Cornered Dogs Bite

Every human thought leaves an imprint. When I look across my front lawn in the morning after a freshly fallen snow, I see it crisscrossed with animal spoors. Each one is different. It is not the difference in the appearance of the tracks that is significant; rather, it is the fact that there was movement: each animal wanted to get from one place to another. It is doubtful that two or more animals ever met because each track was likely made in its own time. If there had been some threat, all the tracks would show the animals running in one direction – away from the danger. In the absence of a threat, the pattern is quite random.

Reading this morning’s headlines, we find that the stampede against the U.S. dollar continues, now with the IMF chiming in. We read that long-standing alliances are rupturing with nations fleeing U.S. entanglements and influence, seeking something more stable, more predictable. They do not make a value judgment as to what’s right, wrong or fair. They simply look to attach themselves to what they perceive as power that would serve to protect them.

The USS America is sinking – whether by benign neglect, sabotage or by deliberate design – and the whole world is running away from the disaster that has become rap America. The pattern in the snow is now discernible. Argentina is now embracing the Venezuelan model. Venezuela has adopted the Tehran model (as have Turkey, Syria, Egypt, etc.) Israel remains undecided. She finds herself cornered. What Israel is likely to do remains a mystery. India too is at a loss to know which way to turn. China faces internal problems. She is keeping her powder dry, knowing that chaos will arrive at her doorstep soon enough. She is doing her best to shore up her defenses (while the West views it as aggression). Japan has her own problems.

We can sit here and evaluate each turn of the screw within its own frame. Every happenstance is quite worthy of a tome or two – even an entire library of tomes. We can go back in history and learn what has happened before, how it developed and the ultimate result - all of it, simply to keep the blogs pumping out words like the ash from a volcano that obscures its source.

The source is America’s continuing disintegration. It’s not true, as some would proclaim that America’s sinking would leave nary a ripple. It has and will produce wave after wave and the result is all but certain: chaos, dislocation and bloodshed. Cornered dogs have been known to bite. We all will be tempted to bite in a last-ditch effort as we dig deeper and deeper down into our emptying pockets to appease those with tyrannical intent - the ones with the biggest clubs and the willingness to use them. Thoughts of freedom and liberty – even dignity - will become subservient to our will to survive.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

We Will Soon Find Out

Larry Kudlow seems finally to have understood (by his comment that ‘POTUS will go Left for his new economic team’) that Obama couldn’t care less about the economy. The question remains: How far left will he go? Will he go all the way to spark a communist revolution in this country? I suspect so. What better way to achieve it than to precipitate complete economic collapse?

The price of gold on the upswing is not so much a consequence of gold becoming more valuable. It is rather an indication of the dollar depreciating. Pretty soon we could be taking whole wheelbarrows of money to the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread. Don’t you think this would end in social upheavals of the kind this nation has never seen? Don’t you think that this would pulverize the foundations of every institution in this country, reduce them to dust to be blown away by the wind? POTUS would remain the only functioning authority over the ruin of a once great nation.

When Argentina suffered through its period of severe inflation in which the price of common products rose every day, the people themselves pegged the value of commodities on the value of a gallon of fuel. Money became irrelevant. Gas stations in effect became banks.

‘Growth recession' is an oxymoron. There is either growth, or there is recession. The two terms are mutually exclusive. POTUS himself is the one who continues to talk this nonsense. By it, he hopes to gain time to perfect his economic nuclear program. We’re all slow to figure it out. POTUS is banking on it. The majority of us still refuse to believe that the man we elected president would actually do this to us. Meanwhile, every day our economy wanes. The trigger will activate when the promise of new leadership will release all our pent up demand. By that time the guts of the system will have been so totally wrecked. Stepping on the gas will cause the economic engine to explode. …and then, nothing. The old car will stall, never to move another inch.

Already we see the signs of what’s coming. Investors in large numbers have abandoned stocks. Money and jobs are leaving the country. Bonds are shaky. Real estate is collapsing all around us. The last refuge is gold. What comes after gold? Nobody knows. Chaos, perhaps. The abyss. We’ve never been there before. Increasingly it becomes apparent that we will soon find out.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Bloodying the Sheep

Now that climate change has been certifiably demonstrated to have been a fraud, what else has been fraud? When we were said to have been on the brink of economic collapse? Y2K? Global swine and bird flu pandemic? Poverty? Racism? Terrorism? WMD? Health care crisis? No child left behind? Toyota? The Obama presidency?

Every one of these issues has been politicized. Each one has been orchestrated, promoted and exploited primarily by the Left: Democrats; Marxists; globalists. Each issue has been used as a vehicle to accelerate wealth re-distribution from the private to the public (non-productive) sector; promote panic, chaos; drive wedges; create political power bases based on threat and fear.

The American people will have to begin taking a closer look at every one of these issues (as well as emerging ones) and ask questions. Ordinarily, a free and impartial press would function as the instrument of such scrutiny. But the press itself has become an issue – a platform for the high rollers who have brought us… (well?) fraud.

In all this it’s trust that’s lacking. We can no longer believe what we are told. The propaganda we’re hearing clashes with what we see. We are told the government is broke. The IRS is charged with cracking down on tax cheats, closing loopholes; promoting fairness all around. Meanwhile half of those now in power have distinguished themselves by having broken tax laws. None have been prosecuted; none have gone to jail – as we would have.

There are two classes of privilege in this country: those in power of whom it is said they can do no wrong; and, we, who must negotiate as best we can under a maze of gibberish law and restriction that renders us permanently guilty no matter what we do or how we do it. Whereas they live in their insular Washington hell, we are the livestock out in the stall. Whenever the overbearing stress of ennui strikes them, they come out to the barn and bloody the sheep.

Not much in our news about Argentina these days. But it might do to check it out. It might well be a snapshot of where we’re headed. Cleo’s lessons of history ignored, condemns us to making the same mistakes over and over again.

The Dollar: That Great, Big Sucking Sound

When the housing bubble was in the process of waxing, I kept watching the value of our house going up and up. All the while, its size and the quarter acre on which it stands remained the same. Nevertheless, we felt good about it and felt ourselves to be inordinately fortunate and well off.

When Argentina experienced serious inflation back in the '70's - when a carton of American cigarettes cost the equivalent of 30 cents - they pegged all their financial transactions on the value of a gallon of gas as defined by the American dollar (which was seen to be the bedrock of fiscal integrity).

Inflation in a currency is a sign of 'value' being sucked out of it. Only the productive sector of an economy produces ‘value’. Government and government-sponsored entitlements (directed to the undeserving) dilute the value of the currency - as does money printed on government printing presses. As you're watching things costing more and more, don't think of it that way. Think of it as the dollar buying less and less. Though it comes out to the same thing, there's a significant distinction in how we look at it. The former engenders visions of greed and corruption - a failure of the private sector; capitalism - whereas the latter points to a failure of government policy.

Excesses in the private sector will always diminish in the course of normally occurring cycles. Government excess can seldom be slowed; never reversed. Once voters decide to abandon their civic duty with regard to voting in elections (or casting their vote lightly), government excess spreads like a cancer unchecked throughout the system - and the system dies.