'It's the NEW AMERICAN WAY....' -- Keeping those land prices high

'Dominant Social Theme: There's no money! The governments can't help! Help! Free-Market Analysis: As the power elite that wants to run the world grows more crazed and desperate, their bought-and-paid-for financial facilities and media mouthpieces become crazier, too. If we had a free-market system of money instead of a monopoly/government/mercantilist one, then the market itself would take care of the money necessary. That is not what the powers-that-be want you to think. They want you to be frightened and thus use their dominant social themes like this one (the world is running out of money) to make you feel hopeless and powerless. These themes are almost always scarcity-based. At the end they propose globalist solutions (run by the power elite) to provide the necessary antidote to market failure. The powers-that-be are by now fully aware that they have poured their tens of trillions into a dysfunctional economic system that needs to be allowed to fail. But since this bubble system of banks and financial firms is NOT to be allowed to fail, it will go on wasting gigantic sums of money. Then, central banks will have to print MORE money and even MORE money. At some point price inflation shall bring the whole system down. Unless, of course, the powers-that-be can somehow make the case to people that the market failure is organic. But it is not organic. The current money system is a fake and a fraud. It is a system of command and control for a very few. And now these few are faced with explaining and justifying its failure during what we call the Internet Reformation. Conclusion: Good luck.'

'Facebook is basically a glorified family photo album for the entire human race. However, a photo album is not a business model. -- There is only one scenario under which the company will become a screaming buy – legalised gambling. Presently, Facebook receives more than 15 per cent of its revenue from Zynga, but there are only so many people on this planet who are willing to waste their time playing Farmville and Mafia Wars. Online poker, however, is another story altogether. If Facebook can become the virtual casino to the world, its profit potential will be enormous. Until that time, I would pass on the stock.' -- Roaring Naughties

'Of course markets stay high with central banks printing huge sums, inflating everything except jobs.'

'Currently, transactions within the shadow economy have to be made face to face, but an electronic System D currency would enable remote and even cross-border transactions. This could significantly broaden the entire informal ecosystem because consumers would have an international reach and merchants would have vast new choices in selecting suppliers. Not all bitcoin transactions require a standard computer and if the mobile payment prognosticators are correct, the mobile phone equipped with applications like Bitcoin Android could end up originating the majority of bitcoin transactions. Contrary to the thesis of anti-cashist David Wolman, the unbanked and the System D traders will not migrate away from cash unless its replacement offers similar privacy features. Bitcoin is barely three years young. Any bootstrapped currency initially will have a chicken-and-egg problem due to the fact that a currency’s overall success is determined by its network effect and pervasive spread. Critics of bitcoin as a currency are quick to point out that not many merchants accept it as a payment type yet. That will change. And, they also point out that the total available market is severely limited. Oh, how wrong! Bitcoin’s first potential mega-market just so happens to be the second largest economy in the world and its sole competitor in that sphere is depreciating government paper cash. Game on.'

Cool zombie flick, bro!

'"I think many investors believed that as they were holding the same bond as the ECB, they should therefore be considered in the same boat as the ECB," said Michael Krautzberger, head of the Euro fixed income business at BlackRock. – Reuters' -- 'For these top financiers, hope springs eternal. They still do not understand the system in which they have chosen to work has not been created to generate "trust" but to foment world government via various destabilizing regimes. For decades, bright and numerically adept men (and women) have made (in aggregate) trillions "playing by the rules" of modern central banking systems. But the top elites are moving aggressively ahead and part of the new plans – as the world depression is apparently consolidated – includes attacking the monied classes themselves. This is part of the fundamental wrongheadedness of operations like Occupy Wall Street (probably controlled opposition). Those running OWS do not make a distinction between the monied classes and the very tip-top elites running central banks. The former are disposable. The latter DO the disposing. Revolutions eat their children. Soon, very soon, the monied classes that have considered themselves immune from blowback shall likely find out just how wrong they were. This happened in the 1930s as well. We shall see if their eventual disaffection contribute to the current disabuse that has overtaken the impoverished and middle classes.'

'I describe the present economic crisis in terms of economic resonance. The economy experiences oscillating money-flows between the commodity market and the bond market. When money flows from the bond market to the commodity market we witness the inflationary phase of the cycle. Inevitably, rising interest rates accompany this phase. At the top of the cycle the money-flow will reverse itself and will go from the commodity market to the bond market. This is the deflationary phase of the long-wave cycle that, no less inevitably, is accompanied by falling interest rates. These huge money-flows are driven by speculation. When the central bank intervenes in the market to control the rise of interest rates, it inadvertently makes prices fall; and when it intervenes to stop prices from falling, it inadvertently makes interest rates rise. The upshot is that the central bank intervention, rather than tempering movements, aggravates them. This is the fundamental flaw of Keynesian economics. At the present junction the Fed is buying bonds to combat deflation. Bond speculators know this and will buy the bonds first, driving down interest rates in the process. The result is more deflation, not less. The Keynes-inspired central bank action is counter-productive. Policymakers are blind and don't see this. They stick to their self-defeating monetary policy. They actually become the quartermaster general of the depression they are trying to avoid. As if cursed by a particular kind of madness, policymakers saddle society with the vampire of risk-free speculation. They turn the constructive energy of stabilizing speculation into a most destructive kind of energy: destabilizing speculation. The problem cannot be cured because bond speculation cannot be eliminated.'

'...there have been no substantial retrenchments of the US government, and the situation is getting worse, on a hyperbolic curve. Trends in motion tend to stay in motion until a genuine crisis changes them, and this trend has been gaining momentum for over a century. The fact is that when a government collapses, especially when the government is providing all the things the US government does today, people want somebody to fix it; they want their goodies back. It's well known that over 50% of the US population are net recipients of state largess. And the degree of state support and involvement in the US is far, far greater than it was in France, Russia or Germany. After a period of chaos, it's always the people who are most political, who have the most rabid statist ideas who get the public's attention and rise to the top. It seems highly likely that the US will get a savior, someone full of bravado, who assures the booboisie that he can straighten things out – if he is given sufficient power. Perhaps it will be an arrogant windbag like Gingrich, perhaps some general. The government won't wither away; it will reassert itself. I don't see any way around it, actually. We are already moving into a police state...' -- There's no stopping what can't be stopped, no killing what can't be killed.

