Occupy Wall Street, After the Campout – What’s Next for the Movement

First let me mention that I don’t agree at all with the idea that American’s can not put up a tent as an expression of free speech. I think that’s a piss poor decision for the courts, considering “flag burning” is okay, but camping is a health and safety issue. Look, I don’t know about you, but I feel like TSA is a huge waste of my time in a free society. I put up with it during the big 911 response, but it’s time to get back to being Americans!

Occupy, in my eyes, is riding along prevailing winds, and has only begun to reveal the energy and brilliance behind it. So, here we are at the eve of having the biggest Occupy camps in the country dismantled by the Man! This is where a dozen news groups and media outlets will do their best to play on the unknown about it, as a scare tactic to weaken the movement. “They don’t know what they want?” or “They need a leader to be considered real”. But here’s the thing…

If you consider the language of the event; camps across the country are gone, and now the morph begins. Having a bunch of big camps was starting to play out a bit “socialist/liberal” for me. Oakland has even called for a support action of Washington Port Workers. Personally I think it needs to grow roots now. Take the time this Winter to seep into the community and plan front-yard CSA’s. Take to the streets to collect funding for space, and help Bank Customers learn about the differences in Banking institutions.

Small groups of Community Assemblies have begun forming in every town in the country. It makes sense that if America is going to change, that we should have a conversation about it. I find it amazing that our media and political systems have escaped the reality that we can do whatever we want. It’s the whole reason the Constitution was written. And, what is being revealed is the difference between the people and the institutions. Shame on the coordinating with local law enforcement. The idea that that all happened so precisely without central coordination is ridiculous. It reveals that there has been a break between the Constitution and the People who will defend it!

It’s time for the culture of America to meet and discuss the fate of our society. If people don’t or won’t see the dangers in the Fed actions to support the World’s economy by printing money and monetizing debt, then don’t worry about it. But if you see what I see, then you see the need for a true dialog with the members of this ship to discuss the current situation and options available to us as Americans! The World is defined by our willingness to engage with it. It can be anything we want.

Timing is Everything

Once again we have come to a crossroads in American history where the future will be shaped by politics rather than rational decision making and as usual the Achilles heal will be the past rationale that the US economy is so resilient that whatever decision is made will either be the right one or we’ll have the time to adjust it and everything will work itself out.

I am of course speaking of the US Budget Deficit, which is growing at an astronomical rate for several reasons. On May 15th the US deficit will reach an unrealistic 14.8 Trillion Dollars, this does not include SSI nor Medicare, whose trusts were breached during the Reagan administration in the 80′s. Nor will it include the reality of the Federal Reserves unbelievable holdings of $2 Trillion in still toxic subprime mortgage securities. It will mainly be centered around the bankers and corporations lobbying for their share of a quickly depleting dollar.

The idea that the US economy could never suffer a irreparable hit is the long standing idea that we are America and has no other basis in fact, but lets just weigh that against some truth. The US trade deficit is way to high, and this is a massive liquidity leak, so to speak. The Fed Chief is fudging number that don’t agree with the worlds foremost investors, which has a huge effect on investor confidence, and he seems to be measuring inflation against numbers on paper and not the commodities they purchase. Keynesian philosophy only really works when you have a supply side surplus and excluding food and energy from core inflation is part of that philosophy giving us a false sense of inflation, which can be rated as high as 10% when you take this and other factors into consideration.

In 1971 when the US went off the gold standard gold was $35 an ounce and if we were to rate the US dollars buying power we can see, looking at golds current $1500 an ounce price, that the dollars purchasing power has faded horribly.

We are still seeing adjustments in housing, which for a time, became a meter for the dollars purchasing power, and prices could very well fall back to pre-1980′s levels exposing the system that built the inflated sense of wealth of converting assets into debt. And now the fact of inertia gets to come front and center stage for the final act to answer the question, “can a debt based society beat the odds the past has proven time and time again?”.

The strongest facts, which will likely be overlooked in this scenario of political posturing, will likely be the need to restore the fading confidence in the dollar and a truly responsible fiscal plan to get us back to a long term solvent state. In the Book, “This Time is Different”, the authors point out several indications that have been consistent in the collapse of past fiat currency based economies, and the most prevalent to me seems to be the confidence factor that makes their treasuries a solid investment, and when investors are only interested in 4 and 6 month treasuries, you can practically count the days on their confidence.

