Exceptionalism:  a theory that a nation, region, or political system is exceptional and does not conform to the norm.

 I have gotten into a few arguments as to the true definition of this term. The conservative friends that I have will quickly amend their statement that “American Exceptionalism” is not a by-product of the American government, but rather a product of the exceptional American people. And it is this later statement that I would like to address in this rambling piece today.

I for one have believed for many years that American’s themselves are a good and moral people; that when push comes to shove that we do the right thing and we look out for those around us and for those around the world. It is with a heavy heart that I write this piece as I have (for the most part) lost that long held belief. Will American’s help those in need? Of course…  We sent hundreds of millions of dollars to the ravaged areas of Sumatra. Here in this country we sent billions in private funds to the devastated areas around New Orleans.  But for a person to be fully honest, one must look beyond the one dimensional view of “giving money” as a sign of being a good and just people.

I personally know of several people that gave up their vacations and went down to New Orleans to help with the re-building of New Orleans. I don’t know of anyone personally, but I am sure thousands did the same in Sumatra. They risked their own lives and went into the devastated areas and spent weeks in the rebuilding effort. These people are getting a lot closer to this idea of “American Exceptionalism” if not diving over the goal line and spiking the ball. But how many people actually go to this level of giving and sacrifice in America? I would put the number at well below 1%.

The other 99% are then to be considered part of the “I gave money at the office” crowd of people whom are part of this American Exceptionism. And it is to this crowd that this article is devoted.

How many of you give money to charity? How many drop dollars in the collection at church or at some social function? I am sure the large majority of you do, as do I. But does this make you a moral person? Does this mean that you are a giving person or an exceptional person? I would argue whole heartedly that YOU (we) ARE NOT.

The subtitle of this piece is called “or my daddy is a gangster”. Some of you will be able to make this leap pretty easy, but for others it will be a long hard stretch. So let me jump right into the analogy and see if I can make it stick.

We will call our new gang by the name of Ameros. And we are the youngest child of the gang’s leader. As such we are heavily shielded from all that the gang does. What we see when we walk around the neighborhood is respect and even a little fear (which we are kind of secretly proud of). We see that people respect our father and they bend over backwards to thank him for the smallest of deeds that he does for them. As he walks proudly through the neighborhood, people stop him and ask him for favors or offer him a free apple or a haircut. It has been this way for as long as we can remember, it is just the way things are. Our father is a very important man in the neighborhood, and we have been told that he is the biggest of all the gang leaders in the city. Even other gang leaders show our father respect and they fear him. This is just the way life is for us as the youngest child of the Ameros gang.

As a child of the gang leader, we are given a very luxurious life. The kids at school leave us alone and we get the best of everything. We get all the good stuff before anyone else in the city or neighborhood. As we have grown older we have expressed an interest in understanding more about what our father does, but he politely pats us on our head and tells us not to worry about it, that he doesn’t want us to get involved. He loves that we are so naïve and innocent. He doesn’t want us to lose that EXCEPTIONAL quality that we possess.

We ask those around the neighborhood about how our father operates and what he does for a living. For the most part people are reluctant to talk to us openly. They heap on praises for our father and tell us what a great and generous man that he is and that we look just like him. We try and gain the favor of the people in the neighborhood by spreading around some of the money that our father gave to us in our allowance. And this makes us feel really good and the people seem to really like us.

As we get into our teens we can’t help but want to know what our father does for a living. He doesn’t go off to work at 7:30am like the other fathers and he comes and goes as he pleases, whereas the other fathers are stuck in jobs that take them away all day and even on the weekends sometimes. Our dad is also way richer than the other dads, which is puzzling to us. The other fathers work their asses off all day long and our father just seems to be raking in the money left and right and yet he doesn’t seem to go to work like the other dads.

We remember one day when we were supposed to stay in the car and we snuck into the laundry guys store after our father had already entered. We peaked around the corner and saw our father screaming and poking the laundry guy in the chest. Our dad had 4 of our “uncles” standing around the man and the laundry guy looked really scared. We remember this guy as he always gave our father free service and hand delivered our clothes to the house. We were just starting to contemplate this new understanding of our father when one of our uncles grabbed us from behind and quickly shooed us out of the store. When father got to the car he was pretty angry, but he explained that Carl the laundry guy was trying to steal money from us and that he was just trying to set him straight. Our father gave us some money and promised us a movie the next evening and all was forgotten.

As we got even older we started to notice that our dad had lots of big guys around him at all times. We hadn’t really noticed it before because they were just our “uncles”. We grew up with these guys for Pete’s sake. But after watching that episode where our father was threatening Carl, we started to see our Uncles a little bit differently.

We were just starting to get really suspicious of our father as we turned 16. As we got older we started to see our father in a different light. He was getting older and it was getting harder for him to shield us from some of the more blatant things he was doing. But then one day something horrific happened. One day 2 cars pulled up in front of our house and one pulled up in front of our dad’s social club where he and the boys hung out and worked, and they exploded. Our dad escaped unharmed as did our family, but several of our uncles were killed and a lot of people in the neighborhood were killed.

Our dad told us it was a terrible gang from the other side of town. That they were trying to take over our part of the city and that if we let them, we would lose everything that we owned and that our entire way of life would be gone. It was imperative, he told us, to get behind him and to not question what he was doing for us and our family. After this episode it was hard not to have great sympathy for our father. He worked tirelessly to rebuild the neighborhood and to make sure those that were injured were taken care of and that those that lost loved ones were looked after. This made us so proud of our dad, and all thoughts of our dad being a low life were set to rest. We knew we needed to step up and be the son that our father would be proud of.  We went out into the neighborhood with a new vigor and we were determined to make those in the neighborhood see how great our father was. But we were dismayed to see that the people in the neighborhood were still somewhat wary of me. We gave freely of our money and we even asked father to give us a lot more so that we could help build an exceptional legacy that he could be proud of.

But try as we might the people took our money and politely smiled, but you could just sense that they were only grateful on the surface. That they did not share our awe inspired love of our generous father was incredibly irritating to us. We kept pushing though and we kept giving money to those that lived in our neighborhood and we even went outside our area and started to drop some money to build some parks and other things in our enemy’s backyard. We got a big kick out of that one, wouldn’t dad be surprised to find out that we were over in our enemy’s backyard trying to turn his own neighborhood against him. What a riot that was. But after awhile we noticed that they still were openly hostile to us. They didn’t dare lay a finger on us, but you could see it in their eyes that they really hated us.

Was it our suit? Was it our education and our free way of living? Why were these people so resentful of us and our father? It was absolutely maddening to us.

On our 18^th birthday we decided to go against our fathers demands and we went over on the other side of the city for a drink. This turned out to be a turning point in our lives. As we got out of our car we were set upon by a small group of men who threw us in the back of their car and were rushed off to some unknown house. When we got there, they removed our hoods and in front of us was a man. We immediately recognized him as Carl the laundry guy. We remembered that several years ago he closed up his shop and we never saw him again. Our dad said he was a thief and that we were better off without him around. We always liked Carl, even though we didn’t really ever get to know him.

Carl had a very strange look on his face and behind him were several TV monitors and a dozen or so DVD players and stacks of disks. Carl told us that he had great sympathy for us and that he felt that at our core we were good, but that he had some very disturbing things that he had to show us, and how we reacted to these videos would determine whether he ccould still think of us as being “good”.

Over the next hours and days he showed us stacks and stacks of videos of our father beating the shit out of poor vendors and shaking them down for their hard earned money. It showed pictures and videos of our uncles sneaking into other gang’s hangouts and murdering them in cold blood. The video also showed that these other gangs were no saints either and that they treated the people in their neighborhood pretty shitty as well. But our father was the best and even those gang leaders gave our father tribute in the form of money and loot; money and loot that was stolen from the people in THEIR neighborhoods.

And suddenly it all made sense to us. The cold looks we would get from the people in other neighborhoods. They were not mad that we had an Armani suit, they were mad because the money that bought that suit was, at least to some degree, was money that was stolen from them. They didn’t care about our carefree lifestyle; they were PISSED OFF that it as being paid for by their hard work and sweat. The people in my own neighborhood weren’t overjoyed at the exuberance we showed for our father because they were scared to death of him. Sure they got a lot of benefits for living under his banner, but they were not free, not like us. They had to work hard for everything they got and they had to hand over a good portion of it to our father who in turn paid us our allowance. No wonder they weren’t impressed when we would show up with a fistful of dollars to spread around. They were probably thinking about how much of that money was THEIR’S IN THE FIRST PLACE!

And so here we sit on this sidewalk. Trying to figure out how to reconcile all we have just seen. Are we GOOD? Are we Exceptional? Up to this point we could always point to how incredibly well our father shielded us (and lied to us) about how our money was made. But from this point forward we can no longer pretend that we don’t know. Before we kind of played dumb and allowed ourselves to be deluded. But we cannot do this anymore, we are now fully awake. So what are we going to do when dad shows up to pick us up? He is likely going to see it in our eyes. Do we pretend that we don’t know? Do we just accept what we are and just go along with it all? Do we spit in his face and tell him to fuck off? We better figure it out soon, because he will be here soon………..

Been lots of talk around lately regarding the collapse of the US Dollar and what that would mean for the United States of America and the world. There has also been a lot of talk about the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America and how unhappy the people of the US are getting with this largely unknown organization.

These two forces are converging together in what could be a very serious and detrimental way as it relates to the average US citizen. This article will rely heavily on flawed analogies to help the lay person understand the inner workings of both the IMF and the Federal Reserve Bank. This is not to be taken as an academic piece and I would ask that it not be judged as such. This is meant to help those people that have recently woken up to the reality that their country has been hi-jacked and those that are desperate to get up to speed as quickly as possible. So let’s jump right into the thick of it shall we? First we need to start with what I hope are simple lessons so that you can take what I am about to teach you and apply it to the real world.

There is one thing that bankers and computer people love to do and that is to use big scary acronyms to scare off the simple folk. So here is your first lesson.

I.M.F. and the S.D.R.

So right off the bat we are using acronyms that mean absolutely NOTHING to the lay person and yet that is an actual sentence believe it or not… IMF stands for the International Monetary Fund. The SDR is short for Special Drawing Rights and is the currency of the IMF. The International Monetary Fund is a private bank that is used to help sovereign nations engage in international commerce. Just like if you owned a company and you used bank A, and your supplier used Bank B, the IMF would be the bank that both banks A and B used to transfer payments and credits back and forth to each other. To Company A and B (using Bank A and B) it would be seamless.

But the IMF does a whole lot more for the global economy. They are the creditor of last resort for a lot of countries. For if you want to engage in international commerce in the free world (meaning the world now) you must be a part of the IMF system. Should a country that is part of this system become over leveraged because of mismanagement and debt accumulation, the IMF stands ready to come to the rescue. To understand how this relationship has worked in the past (and the present); I MUST go into some history. I will keep it brief I promise.

To understand how the global monetary/commercial world works you have to go back to the end of World War II. Following the war the United States was alone as a major industrial power. The rest of the industrial countries were in shambles. The United States was also nearly alone as a producer of oil. It is this later point that needs to be highlighted.

The United States used its vast oil reserves and coupled it with a highly trained industrial labor force and put it to work in its vast expanse of industrial capacity to re-build the rest of the world. It is this fact that is at the very center of our current monetary system some 60 years later. So I will start with my first analogy…

The US Corp could be seen as a huge company like General Motors. Following WWII US Corp was the only company left with the capacity to make things and it had the working capital and energy to do what it wanted. US Corp went out into the world and started to acquire other businesses. First was Japan Corp which US Corp had beaten into a pulp during the war. US Corp decided that it was in its own best interest to build Japan Corp back up but it needed to make sure that it never again could threaten US Corp the way it did in WWII.  Japan Corp used its own currency called the YEN and US Corp obviously used the Dollar. So to make this all work, US Corp had to make sure that the workers at Japan Corp didn’t feel like the last of their country was being taken from them. To keep them vested in the viability of their own country it was very important to let them keep their own currency and their own political structure, albeit greatly modified under the surface. We allowed Japan Corp to keep their figurehead CEO (the Emperor) and we installed a new board of directors (Democratic institutions). We linked the Bank of Japan to US Corp’s bank the Federal Reserve Bank through a new institution called the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

If we were to compare this to General Motors this would be like GM buying another company and bringing it under the umbrella of the GM brand. So in this case Japan is like Pontiac and they are given free rein to run their subsidiary the way they see fit, SO LONG as they abide by the parent companies rules.

