The Noble Lie

Catherine Austin Fitts, former investment banker, former Bush Sr. HUD Commissioner, the woman who discovered massive-scale S&L style scamming of the HUD market by insiders, author of the magnum opus "Dillon Reed & Co Inc., The Aristocracy of Stock Profits," writes insightfully and powerfully about how the banksters made a killing by killing our economy. To my knowledge, she coined the term "tapeworm economy." Her experiences with insiders scamming HUD, and the government's legal assault of her company Hamilton Securities, are a microcosm of the collapse of the US real estate market that started our current financial crisis.

• Catherine Austin Fitts - 2009: The Year of the Great Vampire Squid
• From the vault: Catherine Austin Fitts on the Jim Puplava show

I have followed Fitts and her work at Solari.com for a while. Her two essential economic questions are: "Who's your farmer? Who's your banker?" You can find the answer to the first question at your local farmer's market. The second question is one that people are increasingly asking themselves, and finding a better answer in local credit unions and smaller banks. I kissed my big bank goodbye years ago and have been much, much happier at our local credit union, who was not up to their eyeballs in phony baloney derivatives when the 2008 economic tsunami hit.

I cannot deny
All the evil traits and the filling of the crates
When you do come out
And you slither up to me in your pimpin majesty
But I cannot grow
Till you eat the last of me, oh when will I be free
And you, a parasite
Just find another host, just another stool to post

Cause you, my tapeworm tells me what to do
You, my tapeworm tells me where to go

Pull the tapeworm out of your ass

- System of a Down, "Needles"

Reading the blogosphere, I think I must be the only person out there that thinks this "Cash for Clunkers" is not a good program, and not even a good deal for the consumer in most cases. Most of the people I've seen who oppose "Cash for Clunkers" seem to oppose it not on the grounds that it's a bad deal, but that it smells too much like a handout.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is going to rope me into being a debtor to Big Auto. I buy as much car as I can afford, period. On one hand, I'm glad to see that mere mortals are getting a piece of the action during this round of auto company bailouts. On the other hand, let's not fool ourselves into thinking this is anything more than another round of auto company bailouts.

Will "Cash for Clunkers" help the environment? Possible, but debatable. Let's not forget that on average roughly 10-12% of all the hydrocarbon energy that a car will use in its life goes into manufacturing the car. This doesn't include the overhead of building and maintaining the factories the cars are made in, transporting them to your local dealership, and so on.

Also, the newer and more computerized your car, the less likely you're going to be able to fix it on your own. Not that I can fix a damn thing on my car anyway.

• LA Times - Budget to reshape the Golden State
• HuffPo - Arnold Schwarzenegger's Knife Play

Benjamin Creme has been busy lately, using the economic crisis to advertise and lecture up a storm about Maitreya, again:

Could the current world crises be the tipping point for transformation?
British author Benjamin Creme says YES!

People everywhere are awakening to the reality that the old ways of competition and greed no longer work. The times demand an entirely new approach. According to Benjamin Creme, a group of enlightened Teachers, led by Maitreya, the World Teacher, are emerging into the everyday world to help us solve our most critical global problems. Their advice to us is simple: Share. By Sharing the world's resources more equally, we will inaugurate a new era, bringing freedom and peace to all nations.

Benjamin Creme will be speaking about this remarkable story to audiences in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco during his annual US lecture tour this summer (2009). Details are below. There is no charge for the lectures, and no reservations are needed. Subsequent to each talk will be a public Transmission Meditation, introduced and led by Mr. Creme.

Just outside Plato's Cave waits ten thousand hucksters ready to sell you a new cave.

I've not had the time and energy to reserve for this blog lately. Sometimes just getting through each day is a challenge all its own. When I pick this blog back up again, don't be surprised if the tone has changed and become less negative and critical, and more searching for and highlighting good ideas. We all need hope right now, real hope, not the phony canned stuff sold during elections.

In the macro lens, California is in a big hurt right now. They are looking at a few weeks of cash flow away from bankruptcy. Denti-Cal is getting axed, which means we'll be paying for more emergency tooth extractions and oral surgeries over simply paying to get their damn teeth cleaned before its a problem.  That's bad enough. Two stories have me thinking of a lot of people who rely on the state for their daily bread.

• The Governor has put axing CalWORKs on the table - the end of welfare in California?
• Disability payments have been slashed back to the minimum allowable

Another $165 million to the "insurance" folks who destroyed our economy, courtesy of John Q. Taxpayer.

I also just noticed that Google is now embedding their AdWords feces all over YouTube videos. Remember what I taught you about Firefox and DownloadHelper?

Apparently a decision was made while I was sleeping to give this economic crisis the official title of "Great Recession." Does that mean this is the worst recession we've ever had? When does a Great Recession become a Little Depression? How do you find the world's tallest midget?

According to Bloomberg, "Full employment" will be redefined by the end of this "Great Recession." Even now, it probably doesn't mean what you think. "Full employment" means an unemlpoyment rate of 5.5%. If I'm not mistaken (and I very well could be here), "unemployment" means "collecting unemployment benefits," which means you fall out of the statistic as soon as your benefits expire.

'Great Recession' Will Redefine Full Employment as Jobs Vanish

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- Post-recession America may be saddled with high unemployment even after good times finally return.