The Second Law of Hyper-Inflation

It’s been a couple of years now since the original ripple of the Subprime Market Shift. I am choosing to call it a shift because ever since it occurred we have been steadily moving toward the point of no return. Simply put, the Fed response to the economy over the last 2 years has had a profound effect on the progress and seriousness of what’s happening in the World’s Economy.

The most recent event in the saga has been the slow response to raise interest rates amid a rush of market activity. On paper it looks great, “Highly residual market roars back with a flood of investor cash.” sounds good right? Well without getting into a math quiz prep, lets just look at the basics. In the last 2 years the stock market has gained back 60-65% of it’s pre-subprime shift, while unemployment has very quickly gotten worse, but slowing. Consumer spending is erratic, which means impulsive and not a trend, but rather a whim.

The main problem isn’t any one of these, and there are more I haven’t mentioned. The real problem is that prices over the last 4 years have skyrocketed in many areas of the economy, while some of these are seeing deflation. Much of this inflation has to do directly with the prices of energy. It has effected everything from shipping to food cost, which are the two biggest burdens on an economy. The US Economy was built on cheap food and cheap fuel. It has a hard time thinking outside of that box, and has been excluded as a model type for inflationary scaling. Normally it fluctuates with supplies, but supplies are limited now and the pressure of demand is not letting up, but excelling.

During the peak of the credit crunch part of the shift many people failed to notice that supplies of rice had dried up. During that time China stopped exporting rice and actually imported it for the first time in history. India, the second largest supplier of rice to the world’s markets as well stopped exporting rice. The Philippines could not get 75,000,000 tons from any one country, while a wheat rust began spreading across Africa and the Middle East. All this will put real pressure on the populational scope of possibilities. How many is too many? In any case both energy and food are real factors and can no longer be looked at as separate from core inflation. It must now be balanced.

These factors are mixing to provide an unstable rate of inflation. The argument against this might be that the economy had suffered infrastructural damage and without TARP and keeping interest low The economy could stall and loose any momentum it has gained by our interventions. Frankly I think loosing all of the exisiting banks that jumped on the derivatives bandwagon would not have been such a huge loss. Loosing GM, who is still pushing big trucks and probably helping with the anti-Toyota campaign can go into the dung heap if you ask me. It would be nice to live in a place where oil company and auto maker bedfellow’s didn’t orchestrate our environment economically.

But what to do about Ben. Obama, after having hindsight to call on, stuck with Ben. Congress approved Ben, and if you ask me; I see Ben as part of the problem at it’s crux. You can’t blame Congress for wanting more American’s to own their own homes, regardless of what Fox News might say, and you can’t blame Alen Greenspan for ignoring what shouldn’t have been such a big problem had the SEC asked for clear disclosure from the banks and investment houses on their inventory of subprime investments. In your mind you think of these derivatives as somewhat safe considering the houses were real, that the securities were representing real value. The problem was they were popular raising the value way above the physical value of the homes. So when it fell it fell hard, and that could have been resolved right away when Ben became aware of the collision about to take place… Oh wait!

That’s right! Ben didn’t do anything! He said the subprime fallout would stay in the subprime market. That was way off by the way. Then we fail to recognize the main stress which would prevent this from being an easy recovery… the price of oil and natural gas, which had been going up steadily since the invasion of Iraq. It was causing UPS and Airlines companies to add service or fuel charges to their services. It was effecting food costs, creating shortages, raising values accross the board. Heating cost one winter effect consumer spending directly, but the demand for these things are primary, while supply on the other hand wasn’t to be cured by invading Iraq. It won’t be solved by drilling in Alaska. The only thing that will solve it is greater efficiency. New technology and conservation.

Yes Ben, we have suffered a major systemic threat, but it isn’t the conditions that fail. It is the system which has so many flaws. All we managed to do was put the dying patient on life support for a little while. The conditions themselves were not met with clearly and desisively. They were resolved temporarily in order for the direction of our economic base to keep perpetuating. The problem is that it won’t last and Ben’s gonna provide us with the keys. Failing to raise interest rate in order to keep moving forward is exactly the wrong thing to do. Your might be thinking that he raised them a quarter point, but that was after the momentum in the market was accelerated to the degree is pressing with now. If he would have raised it for the second time it might have slowed down the pace, but he didn’t.

