Star Wars in little over 2 minutes...
Put on your thinking cap...
Kitty said what?
It's fun to use the stairs...
The secret 20 trillion dollar bank...
6 charts to show how money is printed out of thin air...
Building a park out of waste...
Ahhh the power of apple cider vinegar...
A solar and wind bridge that powers 15,000 homes!
A synthetic human body...
Console gaming in the palm of your hands...
Now that is one fast vehicle!
Vehicles talking to vehicles? And buildings too?
How bizarre...how bizarre...
Introducing Yap.TV...
Luciferian temples?
Kill Bill Stick... (props to brother Mike)
Fake babies...
Lennon's words ring true even today...
When pilots get bored...
Survey says!
Apocalypse now...
Oh Joy (Division)...a Playmobil stop motion music video...
We should hope more presidents were like JFK...
Obamanation! (props to pops)
Anybody have some toilet paper?
Lego Daft Punk...
The man...the legend...Jack Lalanne RIP...
Technically speaking...the Internet kill switch...
Amazing animal journeys...
Since we're doing stop motion vids...one of the best ever made...
FREE ENERGY!!!
Doctors prescribing what's best for you?
Realize that the Police State is almost here...
Is it skiing or flying or both?
Knowledge
The Nature Conservancy
"The mission of The Nature Conservancy is to preserve the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive." This group has been working with the public since 1951 to save the last great places on our planet. The most efficient way to navigate the site is to check out the Site Map and proceed from the menu. You’ll be able to find out about the organization, conservation initiations, their projects as well as the work in which the Nature Conservancy is involved. Come join the celebration and see what’s going on around the world on the conservation front!
HubbleSite
The Hubble Telescope has been in operation for 20 years. "Nearly 400 years after Galileo first observed the heavens through a telescope, we continue to seek answers to age-old questions about the universe. And while the technology has evolved over the centuries, the inquiry remains essentially the same: Whats out there, where did it come from, and what does it mean?" Be sure to visit all of the sections in this site in order to understand the impact that Hubble has had on our understanding of the space front. This site is actual fact, not a science fiction fantasy!
The Hubble Telescope has been in operation for 20 years. "Nearly 400 years after Galileo first observed the heavens through a telescope, we continue to seek answers to age-old questions about the universe. And while the technology has evolved over the centuries, the inquiry remains essentially the same: Whats out there, where did it come from, and what does it mean?" Be sure to visit all of the sections in this site in order to understand the impact that Hubble has had on our understanding of the space front. This site is actual fact, not a science fiction fantasy!
Today's Quotes
MOTIVATION/INSPIRATION
"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing that's why we recommend it daily." -- Zig Ziglar
"The greatest composer does not sit down to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working." -- Ernest Newman
"A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one." -- Mary Kay Ash
"When a goal matters enough to a person, that person will find a way to accomplish what at first seemed impossible." -- Nido Qubein
Insight
Discretion is knowing how to hide that which we cannot remedy.
--Spanish Proverb
Whiskey and Gunpowder
By Thomas Sowell
February 7, 2011
Excerpted from Ever Wonder Why: And Other Controversial Essays
Why Economists Are Not Popular
One of the many reasons why economists are unpopular is that they keep reminding people that things have costs, that there is no free lunch. People already know that — but they like to forget it when there is something they have their hearts set on.
Economists don’t have to say anything when people are buying things at a shopping mall or at an automobile dealership. The price tags convey the situation in unmistakable terms. It is when people are voting for nice-sounding things which politicians have dreamed up that economists are likely to point out that the costs ignored by politicians are going to have to be paid, one way or another — and that you have to weigh those costs against whatever benefits you expect.
Who wants to put on green eye shades and start adding up the numbers when someone grandly proclaims, “access to health care for all” or “clean air” or “saving the environment”? Economists are strictly party-poopers at times like these. They are often gate crashers too, since usually nobody asked them how much these things would cost or even thought about these issues in such terms.
Some of the more persistent or insensitive economists may even raise questions about the goals themselves. How much health care at the taxpayers’ expense? In Britain, a 12-year-old-girl was given breast implants. That much health care?
Meanwhile, Britain’s skyrocketing medical costs of taking care of things that people would never have spent their own money to take care of forced cutbacks and delays in more urgently needed medical treatments. One woman’s cancer operation was postponed so many times by the British health service that, by the time the system could take her, the disease was now too far gone for medical help — and she died.
