Burn him, he’s a witch!!

My professional life is crumbling around me. For reasons that I am not privy to, I have been stripped, tied to a post and set ablaze in a twisted witch hunt. The lust for my martyrdom is a mystery to me. I went for a walk on our property. Four point six acres of circumnavigation is a year’s journey for the soul.

I happened upon a patch of Tansy Ragwort. A noxious weed that is poisonous to grazing animals, causing cirrhosis of the liver. We invite our wonderful neighbors to graze their horses on our land, to keep the grass in control, the horses fed and to save our retired neighbors the cost of feed. So, Tansy Ragwort must be eradicated. Its destruction is cathartic as you bring the heel of your boot smartly against its base. Today, I have found a forest of the things. My street shoes prove no match for this invasive. So I head to the house for heavier footwear, a sturdy shovel and a cold lager.

Back at the Tansy Ragwort patch, I relive my professional hell. I swirl through the same conversations over and over as I dig out the weeds with passionate disdain. Clouds roll by, bringing mists that glisten in the sunlight against my sleeves. I continue my fantastic conversations as I dig the weeds and throw them, clods of dirt and all, into a growing pile. Dark clouds that were once in the distance, scuttle overhead and begin to drop the water that they can no longer hold. Large drops dampen the grass and my hair, and grow in frequency and number.

Suddenly, I am no longer alone with my conversations, weeds and rain. My dear cat Rocky has ventured from the safety of the covered porch to warn me of the impending downpour. My heart breaks as he turns his beautiful green eyes toward me in the rain. Cats, I think, are not supposed to get wet! Yet he rubs his face against my calf and purrs his love and concern. I decide that the Tansy Ragwort must be allowed to live another day.

Rocky’s fur gleans in the streaking rainfall that glistens in the full light of the late evening sun, shining from the west, beneath the base of the clouds. His thick, elderly feline body glides though the grass that to him, must seem a jungle. I walk slowly by his side – the lovely little animal who has mustered the will to wonder over a football field to be with his human. We walk slowly, side by side as he zigs and zags along our path toward the house. We arrive at the porch, drenched. I have fallen more deeply in love with my dear pet and I wipe his dark fur dry. What was it that consumed my thoughts as I dug at the Tansy Ragwort?

The Incredible, Powerful Petrodollar

Here are some articles which discuss the Petrodollar and it power. They also point out the weakness – without the Petrodollar, the US economy will collapse.

Here is a historical account of the Petrodollar. This link is to the first in the series with the series being four parts in all.

The next two stories are related and are good for other perspectives.

• World Petro War II
• This story discusses a Chinese port and refinery under construction in Saudi Arabia

The irrelevance of the Three E’s in Today’s contrived reality.

Chris Martenson’s Crash Course is a wonderfully educational and insightful review of how Environment, Energy and Economy are all interdependent. I still believe that he is right. But, we do not live in a natural world. We are living in a world run by self-centered psychopaths who are determined to make as much money as possible at the expense of everyone else.

Environment

1. For anyone with a brain, it is clear that the amount of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide has been increasing ever since the Industrial Revolution. As a geologist, I completely understand that Earth has experienced periods of varied concentrations of CO2. However, it is the intimate relationship between the increased burning of carbon based fuels and the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels that points directly, and with laser accuracy, to Anthropomorphic Climate Change.

2. Mining is, to extract material that either has no means to replenish itself or at a rate faster than that of the rate of replenishment. Iron, Copper, Oil, Diamond and, in some cases, water in very deep aquifers are all mined. Once they are removed, they will not return.

The environment is not something that is forgiving. Earth is a planet sized experiment in equilibrium. Humans have been pumping tons of pollutants into the atmosphere every day for over a century. The short-term (geologic time) effects are that things go out of balance. But Earth WILL re-equilibrate!

For instance, as the atmosphere warms, oceans warm and glaciers melt. At some point, the mixing of very cold arctic water and warm oceanic currents clash and change flows that keep natural balance. England, though it is in higher latitudes, is relatively warm, thanks to the Gulf Stream. As the arctic ice melts, the Gulf Stream slows and England becomes colder and oceans rise. Warmer oceans breed more severe storms. Hotter continents experience severe drought and record temperatures. All of these extremes are brought on by Earth going back to equilibrium.

