"The U.S. Government Is Flat Broke"

"The U.S. Government Is Flat Broke"

by Bill Bonner

"Slip sliding away, slip sliding away

You know the nearer your destination,

The more you’re slip sliding away..."

– Paul Simon

RANCHO SANTANA, NICARAGUA – "On Monday, we reported the latest figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). They were shocking… but not surprising. We remind you that they are just part of a Big Picture. It is the picture of a degenerate empire, slip sliding since 1999… and now, desperately trying to hold itself together with printing-press money.  But it’s gone so far down this road, it can’t turn around. Each time there is a “crisis,” it has to print more. And the more it prints, the worse the next crisis becomes.

Big Story: Meanwhile, the people are distracted. Waiting for the stimmy checks or gawking at the clowns in their capital city… they hardly notice. Do you really think it matters that Janet Yellen is a woman rather than a man? Or how many BIPOCs attend cabinet meetings? Will those be the big stories of our time? Or how about “Russian aggression”… or Chinese cunning? Or the impeachment of Donald Trump? Or the weather in Texas?

What really matters to a nation? Money and war. War and money. Let either one get out of control, and you are headed for trouble. Which is why this is the story of our time… the big story of the 21st century… the story of how a great empire slid into the ditch. But it’s not an original tale. So today, we skip ahead… guessing how it might turn out.

Flat Broke: First, let’s recall the basic numbers from the CBO... The budget deficit will total $2.3 trillion – 10.3 percent of GDP – in FY 2021 and total $12.3 trillion (4.4 percent of GDP) over the next decade.

• Debt will reach a new record as a share of the economy, growing from over 79 percent of GDP at the end of FY 2019 to over 102 percent of GDP by the end of 2021… and will grow another $13.6 trillion by the end of 2031, ultimately reaching $35.3 trillion.

• Four major trust funds are on a path toward insolvency. CBO projects Highway Trust Fund insolvency in FY 2022, Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund insolvency in FY 2026. Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund insolvency appears likely in calendar year 2032 and Social Security Disability Insurance Trust Fund insolvency in the mid-2030s.

• Debt could be even higher than projected. If policymakers enact $2 trillion of additional fiscal relief, extend expiring tax provisions, and grow annual appropriations with GDP, debt would total 120 percent of GDP by 2031.

Now, let’s add some numbers of our own. This year, the feds will collect about $3.8 trillion in taxes. But they will spend $380 billion on interest on existing debt (at the lowest rates in history) and about $4 trillion on “transfer payments” (depending on how much stimmy the feds give out). You see the problem clearly, as we do.

More than 100% of the feds’ revenue is spent before they ever begin governing. The “transfer payments” are things such as Obamacare, Social Security, and supplemental unemployment benefits – moving money from one pocket to another. But that leaves nothing for the Department of Defense. Nothing for the fight against COVID-19. Nothing for the thousands of boondoggles and bamboozles finagled over the years.

In other words, the federal government is flat broke. It has not a single penny with which to fulfill its core responsibilities. Not a farthing for the courts. Not a peso for the Pentagon. And not a dollar for infrastructure… research… climate change… or anything else.

The Way It Works: But those numbers – as awful as they are – will get much worse. And then, they will spin out into absurdity. Because the CBO’s estimates do not take economic setbacks, political jackassery, and market corrections into account. They assume things go on pretty much as they are, with no significant missteps… market crashes… interest rate increases… virus attacks… or recessions.

That is not the way it works. Things go wrong. And the first thing to go wrong (which could begin any moment) is that the markets will blow up. They are in Bubbleland now, searching for sharp objects. Then, in a panic, the authorities will rush out more stimmy checks.

No Alternative: And here, Dear Reader, let us interrupt to connect a simple – but important – set of dots. There are no “decisions” to be made. There are no choices. There are no real alternatives. No “solutions.” It’s “inflate or die,” remember?