This setup worked wonderfully and within a decade Japan Corp was back on its feet and was supplying cheap labor and products for US Corp and with every single barrel of oil Japan Corp bought on the international market it further linked them with our monetary system.  To keep the Japanese citizens from feeling that it was the US Corp in charge of everything we came up with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Of course these institutions were funded initially by the United States and Great Britain and as such they were just pseudo US institutions. But it worked and the Japanese subsidiary of US Corp gladly bought oil and products from the United States in its own currency (the Yen) but it was linked via the IMF to the US Dollar. For you see US Corp linked everything that the industrial world needed to the US Dollar. All gold/oil/silver/food/etc were priced first in US Dollars and depending upon the relative “strength” of your currency to the US Dollar, this would dictate how much of your currency it would take to purchase a barrel of oil or an ounce of gold. This gave US Corp a huge advantage in the world as we produced almost everything anyways. We had most of the world’s oil supply and a very large portion of the food supply. We were the largest producer of the big complex things the world needed to rebuild. We allowed the smaller subsidiaries to produce the little stuff we needed or wanted. Japan Corp was great at the later, supplying us with small radios and other cool electronic gadgets.

US Corp built a company with dozens and dozens of subsidiaries, each one of them bringing something to the table either large or small. And as the world re-built, other countries wanted to get in on the good times and they voluntarily sold themselves to US Corp. Other countries were very reluctant to join our big happy company. Those countries fell into two groups. Either they were affiliated with Russia Corp or they wanted to stay neutral. But in a world that was moving fast towards globalization it became apparent that each country would have to choose a side lest they be shut out of the global market. For remember that the only way to gain access to US Corp’s vast array of markets and supplies is to be a part of the IMF/World Bank. It was the only way to convert your currency to other currencies (like the US Dollar to buy OIL!!).

I will end this history lesson there as I could get sucked in for hours explaining how US Corp and Russia Corp went to economic(and sometimes real) war with each other and how Russia Corp tried to have it both ways by linking themselves partially to the IMF to gain access to US Corps vast supplies and labor.

I will leave that to YOU to go out and study on your own as it is a story to rival any fictional book you have ever read. The important thing to take away here is that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are institutions that were created by the United States and Great Britain. It is a global system that allows countries using different currencies to exchange their goods and services with each other almost seamlessly. Remember also that the system was setup INITIALLY to allow US Corp to control the world’s most important supplies. Things like FOOD, OIL, COMMODITIES (gold,silver,etc) and the rest. At the time this system was created it was the United States that was supplying the lion’s share of these items. But as the decades have come and gone, these items have increasingly come from other parts of the world.  And a good portion of these countries are ones that were FORCED into our system either out of necessity or by direct manipulation of their country by forces outside their borders(meaning the US and the IMF)..

CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HITMAN

This next part of our story is centered on how the US has maintained its spot at the top of the economic order even in the face of massive budget deficits and seemingly unending debt loads. The title of this section is called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, as I give a nod to a book of the same name written by a man named John Perkins. Mr. Perkins is a trained economists and his specialty was international finance. His job was to go out into the world and sell foreign leaders on US Corp and to convince them to get on board with our system. Or more importantly, it was his job to make sure that they were forever caught up in our system and that they did not attempt to leave our company.

For you see there came a time when US Corp was no longer the biggest oil producer, so it was paramount that we lock up as many oil producing nations under the US Corp banner as possible. It was Mr. Perkins job to go out to these nations, most of which were considered very backwards by modern western standards, and convince them that we had something they needed. He made promises of vast loans of money from the IMF to help them modernize their economy and to help them fully exploit the vast resources that they controlled within their borders.

In many cases these were simple men who did not fully understand the deals that were being laid down before them. In fewer cases the leaders of these countries understood all too well the consequences of joining up with this new company. Mr. Perkins (and those like him) approached these leaders and promised them the world. They offered them access to US Corp’s vast array of weapons and industry. Were they to get on board they would be given access to weapons that would give them a huge advantage against countries they were enemies with. And to make sure we covered our bases we made the same deals with their enemies.

A few men stood up and tried to warn these countries that they were being played or they tried to rally these countries to stand against US Corp. These men to a one were assassinated or overthrown. When US Corp ran into stubborn leaders, they had a strange habit of being eliminated by “rival political forces”. These rivals almost always were sympathetic to US Corp.

And once these leaders signed up for the IMF loans, there was no turning back. In exchange for the Damns and bridges and schools and weapons, they only needed to agree to denominate their resources (chiefly oil) in US Dollars. This made the leaders of these countries fabulously wealthy beyond anything they could have imagined.

So after they were brought on as a US Corp subsidiary, every time they sold their oil to another country, it further entrenched them in the IMF system. When they wanted to build a lavish palace, they would sell oil on the markets and in return they would get US Dollars. They were simple people and there was little they could do with all these US Dollars. It did them no good to convert it back to their own currency as leaving it in US Dollars was much more lucrative. So they bought US Debt with this money as a long term savings plan or they used it to buy US weapons to protect their growing economy from their enemies.

 And of course US Corp was no dummy; they were making the same deals with the enemies of these leaders.  As an example we were in bed very early with Iran Corp. Iran Corp showed great promise as being a large oil exporter. A man stood up against this system named Mohammad Mosaddegh.  He was western educated and understood all too well what the IMF was after. The economic hit men tried to get him on board with their plans but he refused. In 1953 a  coup d’état was initiated against his democratically elected government and he was successfully arrested and put under house arrest until his death some years later. Of course the “rival faction” was solidly in favor of linking their oil industry with the IMF and the United States.

This new government was brutal and ruled Iran with an iron fist. It was able to maintain control for many years until a new leader emerged in the late 1970’s by the name of Ayatollah Khomeini. He was decidedly against the plans of US Corp. So to counter this man’s ambitions of ruling the Middle East we got into bed with another leader. A man who was in charge of Iran’s chief enemy, a man named Saddam Hussein, who was the president of Iraq. We got Saddam on board with US Corp just as Iran fell to the Ayatollah and we supplied him with all the weapons he needed to stop Iran from expanding its power. He stayed in our good graces until the late 1980’s when he decided that HE wanted to break free of US Corps clutches. This time US Corp had to do its own dirty work and we stepped in to break Saddam’s back after he foolishly invaded Kuwait a rather small but incredibly important subsidiary of US Corp.

And it didn’t stop at oil. These economic hit men were active in South America and even Africa. All with the sole purpose of getting and keeping these countries entrenched in a system that placed the US Dollar at the center of the global economy with the IMF acting as the intermediary between US Corp and the rest of the modern economic world. It didn’t matter that US Corp was running huge deficits and spending money way in excess of what it really produced.  Because US Corp had its subsidiaries working overtime to make up the shortfall.

Because at all times and in almost every market, the US Dollar was always in demand, and because at all times the IMF was imposing its will upon the rest of the world, because without the IMF acting as an intermediary, global commerce could not happen. Every time a rival would rise up to usurp the US centric system they were quickly and usually efficiently eliminated.  So as we engaged in expensive wars and as we continued to lavish our citizens with ever more extravagant programs the rest of the world kept working to provide our shortfalls. Even when the US no longer could provide for its own oil usage and became an importer nation, the rest of the world played along. Even when in 1971 we ceased to be a nation that exported more than we imported, the rest of the world played along.

For over 40 years the world has played along with the US centric monetary system for one reason and one reason only. No one has come up with a better system and no one has had the balls to stand toe to toe with US Corp and knock us off our pedestal.  That is until now.

THE IMF CUTS US CORP LOOSE

I would like to go back to my US Corp as General Motors analogy once again. US Corp has become so large and with so many competing subsidiaries that it has become completely unmanageable. US Corp has bled so many of its most valuable brands dry that something must be done, because US Corp is going to drive the entire world into the gutter. So a creation that was started by US Corp is going to be used to dismantle the parent company (Corporate Office) in an attempt to salvage what is left of the productive subsidiaries.

US Corp has dug itself in so deep with its debts that there is no way it can ever be paid back. US Corp consumes so much of the world’s energy and resources for completely unproductive reasons that it must be sold off and reorganized.  And this is where the IMF and the SDR come into play.  The same men who organized and put into place the IMF are once again hard at work planning for the next big thing.

Following WWII it became apparent that if there was not some global order enforced on the world that World War III would likely be the result. These monetary elites decided that it was better to have economic wars, rather than global hot wars that killed millions and destroyed entire nations. These elites were even willing to allow for small, local and controllable wars to allow steam to be blown off. Why would they want these small wars? Simple, because war is the ULTIMATE cure for runaway inflation. War is the ultimate “creative destruction” in the economic world. War eliminates old and wasteful factories and pushes technologic advancement. And most important of all, a world always on the “VERGE” of war is a world that needs these financial elites to keep the peace and to fund massive and lucrative arms sales.

A culmination of problems has surfaced over the past 10 to 20 years that threatens the global economic order that these men put into place over 60 years ago. The first is that the United States is no longer an exporter nation, which in and of itself is not a deal breaker. The elites were actually able to use this as a positive as the average US Corp citizen is extended massive amounts of credit and encouraged to go out into the world and BUY BUY BUY!! This keeps the subsidiaries busy and their factories humming. We use our US Dollars to buy their stuff, they use those US Dollars to buy oil from IMF connected countries like Saudi Arabia, whom you remember ONLY accept US Dollars as payment for their oil.

They buy the oil from Saudi Arabia who is already awash in palaces and wealth so they only have one option. They use these excess US Dollars and they buy US Debt with it, which in turn allows US Corp to continue to overspend at will. This is called Petro (oil) Dollar (US) Recycling. It is the very base of the economic order of the planet.

But problems started to surface some decades ago (even as far back as Jimmy Carter) that oil production on the planet was starting to slow down and the growth needed to keep the US Petro Dollar System moving was starting to slow down.

To put the problem into context I will give you some startling numbers. The world on any given day produces approximately 82 Million Barrels of Oil per Day. This is abbreviated as MBPD. Nearly all of this oil is sold using US Dollars. On any given day the world consumes close to 79 or 80 Mbpd of oil. On any given day US Corp produces almost 7 Mbpd of oil. But here is the real problem, US Corp CONSUMES close to 22 Million Barrels of Oil every single day of the year. And every year we consume a little more and every year we produce a little less. This imbalance cannot go on forever and the question you should be asking yourself at this point is when? When will the world finally stand up to US Corp and save themselves?

Which leads me finally to point of this article, how will the IMF be used to stop US Corp from sinking the entire global economy into another Great Depression, which would likely lead to another global war?

First we must make some distinctions. First is that the US Federal Reserve Bank has absolutely no allegiance to this country. The financial elites who are brokering these deals (some of them are direct offspring of the men who created the financial world order following World War II) have NO ALLEGIANCE to this country. Their only allegiance is to ensure the viability of their economic world order. And it is becoming increasingly apparent to them that the workers of US Corp have grown far too complacent and far too demanding and are utilizing FAR TOO MUCH of the world’s increasingly scarce energy supplies.

Again to show you how big the inequalities are. US Corp consumes close to 22Mbpd of oil, which is close to 20 percent of the global supply, yet we only represent around 6% of the global population. The next biggest user of oil on the planet is China. They currently consume around 8Mbpd of oil and yet they have a population nearly double ours.

These inequalities were not a problem to the elites in the past because they don’t deal in equality; they deal in growth and ensuring that the economic order keeps them at the top. So when the US was using way more oil and resources on the planet than anyone else, they didn’t care. Because things were still growing and their economic order was never threatened.

That has changed and they are moving to adapt their economic order to this seismic change that is about to occur.

So if you have actually read this far, I congratulate you. That was a lot of history and bad analogies to finally get to the ultimate point of this article. Everything I have written above is verifiably true. Though I have glossed over a lot of facts and embellished a little bit for entertainments sake, the basic truth is that the United States has and IS ruling the economic world. The United States decades ago stopped being the top exporter nation and stopped being the top energy exporting nation. Since 1971 the United States has been a net DRAW on the world, as we continue to consume more and more, it is coming(as I have CLEARLY SHOWN) increasingly on the backs of 3^rd world nations who are sitting on resources that WE want and need to continue to grow our economy.

But there is a hard wall that we are hitting and that is a dramatic and irreversible slowing and or halt of global energy supply growth. Without the energy to grow, the economic system that these elites have created will halt and quickly reverse. For you see GROWTH is not an option in the economic order they created. It is absolutely imperative that the global economy continues to grow.

But the global elites are up against a wall here. The United States has the largest supply of atomic and conventional weapons on the planet. It citizens are completely oblivious to everything I spelled out above and then some. They are increasingly electing IDIOTS to run their country and it is only a matter of time before some person stands up before the people of this country and riding a gigantic wave of POPUPULISM, decides to throw the IMF and the Federal Reserve out of this country and retake it for ourselves. So these elites must act and with some sense of great urgency.

Unbeknownst to most in this country, the IMF has been increasing its monetary base though the use of SDR’s… Remember they are known as Special Drawing Rights. This is the currency of the IMF. If an IMF member gets into trouble and needs to be bailed out, they get loans in the form of SDR’s to use to restructure their economy. Well the IMF has been busily running around the world buying gold and vastly increasing its supply of SDR’s.

