Just Another Black Friday

 
Greetings, Loyal Readers!

The following story came about after I did some independent investigation about our current financial quandary and then watched one too many scary Black Friday videos.  I hope that it's not too "real".

-D

***

Every muscle in Lynn's body was as taut as an iron cable.  She knew that if she dropped her guard for even so much as a second she'd probably be crushed.  The last time she was in a crowd this frenetic was at a Foo Fighters concert back in 1997.  She'd made the mistake of venturing into the mosh pit during a boisterous rendition of "Monkey Wrench" and barely escaped with her cranium intact.  But that was a long, long time ago when people risked life and limb for something so frivolous a cause as entertainment.

Standing in that nebulous lineup for the past five hours, Lynn realized that she'd been in similar situations plenty of times before and all of them were self-inflicted.  Indeed, she'd stood outside of a Wal-Mart, Best Buy or Target store on countless occasions on the eve of Thanksgiving or early the following morning.  Instead of being at home, warm and cozy with her family and friends she'd often be found languishing in an outdoor queue and willfully risking exposure.  All of this for the privilege of participating in an organized stampede and then getting into a shoving match with a complete stranger over a competitively priced Kindle Fire Tablet, Logitech Webcam or a leather iPad case.

'What an idiot,' she thought to herself as she braced her foot against the glass door.

She looked up and caught a glimpse of fear in the eyes of the blue-vested minimum wage junkie just inside.  She imagined that from his perspective the throng barricaded behind the door must have bore a striking resemblance to the shuffling, brain-dead ghouls in George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead.  Here they stood, pawing at the doors of a retail store, desperately trying to gain ingress to a place they were irrationally compelled to gravitate towards since it "meant so much to them in life".

Lynn was jolted from her mental reverie as some very large and very strong people crushed into her from behind.  She battled a wave of claustrophobia as her own clenched fists dug into her torso.  She had to keep her arms gathered up around her chest in order to protect her ribs from getting crushed, otherwise she'd have the air squeezed out of her like a rat in a python's grip.  She could only imagine the purple and greenish bruises that were starting to appear just underneath her breasts.

She dared to reach down and make sure that her satchel was still closed and oriented in such a way that she could keep an eye on its precious contents.  She knew that if it had been left slung across her back it would probably be completely empty by now.  For the tenth time she unzipped it a crack just to silence that irrational voice in her head which insisted that if her money was out of sight it had probably been stolen.  Mercifully, the significant chunk of her life savings was still present and accounted for.  This was good since the stores had stopped taking credit cards weeks ago.

The odd sight of her money stuffed loosely into what could pass for a bank robber's sack made her think of a story Mr. Peavey, her High School History teacher had told her ages ago.  Lynn hated most of her subjects but liked History because she never thought of it as a bunch of disparate fact and dates, but as a series of stories.  And Mr. Peavey was very good at telling stories.

'After World War I the Allies decided to punish Germany's aggression by, essentially, invoicing them for the entire war.  In order to pay these impossible debts, Germany was forced to print its own currency hand over fist, resulting in what's now known as hyper-inflation.  Well, as you can imagine it didn't take very long before the Papiermark was about as plentiful and subsequently as valuable as Monopoly money.  Can you imagine... pushing a wheelbarrow filled with cash down to the market just to buy a loaf of bread?'

Inflation.  Debt.  Fiscal Cliff.  Every recent warning that Lynn heard through osmosis had since fallen on deaf ears.  'Probably because I didn't hear it from Mr. Peavey', she mused.

When the jittery employee standing just behind the threshold began to fumble with a comically over-sized key ring the crowd took this as an omen and surged.  Lynn winced as a three-hundred pound man avalanched into her, smudging her cheek into the glass.  Just before her face had a chance to go through it she managed to slide her arms down to the metal door handle that was pressing into her mid drift and shove back violently.  It was the only way to win a modicum of space for herself and, more importantly, the microscopic passenger resting somewhere inside her belly.

Directly behind her right shoulder someone angrily shouted:

"Calm the fuck down!  Push one of my kids again and I will stab one of you motherfuckers!"

