Global financial collapse

Trouble

The global economy is heading for a massive amount of trouble in the months ahead.  Right now we are seeing the beginning of a credit crunch that is shaping up to be very reminiscent of what we saw back in 2008.  Investors and big corporations are pulling huge amounts of money out of European banks and nobody wants to lend to those banks right now.  We could potentially see dozens of “Lehman Brothers moments” in Europe in 2012.  Meanwhile, bond yields on sovereign debt are jumping through the roof all over Europe.  That means that European nations that are already drowning in debt are going to find it much more expensive to continue funding that debt.  It would be a huge understatement to say that there is “financial chaos” in Europe right now.  The European financial system is in so much trouble that it is hard to describe.  The instant that they stop receiving bailout money, Greece is going to default.  Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Spain and quite a few other European nations are also on the verge of massive financial problems.  When the financial dominoes start to fall, the U.S. financial system is going to be dramatically affected as well, because U.S. banks have a huge amount of exposure to European debt.  The other day, I noted that investor Jim Rogers is saying that the coming global financial collapse “is going to be worse” than 2008.  Sadly, it looks like he is right on the money.  We are in a lot of trouble my friends, and things are going to get really, really ugly.

The sad thing is that we never have recovered from the last major financial crisis.  Right now, the U.S. economy is far weaker than it was back in 2007.  So what is going to happen if we get hit with another financial tsunami?  The following is what PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian said recently….

“What’s most terrifying, we are having this discussion about the risk of recession at a time when unemployment is already too high, at a time when a quarter of homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, at a time then the fiscal deficit is at 9 percent and at a time when interest rates are at zero.”

Can things really get much worse than they are now?

Unfortunately, yes they can.

Not that things are not really, really bad right now.

In Los Angeles earlier this week, approximately 10,000 people lined up for free turkey dinners.

So how many people will be lining up for free food when the unemployment rate in the U.S. soars into double digits?

Right now there is so much economic pain in America that it is hard to describe.  According to a recent report from one nonprofit group, 45 percent of all people living in the United States “do not have enough money to cover housing, food, healthcare and other basic expenses”.

If this is where we are at now, how much trouble will we be in as a nation if a financial crisis worse than 2008 hits us in 2012?

The primary cause of the coming financial crisis will almost certainly be the financial meltdown that we are seeing unfold in Europe.

The economic downturn that began in 2008 caused the debt levels of quite a few European nations to soar to unprecedented heights.  It has gotten to the point where the debts of many of those nations are no longer sustainable.

So investors are starting to demand much higher returns for the much greater risk associated with investing in the bonds of those countries.

But that makes it much more expensive for those troubled nations to fund their debts, and that means that their financial troubles get even worse.

Over the past 12 months, what we have seen happen to bond yields over in Europe has been nothing short of amazing.

Just check out this chart of what has been happening to the yield on 2 year Italian bonds over the past 12 months.

And keep in mind that these bond yields have been spiking even while the European Central Bank has been buying up unprecedented mountains of bonds in an attempt to keep bond yields low.

There has been a fundamental loss of faith in the financial system, and it is not just happening in Europe.

Just check out this chart.  As that chart shows, credit default swap spreads all over the globe are absolutely skyrocketing and are now higher than we have seen at any point since the great financial crisis that shook the world during 2008 and 2009.

Panic and fear are everywhere – especially in Europe.  In fact, it looks like a run on the banks has already begun in Europe.

The following comes from a recent article in The Economist….

“We are starting to witness signs that corporates are withdrawing deposits from banks in Spain, Italy, France and Belgium,” an analyst at Citi Group wrote in a recent report. “This is a worrying development.”

Nobody wants to lend money to European banks right now.  There is a feeling that they are all vulnerable and could fail at any time, and this lack of confidence actually makes that possibility even more likely.

The following is a short excerpt from a recent CNBC article….

Money-market funds in the United States have quite dramatically slammed shut their lending windows to European banks. According to the Economist, Fitch estimates U.S. money market funds have withdrawn 42 percent of their money from European banks in general.

And for France that number is even higher — 69 percent. European money-market funds are also getting in on the act.

So what can be done?

Well, in a different CNBC article, Mitchell Goldberg was quoted as saying that even “a bazooka” is not going to be good enough to fix this situation….

“It’s too late for a bazooka,” said Mitchell Goldberg, president of ClientFirst Strategy. “Now we need inter-continental ballistic missiles. This is getting worse very quickly.”

This is kind of like watching a horrific car wreck happen in very slow motion.

The financial system of Europe is dying and everybody can see what is happening but nobody can seem to find a way to fix it.

Not that we are solving our own problems here in the United States.

The vaunted “supercommittee” that was supposed to get a handle on our debt problem was a complete and utter failure.

Barack Obama has shown that he has no clue what to do when it comes to the economy, and Ben Bernanke has been preoccupied with roaming around the country trying to get people to feel more “warm and fuzzy” about the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve actually has more power over our economy than anyone else.  But instead of fixing things they only keep making things even worse.

The only people that the Fed seems to be helping are the banksters.

What you are about to read should really, really upset you.  According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Reserve has actually been tipping off their upcoming moves to top financial professionals.  In turn, these financial professionals have been using that information to make a lot of money for themselves and for their clients….

Hours after an Aug. 15 meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in his office, Nancy Lazar made a hasty call to investor clients: The Fed was dusting off an obscure 1960s-era strategy known as Operation Twist.

The news pointed to a boom in long-term bonds.

It was a good call. Over the next five weeks, prices on 10-year Treasury bonds soared, offering double-digit returns in an otherwise dismal year.

By the time the Fed announced its $400 billion Operation Twist on Sept. 21, the window for quick profits had all but slammed shut.

Ms. Lazar is among a group of well-connected investors and analysts with access to top Federal Reserve officials who give them a chance at early clues to the central bank’s next policy moves, according to interviews and hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal through open records searches.

You just can’t make stuff like this up.  The corruption at the Federal Reserve is totally out of control.  After nearly 100 years of total failure, it is time to shut down the Federal Reserve.

Not that Barack Obama should get a free pass for the role that he has played in this economic downturn.  He inherited a complete mess from Bush and has made it even worse.

Today, millions of business owners are so frustrated with Washington D.C. that they don’t know what to do.

For example, one business owner down in Georgia has posted signs with the following message on all of his company’s trucks….

“New Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone.”

The business environment in this country becomes more toxic with each passing year, and the federal government has already strangled millions of small businesses out of existence.

In addition, politicians from both parties continue to stand aside as tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars of our wealth get shipped out of the country.

During 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day were shut down in the United States.  We are committing national economic suicide, and the top politicians in both political parties keep cheering for more.

Well, millions of ordinary Americans can see what is happening and they are preparing for the worst.

The following report comes from an article that was recently posted on the website of the local CBS affiliate in St. Louis….

A chain of three stores that sells survival food and gear reports a jump in sales to people who are getting prepared for the “possible collapse” of society.

“We had to order fifty cases of the meals ready to eat to keep up with the demand in the past three months,” said manager Steve Dorsey at Uncle Sam’s Safari Outfitters Inc. in Webster Groves. “That’s not normal.  Usually we sell 20 to 30 cases in a whole year.”

So are you prepared for the coming collapse?

If you still have a great job and things are still going well for you, then you should definitely be thankful.  Compared to the rest of the world, most of us are incredibly blessed.

But let there be no doubt, the U.S. economy is going to get a lot worse in the years ahead.

Just because you have a job today does not mean that you will have one tomorrow.

Just because you have a nice car and a big home today does not mean that you will have them tomorrow.

We all need to try to become a lot less dependent on “the system”, because “the system” is failing.

A whole lot of trouble is coming.

You better get ready.

Black Friday Violence Worse Than Ever

Black Friday Violence Worse Than Ever As American Consumers Fight Over Deals Like Crazed Animals

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/black-friday-violence-worse-than-ever-as-american-consumers-fight-over-deals-like-crazed-animals

We all knew that this was coming, didn’t we?  Each year Black Friday violence just seems to get worse and worse.  What does it say about American consumers when they are willing to fight like crazed animals just to save a few bucks on cheap plastic crap made in China?  Not that retailers are innocent in any of this.  It certainly seems as though many of them purposely create wild situations on Black Friday where customers will rush like crazy people into their stores and nearly riot as they fight over discounted merchandise.  The more Black Friday madness there is, the more of an “event” it becomes, and the higher the profits of the retailers go.  This year there was more Black Friday hype than ever and there was also more Black Friday violence than ever.  It is being projected that this year a record-setting 152 million Americans will go shopping between Thanksgiving and Sunday night.  That may be good news for the big corporate retailers, but the shocking lack of character being displayed by American consumers all over the country this weekend is very bad news for the future of this nation.

Most Americans would agree that there is a tremendous amount of selfishness and greed on Wall Street, but as the videos posted below demonstrate, there is also a tremendous amount of selfishness and greed on “Main Street” as well.

This year, Black Friday violence included robberies, gunfire and shootings, but the most shocking incidents actually happened inside the big retail stores.

For example, as merchandise was being unveiled on Black Friday night at a Wal-Mart in the Los Angeles area, one woman actualy pulled out pepper spray and sprayed it at other customers that were gathered around her.

Did she do this because she felt threatened?

No, according to the Los Angeles Times, authorities say that the woman was just seeking a “competitive” edge.

It is being reported that at least 20 people were affected by the pepper spray.

The pepper spray incident just added to the wild and frenzied atmosphere inside that Wal-Mart last night.

The following is how the Los Angeles Times described the scene….

Employees attempted to hold back the scrum of shoppers and pick up merchandise even as customers trampled the video games and DVDs strewn on the floor.

