3:1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
Everyone has to admit that Biblical passages can make some very interesting reading...
I saw something 'interesting' in today's 'local' paper... Namely that the Kansas legislature recently passed a law/bill (Senate bill 41) "in an attempt to ensure that students would begin learning more about the financial world." "The bill directed school districts to use textbooks that include personal financial litercay components, and encourage the state board of education to review and rewrite assessments for mathmatics and social studies to ensure that a greater understanding of financial responcibility is taught."
*I* also found it very interestingly noted that "in January, the President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy approved a report with recommendations to improve financial literacy among all Americans."
A quote from council chairman Charles Schwab goes as follows... "There is no question that the lack of personal financial literacy has been a majoy contributing factor to the economic and financial crisis in the United States."
If you already happen to be a reader of my blog then you may know that I feel this 'personal financial illiteracy' was a decades long 'planned' event and outcome. It allowed the credit bubble and housing bubble to inflate to ever greater proportions. Especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the recession of that period and the jobless recovery that followed. At that time also, under the administration of George Bush, the government was desperate to find a way to prop up and reflate the economy. The obvious answer (to the Keynesian idiots) was to make credit so incredibly easy to get for ALL Americans that there was no way the economy could not recover. And recover it did...
It is too bad that it was those poor decisions in 2001 that have led to a great deal of our problems today. Though the government and the financial elites managed to drive the United States economy higher for several years they managed that remarkable feat ONLY by created an economy which was based on absolutely NOTHING but debt! With wild economic models that showed housing rising for eternity. With way TOO easy credit for EVERYONE. And with a constant loud drumbeat of 'consumerism' always in everyone's ears.
These 'achievements' were only possible DUE TO the financial illiteracy that existed then and exists still today in the United States. And it remains my contention that this financial illiteracy is and always was BY DESIGN! It is my opinion that our clueless kleptocratic leaders and soulless financial elites have once again 'outsmarted themselves'...
That 'they' have been SO successful in manipulating a large 'dumbed down' percentage of the American populace that it has finally back-fired on them in a way that will prove to be difficult if not impossible to reverse.
The debt problem with Americans is HUGE. Add to that FACT an unemployment rate of at least 17.5%, soaring foreclosures, wild commodity price fluctuations and you begin to understand that the American consumer is no more and will NOT be back any time soon.
It seems to me now that what the government has decided to do to address these problems is for the government itself to REPLACE the consumer in the American economy. 'They' are doing this by forcibly confiscating money from the entire American populace, redistributing that money to the banking elites who in turn use those tax dollars to reflate the the stock markets, mainly commodities, to 'give the impression' that the American economy is improving.
'They' are currently working frantically to come up with more and more ways 'they' can TAKE money from hard working Americans. Be that throught the markets, through massive tax increases (cap & trade, health care 'reform'), and any other means 'they' can dream up.
Another of my contentions is that our kleptocratic government and our financial elites KNOW that the economy of the United States is 'doomed to failure', that 'they' KNOW our social and cultural safety nets are about to collapse, that 'they' KNOW the United States is about to default on it's debt and that 'they' are doing nothing more right now than to 'buy some time' while 'they' consider the easiest way to transform the capitalistic democratic economy of the United States into the new paradigm of totalitarianism, dictatorship, oligarchy, tyranny, fascism, police state... take your pick but it's coming...
The debate over cap and trade (pretty non-existant) and over health care 'reform' should have proven by now to ALL Americans that we the people have absolutely NO input whatsoever into what/when/why/and how this government decides, unilaterally, to do. If you DO NOT SEE IT then you are blinded by stupidity...
I'm trying to be better prepared for those days to come... I Hope many of you are as well...
It is WAY WAY TOO LATE NOW to "attempt to ensure that students would begin learning more about the financial world." And, besides that FACT, if and when all Americans DO have adequate financial literacy then there will/would BE NO MORE ridiculous asset bubbles with which to pump up a totally debt based economy!
--- You may click here for a discussion of work ethics.
