"Told you so!"
Paulson: Close to Collapse
Not that it comes as any surprise to people who read UrbanSurvival on a regular basis, but there's a report in the UK Independent today that Hank "Paulson reveals US concerns of breakdown in law and order" should the financial system have failed in the wake of last year's financial panic.
The reason that this is so important is that it gives credence to the report that back in (going by memory here) March 2008, CONgress held a secret session (only its fourth in history) and talked about how dire/grim/scary things would be should the system break down.
Ooops. memory isn't completely gone yet....here's a posting off the Honorable Ron Paul's web site from that period under the heading "Congress Secret session March 13, 2008":
"Not only did members discuss new surveillance provisions as was the publicly stated reason for the closed door session, they also discussed:
the imminent collapse of the U.S. economy to occur by September 2008,
the imminent collapse of US federal government finances by February 2009,
the possibility of Civil War inside the USA as a result of the collapse,
advance round-ups of "insurgent U.S. citizens" likely to move against the government,
The detention of those rounded-up at "REX 84" camps constructed throughout the USA,
the possibility of retaliation against members of Congress for the collapses,
the location of "safe facilities" for members of Congress and their families to reside during expected massive civil unrest
the necessary and unavoidable merger of the United States with Canada (for its natural resources) and with Mexico (for its cheap labor pool),
the issuance of a new currency - THE AMERO - for all three nations as the proposed solution to the coming economic Armageddon.
Members of Congress were FORBIDDEN to reveal what was discussed. Several are so furious and concerned about the future of the country, they have begun leaking info."
Initially, these reports were passed over - OK, buried then - by the MainStreamMedia, which we assume had also been brought to heel through various scare-tactics which instead of reporting the news and risks directly, sat on the story while the printing press kicked taxpayer money to the biggest of the banks, auto companies, and so forth. As it turns out, that put what seems still to be coming on hold - but just for a while.
What few places talk about even today is the notion that all we've really done with the bailouts and fancy footwork is put off the day of reckoning so that when it comes, it will be just that much worse for all the additional debt, relevering, & money printing that will be further piled on to our past egregious financial misfeasance.
While there is still time for alert people to hedge their bets by investing in self sufficiency, there's also a good case that by this time next year you'll be looking back at even the relatively high unemployment rates and insane levels of government spending TODAY as 'the good old days'. No doubt, the push for national health care and such is all part of 'make work' programs that government can retain control over.
The government's strategic problem is that a massive Second Depression which we're already into now will result in a serious downsizing of not only government, but of the general population as things like the globalist model of 'free trade/labor wage rate differential spreads - break down accompanied by a much, much lower standard of living in the US - not to mention the wholesale theft of a whole generation's retirement planning by watering down the money supply in order to paper our way through events to come this fall and through next year.
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Seat belt tight? Barf bag at hand? You ain't seen nothing yet, although I'll have to file the Paulson confessional under the 'secrets revealed' meta data set in modelspace and warn you that if you think my outlook this morning is grim, wait till you see the updated predictive linguistics report next week from www.halfpasthuman.com. May be out Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning
Tuesday (night) Cliff and I are scheduled to be on CoastToCoastAM with George Noory where 7/21 runs into 7/22 to talk about what folks can actually do about what's coming. I mean besides flee paper assets and spent what you can on self-sufficiency, seeds, stored fuel, water, medical supplies and what have you. don't forget N100 masks and a radiation monitor, too, if the bombing of Iran comes off on schedule with the 'serious of unfortunate circumstances' that seem to accompany that.
Peace and Brotherly Love Department
"Iran will bring down Western foes". "Israeli warships rehearse for Iran attack in Red Sea". Ah, the fine feeling of peace and brotherhood that's about. Why, it's positively stimulating, eh?
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As we mosey along toward the October 25th date when finally we'll be done with all this print media foreplay and lob some bunker busters around and set loose the cloud of radioactivity and such, it's sad to note that after how many hundred thousand years of cave-dwelling that when we have differences of opinion (and don't even share a border to fight over) we see folks on both sides getting out their clubs...
Whollary?
"Hillary Clinton rejects notion of diminished role." Who?
Someone Actually Listening?
Moderate Mike Ross of Arkansas says he has enough votes to block the Rahmdown health care panic. Smart feller, this Ross guy, in my view.
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Hey! How about it becomes evidence of treason or sedition for folks on the Hill to vote on any piece of legislation they have not read in its entirety? We all are starting to see how much blind leading of the blind there is, heh?
Way I figure it is this: If they haven't read it, they're not representing The People, right?