“It was absolutely crazy,” he said.

Another customer said screams erupted after about 100 people waiting in line to snag Xbox gaming consoles and Wii video games got into a shoving match.

Alejandra Seminario, 24, said she was waiting in line to grab some toys at the store around 9:55 p.m. when people the next aisle over started shouting and ripping at the plastic wrap encasing gaming consoles, which was supposed to be opened at 10 p.m.

“People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray,” the Sylmar resident said.

Pepper spray was used at a Wal-Mart on the other side of the country as well.  Over in Kinston, North Carolina an off-duty police officer used pepper spray as an unruly shopper was being subdued.  Approximately 20 people (including some children) were affected by the pepper spray.

Most Americans are not really concerned over the fact that this country is rapidly heading into the toilet, but they sure will get worked up into a frenzy over some good deals.  Just check out the following video that was filmed in California.  In the video, a huge crowd can be seen storming the entrance of Urban Outfitters in the Thousand Oaks Mall on Black Friday night….

There are lots of other crazy videos of Black Friday madness on YouTube today as well.  Just check out some of the following examples….

*In Fresno, California law enforcement authorities were barely able to keep a stampede at the entrance of one store from turning into a riot.

*In this next video, you can see people going absolutely crazy over memory cards at about the 1:20 mark.

*On Black Friday night, American consumers will riot over just about anything.  For example, there was a huge panic over Tupperware at one Wall-Mart last night.

*Of course electronics is probably the hottest category in most stores on Black Friday night.  In some areas, the fighting over video games became incredibly intense.

*Some of the worst Black Friday rioting goes on inside Wal-Marts.  Just check out this shocking video of what happens inside a Wal-Mart on Black Friday night.

*Also, what happened last night at a Wal-mart Supercenter in Greenville, North Carolina, was nothing short of idiotic.

If this is how the American people will act just to save a few bucks on cheap plastic crap made in foreign countries, how are they going to act when the economy collapses?

If Americans will literally fight each other over saving 20 bucks, what is going to happen someday when millions of them don’t know where their next meal is going to come from?

Thankfully the economy is still in good enough shape that most Americans can participate in these orgies of consumerism.  But the reality is that the global financial system is in a massive amount of trouble, and it looks like we could be on the verge of another global financial collapse.

Do the American people have enough character to be able to deal with a full-blown economic depression?

In a recent article entitled “22 Signs That The Thin Veneer Of Civilization That We All Take For Granted Is Starting To Disappear“, I commented on the declining character of the American people….

Instead of teaching our children to love and care for one another, we have taught them to be incredibly self-involved.  Today, way too many Americans deeply love themselves, deeply love money and are deeply addicted to entertainment.  Each new generation seems to be even more prideful, even more arrogant and even more violent.  As a nation, we are losing our empathy for others, our compassion for the needy and our respect for the elderly.  Our family units are breaking down and thousands of our communities are being transformed into hellholes.

Over the past several decades, the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world has enabled us to enjoy unprecedented prosperity.  But it has been a “false prosperity”, and it is frightening to think about what America is going to look like when the good times finally end.

The other thing that is really disturbing about Black Friday is the fact that the vast majority of the products that Americans are fighting over are made overseas.

As I pointed out recently, 23 manufacturing facilities were shut down every single day in the United States last year.

Since 2001, the U.S. has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities.

This country is bleeding jobs, bleeding businesses and bleeding wealth at a pace that is nearly impossible to fully grasp.

We are becoming poorer as a nation every single day, and yet Americans are seemingly more enamored with consumerism than ever before.

Most Americans could not care less about where something was made.  The only thing that matters to them is how cheap it is.

It doesn’t matter to them that a record-setting 2.6 million Americans slipped into poverty last year or that there are 10 percent fewer middle class jobs in America today than there were a decade ago.

We have become a nation that is so self-centered that it is hard to find the words to describe it.

Rather than caring about what is good for America, most of us only care about what is good for ourselves.

The madness that we see every Black Friday is just one more sign that our society is coming apart at the seams.

America has become a nation that is absolutely saturated with greed.  Unfortunately, all of that greed is going to make the hard economic times that are coming much, much more painful.

The Future of Europe?

The Future of Europe?

European authorities from Brussels published Monday June 29, 2009 a report showing the flux of immigrants will reach alarming numbers in Europe in the next years. By the year 2060, Italy will gain 12 million more immigrants than present.
In the entire EU zone immigrants will increase by 46,2 millions, informs the Italian newspapers Il Giornale.
According to Brussels, Spain’s immigrants will increase by 11,6 millions while Germany’s immigrants will increase by 8,2 millions.

Read the Full Story

Locust: This is America’s fate as well.

Swiss Cheese:  This is not going to turn out well, obviously. Race riots, civil unrest, civil war, and such, are in store for Europe. And the Reds are scratching their heads trying to figure out why neo-Nazism and nationalism are beginning to gain traction.

 

 

 

Eurocalypse

Eurocalypse

By Richard Spencer

Morning shows seem to be a lot more interesting in Ireland!

 

There are two things to consider.

First, in the concentric circles that make up the international, dollar-based monetary system, a crash of the Euro would in all likelihood benefit the dollar, which is still the “safe haven,” until it isn’t.

Second, the European Monetary Union is kept together through a tug-of-war between “Core Europe” (which essentially means Germany) and “Periphery Europe” (that is, the rest).

The Euro makes sense for Germany to the extent that it can take advantage of a single market for its goods; for this, the Euro should be not too hard…not too soft…just right. (In other words, the Euro should be cheap enough to keep German exports attractive, but then dear enough not to raise the specter of Weimar.)

The Euro stops making sense for Germany when the above advantages are overwhelmed by the need to bailout the Periphery’s creditors and prop up its welfare bureaucracies.

The Euro is advantageous for Periphery countries like Greece and Italy in that they can borrow in Euros (that is, at low rates). It’s disadvantageous in that they must pay it back. The majority of Greek and Italian debt could be re-nominated into Drachma and Lira, allowing the countries to pay it off with their printing presses (an option not open to them while on the Euro).

What is clear is that the arrangement described above is highly unstable, as both Core and Periphery have very good reasons for wanting to get out.

I’m terrible with predictions, especially about the future, but my view is that the Euro won’t last another two years. And it’s demise will benefit Washington…for a while.

RSA-USA—Beloved, Benighted Countries

RSA-USA—Beloved, Benighted Countries

By Derek Turner

Into the Cannibal’s Pot – Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa
Ilana Mercer, Seattle: Stairway Press, 2011, hb, 319pp

 

Ilana Mercer is a well-known controversialist on the American right, who writes a deservedly popular WorldNetDaily column and somehow finds time to maintain both a website and blog.

Her views are probably best described as paleo-libertarian. The book’s provocative title, which probably cost her potential readers, is borrowed from Ayn Rand, but the author tempers capitalist principles with respect for national identities and cultural traditions. Unusually amongst conservatives, she combines Israelophilia and dislike of Islam with trenchant opposition to American military adventurism. Unusually amongst libertarians, she is an outspoken critic of current US immigration policy as subversive of social order as well as fiscal responsibility. She has now turned her sights on her former homeland of South Africa – both for its own sake and because she feels its tenebrous present contains urgent indicators for America.

The author was born in South Africa, the daughter of a rabbi, but the family had to leave in the 1960s because of her father’s anti-apartheid outspokenness. They decamped to Israel, before the author moved back to South Africa in the 1980s to start a family. She was (and is) against apartheid; she recalls having tea with Desmond Tutu and being on the Grand Parade in Cape Town in 1990 to witness Mandela’s release. From there she went to Canada and eventually the United States.

Notwithstanding her anti-apartheid views, she feels duty-bound to show that the RSA reality was immeasurably more complex than the simplistic narrative which came to misinform the West’s policy towards its final African redoubt. In the old days, there were gross indignities and injustices, and yet in the African context the old SA compared favourably with its neighbours:

“When we departed, South Africa was still a country with a space program…gleaming skyscrapers, and department stores that rivaled Macy’s. The Central Business District in Johannesburg bustled. Crime was controlled, or at least confined. When mobs stoned cars en route to D. F. Malan Airport in Cape Town…a tough and competent police sprang into action. An equally impressive Western system of Roman-Dutch law, and a relatively independent judiciary, dished out just desserts.” (1)

By contrast, the “Rainbow Nation” so revered by postmodern moralizers is largely dysfunctional and becoming more so, in accordance with what has become a sad post-colonial African tradition. The consequences for South Africans of all races range from the inconvenient to the lethal.

The country which carried on space programmes now suffers regular electricity shortages. Once-reliable government services have become a kind of lottery, with even the wealthiest suburbs experiencing interruptions in basic services like postal delivery, refuse collection and sanitation, while one third of budget-administering municipal councillors are functionally illiterate. There has been an explosion of AIDS, thanks to tribal prejudices against science—to the extent that an estimated 20% of adults have the virus. The overall unemployment rate rose from 19% in 1994, immediately before the end of apartheid and at the end of a long period of economic stagnation, to 31% in 2003. It has subsequently declined to 25%, but this is still very high for a country so well-endowed with natural resources, and with much lower levels of debt than many other countries. Black household income shrank by 19% between 1995 and 2000—although it had started to recover prior to the global financial crisis. This is despite – or because of—Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies which compel firms employing 50 or more staff to have a certain proportion of black employees and/or black investors. BEE has devastated whole industries, such as the mining sector (ironically, as Anglo-American was one of the chief instruments of ending apartheid) and have helped to force 10% of whites out of work and below the poverty line. Comparing past government performance with present, it seems as if the dearest wish of African National Congress MP Mario Rantho has already been realized:

“It is imperative to get rid of merit as the overriding principle in the appointment of public servants.”