'...these stress tests and new rules will choke off the one aspect of fiat money that actually is positive (within the larger negative context). Not only will people have to deal with the monetary inflation that has already been created, they'll have to deal with it within the parameters of a monetary drought. Having caused a rapidly developing depression, the elites behind the world's damnable central banking system are now busily engineering a situation where further capital will not be available (without punitive interest rates) to any but the biggest corporations. How clever it is, eh? If you want to set up global governance, the first thing you want to do is gain control over money and its issuance. You do this by setting up a global network of central banks. Having created central banking and the mechanism for printing-money-from nothing, you now print a great deal of it. In doing so you set off a series of great booms and busts that culminate in the greatest boom and bust of all – leading (as it did in the 1930s) to what should be labeled a depression. Now, once the depression (or "great recession) is underway, you begin to run from bank to bank like a busy bee. You are, in fact, busily engaged in creating a credit squeeze. Having bankrupted middle classes around the world, you are determined to ensure that they will not be able to get their hands on further funds!'

'Dominant Social Theme: Inflate! And everything will work out. -- The BIS, whatever it is, is all for printing lots of money. And the BIS is no small-time trade group. It is perhaps the most powerful (and least known) global business body in the world. Its mysteries are manifold. Its workings are well-hidden. Of course, somebody actually set up the Bank for International Settlements in the late 1930s. And since then someone has set up or helped set up about 200 central banks around the world, many of them reporting directly to the BIS. But who? And how did it happen? Dunno. Who speaks to the head of a state, asking him or her to set up a central bank? Dunno. Do you? Why is that Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq have central banks when they didn't before, or not the kind they do now? Did you read about it? Meh ... this ruinous financial system is not a plant or a tree. It did not grow spontaneously. It did not grow naturally. And we would submit to you that those who created it know what they're doing. The key as always is to pretend that one does NOT know. The key is to create cognitive dissonance. Out of chaos ... order. It is quite clear. Follow what IS rather than what you are being TOLD. The BIS wants to inflate. It ENDORSES inflation. The proximate cause is the unraveling of the current financial system. But it is "their" system. They made it.'

'If you are in the middle class, you are expected to own certain things, do certain things and do so at quality levels that exceed the quality purchased by the poor class (if they purchase that category of things at all) but don’t hit luxury levels. You are also expected to not buy certain things that are either above or beneath you, or do certain things for yourself. For the middle class, there are things that are beneath your station and things that are above your station. For the rich and poor, things are much more one-sided. ...imitation and uniformity in consumption define the middle class. In countries where the middle class is burgeoning instead of dying, especially in Asia, the growth of the class is tracked via measurement of ownership rates of certain typical goods at typical quality levels. By contrast, there is much more variety in how the poor are poor, and how the rich are rich. When a middle class goes into decline, you get a large segment of the population engaging in a desperate scramble to keep up appearances, while switching from collective-norm-based to individual-risk-based financial thinking.'

"Everyone can see this massive bulge of baby boomers is going into retirement... you've got these budding, newly-hatched, wrinkled vampires about to feast upon the jugular of the young, and they're just going to swarm them..." -- "Governments have no money. Repeat after me: Governments have no money: They steal through taxation, they borrow through debt, and they counterfeit through monopoly control of currency."

'Oh, wow, a Greek unity government. Unity. A less polite term would be "communism" in our view – for we and thee, not of course for the top Greek elites. Communism. Sure. Or close to it ... The state runs most of Greece now one way or another. And a politburo runs the state. A "unity government." Hah! This is a long held dream of the elites as they struggle to move this woeful, recalcitrant world toward global governance. The idea is to do away with messy policy questions over the STRUCTURE of government. In fact, the idea is to ensure, via such unity governments, that everyone is on board with the basics. Simple really. The elites run the government and the government runs the corporations and the corporations and government jointly run everything else. Way up at the top, the REAL power resides, with a handful of elite families and associates that own the corporations and secretly control the government. The Greeks. They've been rioting for six months and what do they get? A government that will do exactly the opposite of what they want.' -- Some dare call it communism

'Revolutions are dangerous and unpredictable beasts, and for a population to enter into one without fully understanding what is at stake is much like handing a loaded 45 automatic to a toddler.' -- What have you bought into; what will it cost to buy you out?

"Portugal, Spain, Italy, and hush-hush, France – all of these countries are dysfunctionally mismanaged economies – 'managed' being the mismanaged part of the whole equation because you cannot manage an economy, only a free market can govern itself... -- I believe the Greeks will be forced into accepting whatever austerity measures or any bailout packages that are dropped into their laps via Brussels and the G20."

'...the idea that Occupy Wall Street protesters have a right to share directly in the private profits earned by others is immoral. The protesters were correct in being outraged by having to share in Wall Street's losses. But if they do not want to share the losses, they have no right to demand a share of the profits! One protester equated the low wages paid by Wal-Mart to slavery, yet thought the government should take 70% of my income. In the case of Wal-Mart, employees are free to choose other jobs. What choice would I have when faced with a 70% income tax? They call it "slavery" when Wal-Mart offers workers better opportunities than they could find elsewhere, and "justice" when government enslaves me by forcibly taking 70% of the fruits of my labor. Another protester challenged my claim that businesses create jobs by stating that consumers create the jobs by spending money. When I asked him where the consumers got their money, he replied "from their jobs," which actually proved my point. Without jobs, consumers have no purchasing power. And without production, there is nothing to purchase. I'm calling for these protesters to educate themselves on the causes of the current financial decline and not to waste their time attacking the wrong target.'

