About those clowns...

I'm sorry, but I don't see anyway out of this. With fraud absolutely everywhere in our banking system, like some advanced metastatic cancer, financial metabolism comes to a sickening stop. Nobody can buy or sell property. Nobody can trust any American financial institution. Money can't circulate. Nobody will be able to get any money. It won't be long before that translates into nobody getting any food. We may be a nation of clowns, but as Lon Chaney famously observed a while ago - when explaining his technique of horror movie-making - "...there's nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight...."

See it all...

The Final Curtain

Politics

"We must understand all of politics - no matter
in what nation it is practiced - as a system that
wars against the very nature of life. Politics
cannot be eliminated by force - for to do so
would only imply an even mightier amassing of
power than what is in place. Neither can it be
reformed, the effort to do so being as absurd as
trying to practice a peaceful form of warfare, or
a humane system of tyranny. It can only be
transcended, a process that can only begin by
each of us ending the divisions and fears that
our political masters have carefully conditioned
us to accept. When we discover peace and order
within ourselves, we shall then withdraw our
energies from the sanctified hostilities and
confusion that are destroying life."  --Butler
Shaffer

Help, Oh Help...

So once age and realism have eroded any expectation of adulthood or good sense, you realize that there is no hope. The limbic urges that power Washington are exactly those that you would find up some forgotten holler in West Virginia, at Jimbo’s Pool Hall and Rib Pit.

Damn, what a wordsmith!

Highly recommended

World Collapse Explained in 3 Minutes

The Economic Propaganda Machine

Greek Scramble For Physical Brings Gold Price To $1,700 Per Ounce

Coinupdate.com reports that prices at which the Greek Central Bank is selling one ounce gold equivalents are as high as $1,700 (40% over spot), and prices on the black markets are even higher. The punchline, as Athens slowly returns to a forced gold standard: " A popular spot for street vendors to sell their coins is near the Athens Stock Exchange.  There the traders wait for citizens to bring payments received from unloading their paper assets like stocks and bonds." That's good - downtown Manhattan close to the NYSE has some free space for gold vendors to set up shop as well, they just need to push some of the frontrunning/collocation boxes off to the side. And in other rhetorical ruminations, is it safe to say that the last days of the fiat experiment are among us now that people themselves are bypassing the government and enforcing their own gold standard?

Bet on it.

Highly recommended.

The 10 States Most Likely To Default

See them here.

Farcism

This manner of government is not driven by overt collectivism and the blatant, state-enforced social subjugation that characterizes communism. Nor is it well understood to be dominated by the pernicious nationalism, autocratic industrial centralization and megalomaniacal personality cults framed by fascism. Neither can it be sketched as the consenting construction of broad and broadly parasitic labor pools and growth retarding redistribution schemes that make up the key tenants of socialism. Quite differently, this manner of government is premised on the suspension of disbelief via sophistication, word play, disguise, deception, mistaken identity, the deliberate use of nonsense and absurdity to distract and will, no doubt, end in a melodramatic chase scene (treasury officials in absurd uniforms chasing stage left to stage right after foreign borrowers perhaps?)

In short, the United States has come to be governed by Farcism.

The success of Farcism depends on, and in some ways derives a measure of legitimacy from, the acquiescence (or abject ignorance of) a lazy citizenry.  Truly, it is hard otherwise to explain phenomena like the perpetuation of the myth that President Reagan shrunk the government, or that President Clinton ever presided over a surplus in the United States when budget and historical debt outstanding figures are openly available permitting anyone at all to falsify these claims in seconds.  In fact, under the Clinton administration it was the wholesale pillaging of the Social Security trust fund (accounted for in Intragovernmental Holdings instead of "public debt") that permitted the specious claim that somehow a material slice of the aggregate debt of the country had been paid off.  In other words, the sort of accounting and insurance fraud that would send anyone in the private sector to jail and so familiar to forensic accountants and prosecutors it actually has a name: "Cookie Jarring."  The last real surplus was in 1957, by the way.

Oooha and hot damn.

Highly recommended.

The Decline of the West

The current sovereign debt crisis is another battle in a war for dominance between the global economic system and traditional nation-states, where the global financial system will be the victor. Once that occurs, the nation-states of the West will join those of the global south as hollow states.

Highly recommended.

S&P Downgrades Greece To Junk

Coming soon to a country near you.

Overview:

* We have updated our assessment of the political, economic, and budgetary challenges that the Greek government faces in its efforts to place Greece's public debt burden onto a sustained downward trajectory.
* We are lowering our ratings on Greece to 'BB+/B' from 'BBB+/A-2' and assigning a negative outlook.
* The negative outlook reflects the possibility of a further downgrade if the Greek government's ability to implement its fiscal and structural reform program materially weakens in our view, undermined by domestic political opposition at home or by even weaker economic conditions than we currently assume.

Full obituary.

Housing Crash Update....

"Two major banks are expecting major increases in foreclosures, by the end of 2010.

"According to the Irvine Housing blog, Bank of America, which currently forecloses on 7,500 homes every month will see that number rise to 45,000 by December 2010.....

“JPMorgan Chase is forecasting bigger foreclosure numbers in the coming months. According to a presentation at the end of February, JPMorgan expects the amount of real estate owned (REO) properties in its portfolio to reach between 33,000 to 45,000 in Q410. By comparison, in Q409, REO inventories were at 23,100." ("Big Banks Prepare for Major Rise in Foreclosures Ending 2010" Jon Prior, Housingwire.)

Now do you still believe the talking heads when they say 'the worst is over'?

Highly recommended.

CERN admits black hole ripped in space by Large Hadron Collider

A spokesperson for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) has confirmed the fears of many in the scientific world after revealing that the reason for the sudden closure of the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most expensive physics experiment, was not due to "technical problems" as previously stated, but because its controversial particle collisions have sensationally rendered a "tiny black hole" in the fabric of space.

"I can confirm that, yes, the first stages of the experiment resulted in the appearance of a miniscule black hole," said the spokesperson to gathered reporters on Monday. "The black hole is being kept under quarantine and our scientists have been monitoring its progression," he explained.

Earthmonkey again on a very bad trip, easily fatal.

Lying sacks of shit now say they're gonna keep it 'under quarantine'.

Read.

There Will Be No Recovery