Mr. Martenson states that we are experiencing exponential change in a number of areas. Populations are growing and natural resources are being depleted, exponentially.

Energy

Humans have transitioned from burning wood to coal, oil and natural gas. With the exception of wood, these are all non-renewable resources. Once mined and burned, they are transformed into heat, CO2 (and other compounds) and water. Based upon the observations of some very smart people, we are running out of these resources and will, at some point in the future, run out.

Economy

Humans are capitalistic by nature. At some point in our distant past, when one individual wanted something that another had, they might simply club the owner and take what was coveted. Since nearly everyone has something that someone else wants, this was a very painful means for obtaining things. Barter was (and still is) a civilized way to trade things in exchange for others. When money (gold and silver) came on to the scene, capitalism transformed into greed and greed transgressed further into what we now know as banking. We are now in a global recession brought on by extreme greed.

The fourth E – Elite

The trump card for all of these E’s is Elite. To borrow a quote from J. R. R. Tolkien, “One E to rule them all, One E to find them, One E to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” The modern day Elite is the Lord of the E’s. The Elites control everything. They have control of the monetary printing presses and banks, and with that control, they can buy anything. If the oceans rise and crops fail, the Elites will, as Sam Kinison used to say, “Move to where the food is.” If energy is scarce, the Elites will use their media weapons of TV, Radio and Theater to spread propaganda that turns the gullible masses into armies.

As the economic hardships increase, more and more desperation will force even the less gullible to enlist and fight for money or food. In other words, the Elites will simply take what others have because they can.

I have been absolutely positive that this societal house of cards would collapse soon. I have made preparations. But I am becoming convinced that the Elite puppet masters will be able to create the reality that they want, and for many more years. I truly believe that collapse would be a vast improvement over what we are entering.

I am waking up to the fact that presidents have always been power hungry sleaze bags. I voted for and respected Clinton. But, I have been learning just how much he did to allow the crash of 2008 to occur and assist in creating a world where theft is legal through the use of Derivatives, Credit Default Swaps and Collateralized Debt Obligations. Dubya Bush is an idiot whose arrogance is complete and whose evil is only second to that of his Vice criminal, Dick Cheney. During his presidency, O’bummer has signed laws that remove what were once Constitutional Rights (NDAA, Illegal to Protest ) He has remained complicit with Supreme Court rulings that give corporations the same rights as people but without any of the same accountability and legal consequences. Through his appointment of former banksters to high level posts, he has allowed equity market manipulation and theft by his friends, including former Senator and governor of New Jersey and former Goldman Sachs executive, John Corzine.

Yes, for most of us (99%), we will feel the full impact of collapse as our lives go out of control and fall into the full control of the Elites. The Elites themselves will continue to ride high on whatever is left with the full backing of the power of the Amerikan military and the militaristic police.

Welfare sucks

This guy really has it in for social networks and welfare. While there may be a large number of people who rely on government sponsored safety nets, I think he left out the real reason for the collapse – corporate greed.

As we know, oil is a finite resource. In order to make more money, GM has been slowly destroying this county’s infrastructure. I don’t recall the years, but GM systematically coerced local and regional governments to dismantle their trolley systems in exchange for stinky, inefficient buses. Since then, they have fought tooth and nail against any fuel efficiency laws, since those laws would cause their bed pals – oil corporations – to lose part of their record yearly profits. Oil companies get millions (billions?) in government subsidies (welfare). The government created millions of miles of roads (welfare) so that auto manufacturers had somewhere for their customers to drive their products. We are now living with a fleet of vehicles that average around 22 miles per gallon. With climate change and peak oil proven and widely accepted by the REAL scientific community, GM is making inefficient cars, making record profits selling to the Chinese and paying no taxes! Talk about welfare!