Economists could have told anyone in advance that making things “free” causes excessive use by some, leaving less for others with more urgent needs that have to remain unsatisfied. Rent control, for example, has led to more housing being occupied by some, who would not have paid the market price for as large an apartment as they live in, while others cannot find any housing that they can afford in the city, and have to live far away and commute to work.
Clean air? There is no such thing and never has been. There is only air with varying degrees of impurities, varying amounts of which can be removed at varying costs.
Removing the kinds of things that choke our lungs or otherwise threaten our health is usually not that expensive. But science is becoming capable of detecting ever more minute traces of impurities with ever more insignificant consequences. Yet where is the politician who is going to resist calls for removing more impurities in the name of “clean air”?
Who is going to resist calls to “save the environment”? Only an economist is likely to ask, “Save it from what or from whom — and at what price?”
Bumper stickers in and around Redwood City, California, long proclaimed: “Save Pete’s Harbor.” What did that even mean? In practice, it meant letting one set of people use it as a marina and preventing other people from replacing the marina with housing.
When the Constitution of the United States says that the government owes “equal protection” to all its citizens, why should the government intervene on behalf of one set of contending citizens against another, much less call that “saving” the environment? People have been bidding against one another for the same resources for centuries. Why replace that process with politicians’ control? The 20th century was a virtual laboratory test of political control of economic activities — and it was such a dismal failure that even socialists and communists began abandoning that way of doing things by the 1990s.
Even when you don’t realize that you are bidding against other people, you are. When you drive into a filling station and fill up your tank with gasoline, you are bidding against people who want petroleum in the form of heating oil, plastics, or Vaseline.
Lunches don’t get free just because you don’t see the price on the menu. And economists don’t get popular by reminding people of that.
THE FOURTH AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II. - The Fourth Turning - Strauss and Howe -1997
Harpers Ferry – 1859 Tucson – 2011
The mass murder in Tucson is another brick in the wall of this Fourth Turning Crisis. The importance of this tragic event is not what happened in that Safeway parking lot, but the reaction in the aftermath of the shooting. Turnings are not about specific events, but how generations react to the events based on their stages of life. A turning is an era with a characteristic social mood, a new twist on how people feel about themselves and their nation. It results from the aging of the generational constellation. A society enters a turning once every twenty years or so, when all living generations begin to enter their next phases of life. We entered this Fourth Turning between 2005 and 2008, with the collapse of the housing market and subsequent financial system implosion.We have crossed the threshold into a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime will propel the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. The Silent Generation (1925-1942) is dying off, Baby Boomers (1943-1960) are entering elder hood, Generation X is entering midlife, Millenials are entering young adulthood—and a new generation of child Artists are being born. Strauss and Howe have documented that a long human life of 80 to 100 years makes up a social cycle of growth, maturation, entropy, and death (and rebirth) known as a Saeculum. Within each cycle, four generations proceed through their four stages of life. Every 15 to 25 years a new Turning surprises those who only think of history in a linear way. Strauss and Howe are historians who have been able to document this generational cycle going back to the 1400s.
The Anglo-American saeculum dates back to the waning of the Middle Ages in the middle of the fifteenth century. In this lineage, there have been seven saecula:
- Late Medieval (1435-1487)
- Reformation (1487-1594)
- New World (1594-1704)
- Revolutionary (1704-1794)
- Civil War (1794-1865)
- Great Power (1866-1946)
- Millennial (1946-2026?)
The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it. Thus, might the next Fourth Turning end in apocalypse – or glory. The nation could be ruined, its democracy destroyed, and millions of people scattered or killed. Or America could enter a new golden age, triumphantly applying shared values to improve the human condition. The rhythms of history do not reveal the outcome of the coming Crisis; all they suggest is the timing and dimension. - The Fourth Turning - Strauss and Howe -1997
American Revolutions
“A Fourth Turning is a solstice era of maximum darkness, in which the supply of social order is still falling but the demand for order is now rising. As the community instinct regenerates, people resolve to do more than just relieve the symptoms of pending traumas. Intent on addressing root causes, they rediscover the value of unity, teamwork, and social discipline. Far more than before, people comply with authority, accept the need for public sacrifice, and shed anything extraneous to the survival needs of their community. This is a critical threshold: People either coalesce as a nation and culture – or rip hopelessly and permanently apart.” – The Fourth Turning - Strauss and Howe -1997
There have been three prior Fourth Turnings in U.S. history: the American Revolution, Civil War and Great Depression/World War II. The American Revolution preceded the Civil War by 87 years. The Great Depression followed the Civil War by 69 years and this Millenial Crisis arrived 76 years after the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929. Essentially, each prior Fourth Turning has represented a Revolution in American history.
