[Cid_Yama]

<b>When Belief in the System Fades</b>

In a way, a belief in the value, transparency, trust and reciprocity of the System is like a religious belief. The converts, the true believers, are the ones who work like crazy for the company, or the Force or the firm. And when the veil of illusion is tugged from their eyes, then the Believer does a reversal, and becomes a devout non-believer in the System. He or she drops out, moves to a lower position, or "retires" to some lower level of employment.

Their belief in the goodness and reciprocity of the System--that if you work hard and keep your nose clean, we're gonna take good care of you--fades and then dies.

And then you realize you don't have to work 60 hours a week, or live in a big house. An apartment works just fine, and 40 hours a week is enough. Let somebody else step up and take all the heat and the guff and the never-catch-up endlessness of the work.

At that point, then the elites' machine grinds to a crawl. People don't have to throw their bodies on the gears of the machine--they just have to stop believing, stop taking that promotion, and stop wanting to trade their entire lives for a thin slice of more more more.
link

[Ainan]

So you're saying this is not TEOTWAWKI? Damn, what am I going to do with all this beer I stockpiled?

[Cid_Yama]

<b>Losing The American Revolution</b>

They want a job that pays a living wage.

They want social security to be there in their old age, for their own sake and so their kids won't be burdened with their care.

They want a simple, comprehensive health care system.

They want their livelihoods and the fate of their communities to be taken into account as the elites in government and corporations measure profits, economic growth and the GDP.

And they would like to see the political system cleaned up, so the playing field is more level and their voices not wholly drowned out by the deep-pocket predators from the Business Roundtable.

These are not radical views. These are not even "liberal" views. They are just plain American values.

We've seen the strategy play out for years now: to cut workforces and wages, scour the globe in search of cheap labor, trash the social contract and the safety net meant to protect people from hardships beyond their control, make it hard for ordinary citizens to gain redress for the malfeasance and malpractice of corporations, and diminish the ability of government to check and balance "the animal spirits" of economic warfare where the winner takes all.

Streams of money flowed into think tanks to shape the agenda, media to promote it, and a political machine to achieve it. What has happened to working Americans is not the result of Adam Smith's benign and invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate money, ideological propaganda, a partisan political religion, and a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who bought the political system right out from under us.

It's an old story in America. We shouldn't be surprised by it any more. Hold up a mirror to this moment and you will see reflected back to you the first Gilded Age in the last part of the 19th century. Then, as now, the great captains of industry and finance could say, with Frederick Townsend Martin, "We are rich. We own America. We got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it."
link

[Cid_Yama]

<i>And don't forget this:</i>

<b>60% of US Debt Due by 2011</b>

On February 7th, the US Treasury sold $9 billion of 30-year bonds at a yield of 4.45%, the lowest yield ever. Overall investor demand was tepid. Foreign investor demand was virtually non-existent. "Indirect bidders, a group that includes foreign central banks, bought 10.7% of the amount sold," Bloomberg News reports, "compared with 31.6% percent in the prior auction."

Perhaps that's why the Federal Reserve, the US central bank itself, stepped in and bought half the auction. Yes, Peter borrowed from Paul to pay Paul.

"Would you lend money to the US government for 30 years to receive about 4.45% in interest?" asks Dan Denning, editor of the Australian Daily Reckoning and a professional worrywart. "No? Well then, you speak for most institutional investors as well, who were not interested in buying the low-yielding bonds of a big-spending government."

One auction does not a trend make. But we would note that the 30-year bond yield has jumped from 4.45% to 4.65% since that auction...and that is a trend – a disturbing one.

The US Treasury can ill afford rising rates or skittish bond buyers...or both at once.

America's precarious fiscal condition now means funding her multi-trillion-dollar, long-term liabilities with multi-trillion-dollar, short-term borrowings.

That's a timeworn recipe for disaster.

The amount of marketable public debt that the US government will have to "roll over" during the next few years is massive.

