent of schools, time-motion engineer, tireless one-on-one reformer of the reformable -- and he just loathed FDR, to whom he bore considerable resemblance.  I believe he came of age during Teddy Roosevelt's Presidency. TR had made an impression on him.  I never met the man and yet I miss him.

No, "Audit The Fed," Not "Blow Up!"

Once again, the FBI's got itself into the bomb-supplies business -- but just like Wile E. Coyote's ACME, what they sell doesn't actually work.

     This time, they found a man from Bangladesh who wanted to blow stuff up and were only to happy to set him up.  As is so often the case, it was Target: NYC, with the Federal Reserve Bank his immediate aim, since it seemed easier to hit than the Stock Exchange.  (And we wonder why Mayor Bloomberg seems paranoid?  The FBI's settin' people up to bomb his town!  But you think he'd fret more about ANFO than NRA.)

     While you have to wonder how far any of these clowns would get without J. Edgar Hoover's kids "helping," the successful outcome is that yet again, something didn't get exploded.  (And for the record, I am very much in favor of keeping malefactors from blowing up persons and property.)

     Also, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.  And that's the part that kinda frets me.

     (Summat related, the short film Me And The Big Guy.  Sounds interesting.)

EU Awarded Nobel Peace Prize: Inside Job

Why not?  After all, our current President won the thing for...um, what, winning the election despite American horribleness? Not being G. W. Bush? (But the Nobel Peace Prize has kind of a history of being awarded to foreign heads of the state the Committee has high hopes for, so that's not so far out of line). --But there was a shark in the road ahead:

     Now, the Nobel committee has handed the Peace Prize to the European Union, on the self-congratulatory assertion that the Continent has, somehow, so far managed to avoid starting yet another big war, despite the Archduke-rich environment and an ongoing economic implosion certain to end in wheelbarrows and/or trillion-Euro pocket change.  A committee chaired, by sheerest coincidence, by Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary-General of the Council Of Europe, a kind of Neanderthal proto-.gov existing side by side with the EU's Cro-Magnon and, as is typical of the way things run over there,* thoroughly entangled with it.

     It only avoids being a conflict of interest because nobody outside the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is interested any more.

     But these days, the Peace Prize should come with a round red nose and some white grease paint, don't you think?  And maybe they can get someone to repaint The Coronation of Napoleon with Thorbjoern in the starring spot, face painted and in the process of sticking the clown-nose on!

     Self-beclowning: now all Europeanish and coooool.  Gak.
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* Give them this, there's a kind of freedom in getting things so completely snarled up that nobody can sort them out.

They're Doing It To Ecuador, Too

And East Timor, the British Virgin Islands, Panama, El Salvador, the Federated States of Micronesia and several other countries: QE3.  Inflation.  See, they all use the U. S. Dollar as their actual money, though some of them mint their own cent-value-equivalent coins as well; another handful of countries use our dollars alongside their own money at a fixed rate of exchange.  While the various dollar-shrinking tricks the Feds are pulling may not make all that much difference to an Ecuadorian buying Ecuador-made goods in Ecuador, he's certain to feel the pinch when he goes to buy a Japanese TV or a Korean car -- or a celphone made in China.  (And let's not even talk about what it does to the tourist trade in the British West Indies, though you can bet they are.)

     So remind me again how the Administration is such a friend to the little guy internationally?  Pity's sake, not only do the folks in those countries have no more chance to vote on the Great Mind (ahem) in charge of the Fed than we do, they can't even vote on the guy who picks him.

     Best of all?  Some of those countries ended up switching to U. S. dollars after their central bank tried to print its way clear of economic woes.  It's the Wile E. Coyote school of economics: does jumping off a cliff work any better when the cliff is a hundred times as high?

It's The End! The End! Aaaargh!

Stansberry Associates has a new TEOTWAWKI vid out; they were pushin' it on the Ijit Tube this morning. I took a look.

