 | | The Daily Reckoning | Friday, November 26, 2010 | - Hobbled, weakened, lurching towards collapse...America gives thanks,
- TSA “Grope and Fondle”...how much more will the yanks take?
- Plus, Bill Bonner on the job, reckoning away on Turkey Day...
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|  | | | When Enough is Enough | | Myriad Responses to the Global Financial Crisis | |  | | Bill Bonner |
Reckoning over the holiday weekend...
Yes, dear reader...we are on the job. Reckoning away...
And we are spoiled for choice this morning...so much to reckon with.
First, let’s begin with the US stock market. Up...down...up again. The Dow rose 150 points, Wednesday. Gold fell $4. What does that tell us? Nothing...
Meanwhile, in Europe, poor Ireland is suffering. On Wednesday, it agreed to further spending cuts...and to higher taxes too. Talk about austerity...! These guys will do practically anything to protect their bankers.
Bloomberg:Ireland’s government said it will cut spending by about 20 percent and raise taxes over the next four years as talks on a bailout of the country near conclusion.
Welfare cuts of 2.8 billion euros ($3.8 billion) and income tax increases of 1.9 billion euros are among the steps planned to narrow the budget deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product by the end of 2014. The shortfall will be 12 percent of GDP this year, or 32 percent including a banking rescue.
So far, the Irish people go along...like beasts of burden. Dumbly. Humbly. Fumbly. Whose side is the government on, they must wonder. We watch in amazement...we want to see how far they’ll go.
Of course, they’re not the only ones who seem willing to put up with anything. In the US, the central bank has pledged to reduce the value of Americans’ savings...to cut their real incomes...and make everything they buy more expensive.
Hey, whose side are they on?
A judge in England just handed down a jail sentence to four counterfeiters in Leeds. He said the clink was appropriate because the counterfeiters might have “undermined confidence in the system” and “caused a lot of people to lose money.”
If you get jail time for that, Ben Bernanke better watch out!
Meanwhile, millions of Thanksgiving travelers got to try out the TSA’s new “Grope and Fondle” system of terrorism fighting. Yes, the video proof is all over the airwaves...photos of the TSA patting down toddlers and grabbing crotches...
How much of this will Americans take? We wonder about that too.
Elsewhere, many people have decided they have had enough. Unfortunately, the ones who have had enough were the ones already getting too much – that’s right, the zombies.
Here’s the story from Associated Press: Anger and fear about Europe’s seemingly unstoppable debt crisis coursed through the continent Wednesday. Striking workers shut down much of Portugal, Ireland proposed its deepest budget cuts in history and seething Italian and British students clashed with police over education cuts.
In Lisbon, strikers all but closed the airport, stranding passengers who couldn’t get in or out of the country.
“People have to fight for their rights,” Moreira, 51, told The Associated Press. “People have to fight against what is happening.”
Government policies have “sent people into poverty and misery,” said union leader Manuel Carvalho da Silva, noting that Portuguese civil servants will see wage cuts averaging 5 percent next year.
Italian students occupied university buildings and piazzas to denounce education cuts being debated by Parliament, clashing briefly with police in Rome and blocking five main bridges over the River Arno in Pisa.
In Britain, students decried government plans to triple tuition fees.
“Education is not a rich kid’s game,” said Tash Holway, a 19-year-old student in London. “If this keeps up, the entire industry will change. It won’t be about talent, but only about who can pay.”
Tempers even flared at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, where British legislator Godfrey Bloom was expelled from a debate on Ireland’s financial meltdown after he called a German legislator an “undemocratic fascist.”
So you see, dear reader, there was too much for us to reckon with. We couldn’t help ourselves...
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| | The Daily Reckoning Presents | Yeah, Thanks A Lot!
by Bill Bonner |
This week, Americans sit down in their sturdy chairs to enjoy a national feast. Businesses are shut down. Congress is adjourned. For one day at least, citizens can enjoy their peace.
In every hamlet, urban ghetto and rank suburb they gather, sacrificing turkeys to their deities, whoever they might be. Before they tuck in, they bow their heads and give thanks. But for what?
There have always been two parts to the Thanksgiving holiday – one sincere and personal, the other national, fraudulent and delusional.
One of the first Thanksgivings took place in 1623. The colony at Plymouth Rock had barely survived. The supply ships from England had not brought enough food. Harvests were poor. People died of hunger, cold, disease and malnutrition. Like all central planners, Governor William Bradford blamed it on the weather. Then, when communal farming was abandoned, what luck, the weather improved:
“The Lord sent them such seasonable showers, with interchange of fair warm weather as, through His blessing, caused a fruitful and liberal harvest...for which they blessed God. And the effect of their particular [private] planting was well seen, for all had...pretty well...so as any general want or famine had not been amongst them since to this day.”
Thanksgiving wasn’t made a national holiday until 1863. Then, it celebrated not the success of the American experiment, but the end of it.
Imagine a battle today in which 500,000 American soldiers died – almost as many as died in WWI and WWII combined. As a percentage of population that was the death toll at Gettysburg. That was what Lincoln chose to follow with a day of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for what?
“...peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere [EXCEPT IN THE THEATRE OF MILITARY CONFLICT].” Emphasis added.... [And we] “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged.”