There was a time in this country when work ethics really meant something... I was taught all the right things by my own father as I grew up. My dad made sure that I knew and understood what good work ethics were... Because of my dad I knew that working hard, doing your very best, having loyalty were all very important things. Suffice it to say that somehow my dad instilled in me the 'desire' to work hard and succeed. That to be successful in your occupation was indeed a very important part of life.
When I was young I had some menial jobs. I had a job when I was 15 years old at Dogpatch USA. It was a rustic themed amusement park that opened in the late 1960s based on the fictional town of Dog patch from the Al Capp comic strip "Lil Abner". My 'job' was at/on a small 'trout farm' area. I baited hooks for customers and when they 'caught' one of the fish I took it off the hook for them and carried it to the processing window for the customer where it was cleaned, dressed and packaged. That was my 'first' job...
Eventually I got married and had need for a regular income. I was 19 years old by then. I had no 'skill' to speak of at all and no clue really as to what I might want to do. I ended up working in the office equipment field just as my dad had for many years. I repaired old school 'typewriters' for like 20 years with a small number of companies. I was good... I was a damn good repairman. I took great pride in my work and I wanted to be the 'best' repairman out there.
That's what my dad taught me above all else. That whatever you choose to do it should be your goal to do it better than anyone else. It should be your goal to be the best at whatever you do. And this always seemed to make a lot of sense to me. It always seemed a logical thing. I still live by that rule today...
Eventually personal computers came along. A guy I worked with at the time gave me a TIMEX sinclair 1000 computer. It had 1k of on-board memory and I was fortunate enough to have a 16k expansion pack that plugged into the back. Sometimes it wriggled on it's rubber feet a bit and would bump the expansion pack and wipe out hours of work. I learned to save often lol
I fell absolutely in love with the whole idea of being able to tell a machine what to do and have it follow my directions to the letter. I used to hook that darned thing up to our only TV set in the living-room and work for hours writing code in BASIC. I gambled at the time... Football, basketball and baseball. I ended up writing a good program that gave me a 60% winning percentage in college basketball (no easy feat ;) I just compared the outcome of every game played to the Vegas 'line' to discover exactly where the linesmakers had the most difficult time predicting the outcome of the game. My poor wife rarely got to watch TV lol
Of course as time moved on so did I. I entered the never ending upgrade cycle that computers were and still are to this day. And I continued to love and learn programming. In the early 1990's I wrote 'shareware' software for BBS' (Bulletin Board Systems), mostly BBS games which users played on-line. It was a fantastic experience. We had the equivalent of blogs or forums where I could meet and communicate with other active programmers. After many years of coding, strictly as a hobby, I eventually landed a real job as a programmer. My wages went up by about 8,000.00 a year even though I was actually under-paid, looking back lol I worked for NPC International (used to be $NPCI but went private). I was on fire at NPC. So thrilled to be a professional programmer! I worked at NPC from about 1997 till about 2000. By the time I left my wages had gone up another 8,000.00 per year. Remarkably my income had risen by about 16,000.00 a year in just 3 short years. (And now I see that NPC was sold to Merrill-Lynch Global Private Equity Group in 2006...) I made a poor decision in changing jobs for a couple grand more writing educational software for a small company that went bankrupt in 2003.
Like so many other people then and now we lived on two incomes. That's just the way it was, the way it worked. My income represented about 60% of our total income. When I lost that job it hurt, bad. I had no idea how much debt we had at the time... I was involved in other things and didn't pay attention to that sort of stuff at all. I assumed everything was fine... Boy was I wrong! lol We filed for bankruptcy in 2003. Eventually I did land a good job with Kansas City Southern ($KSU) in downtown Kansas City, MO. It was another 31% boost in income... But it required me, at least at first, to live away from my family in a hotel, in a strange town where I knew no one, with the privilege of driving Interstate 35 twice a day (not fun)... So I quit. I walked out on a 60,000.00 a year job after about a month. They were great at $KSU, it was a wonderful place to work really. it was my dream job come true. It was the job that I thought had been my final goal all along.
