The first rule of FightClub - Never talk about FightClub.
At least the MSN get it, I wasn't at that meeting so I will ignore the first rule.
I'm recommending getting 3 months of non-perishable food on hand. More if you can.
IF we were allowed guns and ammo, those too. Thanks Bryant.
It is not a joke this time. The Fed in the USA has just printed 600bil to pump the market.
This will keep stocks up so the elites can get their cash out to commodities or other safe havens.
Future tax payers(Assuming civilisation survives) will pick up the tab. Sell vs Buy orders on wall street are roughly 1000:1 for the big players.
"Yeah but, thats America you dolt". As I have had someone say to me recently. My reply was - "What started GFC round one?".
Look to the price increases - food and fuel is going to go up, up, up. Check the oil price index to the right, whaet futures anyone?
Short term future? I expect a drop in the oil price due to reduced market demand - noone has money, especially as deflation starts, then hyper-inflation will kick in as fiat currency stops buying the necessities of life.
Be prepared to wipe your ass with fiat money, the only vestigal worth it may hold, a pity our's is plastic. Gold will not be much better. You can't eat it or ask someone to work for you who is just interested in food.
The consequences for middle class Australia:
Where is your Super Bitchez? Mine is in CASH. Thats the best I can do(not self managed). Remove it from the system that will artificially hold up the market till it falls off the cliff. Increasingly government will be tempted to kill the debt buble with this cash. California is approaching Super funds for loans - good luck getting it back if your money is in funds that say yes. They are doing this to keep cops on the street and the garbage from mounting up on the sidewalk. The chances of a gen 'x-er' seeing their super is NIL.
Anyone notice their power bills ths year are out of control? Start imagining no power most of the time.
Not because it's not there, but because you have killed it at the meter - it is no longer in the middle class family budget. If this happens the system will break down.
I'm talking peak energy here. Where return on investment no longer pays. And the consumer will be the barometer.
And don't try and tell me that AGW is not true(So we are paying unfair energy prices blah blah blah) - I will have to scisor kick you in the head. Nobody gives the wilderbeast a get out of jail free card when the lions pounce. That's nature, thermodynamics, limits to growth. Get used to it. See the SCIENCE on global warming.
The supermarket has a 3 day logistic chain - you have been warned. Got soap?
Update: From http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
You may think by now that Geithner and Bernanke and Larry Summers and Bob Rubin and all the rest of the pack are miserable failures and two sheets to the wind and all that, but you'd do better to give them a lot more credit than that.
QE2 is here, despite the gigantic failures and behemoth losses of its predecessors, because QE works like a Mother Mary statue in tears' bleeding charm. Of course these guys all know that no proof of a QE ever reviving an economy exists. But they can pretend it does, and so they do: $900 billion, even for them, is real money.
Thing is, they never meant QE2 to do what they publicly claim they intended it for. This is nothing but another move to bail out lethally wounded banks.
A full additional $900 billion and counting was announced this week. Basically nothing but a swap of long term for short term paper, and therefore necessarily a -very- short term measure. What does it achieve, apart from a knee-jerk market reaction?
Wall Street banks get another injection of short term breathing space. That's all. And what was that last number on insider selling vs buying again? 3000 to 1?! Look, these people can't sell all their hygienic paper all at once, there's silly market regulations that prevent it, they need a time window to do it.
Hey, Bank of America rose 2% today, and Citi was up 3.7%. Now, if all is that rosy, why are William K. Black and L. Randall Wray calling for BofA's books to be opened and the entire firm to be nationalized? Well, BofA shares are at $12, an 80% loss from 3 years ago, and Citi's at $4, a well over 90% loss over the same time period.
These are America's largest financial institutions, and finance over the past 10-20 years has become a disproportionally huge chunk of the US economy. And its politics. And that's where the crux is.
I don’t know about you, but I have completely lost interest in trying to figure out which candidate in the midterm elections got how much from Wall Street. They all need their campaign contributions from bankrupt institutions such as BofA and Citi if they want to have a shot at being elected. It's a closed system, it really is. Putting a few guys behind bars wouldn't change that. And besides, none of them paid that kind of money just to be put behind bars to begin with.
