L, L, and the P of H: 2015 Edition (bringing the Founding Fathers into 2015)

Last week, I wrote about my history as a blogger and included a post I wrote for my blog on, the now defunct website GuerrillaNews.com.  I wrote that post over ten years ago and felt it was still pretty accurate. In fact, the sentiment behind it is probably more accurate in 2015 than it was in 2004. So, I thought I'd post an updated version.  Here goes:

L, L, and the P of H: 2015 Edition

Fri, 4 Sep 2015 13:00:00

We, in America, were always taught to revere the Founding Fathers.  They had the wisdom and strength to not only conceive of the Great Democratic Experiment, but to see it all the way through to fruition.  And they did so in the face of a mighty empire and its king who oppressed them all with unfair taxation.  What wise and brave men they were!

So, wise that for the past two-and-a-half centuries,  we have looked at the words they wrote and the system that put in place as almost sacrosanct.  On more than one occasion, regarding more than a few issues, our leaders, our news media, our idiot Television pundits have asked "what were the intentions of the founding fathers?"

As though, it's not fairly obvious when you consider the context of the Founding Fathers and the men themselves.

As though, culture hasn't changed dramatically since 1776.

As though, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were not written in English as a set of instructions to run a government.

As though, these documents were holy writ, words of deities written in another language and handed down to us, through millennia.

The Fed Invents $3 Trillion and That's OK (I Guess?)

This episode of the Planet Money podcast was really fun (as many of them are), but the first segment was particularly concerning. They talk about how the Fed (literally) conjured $3 trillion from the aether and banks didn't bother loaning it out. All this money is just sitting there, doing nothing. Hopefully, the banks won't loan it out all at once, which would seem, to me, like a reeeally bad idea (steroidal inflation!). In fact, the banks just sitting on it seems like a bad idea, too. I mean, the point was to stimulate the economy. However, according to the experts, it is recovering just fine.

$3 trillion just seems like a LOT of money to wish in from the Cornfield Bank. It's not as bad as that one time, but still. The fact that the Fed can invent money at all is irksome and with everything the USG, banks, and corporations have done over the last ten years, it's hard to trust them.
Just on principle, think about how the Fed works.

They help keep our economic system stable by creating money from nothing. But who benefits the most from our economic system? The 1%. And who runs the Fed? Members of the 1%. So, really, it's just the rich protecting the rich while making sure we get enough table scraps to survive, but not enough to get into a position of power so we can do something to stop this lop-sided system.

If you think about just how much money is in our economy, you realize that a ton of problems that America is dealing with could go away. Do you know how many homeless people that $3 trillion could house? How many it could feed? How many medical bills it could pay?

Ugh... I feel gross just thinking about it.

Yet, all this money exists and is moved around in circles you and I will never experience.
Then again, here is a segment of the Daily Show from January of 2015 that reports on how Salt Lake City, Utah, solved its homeless problem by giving the homeless homes. That's right, they gave them homes.

The Daily Show
Daily Show Full Episodes,  More Daily Show Videos,  Comedy Central Full Episodes

The clip is really funny, but the gist is this: it's cheaper to house everyone who can't house themselves. Between law enforcement costs, medical costs and other costs that occur thanks to people being homeless, it's cheaper to just put them in apartments. Meanwhile, the rest of the country still has this lopsided system.

So much emphasis is put on making money and spending money that we don't even think about the fact that there are other ways our system can work. Should we get away from Capitalism altogether? I don't think so. But the idea that some of us should suffer for not being able to play the game as well as some? Yeah, that's not right. We can certainly use a combination of both capitalism and socialism to the benefit of all citizens, except the 1%, of course. But I think they've gotten most of the benefits over the last 20 years.  I think they'll survive.

Help my personal economics and go buy a Ballpoint Adventures T-shirt or my novel from Amazon!

NPR: The Fed’s $600 Billion Statement, Translated Into Plain English (Can’t believe they did this—now everyone will know!  OK, now every NPR listener/reader will know. So like five people?)

But seriously, this is awesome—not only is NPR covering that the Fed is literally creating money from nothing, but they’ve done it in such a blatant way no one can misunderstand them.

What’s also nice about the above capped piece (you can click on it to go to the article) is that they took Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke’s statement about inventing $600 billion from nothing and translated it into plain English, line-by-line, so you can actually understand what the cagey fucker is talking about.  Here’s an example:

“Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September confirms that the pace of recovery in output and employment continues to be slow.”

becomes:

“The economy still sucks.”

another:

“Longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable, but measures of underlying inflation have trended lower in recent quarters.”

becomes:

“Inflation has gone from low to super low.”

Of course, nowhere do they explain why the rate of inflation going up is good, but hey, at least a fairly mainstream news source is doing us the favor of actually reporting facts that inform us about one of the most important, life-changing things in our life:

Money…

…and how it’s actually worth nothing at all, since some white guys in suits can just conjure it from the aether—like Zero Point Money or something.  Zero Point Energy is a theoretical type of electricity you’d create from nothing.  It’s widely viewed by physicists and engineers as impossible because energy must come from somewhere.  Similar physical laws exist for money, as well (the more you have the less they’re worth), but no one seems to mind the consequences, for some reason.  This allows the Fed to just tappity-tap on their computers and VOILA—$600 billion.  Just like they did back in 2008.

They don’t even need to mix a potion in a boiling cauldron or cast a spell or sign their souls over to the devil.  Well, hopefully, they had to do that last part.

So, how does it feel knowing that while you work your ass off to make money, a group of rich guys in posh offices work to take value away from that money?

666cast episode 32 from website666.com! This week, why the recent election doesn’t matter, how we ARE on the other side of the looking glass and plenty of stories in the ‘news.’ Please listen. Thanks! Let me know what you think! Please subscribe to the feed. Don’t forget to visit webstore666!