'Dominant Social Theme: China is the most magnificent country in the world. Whatta nation! What an economy! More cities than anywhere else in the world. More skyscrapers, too. Never mind that most of them are empty ... -- Free-Market Analysis: We were on the case when it came to China several years ago. At the time, nary a peep could be heard about the insanity of China's "market economy" – which is about as "free" as the Chinese Internet. But now the evidence is becoming clear. China is busted. Oh, we know that China holds over US$3 trillion in reserves, but here's the reality: It's just paper – fiat money from the US and Europe. Western companies continue to pour funds and personnel into China and our only explanation for this is that this mania is somehow a ploy. How is it we understand China but multi-billion-dollar nationals do not? The information is out there. Perhaps the idea is to ensnare as much capital and resources as possible in the Chinese briar patch. Then when China goes down, the failure is that much more amplified in the West. The chaos is stronger and the solution – one world government – is enhanced.'

'"It's truly fascinating—after spending a certain number of hours performing assigned tasks, the so-called 'employees' at such facilities would receive monetary compensation that allowed them to support themselves and their families," said archaeologist Alan H. Mueller, citing old ledgers and time-keeping devices unearthed at excavation sites in the region. "In fact, this practice seems to have been the norm for their culture, which consisted of advanced tool users capable of exploiting their skills to produce highly valued goods and services." "It's a complex and intriguing set of rituals we're still trying to fully understand," Mueller added. "But it appears as if their entire society was centered around creating, out of thin air, actual jobs that paid an actual living wage."'

'As Baby Boomers are discovering now, it was all something of a dream. In fact, here at DB we refer to the 20th century these days as a "dreamtime." It was a century when what we call "directed history" was in its heyday. The elites entirely controlled the media and could relate whatever stories they chose. The fantasy of stock market wealth was just that – a fantasy – for most people. Yet no dominant social theme was much more successful than the investment meme. In the 20th century and even today the Anglosphere elites continue to push the idea of "investing." The buy-in of the middle class means a psychological endorsement of the world as it is, including central banking and fiat money. it is all becoming increasingly evident in the 21st century: the manipulations, the control, the larger elite agenda. Many white-collar jobs are make-work and a modern, "investment-enabled" retirement tends to work only in the "up" part of the business cycle when fiat money is in demand. This extended down-cycle is going to be an extended and brutal one because of all the past re-stimulations of the world's economy.'

'The riots are great political theatre, but in our view they are not serious, or not yet. Most of those involved are perfectly sincere – and agonized – over what is taking place, but at the top, history is being manipulated and plans are being set in motion. It is too pat, too perfect. The mainstream media – an entirely controlled apparatus in our view – is bringing us all the sound and fury of these civil conflicts from the riots in Europe to the demands of Occupy Wall Street in America to the soundbites of the Modern Technological Messiah, Julian Assange, on the steps of St. Paul's in Britain. TV, news, even the Internet is ablaze with modern, scripted chaos. There are wars in the Middle East and Africa, a growing (controlled) global protest, the world's remaining pillar of economic stability – China – teeters perilously over a pit of stagflation and recession. There is talk of revolution ... and guillotines. Russia Today, seemingly part of the Hegelian Dialectic after all, brings us rioting in full color over the Internet. All that is left now is to increase the agony while gradually introducing the final structures of globalism as the antidote. It is perfectly possible that the emergent – and unexpected – era of the Internet has thrown the schedule for globalism in disarray. These are in any event dangerous forces the elite toys with. What seems initially controllable and correctly "channeled" can easily spill over the banks and turn into a raging and uncontrollable flood. The stakes have never been higher, not ever in world history.'

'As we walked through the winding path in the park, I was handed materials from various occupants. One leaflet was titled “ARE YOU AN ANARCHIST?” After reading it, I’d have to say yes. I liked the quote at the end of the leaflet – “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” – Emma Goldman. There were some Chinese people protesting AGAINST the communist oppression in their country. I explained to my sons that this entire protest was really about their futures. The past and current generations in control had saddled their generation with unpayable debts and a system that will eventually collapse under the weight of military expenditures and entitlement promises that can never be honored. Young people have done what they were told to do by their parents and are left holding the bag, as the jobless recovery enters its third year. Meanwhile the Wall Street bankers are paying themselves billions in bonuses because somehow bank profits are “soaring”. The crowd was made up of normal people. It was made up of young, middle aged and old people. It was made up of men and women. It was made up of white people, black people, asian people, and hispanic people. It was made up of Republicans and Democrats. It was made up of you and me.'

'The protesters offer few policy prescriptions. Their goal seems to be adding to their numbers and thus magnifying their grievances. The Democratic party, meanwhile, is trying to figure out how to harness this energy for 2012.'

'Are you interested in taking part in the recent global wave of revolution from the comfort of your home computer? Occupy the Internet!'

Vlad Teichberg, Co-Founder, globalrevolution.tv: "These principles of equality are going to redefine everything. Because we're basically creating the new United Nations except it's not the united nations, it's the united people." -- Useful idiots are useful

'The polls show a vast lack of even a modicum of confidence in political leadership, the failures of which are all around us. The longer the depression persists, the more the rebellious spirit grows, and it is not limited to the Wall Street protests. Poverty is growing, incomes are falling, business is being squeezed at every turn, and unemployment is stuck at intolerably high levels. People are angry as never before, and neither political party comes close to offering answers. The State as we’ve known it – and that includes its political parties and its redistributionary, military, regulatory, and money-creating bureaucracies – just can’t get it together. It’s as true now as it has been for some twenty years: the Nation State is in precipitous decline. Once imbued with grandeur and majesty, personified by its Superman powers to accomplish amazing global feats, it is now a wreck and out of ideas. It doesn’t seem that way because the State is more in-your-face than it has been in all of American history. The mask of the State is off. And it has been off for such a long time that we can hardly remember what it looked like when it was on. Fascism, like socialism, cannot achieve its aims. So there is a way in which it makes sense to speak of a stage of history: We are in the stage of late fascism. The grandeur is gone, and all we are left with is a gun pointed at our heads.'

'The anti-big business movement's now preparing to go international. Protests are due to take place in Canada, the UK, and are even spreading to Asia. RT's Priya Sridhar explains why people in India are preparing to join the "Occupy Together" club.'