But let's not try and solve it all in one go. For now, please understand that QE2 was never intended to jump-start the American economy. It was meant to prolong Wile E.'s 15 minutes of fame, to keep banks like BofA and Citi above water long enough to allow anyone who has some skin in it to get the hell out without triggering any alarm bells.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
End game
From Zerohedge:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-ben-bernanke-sentenced-poorest-20-population-cold-hungry-winter
The following chart prepared recently by JPMorgan demonstrates something rather scary, and makes it all too clear how the Chairman's plan to "assist" the US population via some imaginary "wealth effect" due to QE2, is about to backfire. As is now becoming very evident, the prices of energy and food products are about to surge, and in many cases have already done so, but courtesy of some clever gimmicks (Wal Mart selling what was formerly 39 oz of coffee as a 33.9 oz product for example) the end consumers haven't quite felt it yet. They will soon. There is a limit to how much every commodity can open limit up before it appears on the SKU price at one's local grocer. And while a marginally declining "core CPI" is irrelevant for this exercise as it measures only items that are completely outside of the scope of everyday life, what will be far more important to end consumers will be the push higher in food and energy costs. The problem, however, is that for the lowest 20% of Americans, as per the BLS, food and energy purchases represent over 50% of their after-tax income (a number which drops to 10% for the wealthiest twenty percentile). In other words should rampant liquidity end up pushing food and energy prices to double (something that is a distinct possibility currently), Ben Bernanke may have very well sentenced about 60 million Americans to a hungry and very cold winter, let alone having any resources to buy trinkets with the imaginary wealth effect which for over 80% of the US population will never come.
Here is how JPM explains the phenomenon:
---------------
Note to the rest of the world - What happened when the USA had it's last little fuckup? Thats the only trickle down you get from Globalism.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-ben-bernanke-sentenced-poorest-20-population-cold-hungry-winter
The following chart prepared recently by JPMorgan demonstrates something rather scary, and makes it all too clear how the Chairman's plan to "assist" the US population via some imaginary "wealth effect" due to QE2, is about to backfire. As is now becoming very evident, the prices of energy and food products are about to surge, and in many cases have already done so, but courtesy of some clever gimmicks (Wal Mart selling what was formerly 39 oz of coffee as a 33.9 oz product for example) the end consumers haven't quite felt it yet. They will soon. There is a limit to how much every commodity can open limit up before it appears on the SKU price at one's local grocer. And while a marginally declining "core CPI" is irrelevant for this exercise as it measures only items that are completely outside of the scope of everyday life, what will be far more important to end consumers will be the push higher in food and energy costs. The problem, however, is that for the lowest 20% of Americans, as per the BLS, food and energy purchases represent over 50% of their after-tax income (a number which drops to 10% for the wealthiest twenty percentile). In other words should rampant liquidity end up pushing food and energy prices to double (something that is a distinct possibility currently), Ben Bernanke may have very well sentenced about 60 million Americans to a hungry and very cold winter, let alone having any resources to buy trinkets with the imaginary wealth effect which for over 80% of the US population will never come.
Here is how JPM explains the phenomenon:
When the Fed considers the possible consequences of a falling dollar resulting from QE2, it should perhaps focus on food and energy prices as much as on traditionally computed core inflation. First, the food/energy exposures of the lower 2 income quintiles are quite high (see chart). Second, the core CPI has a massive weight to “owner’s equivalent rent”, which suggests that the imputed cost of home occupancy has gone down. Unfortunately, this is not true for families living in homes that are underwater, and cannot move to take advantage of it (unless they choose to default and bear the consequences of doing so). Due to the housing mess, there has perhaps never been a time when traditionally computed core inflation as a way of measuring changes in the cost of things means less than it does right now.Since nothing else appears to have jarred America from its prime time TV/iPad hypnosis yet, perhaps this is for the best, and a few hungry months in subzero temperatures is precisely what several tens of millions of Americans need to finally march on Constitution avenue.