There is less scope for wry humour when it comes to violent crime, although the author tries by entitling a section “Crime, The Beloved Country” in an allusion to Alan Paton’s classic anti-apartheid novel of 1948. Over 300,000 have been killed since the arrival of black majority rule as the erstwhile unjust but orderly regime became one which is theoretically just but with scarcely any order. Mercer cites BBC statistics from 2006 showing that on average, 65 people are murdered each day, 195 raped and 300 robbed with violence. Shockingly, she cites 2008 figures suggesting that more than 50,000 children under three years old are raped each year—10% of total rapes. By comparison:

“Few realize that during the decades of the apartheid regime a few hundred Africans in total perished as a direct and indirect consequence of police brutality. A horrible injustice, indubitably, but nothing approximating the death toll in ‘free’ South Africa where hundreds of Africans, white and black, die weekly” (author’s emphases)

So ungovernable are some places that private security firms have actually been hired by the police to protect…police stations. The South African Police Service’s acronym of SAPS seems highly appropriate. Even high-profile liberals, like writer Nadine Gordimer, historian David Rattray and former First Lady Marike de Klerk, are not immune from murderous assaults. Arguably more deserving of sympathy are poorer, apolitical Afrikaners, singled out for attack because some among them once oppressed and dispossessed blacks. Now all Afrikaners are being oppressed and dispossessed – except more rapidly and much more finally.

An economically and culturally significant subset, Afrikaner farmers (Boer of course means farmer), almost seems to be targeted for obliteration, with one tenth of them – over 3,000 – murdered since the end of apartheid, without anyone appearing to notice, let alone care. The author notes ruefully that “seals being clubbed to death on ice floes have garnered more attention” than what is widely accepted to be the actual genocide of these agriculturalists, often in circumstances of the most frightful cruelty. Statistically, farming in South Africa is more dangerous than mining. When Pretoria attorney Philip du Toit gallantly raised the unpleasant, unfashionable subject in his 2004 book The Great South African Land Scandal, he was brushed aside or condemned as the most verkrampte variety of bigot. The government, the semi-divine Mandela and the self-appointed “international community” all seem indifferent.

Many of the farmers who have survived thus far are quitting both the countryside and the country, defeated by physical assault, theft, sabotage and killing of livestock, incompetent police, corrupt officials and unjust land confiscations. By 2015, one third of farmers’ land will have been redistributed, and much of this acreage is already lying fallow or reverting to bush, because the new proprietors (often local tribal leaders or ANC party bosses) lack the interest or the skills to farm it. In 2009, South Africa became a net food importer for the first time. If or when famine strikes it will presumably be ascribed to the legacy of apartheid rather than the inadequacies of the nouvelle regime.

The white population decreased by 20% between 1995 and 2005, giving rise to the colloquialism of “packing for Perth” and causing even Mandela to snarl that they are “traitors”. Mandela’s Western worshippers may be surprised to learn that their demi-god would resort to such brusquerie, but after all he did lead the ANC’s terrorist wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) whose anthem contains the following un-neighbourly sentiment:

“We the members of the Umkhonto have pledged ourselves to kill them—kill the whites”

Even terrorists deserve a chance of redemption, but it is salutary to recall that Amnesty International—not generally considered a diehard conservative organisation—refused to recognize Mandela as a prisoner of conscience because of his continued commitment to violence, and that the country over which he hovers like some angelic presence early forged cordial links with the likes of Gaddafi, Castro and assorted Palestinian hardliners.

White flight has further skewed the imbalance between provider and provided for—today for every (disproportionately white) taxpayer there are no fewer than eleven (disproportionately black) voters. To add to this vast potential for class envy, many of these voters have been schooled to resent the whites on whom they depend. It is a volatile blend, fuelling radical redistribution policies and a sporadic ethnic intifada against whites—especially those who live on isolated farms far from police who might not come even if they knew what was happening, and would probably never catch the killers even if they did come.

I have used the word intifada because the Afrikaners always had an unusually intimate relationship with Israel. The author says of the Dutch Reformed Church to which most Afrikaners owe (or owed) allegiance—

“In their community they saw an extension of the covenant God formed with the Israelites.”

The material effects of this mysticism were decades of strategic co-operation between the two pariah-states, both hated for real or alleged racism, and both the objects of innumerable angry denunciations, UN resolutions and anguished editorials. Many in both condemned countries saw the situation as Mrs. Mercer describes it:

“It was SA and Israel against the world and against the forces of nihilistic liberalism intent on snuffing out civilized outposts at the tip of Africa and in the Middle East.”

Calvinist eschatological logic played a paradoxical part in South Africa’s trajectory—originally inspiring the Afrikaner expansion into the intoxicating-horrifying wilderness, then being used to justify and bolster apartheid before eventually turning in on itself, as the Afrikaners realized they

“…had become something they detested…the biblically blessed country became an Ishmael, an outcast.”

There was a consequent collapse of will in Afrikanerdom’s upper echelons. Big business always hated apartheid, there was little or no academic or artistic support, and when the church gave up in puzzled despair there was no more reason to resist—even though Afrikaners knew well that their quality of life would suffer. There is a revealing anecdote from the fraught final days of apartheid, when there were constant rumours of a military coup to forestall power-sharing. When General Constand Viljoen told General George Meiring that the army could take over the country in a single night, Meiring reportedly replied:

“Yes, that is so, but what do we do the morning after the coup?”

The author is particularly insightful on this subject, and en passant tells the little-known story of the slamse gevaar “(the Islamic threat”) in South Africa, as represented by the pro-Iranian revolution group known as People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, which almost unhindered carried out 80 bombings against civilians in 1999-2000 while the state security apparatus focused on a non-existent threat from white separatists.

The author’s father was against apartheid not out of Marxism or sentimentality but simply because he found the system to be inconsistent with the moral tenets he had imbibed from the Torah. Mrs. Mercer is at pains to explain his motivations, because it is her difficult duty to demonstrate that the country he and so many other well-meaning people helped create is in many ways inferior to the reviled Republic. Between the lines of the polemic there therefore crackles much unresolved tension, reflecting this balancing act between her loyalty to her father and her compulsion to attest to truths which will pain him. There is also a palpable sense of guilt—at fleeing from a once-beloved country, and leaving behind them fine people, black as well as white, who had not the Mercers’ good fortune of possessing a second passport and remittable funds.

“If only…” is her underlying refrain—if only the whites had insisted on minority safeguards—if only international opinion had supported the pro-Western Zulus rather than the pro-Third World “Xhosa Nostra”—if only the new reigning ideology had been capitalism rather than racial socialism—if only reform could have been achieved without this kind of miserable meltdown. She does not offer any SA solutions, although she quotes severally from the remarkable Afrikaner cultural activist Dan Roodt. She scarcely mentions contemporary Afrikaner parties like the Freedom Front Plus, or initiatives like the Afrikaner-only settlement of Orania in the Western Cape (which the new SA Constitution permits, and which Jacob Zuma visited last year).

Yet Cannibal is a klaxon of a kind—leaping frequently, if not always seamlessly, between the RSA and the USA. Mrs. Mercer seeks urgently to show how the perils of South Africa are being replicated in her new country of domicile. Both countries are roughly the same age, and both have frontier-taming, republican and Low Church traditions which are metastasizing into anxiety-utopian complexes. They also have large and mutually distrustful racial groups, a factor which militates against social cohesion and democracy because,

“A perquisite for a classical liberal democracy is that majority and minority status should be interchangeable and fluid.”

In America, as in South Africa, perplexed policymakers strive to address distrust through multiculturalism and affirmative action—perversely, because such policies all too evidently entrench rather than efface divisions. Both countries are wedded to what the author calls the “diversity doxology” and to globalisation; both are experiencing PC policy creep on social keystones like freedom of association (and dissociation), freedom of speech, strong families, self-reliance, fiscal rectitude, property rights and enforceable contracts. She feels that as some small recompense for America’s part in toppling the old balance of power, Washington should offer sanctuary to some of those whose livelihoods (and lives) they have ruined—one of her very few proposals, and one unlikely ever to make it into the US statute book.

The two countries’ situations are very different, and their destinies will therefore diverge—but there are strong similarities too, and she raises the powerful possibility what is happening now in South Africa is happening no less surely in her new beloved country.

 

NOTE

1. A rare and interesting cinematic idea of what the Cape Town of the 1960s looked and felt like may be found in the 1967 film The Cape Town Affair, starring Jacqueline Bisset and James Brolin

Restricting Voting Rights, Race, and Future Time Orientation

Restricting Voting Rights, Race, and Future Time Orientation

 http://onestdv.blogspot.com/2011/11/restricting-voting-rights-race-and.html

The left may actually have a grasp of race and politics than conservatives. In an article at NYTimes.com entitled The White Party, Columbia journalism professor Thomas Edsall writes the millionth article I’ve read summarizing racial voting trends. Seriously, I read this same article about once a week, basically just a list of statistics on what race votes for what party. Here’s an excerpt to show what I’m talking about:

Another way of looking at it is this: fully 88.8 percent of all ballots cast in 2010 for House Republicans were cast by whites, compared to 63.9 percent for Democrats.

The degree to which the Republican Party has become a white party is also reflected in the composition of primary voters. For example, on March 4, 2008, in Ohio — where non-Hispanic whites are 81.1 percent of the population, blacks 12.2 percent, and Hispanics 3.1 percent — the Republican primary turnout was 97 percent white. Hispanics were 2 percent and the black turnout was so low it was zero percent, statistically speaking. One percent was described as “other.”