What possible reason would the IMF need that much gold to back that many SDR’s. I feel it is beyond obvious that as the US Dollar enters its end game, that the IMF will step in and use the same tactics it has used over and over again against other nations over the decades. The United States is nearing the point of no return. In just 4 short years our government went from a budget deficit of only 230 billion, to a staggering 1.5 trillion dollar PER YEAR. We have added 4 trillion dollars to the national debt in less than 3 years. States and localities are finding it harder and harder to keep their massive payroll paid and business’ are getting squeezed from every angle as we need to increase taxes or slash spending or likely BOTH to keep the economic system rolling over each month.

But the debt is JUST PAPER!! What if the IMF stepped in and said they could help us out. That they would work with the Federal Reserve to link the SDR to the US Dollar and that they could take all that debt away? All we would have to do is break the link between the US Dollar and commodities and give that function up to the IMF. They would even weight the US Dollar very heavily in this IMF mixed basket of currency. For the IMF is suggesting that the SDR be comprised of a combination of the strongest economies in the world, along with oil and gold and a few other commodities.

What if they took away our debt and in its place the world traded SDR’s in order to maintain global commerce. Inside the United States it would be no different at first. In fact it would probably be pretty nice as our debt load would be greatly reduced. And with a heavily US Dollar weighted SDR currency at the IMF, we would still have an advantage over other countries as the US Dollar would still be worth more in the mix than the Yen or the Euro.

But the devil is in the details. Once the link between the US Dollar and Oil is broken the ability of the United States to print debt at will is gone forever. From that moment on it is up to the financial elites at the IMF to decide what the relative worth of the US Dollar is in comparison to the other parts of the basket.

And seeing as that the ultimate goal of the financial elites(IMHO)  is to greatly reduce the energy demand that the United States places upon the global economy for unproductive ends, it would stand to reason that they would embark upon a slow but steady reduction of the relative worth of the US Dollar. This would result in a reduction in the US standard of living to the point where we would be just like Italy or France or any number of other countries.

If you don’t think very deeply about it, it is only fair right? We don’t produce like we used to, it only stands to reason that we should be taken down a few levels. On the surface this argument holds a lot of water. And what I am proposing in response would ultimately lead the United States to a similar standard of living, possibly even lower.  But what the IMF is moving towards is a continuation of a system the United States used for decades(and England used for centuries before us) to extract the wealth of the people of this earth to enrich themselves and to ensure that this new economic world order is never threatened.

If it is true that world energy levels have stalled out, it could be decades before any real increase in our way of life is achieved. In the mean time the financial elites will slowly bleed off all consumption in an attempt to keep the financial world functioning and to keep them at the top of the economic order.

I would propose a different route. It is a route that requires a large number of our countrymen to wake up and growth the hell up. I am not hopeful that this is even possible, but I am an optimist at my core. What if we just accept reality? What if we in the United States just broke free of this parasitic system that only exists to enrich a very few at the expense of BILLIONS of people? For at it very heart that is what our current system is all about.

The elites use the United States and all her power and influence to enforce a system that sucks all the wealth of the world to THEM. Sure we get some pretty tasty crumbs here in the United States, but in the grand scheme of things are we really that much better off than we were just 110 years ago in this country? Back then we were a largely agrarian country and though the work was back breaking at times, the TOTAL amount of time we spent working in those days as compared to now is not even close. We work months longer per year than we did back then.

Some people in this country are forced to work 50, 60 even 80 hours per week just to meet their basic “needs”. What if we threw off this parasitic system and learned to live within the energy footprint that we currently have? At 7 million barrels of oil per day and the large (but likely short lived) supply of Natural Gas and Coal and our technologic knowhow in the areas of Solar and wind, we could break free of this suicidal dependence upon the Global elites and their debt/growth machine.

EITHER WAY we will end up with a greatly reduced way of life. One way we do it from a place of strength and forethought. In the other it is thrust upon us likely for the next 6 or 7 decades with absolutely no chance for a relative recovery. Last time I checked, countries like Afghanistan and Libya and Turkey and Italy have never recovered at the hands of the IMF…  Why would we expect anything different?

Robert

The fire department has told us it would be in your best interest to remain seated and to not leave the building at this time. Please return to your offices. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Please remain in your offices until you hear further instructions from this office……………………………

MAN FILMING A CONCERT (thoughts in his head): What a great band, can’t believe they are playing in such a dive bar. WOW… Look at those fireworks! Seems kind of a small venue to be using that many pyrotechnics… Guess they know what they are doing.

That looks like a fire over the drummers left shoulder… Hmmm. No one else is worried. Don’t want to start a panic and look like a big dumb ass… Damn that fire is getting big, why isn’t anyone running!!  Damn, I’m getting the fuck out of here!! Damn why did I wait so LONG!! Everyone is trampling people, damn I’m stuck in a door way now………………………….

59 ½ YEAR OLD MAN IN CHARGE OF HIS WIFE’s AND HIS RETIREMENT 2007/2008:  

MSNBC TALKING HEAD: There is no housing bubble, sure there is some froth in certain markets, but the doomsayers who think that real estate prices on average are going to start falling are insane. Not since the Great Depression has national housing prices gone down.

MAN (thinking): I guess they know what they are talking about, we aren’t quite ready to sell the house yet, and just another year and we’ll be ready. Perfect timing, my 401k is doing very well and has almost recouped the tech bubble disaster. They say not to panic.. I’m not going to panic and make a dumb mistake and look like an idiot.

MSNBC TALKING HEAD (Summer 2008): Sure there has been some big sell offs and I’m sure everyone is getting nervous. But this is a run of the mill SHALLOW recession. We are not going back to the levels of the Tech Bubble bust like some are suggesting. We suggest you bottom feed and double down to get greater gains on the way up. Fannie and Freddie are solid and the banking sector is strong… NO NEED TO PANIC!!

MAN(thinking): God I have lost so much already, the DOW is already down into the 10K range and I’ve already lost so much equity in my home, I have to hang in there to make sure I can cover my losses.. I don’t want to panic and look stupid.

MSNBC TALKING HEAD(Nov 2008): It is a bloodbath out there, I TOLD YOU THAT THEY KNOW NOTHING!! Get out while you can, save yourself. Chrysler is going under and so is most of the banking industry. We warned you this was a possibility.

MAN(explaining to his sobbing wife in mid 2009): I don’t know what the hell happened? We lost over 45% of the worth of our home and our 401k lost almost 30%, even though we were in solid blue chip companies. I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT and yet we are still going to lose our home on Friday. God I feel so God Damned stupid!!! I’m pretty sure this knot will hold my weight, I never want to see my wife cry like that again, how did it all go so wrong so fast..……………..

COMPANY SPOKESMAN and GOVERNMENT LACKEY’S: as of this morning we are confident that all of the reactors have successfully shut down as they were designed to do in the event of a major earthquake. There is ZERO chance of a radiological release, all plants are reporting normal..

AL JAZEERA and MULTIPLE BLOGGERS REPORTING FROM JAPAN FRIDAY MORNING!!: We are hearing in hushed voices from people we trust that there is something going on at the reactors in Northern Japan. We do not want to start a panic but what we are hearing is in complete contrast to what the MSM and government officials are saying..

MSM SHILLS:  THE REPORTS coming out of the blogosphere and certain insane news organizations that are obviously anti-American, are reporting an erroneous report about the safety of Japan’s nuclear reactors. This is fear mongering and could cause a panic.

COMPANY SPOKEMAN AND GOV SHILLS: OK we will have to vent some pressure but nothing to worry about; just a minimal amount of radiologic material will be released.

COMPANY SPOKESMAN GOV SHILLS: The top blew off the reactor shell, but nothing to worry about, we have it under control. You see we are directly pouring SEA WATER ONTO THE CORE to keep it from exploding! It is NOT a meltdown

COMPANY SPOKESMAND GOV SHILLS: It is a partial meltdown.. Not even really it is just a misshapen core, not really a full meltdown..

TYPICAL JAPANESE (or American for the matter) Responses in order: Don’t want to look stupid and cause a panic………Well they are saying there are problems, but I am not worried because they say it’s no big deal…HMMMM that didn’t look so good seeing the top blow off the fucking containment building… Maybe I should think about moving further out than 5KM……….. GOD DAMN WHY DIDN”T I LISTEN TO MY GUT and run before this thing blew sky high?? Now we are stuck in this traffic jam with a radioactive cloud heading our way. What are we going to do now……………………..

WHAT FOLLOWS WILL BE AN EXPLITIVE RIDDEN DIATRIBE THAT WILL LIKELY OFFEND A LOT OF PEOPLE. IF THIS IS YOU… STOP HERE!!!

All of these are true stories. The first is a retelling of security guards at the WTC complex during and after the first plane hit the North Trade center building, those in the South tower were explicitly told to return to their seats and that there was nothing to worry about.

THEY HAD NO FUCKING IDEA IF THAT WAS TRUE!! Did those mother fuckers have a radar tower in their office that would show them that there were not just 1, not just  2 and not just 3 BUT FOUR planes that were being regarded as hijacked!! Did they know that one of them was entering New York airspace likely at the very time they were making these prognostications!!

Did they know that the super structure of the North Tower wasn’t so weakened that it wasn’t going to fall over and collapse into the South tower(which didn’t happen BTW, but how the fuck could they have known it wouldn’t!!).. These were people whose job it was to KEEP THE COWS FROM PANICKING and to ensure that those people listened to the authority figures who were telling them what to do.

There were guards actively trying to get people to turn around on the stairwells and to get them to go back. Some pushed passed the guards and continued out of the building… The rest are dead or had to endure a hell on earth as they scrambled to get out of that building when the second plane smashed into the side of their building cutting the stairwell in two. How many died because they DID NOT WANT YOU TOO PANIC!!

The second story is a made up internal conversation that was likely shared by many at The Station concert of the band Great White that ended in a tragic fire and the deaths of dozens and dozens of concert goers. I saw the video from inside as the fire started… WHY DID THEY JUST STAND THERE!!! Because they were conditioned to not panic, they had the panic gene suppressed in them from the time they were small children. They stood there like cattle waiting for some alpha cow to make his first move toward the door and then the rest all went in a mad rush and more people died of being trampled than they did of the fire itself(smoke inhalation killed the most BTW)…

The third story is yet another made up story or more correctly a compellation of news stories that came out in the early to middle part of 2009. How many people committed suicide in the wake of the worst economic meltdown in over 70 years?? He was told by those “in charge” to not panic though his internal radar was likely going off as far back as 2007. But he was conditioned to be more worried about appearing to PANIC than he was about his eventual financial ruin that led him to hang himself from a rafter in his newly foreclosed home’s garage. Seems he should have panicked…

And the last story is obviously unfolding before our eyes as I type this sentence. How many Japanese citizens heard the rumors on Friday morning? How many of us heard the strange reports coming out of Al Jazeera as early as 5 or 6 am Eastern Standard time in the United States about there being major problems with more than one nuclear facility in Japan?? I listened to a young blogger on CNN who was Skyping from his apartment in Tokyo as he gave a very lucid and heartbreaking interview about his experiences. He ended the interview by stating that he was hearing from local news and other bloggers that there were major problems with the nuclear reactors up north.

The CNN talking head immediately jumped on the kid and proclaimed his information TO BE ABSOLUTELY FALSE!! The government was assuring him through PROPER CHANNELS that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the reactors!!! The kid stuck his tail between his legs and said something weak like “well I guess that’s good”. And he was quickly dismissed.

What do ALL of these stories have in common? In the end (except the last one) the person ended up dead… Not because they didn’t realize the danger they were facing, but because they decided not to act upon their natural and understandable panic.

Had these people in the area of the stricken reactors been told as early as Friday morning in Japan that there was a POSSIBILITY of a problem with the reactors, there could have been an orderly and large movement of people away from the area, yet they didn’t want PANIC. So they obfuscated and minimized the possible danger. In the end the top blew off the reactor core and HAD THAT BEEN a reactor blowing up instead of the pressure inside the containment building, we would be looking at potentially 100 thousand people being in harm’s way.

I have friends who live in the path of these things and had these reactors exploded and given them a lethal dose of radiation, I would have been bitter beyond words. Because I KNEW Friday morning that these mother fuckers were lying through their teeth. I knew the way that Al Jazeera was reporting this was just too weird for words and after years and years of studying Main Stream Media LYING, I have become almost too good at picking out when I should take what they say and do the FUCKING EXACT OPPOSITE!!

You had better learn this skill my friends if you haven’t already. In 2007 I sold out of all my retirement accounts and got mostly to cash before the bottom fell out. We got the rest of our investment to cash in fall of 2008 just as things were falling apart. I knew that a bust was coming and that the Jim Kramer’s of the world (he of the THEY KNOW NOTHING!! Line) was a scum sucking piece of shit that was leading millions to their economic ruin.

