We really are screwed.

 Over at Hullabaloo both digby and thereisnospoon have been getting right to the heart of the chief issue we face today. The worlds financial situation. Or maybe that should be the worlds financial implosion. Here is the takeaway graph from thereisnospoon today:

"It's high time that economists worldwide begin to envision a different way forward: a way for sovereigns to bypass reckless financial institutions and survive in the interdependent global economy without their help. A way, in other words, to truly allow banks that are too big to fail, to fail. A way to allow nations to tell investors that they will have to accept the consequences of their having taken the risk that comes with making money off interest with no labor involved. If not, the moral hazard of an increasingly powerful and unaccountable global investor elite will continue destroy sovereign nations socially, economically and spiritually. It's only going to get worse from here."

 As long as the people are slaves to the big banks we will continue to be at risk for an epic depression, that looks to be much worse than the 1930's. At the time many more people worked in agrarian jobs and could, if not be totally self-sufficient, survive. And there were bread lines and a good percentage of people were continuously hungry. Now most food in the industrial countries comes from large corporations, owned by investors. They will not provide food for those who have no jobs, without being paid. Most of the supermarkets are owned by large corporations and they will not give away food. So when the depression hits the hardest and there are no jobs, savings are gone and a large segment of the population is starving and homeless, it will be chaos. A dangerous chaos.

The big problem as thereisnospoon pointed out is that the investment class has changed the definition of risk. It's no longer a position of possible loss, it is a position of permanent wealth.

Digby gets it right once again.

The 2 most important graphs:

"Confidence? You'd be a fool to have confidence in the future. According to all of our most sagacious national commentators, the best case scenario is that our political leaders get past their minor differences on the scope of the cutting and come together to destroy the safety net. If they don't, well ... apparently it will be very, very bad.

Uncertainty? Average people don't have uncertainty. As far as they are concerned they're screwed no matter what happens. Our leadership demands that people buy into the silly notion that giving up their personal financial security is a patriotic duty and that high unemployment and underwater mortgages are niggling little problems that will be solved by putting more of their "skin in the game."

My questions are simple:

How long can we hold on?
How long are we expected to hold on? 
Or are we expected to just fold and go away silently?
What does our government think is going to happen?


Someone stated the other day that it took 12 years to get over the depression. So, we learned those lessons, how to fix the economy, so why do we have to spend another 12 years doing it again? Are we really that stupid?
And the answer seems to be yes, we are just that stupid.
All that highfaluting Ivy league education our betters have, shot to hell. What a fucking waste.

Waiting for rain

I''m waiting to see exactly what the debt ceiling bill actually does before I freak out. It sounds bad. Not as bad as it could be, so maybe better to say not so good. But what are/were the options?

Mostly it sounds like we kicked the can down the road and under the bus. That's sure not a horrible place to be when one has to play adult games with 4 yr olds. And not just any 4 yr old. These conservatards are stupid 4 yr olds. With an unreasonable attention span, a 1/4 track mind and pre-school run by morons.

So how do we win? We can't win, we can only survive till the children get sent to bed without supper. We let them make decisions and this is what we get for it.

So I'm waiting for rain, hoping that will cool things down a bit and that these children don't like to play in the rain.