"Of the marketable securities currently held by the public as of September 30, 2007," the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports, "$2,838 billion or 64% will mature within the next 4 years."
link

<i>500 billion is not nearly enough. When it hits the banks it will evaporate like a drop of water on a hot coal.</i>

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', 'T')he charade will go on. We'll all nod and wink at each other, heave a big sigh of relief, and go about our business as usual. Sure, many jobs will be lost, much more wealth will be destroyed, and many more people will lose everything they have as their properties are foreclosed on.

But the game will continue. The fat lady has yet to sing.

Prediction: By Halloween or so, the Dow Jones Industrial Average will have gone over 13,000 at least once. We may see a 500-point jump today. Everybody's buying into Hank & Ben's Bailout Plan. Everybody's on board. Why wouldn't they be? What other choice do they have?

Did we actually think they wouldn't come up with some sort of stunt to pull themselves out of this mess-of-biblical-proportions they've created? Did we actually think a system of smoke and mirrors couldn't be sustained by a clever re-arranging of the mirrors and an infusion of even more smoke?

Sorry to disappoint you, all you fast-crashers, but it ain't gonna happen quite yet. When the oil begins to run out, that'll be another story. You don't sit at a keyboard and create more Black Gold. Bide your time. It'll come. You'll eventually have a use for your bunkers, but for now, our current domiciles will be all we'll need.

Everybody back to sleep.

[Cid_Yama]

American Dream,

This is just more of the same. They cannot afford to bail the system out. Half a trillion sounds like alot, but it's not nearly enough.

All this will do is chase away the rest of the world from purchasing our debt.

The US is approaching the abyss of default.

[jerry_mcmanus]

Apologies for the long post, but I've been reading the e-book "Since Yesterday" (1939) by Frederick Lewis Allen, an account of the 1930's written by someone who actually lived through it. I'm only about halfway through, but I'm struck, maybe scared is a better word, by some of the parallels to our own troubled times.

Since Yesterday

Shortly after the stock market crash of Oct. 1929 then president Hoover found himself in a position that sounds eerily familiar today.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')oover had tried to keep hands off the economic machinery of the country, to permit a supposedly flexible system to make its own adjustments of supply and demand.

... But no natural adjustment could be reached unless the burdens of debt could also be naturally reduced through bankruptcies. And in America, as in other parts of the world, the economic system had now become so complex and interdependent that the possible consequences of widespread bankruptcy -- to the banks, the insurance companies, the great holding-company systems, and the multitudes of people dependent upon them -- had become too appalling to contemplate.

The theoretically necessary adjustment became a practically unbearable adjustment.

Therefore Hoover was driven to the point of intervening to protect the debt structure -- first by easing temporarily the pressure of international debts without canceling them, and second by buttressing the banks and big corporations with Federal funds.

Thus a theoretically flexible economic structure became rigid at a vital point. The debt burden remained almost undiminished. Bowing under the weight of debt -- and other rigid costs -- business thereupon slowed still further. As it slowed, it discharged workers or put them on reduced hours, thereby reducing purchasing power and intensifying the crisis.

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '&')lt;b>When Belief in the System Fades</b>

In a way, a belief in the value, transparency, trust and reciprocity of the System is like a religious belief. The converts, the true believers, are the ones who work like crazy for the company, or the Force or the firm. And when the veil of illusion is tugged from their eyes, then the Believer does a reversal, and becomes a devout non-believer in the System. He or she drops out, moves to a lower position, or "retires" to some lower level of employment.

Their belief in the goodness and reciprocity of the System--that if you work hard and keep your nose clean, we're gonna take good care of you--fades and then dies.

And then you realize you don't have to work 60 hours a week, or live in a big house. An apartment works just fine, and 40 hours a week is enough. Let somebody else step up and take all the heat and the guff and the never-catch-up endlessness of the work.