And nobody wants to die… neither Republicans nor Democrats… nor any of the vast army of apparatchiks, hangers-on, lobbyists, members of Congress, media… deep staters… insiders… elite cronies… nor the whole kit and kaboodle, the upper 10%, who control the government and have the most to lose when its system of fake-money finance blows up.

Once you start down that road… you can’t even slow down. Because any attempt to raise interest rates to a more normal level… or ease off on the printing press… or cut the deficits… or trim the debt... will bring the very crisis the elite are so desperate to avoid.

So, what happens? It just gets wackier and wackier. And the more slip sliding you do, the nearer your destination you get. Tune in tomorrow for more wackiness – on Wall Street."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

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Related:

"The US Economy is a House of Cards and We Must 

Thank Federal Reserve and Wall Street for This"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/18/21: “Critical Must Know Updates: Economic Freefall, Markets, More”

Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/18/21:

“Critical Must Know Updates: Economic Freefall, Markets, More”

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Ah, You Miserable Creatures!"

"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! 

You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! 

Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough. " 

- Frederic Bastiat

Any questions?

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 2/18/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 2/18/21"

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Feb 18, 2021 7:54 AM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 110,001,100 

people, according to official counts, including 27,873,039 Americans.

Globally at least 2,431,300 have died.

  Feb. 18, 2021 7:54 PM ET: 

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

- www.nytimes.com

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"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
- https://covidtracking.com/
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- https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/

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Coronavirus World Map: Tracking The Spread Of The Outbreak

Feb. 18, 2021, 8:27 AM ET

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• "Treat Your Own COVID"

• "Total Lockdown And Mandatory Masking vs 

No Lockdown And No Mandatory Masking"

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Where I Live:

"Tracking Coronavirus in Pinal County, Ariz."

2/18/2021: "Cases are very high but have decreased over the past two weeks. The numbers of hospitalized Covid patients and deaths in the Pinal County area have also fallen. The test positivity rate in Pinal County is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted. We’ve recommended additional precautions below."

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- CP

So far so good... Maybe.

"How It Really Is"

THU FEB 18, AT 4:57 AM:

• "Imminent Winter Storm To Spread Across Northeast"

• "If A Few Days Of Cold Weather Can Cause 'A Very Serious Emergency'”

"A Catastrophic Stock Market Crash Is One Trigger Event Away From Happening"

Full screen recommended.

"A Catastrophic Stock Market Crash Is 

One Trigger Event Away From Happening"

by Epic Economist

"You may believe it or not, but it is an undisputed truth amongst experts and supported by real data that the stock market is about to experience a dramatic crash. At the current stage, even Wall Street pros are fearing that the stock market has shot too high. U.S. stocks have been on a nonstop bullish run for almost a year, however, the record-high valuations have entirely lost touch with our economic reality. Despite being fueled by the constant massive liquidity injections provided by the Federal Reserve, the latest GameStop frenzy has outlined how the stock price bubble is completely unsustainable, and today, we're going to present several indicators that show the market has entered a dangerous bubble territory, and the only thing missing to set off a crash is one trigger event. 

Since March 2020, U.S. stock markets have been on a crazy run that sent the market up by nearly 70 percent, while some stocks soared in triple digits. The frenzy has mainly been backed up by central banks' and Congress' stimulus packages, but the unprecedented amount of money being pumped into stocks has created such a sharp unbalance that no amount of stimulus will ever be able to fix it. 

In the meantime, authorities will keep enacting more and more packages while our economy rebounds from the several shockwaves triggered by the health crisis. This is why investors continue to take bullish positions since they anticipate that more free money will soon arrive and keep the markets nice and heated. The latest market mania was seen during the GameStop run, and all the fervor that was sparked amongst a new army of retail investors has left Wall Street openly debating whether the market entered a dangerous bubble territory, which might have gotten too incredibly inflated and would likely end up in a major burst. 