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If they aren't going to read the legislation, and put some gray matter into it, we may as well buy 450-odd rubber stamps and sent the whole lot of them home - save a lot of money for the special interests to buy off others with, wouldn't it? Only downside I can see is most of them can't go anything productive when they get back to their home districts except file lawsuits and such...there surely aren't jobs for them.
Wonder if they have figured that out?
Free For All Friday
Funny "Ha-Ha" Meets "Funny/Weird"
Just when I was pinching myself with the Vice-Grips on the shins this morning, since I'm running out of undamaged areas to pinch myself due to the plague of surreality Universe is dumping on us, a reader sent along this link to a Department of Treasury solicitation seeking a contractor to provide...oh I can't do this straight-faced....you read it...
"The Contractor shall conduct two, 3-hour, Humor in the Workplace programs that will discuss the power of humor in the workplace, the close relationship between humor and stress, and why humor is one of the most important ways that we communicate in business and office life. Participants shall experience demonstrations of cartoons being created on the spot. The contractor shall have the ability to create cartoons on the spot about BPD jobs. The presenter shall refrain from using any foul language during the presentation. This is a business environment and we need the presenter to address a business audience.
Upon completion of the course, participants shall be able to:
• Understand the importance and power of humor in the workplace in a responsible manner
• How to use talents in a creative way that adds humor to everyday experiences
• Alleviate stress in home and the office
• Know how and why humor is important to communication
• Improve work-place relationships
• Prevent burn-out"
The proposal itself it humorous in a dry, almost British kind of way. But to see this, you have to understand how humor works at its elemental level. A Wikipedia recipe on how humor works here:
Root components:
appealing to feelings or to emotions. (el Presidente)
similar to reality, but not real. (like UrbanSurvival, right?)
some surprise/misdirection, contradiction, ambiguity, or paradox. (like Congress?)
Methods:
hyperbole (el Presidente again)
metaphor (all politicos)
reductio ad absurdum or farce (UrbanSurvival again)
reframing (spinsters)
timing (time monks)
Rowan Atkinson explains in his lecture in the documentary "Funny Business"[12] that an object or a person can become funny in three different ways. They are:
By behaving in an unusual way (like government)
By being in an unusual place (America)
By being the wrong size (clothes shopping)
Most sight gags fit into one or more of these categories.
How would I deal with such an absurdity? Fire up the PowerPoint, kids....here we go...
(Slide 1) Responsive to: "Understand the importance and power of humor in the workplace in a responsible manner."
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Humor has lost its importance and power in the workplace because it has been largely outlawed by political and judicial conventions, lawsuit, HR departments, compliance departments and it's...
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Enforced by group-think social control mechanisms that deliberately prevent large numbers of people from exercising their God-given right to be creative which in turn is reinforced by...
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Fluoride in the water, and a pill-pushing pharmacological industry which has bought off ethical medicine practitioners with freebies and percs so they pimp more pills, and a Congress which doesn't deal with matters of the public interest with 'clean hands' (uncrossed by silver or votes).
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In summary" the workplace is the modern slave galleon - where change will come from revolutionary acts of disobedience and that's about it. We're all pretty much whipped. And no, nothing is funny anymore..
(Slide 2) Responsive to "How to use talents in a creative way that adds humor to everyday experiences."
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The simplest way to use talents in a creative way that adds humor to the workplace is to actually do your job and then laugh at coworkers who can't keep up.
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However, due to HR rules, this become ridicule and you'll get fired no matter how really good you are at something, so what arises today is actually the modern analog of the...
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Hawthorne Effect which clearly describes the dumbing down/slowing down of business which Treasury may have missed in their accounting courses - it's in the b-school track..
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The best way to use humor therefore is to become unemployed in Massachusetts where you can score a free car on welfare and then drive to Colorado where you can score a free cell phone on welfare. A kind of Interstate Grapes of Wrath meets Mad Max's Thunderdome.
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Then you can go into your supervisor's office and laugh at them for 'not getting it' and working when they could be living under the overpass (or in the van) with no house payment.