As our corporate owned media and ludicrously propagandized educational system filled our heads with dreams of wealth, should we just work hard and save, the Federal Reserve pushed inflation upon the working class at a rate, determined by Friedman, that remained under our comfort level (3% per year). In the 1950′s, a single working member of a family could support their family. Then, it required two working members. Soon even two working members of a family were not enough and the credit card began its evil work. The inability of people to survive, even on two incomes, trained us to become dependent on easy credit. With people believing that being in debt was just a part of life, the mortgage industry was now ready to move in for the kill. People hoping to live the American Dream were led, glossy eyed into mortgages that they really could not afford, but were reassured that they could by smiling banksters. The banksters then bundled all of those doomed (toxic) assets into derivative pools and sold them to pension fund managers who were told that these ticking bombs were viable financial instruments. Meanwhile, the crooked banksters created credit default swaps, which were just insurance policies that paid the banksters when the derivatives failed and killed the wealth of pensioners. As the huge volume of these toxic mortgage backed securities failed and the banksters collected on their insurance policies (bets against their own crap) the collapse of AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers occurred. These failures, which should have been allowed to remain dead, were bailed out (corporate welfare) with the hard earned tax dollars of the tax paying public (middle class and lower class).

And now, here we are. Yes, welfare killed this country, but it was not the kind that Reagan and the author of that article despise.

Today’s happy economic news

In this interview, Jim Sinclair talks about how the 5 largest banks in the US will either go broke or a cascade of derivative clearing houses will go broke, today (January 31, 2012).

The story is about Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and the economic default of Greece. Basically, a CDS is an insurance policy that is held by an owner of, say, derivatives. It the derivative fails (defaults), the owner who purchased a CDS will be insured against the loss and will be paid off – like an insurance policy.

In this case, creditors for Greece are being required to take a loss of 70%. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) is the body who determines if a credit event is a default. If the Greece situation is considered a default, the companies who hold the CDS policies (insurers) must pay. The holders of the CDS are the 5 top US banks. Those same US banks run the ISDA. So, Sinclair says, THEY will likely state that the failure of Greece will not be determined to be a default. The CDSs will not be paid, which will save the big banks (insurers) but that those who hold the equities (insured) will take a 70% loss, causing failures in the equity market sector.

BUT, in order to prevent those failures, there will be HUGE rounds of QE (Quantitative Easing) by the Federal Reserve and ECB (European Central Banks) which will push inflation through the roof and, hopefully, the value of commodities like Precious Metals (gold and silver).

That brings me to another topic called NGDP or Nomial Gross Domestic Product. Basically, GDP is the amount of all spending within a country. Nominal GDP includes corrections for inflation. So, we might have a year where the growth in GDP is 1% (not much growth), but if the inflation rate is 4%, that means that the NGDP is 5%. Some economists and the MSM (Main Stream Media) will call this a great year. However, those on a fixed income or anyone else, for that matter, will feel the inflation pain. Expect Benanke’s 2% targeted GDP to be more like 5% – 8% NGDP when this next round of QE raises inflation to hyper-inflation levels. Things are going to get really expensive. And if (when) we go to war with Iran, oil (gasoline) will jump even more.

Let the fun begin!

Here is a link to an interview with Gerald Celente that should scare the poop out of you. Always entertaining.

Links of the day

Here is an interview of Jim Rickards on King World News. The discussion is about the next round of QE and the exchange of oil for gold between Iran, India, China and Russia. The audio version should be up soon.

It looks like a lot of military might is headed somewhere…

The time has come

As we move closer to war with Iran, I have read and heard many opinions about the reasons for attacking and ideas about the fallout after the war begins. Jim Rickards, in his interview on King World News (http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2012/1/14_Jim_Rickards.html), mentioned, rather cavalierly, that the US would take out the Iranian air force and missile defense and other strategic targets quickly. Sure, he says, oil will go from $100 per barrel to $200 dollars per barrel. But we [the US] have assured China that a deal worked out with Saudi Arabia will keep oil flowing to China.