'A modest if nightmarish scenario ... Suddenly, the world's economy is entirely under water – savings savaged; jobs non-existent; even food and water in short supply for some reason. Now the elites make their solutions known ... Buttressed by the roiling populist protests of Occupy Wall Street, supported by Julian Assange's transparency meme, the powers-that-be take advantage of the starvation and chaos facing not just the West, but the world. With all the persuasive force of the controlled media, they will offer the globe's tortured billions the vision of a compassionate and efficient global government. They campaign for direct democracy to ensure world government is both fair and equitable. It will become apparent, eventually, that Assange's WikiLeaks model provides the transparency that is necessary to erect a feasible model of global governance. Handsome Assange himself shall assume a high position in world government (a man other men envy and women hope to marry). Finally, the elites will offer up the IMF's SDRs as the new world currency. -- Conclusion: Does all this strike you as far-fetched? Heck, we're just speculatin' ....'

'It sounds like the enemy is Wall Street, but observe that the slogan doesn't point to an enemy, it defines the group. The slogan is a twist on an old fascist standby: select a minority enemy, and create an impression of opposing unanimity. Once done, the leaders of the group have the powerbase to do what they want, making it impossible for anyone in the rest of the 98% to disavow this madness. When it all goes down you will be too terrified, or too busy, to dissent. -- Of course Wall Street has excessive profits, but just as your life has been an inflated delusion of easy credit, so has theirs; yes, they have received an obscene share of that fake money, and ten-twenty years ago maybe you could have redistributed that fake money, but that ship has sailed. The moment you take it away from them it ceases to exist, poof, it's gone. Double the taxes, triple the taxes, it makes no difference, it's over. The only way out is a massive tax on wealth; cold fusion; a war; a new media; or inflation. Inflation has the side benefit of pushing you into a higher tax bracket and we'll all get to see what a $1000 bill looks like. "We are the 99%." Stop it. There is a 1%, fighting another 1%, and while both of those megalomaniancs dominate the media coverage the other 98% has no recourse, no representation, no allies, and no savings.'

'Robert Foster in his unparalleled musical manner targets the ailing global economy. How can it be fixed? Does it need to be? Who has the guts to do what is necessary? Special guests of the episode are (sort of) grassroots movement leaders Congressman Ron Paul and the Zeitgeist Movement founder Peter Joseph. (And also surprisingly a homicidal supercomputer on a quest to eradicate humanity and save the Earth).'

'Across the Atlantic, the global financial troubles have reached the UK, as it becomes the latest nation to feel the pinch. Rating's giant Moody's has downgraded 12 of Britain's financial firms and banks, including the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB. That comes after the Bank of England chief said the country's economy is at its lowest point since the 1930s if not ever. RT gets more on this from British Euro MP, Godfrey Bloom.' -- "If [money-printing] was successful, why doesn't he give money-printing machines to every family in the United Kingdom, that they could put in their attic and print money whenever they wanted to go buy something?"

'The complexity of the mess of the Euro area almost defies explanation as it encompasses the European banking system, the US banking system, the politics of individual countries, and the economics of a failed monetary union, past and present regulation, and the ratings agencies. Add in a dollop of media madness, and you have a situation of almost unbelievable complexity. Movements in the ratings then determines the solvency of the banks. The problems is that the ratings agencies might be described as useless in that they are reactive, rather than predictive. By the time that they react, the assets are already held by the bank as 'safe' and then become unsafe. With that 'unsafe' designation, the banks must then shore up their balance sheets.... What we now have is a situation in which banks are now sitting on a pile of 'safe' assets that are now 'unsafe'. It is all down to the idiocy of regulations from a bunch of supposedly smart people who actually thought that they could determine future risk. They didn't get the idea that, just by creating a system in which assets were deemed as 'safe', they would become 'unsafe'. As soon as an asset is declared as safe, thought and calculation, and the regulatory system itself creates an incentive to the over-issuance of the assets in question.'

'...the protest isn’t angry. Quite the opposite, it is loving and accepting. If you go up to protesters with the opposite political view and debate them, they will express their undying love for you and ask for you to join them to increase the diversity of viewpoints. I did this myself, and watched this happen to others, including cops. This attitude pervades everything they do, and is frequently reinforced by the hard-core occupiers. They still haven’t defined themselves, and risk letting the press define the movement for them. They started out with the idea that occupying Wall Street for weeks would be a good way to get their message out, but they are still trying to come to consensus on what, precisely, their message is. The press (and critics) claim they need a message and that they need a concrete list of demands, but I’m not sure that’s true. This is something else, something new, something that doesn’t need to be defined by the old. In that way, it’s like the Internet.'

'...the reason why some mainstream news journalists and many of the audiences they serve see the Occupy Wall Street protests as incoherent is because the press and the public are themselves. It is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped. Occupy Wall Street is meant more as a way of life that spreads through contagion, creates as many questions as it answers, aims to force a reconsideration of the way the nation does business and offers hope to those of us who previously felt alone in our belief that the current economic system is broken. But unlike a traditional protest, which identifies the enemy and fights for a particular solution, Occupy Wall Street just sits there talking with itself, debating its own worth, recognizing its internal inconsistencies and then continuing on as if this were some sort of new normal.'

'Was this all the "free market" at work? Absolutely not! Here’s the question when you get down to it: Do you want to fix this or not? If you do then the demand is not for “single-payer health care” or “free college educations” or “debt forgiveness.” Those demands, if you succeed in obtaining them, will make the problem worse. You will become more of a slave through those demands, not less. The demand you must issue is that all the special protections that are currently afforded by government are to be dropped. The government props under home lending are taken away. The government mandates that people be treated medically irrespective of ability to pay and are able to cost-shift their care to others go away. The non-dischargable nature of student loan debt goes away. You can’t fix this any other way folks. I am well-aware that this goes against the grain of “I need it right damn now” that has imbued our society, but mathematics simply doesn’t care about whether you agree or disagree. It just is.'