The threat was so loud that the skittish store employee jumped back from the door as if tasered and then dropped his keys.  The crowd instantly took this as a sign of weakness and began to shout and pound on the glass.  Lynn immediately felt her innards turn to ice.  Things were already starting to fall apart and the doors weren't even open yet.      

"Stand back! Move back!" screamed the store clerk as he bent down to recover the keys, his eyes never leaving the roiling crowd.  Absently, Lynn wondered if he was the only person to show up for work today and if he regretted that decision.

Then, from out of nowhere, she heard someone bellow:

"Out of the way!  Get the fuck out of the way!"

She glanced up to see the crowd part like the Red Sea off to her left.  Three heavy-set men and a wiry, unkempt woman were running towards the glass doors holding a newspaper dispenser above their heads.  In response to this odd sight Lynn was instantly teleported back to that Foo Fighters mosh pit.  At any moment she expected to get kicked in the head by a Doc Marten-wearing crowd surfer.  Just as quickly she was distracted by a fleeting glimpse of the stale newspaper headline inside the box as it sailed overhead towards the door.  It read:

"BAILOUT STRATEGIES FAIL TO RESUSCITATE MARKETS: INVESTMENTS AND VALUE OF DOLLAR PLUMMET"

The concrete base of the newspaper machine went through the glass window without a hint of resistance.  Lynn flinched as it crashed into a vacant-looking shelf and then slammed violently to the floor with a loud BANG.  She stood there for a moment, stunned, as the reservoir of humanity immediately began to pour through the improvised breach like fluid lanced from an abscessed wound.

Lynn cursed herself for taking a moment to absorb what has happening.  By the time she got inside, a huge chunk of the crowd had already begun to ransack the store.  She also saw that the door's defeated guardian was lying off to the side nursing an angry-looking head wound.  She paused for a moment to make sure that he was alright before snatching up a wayward basket and charging into the fray.

She hurried past the racks still laden with night lights, spa kits, cameras, Blu-Rays, shower heads and designer fragrances.  All of this was landfill now.  Instead, Lynn sprinted through the nearly-vacant grocery, pharmacy and hardware sections, snatching up cans of tomato soup, bottles of Advil, toilet paper, batteries and several jugs of water.  By the time she was done the plastic handle of her basket was bowed from the weight. 

During her mad rush, she spied a furtive-looking employee hastily assembling a pallet filled with bread.  Unfortunately, by the time she got there, the plastic trays had almost been picked clean.  Lynn was forced to engage in a brief altercation with a panicked-looking Asian man after he tried to snatch a multi grain loaf right out of her basket.  After blasting him with several choice epithets he seemed to experience a moment of clarity, gave her a knowing look that suggested penitence and then turned back towards the empty pallet.

With spurts of violence breaking out everywhere, Lynn decided that it was time to leave.  En route she noticed a display shelf stocked with pads and instinctively made a bee line towards them.  Just before she got there she bumped into a pair of store employees who were attempting to wrestle a customer to the floor like a pair of ice hockey referees.  The jolt gave her pause for thought and it finally dawned on her that probably didn't need them anymore.

She flirted with the idea of grabbing a few packs for the distant future but decided against it after another hooligan appeared from out of nowhere, grabbed one of the store employees and whipped him into a shelf filled with razor blades.  Lynn thought the better of it, turned away and began to sprint stop-start towards the exit, hoping to extricate herself from the store with both her spoils and savings intact.  Unfortunately, it was not to be.

As she approached the battered front doors she quickly realized that the keymaster had plenty of reinforcements after all.  A phalanx of about ten or twelve employees blocked the exit, armed with what appeared to be the entire sporting goods, hardware and hunting sections of the store.  A supervisor distinguished herself from the line up, shifted a primed crossbow to her off-hand and then repeatedly stabbed a finger towards the few manned cash registers that were already beginning to back up.

By the time all of her acquisitions were accounted for, Lynn was forced to leave behind a pack of batteries.  Although it was heart-rending to turn over such a disproportionate amount of cash, she also knew that it had to be done.  What other choice did she have?