The First American Revolution began in 1773 when Parliament’s response to the Boston Tea Party ignited a colonial tinderbox—leading directly to the first Continental Congress, the battle of Concord, and the Declaration of Independence. History always seems easy to predict in retrospect. This is another of the many faults in human thinking. There was very little talk or thought of the colonies breaking away from the mother country during the 1760s. Up until the Boston Tea Party catalyst event, no one could have predicted the events which would occur in a chain reaction over the next 21 years. There were dark cold bitter days during this Crisis winter. In the end, George Washington’s honor, courage and fortitude symbolized the character of a new nation.
Historians Charles and Mary Beard described the Civil War as the Second American Revolution. The Civil War Crisis began with a presidential election that southerners interpreted as an invitation to secede. The attack on Fort Sumter triggered the most violent conflict ever fought on New World soil. The war reached its climax with the Emancipation Proclamation and Battle of Gettysburg (in 1863). The epic conflagration redefined America. The slavery issue was settled for good, signed in the blood of 600,000 men. The industrial might of the North was rechanneled toward progress as a world industrial powerhouse. In retrospect many will say the Civil War was entirely predictable, but that is completely untrue.
The great compromise generation (Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster) of the 1850s passed from the scene, leaving the country in the hands of firebrands on both sides. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry and subsequent execution served to increase the brooding mood of the country. The bloodiest war in the history of mankind was not predictable even one year before it began. The aristocracy of Washington DC actually took carriages in their Sunday best to watch the First Battle of Bull Run. Shortly thereafter Lincoln mobilized 500,000 men and unleashed a catastrophic spiral of butchery over the next four years that exhausted itself with the assassination of Lincoln and the surrender at Appomattox in the same week. The resolution of this Crisis felt more like defeat than victory.
Renowned American historian Carl Degler called FDR’s New Deal the “Third American Revolution”. The Crisis began suddenly with the Black Tuesday stock-market crash in 1929. After a three-year economic free fall, the Great Depression triggered the New Deal Revolution, a vast expansion of government, and hopes for a renewal of national community. After Pearl Harbor, America planned, mobilized, and produced for world war on a scale never seen in the history of mankind, making possible complete victory over the Nazis and Fascists. In 1928 did anyone foresee an 89% stock market crash, worldwide depression, vast expansion of government power, a world war more devastating than the prior war, and the usage of an atomic weapon of mass destruction? Not a chance. Only in retrospect do people convince themselves that it was predictable.
Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929 marked the abrupt unforeseen end of the Roaring Twenties. The bewilderingly rapid collapse of the worldwide financial system in the space of three years left the American people shaken and desperate. With their wealth destroyed and unemployment exceeding 20%, the American public turned to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal promises of government social and work programs. He declared “nationwide thinking, nationwide planning, and nationwide action, the three essentials of public life”. This was truly a Third American Revolution. FDR’s policies changed the course of American history. The renewed spirit of American youth during the 1930s was essential in preparing them for the trials that awaited from 1941 through 1945. It is somewhat ironic that FDR’s revolutionary social programs, begun during the last Crisis, will be a major factor in the current Crisis – the Fourth American Revolution.
Fourth American Revolution
“The US government is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.” – David M. Walker
No one knows exactly what events will transpire over the next 15 to 20 years as this Fourth Turning morphs from regeneracy to climax and finally to resolution. The mainstream media, most politicians, and self proclaimed progressives are blind to the cyclicality of history. They believe history proceeds in a linear upwards path. These are the people you see on TV talking about toning down the rhetoric, false gestures of bipartisanship, and soothing words about the financial crisis being a thing of the past. They fail to understand that once the mood of the country is catalyzed by a trigger event or events, there is no turning back the clock. Winter must be dealt with head on. Very few, if any, “financial experts” anticipated a housing collapse, followed by a deep recession, a 50% stock market crash, and a financial system which came within hours of total implosion on September 18, 2008 (as detailed in the documentary Generation Zero). Absolutely no one anticipated the extreme measures taken by the U.S. government and Federal Reserve to “Save” the country from a 2nd Great Depression. These measures have added $5 trillion to the National Debt in the last 40 months. It took 205 years to accumulate the 1st $5 trillion of debt.