I stress out easily (as many of you know lol). And though I loved my work as a programmer it was the corporate politics that I detested... always. (Here's a pretty good article on 'corporate politics' for those who might be interested...). While working in Kansas city for that one short month I made 4 times the pay trading. I researched my 'watch list' at night, gave my wife the orders to put in the next day and did very well...
That's when and why I made the decision to trade full time. to work for myself. To be my own boss. That was 2004.
I live in the real world. I see people people. I know people. I have family. I'm an 'on the street' sort of guy. I try to pay attention to what's going on around me.
To me 'work ethics' have changed dramatically in this country over the last couple of decades. I, personally, don't think it is the people who have changed near as much as corporate America. It used to be accepted as fact that in this country if you worked hard and did your best then you would be rewarded for your efforts. It no longer 'seems' to be that way...
I think many younger workers who have tried to participate in capitalism over the last couple of decades have become quite 'disenchanted'.
dis·en·chant(dsn-chnt)
To free from illusion or false belief; undeceive.
[Obsolete French desenchanter, from Old French, to break a spell
I think 'disenchanted' is the perfect word in this case... Because, all around me, I see people waking up, I see people breaking free from illusion and/or false belief. I love the old French 'to break a spell'. A spell has been broken. A yoke has been and is being thrown off. The culture of greed and corruption that runs through our society and culture like a spreading cancer has destroyed much of what used to be a sound foundation. It is the 'slipping away' of many of the beliefs that many Americans hold dear that is so frightening to many people.
You see, I feel that society has taken a turn for the worse now... generally, overall. That everyday people in many cases no longer feel that they are a part of a larger 'plan'. An honorable plan to make our lives and our country ever better, ever stronger, ever more fulfilling. That somewhere along the way we have 'lost our way'.
I don't think 'they' realize or understand, yet, what is happening in America and with/to the American people. I don't feel like 'they' understand that 'things' have changed dramatically. I don't think 'they' undersand, yet, that 'things' will never be the same.
In this country pride in a job well done has been replaced with the 9 to 5 grind that pays the bills and nothing more. Money/labor has definitely become a 'necessary evil' (unpleasant necessity: something that is unpleasant or undesirable but is needed to achieve a result).
We went through a period of unbridled envy and self gratification. For a time the 'goal' seemed to be nothing more than spending ridiculous amounts of money to obtain as much Chinese slave labor 'junk' as one possibly could. Obviously this could not last long.
It was 'they', the financial elites and our government, who pushed for this. To drive corporate earnings. This was the plan all along. To enslave the American people to the financial sector and to government itself. This was the true reason for keeping interest rates artificially low and offering ridiculously easy credit terms to the under-educated, naive masses.
That offering of easy credit and the 'promotion' of envy and greed as valid lifestyles has all but destroyed our country from within.
The American people have been taken advantage of for the past few decades as they never have been in the history of this country.
Stop and think for a few minutes about how many advertisements you see and/or hear each and every day. Hundreds? Thousands? From insurance to cereal to toys to cars... on and on obviously for what would seem to be eternity. Every single day the American people are bombarded with advertising. Everyone in this country has their hand out for money. Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Target, used car dealers... again it would go on forever... lumped together as 'retailers'.
Think, for a minute, about the bills that almost every American is required to pay. Mortgage/rent, home insurance, home maintenance, car payments, car insurance, car maintenance, gas for the car, gas to heat their home, water, electric, food, clothing.
Now add to that many things that the American people do pay as a normal course of living in 2009. Cable TV, phone service, internet service, vacations, random repairs, pets and pet supplies, appliances, furniture.
And then add to that the many ways Americans waste money each day. Starbucks, toys for the kids, toys for the pets, meals outside the home, music, movies, tattoos, parties...
Easy credit made it easy for even the poorest of Americans to have everything they wanted... Now those poorest Americans are feeling the brunt of this economic downturn the most. They never bothered to read the fine print on anything they signed. Turns out they signed their life away for a fancy car and a big flat panel TV. Now their interest rate is 30% to 40% on huge loan amounts that they never should have had access to in the first place. Now their gas, electric and water is being shut off as they fight to keep their cell phones and internet access secured...
