Stacy Summary: Factory farmed food and factory farmed consumers. Oh it is just too gruesome. What stories are you reading on this Sunday? And is it cold where you are too???
Updates:
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ref. max keiser – Get 6 mo’s free storage
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Rick Ackerman-
- Michael Hudson
- Karl Denninger – Market Ticker
- The Big Picture
- Mish
- David Morgan
- King World News
- SmartKnowledge
- GoldCore
fiat money and the french revolution
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crash banksters – Buy Silver & gold
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All we have to do is feel better!
http://www.casttv.com/video/yvx4u7/can-positive-feelings-boost-economy-video
Close your eyes and go to your happy place!
nothing like snuggling up by the fire and getting a dose of http://www.blameitonthevoices.com and escaping all the nonsense and replacing it with more ……its hailing here in christchurch nz. hoping for snow. looking forward to tuning in wednesday.
cheers for all your work guys.
http://www.blameitonthevoices.com/
handy ole links
You know i made a mistake when i left school in 1980…………i should have trained (sic) to become a Train painter.
The number of times i seem old British Rail rolling stock re-painted……..as if a new spash of paint will cure all the under-investment.
Mike
Unemployment rate went up in April from 8.5% to 8.9% and 539.000 (non-farm pay-rolls) people lost their job.
The March unemployment number was corrected negatively from 663.000 to 699.000.
Since December 2007 5.7 million people got the sack.
@Daniel S.
Thanks for the link Daniel. That is a good example of the propaganda pabulum that the MSM puts out. I remember the early eighties well and even though I personally struggled with unemployment and underemployment during that period I never had the impression that economy was in a crisis comparable with the Great Depression.
What is happening now has the feeling of a profound phase shift in not only the economy but in a broader sense of the global civilization. The scale of the plunder of the national treasuries by the financial elite and the burden of debt being placed on the public is truly astounding. We have only begun to experience the repercussions of this.
@ Stacy, I had wondered what became of Smithfield in Romania. The end of that 2006 Rolling Stone piece, “Boss Hog,” said that Smithfield was hoping to turn Poland and Romania into “the Iowa of Europe,” and that Smithfield was planning to spend $800 million to destroy household farms in Romania that had produced 75% of Romania’s pigs.
It’s really remarkable . . . the amount of damage that be done on a global scale when just a couple crooked politicians decide to bend rules in the favor of corporations. Remarkable, too, that so many citizens are inspired to jump on the hate bandwagon when it comes things like food stamps and unemployment benefits, but have nothing to say about the billions in corporate welfare that corporations receive. Why in the world should a global monopoly receive public subsidies from every government they operate in? Romanian taxpayers pay for Smithfield swine flu vaccinations? Really?! And when they don’t and the pigs get sick, Smithfield blames the gov’t? Because they’re too poor to pay for the upkeep of their own pigs that they wanted total birth-death control of?
One thing is for sure: Smithfield needs to go down.
All that I’ve read today besides your links and some recaps of the White House correspondents dinner is an article about foreign aid being squandered in Afghanistan:
http://www.truthout.org/050109E
And, yes, it’s chilly here, too. Fell asleep watching W. last night (couch is right next to the windows) and woke up with chilled bones. It’s not too bad at 49 degrees, but still cold.
I am wonder how long can they keep the “System” proped up?
I mean even the dogs in the street know its over……..i suspect 12-18 months.
Mike
Like all formulas there are changes to the bottom line with each new addition or subtraction of information.
In this case the formula is behavioral and the more desperate we are made to feel over here in the US the more we will see the human condition begin to break down to the point beyond self destruction in some.
Thats the beauty of it all, if these bastards take away are standard of living (which they have) stolen our wealth (which they did) enslaved our people (which is going on) and given me no good reason what so ever for living other than to try to make their lives of equal or greater hell. I will rise to the occasion.
@stacy: toasty warm here. Temps could reach into the low 90′s. 78 degrees when I woke @ 5am today. Just returned from a spin on my bike to the beach…very pleasant….The dark pools article @ marketoracle.com explains it all…corruption …corruption…corruption… Have you ever viewed the movie Swordfish starring John Travolta, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry??? Regardless, continue on with your good works and deeds, thanx, Richard @lattitude 30N
@ Mike, It will be interesting to see what the effect of universities coming to the end of the spring semester is on the system. Here, we need something like 180,000 jobs created each month just to absorb college grads. What will graduates do when they can’t find jobs? What will the rest of the students on summer recess do?