666cast episode 32 from website666.com! This week, why the recent election doesn’t matter, how we ARE on the other side of the looking glass and plenty of stories in the ‘news.’  Please listen. Thanks!

Let me know what you think!

Please subscribe to the feed.

Don’t forget to visit webstore666!

Fed's Bernanke `Doesn't Understand' Economics, Jim Rogers Says - Bloomberg

Fed's Bernanke `Doesn't Understand' Economics, Jim Rogers Says - Bloomberg

Oh, man—this guy is saying exactly what I’ve been thinking ever since CoalSpeaker first pointed out the Fed’s latest action to “save” our economy (which they decided to do right while we were distracted with the election). Anyway, so here’s a cutting from an article at Bloomberg.com from today:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s decision to pump a further $600 billion into the economy shows his grasp of economics is weak, said investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings.

“Dr. Bernanke unfortunately does not understand economics, he does not understand currencies, he does not understand finance,” Rogers, 68, said in a lecture at Oxford University’s Balliol College yesterday. “All he understands is printing money.”

“His whole intellectual career has been based on the study of printing money,” said Rogers, who predicted the start of the global commodities rally in 1999. “Give the guy a printing press, he’s going to run it as fast as he can.”

I’m continually surprised that most people who are aware of how the Fed works and yet aren’t upset by the fact that there’s a bunch of unelected white guys in suits someplace who can just print up more money while the rest of us have to work for it.

What’s really scary here is that Bernanke’s plan to print up a fresh wad of bills, totaling $600 billion, will devalue our currency even more (they did this before, back in September of 2008 while all eyes were on Congress while they debated how to save the economy, and gosh it really saved us?).  $600 billion is a huge amount of money. 

I’m not sure how else to describe this aside from mass devaluation. 

I think the idea is to encourage foreign investment and make it super cheap for domestic businesses to borrow money.  Since that money won’t buy much, what are businesses supposed to do with it?  Hire new employees and pay ‘em!

That’s the hope, I suppose.  In the meantime, our money buys less.  The other irony is that the inflation rate will go up and make your savings accounts useless or even costly to you.  Think about it.  The inflation rate this year has fluctuated between 1 and 2.6(ish)%.  What’s your savings account interest rate? If it’s not more than that window, you’ve already taken a hit.

Don’t have a savings account?  Good boy!  Shove that cash under the mattress or buy stuff with it.  You’re probably better off.

That’s just my ¥2, of course.

Go read the Bloomberg article for all the details.  Sure, Rogers has a book to sell, but his logic is sound, sadly.

UPDATE: And I just read this in another article on Bloomberg about Japan’s economy:

No matter how much yen the Bank of Japan pumps into the economy, deflation deepens. It’s all about confidence, of which there is virtually none. Companies don’t trust that growth will return and so they avoid investing and hiring and trim salaries. Households fret about the future.

Was puzzling about that article is that it talks about deflation being the cause of a race to the bottom for prices.  He cites Hooters as an example because they sell cheap food and cheap alcohol.  But does that mean deflation?  How many wings is the Yen actually buying?  Hm, maybe it’s that we’re switching positions with Japan.  We’ll all be making more money (if this plan works) but the money won’t buy as much so we’ll have to spend more to get the same stuff.

But injecting money into the economy in Japan hasn’t worked and has inspired price-drops across every sector because the money injection didn’t work.  So, maybe we’re seeing into our own futures?

Geh… why does money have to be so confusing?

FED up

coalspeaker:

How many others out there in webland think this is the beginning of mighty comedy of errors?

Fed will spend upward of $1 trillion to buy gov’t bonds over next year…

No shit. I’m also curious who thinks the Fed just happened to schedule this on top of the elections.  Seriously, who could think this?

Federal Reserve to print billions of dollars in massive shadow stimulus

Federal Reserve to print billions of dollars in massive shadow stimulus

The Federal Reserve’s policy-setting panel began a crucial two-day meeting Tuesday, poised to cast aside its long-held reluctance to micro-manage the economy in a bid to avoid a lost decade of growth.

The central bank’s open market committee (FOMC) is expected to approve massive stimulus spending not seen since the depths of the economic crisis.

At the conclusion of the meeting Wednesday, the Fed is expected to announce it will resume the large-scale purchase of long-term US bonds — essentially printing billions of dollars — in the hope of boosting a weak recovery.

I wonder if this actually happens if it’ll show up on the MSM.

Funny how the Fed has tried things very similar to this before and it hasn’t worked.  It didn’t work the time before that, either.  It’s so funny how these allegedly intelligent people keep doing the same thing, thinking it will yield different results. 

The BIG problem here is they’re essentially loaning money to themselves—at least, if I understand this whole thing correctly.  Usually, they loan money they create from nothing to banks.  Again, that’s assuming I understand this correctly. This means they’ll be able to loan more and profit more.

Whether we’re voting for political leaders who we pretend care for our interests or use money that we pretend has actual value, we are living in a virtual virtual reality.

Kinda scary when you realize this is the other side of the looking glass.

Forgot to say: found via: CoalSpeaker.com

The Onion Calls Out our Imaginary Economy (I wonder how often this'll get RT'd)

Screengrab source.

I guess it’s fine that our economy is entirely a symbolic, mutually shared illusion, so long as we can laugh at it. ;P

…but seriously, I doubt we’ll see this Onion story reblogged and retweeted all over the tuberwebs.

The Virgin Megastore in Times Square has Shut Down

The Virgin Megastore in Times Square has Shut Down, originally uploaded by thepetecom.

Guess we haven't hit bottom yet!