Throw in a job loss for a middle class American family who has been lured into depending on two paychecks plus credit cards to pay the bills...
And what our government is proposing these days astounds me! It seems the ONLY answer that our government and financial elites have to our 'problems' is to 'grow the economy', 'banks need to loan more money', 'we should relax lending standards', 'we need the consumer to spend money'. 'They' expect things to be the same as they were before. The way they were in 2004 or 2005... Are 'they' really completely blind to the realities of the day? Do they really not see the drastic changes that have occurred at the very core of our society and culture? Can 'they' really not see that the American people, as a whole, are sick and tired of playing the same old game of making politicians and corporations ever wealthier at their own expense?
The PROBLEM is debt! MASSIVE debt. On the backs of the American people, on the back of our government, on the back of our corporations, on the back of our small businesses. And our government's answer to the debt problem is astonishingly MORE DEBT!
What we need in America is a return to the moral values of our past. A return to the time when people knew and understood the meaning of right and wrong. When people knew and understood the meaning of fairness and honor. A time when America was one for all and all for one.
I, personally, think we are past the point of no return on those issues. It took us decades to destroy what was once great about America and the American people. It will, by necessity, take us decades to restore it.
But for it to ever be restored will require that we take the government apart, completely. And that we completely rethink corporate America. That we rethink what our corporation's 'interpretation' of capitalism is and correct it to what it was meant to be. Capitalism was never intended to destroy the very fabric of American life. Of that I am pretty sure...
So alas I end up where I always tend to end up...
Until we completely rid ourselves of greed and corruption by ending the tyrannical regimes of our current governmental and financial systems we will never be free.
--- Be advised that the 'Federal' Reserve is nothing more than a cabal of 'PRIVATE' banks who place the accumilation of MONEY above ALL ELSE! The 'Federal' Reserve has NOTHING to do with the federal government... Or at least that is SUPPOSED to be the case! But what has happened to us during and after the great market collapse is that the 'Federal' Reserve AND the Central Bankers/financial elites have effectively TAKEN OVER our government.
Will America stand long for this tyranny?
All political leanings aside we NEED many more people like Alan Grayson on the side of the American people pitted against the 'Federal' Reserve and the banker elites...
Please watch this short video to see what the 'Federal' Reserve is doing with YOUR TAX DOLLARS!
Our government has reached the point, in *my* opinion, that it completely controls the flow of information that 'we' are allowed to receive.
Nearly a year into the obama administration it seems that playing with words and numbers may be the most important 'tool' 'they' have left. I DO NOT mean to imply that this began with the obama administration. But the current administration does happen to be the one that promised us transparency like we have never seen before...
He who controls 'information' controls all. Don't you think?
If you'll look around a bit you'll see that virtually nothing is as it seems anymore.
'They' have been monkeying around with ways to meticulously massage economic data for years, even decades, now. The obvious 'goal' being to have the ability to present said data in a way that the markets and public will find most acceptable. Here is a link to several data sets that have seen reporting methodology change significantly over the last few decades. Look at this carefully, this is very important 'stuff'.
Inflation, Money Supply, GDP, Unemployment and the Dollar - Alternate Data Series on ShadowStats.com
As I have pointed out here, more than once, it is *my* belief that 'they' use complexity and obfuscation to control the dialog.
Anything you are able to portray as extremely complex, extremely difficult to understand, allows you to easily manipulate selected pieces of data to portray virtually any 'story' in any light you wish at any given moment.
My point being that there is no longer any 'honesty' in anything our government tells us. And without honesty there can be no 'trust'.
And... without 'trust' there can be no government or economy...
Even as our government, economy and society/culture continue to unravel the government, with the assistance of the main stream media, continues to tell the American people, and the world, that things are getting 'better'.
To me it is a very 'matrix like' manipulation of reality.
What *I* continue to see, personally, is the fact that the government has done NOTHING to squarely address ANY of our core problems at all!
Military historian Edward Luttwak says: “A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder”.
What ARE our 'problems'?