While it is impossible to predict the exact trials and tribulations that will confront America over the next decade, the issues that will drive this Fourth Turning were clearly visible to anyone with their eyes open, many years in advance of the Crisis. Strauss and Howe clearly detailed the easily observable issues that led to the current Crisis back in 1997. Their book is not prophecy, but historically provable interactions between generations based upon the circumstances confronting society at the time.
“Sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America will enter the Fourth Turning. A spark will ignite a new mood. It will catalyze a Crisis. In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. It could be a rapid succession of small events in which the ominous, the ordinary, and the trivial are commingled.” – The Fourth Turning - Strauss and Howe -1997
The authors use their common sense, based upon known trends, to posit potential catalyst scenarios such as:
- A global terrorist group blows up an aircraft and announces it possesses nuclear weapons.
- Beset by a fiscal crisis, states begin to balk at Federal mandates leading to secession actions, militia violence, cyber attacks on the IRS, and demands for a new Constitutional Convention.
- An impasse over the federal budget reaches a stalemate. The government shuts down. The President declares emergency powers. Congress rescinds his authority. Financial markets spiral out of control. Default looms.
Strauss and Howe postulated on the possible path of this Crisis and I see nothing to doubt their analysis:
“An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. It is unlikely that the catalyst will worsen into a full fledged catastrophe, since the nation will probably find a way to avert the initial danger and stabilize the situation for a while.” - The Fourth Turning - Strauss and Howe -1997
The cable news talking heads, mainstream media pundits, clueless Washington politicians, corrupt Wall Street shysters, and non-thinking robotic masses have been convinced that the actions taken by Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama, Tim Geithner and Congress have averted a financial disaster and saved the world. One hundred years from now when Chinese historians look back on the period from 2000 until 2025 they will ask themselves, “what the hell were they thinking?” The causes of this Crisis are as clear as day to anyone willing to see. A small group of Wall Street bankers and corporate interests through their proxy, the Federal Reserve, created the largest housing bubble in the history of the world generating hundreds of billions in obscene undeserved profits, while destroying the wealth and futures of millions of middle class Americans. Once the fraudulent nature of the bankers’ pillaging of the nation’s wealth came to light, the entire ponzi scheme collapsed, as they always do. On a parallel track, the Federal government, knowing full well that its un-payable social welfare commitments could never be fulfilled, decided to engage in two wars of choice, made additional un-payable social welfare commitments, and created new bloated bureaucratic agencies in the name of security and safety.
What will truly amaze future historians is the “solutions” that our leaders chose to save the country. Despite already being the largest debtor the planet has ever seen, with a National Debt of $8 trillion in 2005, the President and Congress have added an additional $6 trillion of debt, with plans to increase that debt at a rate of $1.5 trillion per year for the foreseeable future. Despite the fact that the housing boom was created by loose monetary policy and non-enforcement of existing laws and regulations by the Federal Reserve, our leaders have allowed this bank owned entity to reduce interest rates to 0%, buy $1.5 trillion of toxic mortgages from the Wall Street banks that caused the crisis, suspend requirements for banks to report their assets at their FMV, monetize the debt spending by the Federal Government, and create inflation through the printing of money out of this air. The Federal government’s response to the crisis was to create a mandated healthcare benefit for 35 million more Americans with no means to pay the untold trillions in future costs. Our leaders’ solution to a crisis caused by excessive debt has been to create twice as much debt. A passage from the Book of Matthew which Abraham Lincoln utilized during a prior Fourth Turning Crisis is a fitting description of where we stand today:
“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” - Matthew 12:25
The country is deeply divided. There is a vast swath of America that has chosen ignorance over knowledge. With 50% of Americans paying no income taxes, they will vote for anyone who promises them more. The rest of America is split between those who believe the answer lies in increased Federal government coordination and control and those who want a return to liberty, individual responsibility and a vastly reduced Federal government footprint. As I have tried to figure out the most likely path of this Fourth Turning I was focused on an external conflict in the Middle East or an incident on the Korean Peninsula providing the next spark. After the shooting in Tucson, this Fourth Turning is beginning to crystallize.
What I realized was that the three previous American Revolutions all occurred on U.S. soil. The First American Revolution was fought on American soil by a loose confederation of autonomous states against the overbearing control of a great European empire. The Second American Revolution was fought by Americans against Americans and resulted in a vast expansion of Federal government power and diminishment of state power. The Third American Revolution took place under the auspices of saving America from the depths of Depression with government social programs and the birth of the Nanny State. Each Revolution has further expanded the power and control of the Federal government. I believe the Fourth American Revolution will ultimately come down to a battle between the Liberty movement and the ruling oligarchy of Wall Street, Mega-corporations and supporters of the Military Nanny State.