In the Jan. 19, 2008, South Carolina primary, 96 percent of the Republican turnout was white, 2 percent black, 1 percent Latino and 1 percent other. The population of the state is 64.1 percent white, 27.9 percent black and 5.1 percent Hispanic.

Oh wait, I forgot the other part of this formulaic sort of article – castigate Republicans as racist merely on the basis of support amongst whites.

Now, moving toward what has all the markings of a historic ideological and demographic collision on Nov. 6, 2012, Republicans are doubling down on this racially fraught strategy.

But even Dr. Edsall admits Republican never make any explicit appeals to white voters, with this presumably the most basic justification of his characterization above:

While the subject of race and of the overwhelmingly white Republican primary electorate are never explicitly discussed by Republican candidates, the issue is subsumed in blatant anti-immigration rhetoric.

Ahh once again, the liberal mind-reading ability arises. Funny that liberals can so adeptly parse the hidden motivations of conservatives, including those of racist whites, institutionally racist businesses, women-hating men, and so on. Right after the above, Dr. Edsall notes a parallel strategy amongst Democrats, though the accusations of bias are conspicuously absent:

The major threat to the Republican “white” strategy is a revival of the high turnout among minorities that carried Democrats to victory in 2008.

But our intrepid Dr. Edsall does not stop there – he notes how those evil Republicans have enacted laws with the specific (though unstated) intention of reducing minority turnout:

Republicans, however, are taking advantage of their newly won control of state governments across the country to enact laws designed to suppress minority turnout. Republican legislators and governors are reversing decades of liberalized access to the ballot by passing laws restricting or eliminating election day registration, early voting, the broader use of absentee ballots and voting by mail…Liberal groups, including the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School, estimate that as many as five million men and women will be unable to vote because of these laws, which disproportionately affect minority voters.

OK, maybe we’re not supposed to question the premises of leftist academics writing for the NYbetaT. But may I ask why exactly, in the liberal paradigm of racial behavioral egalitarianism, would “restricting election day registration and early voting” disproportionately affect minority voters? I presume it does (see next paragraph), but these laws don’t disenfranchise felons, a class whose racial disparities liberals can at least blame on our racist society. These laws merely demand that people put a little effort into voting, undoubtedly an act of great importance and one that should be granted to those who can exhibit the most trivial amount of responsibility. What exactly about racist judges, racist schools, and racist police officers would make minorities less able to register ahead of time? One presumes that someone who has the ability and information to vote on voting day also has the ability to register prior to that day. Liberals can’t resolve this “conundrum” and it’s why articles such as Dr. Edsall’s rely on invective rather than analysis.

So why do blacks and Hispanics suffer disproportionately from these measures? (Let me just add that I love these laws.) They lack “future time orientation,” a concept well known amongst the HBD-osphere but surprisingly absent from academic discourse on intelligence. Two of the top Google results are from HalfSigma and Mangan. HalfSigma provides a great definition:

What is “future time orientation”? Presumably this refers to planning for a better future and placing future benefits over immediate gratification…The prisons are full of people lacking in “future time orientation,” because committing a crime to get some quick cash or get revenge at someone who pissed you off is an example of enjoying immediate gratification at the expense of one’s future.

One of the most well-known stereotypes about blacks, one that can’t be blamed on racist whites, is that they never show up on time. “Future time orientation” largely explains this as blacks lack the ability to analyze how present decisions will manifest as consequences for future situations. Blacks and Hispanics, due to their lower intelligence, have difficulty in planning, delaying gratification, and, most fundamentally, foreseeing future outcomes based on a perhaps complicated set of current data. Clearly then, blacks and Hispanics want to vote right when they’re able to, they don’t want to wait or plan ahead for something that won’t occur until a later date. Children think this way too, as evinced by the famous marshmallow study – they can’t temper their impulses in order to make rational decisions. As HalfSigma says, “the black man would rather hang out” than get off the stoop to do something for something else that won’t even occur for awhile later. (Do liberals get around this by having ACORN and other community organizers round up NAMs in the ghetto on voting day?)

However, even if this didn’t have the fortunate consequence of reducing minority turnout, I’d still support the measures. While I view democracy as an OK system, I still don’t want the listless classes having their say. I also don’t want a monopolized system of power, one largely confined to elitists living in the social Ivory Tower. I want a happy medium where the productive masses vote because they know what’s best and fair, not because they want a piece of the pie without working for it. By requiring a little bit of foresight in gaining voting rights, we ensure that the proper class of individual, non-criminal, mature, informed, and responsible, comprises the largest portion of the voting public. How can Dr. Edsall disagree with that? Oh wait, that’s waayyyccist.

How to Save the Real America from Black-Run America

How to Save the Real America from Black-Run America (BRA)

http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/

Real America is growing increasingly ready for action

Visiting a store dedicated to peddling Christmas decorations 365 days of the year, I had an epiphany. Looking at the miniature Christmas Villages on display, depicting a quintessential Normal Rockwell American town – that seems like a phantasmagoria in our world today where the Federal government deliberately seeks to place refugees or Section 8 Housing in the dwindling number of Whitopias to disrupt the peace and serenity found there – it dawned on me that people display these in their homes for a deliberate, perhaps unconscious reason; this is the America they long for; white picket fences, good neighbors, Christmas carols, safe streets and empty highways, and a future filled with promise instead of the uncertainty we face today.

With Thanksgiving approaching, it’s time we at SBPDL let you know how thankful we are for readers of this site that continue to put up with our war on college football (and sports) and visit here daily. The growth of this site – compared to last year – is mind-blowing, and that’s something we – I’m – thankful for. Doing this site is dangerous, but realizing that there are still millions – tens of millions – of people in this country who long for an earlier time when those Norman Rockwell paintings were an everyday reality, well, a powerful sense of duty and drive to write SBPDL seems almost obligatory.

Lawrence Auster recently published a simple, concise breakdown of what has been dubbed Black-Run America (BRA), and I’d like to re-post it here. In talking about the reluctance by the media to admit that Flash Mobs are actually Mahogany Mobs, he writes:

But the current reality, in which the blackness of blacks is relentlessly pushed into our faces when it advances blacks’ interests or blacks’ collective ego, but is covered up when it does not, is also extremely odd, and yet everyone takes it for granted. No one in mainstream America questions it.”

Because Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs) have tied all of their progressive agenda into uplifting Black people from the chains of Jim Crow – interestingly, almost 1/3 of Black males, by their own actions, put those chains back on – Real American’s have been unable to launch an effective counter-measure against these societal changes for more than 50 years.

On this Thanksgiving Eve, as many good people across this land read political manifestos by aspiring Presidential candidates – or fight horrible traffic caused by white people having to flee the Black Undertow and the unnecessary addition of millions of immigrants who concentrate in large cities – let SBPDL supply a small list of action items that, if adopted by the ever-increasing (but reluctant to admit it) white party, could start to roll-back some of the insanity we see in BRA.

1. Restore the right of Restrictive Covenant that will forever end the ability of the Black Undertow to overwhelm cities and counties, forcing real Climate Change.


2. Fight to end Affirmative Action once and for all. It’s that simple. Oh, and end the nonsense known as “Disparate Impact.”

3. Understand that the rest of world is preparing for a post-American future by investing heavily in building what are called “Aerotropolis‘.” Conversely, the failures of Detroit and Birmingham provide the primary answer as to why tourism is down in America (who really wants to see interchangeable American big cities with no culture, save Knockout King played members of Mahogany Mobs hoping to get on WorldStarHipHop?) and showcase why this nation is seen as obsolete in long-term strategies for global trade.

4. Knowing the reality of No. 3, abolish the Department of Education and end the war on the racial gap in educational achievement. Start tracking students at a young age and develop programs that mentor the ‘gifted students’ instead of investing huge sums of money trying to figure out why certain segments of population are disciplinary problems.

5. File an anti-trust suit against ESPN and break up that monopoly.

6. College Athletic Departments are considered “non-profits,” sense they have some sort of convoluted educational mission. Thus, college football head coaches are considered executives of the most lucrative non-profits in America; end this tax-dodge, where millions of boosters continue to provide lavish funding toward.

7. Fight to end Section 8 Housing.

8. A moratorium on all immigration, coupled with actively expelling all illegal aliens (and legal immigrants) who have been found guilty of crimes against Real American’s.

9. Began Project Go Home by working with the states that the Federal government is suing (because they refuse to enforce our immigration laws) to pass tough laws against those who employ illegal aliens. Illegal aliens are leaving Arizona, Georgia, and Alabama, because it is feasible to enforce our laws – that the Department of Justice is suing over! – and the increased financial strain on state and local budgets can be solved.

10. Because more than 50 percent of murders in this country where committed by less than 5 percent of the population in 2010 (yes, Black males, we mean you because “guns don’t kill people, dangerous minorities do”) enact massive racial profiling in major urban areas. Because the majority of those killed by Black people are Black people (because white people and other racial groups do everything possible to avoid living near Black people), this extra policing should work to increase the quality of life for all Black people.

11. Enact the “Castle Law” in every state.

12. Enact term limits immediately for Congress at: only one four year term; for senators, only one six year term.

13. Fight to overturn “Hate Crime” laws.

14. End all “diversity” initiatives in the military and in the Federal government.

15. Break up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Abolish HUD.

16. Re-open The House of Un-American Activities Committee on all DWLs ensconced in academia, the media, corporate America, the Federal government, and Hollywood. Real America deserves better than BRA.

17. Conduct studies as to why public transportation in America works in some cities and doesn’t in others. Once the reality that Black people and their behavior keeps Real American’s from utilizing this sane mode of transportation, consider ways to fix this problem.

