We are the masters now: the Chinese crescendo is building.

” ‘We are the masters now.’ I wonder if President Barack Obama saw those words in the thought bubble over the head of his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, at the G20 summit in Seoul… If the president was hoping for change he could believe in—in China’s currency policy, that is—all he got was small change. Maybe Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also heard ‘We are the masters now’ as the Chinese shot down his proposal for capping imbalances in global current accounts. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke got the same treatment when he announced a new round of ‘quantitative easing’ to try to jump start the U.S. economy, a move described by one leading Chinese commentator as ‘uncontrolled’ and ‘irresponsible.’ ”  Here (Niall Ferguson)

Criswwell predicts: Ladies and gentlemen…I PREDICT that in another twenty years the Grand Banana Republic will be just another South American country.

Life in the Grand Banana Republic (cont.’)

Britain’s blaring front page Daily Mail says it all: Americans starve as executive pay rockets: 50 million people go hungry while Wall St fatcats take home millions.

Related: No, no, China, please dont do it, turn back now, no…ooops too late: China buys more worthless Grand Banana Republic debt. I’ve figured it out. They want to prop us up so we can keep buying their toxic cheap crap in Wal-Mart.

Related: BTW, here’s how the super rich scumbags escape their share of  taxation: NYC’s mayor Bloomberg in action.

The Grand Banana Republic’s debt situation

“…The US will Default on its Debt … either that or experience hyperinflation. There is simply no other option. We can NEVER pay off our debts. To do so would require every US family to pay $31,000 a year for 75 years. Bear in mind, I’m completely ignoring the debt we took on with the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie, AIG, and the slew of other garbage we nationalized or shifted onto the Fed’s balance sheet. And yet we’re STILL talking about every US family making $31,000 in debt payments per year for 75 years to pay off our national debt. Obviously that ain’t going to happen… Here (Zero Hedge).

Related: “On the brink”

Relax…

Lie back and relax, ninnies, with the first color film; after all, there are at least a few weeks left till the economic apocalypse ( I forget, considereing the gravity implied by such a word, should I capitalize apocalypse?)

Corporatism (i.e., unbridled capitalism) gotta go

I watched this documentary the other night on Netflix Streaming. Incredibly, the U.S. is even worse off now than it was when Moore made this film.

Some items of corroboration

• U.S. economy near point of no return
• The financial conspiracy
• Jobless millions signal death of American dream
• Economic fear
• Wall St and second wave of recession
• Third World America
• Ugly world of monopolies
• Commercial real estate getting ugly

Hey, bro, can you spare a C-note for a cup of Starbucks coffee?

Peter Schiff, who before It Fell told us of the Coming Fall, is now warning: “We’re in the early stages of a depression.”  ………”In August 2006, Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, offered what many considered to be an outlier prognosis for the economy: The exuberance would end, real estate prices would crash back down to earth, and consumers would revert to saving from spending. In short, a deep recession was in the works. As outlandish as he may have sounded at the time, he was right. Four years and the worst recession since the Great Depression later, Schiff stands alone again with a bleaker diagnosis for the economy: an inflationary depression…” Here.

Update (as of 08/12/10): It ain’t pretty.

Update: It ain’t pretty II

Update: It ain’t pretty III

Update: This sounds scary and  certainly lends itself to the This ain’t pretty category: Financial writer says “Protect your property with high-voltage fences, barbed wire, booby traps, military weapons, and Dobermans”  Dobermans? Well I guess whoever’s capable of  getting through the first four defences won’t be that much troubled by a couple of snapping guard dogs. I mean the intruder would have to be like Robocop–or Stallone in First Blood.

“Defining prosperity downward”

“…Yes, growth is slowing, and the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That’s bad. But what’s worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care — that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal…” Seems a lot of people are waking up now, slowly and surely maybe, but nonetheless waking up. Here.

Too big to–succeed

…What topic? “America!” America? “What could I possibly teach this esteemed group about America?” A lot. The core issue became clear when the CEO of one of America’s top companies pulled him aside: “We’ve had tremendous success in recent years,” but “when you are at the top of the world … the most powerful nation on Earth … the most successful company in your industry … the best player in your game … your very power and success might cover up the fact that you’re already on the path of decline?…? Mighty America’s five stages of rapid decline

Here’s an alternate title: Who moved my cheese to an undisclosed location?

Quoting Alexis

–Alexis de Tocqueville: extrapolations from the past finally arrives now on our doorstep as established facts:

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

“I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself…” (Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, 22 October 1843)

(By the way here’s Tocqueville’s master work online: Democracy in America)

(Note: the first quote above is sometimes attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler)

Surviving the downdraft

Down but not out… Remnant of free enterprise escapes the downdraft:

Live long and prosper (heh heh)

(Don’t worry, as more and more people lose their jobs pen cap competition will drive the price even further  down; look for five to six cents by mid- winter )