So here is my prediction from this flotsam of ramblings. Ben’s response have been steadily late. He didn’t take inventory when it started and could have done more earlier without pumping 4 trillion dollars into the banks, who should have failed due to poor risk assessment and management. He could have primed Congress to reign in the banks before the splash and had them increase their cash positions earlier. They could have forced the SEC to ask them for full disclosure and written off the debts, assembling them back into real estates, and not paper. None of these things happened. It is likely we will stay the course and what was the direction wasn’t really working all that well. It is likely to repeat itself.

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Ben’s not the problem, but is he the “Man to Solve It”?

Now wait one second, Mr. Ron Paul. I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that Ben Bernanke caused the recession. That would be like saying that he personally engineered the subprime mortgage security, these… as Greenspan called them, creative Financial Products. As well it would be like suggesting that he, and not Greenspan, first became aware of these derivatives and how if left unchecked, like most objects the bubbles surround, could have a greater fallout on the bigger economy. Unfair if you ask me, but a saint in this affair he is neither.

Ben, Your crime is negligence my friend. You had a chance to study the possible effect of the subprime fallout in its making. You knew by the figures that it had reached the title of bubble based on the intel you collect on the economy daily. Crunching the numbers would have told you that the value of these products were highly inflated. He also knew that the subprime lendees were starting to default at a rate exceeding what the current (at that time) secondary housing market could absorb (2 million that year alone). And you ignored the fallout.

The housing industry supports so many other industries and about 30% of the blue collar work force, how could you be so naive that you would forget about small appliances and turf farms, or the trillions of dollars worth of collapsible wealth there was hidden in two highly regulated markets; the banks and real estate.

The one thing no one wants to admit is the part that 140 a barrel oil played into that scenario. How it was the real pull that was slowing the economy. It was just bad timing that the subprime fallout occurred simultaneously. Timing was the real culprit of this decades recession, if you ask me.

But… Ben, you could have made a real difference when it started in Dec. 2006. This would have been a great time to look at the senarios the fallout could have, mixed with the fuel pressure. Greenspan warned us that natural gas would peak in the US and that without building new infrastructure to trasfer the reigns to importers, that the preasure it would put on the economy could be catastrophic beyond repair, which coupled with the war in Iraq and the inflation which follows war, it would have taken a real genius to worm us out of that without a flu shot!

Act 2, Scene 2011 – INFLATION

So, here’s the dealio folks. We know that although Greenspan was a economic muse it didn’t save him from ignoring the truth sometimes. Struggle as we do, it’s life! Ben on the other hand has not been at all the successor we were expecting. I think we were into the whole moderating side of Keyenian economics. Sure it won’t last forever, but it does tend to keep inflation and unemployment in check, for the most part. And, here’s where it gets a little tricky, and I see Ben looking ahead a little bit, but… how do you tame a super-hyper inflation.

We just poured approximatly 4 Trillion dollars into the US economy, Europe is already beginning to see an uptick in there inflation from the money they poured into there central banks. The problem is that when these banks start loaning out this money it is going to multiply, as they loan it. This mixed with inflation in every other country that followed this lead will have a global effect of manic deflation.

Seriously we should have let the fallout happen and build a health economic plan that was based on total value, including energy and global costs of repair. It’s not really a choice if we understand what we are facing.

Last Night on TV

So, last night I’m watching the La Lakers take the first game of the Western Conference Finals (online of course) and I get to watch all the commercials on ESPN. Some of you might think that’s a bit odd, but I don’t have access to commercial television; no cable or satellite dish, just my internet connection.

All through the game I saw a lot of different advertising and this one I couldn’t believe. First of all Toyota is advertising their prius and it’s Green Appeal, and then I see this Cadillac Escalade commercial and it hits me that this whole GM bailout is going to fail, sure as shit. How is this any different?

Toyota and Honda are both selling cars that people need in order to meet with the changes coming, frankly gasoline cannot last for ever and these things can get 50 mpg. What does an Escalade get for mileage. I don’t even care. Like I said I don’t even own cable..

It amazes me we even bothered bailing anything out at all, the banks the insurers and the automakers can fold and I don’t think I would miss them at all. It seems to me that they got themselves into this mess, right!?

But, promising the American Government that it would change directions and then going on like “business as usual”, minus the layoffs, factory closures, and dealer closings. Don’t worry we’ll help you stretch out that failure, while we let our factory workers and and sales people find something else to do.

Personally I believe that all that bailout money would have been far more wisely spent on education, because the people running these companies obviously missed out on economics 101…

Is that Tamiflu in your pocket…?