'We are the 99 percent. We are everyone else. And we will no longer be silent. It’s time the 1 percent got to know us a little better. On Sept. 17, 2011, the 99 percent will converge on Wall Street to let the 1 percent know just how frustrated they are with living in a world made for someone else. Let us know why you’ll be there. Let us know how you are the 99 percent.' -- Letter submission tumbleblog

'Welcome to OCCUPY TOGETHER, an unofficial hub for all of the events springing up across the...' -- World: Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Mexico

'Protestor': "If it maximizes social justice..." -- Relativism. No Future.

'Despite their honest intentions, many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are being suckered into a trap and calling for the very “solutions” that are part of the financial elite’s agenda to torpedo the American middle class – higher taxes and more big government. The zeal for totalitarian government amongst some of the “protesters” is shocking. One sign being carried around read, “A government is an entity which holds the monopolistic right to initiate force,” which seems a little ironic when protesters complain about being physically assaulted by police in the same breath.' -- Useful idiots are useful

'"Britain has become a zombie economy. Capital is no longer being allocated. – UK Telegraph" -- ...people (normal people) are aware of the elite money giveaways. To them it doesn't look like a substantive policy – it just looks like a bunch of rich people propping up "their" financial system. In fact, that's exactly right. This elaborate charade was presented with some level of dignity in the 20th Century but collapsed utterly in the 21st Century when the Internet exposed it. In a single decade, central banks have gone from possessing an almost religious aura to being a laughingstock. The elite still doesn't "get it." What's been lost is the moral justification. People see the central banking system as a scam now, even when they can't quite explain it. And that's what's going to kill it eventually.'

'Germany is rumored to have ordered printing plates to resume printing Marks, and is intending to walk. ...playing the bailout game is a tax exactly identical to the impact of that stronger currency, and the bailout game costs you the decision-making power you retain when you are the one in control of your own destiny. The German people are tired of the crap and with good reason. There is a political limit to how far you can go with these acts before the people act in whatever manner is necessary to put a stop to it, and the Germans have a long and painful history of what popular tolerance of political stupidity leads to. Whether Germany actually goes ahead and does it likely depends on whether there is a further contagion - and I think there will be. ...I have a nasty suspicion that Europe will ultimately "resolve" this problem the way Europe has in the past - via the business end of a bunch of hot lead-chuckers.'

Dominant Social Theme: Look. Depressions happen. But what would you do in 1932? You'd stick it out! By, say, 1960, you'd be back where you were! No problem ... -- Every day of your life you look anxiously in the newspapers to find out what "they" are saying about inflation, about Europe, about the budget crisis and whether taxes are going up. You have a job, but you're worried you're going to be made "redundant." Or maybe your company is going to go out business. Or your skills simply aren't going to be needed anymore. It's your fault, too. Plenty of people are "making it" in the modern world and if you're not it's because you haven't planned properly. You haven't taken the right degrees, focused on the right industry, created the image for yourself. Your fault anyway ... And so you worry. You live with worry. You worry all the time. There are so many outside factors weighing down on you. So much you can't control ... Recession, depression ... global warming, overpopulation ...'

'When the world's leaders begin to warn of something in concert, we try to peer beneath the surface to see what they are really driving at. Austerity – the grinding down of the West's middle class – is one aspect of it, perhaps. But the installation of a global currency is perhaps another. Problem ... solution. Thesis ... antithesis. It has occurred to us, as well, that the powers-that-be miscalculated with this latest downturn. While in another era it might be easy for the elites to utilize such a crisis to their advantage, the Internet itself is likely making this sort of manipulation more difficult. We see a kind of Internet Reformation taking shape around the world that is countering the globalist trends of the Anglosphere power elite. Things will likely get much worse before they get better, but the rising consciousness about the way the world REALLY works means that solutions meant to be implemented from the top down will likely be put in place with a good deal more difficulty.'

'About 3 trillion yuan (US$470 billion) of bank loans have been channeled into underground lending in the eastern coastal provinces, China Banking Regulatory Commission chairman Liu Mingkang told a recent closed-door conference with lenders. Companies are not alone in engaging in such lending businesses; individuals are welcome to join. Liu Chumei, a housewife in Liantan town in Yunfu city, in southern Guangdong province, close to Hong Kong, said credit companies had promised her family a 7.5% interest rate per month on deposits of 10,000 yuan. "Seeing the inflation rate is higher than the [official] deposit rate, we actually loose money putting our cash in the bank ... I would put my money in such credit companies if I had any, so I called some of my relatives in Hong Kong to see if they were interested," she said. "They refused on security reasons."'

'Protesters camped out, refusing to budge until their demands were met.' -- What have you bought into; what will it cost to buy you out?

'Every time Merkel meets with Sarkozy in one of their "no, no, yes, yes" liaisons, European stock markets rise. There is some vague language about another round of bailouts. Investors rush in to buy, buy, buy. The fund managers are not rewarded to produce long-term capital gains. So, they cannot resist buying whenever Merkel and Sarkozy emerge from their tryst to tell the world that they are willing to let Germany bail out the Greek bond market one more time. This is great political theater. The funds' memos to major banks regarding the funds' refusal to roll over their short-term loans can go out at any time. No one wants to be the first fund to trigger a banking panic. But no one wants to be left holding the bag. This is why predictions regarding the day of reckoning are highly speculative. The major decisions will not be made by banks. They will be made by fund managers with large deposits at banks. The bankers are just sitting there, hoping for the best.'

"The consequences are the exact opposite of the intent." -- That which is not seen.

'If Yemen is destabilized, Bahrain and eventually Saudi Arabia itself could become embroiled in domestic turmoil, which many observers believe could eventually end the fragile Saudi regime... A failed Saud regime would likely collapse the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. The results would make the financial turmoil from the current downgrade of US Treasuries look minor, indeed. The failure of the US dollar reserve could create a world depression of the sort that has not been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The purposeful degradation of civilization itself is apparently the aim of the elites. The goal is world government. Out of chaos, order. With secret, illegal, unconstitutional wars like the one in Yemen, this goal is advanced. The gravity cannot be overstated. The mounting recklessness and lawlessness of these actions provide evidence that opposition to freedom and civil society – embedded in mainstream Western institutions themselves – grow ever more bold.'