I trust that Strauss and Howe correctly assessed the main factor that will drive the next phase of this Crisis – the Great Devaluation:
“It could be a series of downward ratchets linked to political events that sequentially knock the supports out from under the residual popular trust in the system. As assets devalue, trust will further disintegrate, which will cause assets to devalue further, and so on. Every slide in asset prices, employment, and production will give every generation cause to grow more alarmed. With savings worth less, the new elders will become more dependent on government, just as government becomes less able to pay benefits to them. Before long, America’s old civic order will seem ruined beyond repair.” - The Fourth Turning - Strauss and Howe -1997
There is no doubt in my mind that the next downward ratchet in this Crisis will be caused by Ben Bernanke and his attempt to generate just enough inflation to make our un-payable debt load less burdensome. His track record regarding economic forecasting, assessment of housing prices and anticipation of economic distress is flawless. He hasn’t been right once. With the top 1% richest Americans controlling 42% of the financial wealth in the country, an all-time high, the next leg down will boil over into class warfare. The middle class has been devastated thus far. Another stock market collapse and more job losses would push them over the edge. The evident failure of government solutions will invigorate the Liberty Movement to become even more strident in their anti-government message. The subsequent battle between the Haves and Have Nots is likely to flair into protests, riots and increasing violence. There will be no compromises. The 2012 Presidential election could incite reactions on par with the election of Lincoln in 1860. While the country convulsively flails about, foreign adversaries will take advantage of our weakness. Peak oil will throw a further wrench into the downward spiral. Out of this tempest, the country will either turn to a strong leader and more government control or move back toward a smaller Federal government footprint and a return to rule by the people and for the people. The outcome is unknown, but the path is foreseeable. Let’s hope that Ben Franklin was right.
All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?” – Benjamin Franklin, To Colleagues at the Constitutional Convention
“History offers no guarantees. If America plunges into an era of depression or violence which by then has not lifted, we will likely look back on the 1990s as the decade when we valued all the wrong things and made all the wrong choices.” - The Fourth Turning - Strauss and Howe -1997
Whiskey and Gunpowder
By Jim Kearns
February 9, 2011
Belcher, New York, U.S.A.
A Self-Employed Carpenter’s Thoughts
on the Future
The world is changing. Currently, as a nation, we have a large and well-trained section of our work force dedicated to residential construction. Unemployment within the construction industry now exceeds 20%. That number takes into accountonly workers getting unemployment compensation. There are also many self-employedindividuals, ineligible for unemployment compensation, who have simply run out ofcustomers and work.
That is the bad news. Now the worse news: Not only are those jobs not coming back, but the construction industry will continue to diminish for the foreseeable future. The real estate glut is not on hold; it is over. Waiting for its return is similar to waiting for next the big surge in typewriters, 35mm cameras, and home phones.
Why are the construction jobs not coming back? There are three main reasons, the first of which is inflation. Decades of credit expansion and the recent printing of money (quantitative easing) have increased the overall volume of our fiat currency: dollars. Therefore, the value of each dollar unit has been reduced, causing prices to rise. This results in increased costs in construction of new homes. Higher new construction costs make staying in and repairing older structures, or renting, more attractive.
The second reason is fuel costs. Living rurally and working in urban areas is becoming very expensive. Reasons one and two will keep an increasing number of younger workers and couples living and renting closer to work. Why take the financial and mobility risks associated with homeownership?
The third reason is we are broke. Who are “we”? Western civilization, comprised mainly of the U.S. and Europe. Consider this…there are gold and silver coins and bullion: actual wealth storage vehicles. There are paper dollars: temporary wealth storage vehicles. And there are also trillions of “dollars” represented as pixels on screens in accounting software programs.
When I say that we are broke it is because I don’t believe those pixel dollars represent anything. All of the wealth supposedly held in those pixels does not exist. It is a classic Ponzi scheme. If you go today and convert your pixels to actual dollars, everything is just fine. But if 10% of us go today and try to convert our pixels into dollars, the banks will shut down…Why? Because the money doesn’t exist. There is no actual wealth stored in any of those pixels.