In essence, a bubble is formed when prices for something run a lot higher than they should rationally be, and we can say this is happening for numerous leading stocks right now. Yale professor and Nobel-winning economist, Robert Shiller, pointed out that "a bubble occurs when people think that the market is going to go up but worry that it may drop. That is where we are".. 

The Shiller S&P 500 price-to-earnings ratio is signaling that we're at nosebleed territory. The average Shiller P/E ratio over the past 150 years was 16.78, but as of February 11, it closed at 35.66. The ratio is based on average inflation-adjusted earnings from the previous 10 years, and now it is at its highest level since the dot-com bubble almost two decades ago. According to several analysts, the stock market was already on the path for a secular correction way before the health crisis started, and ever since then, as the recent wild GameStop run has largely inflated several stock bubbles, that process might have been significantly accelerated. 

When stock bubbles expand too much, the markets become highly vulnerable to investors' sentiment, but emotions are a kettle that could explode at any time. In the long run, what effectively drives equity valuations higher is the growth of operating earnings, but in the short-term, investors' behavior tends to point to where the markets will go. That's exactly what we have all been watching during the past few weeks, as Reddit retail investors have been sending garbage stocks to sky-highs. With that in mind, it wouldn't take much for emotion-driven momentum traders to send the stock market into a downward spiral.

No stock market crash discussion would be complete without mentioning the role the health crisis could still play. Keeping in mind that less than 30 percent of the population affirmed to be confident about the effectiveness of the vaccine, it seems that the health crisis may linger for longer than what was previously forecasted, and that also means that our economy will continue to struggle for much longer.

Lastly, another evidence can be seen in the remarkable decline in buybacks, which have played a notable role in recent years in helping to drive earnings growth. But without this buyback bump, earnings growth could be dramatically slower than expected in 2021 and end up fatally pressuring equities. No matter where we look, we can find several points of exposure inside the markets. At this stage, if only one of these determinants is pushed in the wrong direction that could trigger an epic explosion of the stock price bubble, and crash the markets up to 89 percent, so investors better beware."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com

Musical Interlude: Poco, "Rose of Cimarron"

Poco, "Rose of Cimarron"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust. 

 

Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120212.html

"You Take This Thing..."

"That life. This life. It looks as if you can have both. I mean, they're both right there, one on top of the other, and it looks as if they'll blend. But they never will. So, you take this thing. You take this thing you want, and you put it in a box and you close the lid. You can let your fingers trace the cracks, the places where the light gets in, the dark gets out, but the lid stays on. You don't look inside. You don't look at this thing you want so much, because you Can. Not. Have. It. So there's this box, you know, with the thing inside, and you could throw it away or shoot it into space; you could set it on fire and watch it burn to ashes, but really, none of that would make a difference, because you cannot destroy what you want. It only makes you want it more. So. You take this thing you want and you put it in a box and you close the lid. And you hold the box close to your heart, which is where it wants to go, and you pretend it doesn't kill you every time you feel yourself breathe."

- Megan Hart

Chet Raymo, “Living In The Little World”

“Living In The Little World” 

by Chet Raymo

"My wisdom is simple," begins Gustav Adolph Ekdahl, at the final celebratory family gathering of Ingmar Bergman's crowning epic “Fanny and Alexander.” I saw the movie in the early 1980s when it had its U.S. theater release. Now I have just watched the five-hour-long original version made for Swedish television. Whew!

But back to that speech by the gaily philandering Gustav, now the patriarch of the Ekdahl clan and uncle to Fanny and Alexander. The family has gathered for the double christening of Fanny and Alexander's new half-sister and Gustav's child by his mistress Maj. A dark chapter of family history has come to an end, involving a clash between two world views, one - the Ekdahl's - focussed on the pleasures of the here and now, and the other - that of Lutheran Bishop Edvard Vergerus, Fanny and Alexander's stepfather - a stern and joyless anticipation of the hereafter. It is not the habit of Ekdahls to concern themselves with matters of grand consequence, Gustav tells the assembled guests. "We must live in the little world. We will be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it."

