I try to tell friends some of this stuff. They act like I just told them I went for a ride in a flying saucer piloted by Elvis.

Many elderly will say that they are waiting for God but it appears they may get to see Bondzilla just before the lights go out.

It's very difficult for someone to wrap their mind around the fact that they've been lied to by the major institutions in their society for most, if not all, of their lives.

I remember reading the despair of Soviet WWII veterans in the 1990's after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that their sacrifices for a regime that turned out to be all lies, was not worth it in retrospect.

I'm wondering how all the now brain-dead populace of America will react when they realize that all those 60 hour weeks at cube farms was for a world built on lies.

Michelj said:

Quote:

The rich, the real ones, have no piles of money. They are leveraged to the hilt but have access to the money FLOW.

I am having trouble understanding your post. I don't know what you are trying to say but, here is how I see it. The real rich have a lot of cash and no debt. Thier personal balance sheets are very positive with little to no exposure to debt. Now, with that said, companies they own/control MIGHT be leveraged to the hilt but, it is not their personal money/fortune that is on the line if things go sour.

The rich are rich for a reason and part of that reason is knowing how to hang on to money.

Flap

the bondholders lent to an institution with no value. Buh-bye. Don't care who they are. Give it to the bondholders and put the whole thing in runoff.

Quote:

I remember reading the despair of Soviet WWII veterans in the 1990's after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that their sacrifices for a regime that turned out to be all lies, was not worth it in retrospect.

Going to point out to you and those FSU Vets, that the point wasn't to fight FOR the SU, but AGAINST Japan, Italy and Germany.

What those FSU vets did was save the FSU and decades down the line, Russia. And the West and Everyone Else.

Had they failed, there would have been no FSU to collapse to Russia and its satellites.

My imagination is not fertile enough to re-write 75 years of history with a German Occupied EU and UK and a defeated Soviet Union.

It would probably suck and I would probably not be here.

Flap, The rich are, as KD says eloquently, shorting money. If inflation would hurt the .01% we would have no inflation. Looks like the opposite is true; inflation transfers wealth to them; deflation has to be avoided at all cost. Think about it, why is that.

Is there a place where I can see the numbers ?

How much is Spain GDP ? How much current Spain government debt ? How much each Spanish bank bailout will cost ? (Bankia and others)



same for Greece , Italy, all the PIGS.

now how much is all that compare to German and French GDP ? how much taxes does the french and German collect from their citizens.


all this might help show when will the German citizens say : enough is enough.

TIA


update: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/ecbs-refus....

This is a great ticker Karl. One worthy of me linking to others. It is concise and spells out everything nice and neat. It should be on the front page of drudge. Everyone I try to tell this to immediately clams up and says they are scared and they don't want to hear it. Or they just act nice and pretend they are listening but you can tell they would rather be talking about anything else. Most people just can't grasp the enormity of what awaits us. Even the people in charge don't seem to grasp it or else they would never be running for President since the next President will almost certainly preside over the collapse. It just doesn't make any sense...

Great ticker again karl! I wish it would make a difference. Unfortunately tooo many people dont care to understand and a bunch of them cant understand. Things will change when we finally hit that wall. They will not change before that.

I sense that people are somewhat aware that things are not quite right, but cant quite put their fingers on it and as long as the water boils slowly they arent going to get out of the pot.

Karl, sometimes being right means squat. They are going to print until the wheels come off the wagon.

Most people (2/3?), have already been conquered by the financial system. They are on food stamps, SS, in debt, or living paycheck to paycheck.
The ones that need to worry about what the banking system is doing are people with cash and assets. (Karl?) They are the ones that are under attack.
The well-to-do people are the only ones that have the resources and and can make changes.
Karl, keep trying.

Quote:

WHEN Will We Talk About The ACTUAL Issue

When Bid no longer will match Ask under any material basis.


Everything else is white-noise, and as you've seen can continue for quite sometime.

Jackl, bid will always match ask, because the Fed and the other central banks have decided to print to make it so. Soon, bid will be the Fed's right hand, and ask will be its left, but bid will always match ask.

They have no tools left but to print, and they will print to infinity and beyond. The only fly in the ointment is that they cannot print the goods and services they want to buy. Thus, inflation.

