red pill, blue pill

I came across this article, and found it to be "very interesting". The comment below is something that I have alluded to here (and elsewhere) before.

'Bush Caused the Financial Market Meltdown'
Washington ignored the lessons of the bank failures of the 1930s

Not a mistake, not incompetence, its the plan.
"It also ignored the lessons of the bank failures of the 1930s"

I would say "It learned from the lessons of the bank failures of the 1930s"

A crisis of this magnitude is not accomplished by ignoring history, but by learning from it. The Plan is to destroy the US dollar, to bankrupt its citizens forcing them to abandon or sell off their property, and to allow those who designed this collapse to buy their property at discount rates.

This is not a mistake, this is not incompetence, this is the Plan.

Have you never noticed that successive governments at all levels do as much as they can to take from the citizenry's pockets only to line those of their friends, and their own? Let us eat cake, or caka...

Governments are quite good at orchestrating all kinds of complex operations, why not one like this global bubble? Politicians tend to be lawyers and business people for the most part. It may seem to have a tin-foil wrapping as an idea, but really, corporations exist for only one reason, and that is ever-increasing profits. Problem is, we live in a closed system. Everything is finite.

Are we being marched back to feudalism? We might not notice as we sit and watch our favourite idol show (right after CTV/Fox news), load up the IPod, yell at the kids playing with their Wii-Wiis to keep it down while we watch food, fuel, housing, and all of our costs directly related to survival sky rocket. Meanwhile, the cost of all of those distractions keeps falling.

The Matrix written by Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski

Morpheus: I imagine that right now you're feeling a bit like Alice. Tumbling down the rabbit hole?
Neo: You could say that.
Morpheus: I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he's expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. Do you believe in fate, Neo?
Neo: No.
Morpheus: Why not?
Neo: 'Cause I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life.
Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind -- driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Neo: The Matrix?
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?
(Neo nods his head.)
Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. (long pause, sighs) Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.

Red pill, Blue pill.

deceit

On victory born of deceit

I, Virtue, soak the tomb of Ajax with my tears, alas, wretched, having rent my whitening hair. Certainly this matter still remained, that by a Greek judge I should be vanquished: and that deceit should have the stronger defence. link

This is just food for thought. I can't write the situation any better.

It is Amero-centric, and is a departure from Vancouver RE (I seem to be doing that lately), but I think that it is pertinent and applicable to what we are/will be seeing here. (emboldening mine)

How does the government deceive us? Let's count the ways.

Employment/Unemployment: Job hunters vanish without a trace after six months, and ghost jobs are created in the hundreds of thousands by a bogus "birth/death" model.

Inflation: As even the mainstream media is now admitting, official inflation is grossly manipulated to appear half of the true rate (3% vs. 6%). This lowers payments to those costly entitlement retirees and maintains the illusion that interest rates can be kept low because inflation is so low.

GDP: The GDP number always comes in "hot" and is usually revised downward later, when nobody's looking.

Federal Deficit: The Federal deficit contains a huge deception: the Social Security surplus is spent to offset current spending, reducing the "official deficit" by hundreds of billions each and every year. In exchange for these trillions, the Government issues the Social Security fund an IOU. The IOU is now about $4 trillion.

If this fiscal legerdemain were outlawed, then the true Federal deficit would be double or triple the "official" deficit.

"A strong dollar is in the interests of the nation." Hahaha... is that why you've engineered a 33% decline in our buying power since 2002 (the dollar index dropped from 120 to 80 in that time and is currently 78.) I'd hate to see what would happen if a weak dollar were in our interests.

All these accounting tricks serve one purpose: to deceive the citizenry and the world into believing the U.S. economy is stronger than it actually is.

2. The government has opened the floodgates of money and loosened banking regulations to help all those poor investment bankers. Regulators who should have provided oversight of the lending, mortgage and derivative markets have been idling away their time, doing anything but their job. Who's benefitted? Their pals churning all the origination fees, that's who.

3. The banks sold hundreds of billions in "safe investments" to institutions, domestic and foreign alike. Only now are the true risks and illiquidity of these SIVs, MBS, CDOs, etc. being revealed in the grim light of day.

4. Our trading partners who export vast quantities of goods to the U.S. (and who run stupendous trade deficits with the U.S.) have bought trillions in U.S. debt to keep us afloat. Since Americans don't save anything, somebody has to give them a credit card to fund all that spending.