(Slide 3) Responsive to "Alleviate stress in home and the office "
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Show virtues of going camping, RV'ing, and learning campcraft for under the overpass
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Become a hobo with no home or office to concern yourself with and follow decent weather around avoiding beat-down by the railroad bulls as in the 1930's
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Join a monastery or nunnery
(Slide 4) Responsive to "Know how and why humor is important to communication"
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The best joke books to study and emulate are published by the Federal Government and offer guidance:
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Patriot Acts 1 through 9 which have been passed with no one reading them
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The Rahmdown healthcare joke which no one will read, either
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The monthly Treasury budget statement which is either unread, incomprehensible in its assumptions, or all of the above
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The administration's repetitious use of the words 'change'. 'green shoots', and 'transparency'
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(Slide 5) Responsive to "Improve work-place relationships "
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Develop an interest in bisexual behavior
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Preliminary research shows this will double your odds of finding a relationship
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Everything is a 'protected class' to the HR wonks - so no worries, right?
(Slide 6) Responsive to "Prevent burn-out"
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Multiple options to prevent burnout
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Bilk people out of $50-billion and get free room & board for life
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Rob a bank and get free room and board for life
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Get fired in Massachusetts, get a car, drive to Colorado for the free cell phone...
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Find a different job
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Failing job-change (there are none to be had), find a new group of investors or a different bank and try again
(Slide 7) Responsive to "Contractor shall conduct two, 3-hour, Humor in the Workplace programs"
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My training PowerPoint is less than 20-minutes even with additional one-liners
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Divide up attendees into three teams
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Team one gets beer, tequila, Jack and mixer and a quarter-ounce
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Team two gets chips, salsa, pickles, Zig-Zags, and mixed nuts
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Team three gets napkins, empties pop cans to make bongs, calls in the pizza orders, and gets bags of ice and lighters.
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Upon completion of this task, break into small groups and hold 3-4 hour learned discussions about humor and its application in government.
(Slide 8) Shameless self promotion
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Better understanding of workplace dynamics could be attained if sites like www.urbansurvival.com were unblocked in the federal workplace.
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Sites like www.toon-republic.com should be made mandatory and for a small fee, I'm sure Rebecca Price could supply an almost infinite number of 'you-fill-in-the-caption' cartoons with whatever caption moves you.
Further Readings in Humor
For a further explanation of how humor works, please see the Congressional Budget Office Director's Blog which this morning offers a genuinely gloomier than even my forecast for the nation's outcome:
Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario for current law. Unless revenues increase just as rapidly, the rise in spending will produce growing budget deficits. Large budget deficits would reduce national saving, leading to more borrowing from abroad and less domestic investment, which in turn would depress economic growth in the United States. Over time, accumulating debt would cause substantial harm to the economy. The following chart shows our projection of federal debt relative to GDP under the two scenarios we modeled.:
The accompanying chart show the variance between the BS/Happy talk model which gets pimped on The Hill and at the White House and the oh-oh, don't talk about this one model:
Obviously, this guy has missed our humor seminar. "Team one, hand him some herb. Team two, hand him a paper or one of those smashed pop cans with the hole in it. Team three? Some fire over there?"
But Wait - It Gets Better!
Then when have veep-Joe telling us "We have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt." Don't know what they put in the water in Washington, but veep-Joe might want to bring in some bottled water from East Texas, or change brand, or something... then he turns around and says of the current pork & stim that 'It's working". Yeah...sure...whatever, Joe.
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But all sarcasm, cynicism, disgust, and nausea aside, he actually is right in one sense (if I can use that word 'sense' in a country turned topsy-turvy): The government needs to immediately spend money to put people back to work and don't know how you'll take this but it seems to me that socialist health care being Rhammed down our throats, closing half America's auto plants and having the banksters tighten up lending just isn't the way to increase the velocity of money, is it?
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"Team one, hand him some herb. Team two, hand him....
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Coping: With Your Kid's Future
Back in 2001, when my youngest daughter Allison was thrashing about looking for a career, she settled on going into the food industry. While I wasn't particularly happy at the time with here choice of going through a two-year culinary program, I still held some hope that it would work out for her. Nevertheless, my advice back then was "If you want to do something in the food business, why not just go to work for a grocery chain, start as a checker and then work into one of their specialties like produce or baking?" I remember offering. But, who listens to Dad, right?
She did very well in school, and one thing led to another and a series of prep-chef kind of gigs is what I have to admit, having eaten at some of them, just really good upscale restaurants in the Seattle area. She even worked for a while as a prop chef for a Northwestie kind of TV show.
Still, as a dad who lives more than 10-minutes (often 10-years) into the future, I was worried that her training might not be a source of a decent (average and above) income for a long period of time. One suggestion I made (repeatedly) when she was completing school in 2003/2004 was "Why not become a sales rep for one of the food companies, or maybe go into wholesale food-serve supplies?"