Lots of Americans are on foodstamps. Did you know that?
http://uk.reuters.com/article/usTopNews/idUKTRE5314B320090403?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
Yes, martijn. And unemployment benefits are set to end soon for an estimated 700,000 people:
http://www.allgov.com/ViewNews/Unemployment_Benefits_to_End_Soon_for_Many_Americans_90406
One benefit that our poor and near-poor families have is that their kids get reduced or free lunches in school. But with school about to end and unemployment benefits ending for a lot of people, we’re bound to have an even bigger hunger problem soon.
Every time I go grocery shopping, I try to remember to buy extra food to take to local food pantries. Got to get better about always remembering. I’m glad that we have a food stamp program, but I wish the Dept. of Agriculture would amend the law and the formula they use. I can’t locate the info. online, but I know the law was put into place in the 1930s and hasn’t changed since. Most families receiving food stamps receive benefits that equal $5 per day. And I believe that the original formula was intended to approximate the amount of food needed to stave off hunger-induced death. So while the program is certainly better than nothing, it has always aimed to provide the least assistance possible.
Everything in the states is “aimed to provide the least assistance possible.”
What all these comments and articles bring home is – bottomline – that it’s a rigged game. So what is one’s recourse in a rigged game? Not sure. Stop playing? How, when it’s for life?
Stacy, it’s definitely cold here in the mountain west. Snow expected Tuesday night.
its a beautiful sunny day in London Town. Just got back from local community garden plant sale – bought some peppers and courgette which Ive planted….. now Im reading about a scheme for growing food on london council estates.
http://www.what-if.info/VACANT_LOT.html
That’s all Ya’ll
@Stacy,
RE: Credit Cards
How about a boycott of Credit Card Companies?
(Of course if these laws get passed, it just means that the people that “really” need them, won’t get credit cards.)
@Mep,
Your charitable actions show how the less unfortunate would be helped without Government Action.
@ Stacy,
It’s still cold here. Was below Zero over night, but has warmed up to 7 degrees. Ice and snow on the lakes, with patches of snow on the ground. I think it’s very smart to talk about the Ecological disaster, separate from the Global Warming propaganda.
Correction:( either less fortunate, or unfortunate; oops)
@MEP
Yep, but frankly riots are not the answer, what will finish this is IF everyone just refuses the Tax returns……Tea party sort of thing.
Make the other side over react, then await “Critical mass” then attack.
Mike
Goldman Sachs won!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzqW0YaN2ho&feature=related
Bugger
Mike
@ William,
Even with charitable donations, food panties are near-bare, and organizations that assist the poor have been really hurting for some time. Donations are way down and demand is way up. Even before the economy really started tanking, the Red Cross and other large organizations were in the red due to one natural disaster after another.
@Mep,
I’m sure you meant pantries; which reminds me of a joke.
Do you know what I hate about crotchless panties?……
My balls keep falling out.
@ William LOL!! Oops!
Yes, pantries. (I don’t think edible panties have any nutritional value.)
Oh William!!!!
Clean Slate, I agree that this is global and the effects are only beginning to be felt. I think what we’re seeing is the fallout of a conquest of the mind that is allowing a global prison to be built with increasing powers to control us.
The psychopaths have found little flaws in the human condition and figured out how to exploit them in a variety of ways region by region and culture by culture. They’ve been fighting this war on all fronts for generations. Now global culture, finance, and laws are being homogenized to best suit the psychopaths. The greatest problem is in people’s lack of understanding of how their minds are being manipulated, and how they are investing in their own demise.
Corporations move lawlessly, setting their money/debt footprint down anywhere whenever they want, and pick up to leave in a heartbeat. Individuals are largely stuck through a variety of barriers (licensing, credit, passports, citizenship, actual threat of prison). It’s a very well crafted global prison being built.
All we the people manage to do is push back once in a while on a front or two when the water gets too hot. I’m gonna make some tea. Peppermint anyone?
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Daniel,
It is becoming increasingly and unsettlingly obvious that individuals with socipathic personalities have attained high positions of power and influence in finance and government. Intelligent sociopaths can usually mask their sociopathy and seemingly appear normal to the average person. This blog: “The Role of the Psychopath in the Generation of Global Evil” at http://ponerology.blogspot.com/2005/12/role-of-psychopath-in-generation-of.html really illuminated, for me, this largely unrecognized aspect of the root cause of the what increasingly looks like an engineered financial crisis.