By the by, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has admitted that Iran has no nukes http://thedailybell.com/3500/VIDEO-Panetta-Admits-Iran-Has-No-Immediate-Plan-for-Nuclear-Weapons

How is this suddenly about China? Let’s talk about China for a moment. China has been bailing out the US for a long time now. They have been the primary buyer of US bonds, allowing the Federal Reserve to print money backed by those bond purchases that China makes. China is now enjoying a strong economy. Yes, they are having problems, but the US and the European Union are still begging China to buy bonds because China has the strongest economy of the bunch. They are also the “C” in BRICs – the only countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) that seem to be doing well while the Western World creeps ever closer to collapse. The US “powers that be” know that trying to get out of this economic disaster is futile. Derivatives, Credit Default Swaps, lawless banksters and crooked politicians are so numerous, that there’s no way to trick disaster and come back to the “good ole days”.

If When Europe and the US collapse financially, that will leave China and Russia to rule the world, such that it is. So, all of this talk is not about a war with Iran. This is a war with China. Iran provides oil to China and China is the enemy. China has the population and all of the manufacturing power that has been shipped out of the US. The US manufacturing sector has been rendered impotent by money grubbing CEOs of companies like GE and GM that pay no taxes and make millions or billions on tax free profits selling to the Chinese who build the things that the former US companies made. If you doubt it, just check the country of origin for the things that you buy. The US builds McMansions, everything else is made overseas. Still, China is the enemy of the US power elite. The phallically challenged political war hawks and elite banksters cannot stand by while the Chinese rule their world.

This is all about oil and an attempt by the US to keep the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and maintain the Petrodollar as the ONLY way to purchase oil.  Banksters have been working on this little scheme since at least 1913.

Those who stand to gain the most (Big Banks, Big Oil, Defense Contractors and vigilantes) are eager to send camouflage wearing kids into battle to die and to bomb the bejezuz out of a country that has no means of defending itself against a militaristic country like the US that spends more on making war than all the other countries of the world combined.

It would be folly to simply attack China or Russia head on. So, the US will go after a country that provides China and Russia with Oil – Iran. And, of course, the US knows that it cannot be blatantly obvious what they are up to. So, another threat from a Middle Eastern country is cooked up. Instead of the ambiguousness of the Iraqi threat and their Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), the Main Stream Media sluts fill the air waves with news of nuclear weapons. Does anyone actually think that the Chinese can’t see this for what it really is? The US Military Industrial Complex – yes the one that Eisenhower warned about – must cloak their intent under the ruse of saving the world from the wicked Muslims. Never mind that Pakistan and North Korea have nuclear weapons. They don’t have the vast reserves of oil that lie under the sands of Iraq and Iran. Even Hollywood portrays the Persians as multitudes that fall like impotent flies upon the swords of Europeans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(film).

This is all just to say that we are entering into the last World War. I hope it is not the last World War because we are all vaporized. I believe that this is the last World War because after this war is over, the world’s economy will be driven once and for all into the Gorge of Eternal Peril (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV0tCphFMr8), oil fields in the Middle East will burn without the means to stop the burning and to return to pumping. The loss of Black Gold will lose the modern world its life blood.

Oil provides much more than just a liquid with which to fill our gasoline tanks. Some wanking nut cases claim that oil shale and the oil rich sands of Alberta will keep us motoring for decades. However, some rather simple math proves this hope flat wrong. Let’s begin in North Dakota and the Bakken Shale. Generous estimates place the number of “recoverable” barrels at 2.1 billion. Sounds like a lot, eh? When we consider, however, that the US alone uses 20 million barrels of oil per day, that 2.1 billion barrels lasts a whopping 105 days! That’s a little more than three (3) months.

Now for Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands. This is truly a sizable deposit of Bitumen. Bitumen? What the hell is bitumen? I thought these were oil sands!

Here are some definitions of Bitumen.

1. (Chemistry / Elements & Compounds) any of various viscous or solid impure mixtures of hydrocarbons that occur naturally in asphalt, tar, mineral waxes, etc.: used as a road surfacing and roofing material
2. (Chemistry / Elements & Compounds) the constituents of coal that can be extracted by an organic solvent
3. (Chemistry) any liquid suitable for coating aggregates
(Engineering / Civil Engineering)

This is not the kind of stuff that just gets pumped out of the ground with a pipe and an oil rig. Bitumen is thick wax that, in this case, is mixed with sand. It takes vast amounts of steam and solvents (that’s oil) to process this waxy, sandy mix into something that can even be liquid enough to begin to process. With today’s technology and the deep pockets of Big Oil, daily production is up to 760,000 barrels per day. In other words, it would take 26 times more production just to keep up with the amount of oil that the US uses each day. But, Canada wants to keep some of their oil too! Bastards! We’ll attack them next!