Hundreds of thousands of jobs have vanished forever in industries such as auto manufacturing and financial services. Millions of people who were fired or laid off will find it harder to get hired again and for years may have to accept lower earnings than they enjoyed before the slump.

This restructuring -- in what former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker calls “the Great Recession” -- is causing some economists to reconsider what might be the “natural” rate of unemployment: a level that neither accelerates nor decelerates inflation. This state of equilibrium is often described as “full” employment.

Fallout from the recession implies a “markedly higher” natural rate of unemployment, says Edmund Phelps, a professor at Columbia University in New York and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics. “It was 5.5 percent; maybe it will be 6.5 percent, maybe 7 percent.”

That has implications for policy makers as well as workers. The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are counting on the jobless rate to fall to a medium-term equilibrium of about 5 percent as the economy recovers. A natural rate significantly above that would drive up the annual budget deficit -- which will top $1 trillion for the first time this year -- by reducing tax revenue and pushing up spending on unemployment benefits.

I used to listen to Alan Watt a lot, and one of the quotes he repeated often came from Margaret Thatcher's days as Prime Minister when she told Britons, "This is a generation which will never know employment, get used to it."

Now Americans are starting to get this same somber message, in our own particular media-friendly style.

"The Rachel Maddow Show is brought to you tonight by Preparation H Medicated Wipes."

That's good, because I needed them by the end of the show last night. First she mocks last year's "End the Fed" protests, teasing Federal Reserve critics by suggesting we want to "go back to paying for stuff with doubloons," because of the "secret subtext" of the Wizard of OZ. She's hip to the "bimetalism" interpretation of the Wizard of OZ.

The major complaint on liberal media about the tax protests today are the participation of "fringe groups" - secessionists, militia types, conspiracy theorists, the "marganalia of the radical right." My major complaint is that party Republicans (the same ones who marginalized and eventually removed Ron Paul from the presidental primary debates) are trying to hi-jack, infiltrate, take credit for, and steer the course of a very genuine patriotic uprising. Texas Governor Rick Perry, the same one who was actively pushing for the Trans-Texas Corridor, whipped a loyal crowd into chants of "Secede! Secede!" What a joke.

During another interview on this same show, one of Rachel Maddow's guests (or maybe it was Olbermann) stated very bluntly that the "fringe" people are anti-globalists and they are whining because they have been shut out of the political process. I'll include more details and post this video as soon as I either find it or upload it myself.

As an aside, the most fascinating interpretations of Theosophist Frank Baum's Wizard of OZ (which has less to do with economics than with finding the "god within") can be heard by Greg (with Vyzygoth of The Grassy Knoll) and Synkronos23 on the Occult of Personality website.

Recession fueling right-wing extremism, U.S. says

According to this article, Homeland Security is concerned that the economic crisis and the fact that we have a black president is spurring  "recruitment and radicalization activity," lumping together "white supremacist groups, anti-government extremists, and militia movements" without naming any specific groups.

"Right-wing extremism" is probably very high at the moment, but this alert is a little too ambiguous for my tastes. While it's already irresponsible to lump these groups together, I think the net will be cast much further than what could be called "right-wing extremism." I'm concerned this is a net for all anti-globalists and anti-free traders, many of whom have some very valid gripes to say the least. The drumbeat is rising to connect domestic terrorism to patriot radio, alternative media, and the internet.

This is a vulnerable time for globalism because it is going public in a big way. This is also an increasingly tense time for people who speak out against it.

Through the magic of repetition during this Middle East conflict, the word "extremist" has become synonymous with "terrorist," which is a slippery enough term on its own.

They've got the whole world... in their hands.

The International Money Fund is poised to become the new Federal Reserve and SEC for the world. The New World Order is right on track.  During massive protests, the G-20 met and pledged to triple the funds of the IMF, and to give it new international regulatory authority. They're actually using the term "New World Order" regularly in the news. Who in the world is going to elect these international regulators? Why, nobody, of course, any more than we have a say in the Fed.

If you've ever opposed this idea, it's go time. Now. My hope is to see massive relocalization, supporting local farmers, local credit unions, rebuilding lost community relationships, kicking big corps OUT of our towns. We need to start doing things for ourselves again. I've been struggling to learn the basics of food and water security, and we have a LOT of work to do. At the same time, our government, and other governments around the globe are scrambling to make food and water security illegal.

As I suspected, Obama's one job as president was to sell us down the river. So does this mean we're going to give the IMF a bunch of money so they can loan it back to us at crippling interest?

From Bloomberg:

G-20 Shapes New World Order With Lesser Role for U.S., Markets
By Rich Miller and Simon Kennedy

April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Global leaders took their biggest steps yet toward a new world order that’s less U.S.-centric with a more heavily regulated financial industry and a greater role for international institutions and emerging markets.

At the end of a summit in London, policy makers from the Group of 20 yesterday delivered a regulatory blueprint that French President Nicholas Sarkozy said turned the page on the Anglo-Saxon model of free markets by placing stricter limits on hedge funds and other financiers. The leaders also pledged to triple the resources of the International Monetary Fund and to hand China and other developing economies a greater say in the management of the world economy.

"It’s the passing of an era," said Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, who helped prepare summits for presidents Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. "The U.S. is becoming less dominant while other nations are gaining influence."