18. Put the military on the border. Prepare to wage war on the Mexican drug cartel utilizing Predator Drone strikes. Stabilize Mexico’s government so that the tens of millions of illegal aliens in America can return to a nation in need of their labor.

19. Grant asylum to white South Africans fleeing the tyranny of the African National Congress (ANC). Let them settle in Detroit and other failed, majority Black cities. Declare an “Enterprise Zone” there and in less than one year you’ll have a world class again.

20. Grant asylum to Europeans fleeing the tyranny of a cradle-to-grave ‘nanny state’ that is the European Union, which actively supports the rights of radical Mohammedans over the indigenous population.

There. You won’t see any of these ideas broached in any political manifesto from a 2012 Presidential candidate, but this is how you restore freedom and liberty to America; by rolling back BRA, which makes freedom and liberty available exclusively to Black people and their DWL enablers.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

Posted by Stuff Black People Don’t Like

100%

100%

http://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2011/11/100.html

A milestone in the history of our nation was reached about 8:30AM EST today, when our ever-increasing debt to GDP ratio exceeded 100%. Just over 2 years ago, Bill Gross of Pimco, the wizard of bonds, said our debt to GDP ratio could conceivably reach this level in “perhaps as quickly as five years“.  Most of us have seen the great visualization sequence at usdebt.kleptocracy.us, who gives us this image of the physical size of our debt: here is $15 trillion dollars, in stacked pallets of 100 dollar bills.

I want to show the following chart, a recent, but not up to the minute version of the data, which shows the growth of the debt in the last century.  I like this format because the linear vertical scale clearly shows – with a minor hitch – exponential growth, and that’s the fundamental problem (source is from January):

The exponential growth is the example of why this can’t be fixed by increasing taxes; which is the equivalent of taking a bucket of water out of a swimming pool and dumping it in the other end.  This is a spending problem.  This is the death spike of a currency.

As I said last night, with a congress unwilling to make even 3% cuts in spending, this does not end well.  But it does end – it has to – and probably fairly soon: it ends in months, not years.  Infinity is a handy concept in math but not a good basis for economic policy.

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency involved. – Ludwig von Mises

Oh – that’s right.  An anonymous Keynesian commenter in October said that Austrian economics can’t make predictions.  Everything is fine.  Just keep on with life.  No need to store food or any of those fruitcake ideas you read about.  You can trust our insect overlords to fix everything.

The Decline of Nations

The Decline of Nations

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

No country falls but from within. Given a sufficient population and resources to hold off its enemies, the only sufficient explanation for its fall is internal.

Take the decline of the West, which is often talked about and attributed to leftist conspiracies and Islamic colonialism. But why is Japan, a First World nation whose culture and geography differs dramatically from America and Europe also in a state of economic, political and cultural decline? Not to mention demographic decline.

The Japanese left is certainly active, but blaming it for the country’s decline is a more difficult proposition. Japan has a long history of Islamic outreach, but it isn’t about to be Islamized and immigration is not a factor. Nor did Japan have a religious heritage that was lost to secularism. Nevertheless with its dwindling population, escapist culture, dysfunctional politics and tremulous foreign policy– Japan’s follies seem to resemble those of the West. The origins of its problems may be different, but the outcome is the same.

Taking a broader view, it almost seems as if joining the club of First World nations is a national death sentence. Sure the technology and the social benefits are nice, but they’re not much good without a future.

The future is an important part of the equation, not the actual future to come, but how people see the future. Progress split the world into two kinds of societies, those that could envision a future different from the past– and those that could only imagine the past endlessly repeating itself.

To change, you must first know that change is possible. Only then is it possible to break free of the wheel of time and rise like an arrow into the unknown reaches of the future. A hundred years ago, the world was dominated by nations that were fascinated by change and futurism. 1900 was attended by wild predictions about what life in the year 2000 might be like. That century also brought the explosion of Science Fiction, a primarily American literary genre that envisioned technology reshaping mankind.

60 years ago those elements still remained in place, but progressivism had become Dionysian, irrational pleasure seeking and substance abusing, its reformism limited to social reforms. Big government was swiftly becoming the only element of the old progressivism that still remained intact, but even that was a shell of the scientific government it was meant to be.

Pessimism has replaced optimism. Mankind is in a state of eternal war against its own social problems, class war, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on carbon and the war on terror with no solutions in sight. The Dionysian intoxication drifted between naive optimism and pessimistic melancholia aided by large doses of self-medication with drugs, prescription and illegal, to aid in their doomed search for happiness and fulfillment.

The enemies of the West had never embraced progress. The Soviet experiment was derived from a Western European model and quickly reverted to Czarist feudalism under a new name. And Islam, which had never accepted any other future than the past, was determined to tear away modernity and replace it with the past.

The Clash of Civilizations is a clash between a First World that no longer believes in its own future and an Islamic world that is determined to undo the future and bring back the past.

It is always difficult to envision the future, but the First World’s visions of the future have gone from the optimistic to the pessimistic to the entirely blank. The progressives see the future as a long chain of government offices, the expansion of authority from the local to the national to the global. But there’s no romance in global government as even the EU’s biggest enthusiasts have trouble depicting it as anything more than some tottering gargantuan nightmare.

Take Europa riding the bull, a common piece of EU art, the outward symbolism is of the gentler side of humanity fighting to rein in the beast of nationalism, but the actual tale is of a god in the form of the beast abducting Europa. The Eurocrats might like to pretend that the woman represents the EU, but actually they see themselves as the beast-god, ideals posing as brute force, to kidnap and ravish the nations of Europe for their own good/

The EU’s motto “In Variate Concordia” or “United in Diversity” means something very different from the similar sounding, “E Pluribus Unum” or “Out of Many, One”, the original motto of the US and even more different than the official motto, “In God We Trust”. In Variate Concordia is contradictory, expressing the limits of the progressive vision without even knowing it is doing so.

Bigger and bigger government is not inspirational to anyone who doesn’t foresee a future working for it. Nor is a national identity built out of regional and global diversity at all meaningful. A future of multicultural bureaucracy isn’t visionary, it’s crisis management for societies that use cheap slogans to pave over real problems.

That European vision defines the First World, but it is a vision in decline and the decline of national vision is also the decline of nations. Latecomers to the club, including America, Japan and Israel have tried to adopt the European vision with disastrous results and formerly optimistic countries now suffer from national malaise.

50 years ago, America, Japan and Israel represented the “can do” spirit. Today they’re as hapless and dysfunctional as Europe and unable to imagine a future that doesn’t hinge on some kind of global togetherness as expressed in UN literature and Benetton ads. The European vision has gifted every country that adopted it with oversized and unwieldy governments, unstable economies and no future.

The Islamists and Communists who gathered to feast on the corpse of Europe were a symptom of the problem– and the problem was a failure of vision. And a failure of vision originates in a loss of identity.

To know what you want from the future, you must first know who you are. The High School student who has yet to develop an idea of the kind of life he would like to lead and the things he would like to accomplish is going to have trouble picking a profession. Are you a strong person? A contemplative one? Do you enjoy the company of people, are you interested in what makes things work? Or are you “United in Diversity” and have no idea who you are?

The American future was defined by an American identity. When the American identity switched to “United in Diversity” and the national goal became to heal the eternal wounds of classism and racism and address all the social problems, then there was literally no future left. If you define the future negatively, in terms of remedying ills, rather than positively in settling an entire continent, then the future can never arrive. And even if it did, you wouldn’t want it to, because those ills, racism, sexism, poverty and pollution are the closest thing you have to an identity.

A nation does not have to be multicultural to suffer an identity crisis, not when it’s piggybacking on someone else’s identity crisis. Japan tried very hard to catch up to Western modernism, now it’s racing Europe into economic and demographic decline, without ever opening up its borders or indulging in much political correctness, besides the ritual apologies to the Ainu. Israel is still on the rise economically and demographically, but culturally it has drunk deep of the poisoned wells of European academia.

America, Australia, Canada and the rest of them are busy with their own apologies to the indigenous peoples and the foreign peoples who were offended by something or by anything. Which amounts to apologizing for their existence. And nations that apologize for their own existence have lost their identity and their future.

The “United in Diversity” model is broken, globally and locally, and that model is used to sustain the national, regional and global federalization of government into one long iron chain of authority. Without that model, the illusion of functionality would begin breaking down, forcing a redistribution of power back to local authorities.

A more honest name for the First World model would be “Progress Through Central Authority”, a distillation of everything that has gone wrong, consuming the energy and vitality of great nations. In the absence of a directional vision, the First World has become easy prey for reactionary utopians with their own perfect societies.

Islam has the demographics to conquer the West and a vision of a future that is the past, building on the progress of the cultures it conquers while crushing the spirit of inquiry that made that progress possible. Having subjugated Athens, Delhi, Constantinople and Jerusalem in the past, it has its eye on London, Paris and New York today. It knows to sweep in when the innovators falter, their cultures decay and become static, and then claim its prize.

Islam has lost Jerusalem, Athens and Delhi, but it is confident of being able to reclaim them, and Athens, despite the loss of Constantinople, is urging the downfall of Jerusalem. But to those who subscribe to the “United in Diversity” vision, what difference does it make who populates a city. All people are alike in that they are to be ruled by the same global authorities. What matters is the rule of law embodied in global government… not the beliefs and identities of individual peoples, except as cultural heritage fairs.

If the First World nations don’t reclaim national visions of the future that are deeper than that, then they will fall into the hands of those whose vision isn’t “United in Diversity”, but “United in Submission” and “Enslaved Through Force”.