At that point, then the elites' machine grinds to a crawl. People don't have to throw their bodies on the gears of the machine--they just have to stop believing, stop taking that promotion, and stop wanting to trade their entire lives for a thin slice of more more more.
link

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'A')merican Dream,

This is just more of the same. They cannot afford to bail the system out. Half a trillion sounds like alot, but it's not nearly enough.

All this will do is chase away the rest of the world from purchasing our debt.

The US is approaching the abyss of default.

[Byron100]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '&')lt;b>Losing The American Revolution</b>

They want a job that pays a living wage.

They want social security to be there in their old age, for their own sake and so their kids won't be burdened with their care.

They want a simple, comprehensive health care system.

They want their livelihoods and the fate of their communities to be taken into account as the elites in government and corporations measure profits, economic growth and the GDP.

And they would like to see the political system cleaned up, so the playing field is more level and their voices not wholly drowned out by the deep-pocket predators from the Business Roundtable.

These are not radical views. These are not even "liberal" views. They are just plain American values.

We've seen the strategy play out for years now: to cut workforces and wages, scour the globe in search of cheap labor, trash the social contract and the safety net meant to protect people from hardships beyond their control, make it hard for ordinary citizens to gain redress for the malfeasance and malpractice of corporations, and diminish the ability of government to check and balance "the animal spirits" of economic warfare where the winner takes all.

Streams of money flowed into think tanks to shape the agenda, media to promote it, and a political machine to achieve it. What has happened to working Americans is not the result of Adam Smith's benign and invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate money, ideological propaganda, a partisan political religion, and a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who bought the political system right out from under us.

It's an old story in America. We shouldn't be surprised by it any more. Hold up a mirror to this moment and you will see reflected back to you the first Gilded Age in the last part of the 19th century. Then, as now, the great captains of industry and finance could say, with Frederick Townsend Martin, "We are rich. We own America. We got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it."
link

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Byron100', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '&')lt;b>Losing The American Revolution</b>

They want a job that pays a living wage.

They want social security to be there in their old age, for their own sake and so their kids won't be burdened with their care.

They want a simple, comprehensive health care system.

They want their livelihoods and the fate of their communities to be taken into account as the elites in government and corporations measure profits, economic growth and the GDP.

And they would like to see the political system cleaned up, so the playing field is more level and their voices not wholly drowned out by the deep-pocket predators from the Business Roundtable.

These are not radical views. These are not even "liberal" views. They are just plain American values.

We've seen the strategy play out for years now: to cut workforces and wages, scour the globe in search of cheap labor, trash the social contract and the safety net meant to protect people from hardships beyond their control, make it hard for ordinary citizens to gain redress for the malfeasance and malpractice of corporations, and diminish the ability of government to check and balance "the animal spirits" of economic warfare where the winner takes all.

Streams of money flowed into think tanks to shape the agenda, media to promote it, and a political machine to achieve it. What has happened to working Americans is not the result of Adam Smith's benign and invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate money, ideological propaganda, a partisan political religion, and a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who bought the political system right out from under us.

It's an old story in America. We shouldn't be surprised by it any more. Hold up a mirror to this moment and you will see reflected back to you the first Gilded Age in the last part of the 19th century. Then, as now, the great captains of industry and finance could say, with Frederick Townsend Martin, "We are rich. We own America. We got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it."
link

[Heineken]

I wonder what the interest on the national debt will be once the national debt (now close to $9.7 trillion) is adjusted upward for these huge new obligations. Talk about a budget buster.

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'I') wonder what the interest on the national debt will be once the national debt (now close to $9.7 trillion) is adjusted upward for these huge new obligations. Talk about a budget buster.

[Byron100]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'I') wonder what the interest on the national debt will be once the national debt (now close to $9.7 trillion) is adjusted upward for these huge new obligations. Talk about a budget buster.

[Cid_Yama]

<b>The worm is about to turn</b>

“We are the decent, law-abiding citizens,” he began nervously, “that built America. We are the ‘Joe six-packs’ who have always played by the rules, paid our taxes, and our mortgages. But they lied to us. We can’t refinance, like they promised. We live in Ohio. We live in Kansas. We live in Michigan, and Indiana. The last few years have been hard, but we’ve known hard times before. We’ve been ground down, but what’s happening now is different. The plastic is maxed out, and the interest rate is insane.