Y'know how it's possible to be right in such a way that it looks like you're full of it? For instance, take a real figure, then say, "But if..." and outline a circumstance that's not gonna happen, like gummints suddenly having to pay the same kind of interest rate as you and me on previously-established debt, and then run with it as if it was the actual number? Yeah. Maybe not a real good way to go if the listener happens to be taking notes. They have a history of tellin' the truth a bit costumed; I'm assuming it's simply a bent for the dramatic.

But here's the thing: the sky really is falling. Uncle Sam's greenbacks are less and less obviously the Very Best Choice and their only saving grace so far is that everything else looks worse. The Euro is busy cuttin' itself off at the knees; Iceland's lookin' not Eurozonewards but West to the Loonie for their new monetary base. And the Fed, well, they have the Mint printing more U. $. Dollars just as quick as they can; more dollars chasing the same quantity of goods and services results in-- What is it called, class?

--It could be a whole lot worse than just your house payment turning into the cost of a case of booze; even if your pay chases within sounding distance of the rate of inflation (don't bank on it) and you own a very fine wheelbarrow, there could be worse in the wings. Right now, most international business is done in dollars. This helps keep our own homegrown currency as sound as -- gee, golly, as sound as the dollar. Everyone uses them; everyone has a vested interest in not lettin' 'em go lighter-than-hot-air and float away.

Alas, if way too many are out there, if the dear old $ gets inflated/devalued enough, no bank in the world will want to be left holding it when the music stops; no sheik or autocrat will price his $NATURAL RESOURCE in bucks if the value of 'em will evaporate before he can direct-dial Rolls-Royce or Bombardier.

There's still no serious contender for replacement; the next-most-traded currencies (Euro, Japanese Yen) aren't exactly in fighting form. But our old pals in Red China have been busy writing about the tottering dollar -- and wouldn't they just love to have banks of the world cherishing colorful Renminbi instead?

And what would that do to the price of all those colorful Chinese imports, from iPhones to Mall-Wart socks?

The punditry will no doubt advise sellin' short and buyin' gold. Me, I dunno; you can't eat it. Brass and lead and Parkerized or blued steel might be more-useful metals. And instead of stocks, we'd likely be better off with goats and chickens, with a garden and the distinctly non-1337 skills it takes to grow 'em up and turn 'em into food. Me, I'm thinking about getting the house re-insulated.

And we'll be wanting some expert advice before things fall apart. Me, I dunno from Wall Street -- I'm more interested in my street.

Funicular? Wilderness Of Mirrors?

I dunno; Federal politics partake of both. Like the funicular (but far less benign), there's a left side and a right side; one's up when the other is down, and they never quite touch in passing (though it's possible to get badly torn up if you get caught in the middle). It travels, but the net motion cancels out.

On the other hand, the amount of mutual dis- and mis-information bandied about makes it generally impossible to be sure of anything but the most banal and inane facts about office-holders and office-seekers. What's true, what's gaslighting, who has his fingers crossed when he says what-- You don't know. You can't know.

Looking at who's running for President -- and who isn't -- I can only conclude the deeper pundits (and perhaps pockets) of both sides have decided the economy is going to tank even worse in the next four years, possibly followed by a nice game of the-center-cannot-hold; the Dems have left a less-than-popular incumbent to take the fall (seriously, have you seen what his own party's Left has to say about the guy?) while the GOP has abandoned the field to a pool of perennial also-rans and perpetual candidates. Other than Mr. Santorum's religious fervor (a bit polarizingly off-kilter for a guy who aims to be President of the entire mixed pot of citizens), the whole bunch of them rate little more interest than "meh."

Their Party seniors can read the wind; what they read, they're not sayin', but what they've left fluttering in the breeze looks more and more like a hurricane flag.

And that's this morning's happy thought. At least I got the link to funiculars in there.

On Politics, Activism And Blog Content

I've been mostly talkin' about small, personal things of late and there's a reason for it. No, I haven't given up, quite the reverse.

I think there's a tsunami coming. While Claire is talking hyperinflation in the linked post, I wouldn't bet against a long, slow downhill slide instead of an abrupt change of slope. I don't see much recognition of the problem from the fed.gov or the leading and lesser lights of either party (except, perhaps, R0n P4u1) and no grasp whatsoever of the magnitude of the current and likely future problem.