So what's hidden? How utterly dependent the U.S. is on foreign buyers of Treasuries and debt to keep U.S. interest rates low. That's another little wink-wink, of course; when the Fed slashed the Fed Funds rate a half-a percentage point, headlines blared "Fed Cuts Interest Rate." Meanwhile, back at the Long-Term Interest Rate Ranch, 30-year mortgage rates actually went higher after the Fed's cut. Huh? Yes, that's right--because the market sets the long-term interest rates, not the Fed. Not that you'll ever read much about that, though.

So the "debt junkies" in the U.S. get their "fix" of abundant, low-interest debt from the "pushers" who need the junkie to keep buying exports and oil. link

the grab bag #10 - bc bud

This new "grab bag" explains the hot Vancouver housing market. Or does it?

It's been a busy week. Forgive me my absence. On top of that, I haven't got too much of a clue as to what is really going on, do you?

There have been all kinds of fallacious explanations as to why Vancouver's RE market "remains so buoyant", and over at Rob Chipman's place, a couple of knuckleheads are convinced that it is the pot "industry" that both drives the market, and maintains it. They have all kinds of different measuring sticks as to the value of that industry, and I suspect that maybe they are themselves grow operators who have bought RE with their proceeds, or they are just knuckleheads. It's as silly as the mountains, the Olimpdicks, and the mountains, in my view.

Today I heard Marc Emery (fighting extradition to the US for selling pot seeds, and also the leader of the Marijuana Party) twice quoted (on CBC) on the effect of the low US dollar on BC's pot exports. Apparently, the price that the growers garner has dropped (relatively) with the strength of the dollar, and demand has not diminished at all - despite the climate of prohibition and interdiction. I did find it amusing that it was a topic of discussion on the national business news. And so what? I smoke pot, and have for thirty years. I do have MS, so it is (now) "medicinal", but really... Reefer Madness was a bit of campy propaganda from the 1930's, but this is the 21st century. Get over it already!

The dollar closed at $1.01 something US today. Yee haw! So what?

GM went off strike after two days. So what?

$13.8 Billion Federal surplus. So what? (National debt is some $1,600 Billion - depending on how measured).

US housing market continues to slide. So what?

I really believe that the Vancouver market is sliding too. So what?

Wake me up when we are back at 2002 prices. I'm going to smoke a joint (because there is nothing like a Mint Julip and a joint).

update

There is an update to this story over at The Republic.

Find more here,here, and follow the links.

It really isn't about hippy-dippy "New World Travellers" and such, but at the same time, it is. There is some wild reading to be had, and I encourage you to follow it. It is most interesting in the larger context.

I think that we, as a society, are at one of those "forks in the road", and we need to decide how to go forward - as everything that we believe comes into question. Make your own conclusions.

flailing

Not Li'l solipsist

I read an interesting article over at The Republic relating to forecasts of economy, human behaviour, triggers to calamities, etc. It is redacted below.

The conclusion that I drew was: don't listen to the boffins! They are just flailing like little babies.

Theoretical physicist Mark Buchanan’s Ubiquity: The Science Of History . . . Or Why The World Is Simpler Than We Think (Phoenix, 2000), is a book whose implications are so powerful they’ve given me vertigo. Buchanan makes a very strong argument that, despite all appearances to the contrary, human history may be governed by very simple mathematical laws. Unfortunately, those laws would guarantee history’s complete unpredictability, and they would also fundamentally contradict the economic and political theories informing our decision-makers.

The study of non-equilibrium statistical physics shows that critical states seem to emerge whenever systems are kept far from equilibrium in conditions where the forces of chaos and order are in constant flux, and where the components of the system exert some influence on each other’s behaviour. It seems that at least some features of our collective behaviour can be reasonably explained by these concepts.

Might as well just guess

Research suggests that both stock market fluctuations and the distribution of global wealth follow power laws. This is an unnerving finding, as it flies in the face of traditional economic theory,...the effects of a relatively minor economic variable may produce anything from unnoticeable effects to such calamities as the 1929 stock market crash and the collapse of the “tiger” economies of Southeast Asia in 1997.

This helps explain why economic forecasts are so consistently proven wrong. Buchanan writes that in 1993 the OECD “analyzed forecasts made between 1987 and 1992 by the governments of the USA, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, and Canada, as well as those of the International Monetary Fund and the OECD itself. Their conclusions? Not only were each of these organizations’ predictions abysmally inaccurate, but they would have made better predictions for inflation and gross domestic product if they had scrapped all their sophisticated economic models and simply guessed that the numbers in each year would be unchanged from the last.” Similar studies have produced the same results. This has grave implications. Given that the study of economics presupposes equilibrium, and given that our nations’ powerbrokers rely upon economists for their understanding of the world, it seems that our leaders’ most basic assumptions about the economy are dangerously wrong-headed.

Indeed.