---------------
Note to the rest of the world - What happened when the USA had it's last little fuckup? Thats the only trickle down you get from Globalism.
Interregnum
http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/as-one-drought-ends-hope-dries-up-in-wa/story-e6frg13u-1225942054152
How many of you people expect to wake up in 10 years and expect your lives to be the same. Y'know all happy and shit with Maccas still available around the corner?
I suggest you re-watch MadMax. That will be closer to your future. Super will not save you nor will the government.
The French don't get it yet with all of their laudable protesations. The easy bit of the Civ game we are playing is over. But no one joins the dots?! TOO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE. Even in this girt continent.
Welcome to Harry Harrisons world.
Please explain to me how all of this will end well? The Banksters in the USA have ruined the Kensian dream. Physics suggests that we have overshot our carrying capicity of the FUCKING PLANET, did you just not get that bit?
And people tell me I should invest in super, my health, the stock market - What the FUCK FOR?
Did you know that if the world heats up more than 2 degrees then there is a 30% chance of runaway global warming? 6 Degrees will end life on earth. We are approaching 400 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere - the point where we could avoid a 2 degree rise is 330ppm...Scisor kick the next denialist you see, for me.
How many of you people expect to wake up in 10 years and expect your lives to be the same. Y'know all happy and shit with Maccas still available around the corner?
I suggest you re-watch MadMax. That will be closer to your future. Super will not save you nor will the government.
The French don't get it yet with all of their laudable protesations. The easy bit of the Civ game we are playing is over. But no one joins the dots?! TOO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE. Even in this girt continent.
Welcome to Harry Harrisons world.
Please explain to me how all of this will end well? The Banksters in the USA have ruined the Kensian dream. Physics suggests that we have overshot our carrying capicity of the FUCKING PLANET, did you just not get that bit?
And people tell me I should invest in super, my health, the stock market - What the FUCK FOR?
Did you know that if the world heats up more than 2 degrees then there is a 30% chance of runaway global warming? 6 Degrees will end life on earth. We are approaching 400 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere - the point where we could avoid a 2 degree rise is 330ppm...Scisor kick the next denialist you see, for me.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Why am I blogging?
I guess every blogger should let potential readers know why they have decided to 'blog' their thoughts on the Internet for all and sundry to read. This is my attempt to do just that.
I see many threads in the world around around as converging. Most of these threads are of a negative nature.
You are rolling your eyes right now; "Oh Nos - Another Doomer!"
I hope to stimulate a more intellectual and measured response to the issues we collectively face. That is, if you, like I, wish to make the world a better place, or even a place where humans continue to exist.
There is so much denial of what is staring us in the face, if we choose to lower the pillow during the scary bit of the movie and confront what the director has intended, then at least we may understand our situation, and perhaps find ways to improve the situation. I use the analogy of a scary movie for good reason; much of what I will blog about is scary.
So much of what we take for granted is now in jeopardy. And I speak as a first world person, not one of the disenfranchised who had the misfortune to be born into less positive circumstances. The disenfranchised live in the first and third worlds - my family, on the cusp, would have been middle class as little as 5 years ago. Peak oil is creeping up on all of us.
"In 2007, 923 million people were reported as being undernourished, an increase of 80 million since 1990-92"
We have added many millions of us to the world since then, despite the "Green Revolution", more and more die every year. This is a tipping point for humanity, live on television, as long as you are not switching over to "reality T.V." to avoid the inconvenient truth. There are too many of us, and the world cannot support us, especially with constraints on energy on the horizon.
Population, or more correctly, overpopulation is the cause of ALL humanity's woes. 1 million hunter gatherers could do as they wished, till the sun gives out and envelops the earth. 7-10 billion humans (within the next 30 years) aspiring to a techno-utopia as seen on T.V. it's just NOT GOING TO FUCKING HAPPEN.
So my first bit of advice, is to throw away the T.V. (Responsibly, I might add.) It is rotting your brain, and will let in all of the plutocracy who wish to continue the current system of growth at any cost. Revel in your local culture, if you still have one. If not, connect with others, build resilient communities and build a culture of the future. That has a future. I work hard in I.T. my profession is without a future.