'Rule #1: Go where the food is! Regardless of the state you live in, get out of the city and into a rural area. Next, a community’s proximity to urban environments must be considered. Many rural retreats are still vulnerable to being flooded by unprepared city dwellers in search of food at the onset of collapse. ... [live] at least one tank of gas distance from major metropolitan areas. Just as there are better places to live in each state, there are also better states to live in; what we call “Safe Havens.” Safe Havens are meant to consist of a large number of people, with a diverse membership, living in relative proximity. Safe Havens are NOT compounds, communes, or any other such nonsense that requires too many people in too small an area with too many rules. A Safe Haven will not be dictated or micromanaged through pyramid structures, military hierarchy, or “community tribunals”. It is a designated area of free cooperation, not a creepy village of collectivists...'

'"Even if I did somehow make enough money to keep my head above water, I haven't the slightest clue what I'd do with it anymore," Bowman added. According to the survey, 63 percent of Americans said they had come to rely upon the familiar sense of dread that came from knowing the country was quickly losing its place as an economic superpower, while 71 percent described finding a kind of tranquility in the steady, predictable cuts to local, state, and federal funding.'

'The people are catching on. Thus we arrive at the strangest of moments when the world is figuring out that the forecasts of fire, flood and plague were faked, just as they realize the reassurances about the money were faked too. Disaster is coming, but not because of carbon. We’ve been worried about the wrong tipping point. Is it a coincidence? A random convergence of delusions? Not so. It takes one falsity to feed the other. We need a special kind of wealth to worry about bad weather 100 years from now. No one was watching the dollars hard enough... Corruption reigned across the high end of town. Politicians lied, scientists lost data, bankers mispriced risk and sold it to suckers but were bailed out, and public servants served government instead of the public. Science journals forgot what science was, professors broke laws of reason, and virtually everyone in the old media let them get away with it. Indeed the old-media was busy hacking phones for entertainment.'

'...the real problem is the unrestrained and continuously inflated currency unit itself and the central banking system that manages it .... The system allows Western politicians to make unrealistic promises to a mass of non-thinking "takers" who've been educated into believing they have a "right" to a free ride through life. It feeds Money Power's hunger for global government and enables its use of NATO and the US military-industrial complex to mold foreign countries into manageable pieces that can eventually be amalgamated. The Internet Reformation ... threatens to reshape the world as we know it by exposing the power elite's machinations for all to see. Mainstream media is under attack. Establishment politicians stumble through one embarrassing press conference to the next attempting to maintain the illusion that they are really working for the people. Instead, they are willing soldiers intent on increasing the debt-pressure and ignoring the rising barometer of understanding.'

'If you increase the workforce by 10% but only increase the resource by 5% then something is going to happen to the distribution of resources. ...the real reason for this crisis is not capitalism, but the actions of communist and socialist governments before they started the process of opening their economies. They created barriers to the integration of their labour force into the productive and enriching capitalist world economy, and then suddenly started 'dropping' the labour into the world economy at a rate that the capitalist system could not absorb. It is why we see the increasing divide in incomes between the rich and the rest. It is not the evils of capitalism, but rather the last terrible contribution of years of rejection of capitalism in countries like China and India. They created a flood of new labour into the world economy, and the result is that labour has been devalued. ...the fundamental causes...[:] government constraints and interference with free market capitalism.'

'In response to the US dollar's declining value some citizens and states are making moves to mint their own alternative currencies. At least one has been convicted on counterfeiting charges and labeled a domestic terrorist by the US attorney. More are still trying to get their currencies circulating. With the Fed talking about more quantitative easing and the country facing trillions of dollars in mounting debt - who is terrorizing the US economy and dollar?' -- Competition is a sin!

'Two things have happened: First, people have been made aware as never before of the essential unfairness (not a strong enough word) of the system; second, the massiveness of the bailout (handout) shows clearly that the system itself is finished. The last time something of this magnitude occurred was during the Great Depression and it took a World War to reconfigure and reassert elite control. Absent another world war (which is impossible because of nuclear devices) nothing is going to bring it back. The price distortions are so great, thanks to the directed money printing, that it cannot unwind. In fact, around the world, central banks are busily printing money for the very elite power nexuses (banks and financial institutions) that need to fail. Those in charge of the money printing will not let them fail. This means the unemployment and misery will continue to grow. The whole system is insane. It is beyond salvage.'

'The Fabian-socialist economist John Maynard Keynes famously said not one man in a million could comprehend the workings of the central bank – so large is the lie that the money system is based upon. But Keynes's statement was pre-Internet. The giveaway of the Fed's trillions and trillions has played out under the merciless spotlight of digital coverage. Thousands of bloggers and perhaps millions of articles have commented on these impossible figures. And gradually, around the world – and certainly in America – it has occurred to the jobless, homeless and hopeless that SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT. The great, grasping mechanism of mercantilist central banking has been exposed for all to see. Societies that use some form of gold-as-money are apt to be fairer and healthier than fiat-money societies. The Chinese who have experienced eight ruinous bouts with fiat currency call it "flying money." Gold doesn't fly. In this sense, it has a morality as well as a utility.'

'You CANNOT, as a society, witness a couple of guys pull a trillion out of their back pockets without feeling, well ... snookered. And after feeling snookered, something else begins to percolate. "Hey," you say, "wait a minute. I sit here with my debts and my job and my house in foreclosure and this guy – THIS GUY – throws around trillions? Wait a minute. WHEN DO I GET MINE!" And so it begins. You have seen the essential immorality of the system. You have felt it deep in the gut... Human beings, among other things, live within various ethical environments. When these are shown to be false, there is trouble brewing. We've written this over and over, that the old financial order, based on central banking, is basically finished. But THIS is WHY. The moral order that supported this sort of society is kaput. It's been found out. On the way is increased chaos, increased immorality and eventually A NEW MORAL ORDER.'