I had sold my home in 2005 because I understood what was coming and that their insistence that this was a shallow recession and that housing always went UP, was a bald face LIE and they FUCKING KNEW IT!!

Tomorrow we are expecting a huge release of Bank of America emails and correspondence that will unequivocally show that BOA and all the rest of these mother fucking “DO NOT PANIC WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING” pieces of shit knew exactly what was coming even as they were talking Middle America into doubling down. They knew that an economic tsunami was inevitable as early as 2007 and even earlier and yet they continued to pump more 401k and pension money into these abominations all in a attempt to stave off what was going to be an INEVITABLE PANIC IN THE END.. The key was not to stop the panic. The KEY WAS TO MAKE SURE THESE PRICKS GOT TO THE EXIT FIRST!!!

In Japan as I type this, literally millions of people are sitting in the path of a potential meltdown explosion and a potential for a radiologic cloud that will easily hit Tokyo if the prevailing winds are blowing in that direction.

I understand that having people swinging from the chandeliers in abstract panic is going to help no one, but to LIE TO THEM and tell them that all is well is a piece of shit move only a true authoritarian could possible make. Give these people a fucking fighting chance and tell them what they should be doing and give them THE WORST CASE SCENARIO so that at least they can plan for it. If it doesn’t happen and they all taped themselves up in their bathroom with cellophane and duct tape and they look like a bunch of God Damned fools, THEN WHO CARES!! At least they had a fighting chance if the worst case did happen.

Panic is a useful tool when it is used correctly. We are told to NOT PANIC, BE CALM, and LISTEN TO THE AUTHORITIES… You know what I say to that? I SAY FUCK THEM and you start getting your own head around the vulnerabilities in your own life and you start your own contingency planning. Because time and time and time again the “authorities” have proven that the only thing they care about ultimately is making sure that the herd doesn’t trample their asses as they make their way to the exits before the masses.

And I want to end with a small prayer which is very unusual for me. I don’t generally tout my religious beliefs and if you are a non-believer then please ask for Karmic intervention or just plain good luck!! But I would like to say a prayer to the brave souls who ran into the burning building on 9/11 even as they knew they would likely die. To the brave souls who took the barbs of the MSM in 2005/06/07 and to THIS DAY, who tried to warn the American (and global) people about the abstract thievery that was being committed by these financial terrorists. They in some ways lost everything. They lost friends and wives and husbands, all of whom could not reconcile what they were being told by the MSM and what their own friends/husbands/wives were trying to tell them. How many people lost marriages and children to the economic devastation that followed the collapse? How many suicides, how many starving people in the third world have died?? All because we have to listen to the authorities and NOT PANIC!! And finally say a prayer to the brave souls who are, as I type, rushing into dangerous reactors in an attempt to save potentially millions of lives. Pray they are successful and that they are kept safe and that their bravery is not forgotten. They are the true heroes and are the ones who RUN IN and try and save those put at risk by these mother fuckers. They are golden in God’s eyes if I could ever be that bold as to know God’s will.

I say get really good at panicking. God put that gene in our brains for a reason. Just like the word ANARCHY, the world panic is taken out of context and is not used properly anymore.

What is the next word that always follows anarchy in the MSM…. It is CHAOS… But anarchy is simply the absence of central authority…. Could it lead to chaos.. Yes. Does it need too??? Absolutely not…

Panic is the brains way of making you do something NOW and without hesitation. If a lion jumps up in front of you in the jungle, do you sit and wait for the guy in charge to tell you to RUN or climb a tree or pull out a knife to protect yourself??? Of course not, you do what you need to do. Maybe you grab your child and throw him up a tree and sacrifice yourself, or you grab a knife and charge in, or you run like a little girl and save yourself. But the point is that you do not wait. YOU DO!!

And living in these times it is crucial to understand the dangers that surround you and to think about your “panic” in advance. My long standing philosophy in such things goes as thus “PANIC FIRST, PANIC SMART OR DO NOT PANIC AT ALL”…

Understand that the “authorities” do not have your best interest in mind and you had better start looking out for yourself and those around you WHILE YOU HAVE THE TIME and the clear mind to do so. Know what your panic looks like in any number of situations and know what you will do when it happens. But do it when you feel/know it’s right, not when some politician tells you it is “all clear”(after making sure all the privileged people have gotten out).

PANIC FIRST, PANIC SMART or DO NOT PANIC….

Robert

NEKKEI IS DOWN OVER 13% at this moment and plunging lower. This is leaking into all world wide markets. As of this writting there are FOUR reactors either on fire or in some process of melting down. The prevailing wind is currently pushing wind and debris towards Tokyo. Pray to God that this explosion is minimal until tomorrow where the prevailing wind is predicted to change to out to sea. PRAY TO GOD TONIGHT PLEASE! I have friends who live outside(south) of Tokyo and I have not yet gotten in contact.

I am not being alarmist here. But if you have room to take in a refugee, please start the preperations to do so. I am going to offer tomorrow(assuming I can get into contact) my friends a place to stay here. At the very least they could send their children here if they do not want to leave the country of their birth.. but get your heads around this people, this is a TRUE black swan event and what is known as a TRIGGER EVENT..

The Japanese markets are absoultely IMPLODING at a rate that dwarfs the rapid declines we saw in October of 2008. Currently US Futures are down over 250 points and heading lower. Everything is blowing off JUST LIKE I PREDICTED over 4 days ago.

Read my post on PANIC and get your head around the vulnerabilities in your life right now. Obviously the bulk of the US is not in any immediate danger from this catastrophe(thought the West Coast had better be paying attention). But should the wind push this into Tokyo or even across the sea of Japan into China, this could be horrific beyond words. The economic fallout is going to be SYSTEMIC.. I am not worried about Joe Six Pack loosing his 401k money, I am starting to worry about a break down in the basic ability of commerce to function in this HIGHLY interconnected world. Should we have a major re-insurer fail or a major Japanese bank fold unexpectedly in the midst of all of this, the downsteam consequences could be catastrophic…

PLEASE keep a weather eye on this situation and I will check back in, in the morning. I just left my job and I am on a 2 week break till I start my next job, so I will be on top of this story as it happens…

Robert

9:00PM FRIDAY EVENING.

Just finally getting back to my blog after an incredibly crazy day.  Been taking in the event throughout the day and am absolutely amazed at the market reaction. The DOW actually bounced up towards the close and got back above the 12K mark and most other commodities sold off moderately and the whole day was very calm.

The anticipated Saudi protests were a non-event (so far) as the police were out in overwhelming force, but this does not mean that it is over. On the contrary I think this sets up a very violent end to the protestors wants of a free election and at least some say in their governance. This is a slow burn news item now as they will have to force their movement onto the world stage and it will likely be bloody.

All of this has left the markets kind of frozen in place and awaiting the shakeout for Monday.

But enough of the markets, I’d like to concentrate on the literal fallout from the Japanese quake and its potential ramifications as a triggering event for the globe. As it stands now there are 2 nuclear reactor facilities having major cooling problems in up to FIVE reactors. These are state of the art facilities and it would take a lot to get these things to go into meltdown (like Chernobyl). But as of this writing there is a very small possibility of this happening.

And seeing as that this morning the Mainstream media types were proclaiming a ZERO CHANCE of radiation leaks, I would take all of this will a huge grain of salt. We went from NO CHANCE to SOME PROBLEMS to a LIKELY RELEASE OF A SMALL AMOUNT OF RADIATION in a matter of 12 hours or less. There are tens of thousands living in close proximity to these reactors and with all communication and electricity down and most roads impassable, it seems unlikely a general evacuation will even be possible at the moment. So looking forward to Monday and the global reaction to this event it would seem that the rosy picture painted by the MSM about this being a BULLISH event seem about as likely as their initial reports of the nuclear reactors having ZERO chance of leaking.

There is no possible way that this event cannot have a huge and negative impact on the global economic situation, and in turn upon all the people that depend upon that economic system. Japan is the 3^rd largest economy on the planet and nearly their entire country is at a stand still as of this moment. Most of the major manufacturing plants will be closed for days if not weeks even if they were not directly damaged(at least obviously) because they will have to have safety inspections to ensure they are safe.

Think of the global impact on Semi-conductor production and automotive production? What about food production in the farm heavy north. From all indications the wave swept inland in some places as far as 50 miles or more. It will be years before that area can be even minimally reclaimed. The entire Japanese fishing fleet will be out of commission for a long time as port facilities were completely wiped out and likely all the canneries and processors.

This reminds me of the happy happy talk after Katrina passed over New Orleans and the hushed talk of water rising in the city and the Mainstream Media’s insistence that there were no problems. It wasn’t until the next morning that we woke to half the city under 10 feet of water and hundreds of people dying a slow and agonizing death.

This event will evolve over the weekend and will likely have some very serious repercussions to the world economic systems. I am not talking about MARKETS here, but the macro economy at its core. You cannot have a major economic contributor like Japan just fall off the grid like it just did and not have serious problems… Mark my words, this will slowly over the coming days and weeks morph into a very serious and deadly problem.

Robert

2:30AM Friday Morning

Woke up from a fitful attempt at sleeping early tonight and rolled over to turn on the TV at about 2:15 EST and saw the carnage of the Japanese earthquake just as the first tsunami waves were rolling onto shore.

I cannot fathom the power of this event and the horrific loss of life that is likely to occur. I am only now writing this 30 minutes after waking up and trying to absorb what is happening so please forgive me for the rambling nature of this post. I am going to try and capture the event as it happens and my predictions for the morning in the United States.

As it stands now(2:40am EST) the first and second tsunami waves have crashed ashore in Northern Japan and they have been nothing less than devastating. I appears that there is major infrastructure damage, even on the outskirts of Tokyo itself. I saw a major refinery on fire and it appeared to be ready to explode into a fiery mess. The waves washed onshore to consume to the airport in Sendai, it is a large structure and appears to be holding together. There are dozens if not hundreds of people on the roof of the structure and I pray for their safety. The wave literally washed ashore and did not stop and came inland for what appeared to be MILES. It washed away everything in its path and I pray to God that the people got some kind of warning.

The only saving grace may be that it happened in the afternoon and that the people of Japan are drilled from birth to take earthquakes and tsunami deadly serious. But I fear that all the prayers in the world are not going to make the death toll any easier to bare. The loss of life is going to be staggering.

I do not think the markets at this point have had a chance to take in the totality of this event, but I fear this could be a TRIGGER EVENT.. Japan is a major market player and if the damage to the infrastructure is as bad as I fear we could be looking at a complete and utter rout in the morning and as Europe opens in the next 2 to 3 hours.

I would assume the Japanese and Asian markets in the affected areas are going to be shut down shortly if they haven’t already. At present the NIKKEI is down about 2% as is most of the Asian markets. The oil futures and the rest have not yet seemed to have reacted to this event.

What I really fear for Japan is the obvious loss of farm land as this happened in the farm heavy north of Japan and all the farms are being literally washed into the sea.

Right now US DOW futures are pointing to a 100 point drop at the open and the US Dollar is strengthening considerably on the news. We have popped well up into the 77 range and if I had to bet we will be well into the 78 range by the end of the day today. I think there will be a general sell off of anything and everything and a quick and NOT ORDERLY move to government debt in stable countries outside the affected area, which means the US Dollar and possibly Singapore and Switzerland. Expect money to flee everything and a general rout of all equities if the damage is as bad as it appears in this first 2 hours of the disaster.
I am going to post this now and update as long as I am awake which is likely to be until morning.

EDIT 3:30 AM EST

Major refinery just went up in a mushroom cloud and is likely a complete loss. Further pictures show this wave has hit all up and down the coast of Japan and will likely be devastating to the infrastructure of the country. I can only pray that the well drilled people of Japan were able to get to higher ground and that the loss of life will be much much less than the Sumatra earthquake.

But given the absolute devastation and the wide area this has affected I fear that there will be a great loss of life. I just heard that if the preliminary reports of the magnitude hold that this will be the SEVENTH largest earthquake in modern reporting times at 8.9.

There have already been multiple 7.0 PLUS aftershocks each of which in normal times would be significant. Most transport in the country is now down and I can only imagine how bad the coming days and weeks will be for this island nation. They are absolutely dependent upon their coastal infrastructure and the initial pictures from the North show complete and utter destruction of the port facilities I have seen. This will likely greatly hamper recovery efforts in the affected regions.

I have not seen any pictures of Tokyo as of yet and I will admit my ignorance of the geography of the Nation as I don’t even know if Tokyo is on the coast at all.  I am actually downloading  Google earth as we speak so I can have a better understanding of the geography and where the wave likely went and what port facilities’ were likely wiped out. This will be key to the rebuilding effort in the country as so much of what Japan does is based on shipping.