“We’ve given up our decent car. Now we drive a beater to work. We gave back the keys on our dream home. Now we live in a crappy apartment. Go out to eat? Hell, our wives have been reduced to hitting up the food pantry behind our backs. We’ve eaten too many “Velvetta” sandwiches for lunch, and our families have shared one too many cheese pizzas for dinner. We took a second, even third job, and our crummy pay check can’t provide enough gas money, steady meals, or a decent roof over our heads. Our kids are freezing at night in the winter, and still the oil bill is completely ridiculous. We’ve cut out all the extras, but the “math” doesn’t add up.

“We aren’t getting by. Not in the slightest. And it’s eating us up. We tried to keep some dignity, some pride. We’ve even hit up our relatives until they’ve had to say ‘I’m sorry. We can’t help. We’re hurting too.’ We’ve lost our dignity, because we had to, to keep our kids fed. We fought with our wives and screamed at our kids. We became the kind of men we promised ourselves we’d never be… because we’re angry. No. Angry doesn’t even capture it. I’m sorry, your honor, but we’re pissed.”

Frank begins to tremble. His voice cracks. Tears well up in his tired eyes.

“I’m one of the people who was supposed to get by…. I spoke to Sean Hannity once, and he said I was a ‘Great American…’” Frank sputters. “ And I voted for President Bush both times…”

“That’s quite enough!” the Judge cuts him off. Frank’s mouth is still slightly open. His lower lip trembles.

Suddenly, Frank has an epiphany that feels like a ball of boiling oil in the pit of his stomach. Thoughts pop into his head. Strange thoughts. An eerie calm relaxes the muscles in his face, and spreads through his entire being.

He doesn’t care what I have to say. He doesn’t even care what happened to Mary. He’s just one more big shot that could care less if we can pay our bills, keep a roof over our heads, or feed our kids. There is no justice. I’m on my own… We’re on our own….

Frank played by the rules and expected to keep his dignity in tough times, to keep body and soul together. He was even willing to surrender the notions of prosperity and upward mobility that his parents had told him was his birthright.

But how can he give up the expectation of having the basics? Food? Shelter?

We haven’t seen this kind of class rage in over a century. So far these Americans have been quietly complacent, waiting for the fundamental change that never comes.

It will manifest what has always been the single greatest fear of America’s ruling elite: “There’s a f*ck-load of them, and they have guns.”
link

[Byron100]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '
')------

We haven’t seen this kind of class rage in over a century. So far these Americans have been quietly complacent, waiting for the fundamental change that never comes.

It will manifest what has always been the single greatest fear of America’s ruling elite: “There’s a f*ck-load of them, and they have guns.”
link

[oowolf]

A week of psychotic desperation: impotent attempts at remediation while the marketeers quaff buckets of proffered kool-aid. A few more entertaining death spasms, then October brings doom.

[UncoveringTruths]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('oowolf', 'A') week of psychotic desperation: impotent attempts at remediation while the marketeers quaff buckets of proffered kool-aid. A few more entertaining death spasms, then October brings doom.

[AlexdeLarge]

"We haven’t seen this kind of class rage in over a century. So far these Americans have been quietly complacent, waiting for the fundamental change that never comes. "

All that is needed the right demagogue to take it to the next level. Play on the fears of the working class and point out the excesses of the rich. Todays bailout offers lots of ammo for this argument.

[Zardoz]

"The revolution will not be televised."

I think many of you are underestimating the complacency levels of the vast majority of we 'Murikans. We're very easily manipulated. We're easy to control. We're a nation of easily-duped pigeons.

We'll go along with anything the money masters throw at us. Hell, only a small percentage of us are even aware that there's a financial hurricane swirling around them. The overwhelming majority of us have absolutely no idea that there's anything wrong.