To add to her annoyance, the store had run out of bags, so Lynn stuffed as much as she could into her now-empty satchel and then carried the two jugs of water out in either hand.  Her spirits were instantly buoyed as soon as she left the oppressive atmosphere of the besieged store.  A quick glance at her watch revealed that she was also making better time then expected and she humored the possibility of cobbling together a humble repast for her husband before he got home.

It would have been great to have Bryan by her side today but she also knew that this just wasn't feasible.  Indeed, it was encouraging to know that at least one of them still had a job to go to.  Although his pay had been severely slashed by what his supervisors now grudgingly referred to as "austerity measures" and he was usually gone anywhere from sixty to eighty hours a week, his work was still a Godsend.  Without it, she knew that there'd be no way to stay afloat financially with a kid to feed and another on the way.      

Lynn came to a sudden halt as she rounded the corner and found herself staring at a small cadre of lean-looking young men, several of whom appeared to be holding baseball bats.  She immediately broke eye contact with them, put her head down and resumed her course.  As she felt their collective eyes pawing at her and heard their coarse laughter, she started to double-time her way towards the parking lot at the back of the store.

As she started down the dirt trail which eventually led to their apartment building one of Mr. Peavey's follow-up lectures popped into her head:

'Eventually the Weimar Republic tipped into economic anarchy.  Hate crimes, violent uprisings and widespread thuggery became the order of the day.  The situation became so toxic that it eventually gave rise to one of the most degenerate regimes in human history.'

Through the haze of her mounting fear, Lynn absently wondered if humanity was on the cusp of eclipsing that level of barbarism.  Just behind her she heard the sound of several pairs of boots sliding down the gravel path.

And that's when she dropped the water, shrugged off her bag and began to run.

EPIC DOC

        
EPIC PREDICTION
  

 
WE FAIL (AS HUMAN BEINGS)
   

     

The Elephant In The Room

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."   Thomas Jefferson

Welcome, Free Thinkers!

So, America is teetering on the edge of total financial collapse and the mainstream media is doing a fantastic job keeping the general populace blissfully ignorant of this looming catastrophe. Instead of warning people about the ramifications of the U.S. dollar evaporating, we're hearing about J-Lo's separation, "McSteamy's" pain killer addiction and rampant speculation as to what chemical finally killed Amy Winehouse.

But, hey, maybe it's our own fault.  Maybe all we really want to do is keep fiddling blissfully while Rome turns into the equivalent of Backdraft.  Sometimes it's difficult facing reality, especially when it's the equivalent of a greasy pork sandwich served up in a dirty ashtray.

I will endeavor, in my own modest way, to try and compensate for this.  If and when everything goes bizzonkers, at least the five or six people on this planet who regularly read my blog will know what the hell is going on.

I don't want to split hairs here, people. When the U.S. economy tanks out (please note the deliberate use of the word 'if') we're all in some serious shit.  It will likely result in a planet-wide economic depression, the proposal of a centralized global economy, the subsequent erosion of sovereign nation identity and a major hit to our quality of life.  It will also result in the utter annihilation of bank savings and personal investments and make the debt-ridden middle and lower classes further beholden to their economic slave masters.

First and foremost, here's a documentary about the U.S. Federal Reserve: the shadowy and secretive organization at the heart of this financial crisis:

Some take-away's to consider:

1. The U.S. Constitution clearly states that the nation's currency must be Gold and Silver coin not government-issued paper I.O.U's.  Paper money no standard anymore, no backing.  In fact, it's printed like Monopoly money by the Federal Reserve whenever the government asks for it. 
2. The Federal Reserve is about as Federal as Federal Express.  It is not a government body but a cartel of large, elite, private Federal Banks who have allied together to curtail competition and maximize their own profits.
3. Ever wonder why the U.S. government never increases taxes?  It's because that, under the Federal Reserve system, Congress can go to the Fed and request that money be printed out of thin air without having to piss off voters by raising taxes.  
4. Income tax was introduced in the same year that the Federal Reserve system was instituted partially to off-set the in-born interest that every bill comes with as soon as it's printed.  
5. Banks routinely loan out more then they have in reserve in order to make lungfuls of money.  The market sets prices and wages based on what it assumes is the total amount of money in circulation.  When the Central Banks bleed reams of cash into the system, it devalues the dollar, increases the cost of goods and services and drives inflation through the roof.  That's why a bag of chips that cost twenty-five cents in 1978 now costs $2.25.   
6. If you want a sneak preview of what may happen to us if we don't smarten up, just have a look at Germany between World War I and World War II.  Forced to pay for war reparations, Germany started printing their currency like the Federal Reserve does now.  Eventually it destroyed the Middle class, who were forced to take wheelbarrows full of money down to the market just to buy a loaf of bread.
7. This all seems pretty important, so why aren't we hearing about  this constantly on T.V. or in the newspapers?  Well, ever since deregulation set in we went from having over 100 independent media voices to about six, which are all now owned by wealthy corporations.  Corporations that don't want the general populace to be informed about how the money system really works for fear that we'd all get super-pissed off and start rightfully demanding change.  
8. Inflation has nothing to do with the rising cost of living and everything to do with our currency losing it's value
9. Things actually should be getting cheaper not more expensive anyway because our modern production capability easily outstrips demand. 
10. Inflation caused by the Federal Reserve is so severe that it now takes a two-income family to make ends meet.

Now I'm not an economist, but that actually helps my argument here.  The powers that be are not just doing a poor job running the world economy; I believe they're doing a terrible job running the world economy, so terrible in fact that I believe that it's deliberate.

Leading up to the economic crash of 2008, efforts had been made to deregulate the banking industry in the United States.  The venerable Glass-Steagall Act, which recognized the conflict of interest inherent in allowing financial institutions to pursue both investment and financial banking, was systematically dismantled during a tsunami of industry lobbying.  Once the floodgates opened and banks began to engage in the most drunkenly reckless use of unlimited credit and Derivatives-based Ponzi schemes, the end was inevitable.

This is perhaps best-illustrated in the tremendous documentary Inside Job, which endeavors to explain just how this often-convoluted and Machiavellian economic false flag event was orchestrated:

Untitled from harisgr on Vimeo.

So, after things start falling apart as expected, George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson goes before Congress to begin a campaign of what can only be called economic extortion.  He warns the American people that if the big financial institutions don't get bailed out, the entire edifice will crumble.  Under threats of a global financial meltdown and warnings of impending Martial Law (!) Senators and Congressmen feel compelled to approve it:

Long after those notorious bailouts got rammed through, it's since come to light that a frighteningly large chunk of this money (which was supposed to write off bad debt in an effort to remedy the sub-prime mortgage crisis) was misappropriated.  In fact, huge tracts of the stuff was given away, blank-check style, to hung-over financial institutions to snatch up more assets that they didn't already own.  Co-incidentally, this also included a life preserver for Goldman Sachs, one of the biggest sinners during the investment frenzy and Henry Paulson's old Alma-mater!

As if that wasn't bad enough, there's at least $700 billion dollars still unaccounted for.  When asked about this, all the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke will say is that it was given away to foreign banking interests and and that no-one has the right to ask who those institutions are.

Can you believe the unmitigated arrogance of this asshole?  It just blows me away that the Federal Reserve has never been the recipient of an external audit.  If one of us regular, old, clock-punching, carbon-based units acted like this in the workplace we'd be fired and then locked up indefinitely...