There's not much I can do about it. Help keep Roseholme stocked with long-term storable foods and drygoods, assist in gardening as much as I can (we are woefully behind; though Tam claims to not have much of a green thumb, she's a veritable Mother Nature compared to me: I've got more of a brass thumb).

I don't think sign-waving or writing to Congresscritters will help. Nor is it the kind of issue that could be fixed by a few strategic "rooftop vetoes." Can't fix it at the ballot box, either; while I'd like to think a healthy outcome of Bad Times would be a greater diversity of choices for voters, that won't happen until (unless) things have already gone bad -- at which point any Huey Long promising a new car in every pot plus two chickens in the garage is liable to drown out opponents with notions for a long-term solution.

So I'm keeping the knives sharp, the pantry stocked and ammunition on hand; I've got my sewing machine and leatherworking kit, electronics workshop and vehicle repair tools (I'm stocking scooter parts as I can. With gas over $4.00 a gallon again, it's a better choice than any car). I hope to get by. I stopped thinking about retirement a long time ago; the dirty, class-war commies of AARP have started sending me their nasty little invites (pathetically early: "Give me the middle-aged adult and I'll own the senior citizen," perhaps?) but for my generation there is unlikely to be any easy dozing on the porch; Social Security will be bankrupt or its dollars valueless, other retirement funds eaten away by inflation; marketable skills are the only thing I know to hold real value -- and many of those become less relevant as technology shifts (when was the last time you saw a TV repair shop?) .

Thus I talk about things closer to home, down to earth. Simple joys like the antics of a cat. When the politicians are on something of interest, like firearm laws or other Constitutionally-protected activities, I comment. I'm not going to try to tell you how to get out of this mess, 'cos I have no idea.

Water runs downhill and the two big parties sweat over diverting it a few degrees to the left or right, both hotly denying it'll ever reach bottom. They're dreaming but the nightmare will be ours. No Congressman will miss a meal, no bureaucrat, nobody in the Executive or Judicial branches is gonna have to choose between the gas bill and the electric bill. I strongly suspect for the rest of us, if that's as bad as it ever gets, that'll be a good outcome.

Buy A Wheelbarrow: Hyperinflation Forecast

Unhappy thoughts:

"The [...] crises of the last four years only have been precursors to the coming Great Collapse: a hyperinflationary great depression. Such will encompass a complete collapse in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar; a collapse in the normal stream of U.S. commercial and economic activity [...]."

Read Claire Wolf's quick take or the whole article from Shadow Statistics. The indicators do not look good; anyone who's been buying groceries this Spring knows the prices are higher every week, while the Feds and The Fed keep claimin' prosperity is right around the corner.

Yeah, it is, holding a rusty .32 revolver and gettin' ready to ask for whatever's in your pockets.

I'm pretty sure there's no hidin' in the basement until this one's blown over.

Brazen Burglary?

More like ferrous! The headline says it all: Indiana police investigate theft of railroad tracks.

Times are indeed tough -- even if you have enough heavy machinery and sheer effrontery steal railroad tracks.

"...but it's a good day...."

Gasoline prices took a big jump yesterday, $3.15/gallon up from $2.79[1] -- for once, the day after I filled up my tank -- and this morning, the Local News had to explain to us proles What It All Meant:
Higher prices at the pump, the man with the microphone said, are the price we pay for a recovering global economy. [2]

Huh.

So, I found myself wondering, they're not the result of pumping zillions of fresh-printed dollars into the "recovering economy" and thereby making each and every one of them worth a bit less? Oooookay.

Bonus point: "Hoosiers will keep on paying for higher fuel prices even away from the pump. More on that 'trickle-down' effect coming up." See, they tolja "trickle-down economics" was baaaad! (And, natch, rubes like us could not possibly grasp that it takes fuel to move, well, everything tangible from point A to point B and we pay for the gas as a part of the price we pay for the tangible item).

Egad.