OK after viewing the map it would appear that Tokyo will be well shielded from the wave and given the extensive locks and barrier walls they have in place that the tsunami will not be a problem in the capital. I have not heard of any waves hitting the Island of Hokkaido yet, but I would think that it would have already arrived. I pray that the reason we have not seen any pictures from the island is because nothing is happening there. But it seems unlikely as they are right in the path of this earthquake.

As I write this a Tsunami warning has been issued for the Hawaiian Islands at it will arrive at about 2:00am LOCAL TIME. That is in about 2 ½ hours from this writing (3:46am).. I pray to God that the energy of this earthquake dissipates by then, but there is absolutely NOTHING to block the energy of this wave and I fear for the friends I have online who live on the big island.

Right now the markets do not seem to be responding to this disaster, the US Dollar has actually fallen off its highs and oil and the futures have all improved over the past hour. I am not sure what this means, could be that no one is awake yet to react to this monumental disaster.

I am going to post now and come back in a few. Please say a prayer for all involved.

Robert

First I’ll address today’s monster blowout on the markets and try and make some sense of it. We had a 200 point pop in the markets, wiping out the losses of Tuesday and setting up another test of the recent highs. I still think there is little chance we break out higher, but just remember my comments about PROGRAM TRADING and how computers are in charge of most trades.

We came close to breaking under 12k and failed, combined with a 1 to 2% drop in oil prices and a 30 dollar drop in gold, this sent a clear signal to the program traders that it was a buying opportunity. But there is one thing that is lurking under the surface and I have not heard any real MSM commentators speaking about it and that is the dropping US Dollar and the rising YEN/EURO spreads.

The US Dollar index has dropped well into the 76 range and hit an intra-day low of around 76.43. As I type this sentence we are at 76.51 and the Euro/USD is nearing 1.40 to the Euro. Yen is sitting at 82 and has not moved much this week so far.

This all sets up some very interesting scenario’s; just remember that I have no skin in this game as I got out in the fall of 2008 and moved to cash. Since then I have moved to paying off the last of my debt, preparations in the form of 6 months food in the pantry and longer term seeds and longer term storage items like sugar, wheat, rice and the rest. What I have left is staying in cash for now and if I consider anything it will be waiting for another dip in silver and possibly buying in at these elevated levels, though it scares the living crap out of me.

So on to the scenarios.

Scenario 1: With the US Dollar dropping this fuels the DOW and other markets up further as the expected action is that it takes more USD to buy more of the DOW/S & P. Meaning that you are getting nowhere as you have these huge 200 point increase days. The US Dollar index has dropped nearly 1 ½% in the PAST WEEK ALONE… How much did the market increase? About the same, so this means that you didn’t really gain anything being in the markets. Were you in Silver or Oil or Gold, you would have gained quite a bit as those have gone up in USD relative prices on the order of about 2 to 4 %( depending on which one). And this leads me to the LEARNING MOMENT OF THE DAY!!

This learning moment is going to be centered on NOMINAL and ACTUAL gains as it relates to the US Dollar. A nominal gain is strictly a percentage gain. Today the DOW gained about 1 ½%, so if you had invested 100 dollars in a DOW fund, you would have around 101.50 in that fund at the end of the day;  NOMINAL GAIN of $1.50.

But that is not the end of the story. You must factor in the inflation to figure out your ACTUAL gains. During the 1 week that you gained that $1.50, the CURRENCY THAT IT IS DENOMINATED IN has lost nearly the same amount. So in real terms you are no better off with the money you invested in the DOW than when you started.

But again, that is not the end of the story either. Were you to have stayed in US Dollars(meaning not investing at all) you LOST 1 ½% during that time frame(like me) as holding cash is causing you to absorb the entire loss of the value of the US Dollar. But were you to have invested those US Dollars in something like silver, then you would have gained 3%. But the problem with that gain is that it will not be realized (the same with the DOW) until you convert it BACK TO CASH.

And it is this point that has gotten me into hot water over and over again with the Gold bugs. My point about staying away from gold is based on the premise of priorities. I did not have any preparations done 2 ½ years ago (when gold was at 750) and I had received a large buyout from the company I worked at for almost 11 years. I decided that the better use of that money was to pay off the bad debt we had hanging over us (and buying food preparations and other long term cost saving ideas), instead of investing in gold.

Now here is the point I am trying to make. Had I taken all that money and invested in gold, instead of preparing by buying food and paying off bad debt,  I would have been FORCED to sell that gold about 12 months later as I had not found employment and my Unemployment benefits were running out. My wife was facing a layoff as well and we were getting cash strapped. I would have sold that gold at about 910 dollars an ounce (the price after 12 months). I would have made a small gain in the grand scheme of things and I would still be in the same debt and I would still not be prepared.

By using that money in the way I did, I was able to fundamentally change the way I was living and reduce my monthly outlays considerably. I am now in a much better financial place, even as my wife ended up losing her job at the beginning of this year. And we are now in a place that we could even risk a little bit of our money on some silver bets and not have to worry about liquidating them in a blind rush(possibly even into a falling silver price) because we are cash strapped again.

You must understand why you are getting into any investment and what your end goals are. In my case I am not worrying about a traditional retirement as I believe that is a pipe dream. I view people running around in my income bracket (middle middle class) worrying about their 401k’s and “investments” as a study in futility. Everything is going to change on that front over the next 20 to 30 years (my retirement window), so what is the point playing by the rules of that world? I am getting to cash and getting my slate clean and getting ready for whatever is coming our way.

And from that platform is where you should do your investing. If you are as prepared as you can (and that varies depending upon your location and circumstance) and you are as debt free as you can get (always moving towards being completely debt free), then you are standing on a great platform to preserve your spare wealth. And I think from that vantage point; silver and gold and other hard investments are a great place to be. But if you are standing down in the mud and you think that taking all your cash and throwing it in Precious Metals is a great idea, I think you are delusional. You are buying from a place of weakness and should we see another replay of Fall 2008 to Summer 2009, where precious metals fell, and you are forced by circumstances to liquidate into that weakness, you would feel really foolish.

But if you are out of the mud and on your platform, you can watch these drops in prices with detachment, because you are holding gold and silver for the correct reason and that is to help you on the other side of the economic chaos….

End of my sermon.

Back to the scenarios I see playing out tomorrow.

Scenario 2: Is that oil prices re-assert themselves tomorrow as the crisis in the Middle East is still unfolding and oil prices could go up considerably from these levels. Another GLARING fact that seems to have eluded the MSM commentators on CNBC (yes I pick on them a lot) is the spread between West Texas Intermediate Oil and Brent Crude Oil prices. Right now Brent is selling above the 116 level and WTI is barely above 102 as of this writing.

I have been watching oil prices since about the middle of 2005 and I mean WATCHING THEM! I check WTI/Brent futures on an almost daily basis and up until 2 months ago, Brent almost ALWAYS sold at a discount to WTI. Whenever WTI was at 80, you would expect Brent to be around 76 to 78 a barrel. But for some reason about 2 months ago this current detachment happened. And my guess is that Brent is telling the true story and that WTI is being artificially suppressed at the moment either through market manipulation (unlikely) or because of some bubble in the system that has not yet worked itself out. Whether it is manipulation or a market anomaly, it is just a matter of time before either WTI explodes upward to match Brent, or Brent collapses to meet WTI. I bet on the former as gasoline prices are pointing towards a WTI price of about 107 to 110 at this point.  And on that point RYOB gasoline prices are now hovering easily above the 3 dollar mark and will likely lead to 4 dollar gasoline at the pump in my area in a matter of 7 to 10 days at the longest(assuming no major retracement). 4 dollar gasoline is already showing up in California markets due to their high taxes.

So what happens tomorrow? Who the hell knows? But I would not use the DOW and the markets as your barometer. Remember that they are highly manipulated and they long ago lost any ability to predict the economic future as they are now run by lightning fast computer systems that no longer INVEST but rather look for arbitrage and a quick fraction of a cent gain before moving on to the next data set.

ARBITRAGE: the simultaneous purchase and sale of the same securities, commodities, or foreign exchange in different markets to profit from unequal prices.

Have a good Friday everyone.

Robert

It seems to be gathering steam this afternoon. I will hit the highlights as they are getting alarming, but still far from panic time.

Gasoline/Oil

Gasoline futures were pointing to a huge increase overnight. I didn’t comment because the last time I commented on gasoline futures, by the time the market opened it dropped 20 cents and I looked like an alarmist fool.

Well this time it stuck and then some. RYOB Gasoline prices have broken the 290 level and it is NOT STOPPING… Pencil YET ANOTHER 20 to 30 cent increase in the pipeline on top of the 20 cent increase that should be arriving at your pumps in the next day or so… What this means is that in Ohio we will move from 3.39 a gallon as of today and we will move quickly to 3.59 in the next day or so. If the price holds at the 2.90 level or goes up, we will be looking at close to 4.00 a gallon by late this week or early next week.

WTI oil is within a sneeze of 100 again on tensions in the Middle East. So it seems the MSM was once again WRONG and the ME problems are just getting started. Iran is cracking down on protestors and now we have 2 major oil producing countries sitting on the precipice of a full break down in civil society. Libya is over the edge at this point and if they don’t pull themselves back from the brink, they will look like Bagdad in a very short amount of time.

The people that could have pulled Libya out of the economic collapse have already likely left the country (the skilled oil rig workers and the engineers) and it will take a lot to convince them to return. This means that for the foreseeable future, Libyan oil production will be greatly reduced.

Now add the possibility of another 2 ½ to 3 million barrels of oil production (and Natural Gas) being removed from the markets and you can understand why Oil prices are quickly rising. Remember what I said about the 2 to 4 million barrel cushion in global oil supplies. The markets will react chaotically if that number goes below 1 million barrels and if you start adding up the supply disruption already, we are getting dangerously close to that level if Iranian supplies are disrupted.

As I am typing this sentence, RYOB gasoline futures are standing at 294 and rising and WTI is actually down a few cents at 98.90 or so.

THE DOLLAR/CURRENCY MARKETS

What really tipped me off last week was the US Dollar weakness and the sudden rise in the Euro/USD spread. Right now the Euro is nearing the 1.40 level to the USD and the Yen has broken through resistance and is at 81.65 yen to the US Dollar.

But what really caught my attention was the sudden drop of the US Dollar index which is currently sitting in the 76.93 level, having hit as low as 76.80 this morning… We are ready to break the one year low, under which the next down side resistance level is around the 73/74 level.

At current oil price levels (and gold and silver) a drop from current US Dollar levels to the 73 level would likely add another 2 to 4 dollars onto the price of oil (and similar % for gold/silver).

I don’t know what has changed in the dynamic, but during times of global unrest it is considered a slam dunk that the US Dollar index (and US Dollar to foreign currency spreads) would move in favor of a stronger dollar. This is because as people exit more volatile emerging markets (like Egypt/Iran/Pakistan/Saudi) that the money will flow back to the US markets and either be parked in US Treasuries(strengthening the US Dollar) or into the US Equities markets(driving up the DOW and S & P). Neither is happening at this point, but could reverse quickly if Iran goes over the edge.

BUT IF IT DOESN’T, then something has fundamentally changed out there in the global markets. During the worst of the 2008/2009 global economic meltdown the US Dollar strengthened from an all time low of 70.89 in the summer of 2008(something I and others were screaming about at the time) and topped out in the summer of 2009 at a high of nearly 89. I benefitted greatly from this move as I had cashed everything out in the fall of 2008 and moved it all to money markets and treasuries and avoided the collapse.

THIS IS WHAT THE SMART MONEY DOES. The inside players bid up the DOW and the other markets and as a top is formed they slowly start selling into the weak hands and move to the relative safety of the US Dollar through money market accounts and US Treasuries.

So for this has not happened, the US Dollar continues to weaken into the global instability and the Yen and Euro continue to rise. Also the Australian dollar and Canadian loony (spelling?) continue to gain against the US Dollar.

I think the US Dollar is the key number to watch at this point to figure out if this is a run of the mill market correction or something much worse. If the US Dollar continues to weaken into this growing global chaos, then I would get very worried. But if we see a re-run of the events of July 2008 to May of 2009, meaning a quick reversal of the US Dollar as money floods home to the US to seek out safety in US treasuries, then it would signal a re-play of the collapse of 2008 and another deflationary bout.

This is what I am betting on at this point, but am open to the possibility of this being different and that this may be the disconnect that we have all been waiting for and expecting. History says this is NOT it and the dollar will hold together, but at some point it will break and then everything changes for the US and the world….  I do not think we are there yet. I expect a further drop in the US Dollar to test the lowest levels around the 70.89 market, possibly going into the high 60’s and then reversing. I think this happens in a matter of months/weeks NOT months/years.