The little world. I love that phrase. This world, here, now. This world of family and friends and newborn infants and trees and flowers and rainstorms and- oh yes, cognac and stolen kisses and tumbles in the hay. The Ekdahl's are a theatrical family; we will leave it to the actors and actresses to give us our supernatural shivers, says Gustav. "So it shall be," he says. "Let us be kind, and generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "I Want A Lot"

"I Want A Lot"

"You see, I want a lot.

Perhaps I want everything:

the darkness that comes with every infinite fall

and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing

and are raised to the rank of prince

by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces

that so work and feel thirst...

You have not grown old, and it is not too late

to dive into your increasing depths

where life calmly gives out its own secret."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Paulo Coelho, "Killing Our Dreams"

"Killing Our Dreams"

by Paulo Coelho

"The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight.

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.

And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the Good Fight.

When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoons."

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

"I Would Rather Have..."

"When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair."

- Nadezhda Mandelstam

The Daily "Near You?"

Oakes, N. Dakota, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Universe

“Believe me, I know all about it. I know the stress. I know the frustration. I know the temptations of time and space. We worked this out ahead of time. They're part of the plan. We knew this stuff might happen. Actually, you insisted they be triggered whenever you were ready to begin thinking thoughts you've never though before. New thinking is always the answer.”

“Good on you,”

    The Universe

“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”

- www.tut.com

Gregory Mannarino, "WHAT THE ACTUAL FU*K! Get Paid To Be Infected. What You Are Seeing Is REAL"

Gregory Mannarino,

"WHAT THE ACTUAL FU*K! Get Paid To Be Infected. 

What You Are Seeing Is REAL"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"The Big Girl Wakes Up"

"The Big Girl Wakes Up"

by Bill Bonner

RANCHO SANTANA, NICARAGUA – Napoleon called her a “sleeping giant.” But now, the big girl is wide awake. She’s had Covid… and shook it off. Now, she’s back at work… with big plans. Here’s the latest from Politico: "China was the EU’s main trade partner in 2020, taking the top spot occupied until last year by the United States.

In 2020, exports of EU goods to China increased by 2.2 percent and imports went up 5.6 percent, while EU trade with the rest of the world dramatically dropped (down 9.4 percent in terms of exports, and down 11.6 percent in terms of imports compared with 2019). The pandemic severely hit transatlantic trade, with exports of European goods to the U.S. falling by 8.2 percent year-on-year. Imports fell 13.2 percent.

As a result, the U.S. is no longer the bloc’s top commercial partner and has been replaced by China. EU exports to China in 2020 amounted to €202.5 billion while imports reached €383.5 billion." 

And here’s more from the Business Times. For perspective, Donald Trump’s trade wars were supposed to reduce America’s trade deficit – especially with China. Here’s what happened: "US annual trade gap grows to biggest since financial crisis." "The US last year posted its biggest annual trade deficit since 2008 as the global health crisis depressed export markets for American companies. The gap in trade of goods and services widened to US$678.7 billion in 2020 from US$576.9 billion in 2019, according to Commerce Department data. […] China regained the top spot among US trade partners for goods after finishing behind Mexico and Canada in 2019."

Us Versus Them: China is finding favor with investors, too. Here’s the lowdown from CNN: "Foreign companies are turning their backs on the United States, taking advantage of China’s booming economy and superior management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Direct investment in the US by foreign companies plummeted 49% to $134 billion last year, according to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. By contrast, foreign direct investment in China grew by 4% to $163 billion in 2020. 2020 marked the first year in history that foreign direct investment in China overtook that of the US, according to the UN. China is now the world’s largest recipient of foreign companies’ investments." 

Some people will view these facts with alarm. They think we’re in an “Us versus Them” competition with the Chinese. If they win, that must mean we lose, right? But does it really work that way? If Chinese engineers invent a better light bulb... won’t our days be brighter, too? If they get richer and buy more of our Netflix features… won’t we be better off, too? 