(Homework for the curious: compare oil prices to gold prices in various currencies. Betcha they track, with gold generally leading).
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1. Yes, you pay more. Unless you pay less.
2. Corrected mispelling "prince" to"price".

We're Doomed! Doomed!

...Hell of it is, we probably are. Stansberry and Associates are creating controversy and turning a tidy profit by telling you about it as a way of selling subscriptions to their service; and since it's prognostication, who's to say he's wrong? Trouble is, they have a mildly mixed reputation; when the first Google return for your name that isn't you contains fighting words like "scam," I gotta suggest the ol' emptor might wanna grain of caveat or two.

On the other hand -- the U. S. Dollar is in sad straits and fixing to become sadder, even with tough ol' Ron Paul on course to be chairing the committee that has oversight on the bureaucrats who advise the Fed on-- aw, we're doomed: onions have fewer layers.

You do need to have half a year's food set back (we're three months shy at Roseholme) and water, too (OMG, we have maybe a month); and though it is flat over the long term, gold has the advantage of holding purchasing power while the value of cash money plummets. (There's people swear by silver, which is way below the famous 16:1 ratio. Spin the wheel if you can afford it, I guess). And do those things not because doom is imminently imminent but because it is never all that far away; one winter storm, one tornado, one major illness or accident, one layoff can have you digging into your reserves and getting through -- if you have them.

Interestingly, as talk of a Coming Collapse or Greater Depression-Like-Thingie (GDLT, you read it here first, folks) is bandied about, I've been reading a very apt "seminal book of libertarian thought" that few folks seem to have read: Rose Wilder Lane's The Discovery of Freedom. (Go to Tam's Amazon link, buy a copy. You won't be sorry).

Ms. Lane's thesis, at least in the early going, is that while Government may be inevitable, it is invariably self-destructive as well; for every "service" a government renders past the bare minimum takes away energy that could be put to productive use; Government must inevitably grow to survive (since it accrues layer upon layer); and although "...there is a natural limit to the amount of human energy that Government can waste...," but "because men in Government are using...force, they have no means of knowing what this natural limit is." [Lane, op. cit. p 54, italics in the original].

She opines that societies only grow and prosper when Government is kept small enough that productive effort is not hampered; once Government has got big enough to meddle in economic activity, real progress comes to an end and they coast on past glories, eating up more and more productive capacity in parasitic routine until things fall apart. Government is simply a very complex self-unpowering machine that happens to provide police and courts.

Like that. Only with a lot more steps between "go" and "stopped."

Overheard In VFTP Command Central

Tam: "If I was minded to believe in conspiracies, I'd wonder at all the attention given to the off-again, on-again Koran-burning in Florida and the Ground Zero Mosque. It's almost like they want a global war to get the economy moving."

Your lips to FDR's ears....

Elsewhere: there was an animated cartoon version of Animal Farm? And it's on YouTube? H'mmm.

Things Are Never So Bad

Never so bad that a government program to "fix" them won't make it worse: [President]* Obama's "August Surprise" has yet to be revealed, but some speculation leans strongly to another massive government bailout, likely an attempted vote-buying "Main Street bailout" in the form of forgiving or hugely reducing the amount owed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans (issuers of the bad loans that stated the whole housing boom rolling).

Can his Administration be that foolish? Will they? I dunno -- but I'm startin' to wish we'd put in a little vegetable garden at Roseholme this year. That's the sort of thing that jump-starts inflation, not the economy; and the current Congress and the present Administration already have a history of pulling the pin on things they haven't any clue about.

Aw, rats. I just realized we haven't got a wheelbarrow, either.
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* I continue to object to invoking Presidents and other politicians by naked patronymic. Sure, I believe 95% of them -- at least -- are snakes-in-the-grass who should be kept away from the good silver and the keys to the liquor cabinet and, ideally, never be invited in. It still looks bad to bark out their names. Please, not where Canadians and Europeans can see -- the poor innocents still have a few illusions left about gravitas and dignitas and if we can keep them from seeing any real close photos (Representative Frank, Madame Speaker Pelosi, I'm lookin' at you) and use proper titles, we might be able to avoid shatterin' 'em.