GOLD/SILVER/COMMODITIES

I will just shut up about gold and eat crow. I keep waiting for the eventual collapse of gold prices and yet it never happens. Every pullback is quickly reversed as smart money realizes it is a buying opportunity and not a gold collapse. I will say that I have been and continue to be SPOT ON with silver.

I said years ago that silver was the better play and that has proven to be correct. Unfortunately I did not benefit, as I could not risk my meager savings on something as volatile as commodities. Now that I finally have some spare change, the price of Silver is sitting at a price that just makes me too nervous to jump in, and yet I said that at 27 an ounce and it rose another 6 dollars to its current level of 33.89 34.01 34.44(moved that fast while I was writing this and getting ready to publish).

On the other commodities I am being somewhat vindicated, but nearly as much as I inferred or expected. Most soft commodities are selling off at the moment, but not in any meaningful way.

MARKETS

For now on, I will place my market update WHERE IT BELONGS, at the bottom of the heap. The markets are so rigged and manipulated that they are a farce and a complete waste of time for the serious economy watcher. It is only good to watch on days like today where you get these stomach churning drops and you see the MSM boys and girls on CNBC squirm like little children. Currently US Markets are down on the order of 1 to 1 ½%.

I do believe that there is some benefit in watching DOW and market LEVELS as opposed to any particular direction (up or down). I said that we would likely try and break UP one more time and fail and that we would reverse this week and break well below the 12K mark(11200 was my prediction). These are not arbitrary numbers, but rather points that the trading algorithms seem to gather around.

And this leads me to today’s learning moment. It is a term that is thrown around a lot called PROGRAM TRADING… And it is at the center of my market watching philosophy. Most trades on the US and global markets are no longer completed by human’s, rather they are done by computer. And I mean the trades are DONE BY THE COMPUTERS with little or no human intervention.

Obviously all trades are entered using computers in these modern markets, but what many would be surprised to learn is that even the trading STRATEGY is being run by vast computer networks created by companies like JP Morgan or Wells Fargo or Goldman Sachs. These trading algorithms are closely held company secrets as they give an edge to these major players. They can eke out a profit on a mere FRACTION OF A PENNY move on any stock or commodity. These computers are scouring the markets thousands of times a second looking for arbitrage. And what tends to happen is that the computers all start to converge around certain market prices and await a breakout in one direction or another before committing their reserves.

That is why barriers like 12K are so important, the computers have already factored in the possibility of tens of thousands of 401k owners calling in if the DOW breaks below 12K and demanding that they get out of a certain fund.

So if the 12k barrier is broken all the computers begin to sell and this is how a 1000 point drop in the DOW can happen in a matter of 10 minutes. When all the computers independently converge around certain market price points, it sets up a big move, either to the upside or down. But it is the downside that is the most concerning as the computers move so fast that sometimes they fly ahead of their human masters and cause a market panic.

So that is PROGRAM TRADING and it is a big factor in my predictions around certain DOW numbers (and the US Dollar Index and Oil/Gasoline).

We are nearing the 12K point again and the DOW is off by 105 112 129(falling by the minute).. If we have a 200 point drop today we will be standing at the edge of 12k again. I don’t think we break it today, but likely by Wednesday.

Got to go, the sun is shining and it is actually kind of warm today. Greenhouse temperature is already over 70 degrees and today is MARCH 1^st.. Time to get the seeds in the ground….

Have a good day, will likely have another update sometime around 1 or 2am this morning.

Robert

It was truly an amazing feat, that these men with nearly no technology and relatively few people, could coral so many intelligent and incredibly strong elephants. The process starts by identifying a large herd of elephants; they will light a brush fire on one side of the herd which starts the whole process.

There are few things that will scare an elephant and fire is a big one. They get the herd moving in the general direction that they want them to go, at no point can they let the elephants see them as this will cause them to panic and to move in the wrong direction(as people are the other thing that will scare the smart elephants).

Instead; just out of site of the heard is a very weak fence made of brush and sticks. Should the elephants veer off course, they will encounter this barrier. Now if the elephants realized they were being herded at this point, they would panic and burst through the very weak fence. At this point it is far too hard to build an elephant proof fence, it is impossible to anticipate where along this long line they might decide to bolt, so the trick is to just keep moving them forward and if they get too close to the fence, there are men with torches there to scare them back towards the middle of the path.

This goes on for a mile or longer and the further along they move, the closer the walls get and the easier it gets for the relatively few men to scare the elephants back into the middle of the path. Eventually the elephants enter the trap. Had they realized at any point before then, that they were heading for a trap, they could have easily just pushed over the weak fence and trampled the torch wielding man. But the elephants almost NEVER do this, they just keep moving along until they enter the trap.

Inside the trap the walls are reinforced and can withstand a full sized elephant hurling himself against the wall. When the elephants enter the trap area, the door is swung shut behind them and then all hell breaks loose. The elephants go insane and smash themselves against the walls. The men brandish torches to further scare and torment them. This is to get them to wear themselves out in a completely futile attempt at escaping. After many many hours of this torment the next phase begins. They will introduce several domesticated elephants into the corral, in an attempt to calm the herd down and to start picking them off one by one. Two elephants will straddle one wild elephant and they will slowly lead him off to a pen where he will be by himself to complete the process of breaking.

The elephant is removed from his herd and he is surrounded by men with torches. He is chained by the leg and staked to the ground and try as he might, he cannot break free. After days of this treatment he is then introduced to domesticated elephants who take him through the last parts of his “training” and he is from then on a domesticated elephant (or if he cannot be trained he is euthanized).

What does this story have in common with our current economic crisis? Plenty! We as a country (and world) are being led down a certain path. An economic fire was lit behind us almost 11 years ago that scared the living hell out of everyone. That fire was no accident, it was a foreseeable crisis that anyone with a shred of economic common sense could and should have seen coming. The problem with this country is that all economic common sense is beaten out of everyone by the age of 18 by making it seem boring and nerdish. No one wants to understand basic economic theory, so therefore they are easily scared by mysterious men behind weak fences that keep us on our path. Paulson jumps up in front of congress with his torch “PASS TARP OR THE ECONOMY WILL BE DESTROYED, BLAAAHHHHH”. And like pliant little piss ants, they comply, because their woeful economic education does not allow them to understand that outside that weak little fence that Paulson (and now Geithner) is guarding lies true economic freedom.

We are so afraid of smashing through the fence and seeing what lies on the other side, that we will willingly continue walking along a path we KNOW leads to an economic trap. In 2008 I warned that if something did not change, that they would bar the economic doors on those who did not understand the dangers of blindly following the advice of Paulson/Geightner/Bernanke/ and Greenspan.

The time to have gotten enraged was 2 ½ or 10 years ago, at that point we could still have broken free, but now we have entered the trap. They have successfully re-organized the banking system and completely re-written all the rules regarding our monetary system(ALL WITH NO PUBLIC INPUT OR CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT!!!) and now they will sit back as all the big bull elephants hurl themselves in abstract futility against the walls of their pen. The unions and the pensioners and the middle class and the business owners and all the rest are now going to get good and angry. They will whip themselves up into a good lather and they will smash themselves against the walls. The boogie men will come out of the shadows and brandish torches to try and keep them scared.

The Glenn Beck’s of the MSM will come out and proclaim the jihadists are out to get you. Those scary Egyptians are coming for your freedom and you better listen to him. The liberals will roll out the “they are coming for your pensions, they are coming for your jobs, and they will take away your collective bargaining rights!!!” And both sides will be whipped up into a righteous fury as they wear themselves out fighting the wrong fucking battle.

For you see, the Egyptian’s (and Saudi’s) ARE coming to take away our way of life. But what Glenn Beck doesn’t tell you is that WE deserve it. Our way of life is being propped up by stealing the fruits of other countries without so much as giving them affordable food in return. No; we send them pallet loads of green paper that is devalued almost as soon as it arrives and goes to line the pockets of our hand selected dictator da jour and nearly none of it goes to the working class or the poor.

For you see, YOUR PENSION IS GONE! They stole it years ago and the only reason you didn’t realize it, was because they were writing IOU’s to the state treasury (which counted as real money). Your government job in many cases is already gone; you just don’t know it yet. There isn’t enough money in the budget to keep you employed as a state/county employee, and no one is willing to see their already dwindling pay checks get taxed at a rate high enough for you to keep your job. (Don’t expect the elites to pony up the money; that would be against everything they have fought for these past many years).

The fire they lit a decade ago or longer burned all of it to the ground and started you on a path to where you stand now. Had you decided to wake up in 2002 or 2003 and realized that the American way of life was a complete sham and actually had done something about it, we might have had a chance. How the hell could we have not immediately have started riots in the streets the day that George W Bush stood in front of the nation and told us in the wake of 9/11 “TO GO OUT AND SHOP. THAT IT WAS OUR DUTY AS GOOD AMERICANS!!!” How the hell could we not have seen it then?

But they kept moving us along with cheap houses and double digit increases in our home equity values. They kept us going by engaging in 2 wars over resources and kept us in a perpetual state of fear over another terrorist attack. Only they didn’t tell the masses that it was our belligerent actions that were all but ensuring that we would breed yet another generation of US hatred among those that we dominate.

The average American probably felt a certain kinship with the throngs of people in Egypt. There is something very moving about seeing people deciding that they have had enough and to just break free! But here is a little hint for those that are just slowly waking up to the nightmare that surrounds you. The people of Egypt are actually pissed as hell at you. And it isn’t because you are free and that they are not, it is not out of envy of your “way of life”, it is because they have lived under your boot for decades and you didn’t lift a FINGER TO HELP THEM WHEN IT MATTERED!(And just to be clear. I AM PART OF YOU. I did NOTHING to stop this nightmare, save write a lot of words from 2004 to the present).

We are now in the trap and like predictable elephants; the bulls among us are hurling themselves against the walls. My advice is to not listen to them, but rather to save your strength and to bide your time.

After all of the ruckus that was created in Wisconsin, what was accomplished? They passed the bill anyway and all the anger has now turned to resentment and to passivity and angry acceptance. For they were raging against the wrong thing; they were hurling themselves against an immovable fence. For you see the states are really going bankrupt now and there is nothing you can do about it at this point.

But what you can do is to realize that everything in your life has fundamentally changed and that at this point you have nothing left to lose. To me, the best course of action is to wait until enough of us are awake and angry and UNITED and we rush them where they are the most vulnerable. The next phase is already underway and that is the part where they make our captivity seem to be an inevitability. Next Ohio will pass Senate Bill 5(the same thing that they fought in Wisconsin) and the governor will sign it into law and the unions will rally everyone once again to the state capital in a vain attempt at changing their minds. GUESS WHAT, IT IS ALREADY DONE. And marching in Columbus will accomplish absolutely nothing.

After Ohio will be a whole avalanche of states doing the same thing and in each state they will hold rallies and there will be anger and maybe even some violence. BUT WHAT IS EVERYONE FIGHTING FOR? They are fighting to hold onto a system that is corrupt and is destroying this world. Would it not be better to save your righteous anger to fight the REAL FIGHT? End this corrupt monetary system that sucks the wealth of the 3^rd world to the United States and its Western friends in a vain attempt at keeping this financial Ponzi scheme inflated.

Wouldn’t it be better if we all worked to end the choke hold on us all by a relatively few number of people? WE OUT NUMBER THEM and it is not even close. We only need 10% of the people who are currently being blindly corralled to just do the unthinkable. And that is to JUST STOP! When they come at you with torches, don’t react. When they send in the faux elephants to try and convince you to follow them out of the pen, DO NOT GO! Just stand pat and wait.

Stop spending money, stop consuming, stop taking out lines of credit. Pay off your Credit cards if at all possible, or be really revolutionary and just stop paying them if at all possible(legally would be even better). Start selling off your 401k and move your money to cash and from cash start paying off the worst of your debt and start purchasing real things that have value(and buying 2^nd hand would be the best. If you must buy new, then cash only).

The point is to not let them feed upon your fear and to do the EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEY ARE TRYING TO GET YOU TO DO! If they want you to “consume” because it is your patriotic duty, you should do the opposite and buy 2^nd hand and not from some corporate company, but from Craigslist. If they raise the price of food on you, work to grow some of your own and help your neighbor do the same.

At some point when they realize that you are not allowing yourself to be led off to your economic death, they will get desperate and they will have to try and FORCE you to do things. Once this happens the other 90% of the herd will realize what is happening. Once the majority of people wake up to how evil these people are, they will gladly join you (and me) in our economic revolution. Once we stop enslaving ourselves in our old way of thinking, we will be free to truly change things.

But if we continue to think that Saudi Arabian oil is ours and that those brown skinned people that live over OUR oil fields, is the truth, we will find that we will make any excuse necessary to allow our masters to go over there and deal out “justice” to keep the oil flowing.