'The colossal miscalculation made by Washington and Wall Street is that they could control the moral hazard genie once they removed it from the bottle. They assumed that the people would be too stupid to see what was going on. And that even if the people did figure things out, they would willingly wear the thick, choking chains of debt being welded to their necks... Instead, thanks to the Internet and the democracy of information and insight it affords, the people were instantly wise to what was happening, and it stirred them. ...the moral hazard virus is now loose and swiftly propagating throughout society. The American psychological landscape has been parched by the searing winds of financial desperation, surging inequality and dying hopes. And the tinder of the desiccated American Dream, once the great calling and aspiration of a nation, is now piled so high that a spark igniting it would unleash raging flames reaching up to and scorching an astonished Sun.'

"You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket." -- Frank Sobotka, The Wire

'The world's economy is a kind of planned madhouse. Those in power have inflicted upon it scores of central banks – all busily printing/creating money from nothing at the push of a button. Those who run these central banks are well aware of their ruinous disposition. They understand fully the boom bust cycle that brings bankruptcy and hopelessness to so many. But one does not ever acknowledge this. If one works within the system, one is not supposed to. In the upside-down world of modern finance, central bankers who print money are "hawkish inflation fighters." Politicians who endlessly create the distortive price fixes, called "laws," are "public servants." Corporate leaders who generate profits by linking their companies to the great, grinding machinery of Western legislation are "entrepreneurs." ...the Anglosphere elites also work via OMMISSION. That is, in addition to advocating fear, they actively encourage ignorance. The mendacity is breathtaking.'

'...the Dreamtime the elites were able to create in the 20th century has become exposed for what it is. People no longer believe that investing in the stock market will make them wealthy. It is seen more as a confiscatory situation more ammenable to enriching a few... ...as mercantilist public/private central banking has driven economies into collapse, the elites need to promote the idea of "austerity." They have been waging a campaign to make people feel their governments have been profligate and that the only solution is significant cutbacks. What is left unsaid is that government profligacy is an expectable outcome of central banking overprinting of money. Governments are apt to overspend just as businesses are. The austerity that the elites are trying to impose on Europe has reached Britain's shores. Americans do not realize it yet, but the arguments over the debt ceiling are the first signs that the austerity battle has been joined in the US as well.'

'The federal government has not yet issued any plans for dealing with the mass exodus, which is expected to have wide-scale economic repercussions in the abandoned regions, including a complete collapse of consumer trading and a short burst in hardtack sales. However, the House of Representatives will begin debate on bipartisan measure H.R. 3492, which would declare a state of emergency on the East Coast and provide tax breaks to those who remain behind, as soon as Congress reconvenes next month at a cabin in Rock Springs, WY. "Everywhere across this land, hard-working men and women have come to see that anyplace is better than here," said Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), who is giving up his $169,300-a-year job in search of work in the railroads. "No matter how bad things get or how dark tomorrow may seem, the one thing Americans can always count on is the promise of a better life somewhere else."'

'Hong Kong television showed seething crowds of migrant workers from the southwestern province of Sichuan running through the streets of Zengcheng, smashing windows, setting fire to government buildings and overturning police vehicles. Thousands of riots, protests and other forms of unrest break out across China each year over problems ranging from rampant inflation to corruption, a big wealth gap, industrial pollution, forced demolitions and abuse of power. The Chinese Communist Party maintains strict political and media controls to quash any form of organized dissent.'

'"They've been giving us the runaround on this money for a long time now, so we had no choice," said Victor Migliore of the Bayonne, NJ-based collection agency. "We mailed them four warnings and called the Capitol and White House at least 10 times each, but they just ignored us. Maybe now they'll finally realize we're not fooling around about that $5,498,415,904,232.05 they owe." "The United States is certainly not acting like a country that is serious about settling its account with us," Migliore said. "Last Wednesday, I asked them for the money, and they said they didn't have it yet. The next day, I read in the paper that they just bought a brand-new $350 million Stealth fighter. How does that make them look? Not very good, that's for sure."'

'...a hyper-regional war aimed primarily at Pakistan and Iran could entail a draft and, of course, a steady demand for new fiat money from the Federal Reserve to fund the whole charade. Troublesome young people in Europe and the US will be taken off the street and retrained by competent sergeants. All this is going through the perfervid brains of Pentagon planners even as we write. War seen this way is a fungible, powerful tool. Mostly it is generated to create social cohesion in our view and just as importantly to distract people from focusing on the source of their frustration and anger, which is more often than not their own ruling elite. Is a super-regional war – a kind of World War III – something the elites are currently working to induce? It would change everything. We recall after World War II that the Anglosphere elites were able to create a new economic system featuring a reserve dollar and global financial infrastructure. Is it a solution destined to reoccur?'

'...the Anglo-American power [elite's] fear-based promotions are not having the intended effect and thus it seeks to offer the impression that its strategies are unstoppable. But this has its drawbacks. When one wishes to impress upon the people the inevitability of one's designs, then not even one failure can be countenanced, nor one question can be raised. This is an almost impossible burden because the promotion retains no elasticity and sooner or later there shall be some sort of breach. The stance the EU is now adopting with its constant emergency agitation seems to us to be counterproductive. If the EU survives, then EU leaders look as if they were too pessimistic. If the crisis triggers a much larger one, then they run the risk of looking as if they have lost control. Why, we ask, are those running the EU program, purposefully placing themselves in this trap? Either they are panicking or they are in some sense inviting the crisis. These are risky games indeed.'

'One needs a problem in order to provide a solution. And the move is on, most obviously, to create ever-closer global governance and perhaps an alternative currency. Modern central banking has done its work, throwing Western economies into confusion and disarray. Europe is already suffering from IMF-style austerity tactics and Britain is implementing them now. The US is next on the list. The IMF austerity message is being "prepped" by the S&P warning... The result is a controlled social implosion that the powers-that-be can capitalize upon to introduce a new system, presumably a more globalized one, complete, perhaps, with a global central bank administering a new currency. IMF provisions featuring privatization, tax hikes and public sector "austerity" are designed in my view to provoke the very public anger that Western elites are counting on to fuel a conversation about yet MORE centralization and MORE governmental control...'