It goes far beyond mere greed or incompetence. In fact, it seems that “incompetence” (in reality carefully planned and executed) is not a factor at all if you consider that the agenda of the psychopaths in high level finance is being well served by the financial crises and that the social and economic cost to the real productive economy along with the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people are being eroded and ultimately destroyed.
Psychopathic individuals have a competitive advantage over normal individuals in that they are not restrained by feelings of empathy and compassion. In the world of high finance this competitive advantage gives the sociopath extremely high leverage over others. If you recall some of the stories about certain Wall Street CEOs over the past few months they often expressed sentiments that showed a strong sense of entitlement for themselves and they simply did not comprehend how their fraudulent actions have harmed millions of others.
@Clean Slate: Well said…A thorough didactic analysis of the personality traits of the criminally insane yet well indowed financial oligarchs and his/her minions…. this multi-tiered generational wealth; mega monster wealthy; ultra huge wealthy; extremely wealthy; etc., etc…..hierarchy doesn’t even consider the lower income brackets in the equation….It’s been some time since I held true that the Congress was representing anyone other than their major political contributors…imo that alone eliminated 325 million Americans….How else can you phathom trillions immediately available for the banks while it took ten years to raise the federal minimum wage ( incrimentally at that ) to an amount still below the poverty level. By the By:I love the nonsequitor inserts..Computer keyboard as art!!! Very Innovative…a good intellect is hard to find…as always, Richard lattitude 30N
@Daniel and Clean Slate:
wow! I love the way you both put down the facts of the situation. Nice work, thank you.
Kurt Vonnegut nailed these people. He called them PPs for psychopathic personalities, “smart, personable people who have no consciences.
“…. congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These were people born without consciences, and suddenly they are taking charge of everything.
PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care.
“And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And they are waging a war that is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he’s against gay marriage.
“So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.
“They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin’ day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they don’t give a fuck what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilise the reserves! Privatise the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!”
What he, and Clean Slate, and Daniel point out all fits. Plus the idea that incompetence is part of it, a distraction we can all lament and bitch about, like Bush’s, while it gets them exactly what they want. What do they care if they are perceived as incompetent dolts that can’t get anything right when their agenda is moving along right on target.
So, what is the answer when the game is SERIOUSLY rigged? That’s where i get stuck. What does one do?
Protests don’t work. Millions protesting against the war in March 2003 didn’t raise a psychopathic eyebrow. They are at a very blatant stage now. They could care less what “the people” think. Their wholesale looting of the treasury is worrisome. As if there is no tomorrow.
Sometimes I think it comes down to mafia rules. They are so powerful, only one syndicate can take out another. The infighting (Lewis at B of A, for example) is promising. But can we afford to wait for them to take each other out? Will they self-destruct? Will they trip on their hubris?
I think we know the problem. But what is the answer?
Stacy,
so I was at the dump looking for copper( taking the hint from the Chinese) and listening to ” Max and Stacy…” on my MP3. It was all so surreal, the sun was out and in Wyoming that is always something to celebrate accept that I was also watching my fellow Americans throw away their old shit so that they can buy more new “shit”. Lay offs are finally hitting our neck of the woods and hard too. Yet people still do not know how to be frugal. I dug around in the dump one day and took 350 Lbs. of copper, then sold it for $1.35 per lb. (free money $472.) then I turned the cash into 30 ounces of silver when silver dropped to $11.88 an ounce; took the family out to dinner and bought some groceries.
I asked this guy once who had just tossed out two descent looking chain saws “hey, do those still work?” “well, uhh, yes they do, I just ah, I just wanted something newer and… yeah they work.” I took them home and sold them in a garage sale two months later for $40!!! No great treasures today though. The bull dozer beat me to the good stuff.
But there is always tomorrow and the next day. I guess you could say that I am working my our little mine and it turns up copper and silver, now if I could just get it to turn up some gold!
My point is, is that our land fills could be economically mined as the cost to mine the materials would be less than bringing a new copper mine on line, or aluminum, or iron mine on line. after all the consulting fee, environmental and geological would be reduced to almost nothing. These and equipment expenses are what kills mining opportunities.
Clean Slate, I agree.