T.V. is meant to "Green Wash" all the things that will keep the elite rich, you poor, the populations growing (their market of serfs) and the planet dying.
My family doesn't have a T.V. We watch what we want to, when we want to, on the Internet. No ads for 'Bratz' dolls for my daughter to consume and the toxic sexuality these little zombie dolls represent. My daughter is going to be a whole lot more powerful than the marketeers definitions. More a Sarah Conner than a Paris Hilton.
I digress, as is a blogger's prerogative.
No one can put a certain timeline to how the fall of our civilisation will take place, unless you are Ben Bernanke. It may even just depend on your definition of what makes a good civilisation; think Blade runner. As long as you think the government is looking out for you, that you are owed something by the universe, then you consign yourself to slavery, to a system that will in the short term reward your docile sycophancy, in the long term it will place you in a herd.
A herd driving relentlessly towards a pasture of dust and lamentation.
*This blogs reading/watching list:
"Make Room, Make Room" by Harry Harrison
Info on Bill Hicks
How to grow a food forest
I see many threads in the world around around as converging. Most of these threads are of a negative nature.
You are rolling your eyes right now; "Oh Nos - Another Doomer!"
I hope to stimulate a more intellectual and measured response to the issues we collectively face. That is, if you, like I, wish to make the world a better place, or even a place where humans continue to exist.
There is so much denial of what is staring us in the face, if we choose to lower the pillow during the scary bit of the movie and confront what the director has intended, then at least we may understand our situation, and perhaps find ways to improve the situation. I use the analogy of a scary movie for good reason; much of what I will blog about is scary.
So much of what we take for granted is now in jeopardy. And I speak as a first world person, not one of the disenfranchised who had the misfortune to be born into less positive circumstances. The disenfranchised live in the first and third worlds - my family, on the cusp, would have been middle class as little as 5 years ago. Peak oil is creeping up on all of us.
"In 2007, 923 million people were reported as being undernourished, an increase of 80 million since 1990-92"
We have added many millions of us to the world since then, despite the "Green Revolution", more and more die every year. This is a tipping point for humanity, live on television, as long as you are not switching over to "reality T.V." to avoid the inconvenient truth. There are too many of us, and the world cannot support us, especially with constraints on energy on the horizon.
Population, or more correctly, overpopulation is the cause of ALL humanity's woes. 1 million hunter gatherers could do as they wished, till the sun gives out and envelops the earth. 7-10 billion humans (within the next 30 years) aspiring to a techno-utopia as seen on T.V. it's just NOT GOING TO FUCKING HAPPEN.
So my first bit of advice, is to throw away the T.V. (Responsibly, I might add.) It is rotting your brain, and will let in all of the plutocracy who wish to continue the current system of growth at any cost. Revel in your local culture, if you still have one. If not, connect with others, build resilient communities and build a culture of the future. That has a future. I work hard in I.T. my profession is without a future.
T.V. is meant to "Green Wash" all the things that will keep the elite rich, you poor, the populations growing (their market of serfs) and the planet dying.
My family doesn't have a T.V. We watch what we want to, when we want to, on the Internet. No ads for 'Bratz' dolls for my daughter to consume and the toxic sexuality these little zombie dolls represent. My daughter is going to be a whole lot more powerful than the marketeers definitions. More a Sarah Conner than a Paris Hilton.
I digress, as is a blogger's prerogative.
No one can put a certain timeline to how the fall of our civilisation will take place, unless you are Ben Bernanke. It may even just depend on your definition of what makes a good civilisation; think Blade runner. As long as you think the government is looking out for you, that you are owed something by the universe, then you consign yourself to slavery, to a system that will in the short term reward your docile sycophancy, in the long term it will place you in a herd.
A herd driving relentlessly towards a pasture of dust and lamentation.
*This blogs reading/watching list:
"Make Room, Make Room" by Harry Harrison
Info on Bill Hicks
How to grow a food forest
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