Well, one thing led to another and for the past two years or so she's been working for a DNA testing outfit - and it was there that she was let go earlier this week...business is slowing in a lot of sectors, it turns out and the company was making adjustments and she was in a position which the company figured it could reduce while transferring workloads around.
But if there's one thing Allison got from 'the old man's' family it was plain old hustle. So you can imagine how pleased I was to get a phone call last night reporting that "Dad I've got a full-time grocery checking job and there's a good chance I can move up over time..."
Needless to say I'm pleased as punch. One daughter in the 'can avoid it' part of the food business, a son doing advanced EMT training and another daughter in nursing school. At least they will all have jobs in an all but totally on-the-rocks economy. And that pleases the hell out of me.
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Had a reader call yesterday asking about what her son might do for a career and it's been weighing mightily. As I see it, there are basically three ways people can run life: Directed toward maximum gain, structured for minimum loss, or just go with whatever opportunities life sends knocking on your front door.
Each of my kinds now has set what I refer to as a 'personal trajectory'. In other words, they have at least one 'no-matter-what' career track, and if they see some other higher return track, they can always upshift to that. But, as a personal safety net, they also have a set of 'keep alive' skills they can fall back on that will be able to put food on the table in all but the complete breakdown of society, and even then a good bit of medicine, knowing about wild foods and foraging would still give a person considerable advantage over the mass of people who never take the time to ask hard questions about their life like "In an age of specialization, what happens if my specialty is suddenly no longer needed?"
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Being early is something that has run in the family for at least 150-years, as I explained earlier this week. But here lately, as time & events speed up, the period we have to wait before being right seems to be shrinking. Doing 'wireless data and software over radio' which I was doing in 1983 was only about 10-years early. Moving to the ranch in early 2003? Only six years ahead of the pack. And pushing a daughter into the indispensible side of the food industry? Maybe five years early. And some of the predictive linguistics work ("death of the dollar" for instance) may only be three or four years early.
All this leads up to an interesting idea for a few hours of personal introspection this weekend, a study of personal 'time loops'. Most people have a hard time recognizing them, but as you get old enough, there are certain repeating patterns that emerge in most people's lives. You can graph them out if you want - and in some cases, you can even see your personal progress moving backwards - not forward.
Not everyone has multiple 'curly-cues' and there's no reason just to map your life as peaks of creativity. Another way would be to make loops based on marriages (I'd have three loops there, LOL). But it's an interesting tool not just for the personal insight it gives into the way you're conducting your own life, but when watching your kids grow. I can see in each of mine now, how their first creativity loops are going and it's from this that a parent can 'see' how their kids will come out.
As my grandmother (on the Danish side) said "It's through our kids that we achieve immortality." and by watching the rises and falls in their loops as they arise, there's a certain sense of wonder and a great appreciation to be had for the natural/cyclical nature of things.
Not that this is the only method of looking into the future of your kids (or inspecting your own life's work). Another method would be to use the S-Curve approach pioneers by my friend Cesar Marchetti at CERN which I described in one of the earliest weekly Peoplenomics reports - what back when it was "Inside Report" in 2001. The "S" curve phenomena described in that report not only applies to people's lives, but appears to also apply to markets.
So there...something to ponder for the weekend - life loops and S curves. and maybe even a ponder or two for the kids as they thrash about.
One thing seems likely, however, and it's a key thing to consider: It seems as time has moved along from the post-World War II period that the 'single loop' life - the going to work for one employer, staying there 35-years and then retiring to make a single loop (along with a single marriage, and so forth) is toast. Hard to run into anyone these days who has a single-loop life mapped out.
More like going forward into the future - and almost certainly as we approach 2011/2012, the number and magnitude of change implied by the LifeLoops (or S curves) will be increasing. And that has tremendous implications with how we construct our daily lives.
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The approaching of the technical singularity struck home just yesterday for me as another new technology was described to me which has the potential to dramatically change computing. We're in a helluva race right now: The two contestants are the technological 'singularity' which offers the notion that enough technological change can save us (after Kurzweil) while the other is that so much change happening in such a short period will reduce the gains of enough of the middle class such that the marginal rate of return for increased effort falls below zero and society (as we knew it) just self-destructs (after Tainter, et al).
Hell of a race, huh? A sort of LifeLoops for the masses? No, that's how the Mayan Calendar works.
Around the Ranch: Wet Spot
Although the chance of rain is only 20%, we've just had 1" of that 20% drop into the rain gauge overnight and this morning. Still too damn hot to play golf, but the greens should be in decent shape after all this...now instead of a golf cart if I could get a swamp buggy on the course....