Creative societies innovate, decaying societies quarrel over the scraps and invite in their own enemies to rule over them. It has happened before and it is happening again before our eyes. Our capacity to resist that decay emerges from our culture and its vision of the future. Only when we see the future as an adventure, rather than a progressive decline, will we be able to win that future for ourselves and our grandchildren.

The Impossible Numbers

Failure of the Supercommittee

The Impossible Numbers

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/11/impossible-numbers.html

Some political systems are based on beliefs and identity. The American congress is built on spending money. The spoils system long ago became the spoiled system with money as the lubricant of politics. The legacy of a leader used to be measured by his accomplishments, today it’s measured by how much money he managed to extract from the collective pool of real and imaginary money held in the sweaty hands of the legislatures.

Much of the money is imaginary, but in the minds of the politicians it’s all imaginary. Unreality is an elementary tool of price inflation. The more outrageous the markup, the more the merchant works to create an atmosphere where money does not seem to exist and reality bends at the seams. It’s not a new game of a particularly clever one, but the unreality bubble now covers much of Washington D.C.

In the unreality bubble, numbers don’t really mean anything. 2 + 2 does not equal 4, sometimes it equals 1, sometimes a 100, sometimes any number you want it to be. Philosophers have spent thousands of years proving that nothing is real, but until recently they were not being employed as economists.

The clever are particularly adept at deception and at self-deception, treating reality as if it were as malleable as language. Objective reality can’t be manipulated with language, but subjective reality easily is. And each manipulation only increases the perception of unreality as the reality gap widens between the out of touch, who also happen to be in power.

Spending is momentum. It’s also privilege. Wealth is power and the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money is rather disturbingly close to absolute power. And absolute power not only corrupts, it also blinds and distorts.

The political elite have confused their power over their own subjective reality with control over subjective reality. That is how we got to 15 trillion and given the willingness of much of the disaster that passes for the global economy to participate in the debt funded planned government economies springing up from China to Turkey to the United States, there’s no limit to how much money we can spend except the collapse of the system.

So the failure of the Supercommittee should be no surprise. The Democrats have only one election strategy and that’s to blame the Republicans. They have nothing to gain from cooperation and everything to gain from conflict. They would see the economy burn, even if they didn’t have anything to gain from the flames—but they do.

Hypocrisy abounds on the Republican side where symbolic votes cover a multitude of economic sins. And when he symbolic votes tank, then the masks come off. But why expect anything different? The United States is not a one party system and congress can only be held hostage so far. The Republican Party is not innocent, only comparatively less guilty, their crimes those of greedy and complacency, rather than the ideological agenda that fattens up the spending of the left.

Everyone talks cuts, but no one makes them because cuts are a dangerous thing. Elections are expensive and someone has to pay for them. Indirectly that someone is the poor schmoe sending off money to D.C. without getting anything for it but aching fingers.

There is a base for cutting taxes, but cutting spending alienates almost all the bases. Real spending cuts would gore everyone’s cow and the congressmen and senators who listen to pleas, demands and pitches day in and day out know that better than anyone else. They know that spending cuts are a thankless task and that for every target that gets applause, there will be two that evoke discomfort and one that brings out horror and disbelief. “You can’t cut that.” And you can’t.

It’s much easier to indulge in impossible numbers, to borrow insane amounts of money and pass on the debt to the tenth generation. Let them figure it out. And why not. It’s only money and congress has been spending increasingly insane amounts of it year after year.

The bigger the system, the harder it is to hold anyone accountable. Bureaucracies don’t correct failure, they falsely report success up the line. That’s how the Soviet Union went into a deep decline without anyone ever realizing it. When everyone is inventing impossible numbers and claiming success and the reporting system has an interest in not questioning the ridiculous claims of 92 percent harvests while bread is impossible to find, then before you know it you’re chewing on straw and calling it delicious.

15 trillion is a wake up call for people who can count, for most of congress it’s just a bunch of zeroes which don’t become any more perilous with addition. Congressmen who aren’t impressed by a billion aren’t going to be impressed by a trillion. A quadrillion? Why not. It’s all mostly zeroes anyway.

A political elite that no longer knows the difference between driving on premium unleaded and running on fumes can’t see anything wrong with the arrangement. They’re part of a system whose spending momentum runs in only one direction. Sure they could try to drag the massive budget boulder back up the mountain and then pare it down, but it’s easier to stand back and let the good times roll.

In this the political elite mimics their financial services industry counterparts. The left shouts about Glass-Steagall, but they are counting on the government to rein in the banks. And who will rein in a government which spends so willfully that even the most irresponsible investing strategy seems reasonable by comparison? If the government is supposed to watch the banks, then who will watch the watchers?

Corruption is one side of the problem, but that explains how we got here, not why we’re still here. To do that you have to get into the head of a Madoff, a man who knew better than most the futility of his financial scheme and yet kept digging himself in deeper and deeper. Whatever tragedy there is in the hubris that made it happen is more than amply present in the government.

Like Madoff, there are men and women in the government who know full well the path that they are on and do nothing about it. Like him, they likely vacillate between hubris and despair, bouts of self-loathing giving way to explosions of public arrogance. But they also know full well the futility of action.

Once Madoff’s scam became uncorrectable, when it was no longer possible to pay out the investors and move on, then the man and the scam became one. There are men and women high in our government who have reached the same conclusion, who have decided that it is too late to reverse the damage and so they might as well ride the bottom all the way down.

Amid the spectacle of their retirement dinners and awards, the civic speeches and noble sentiments, they know full well what they have done. Knowledge such as that carries its own price and shapes actions. The man who believes that he is living in Eisenhower’s America or Weimar Germany will behave differently.

The choices we make derive from our morality, but they also emerge from our hope for the future. When there is no hope for the future, then corruption is the only way. The reign of the hapless and the hopeless becomes a way of life and while endless plans are made, no one believes that they can or will succeed. Leaders become glib scam artists endlessly practiced at reassuring the public that everything is fine. But inside they are hollow men who have already abandoned the future.

This is not the face of the majority of our congress, much of which still has faith in impossible numbers, but I suspect that behind the dour faces of more than a face long serving senators is that knowledge and its attendant despair. The men who have decided that 15 trillion is an irreversible debt or those who think that money is abstract are equally likely to behave irresponsibly.

Excessive naiveté or despair both lead down the same road of irresponsible spending, and whether the authors of the bills spend because they do not believe that money is finite, or because they know all too well that it is, the results are the same.

But even this is too much for many elected officials who have not put this much thought into it, who follow the system and do what everyone does and avoid thinking about what it is they are doing. They admit that the debt seems high, but there are always reasons why their district can’t lose anything when there are so many other programs in so many other districts that need cutting.

Adversarial apathy is an equally sure path to the same road, but it lacks the pathos of tragedy, it is as vulgar as a mob fighting over a discount sale. Pork is the engine of this machine and as long as the fat burns, then the politicians will cluster to grab a slice. And why not? They know their jobs, not to be leaders but to serve as intermediaries for the special interests back home. If their predecessor got it for them, then they have to get it also. And when the corporations come calling, a little crony capitalism never hurt anyone and helped their chances when moving up the ladder.

It’s not really numbers that are impossible, it’s people. You can play any game with numbers so long as your game has consistent rules. And so long as you don’t believe that those rules govern reality. But the rules of the game being played with the future of the country are not consistent, and even if they were, you can only buy real commodities with impossible numbers and imaginary money until the sellers stop taking play money.

AL immigration law is not “anti-Latino.”

AL immigration law is not “anti-Latino.”

Latino race hustlers and left-wing open border advocates have egg on their face after a high profile arrest proves the new AL enforcement law isn’t aimed solely at Latinos. The great lamentation from the left is that the AL enforcement bill is “anti-Latino.” They have invented a fantasy where police only ask “brown skinned” people for identification.

A man was pulled over for not having a license plate. He also did not have a driver license, only a German id. He was arrested and detained until another man retrieved his passport and US visa. It turns out the man is a manager for Mercedes-Benz which just opened a plant in Alabama.

Previously, anyone without US id would have been given a ticket and court summons. Illegal aliens would simply ignore the ticket and the summons. Nothing would ever happen to them. This is what goes on all over the US every day.

Read Article.

Illegal aliens began fleeing Alabama even before any of the new enforcement measures went into effect. Last month Alabama saw a huge drop in the state’s unemployment rate. Illegal aliens have also disappeared from public schools and welfare roles, saving Alabamans a lot of money.

Alabama reaps huge rewards from new immigration enforcement bill.

Mexican drug cartels moving north.

Mexican drug cartels moving north.

From Fox News…

Echoing complaints made by authorities in other border towns, law enforcement authorities say that Mexico drug cartels are a growing force in northern New Mexico.

The Farmington Daily Times reports that Region II Narcotics Task Force Director Neil Haws says the Juárez cartel has been operating for two years in San Juan County, for example, but that the Sinaloa and Michoacán cartels also have gained ground.

Haws recently told Bloomfield city councilors that members of cartels live in the area with their families and recruit local gang members to sell their drugs to avoid detection.

Haws said cartel members find it easy to import the drugs, mainly meth, via wide-open New Mexico roads and reservation lands.

Farmington officials and the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office have been lobbying for a federal magistrate for the area.

Earlier this month, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said that Mexico’s drug gang violence has become a crime issue in the Lone Star state, and he has sent a request to President Obama to bolster security along the U.S.-Mexican border that runs along the state.

Abbott said the matter had gained more urgency after a shooting between cartel operatives and Texas law enforcement that resulted in a deputy sheriff being shot three times.