Lincoln should have proclaimed a day of mourning. The battle and the War Between the States were not glorious achievements. They were national disasters. The fondest hope of the founders – that people could decide for themselves what kind of government they would have – died on the battlefield. But the nation’s course was set.
America may be in the New World, but it has one of the oldest governments on the planet. France, Italy, Germany, India, China – all have newer, fresher governments, as much as 200 years younger. Newer economies bustle with more energy and money too. America appears near exhaustion by comparison. China and India eagerly court the future; America seems desperate to hold onto the past. Her armies are stretched over the globe, trying to prevent anything really new from coming about. At home, her politicians and economists try to prevent anything old from going away. At great cost, banks and businesses, as well as the old timers themselves, are propped up...supported...and sustained.
Still, the typical American has much reason for gratitude. His house is bigger and gaudier than ever before. His car is a plush monster. He has more than enough to eat. He has gadgets and gizmos galore – including a machine that blows the autumn leaves off his asphalted driveway. And behind him is still the mightiest government the world has ever seen – ready to protect his vital interests in the Hindu Kush as well as Wall Street.
Yet, all his blessings seem to come with fuses attached. If the winter is severe, he may not be able to heat his palace. If the price of gasoline rises, driving his land barge could ruin him. If he looks in the bathroom mirror, he might get depressed. Our own polling tells us that 1 in 10 households will give thanks for their government this week. They should reconsider. Didn’t the federal government tempt them to buy a house by giving him tax breaks and subsidizing mortgage rates? Didn’t it egg them on to spend money by reducing the value of the dollar by 97% over the last 97 years? Didn’t the feds stymie every attempt to correct their over-consumption by cheapening credit and stimulating consumption even more? And isn’t it the government that has run up a net national “finance gap” of more than $200 trillion...so that each newborn American faces a burden of $700,000 in debt even before his first diaper has been changed?
And now, the government practically mocks him in an outrageous way. Ever since an amateur terrorist set his underwear on fire, the airport polizei are determined that a man should have his genitals checked before he boards an airplane. Thank god the would-be terrorist didn’t tuck his explosives into a body cavity!
It is fascinating from an ethnological point of view; the poor American has been led along, put upon and knocked around so much. Foreigners must look on in amazement, wondering how much abuse he’ll take. And now, his head bent over...the “butterball” turkey waiting for him...the American must feel the weight of his blessings. He is broke. He may lose his job. His country is in decline, headed for bankruptcy and his leaders are incompetents and scoundrels. To make matters worse, his central bank is keen to commit a new act of sabotage – intentionally trying to undermine his savings...his labor...and his standard of living.
Like Lincoln, he can say to himself...except for that...everything is okay...
Regards,
Bill Bonner,
for The Daily Reckoning
| | | Major News Outlet Calls This the “Next Crisis”...
THE GREAT AMERICAN “RECOVERY RIP-OFF!”
America on the mend? HORSE HOCKEY!
Here’s what’s real: Brace yourself for what’s going down as the BIGGEST SECRET “WEALTH SWINDLE” in world history, engineered by none other than the fat cats on Wall Street and in Washington, DC.
How does their scam work? I reveal all in this special research note.
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| | | | Bill Bonner | Double Dips, Dollar Declines and Disillusioned Doctors
by Bill Bonner |
Oh...and here’s something else to reckon with. New home sales took a dive in October. The FHFA has confirmed a “double dip” in the homing market. Prices are weak everywhere and falling in some areas.
And if you leave a house vacant, squatters might move in. Talk about complications! The house next door has been foreclosed. But the paperwork was fraudulent. Who owns it? So who’s got the right to expel the squatters?
Don’t worry about it. It will work its way out somehow.
*** And on the other side of the globe, they’ve had enough too.
“Russia and China Ditch the Dollar,” says the headline.
It was inevitable, wasn’t it? The two said they didn’t need no stinkin’ greenbacks to do their bi-lateral trade. They can work it out perfectly well in yuan and rubles.
Besides, with the Fed undermining the value of the dollar, who wants to hold it? You could have a few hundred billion one day. And then, the next day you discover that you’ve lost $200 million – just from holding the wrong currency at the wrong time.
No thanks.
The Russians and Chinese won’t be the first. And not the last either. Gradually and suddenly, the world will drop the dollar.
Eventually, Americans will drop it too.
*** “I don’t know if I want to be a doctor,” said Henry, back from college for Thanksgiving.
“I like the theory and the science of it. But now it’s extremely regulated and controlled. And nobody seems to know what the new health care system will mean or where it will end up. I don’t know if I could live with the paperwork.
“I’m thinking about sticking with physics.”
Enjoy your weekend,
Bill Bonner,
for The Daily Reckoning
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Here at The Daily Reckoning, we value your questions and comments. If you would like to send us a few thoughts of your own, please address them to your managing editor at joel@dailyreckoning.com |
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| | The Daily Reckoning: Now in its 11th year, The Daily Reckoning is the flagship e-letter of Baltimore-based financial research firm and publishing group Agora Financial, a subsidiary of Agora Inc. The Daily Reckoning provides over half a million subscribers with literary economic perspective, global market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Published daily in six countries and three languages, each issue delivers a feature-length article by a senior member of our team and a guest essay from one of many leading thinkers and nationally acclaimed columnists. |  |
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