If China’s growth brings dangers, it brings opportunities, too. Chinese billionaires may buy our houses… our malls… and our stocks. They may hire our children as chauffeurs and houseboys… and our ex-military to help them suppress dissenters. And who knows, maybe smooth-talking Americans will be able to hook up with rich Chinese lovers… like a down-at-heel English aristocrat hoping for an American heiress to save his pile.

Useful Theme: The “Yellow Peril” is a useful theme. The politicians, warmongers, fixers, media, lobbyists, think tanks – all love it. It’s another big threat they can protect us from.  And it is a good distraction (along with many others) because it leaves the Elite Establishment large, in charge… and in the money. But as far as we can tell, the Chinese are not about to invade San Francisco.  Or if they do… it will probably be as part of a UN “peacekeeping” mission, trying to keep Americans from killing each other.

Age-Old Story: So what will happen in China? Is the country becoming richer and more powerful? Or will central planning and debt soon cause it to blow itself up? We don’t know. The Chinese book is a mystery to us… ancient and unfathomable… largely off limits to western eyes.

The U.S. book, on the other hand, is tattered and worn. It’s an old story with an old plot. Oft-repeated, for amusement… and moral instruction… it is a perennial favorite. Boy meets girl. Boy spends too much money trying to impress girl. Boy counterfeits money to try to cover his debts. Girl goes off with someone who hasn’t made a fool of himself by trying to tell everyone else what to do… someone who is still solvent. A Chinese guy? Maybe. 

Over the last four years, the U.S. has added $3 trillion in new money (central bank holdings). The Peoples’ Bank of China, by contrast, has added almost nothing.

Eastward Drift: Here’s how CNN summarized it: "China wants to lead the global recovery from the pandemic and become more influential on the world stage than ever before. It might just have the momentum – and the confidence – to pull that plan off. “China emerged from the Covid-19 shock earlier than the rest of the world and authorities are already planning for the long term,” wrote Françoise Huang, senior economist for Asia-Pacific at Euler Hermes, in a report titled, “The world is moving East, fast.”

The world can’t really move east. It is a ball. Half moves east. The other half moves west.  But the China story is one for the history books. It has risen from one of the most backward nations on the planet to one of the most powerful and modern – in a single generation.  And what next? How does the story end? Oh, Dear Reader, you can’t be serious. You’re asking us?  Again, we will have to turn the pages, one at a time, along with everyone else. But the U.S. story? We think we can skip ahead. Tune in tomorrow..."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"A Lot Of People..."

"When science discovers the center of the universe 

a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not."

- Bernard Baily

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 2/17/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 2/17/21"

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"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will

do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

- John Maynard Keynes

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"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/17/21

"Important Updates: Caution Advised"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

Feb 15th to 17th, Updated Daily 

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Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

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Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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And now, the End Game...

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Oh yeah...

"How It Really Is"

 

"3 Million Texans Without Power As Grid Chaos 

Continues Ahead Of Imminent Ice Storm"

“Are You Sane?”

“Are You Sane?”

by Charles Hugh Smith

“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.” 

– Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House”

“Madness has engulfed the entire world, with a concentration of power in the hands of a few psychopathic financial elite wielding an inordinate and dangerous expanse of power over the lives of the common man. They are a modern day version of Al Capone, except their weapons of choice aren’t machine guns, but a printing press, peddling debt, creating derivatives of mass destruction, and peddling heaping doses of disinformation. The contemporary criminal class wears Hermes suits, Rolex watches and diamond studded pinky rings, drops $500 to dine at Masa in NYC, travels by chauffeured limo, lives in $10 million NYC penthouse suites, occupies luxurious corner offices in hundred story glass towers, and spends weekends hobnobbing with the other financial elite at their villas in the Hamptons. They have nothing but utter contempt for the lowly peasants who depend upon a weekly paycheck to make ends meet. Why work when you can steal $1 or $2 billion from farmers with no consequences?