'There is no escaping the arithmetic.' -- Left + Right = Collapse

'...control, control and more control is the statist's answer to everything, as if statists had a clue how to manage things without running them to the ground like virtually all statists systems (that do not benefit from cheap oil or other vital resources) do eventually. Truth is we are in for a rough ride and few people will weather it well. And our leaders – would be rulers, in fact – don't want to admit it since they always want to reserve the right to restart the welfare state so they can continue to pretend to serve the public. But as I recently discovered Charles de Gaulle to have said, "In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." We all will be asked for sacrifices and to accept that those in charge of the public treasury are blameless; they were merely responding to their constituents and hadn't a chance to inform them of the facts of economic life, the plainest of them being that one just cannot get blood out of a turnip.'

'This is an old elite problem. You can control all the money in the world but if a few hundred million—even a few million—are dead set against your solution, then it is probably a non-starter. This is one of the reasons Western elites have operated in secrecy and used fear-based promotions (dominant social themes) to put into place the building blocks for one world government. But the Internet itself has ended that secrecy. It is an era of internationalist transparency now, and the elites are stuck with it like everyone else. They grind on however. We've compared elite strategies to the walking dead in the past. No matter how exposed a dominant social theme becomes (see global warming) nothing kills it. It lurches ahead, brain dead and missing a limb or two, but it continues on. You see, elite programs involve many complex moving pieces and literally billions of people. Plans once laid are almost impossible to change. Manufactured crises give way to equally stage-managed solutions.'

'Why does a 13-year old with a three-minute, basically homemade, song get so much attention? Perhaps, the amount of attention paid to her is inverse to how fearful people are about commenting on significant issues facing their lives. We would suggest what is going on is what Sigmund Freud called "displacement." People are angry at how their lives are turning out, worried about their futures and generally feel helpless and increasingly furious because of the collapsing economy. No one is going to get into trouble for criticizing Justin Bieber, even harshly. But make the wrong comment in the wrong chat room about, say, Barack Obama and the police may show up at your door. So much attention and vituperation. Western society is in decline. People are well aware – deep down anyway – what's going on. But because of society's larger sickness, their anger and frustration is being channeled into unusual venues and finds its expression in places where it might not be expected.'

'Own much?' -- None dare call it COMMUNISM.

'American youth are slowly realizing that the old system is broken, and no longer holds the answer to all their dreams and desires. Together, we’re learning that instead of waiting for politicians and corporations to fix the system, it’s possible to create a better one of our own, right under their noses. A new way of living, in which access is valued over ownership, experience is valued over material possessions, and "mine" becomes “ours” so everyone's needs are met without waste. Consumption is no longer an asymmetrical activity of endless acquisition but a dynamic push and pull of giving and collaborating in order to get what you want. Along the way, the acts of collaboration and giving become an end in itself.' -- Long list of schemes and services. Also: http://www.shareable.net/how-to-share

'In Los Angeles, we meet five people who are going through a transformation in their lives during this crisis. Justin and Christine lost their jobs and are now living in a van with their two young sons. Charles has gotten out of prison after fourteen years. Mizuko prepares her children for the future by making them at ease in virtual reality. Laura has taken advantage of the crisis by buying land cheaply and starting an urban farm and artists collective Fallen Fruit maps the abundant free 'public fruit' available in the city. Who are the pioneers who are reinventing the new America and how do they see the future?'

'Dominant Social Theme: Invest wisely and well. – Let's try to put this long-running power elite promotion into perspective. We don't agree with the LA Time's perspective (see article excerpt above). It's not nest-egg versus Social Security (which the US cannot afford, especially because there are no SS funds, only fancy IOUs). There is a third way, which is to get rid of central banking entirely and let tortured Western economies gradually deflate. As economies undistort without the endless goad of monetary stimulation, people would gradually begin to be self-sufficient again. Nuclear families would collapse and extended families would reappear; this is the logical solution to old age, not frantic investing leading to the selection of an old-age home where one is likely to be abused before dying. ...the dollar-reserve system died in 2008, along with the popular belief that one could count on "investing" for retirement. It was never a reality; it was fiction.'

'This cartoon from the talented Emi Gennis is the first from Shareable's Share or Die: Young in Recession series, which culminates in the release of an e-book in May.'

'It's one thing to say the poor/uneducated can't find work, it's another thing to say the explicitly desired outcome of this country's social and educational system can't find work. The supply is there; but there's no demand. And there's no demand because there's not enough people who create stuff creating stuff which would justify the other jobs. They never were creating new drugs, they were only creating new markets. ...markets were created to sustain both Lexapro and Zoloft; not one market with two products, but a doubling of the market. In a perfect world, Lexapro wouldn't have been invented, they would have worked on something else. But since they knew they could create a market for "another Zoloft," they took the easy route. And they hired a salesforce, accordingly. While that was good for Lexapro, it's terrible for the country. Temporarily – and ten years is temporary – hiring all these people to essentially duplicate efforts catabolizes resources from other industries.'

'"Out of chaos, order" may guide the actions of globalists, but there is such a thing as too much chaos. The Greater Recession provided people with an impetus to read about alternative economics on the Internet... The truth-telling of the Internet has begun to have an impact. "Austerity" provided the trigger. The seeds were planted long ago, with the spread of mercantilist central banking around the world. In 2008, however the post-war system finally failed. Since it failed, the powers-that-be have printed about US$50 trillion in phony currencies to try to prop up the system. The nonsensical "banking" industry has been "bailed out" – though commercial banks are merely the distribution arm of central banks. They are not for the most part necessary, and have distorted Western economies terribly. Nonetheless, they have been preserved along with the rest of the ruinous system. It is this system that the powers-that-be are trying desperately to preserve.'