OMG!! We’re all gonna DIE! Again… It really amazes me how ridicules the Nation’s Media is. Look, I like Drama just as much as the next guy, but Pandemic? The Spanish Influenza kill 50 million people in 30 days. Loosing 200 in a week is not on the same scale. First of all only about 50-75 people in the US have contracted this thing, and according to “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (they) estimate that approximately 1.1 million persons are living with HIV in the United States.”(1)

The funny part about living with the US’ Media is that they are all on the same script. I wonder if viewers could start a group law suit for starting a panic over total misinformation. When Howard Dean was tore apart by the Media after misinterpreting what I would consider to be a pep rally to raise the morale of the thousands of volunteers that were there to support his Campaign. For weeks we had to see this one stupid picture that fraudulently depicted his actions, while the “commentator news core” ripped on him and told us all about his poor behavior, unbecoming of a president.

Now, everyone may not agree with me, but I think he was the only president running at the time who had any real plan, including a balanced budget, health care for America, and alternative energy. We could have really used him in 2004, but that’s not what happened. Instead we got a Republican agenda which was running rampant against all the things most American’s believe in, like Torture and Financial System Bailouts, and 4 dollar a gallon gasoline.

Personally I feel that any format that presents itself as a news program must leave commentary to the commentary segments and should be held accountable for the facts they present as news to America. I wish Howard Dean would have sued AP News and any parrot news agency who repeated the lie. It’s bullshit and we all know the Media is a PR scandel in American life. If you don’t believe me check out your sources and the fact surrounding them and see what’s what. Don’t take my word for it, do a little research on your information.

1). Taken from the CDC website.

Monkey Security and the F-word (Freedom)

It amazes me how everything political has become an issue of “Security”, even global climate changes that may be the result of global warming or may just be industrialization, or both. It really doesn’t matter what the cause is to Washington, but does this effect our Security? It was never about the conditions we create that may or may not effect life on this planet, but rather how we, as a Nation, protect our dominant positions on the socio-political and economic structure, chess board.

When I was a kid we used to play something like that called Risk, but we never really took it that seriously. Well, this morning I was doing some light reading and came across this section of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act* (see below) and was less than surprised that they had turned the Green Movement to Stop Global Warming into another version of the security game. You know, the one that was magnified into a monster the size of a low budget Tokyo film after Bush and friends, I mean the terrorists, started their war.

Lets just stop for a minute and try to understand this (stream of thought). According to the Websters Dictionary** (see below) – Security means to be free from anxiety or fear. The irony here is that you must first be subjected to an idea in order to be freed from it. In other words you can’t really be freed from prison without first going. “So what does this have to do with the environment?”, you ask. Well, that’s the point isn’t it. It really doesn’t have to do with the environment at all, and that’s my point.

“INTERAGENCY CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL” He muses thoughtfully, and I wonder when Webster decided to make security and freedom equinimitous.
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*SEC. 4801. INTERAGENCY CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL.

(a) Establishment- There is established a Climate Change and National Security Council (referred to in this subtitle as the `Council’).

(b) Membership- The Council shall include–

(1) the Secretary of State, who shall serve as Chairperson of the Council;

(2) the Administrator;

(3) the Secretary of Defense; and

(4) the Director of National Intelligence.

(c) Duties- The Council shall–

(1) submit annual reports to the President, the Committees on Environment and Public Works and Foreign Relations of the Senate, and the Committees on Energy and Commerce and Foreign Relations of the House of Representatives that describe–

(A) the extent to which other countries are committing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions through mandatory programs;

(B) the extent to which global climate change, through the potential negative impacts of climate change on sensitive populations and natural resources in different regions of the world, may threaten, cause, or exacerbate political instability or international conflict in those regions; and

(C) the ramifications of any potentially destabilizing impacts climate change may have on the national security of the United States, including–

(i) the creation of refugees; and

(ii) international or intranational conflicts over water, food, land, or other resources; and

(2) include in each annual report submitted under paragraph (1) recommendations on whether it is necessary to enhance the national security of the United States by funding programs with amounts made available under section 4802 that the Council determines would assist in avoiding the politically destabilizing impacts of climate change in volatile regions of the world.

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**Security 1: the quality or state of being secure: as a: freedom from danger : safety b: freedom from fear or anxiety c: freedom from the prospect of being laid off