If we continue to DEMAND that unsustainable pensions and 401k’s and all the other “INTEREST” bearing vehicles that we use to MAKE MONEY UPON MONEY is a path to freedom and security, then we will make any number of excuses to allow our politicians to continue to screw over the people of the 3^rd world to keep the conveyor belt of wealth transference going from East to West.

We have a choice right now, but the time to exercise that choice is quickly fading. We can choose to continue fighting for things that are corrupt and evil or we can grow up and realize that our way of life IS NOT WORTH SAVING!

Is the American way of life so bereft of humility and generosity, that we have to FORCE other countries to provide us with our sustenance and wealth? We are a country that has immeasurable wealth and yet we are forced by this corrupt system to go out into the world and TAKE MORE. Do we really need new electric cars? Really? Do we really need bullet trains to get us to DISNEYWORLD FASTER? Really?

How is it all going to get built? Where does the energy come from to accomplish all of this? How do you get to retire at age 62, when you are expected to now live well past 74 years of age or longer? Where does it all come from?

WE NEED TO FIGHT, but we had damn sure better be fighting the correct fight, because this is a once in a generation opportunity that lies before us and if we screw it up now, it will be a mistake that we will all have to live with for the rest of our lives(and our children’s and likely their children).

Robert

First I’d like to thank everyone for the kind words and for coming to my site. Today marked the first time I have gotten over 400 visitors in one day since my record day back in early 2009 when I posted my Eye Wall article, when I was receiving close to 1500 visitors a day. It is very encouraging and is all the reason I need to keep posting. I was content to write to 40 or 50 a day, but having larger numbers of people reading helps keep me motivated.

MARKETS:

DOW closed down about 36 on the day after actually breaking through the 12k level for a mere 2 or 3 minutes during trading. At 2:00pm there was a shift in sentiment and the bulls rushed in to “buy on the dip”.  This could be seen as a very bullish event if you are a chart watcher (which I am). We dipped below 12K (important barrier number) and immediately the trading programs jumped in and started to buy. This is significant to note as a hard break point on the markets. Any downward movement on the DOW will have to break 12k to get any traction.

At this point we are early in futures trading and there seems to be very little volatility at the moment. Libya is the big news item right now and the markets have absorbed the reality that Libyan oil shipments for the foreseeable future are off the market(like 75% of production). This is not a huge deal in the grand scheme. But the action last night around 2:00am to about 4:30am should shed a very clear light on the connection to Oil prices and the markets. At about 2am Dated Brent Oil surged past 120 a barrel and was quickly followed by WTI at 4am as it rose over 104 a barrel. Conversely the DOW plunged to nearly 100 points down on the futures markets and gold/silver surged as well.

I posted to Facebook all concerned at 4:30am about how fast things were swirling out of control. I went to bed at 6:00am and woke up at 1:00pm and it was like nothing happened. The futures markets can really mess with you when you are up all night. I forget how quickly things can change when the market opens at 9:30am. BUT SOMETHING happened last night that spooked the night investors. You had to see it happen in real time, the speed and depth of the movement was scary. WTI opened and within minutes was up over 9 bucks and RYOB gasoline futures were almost at 290. By the time I woke up, they had all settled back down to where they started the night.

What this should tell you is that the market is sitting on a hair trigger and the slightest scare from the energy producers is going to cause an immediate reaction.

Right now markets seem calm and I will stick to my original prediction that we go into this weekend on a strong note. I think the markets might actually pull out a green day tomorrow, but I will also stand by my assertion that we are at the end of the Bull Run and events will start to spiral even faster next week. Unemployment numbers are getting worse each week and the housing numbers continue to weaken. Combine all the negative economic numbers with Oil pushing past the 100 dollar level and you have the makings of “profit taking” on the equities markets.

12K will be breached to the downside going into next week in my opinion. And from there we will quickly retrace back to 11200 and pause. 11200 is another barrier number and it fought hard on that number the last time on the way down and more recently on the way up.

And just to be as CLEAR AS MUD. There is no support ABOVE 12K at this point. Should the markets get a head of steam behind them and the Middle East problems are laid to rest, we could see a HUGE move to the upside. Again I am not supporting this outcome as I think the Middle East situation is going to get worse not better. We have two MAJOR clouds hanging over the markets right now.

One is the Internet movement among the youth of Saudi Arabia. They are planning a “day of rage” for the first week of March.

Two is the showdown with House Republican’s and the President on the budget.

Either one is a potential game changer, but together it should be enough to freeze the Bulls out and start a short term selloff to the levels I indicated above.

ENERGY/COMMODITIES:

Looks like oil has settled down a little bit as I noted above; Libyan oil production has been taken out of the world markets and as expected Saudi Arabia has stepped in and said they will backstop any production loss from Libya and Egypt. This should ABSOLUTELY UNDERSCORE the importance of Saudi Arabia to the economic world.

Now personally I doubt that Saudi can actually backstop the loss of Libya and Egypt as I am of the belief that KSA (I will use that from now on when talking about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) is at or near their peak production capacity. But for now all it takes is a little pump rattling from KSA and the world energy markets will jump. That is why I am watching these protests in KSA so incredibly close. Even though the US of A imports very little oil from the Middle East anymore, it does not matter. If there is even a 5 or 10% loss of production from KSA, it would mean an immediate jump in global oil prices to the 150 to 200 dollar a barrel range. Just one major pipeline sabotage or refinery blocked by protesters and you could see that kind of loss.

The world is operating on a cushion of about 2 to 4 million barrels of spare capacity at any given time. That is why Libya/Egypt is not that incredibly important at this point (from a strictly energy point of view). The combined loss to markets is less than 1.5 million barrels a day. But the daily output of KSA is somewhere around 7.5 to 9 million barrels a day and 10% of that is around 1 to 1.5 million barrels a day. Once the cushion in the markets gets below 1.5 to 2 million barrels a day is when you start to see parabolic price increases like we saw in the run-up from 2007 to the top in early 2008 at $146 a barrel.

But for now we are sitting below the incredibly important physiological barrier of 100 a barrel for WTI(West Texas Intermediate).

And since I am going to be doing these updates more frequently, I think it’s important to understand the jargon that the markets throw around. West Texas Intermediate is a standard used to grade oil on the markets. WTI is a Sweet and Light grade of oil, meaning that it has very little Sulfur (sweet versus sour, meaning it burns cleaner and needs less refining) and that it is LIGHT. The later is the most important distinction. Light Crude is highly desirable and is why all oil is NOT CREATED EQUAL!!! Light Sweet crude is the mother’s milk of the oil industry as it is easy to refine and is very lucrative as you get the absolute most amount of distillates from refining.  Oil runs from LIGHT/SWEET to SOUR/HEAVY and everything in between. On the Sour/Heavy side is Venezuelan oil. It is very hard to refine and is very messy and polluting. You don’t get the output you would get from Light Crude. So you have to refine MORE and the costs go UP the heavier and sourer the oil gets.  And on the very worst end of the scale is the Heavy Tar sands of Alberta Canada (or their cousins in Colorado or Venezuela). They call it oil, but it is nothing of the sort. It is not even liquid. The amount of refining and excavating that this stuff needs to get it to market is incredibly energy intensive.

So I hope that helps a little in understanding how the energy markets view crude oil. Not all crude is created equal and is why WTI is the standard that all oil is held against.

So anyways, WTI is sitting at 97 a barrel and RYOB gasoline futures (just another standard like WTI) are sitting just above 273 a gallon. This will pencil out to about 3.65 a gallon in Ohio in a matter of days. We are already seeing 3.49 at places in the Toledo market.

I will touch lightly on the commodities markets in general at the end of my update in the conclusions section. There is some rather good tin foil brewing on the inter-webs regarding Ben Bernanke and QE2.

THE US DOLLAR:

Haven’t commented on the ole Green Back in quite awhile; but we are BACK TO THE ONE YEAR BREAK OUT NUMBER YET AGAIN!! We are ready to break under 77 on the US Dollar Index chart and have not broken this level since the bottom was reached in 2008(around the 70.85 level). We have twice come to this point and both times we reversed and saw a strong recovery, which in turn drove down oil prices and commodities prices. This is not talked about enough, but the correlation between a WEAK US DOLLAR and rising commodities prices is absolute. As the dollar weakens, it will take more US Dollars to buy a set amount of commodities, be it Silver/Gold or Grain/Rice.

The fall in the dollar does not explain the 100% price increases we have seen over the last year, but it is a contributing factor. If the US Dollar breaches the 76 level over the coming days/weeks it will be yet another incredibly bearish sign post.

So many things are retracing their path from the early parts of 2008 and late 2007, only the pace is exponentially faster this time. From late 2007 into the summer of 2008, saw the near collapse of the US Dollar as it plunged to a record low of 70.85(give or take a penny). This fuelled an already red hot oil price to a record 146 a barrel. It drove food prices and electric/NG prices up and set the stage for the 2008 banking/economic collapse.

The same confluence of events is coming into focus; the dollar is falling (currently at 77.10 or so) which is feeding into energy price increases (along with naturally occurring fear based price increases). Commodities across the board are rising along with gasoline prices(currently nearing 3.50 a gallon in Ohio) and this will eventually sap a large portion of consumer discretionary spending, just as business’ were starting to stretch themselves out a little bit in the hopes of a recovery.

Oil prices and the Dollar are absolutely linked at the hip and they both have their own gravity. Sometimes it is the US Dollar pushing on Oil and sometimes visa versa. But right now they are both under assault and I think they are both individually falling/rising for different reasons. The dollar is falling as there is growing resentment among our creditor nations (China/Japan/Etc) that we continue to rack up Trillion Dollar Plus Budget deficits and oil is rising out of fear of KSA falling into the hands of the Sunni majority and that they will likely not be amenable to western pressure to pump at all costs to hold down oil prices.

CONCLUSION:

Tomorrow is likely to be another quiet day barring any unrest in the Middle East or elsewhere. We will likely see the DOW down out of the gates and quickly rebound as we failed to take out 12K. This will set up program trading to come in and buy the dip and drive markets up. I predict a modest 75 point gain on the DOW. Oil is likely to stay put and gold/silver/commodities will continue its selloff as this is the undercurrent to be watching in the coming days. And is where I will leave this post, with a bit of Tin Foil I’ve been hearing about from places like Zerohedge and George Ure.

I give it credence as it ties in nicely with a macro prediction I have stood firm with, even as it has made me look incredibly foolish for over 2 years now. It is the basis of my continuing belief that a final deflationary collapse is in the works and it will come at the hands of the Federal Reserve itself.

The tin foil goes as THUS.. Bernanke instituted QE2 (2^nd round of Monetizing the Federal Debt) around 5 or 6 months ago and this has had the very foreseeable (and probably incredibly disappointing to Ben) result of driving up global commodities prices. The Fed was hoping beyond hope to spur new loans and to prop up the US Housing market. Instead the money has bled into the very real area of global food commodities. This has had the effect of driving numerous countries into a state of Civil War and this movement of revolution is now standing on the door step of KSA (Saudi Arabia).

The Fed and the government understand what the loss of KSA to the United States means and they will not let that happen without a major fight (economic). This means that the US Fed is going to have to relent on QE2 and they will start to pull liquidity from the system in an attempt to drive down the price of global food and energy by starving investors of liquidity with which they are betting on global food/energy indexes.

If this happens it will start a chain reaction that will cause everything to drop in price in unison and it will be quick and severe. They will be forced to drive up interest rates in the United States to help draw in foreign money to cover the US Budget deficit and this will mean another round of housing price decreases and a new slate of foreclosures.

Watch the Feds language over the coming weeks to see if this has any merit. They will have to telegraph this move at least a little bit. They cannot raise interest rates without any warning, but even a warning may be enough to cause a global selloff in commodities and is the reason I feel that silver and gold will fall quite hard in the coming weeks/months…..  We’ll see…

Have a Good Friday.

Robert

DOW and EQUITIES MARKETS

For 2 days we’ve seen a pretty sustained sell off in the equities markets. This is peanuts compared to the nearly yearlong and prolonged gains they have seen, but I think it deserves to be watched. The DOW reached a post crash high of nearly 12400 at the close last Friday. We have since lost nearly 250 points and are one more triple digit close from breaking back under 12K. This is significant because markets do follow some semblance of order and certain levels are psychologically important. When the markets broke through 12K for the first time since the collapse, it fed upon itself and quickly rose to over 12,400. If we break below 12K, I can see us quickly re-tracing back to the 11,400 level which is the next level of resistance on the downside in my estimation.