It also pisses me off that people keep cutting Obama slack in his utter failure to jump-start the economy.  The old argument that he "inherited a mess" from Bush just doesn't hold water anymore.  The sad fact is, Obama's promise to keep his administration free from lobbyists and economic opportunists was cast out the window just as soon as he picked his cabinet.  Check out this Rogues Gallery of creeps:

• Larry Summers helped neuter the Glass-Steagall Act, served as Chief Economist for the ultra-shady World Bank and was forced to resign as the President of Harvard University over conflicting economic relationships and some pretty sexist remarks.  For most people, this would result in a black-listed resume but Obama apparently thought he'd be make the ideal director of the White House National Economic Council.
• Timothy Geithner, Obama's Secretary of Treasury was once the President of the private Federal Reserve Bank of New York.   He oversaw the dispersion of $350 billion dollars of bailout money which criminal outfits like AIG translate then used to give massive bonuses for it's own executives.  Frankly, making someone like Geithner Treasury Secretary is like putting a fox in charge of a hen-house.
• Speaking of a massive conflict of interest, William Lynn was made Deputy Secretary for Defense despite being a former lobbyist for Raytheon, one of the world's largest defense contractors.
• Geithner's Chief of Staff is Mark Petterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist.  
• George Mitchell, former lobbyist for the Saudi Royal family, now enjoys the position of Lead Envoy to the Middle East.  
• Tom Daschle was a lobbyist for several health care firms and was tapped by Obama to run the Department of Health and Human services.  

Frankly, I was willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt for awhile but his time in office really does drive home that there's no difference whatsoever between the Republicans and the Democrats.  They both serve the same corporate masters.  In fact, every one of Obama's broken campaign promises leads me to believe that he is 100% in the back pocket of the big, global corporate interests. 

Face it, if Obama was really committed to driving down the debt and cutting spending he would have immediately followed through on his most popular campaign pledge to shut down American military garrisons around the world and bring the troops home.  Senator Ron Paul, one of the few sane voices in Washington today, reminds us of that right here:

So what happens when the rest of the world wakes up one morning and decides that the U.S. dollar isn't worth the paper it's printed on and then demands that all past payments are now due?  Well, the following video may be a tad alarmist and mercenary, but it'd also a fairly good 'what if?' speculation:


So what can be done to try and offset this?

1. All the corporate criminals, special interest groups and lobbyists have to be flushed out of Washington pronto.  Corrupt "walking dead" businesses must be allowed to fail to make room for fresh growth.
2. The United States must cease to be global policemen.  Rampant military spending must halt immediately.
3. The Federal Reserve system must be moth-balled and the gold standard has to be re-married to the dollar.
4. Free-thinking, non-partisan and truly independent political visionaries like Ron Paul need a kick at the political can.  Be wary of the same old, two-party choice of bad and worse being foisted up by the mainstream media!  Embrace those candidates that make sense but are being ignored! 
5. People need to get out of debt as soon as possible and must stop spending beyond their means.
6. Cash and bonds are a volatile form of savings right now.  Gold, silver and other commodities are the smartest investments when fiat currencies are revealed as the financial house of cards they really are.  
7. If the worst-case-scenario happens and hyper-inflation takes root in a panic, you can expect the value of investments and cash savings to evaporate.  The price of goods and services will skyrocket.  Having a stockpile of food and supplies as well as growing your own produce would be a very smart thing to do in this scenario.
8. If a crash does happen and suddenly our politicians are telling us that we must abandon our Canadian currency in lieu of an amalgamated North American/Global currency, this is our cue to rise up.  After all, this emergency could easily be used to usher in a global version of the Federal Reserve system which is designed for one purpose only: to make poor people poorer and the rich even richer.   

I truly hope that I'm wrong about all this.  In fact, I hope someone reads this, does their own research and  comes up with a truly compelling rebuttal that completely deflates my concerns.  But when you take a long, hard look at the current debt figure, it's hard to feel optimistic:

You know that when the corporate-controlled mainstream media is suddenly talking about the possibility of a U.S. economic default, then we need to unplug ourselves from the opiate of mainstream infotainment and be very vigilant.

Don't say that I didn't warn you.  Now go forth and get informed...

EPIC  Another documentary about the sketchy origins and ruinous nature of the Federal Reserve:

FAIL This doc if far from even-keeled but it does do a fair job cataloging Obama's failure to deliver any of his campaign promises. 

MINOR FAIL: Hate the song and video but I LOVE the mantra towards the end...