Spain and Portugal may require financial bailouts in 2011. Part of the fallout from the Greek financial crisis last year was the creation of a eurozone bailout fund of $1.01 trillion. That fund could be used to assist Spain and Portugal if necessary. Where did that $1.01 trillion come from? Was it removed from another sector of Europe’s economy? Supplied in gold bullion to EU headquarters in The Hague?
Removed from the savings accounts of earnest Europeans?
No, none of those could supply that amount of wealth. It was simply created by banking and government officials in pixel dollars (euros). It has no actual, tangible value, because it was created out of thin air. One trillion dollars set aside after a series of business meetings, and no individual, company, or government had to contribute one dollar of actual wealth. The pixels in the spreadsheets represent nothing. They serve only to continue the illusion that everything is fine. Everything
is not fine. We don’t have the wealth we’ve been lead to believe we have…we are broke.
What does that have to do with construction? Everything. Cities and counties are broke. They cannot afford to borrow more money, and they cannot continue to raise taxes. States cannot afford the programs and pensions that they’ve promised, nor can they raise taxes. Companies cannot afford the pensions and benefits they have promised. They cannot raise prices either, as their customer base is already shrinking due to cost. Families and individuals are struggling to both get out from
under mountains of debt and to mesh sharply rising prices into their budgets.
The federal government spent $3.5 billion more per day than it brought in for fiscal year 2010. It is having trouble borrowing money by selling bonds to foreign entities because our current debt makes those bonds much riskier. The Federal Reserve is administering a program of quantitative easing (printing money or just adding pixel dollars) to keep up the appearance that everything is shipshape.
What ship? I’ll get back to that. Point being we are broke. There will be no excess income or wealth to support a large-scale residential construction industry in the near future.
The ship, of course, is the Titanic. Imagine that we’ve already hit the iceberg. But…everything seems to be roughly the same, and the ship’s intercom is continually telling us that everything is just fine. Remember the bailouts and the stimulus packages of hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars? That was the crew and the first-class passengers casually heading past you to get into the
lifeboats. This current financial system will be on the bottom within a decade. And no, there is not going to be a lot of new residential construction during that decade.
We are already well into a global wealth realignment. How is wealth created? Not obtained, but created? Manufacturing is the application of labor to raw materials to make products. The exchange of those products for tangible assets creates wealth. A nation that manufactures and sells abroad is creating and accumulating wealth. The lower, middle, and upper classes of those nations, whether participating directly in manufacturing or not, benefit from that creation of wealth.
Western civilization in general, and the United States in particular, no longer creates wealth; we simply move it back and forth. Usually to the benefit of those who have the capacity to slowly, without causing concern, convert pixels into actual assets (think lifeboats).
But…the curtain is slowly falling away. The sad state of our current financial situation has become too large, and too smelly, to hide. We are broke. No real wealth means no real money and no real credit, and, therefore, no large force of construction workers will be needed. Take a deep breath and figure out what you want to do next. And yes, I am saying that as much to myself as anyone….
My guess is that it will take at least a generation to recover from this financial predicament. All our debts will have to be paid…the debts that your governments have incurred in your name will be paid by you. Believe it. We will have no choice but to live within our reduced means. The options you have today, the programs and support you have today, the retirement that you think you will have tomorrow
no longer exist.
China is not going to be a superpower; they already are the superpower. The Chinese are testing a stealth fighter technologically superior to our best fighter, of which we have scant few. When they move to production, they will be able to produce as many as they think they need. We will not keep pace…we are broke. We will lose air superiority in a wide arc around China, including the Koreas,
Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines within five–10 years. The discussion of whether or not we should be the world’s policeman is moot; we can’t be.
We have to pay our debts, live within our means, roll up our sleeves, and get back to turning raw materials into products with efficient labor. Government’s restrictions and regulations concerning manufacturing will begin to ease…they will have no choice. We as a nation will eventually emerge stronger and more compact. We as individuals will be greatly challenged, but we will be fine, if not finer.
There is no need for panic or despair, no matter what the news brings in the near future. Take this period of relative calm to sharpen your tools, mend your work clothes, and trim the fat out of your budget. We’ll all be back to work shortly, and no doubt working our butts off at something we’d never expect today…
P.S.: It will be interesting to see if “pixel dollars” catches on…
Bits and Pieces
DO MORE
One of the greatest tragedies of the average person is the tendency to
spend our whole lives perfecting our faults.
Norman Vincent Peale
A person is never what he ought to be until he is doing what he ought to
be doing.
Author unknown
Peace, love, and happiness...until next time...
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