Markets are poised to rebound at the moment (11:30pm Wednesday) as futures are pointing to a moderate gain. But at this point last night the futures were pointing to a large gain at the open that quickly dissipated and ended with a 103 point drop at the close. Again this is a SMALL LOSS in comparison to the gains; it amounts to a less than 1% loss on the day and a cumulative 2.1% loss in 2 days. This is a far cry from the 3 or 4 or even 6% losses we were seeing at the worst of the 2008 collapse. But the fear is back, and once the bull fever subsides, we could see it replaced with a long and sustained return to the bottom I’ve long called for, but have yet to see. If you remember in 2007 I had given a series of predictions that would see the market re-trace its 2001 collapse and break through to the 5200 level on the DOW. The collapse followed very closely the levels I was looking at (remember the 8702 level?? That was almost funny as it danced at that number for weeks). But just as the bottom was forming and a further fall was set to happen(from the bottom at 6667 on the DOW), the Fed and the US Treasury stepped in to stop the inevitable deflationary collapse that was set to burn this economy down to the ground.

We will eventually retrace those numbers; and I believe that it has already started. I do not expect us to top the 12400 level again, but I could be wrong. If there is a quick and painless resolution to the Middle East problems and Saudi Arabia is able to quell any internal strife, then the Bulls might stage a comeback. But I think all forward momentum on the markets is lost and a return to the old trend line is at hand. I expect a few days of moderate to possibly strong gains going into the weekend. Probably pulling back to within striking distance of 12400; but that is likely to be the end.

COMMODITIES:

This will anger a lot of people here, but I am sticking to my long held position that gold and silver are going to go through one more sustained period of collapse. Not saying to sell, JUST BE MENTALLY PREPARED FOR IT. Just try and keep some powder dry so that you can swoop in and buy up some lower priced silver (my preference) and gold.

But even as I write this Silver has jumped over 33 an ounce and Gold is falling slightly to the 1408 level (give or take). But it is the other commodities that I am watching. With oil finally catching up with the long term trend line, it is going to do to the economy what it did in 2006/2007, only it will happen MUCH quicker and much more violently. I do not think we see 110 dollar oil or 4.50 gasoline this time around. I think we are very near the level where it will choke off economic growth (what little there was), and it will set in motion another (and possibly FINAL?) deflationary spiral that will send all commodities/equities/home prices into the sewer. It will be accompanied by another massive round of layoffs at the public sector and small business level. Be prepared to benefit from collapsing prices as this is likely to be the last go around of this merry-go-round.

After the deflationary collapse, prices will likely move from collapsed to high to possibly unaffordable in a very short time frame(like less than 12 months). Just keep watching and waiting. Do not sell unless you have to cover something of greater importance on the way down, but rather save up some money to buy silver at a greatly reduced amount. I think 17 is a good number to look for, but possibly only as low as 21 or 22. I am not rich enough to afford Gold, so I will withhold any comment.

OIL PRICES:

WTI prices finally whipsawed back in line with Brent Crude. Was this really a surprise to anyone? Really? Brent has been selling at a nearly 12 dollar premium to WTI and it was explained by any number of ridiculous mainstream reasons. Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one and that is WTI was being manipulated down for political reasons. WTI corrected nearly 10 dollars in 48 hours shaving billions off of GDP in that amount of time. And that number will continue every single day that oil prices stay at these levels.

Oil prices are the lynch pin to everything at this point and should be watched CLOSELY. And I mean this literally. If you have an APP on your smart phone, I would have it track WTI and BRENT by the minute over the coming days and weeks. Before CNN, before FOXNEWS or any other news show tells you that there has been an uprising in Saudi Arabia or some other large producing nation, the markets will react violently like they did this week. We could see a 10 or 15 dollar spike on just a RUMOR of problems in Saudi Arabia.

The price of oil is already causing gasoline prices to spike towards the upper 3 dollar a gallon range and is already past 4 dollars in some California markets(due to higher taxes). 4 dollars is the line which we cannot cross in the United States. It is not just purely psychological either. At 4 dollars a gallon a person making Min Wage mine as well stay home as the fuel costs (and the rising costs of food and the rest) will make working almost a negative. At 4 dollars it costs the average middle class SUV driver close to 65 to 75 dollars to fill the vehicle. Combined with rising costs for home heating and electricity, it will quickly sap any spare money they were using to go out to eat or to buy whatever small amount of luxuries they were just starting to venture out and buy.

The same confluence of events is replaying that played from Late 2006 to early 2008(the spiking of basic prices like energy and food). Only this time it will complete in months not years. There is no more slack in the system and anything that drains liquidity from the consumer is going to be immediately felt as companies and service providers do not have access to deep wells of credit like they did from 2006 to 2008. They are living on the razors edge.

CONCLUSION:

We are entering a period of chaos again and it will likely get much worse. But remember that things do not go up in a straight line and neither will it go down in a straight line. We are bouncing along the bumpy plateau of Peak Oil. We wondered in 2005/06 what it might look like and to be honest it is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Granted we are only in the opening stages and it is likely to get much worse. But from the vantage point of 2006, I thought 2011 would be the year that it was entering the final stages of economic collapse.. We have not even completed the opening stages yet.

Robert

Changing Your Paradigm by Robert Denner April 2005

I have heard more than once from younger people and older people, about their inability to make changes. I have heard a variety of reasons for this inability. “I’m 18 to 23 and in college and completely dependent on my parents for money and sustenance” to “I’m 72 and I can’t work a hoe or I’m incapable of physical labor”. These aren’t excuses and in no way am I berating anyone for these reasons.

But what is stopping you is not the reasons you site, but your paradigm. We all were brought up (with a few exceptions), to believe that it was our God given right to a better life. This age old American paradigm has held true since the founding of our country, and even before then.

So, why all of a sudden isn’t it our God given right to inherit and in turn leave behind a better country?

As most on this list will have figured out by now, it’s because for the past 60 years or more, the American paradigm has been slowly shifted on us. What a “better life” used to be is vastly different than it is now. A better life was saving and prudence, and forbearance. You did this so that those that come after you would have more. I don’t know if it’s human nature that seems to dictate that when humans have too much, they squander it? Kind of like the saying “the surest way to be late, is to have too much time on your hands”. The post peak oil saying may go like this – “the surest way to destroy a society is to have too good of a society”.

But I digress. The point is, is that we have all been sold a bill of goods that says, a better life is a bigger, nicer car. A better life is a 3500sqft home in the “burbs”. A better life is 10 credit cards and a 100k line of credit at the bank.

And on and on it goes.

The paradigm shift that has occurred is that we have become programmed to think that savings and prudence are boring and stupid, and immediate gratification is everything.

To those thinking about college, I would never dissuade a person from attaining knowledge, but how you gain this knowledge is of the utmost importance. In days gone by, it was very costly to attend a University, and it was meant to be that way. Most “smart” people in the old days learned it the hard way. They went to libraries and sought out those with knowledge and became their pupils of sorts. If you were lucky and had the money, you saved and went to a University. Now it’s everyone’s God given right to go to a University. And the price of admission for this newest generation is economic slavery. We have kids coming out of college with 50k of student loan debt and 20k in credit card debt. All of this for a degree that will, in most cases, net them at best 35k a year for the first 5 years of employment. Now here is the paradigm shift as it pertains to you. That 35k may have been enough 5 years ago, but it isn’t anymore. With costs rising, that 50k in loan debt and the racked up Visa is a noose around your neck. The paradigm shift for you means to use your youth and energy to rethink your way out of this box. I can’t tell you what the effect on you personally will be, but I can tell you that 75% of college graduates (or more) are graduating with record debt levels and record employment opportunities (in the bad direction). This is as plain to see as the nose on your face, yet the paradigm tells you, YOU MUST DO THIS!! Go to college, go into debt, and you will be rewarded.

Well the paradigm changed on you, and no one decided to tell you.

My advice is this: If you haven’t already started college, don’t!! Unless you can, with very good odds, predict that you can do it with cash only, and will end up with great employment opportunities at the end.

My advice would be, put your efforts towards something else. There is a huge need for those who can DO, in this society. Machinist, carpenters, and mechanics are needed in this society also. These are considered menial and beneath a lot of college bound people. But, they are well paid, and require a minimal amount of money to learn (compared to a University). If you are in the fourth year of your degree and have already racked up 50k in school debt, and have maxed out the Visa’s my advice is to go ahead and finish, but realize what has happened to your paradigm.

Stop your bleeding. Stop using any form of debt to finish your degree, even if this means adding a few more semesters to your finish time. Find a job now, to help pay your way through. Swallow your pride now, so that you will have some food to swallow later. Get a couple jobs at the local burger joint, and taco stand. Halve your classes and slash your lifestyle (what little you probably had).

If you can’t do this now, while you are only answerable to yourself, think about how hard it will be in two years? Think about following the paradigm to the next level. Because it is telling you to get married and buy a house, get a new car, have a few kids, etc, etc. Think about how hard it will be to change then?? By paying your way through to the end, it will teach you a valuable lesson about a future of dwindling resources. Because the first casualty of peak- oil will be the economy. And having to do with a lot less money and no credit cards is in everyone’s future, so get used to it now, while it’s still a choice.

Once you graduate, it’s up to you, not the paradigm, to choose where you go from there. A year from now, things may not be that bad yet (but assuredly getting harder). Set your goals a little more realistically. Try and use your paid for knowledge to get a job of course, but understand that the market for a Communications major or a Psychology degree is getting pretty thin. You may have to accept the fact that you just blew 50k on a major you won’t ever use. Prepare mentally now for that fact. If you land a great job at your dream firm, DOUBLE BONUS!! But if not, don’t sit with your thumb you know where. Get over it, and start thinking outside the box.

What else are you good at, that you can start making money now?

The point is to start getting your head around all of this. That is where the change must come. Once you accept the loss of everything you thought was going to happen, it gets much easier to adapt (last stage of Lise’s stages of peak oil mourning).

For the older peak oil learner, things are a lot harder.

You were made a promise in a time when the paradigm told you that if you work hard, save, put money in the bank and payoff your house you will be OK. Well it turns out the paradigm lied to you also. And this lie is way worse for you. You may have been promised a pension from your big company (and still may be receiving it). Prepare yourself mentally now, that the pension is gone. Because as companies find it harder and harder to maintain current operations, pensions will be the first casualty. I can’t imagine the fear that one statement must provoke for some people. You have saved and persevered all these years, with the thought that this would be your payoff. And to have it so cruelly pulled away at the end, has to be hard to swallow.

Like the above college person, you must prepare for a complete change in paradigms. If 10 years from now, your company is still paying your pension and health care, that’s double bonus time!! But, you must get your head around the fact, that statistically speaking, this won’t happen. The only way that the big companies are going to survive through this stage of extreme prices and energy shortages, is to dump its pension liability (among a lot of other drastic things). Like your younger college counterparts, you have a few things going for you, that a lot of others don’t. You have physical freedom and you have independence. You may be wheelchair bound, or have other physical problems, but you answer to yourselves and yourselves only. Children are probably grown and gone, and will probably fight you, if you take any of the advice I’m about to give. But, you are your own PERSON… What your kids think of you is of little consequence. You are free.

If you are elderly and are counting on getting your pension till you die, consider going to your company now, and asking for a buyout of your pension, while the money is still there. Something drastic like a 50 cent on the dollar buyout of your likely pension, may be accepted as a way to cut their future liability to you. Consider selling your house and moving closer to relatives you think you could count on in the future. Consider this, if you know relatives who are struggling financially who have kids – see about becoming a sitter for them. Trust me on this, if they have two kids, and both of them are working, they are paying somewhere north of $900 a month in child care costs.

Use your free time to learn skills that maybe useful in the future. Sewing and stitching seem like good bets. Or for the men, small home repairs. Young whipper snappers such as myself, don’t have a clue as to most small home repairs. Like getting a door to stop sticking. Or the proper way to join two water pipes together. Or a thousand other little pieces of knowledge that one acquires from 75 years of living. In the old days, the elderly were highly respected and valuable. I see absolutely no reason why this won’t be the case in the future.

Oil has substituted for the knowledge of our peers for over 60 years. We were able to throw away the wisdom of that generation. Why fix this or that, when you can run down to Home Depot and replace it. My father-in-law is a goldmine of now ‘useless’ information – but his ability to fix things, and think of new ways to compensate for his disability (he had polio as a boy), is truly heartening. There are a hundred other ways to compensate for your perceived weaknesses.

The point for all, is get out there and try.

The old paradigm is dying, and a new one is being forming. What the new paradigm will tell us? I’m not sure. But I know it will be formed by both young and old alike. As the saying goes “power hates a vacuum”, and make no mistake, a world without a paradigm is a vacuum. What rushes in to fill that vacuum is up to all of us. Does that vacuum get filled by our worst daemons or our best angels? Don’t know the answer to that obviously. But I am hopeful. The people I read on so many of these boards gives me heart.

Individually we don’t have all the answers, but as a group, we can hopefully fill the coming void with a hopeful future.

If you actually read this far, thanks for reading