Where was I? Oh, yeah.

So, after the war with Iran begins and while the oil fields in the Middle East burn, tractors will stop plowing fields because there is no diesel to fuel them. Monsanto’s Franken-seeds will wither and die without oil derived herbicides, insecticides, fertilizer and the natural means to reproduce! Fun techno toys will be a thing of the past as oil derived plastics used to produce their sexy containers will be too expensive to waste on toys. Clothing prices will skyrocket as plastics become more expensive and cotton dies in the fields without tractors to harvest it and pests go unchecked, gorging themselves on the plants that are no longer protected by poisonous oil products. Grocery stores’ shelves will quickly empty since the fuel to run delivery trucks becomes scarce and expensive. Expensive and scarce food makes people cranky. Expect food riots and crime that will make the Rodney King riots (http://vimeo.com/7476257) look like a playground squabble.

This is the worst possible scenario: attacking a major source of Oil (Iran) for two VERY powerful countries – China and Russia. Hopefully, the wars with them will be economic, wherein they will cash out their US bonds and declare an end to the dollar as the reserve currency. That alone will leave the US in ruin. The dollar will become useless and hyperinflation, like what happened in the Weimar Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_republic), will mean that imports will be so expensive that we can no longer import any goods. Since the money grubbing corporations have gone off-shore with all the manufacturing that the US used to be known for, we will have no skills or factories to create anything here.  Because we will not be able to purchase Oil to rebuild our factories, the country will grind to a halt.  The military and militaristic police will declare martial law as our major cities burn.

The riots will allow the US Government to begin the work that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) put into law (http://rt.com/usa/news/indefinite-detention-bill-senate-905/). It isn’t enough that cops can beat the living bejezuz out of peacefully demonstrating US citizens (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpOMlDVaXzc) or pepper spray students sitting on a sidewalk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4). Now, the US Government can grab your beaten and pepper sprayed body and lock you away indefinitely.

Ah. So much to look forward to!

But seriously, buy some seeds and plow your useless lawns under. The time has come… (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpkGvk1rQBI)

Collapse

Collapse is a sleeping monster in a cave. We keep moving closer to the monster as the darkness becomes more complete. It is not clear when we will touch its greasy, blood stained fur, but touch it we will. And when the monster awakens, running in the dark will offer no escape. Hunkering down until the monster’s hunger is satisfied will be our only hope. When the dust settles and the blood of its fury runs cold, only then will it be safe to emerge into the light of the new reality. You can smell its breath now…

Ready for a conspiracy based prediction? Chinese Terror Attack!

Today, Bernanke announced that he is reconsidering his earlier claim that another round of Quantitative Easing will not be needed. He told congress that growth is slower that he had anticipated (Growth? There hasn’t been any growth since the announcement that the recession ended in June of 2009.). With that little announcement, gold and silver prices shot up in morning trading. Silver was up over 5.5% and gold over 2%. When the next round of QE (QE3) is released, Wall Street will, once again, be flooded with billions of dollars backed by tax payer debt (that’s us!). Since the Wall Street hooligans and the Banksters don’t pay taxes (only capital gains of 15% and less with write-offs) they won’t be footing the bill that pads their pockets.

Inflation will escalate again as the glut of dollars drops the value of paper, fiat currency. The purchasing power of the middle class will dive even more while the pockets of the elite class bulge even more.

My earlier predictions:

1. $5.00 gas by fall seems to be on schedule – even with the release of oil from the reserves.

2. The State of Minnesota is closed down.

3. Unemployment is rising.

4. Northern Africa, the Middle East and Europe are experiencing riots because of unemployment and rising food costs. Greece is being held hostage by the Banksters (IMF, EU) and its assets are being sold off to raise money to cover debts that can never be repaid! The Pantheon will now be renamed Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s Member Memorial. If you believe the riots are for democracy, stop watching FOX News!