Global Financial Collapse

The Coming Global Financial Collapse That Will Make Your Hair Stand Up

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Is the world on the verge of another massive global financial collapse?  Yes.  The western world is drowning in an ocean of debt unlike anything the world has ever seen before, and our financial markets are gigantic casinos that are dependent on huge mountains of risk and leverage remaining very stable.  In the end, this house of cards that has been built on a foundation of sand is going to come crashing down in a horrifying manner.  Usually in this column I go on and on about why things will soon get much worse.  But today I am going to take a bit of a break.  Today, I am going to let some of the top financial professionals in the world tell you why things will soon get much worse.  Many of the quotes that you are about to read just might make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.  Most people out there have no idea what is about to happen.  Most people out there are working hard and are busy preparing for the holidays and they are hopeful that the economy will turn around soon.  But that is not going to happen.  We are heading for another major global financial collapse, and when it happens the U.S. economy is going to get even worse.

The epicenter for the coming global financial collapse is almost certainly going to be in Europe.  As you will see below, financial professionals all over the world are sounding the alarm about Europe.  It is a disaster that everyone can see coming but that nobody seems to be able to prevent.

Of course the failure of the “supercommittee” in the United States certainly is not helping matters.  There is already talk that we may soon see another downgrade for U.S. debt.  It is hard to even describe how incompetent the U.S. Congress is.

There is a tremendous lack of leadership both in the United States and in Europe right now.  The financial world is more interconnected than ever before, and when the financial dominoes start to fall it is going to take a miracle to keep a complete and total disaster from unfolding.

So when the time comes, who is going to step forward and provide that leadership?

That is a really, really good question.

Right now, panic and fear are spreading like wildfire in the financial world and nobody knows for sure what is going to happen next.

But one thing is for certain.  Pessimism is growing stronger by the day.

The following are 17 quotes about the coming global financial collapse that will make your hair stand up….

#1 Credit Suisse’s Fixed Income Research unit: “We seem to have entered the last days of the euro as we currently know it. That doesn’t make a break-up very likely, but it does mean some extraordinary things will almost certainly need to happen – probably by mid-January – to prevent the progressive closure of all the euro zone sovereign bond markets, potentially accompanied by escalating runs on even the strongest banks.”

#2 Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup: “Time is running out fast.  I think we have maybe a few months — it could be weeks, it could be days — before there is a material risk of a fundamentally unnecessary default by a country like Spain or Italy which would be a financial catastrophe dragging the European banking system and North America with it.”

#3 Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank: “If you don’t think Merkel’s tone will change then our investment advice is to dig a hole in the ground and hide.”

#4 David Rosenberg, a senior economist at Gluskin Sheff in Toronto: “Lenders are finding it difficult to finance their day-to-day operations with short-term funding. This is a lot like 2008 but with more twists.”

#5 Christian Stracke, the head of credit research for Pimco: “This is just a repeat of what we saw in 2008, when everyone wanted to see toxic assets off the banks’ balance sheets”

#6 Paul Krugman of the New York Times: “At this point I’d guess soaring rates on Italian debt leading to a gigantic bank run, both because of solvency fears about Italian banks given a default and because of fear that Italy will end up leaving the euro. This then leads to emergency bank closing, and once that happens, a decision to drop the euro and install the new lira. Next stop, France.”

#7 Paul Hickey of Bespoke Investment Group: “More and more, we are hearing anecdotal comments from individual and professionals that this is the most difficult environment they have ever experienced as the market is like a fish flopping around after being taken out of the water.”

#8 Bob Janjuah of Nomura International: “Germany appears to be adamant that full political and fiscal integration over the next decade (nothing substantive will happen over the short term, in my view) is the only option, and ECB monetisation is no longer possible. I really think it is that clear and simple. And if I am wrong, and the ECB does a U-turn and agrees to unlimited monetisation, I will simply wait for the inevitable knee-jerk rally to fade before reloading my short risk positions. Even if Germany and the ECB somehow agree to unlimited monetisation I believe it will do nothing to fix the insolvency and lack of growth in the eurozone. It will just result in a major destruction of the ECB‟s balance sheet which will force an ECB recap. At that point, I think Germany and its northern partners would walk away. Markets always want short, sharp, simple solutions.”

#9 Dan Akerson, CEO of General Motors: “The ’08 recession, which was a credit bubble that manifested itself through primarily the real estate market, that was a serious stress….This is much more serious.”

#10 Francesco Garzarelli of Goldman Sachs: “Pressures on Euro area sovereign bond markets have progressively intensified and spread like a wildfire.”

#11 Jim Rogers: “In 2002 it was bad, in 2008 it was worse and 2012 or 2013 is going to be worse still – be careful”

#12 Dr. Pippa Malmgren, the President and founder of Principalis Asset Management who once worked in the White House as an adviser to President Bush: “Market forces are increasingly determining what the options are and foreclosing on options policymakers thought they had. One option which is now under discussion involves permitting a country to temporarily leave the Euro, return to its native currency, devalue, commit to returning to the Euro at a better debt to GDP ratio, a better exchange rate and a better growth trajectory and yet not sacrifice its EU membership. I would like to say for the record that this is precisely the thought process that I expected to evolve,but when I proposed this possibility back in 2009, and again in September 2010, I had a 100% response from clients and others that this was “impossible” and many felt it was “ridiculous”. They may be right but this is the current state of the discussion. The Handelsblatt in Germany has reported this conversation, but wrongly assumes that the country that will exit is Germany. I think that Germany will have to exit if the Southern European states do not. Germany’s preference is to stay in the Euro and have the others drop out. The problem has been the Germans could not convince the others to walk away. But, now, market pressures are forcing someone to leave. Germany is pushing for that someone to be Italy. They hope that this would be a one off exception, not to be repeated by any other country. Obviously, though, if Italy leaves the Euro and reverts to Lira then the markets will immediately and forcefully attack Spain, Portugal and even whatever is left  of the already savaged Greeks. These countries will not be able to compete against a devalued Greece or Italy when it come to tourism or even infrastructure. But, the principal target will be France. The three largest French banks have roughly 450 billion Euros of exposure to Italian debt. So, further sovereign defaults are certainly inevitable, but that is true under any scenario. Growth and austerity will not do the trick, as ZeroHedge rightly points out. Ultimately, I will not be at all surprised to see Europe’s banking system shut for days while the losses and payments issues are worked out. People forget that the term “bank holiday” was invented in the 1930’s when the banks were shut for exactly the same reason.”

#13 Daniel Clifton, a policy strategist with Strategas Research Partners on the potential for more downgrades of U.S. debt: “We would expect further downgrades, a first downgrade from Moody’s and Fitch and possibly a second downgrade from S&P.”

#14 Warren Buffett on the problems in the eurozone: “The system as presently designed has revealed a major flaw. And that flaw won’t be corrected just by words. Europe will either have to come closer together or there will have to be some other rearrangement because this system is not working”

#15 David Kostin, equity strategist for Goldman Sachs: “The wide range of possible outcomes on both the super committee process and the unstable political economy in Europe drives our view that investors should assume the worst while hoping for the best.”

#16 Mark Mobius, the head of the emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management: “There is definitely going to be another financial crisis around the corner”

#17 Gerald Celente, founder of The Trends Research Institute: “The whole system is going down. Pull your money out your Fidelity account, your Scwhab accout, and your ETFs.”

Are you starting to get the picture?

When so many top financial professionals are freaking out like this, perhaps the rest of us should start paying attention.

They are telling us that “time is running out”.

They are telling us that “there is definitely going to be another financial crisis”.

They are telling us that this “is going to be worse” than 2008.

They are telling us that “the whole system is going down”.

Yes, a devastating financial collapse really is coming.  Just like in 2008, it will seem like the “end of the world” while it is happening, but it won’t be.  It will severely damage our financial system and our economy, but it will not finish us off.

Think of it this way.  When you build a sand castle at the beach, it doesn’t get totally wiped out by the first wave or the second wave that hits it.  Each wave does significant damage, but the destruction of your sand castle is a process.

It is the same thing with the U.S. economy.  We once had the most incredible economic machine that the world has ever seen.  It is constantly being gutted and the financial crisis of 2008 hit us really hard, but we are still doing okay.

After this next financial crisis we will be in even worse shape.  But we will still be breathing.

More “waves” will come after this next financial crisis.  If we continue on the road that we are on, our economy will progressively get worse and worse.

Not everyone will agree with this analysis, and that is okay.  In the end, time will reveal the truth to all of us.

Right now, we all need to get ready for the next wave that is about to hit us.  A lot of people are going to lose their jobs over the next few years.  Hopefully you are prepared for that.

The Coming Baby Boomer Retirement Crisis That Will Blow Your Mind

For decades we were warned that when the Baby Boomers started to retire that this country would be facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude.  Well, that day has arrived ladies and gentlemen.  Back on January 1st, the Baby Boomers began to retire and more than 10,000 of them will be retiring every single day for years to come.  Most of them have not saved up nearly enough money for retirement.  At the same time, private sector pension plans are failing all over the place, hundreds of state and local government pension plans from coast to coast are woefully underfunded, and the Social Security system is on the road to complete and total disaster.  A massive wave of humanity is hitting retirement age at a moment in history when the U.S. economy is coming apart at the seams.  We do not have the resources to keep the promises that we made to the Baby Boomers, and most of them have not made adequate preparations for retirement.  What we have is a gigantic mess on our hands, and millions of Baby Boomers are going to find retirement to be very bitter and very painful.

A lot of younger Americans just assume that Social Security is enough to take care of the needs of elderly Americans.  But that is just not the case.

Have you ever tried to live solely on a Social Security check?

It is not easy.  The truth is that those checks are just not that large.