A book along these lines was recommended to me but I’ve yet to get it. Like a few others it is being suppressed but it only means one has to pay a little more for it. “A Review of Political Ponerology” by Andrzej M. Lobaczewski. It has great reviews. Like Dan Russell’s “Drug War” not one copy in my local library that serves about 700,000 people. Of course! lol
Don, dumps are weird aren’t they? A few days ago I was thinking about items that shouldn’t go to the dump (vegetation in the dump is essentially top soil destroyed) and it struck me. Nothing should go to the dump. There is no valid reason to have them. Anything that must be dumped can be made differently in the first place. It’s the tail end of a mad system imo.
If it were legislated that everything made in country and everything imported must be recycled, composted, etc, we’d find a way to do it.
Stacy
Read this:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/5304794/Money-printing-starting-to-work-says-Bank-of-England.html
BTW MUM was delighted with the mention!
Mike
via Moscow Times:
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1009/42/376962.htm
Russia will switch to steel coins from copper ones, the Central Bank said Thursday… “Starting from the second quarter of 2009, 1-, 2- and 5-ruble coins made out of steel with a nickel covering will come into circulation,” … Steel costs about $400 a ton, while copper fetches nearly $5,000.
@Don……I’ts become such a joke nowadays. I recently saw two decent dvd players and a computer thrown out in the street and just walked on by. I have found so much eletrical equipment etc over the last few years I’m becoming blase, I felt slightky ashamed asterwards as I’ve always considered recycling a spiritual responsibility; I hate to see anything wasted or discarded
Great post – have a good week…
“Is Geithner a genius con man?”
If banking is effectively a confidence trick then he has to be.
Is Geithner a genius? No. Is he a good con man? Yes.
He and all the others responsible for this will never do two things. One, publically admit that they DID play a role in this. And two, publically admit that yes, they have no freaking clue about how to solve this.
@tofu charlie….The U.S. Mint has implemented an interim rule that makes it illegal to melt nickels and pennies, or to export them in mass quantities. The modern us penny (made after 1982) is worth 1.73 cents with production costs included. The nickel, which is made of copper and nickel, is actually worth 8.34 cents when production costs are included. …….
Which reminds me of this clip …….
I think this might be the the cure for americas financial problems………I’ve always been a fan of the young ben bernake….ha.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVSPbVQlDi4
Please check out HR875 if you haven’t already
@Daniel I totally agree, it is part of the insane cycle. I have also been told that it is “illegal” to remove anything from the dump. Folks seem to prefer “land fill” it just sounds more romantic than “dump”. In Latin America people work land fills that have a lot less goods of value reaching them but very little is ever wasted.
& SuperGeek
I agree, it seems to be an abuse of Nature to use and devalue Her wares so thriftlessly. That is why I decided to bring things out, and when I was told it was “illegal” I said “well, thats too bad, it should have been illegal’ to be so wasteful and throw away things that cost the county money to have stored for a time and then trucked away later because the “land fill” is full!!”
We actually truck our waste 120 miles away for disposal after it has first been dumped.
But hey! I have to say “I love the people who throw me $$$!”
I hear that it cost like, 6.3c to make a US nickel which is all nickel. Therefor, some say nickels will be a good trade good currency if the shtf.
When I was at the g20 demo I actually saw two undercover cops throwing stuff at the police one minute before disapearing behind the police lines the next, later when I told people about it I’m not sure if anyone completely believed me….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/10/g20-policing-agent-provacateurs
Great copper post Don. Thanks for sharing.
MERCK! Acting like thugs!
Big Pharma is scary to me.
Ethics @ Work: Negative interest’s dark side
“The Bank of Israel considers a seemingly revolutionary proposal: negative interest. That’s right, the money you deposit in the bank will lose value instead of gaining it”
@Don – I absolutely love the story about finding all that copper at the dump; we used to do that in the 70′s too during the commodities boom. Of course, during the fiat boom that followed, real things were so devalued it wasn’t worth recycling. Speaking of recycling, as a child I lived like a king because it was just when cans started having a recycle value of 5cents and, I don’t know what it is like now, but back in the late 70′s, early 80′s, you could bring the soda cans and bottles (10 cents for the bottles) and they would have to give you the refund. My friend, Maureen, and I would cycle the miles between the two shops anywhere near us and just collect all the bottles and cans in the garbage cans just outside the shops and would always make enough for at least two pizzas. Of course, we had to ride our bicycles at least ten miles for those two pizzas.
I reckon we should get work for welfare schemes where gold is recycled from mobile phones etc. Even better return to a gold standard and then the unemployed are actually making the money.
Vote #1 snoop diddy lol