Here is my conspiracy thought:

Another headline this morning announced the bombing of markets in Mumbai, India. The bombings took place in jewelry districts. Jewelry is made from gold and silver. The Indians have been buying gold and silver in record quantities, forcing the price of precious metals higher. JP Morgan has been manipulating the prices of gold and silver to keep them low with respect to the US dollar. Any country threatening a move to the Gold Standard is a threat to the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Since the US makes so much money on that status, the US government (spelled Big Banks) will go to any length to maintain that status.

Saddam Hussein was in the process of creating a sovereign currency with which Iraqi oil could only be purchased, ending the use of the US Dollar and creating less income for the US from proceeds gained through the Petrodollar. The US then moved in, killing millions, but maintaining the power of the US Dollar.

Muammar Gaddafi was also in the process of moving to the Gold Standard, using the billions of dollars that he was getting from the US government. The US military is now bombing the shit out of Libya. Back to India. Bombs have gone off in Mumbai.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Bank will be allowing citizens to purchase gold bullion. Andrew Maguire, the famed “silver short” whistleblower, makes this point, “…if just 1% of their customers bought a single 10 ounce contract, that would equate to 1,000 tons of physical gold being drawn down….” I am predicting that there will be some sort of shenanigans to come in China and I would suspect that the CIA, acting on behalf of US banks, will be behind the curtain.

Precious Metals as a hedge against the fall of fiat currencies

In 2011, the price of gold increased from around $1420.00 on January 3, 2011 to about $1560.00 on May 1, 2011 for a return of 9.8%. The price of silver increased from $30.80 on January 3, 2011 to about $48.00 on May 1, 2011 for a return of 55.8%. On May 1st, the increases were stopped by the actions of JP Morgan and a couple other large banks. Some main stream media weenies claim that this was a normal and much needed correction because the precious metals, especially silver, had gone parabolic in its rise in value. Had they actually done some research, the main stream weenies would know that even with silver at $48.00 per ounce, it is still undervalued, using a number of different means of evaluation. In addition, records from the trading day show that the market was (and still is) clearly being manipulated by large bullion banks that had shorted silver. In other words, these banks had bet that the value of silver would fall. However, when normal people started to understand the importance of having something that has intrinsic value – silver and gold – the demand increased and the supply began to dwindle. Economics 101 took over the market and the price began to reflect the true value of precious metals.

Here are a couple of ways in which the true value of precious metals may be appreciated:

• The ratio of silver to gold in the Earth’s crust is anywhere from 10-16 to 1. With that ratio, a value of gold of $1532.00 (May 31, 2011) would mean that a fair value for silver would between $153.20 and $95.75. Today’s spot for silver is $38.30, a ratio of 40 to 1.
• Many countries have begun amassing gold in what is considered to be a move toward the gold standard, which the US moved away from under the Nixon administration in the 1970’s. The United States currently has 261.7 million ounces of gold in reserve (this has not been verified to still exist). There is currently $1,165,184,270,423.00 (1.165 trillion) in U.S. currency and coin outstanding and in circulation (USCC), according to the Financial Management Service, Treasury Bulletin. If the United States were to go back on the gold standard, the price of gold would need to be about $4,452.00 per ounce.
• Just for fun, that would put silver at about $111.30 at a 40 to 1 ratio and between $278.25 and $445.20 with ratios of 16 to 1 and 10 to 1, respectively.

Gold Confiscation

In 1933, Executive Order 6102, required all United States citizens to deliver their gold to the government. It allowed each citizen to keep only 5 troy ounces. There are many who are worried that the same sort of order could arise should the United States go back to the gold standard. While that remains to be seen, consider that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution gives citizens that “Right to Bear Arms”. Actual numbers are not available, since National Registration is not required, but estimates are that there are between 70 – 80 million gun owners with about 270 million guns.

Even unorganized, this many angry citizens would be a formidable army against the forced removal of personal wealth.