The following comes directly from the Social Security Administration….

The average monthly Social Security benefit for a retired worker was about $1,177 at the beginning of 2011.

Could you live on less than 300 dollars a week?

And keep in mind that the $1,177 monthly figure is just an average.  Many receive a lot less than that.

In addition, Social Security benefits have been seriously squeezed by inflation in recent years.  The cost of food and other basics has risen briskly and Social Security benefits have not.

Today, many elderly Americans have to make a choice between buying food, heating their homes or buying medicine that they need.  They simply do not have enough money to do all of them.

It would have been nice if all of the Baby Boomers had been busy saving money for retirement all these years, but that just did not happen.  In fact, the Baby Boomers as a group are trillions of dollars short of what they need for retirement.

So why doesn’t the U.S. government step in to help them out?

Well, the reality of the situation is that the U.S. government is flat broke.  The federal government is now over 15 trillion dollars in debt.  During the Obama administration so far, the U.S. government has accumulated more new debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

Lawmakers are already looking at ways to make the Social Security program less costly.  No, the federal government is not going to be riding to the rescue.

In fact, it will be a minor miracle if the Social Security program is able to survive until the end of this decade, and it will be a major miracle if the Social Security program is able to survive until 2030.

As for myself, I do not believe that I will ever see a single penny from Social Security, and many other working age Americans feel the same way.

Retirement is supposed to be a fun time, but sadly most Americans that are approaching retirement age are not going to have any “golden years” to look forward to.

Rather, millions of elderly Americans are going to find the years ahead absolutely agonizing as they struggle just to survive.

The following are 25 bitter and painful facts about the coming Baby Boomer retirement crisis that will blow your mind….

#1 According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 46 percent of all American workers have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, and 29 percent of all American workers have less than $1,000 saved for retirement.

#2 According to a recent poll conducted by Americans for Secure Retirement, 88 percent of all Americans are worried about “maintaining a comfortable standard of living in retirement”.  Last year, that figure was at 73 percent.

#3 A study conducted by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research has found that American workers are $6.6 trillion short of what they need to retire comfortably.

#4 Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

#5 On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers started to retire.  For almost the next 20 years, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be retiring every single day.

#6 At the moment, only about 13 percent of all Americans are 65 years of age or older.  By 2030, that number will soar to 18 percent.

#7 Right now, there are somewhere around 40 million senior citizens.  By 2050 that number is projected to increase to 89 million.

#8 Back in 1991, half of all American workers planned to retire before they reached the age of 65.  Today, that number has declined to 23 percent.

#9 According to one recent survey, 74 percent of American workers expect to continue working once they are “retired”.

#10 According to a recent AARP survey of Baby Boomers, 40 percent of them plan to work “until they drop”.

#11 A poll conducted by CESI Debt Solutions found that 56 percent of American retirees still had outstanding debts when they retired.

#12 A study by a law professor at the University of Michigan found that Americans that are 55 years of age or older now account for 20 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States.  Back in 2001, they only accounted for 12 percent of all bankruptcies.

#13 Between 1991 and 2007 the number of Americans between the ages of 65 and 74 that filed for bankruptcy rose by a staggering 178 percent.

#14 What is causing most of these bankruptcies among the elderly?  The number one cause is medical bills.  According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States.  Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.

#15 Public retirement funds all over the United States are woefully underfunded.  For example, it has been reported that the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of complete collapse.

#16 Most U.S. states have huge pension obligations which threaten to bankrupt them.  For example, pension consultant Girard Miller told California’s Little Hoover Commission that state and local government bodies in the state of California have $325 billion in combined unfunded pension liabilities.  When you break that down, it comes to $22,000 for every single working adult in the state of California.

#17 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management have calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states.  What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds.  That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars.  So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from?

#18 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system paid out more in benefits than it received in payroll taxes in 2010.  That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016.  Sadly, in the years ahead these “Social Security deficits” are scheduled to become absolutely nightmarish as hordes of Baby Boomers retire.

#19 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers.  According to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each person that is receiving Social Security benefits in the United States.

#20 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out five years faster than they were projecting just last year.

#21 The total cost of just three federal government programs – the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare – exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 by 10 billion dollars.  In the years ahead expenses related to Social Security and Medicare are projected to skyrocket dramatically.

#22 The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is the agency of the federal government that pays monthly retirement benefits to hundreds of thousands of retirees that were covered under defined benefit pension plans that failed.  The retirement crisis has barely even begun and the PBGC is already dead broke.  The PBGC says that it ran a deficit of $26 billion during the fiscal year that just ended and that it will probably need a huge bailout from the federal government.

#23 According to a survey by careerbuilder.com, 36 percent of all Americans say that they don’t contribute anything at all to retirement savings.

#24 More than 30 percent of all investors in the United States that are currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k plans invested in equities.  So what is going to happen to them if the stock market crashes?

#25 A survey taken earlier this year found that 20 percent of all U.S. workers admitted that they had postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the last 12 months.  Back in 2008, that number was only at 14 percent.

Our politicians should have addressed the retirement crisis decades ago before we got to the point of being in debt up to our eyeballs.

It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will hit 344% of GDP by the year 2050, and the Congressional Budget Office says that U.S. government debt held by the public will reach a staggering 716% of GDP by the year 2080.

Obviously those figures will never be reached because our financial system would totally collapse long before then.

So what do we do?

We have tens of millions of elderly Americans that are completely and totally dependent on Social Security and Medicare, but those programs also threaten to bankrupt us as a nation.

Anyone that believes that there is a “quick fix” to these issues is being naive.

The “supercommittee” was supposed to address this problem, but they failed so spectacularly that they have become a national joke.

Sadly, most of our politicians just keep kicking the can down the road.  They hope that somehow things will just magically “work out”.

Well, the truth is that things are not going to “work out”.  The poverty level among the elderly is going to continue to increase.  Pension plans all over this nation are going to continue to fail in staggering numbers.  Social Security and Medicare are going to bleed more red ink with each passing year.

Something should have been done about this problem a long, long time ago.

But it wasn’t.

This crisis was ignored, dealing with it was put off time after time and all the doomsayers were laughed at.

Now the crisis is here, and we are all going to pay the price.

 

Massive conservative victory in Spain.

Massive conservative victory in Spain.

The conservative People’s Party wins big in Spanish elections.

The Socialist party has been toppled as a result of Spain’s severe debt problem. The policies of the Socialist party has given Spain one of the worst economies in Europe.

In elections for the 350 member Spanish Congress, the People’s Party won 44% and the Socialist Party 28%. The People’s Party will gain 32 seats and the Socialist party will lose 59. The new president will be Mariano Rajoy of the People’s Party.

This dramatically changes the Spanish government.

The conservative Catalonia Nationalist party received about 5% and 16 seats. Another 12 seats will go to Basque nationalists split between a centrist party and a left-wing party. The rest of the seats went to centrist and left-wing parties.

The Afghan war is Lost

19 true things

generals can’t say in public

about the Afghan war:

A helpful primer

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com

As a public service, Best Defense is offering this primer for generals on their way to Afghanistan.

Here is a list of 19 things that many insiders and veterans of Afghanistan agree to be true about the war there, but that generals can’t say in public. So, general, read this now and believe it later-but keep your lip zipped. Maybe even keep a printout in your wallet and review before interviews.

My list of things to remember I can’t say

• Pakistan is now an enemy of the United States.

• We don’t know why we are here, what we are fighting for, or how to know if we are winning.

• The strategy is to fight, talk, and build. But we’re withdrawing the fighters, the Taliban won’t talk, and the builders are corrupt.

• Karzai’s family is especially corrupt.

• We want President Karzai gone but we don’t have a Pushtun successor handy.

• But the problem isn’t corruption, it is which corrupt people are getting the dollars. We have to help corruption be more fair.

• Another thing we’ll never stop here is the drug traffic, so the counternarcotics mission is probably a waste of time and resources that just alienates a swath of Afghans.

• Making this a NATO mission hurt, not helped. Most NATO countries are just going through the motions in Afghanistan as the price necessary to keep the US in Europe

• Yes, the exit deadline is killing us.

• Even if you got a deal with the Taliban, it wouldn’t end the fighting.

• The Taliban may be willing to fight forever. We are not.

• Yes, we are funding the Taliban, but hey, there’s no way to stop it, because the truck companies bringing goods from Pakistan and up the highway across Afghanistan have to pay off the Taliban. So yeah, your tax dollars are helping Mullah Omar and his buddies. Welcome to the neighborhood.

• Even non-Taliban Afghans don’t much like us.

• Afghans didn’t get the memo about all our successes, so they are positioning themselves for the post-American civil war .

• And they’re not the only ones getting ready. The future of Afghanistan is probably evolving up north now as the Indians, Russians and Pakistanis jockey with old Northern Alliance types. Interestingly, we’re paying more and getting less than any other player.

• Speaking of positioning for the post-American civil war, why would the Pakistanis sell out their best proxy shock troops now?

• The ANA and ANP could break the day after we leave the country.

• We are ignoring the advisory effort and fighting the “big war” with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam. And the U.S. military won’t act any differently until and work with the Afghan forces seriously until when American politicians significantly draw down U.S. forces in country-when it may be too damn late.

• The situation American faces in Afghanistan is similar to the one it faced in Vietnam during the Nixon presidency: A desire a leave and turn over the war to our local allies, combined with the realization that our allies may still lose, and the loss will be viewed as a U.S. defeat anyway.

Thanks to several people who contributed to this, from California to Kunar and back to DC, and whose names must not be mentioned! You know who you are. The rest of you, look at the guy sitting to your right.