18 August 2010

QOTD: Daily Reckoning Style

"'The predominance of the West is an anomaly in history,' Kraus goes on. 'It ended with the turn of the millennium.' It is now a “multipolar world” – in ideas and commodities. Instead of the traditional New York-London axis, the economic world will spin on different poles from Beijing to São Paulo."
All great empires, in our case an Empire of Debt, must come to an end.  Unfortunately, we are seeing a great world shift from the dominance of the Angelo-Saxin world towards that of the far east.  Nothing spectacular as it happens ever one to two thousand years, as China, Mongolia and Mesopotamia once ruled in advance of Greece and Rome societies.  Ergo the sands of time.

History, if we fail to learn it, means we are doomed to repeat it.

Special recognition to contributor AK Fan who gave me the exact same quote (almost verbatim) yesterday. 

Debt vs Votes

BigGovernment.com had an interest graphic last week.


Votes for President in 2008 versus the debt loads of the states.  See a correlation? 

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."  -Alexander Tyler

Click the link for a more in depth analysis of state debt load vs. 2008 presidential election. 

Bank of England Gov Wars of Higher Inflation, Longer

Less than a week after a Federal Reserve Governor warned of a boom bust cycle outlook for the USA, the Bank of England's Governor has issued a letter to the UK Treasury to state that inflation is running higher than the central bank's target.

It seems that, according to the Telegraph article, the Bank of England's Governor doesn't foresee a return to the country's 2% inflation target until 2011 at the earliest.  Now I'm sure the dear readers out there are wondering how can England's central bank admit to inflationary policies, yet the Federal Reserve can't see the same problem? 

Obviously, the Fed is more worried about the deflationary problem since the USA is saddled with exorbitant debt.  As prices deflate, wages stagnate or regress, and we get stuck in a downward cycle (great depression).  Deflationary pressures when there is a mountain of debt usually means default, which for the political establishment usually means an ouster.  Inflationary policies, as I am finding out in When Money Dies, allows the rulers to 1) buy time, and 2) those who wish to inflict radical changes to a country's structure then have a chaos within which to operate as the people are consumed with outright survival.  Where debt deflation is a market's ordered "survival of the fittest" solution to those who are over extended on their credit and have reaped the benefits of a cracker-jack economy, the US Fed wants to resist these pressures at all costs because it means a loss of power, as credibility has long since gone out the window.

So what is implied by the warning from the BOE's chief?  Nothing good, that's for sure.  Loose monetary policies have been the societal norm for the last 20~30 years.  As we are seeing detailed in the mainstream headlines lately, the consensus is starting to shift towards a dire outlook.  Hello second-half of the non-existent double dipper.  I don't like to offer a completely gloomy projection, but if we repeat the complete historical inflationary burn of 1920s Germany, the next decade will be ugly. 

House Speaker Admits to Dem AstroTurfing!

Nit wit Speaker Pelosi has just admitted that the Dems and their minions AstroTurf!  Well, ok, maybe she didn't specifically say that, but let's read between the lines.  Heard here, Madam Speaker has called for an investigation into the funding of the opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque.
"And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded."
FUNDED!??  Funded?  Really Speaker BELOW-ME?  You think that everyone that opposes you is funded by the vast right-wing conspiracy?  Perhaps you think that opposition to the Ground Zero Muslim Community Center is being funded because it is how your side operates?

Think like your enemy if you wish to defeat them, the problem being for our radical leadership, it's not so easy to think like us.  We're normal, you're not. 

Helo Ben's Facebook Page

Zero Hedge has been doing a series of artist renderings of political and economic leadership's "desktops" lately.  Yesterday, they took it a step further and did a rendering of Helicopter Ben Bernake's Facebook profile. 

The rendering comes from William Banzai who's blog is full of financial parodies and is worth a look for the (un)amusing factor.  Meaning, that the pics are so satirical, that they portray the reality that the political and economic leadership don't want us to know (hence why they are "un"amusing). 

Enjoy and happy hump day.