Maybe I attempt to 'oversimplify' with my constant use of the terms 'greed' and 'corruption'. I am prone to 'over simplification' myself... *I* believe virtually all of our 'problems' can be encompassed with the phrase 'Too big to fail'. It is *my* opinion that our government CERTAINLY 'sees' itself as 'too big to fail'.
Our government's obvious ties to, and dependence on, the financial sector, and I use the term loosely, via the Federal Reserve system, Central Banks, Regional banks, Insurance companies, and drug companies is FRIGHTENING!
This entire market run higher has been nothing more than a collusion by/of the United States government and the financial sector. The government with the assistance (voluntary or forced) of the FED/Central Banks, hedge funds, Sovereign wealth funds, and even very wealthy individuals (Buffet) has manged to reflate the previous bubble to a degree that I would not have thought possible.
Our entire banking system has already collapsed. Our banks are already insolvent. *I* believe our entire medical industry is, or soon will be, insolvent as well. First and foremost the Insurance companies. But also across the board. Hospitals and drug companies.
As cash strapped Americans seek to cut costs and deleverage in any way they possibly can unnessasary medical costs, certainly health insurance, shows up on the chopping block rather quickly. Especially if one is rather 'healthy' and perhaps 'young' to begin with. Most 'young' otherwise 'healthy' Americans families can save 6,000.00 a year by simply dropping their health insurance. This has been going on for YEARS in this country as insurance costs have continued to climb WAY ahead of (mis-reported) inflation. It's not a new thing at all. Now 'they' want to make it 'illegal' to live in the United States of America and not buy health insurance. WTF?!
After our financial system collapsed and as our kleptocratic government watched our economy change rapidly it became obvious to them very quickly that insurance companies, and the entire health care industry itself, was in grave danger of collapse. Due merely to 'cost cutting' by the American people. What a 'predicament' to be sure... Americans MUST delever as never before just to survive this economic disaster. But the conundrum is that very deleveraging threatens to expose the LIE that things are getting better.
And why/how is our economy in such grave danger? Once again use the K.I.S.S rule! (Keep It Simple Stupid). It is NOT nearly as 'complex' as those in Washington and on Wall Street would have you believe! Our government AND corporate institutions have for decades become so enamored of greed and corruption that now 'they' are UNABLE to EXIST without MONEY!
It is NOT 'they' who are important! It is NOT 'they' who matter! It is *my* opinion that 'they' MUST fail if America is to survive...
WE are the only thing that matters. We the people. And I speak NOT only of the 'people' of America! I speak of the people of the world... It is TIME for people all over the world to rise up and finally, once and for all, put a STOP to this man made, contrived, ridiculous notion that 'people' cannot exist without a government to tell them what to do. It is TIME for PEOPLE all over the world to stand up and shout 'WE can do it better!' PLEASE try to understand and remember that WE do NOT need them! 'They' need US! 'They' (in theory) work FOR us! Even though in reality 'they' prove time and time again that 'they' truly work for NO ONE but themselves!
Humans, mankind, took a 'wrong turn' somewhere along the line of history. We (humans) have veered wildly off the course of improving the state of mankind on the planet. We seem to be headed into some very strange direction in which the 'goal' seems to be the 'prevention' of our ability to progress. We all, collectively, do this by turning over our freedoms, our liberty, our aspirations, indeed our mandated task of 'improving' the human condition, to governments...
'Too big to fail' is a LIE! It has always been a LIE! Our economy and financial system has ALREADY failed! Our government is close behind. We, people around the world, can help most by by helping the current oligarchy cease to exist. By DEMANDING it's dismantlement.
Tyranny is upon us now... Will we fight? Or will we simply lie down and die?
THIS time, in THIS great nation, will turn out to be the most important time in the history of the United States of America.
It will BE the time our greedy and corrupt government and corporate elites were destroyed by the PEOPLE.
Or... it will be the time that the people were destroyed by our greedy and corrupt government and corporate elites...
Here is a large portion of the truth as *I* personally see it to be...
Gerald Celente is a brilliant man, IMO. Please take 15 minutes of your valuable time to see what he has to say... "The second American revolution has begun."
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