The willfully ignorant masses are kept at bay by the selling them a false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, and capitalism versus socialism. The ruling class distracts the public with fake wars on poverty, drugs and terror, while using these storylines to further enrich themselves and keep the public alarmed and frightened. We’ve been “fighting” the wars on poverty and drugs for over four decades and poverty is at record levels, while drugs are easier to obtain than candy in a candy store. The war on terror is nothing more than a corporate arms dealer welfare plan. The end of the Cold War put a real crimp in the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and the rest of the peddlers of death. 9/11 and the subsequent undeclared wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, with Iran on the horizon, have been a godsend to the bottom lines of the corporations Eisenhower warned about in 1961.

In reality, the politicians are interchangeable and bought off by corporate and special interests. The people are sold a fable, and controlled opposition is the fairy tale. They perpetuate the welfare/warfare state that enriches Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the healthcare service complex, politically connected mega-corporations and the corporate media propaganda complex. The American people are given the illusion of choice by their keepers. The system is rigged. The real decisions are made by unelected secretive men who operate in the shadows and use their wealth to direct the decision making of the politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate entities that benefit from those decisions. Edward Bernays described a society that existed in the 19th Century, 20th Century, and has now grown to immense proportions in the 21st Century:

“Political campaigns today are all sideshows. A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand,’ but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room. The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” – Edward Bernays 

The manipulation of the masses has been perfected by the ruling class through decades of corporate mass media messaging the purposeful dumbing down of the populace through government public school education that teaches children how to feel rather than how to think. The conscious manipulation of the masses has been designed to produce obedient non-thinking consumers of corporate products, educated to believe the accumulation of material goods with debt constitutes wealth, to fear whatever the government tells them to fear, and never look up from their iGadgets long enough to actually think for themselves. We are bombarded with Orwellian memes designed to keep us sedated and pliant, as the ruling class pillages the national wealth and expands their power and control over our lives.

Conform; Stay Asleep; Do Not Question Authority; Obey; Consume; Reproduce; Submit; Watch TV; Buy; Follow; Doubt Humanity; No New Ideas; Feel, Don’t Think; Fear; Accumulate; Honor Apathy; Believe Experts; Surrender; Spend; No Independent Thought; Win; Want More; Hate; Succumb To Desire; Yield To Power; Choose Safety Over Liberty; Choose Security Over Freedom 

This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character.

Vonnegut and Huxley’s social commentary reveals a basic truth that societies and human beings have been prone to bouts of madness over the course of decades and centuries. Humans are a weak species, susceptible to the vagaries of greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, envy and pride. The seven deadly sins are in full bloom today, as the American empire descends through Dante’s inferno of reality TV, celebrity worship, religious zealotry, adulation of wealthy titans, military conquest and worship of false idols.

This is where the interests of those in power and those being ruled have coincided, as a fiat based monetary system allowed unlimited spending to keep the welfare/warfare state growing, enriching the crony capitalists, deepening the power of the state, and providing the masses with foreign made trinkets, baubles, corporate logoed clothing, techno-gadgets, and pimped out financed wheels. The concepts of self-restraint, discipline, saving for a rainy day, prudence, discretion, and deferred gratification are rarely displayed in modern day America. In a case of mass delusion, Americans have convinced themselves to live for today, recklessly ignore their futures, irresponsibly spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need, neglect their civic duty towards future generations, choose ignorance over knowledge, and vote for spineless politicians who promise them entitlements that are mathematically impossible to honor. The public’s foolish attitude towards debt accumulation matches the arrogance of our gutless intellectually dishonest leaders.”

- http://www.theburningplatform.com/

"We All Do What We Can..."

“All sins, of course, deserve to be treated with mercy: we all do what we can, and life is too hard and too cruel for us to condemn anyone for failing in this area. Does anyone know what he himself would do if faced with the worst and how much truth could he bear under such circumstances?” 

- Andre Comte-Sponville

Joe South, “Walk A Mile In My Shoes”

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