It will all work out for the central banks and their minions and cronies as long as we keep on taking the emissions of their printing press for our goods and services. The wheels will come off the wagon when enough of us stop working for fiat currency, and not before.

I don't see much hope for that: no-one is going to stop working for fiat while it is still generally accepted. Look at the great inflations of the 20th century for evidence on that. If you want to be able to help end the nonsense, be ready to function for a few years without participating in the economy except by barter with neighbors.

When The Derivatives Market Crashes (And It Will) U.S. Taxpayers Will Be On The Hook
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archi....

It's strange how completely people have been trained to accept the assertions of authority, trained not to think or ask questions.

Recently a city council member in Odessa remarked, re the city's debt level, "This is not a lot of debt for a city this size."

Well, I guess I don't have a lot of debt for a person my size, either. But I am not sure that you properly evaluate debt levels based on size, whether it's expressed in weight, volume, area, or population. I mean, I would think that you would evaluate this based on underwriting standards.

It floors me that people accept statements like the city councilman's--as if they weren't purely ridiculous on their face.

Karl, you speak the truth and have warned everyone who reads your tickers. You warn of the day when the well runs dry. I hope it doesn’t come to this, but here is how I can imagine the beginning (of the end):

All welfare, FS, UI, and SS checks stop. All banks fail, shut their doors, and the FDIC electronically pays bills submitted by depositors, along with monthly cash allowance via a government debit card. All markets are frozen, and remain closed till “the State determines” a free market can resume. Personal debt will be frozen interest free until then also. Fiat is no longer legal tender and a certain amount “determined by the State” may be deposited into one’s FDIC account. Gold confiscated after global value determined? Taxed to the point of no value? Bartering considered a felony. All transactions must pass through an FDIC account with taxes collected automatically.

Those who have nothing at all riot in the streets, looting everything till there’s nothing restocked and retail businesses just shut down, later to be replaced by government run distribution units. Law enforcement will be ineffective as local police are at home protecting their own families. These riots first start in urban areas. Martial law is declared, the Constitution and pending elections are suspended. The take over Executive Order is instituted. The military is sent in with shoot to kill orders, sending marauding gangs out into the suburbs killing and pilfering well to do neighborhoods. The military will draft all police personnel and non-rioting able-bodied unemployed men to restore order in these areas. Their families will be housed and protected on military bases or secured gated neighborhoods.

People employed by industries will report to work as soon as some semblance of order is restored. Union participation will be suspended. Wage and price controls will be put into place. Pay will be issued via their government debit card. Many destitute elderly will be gratefully sent to FEMA camps to escape the violence and be provided with food, shelter, clothing and rationed medical care. Schools will be closed until order is restored in the school district.

Captured rioters deemed “Enemies of the State” will be sent to concentration camps for “Rehabilitation”, until they can be “in the opinion of the State”, re-integrated back into society, or executed, if guilty “in the opinion of the State” of murder or hideous crimes. Revolutionaries banded together in remote areas will be “invited” to turn in weapons and rejoin the new State society. Drones will be sent in to quietly destroy the “insurgents” who refuse.

Of course there will be some “actual” U.S. States that will say **** you, we’re out of here. If there are enough of them, we get our freedom back (yes, millions will die), if not, we’re slaves of the “State” till there are enough. Unfortunately, with the way the population is now conditioned, God help us.



Just my thought guys,
Boomer

Some here appear to understand the basic problem. The problem is that what Karl is advocating is painful. He is asking politicians to admit they have erred, admit that there is no free lunch, and take real, difficult steps (reconcile a whole bunch of banks (the only way to do it would likely include a sizable print of dollars to meet FDIC obligations), deal with huge monetary losses to investors including insurance companies and pension funds - develop equitable taxes to recover the costs to the Treasury (or, take on sovereign coinage and induce a nasty bout of inflation) - AND GET RE-ELECTED. Never forget that last bit - it is every politician's prime directive. Forget that drivel they spout when working to be elected or that oath of office directed at upholding the Constitution - what pols all want is to be re-elected - and they begin working on it the day after elections.

If we want something like this to happen, we will need to elect folks used to giving folks bad news - like an oncologist. The more likely outcome is continuing currency debasement until the total collapse. Crazy, I know, but I see no other possible outcome. Look out to the political horizon. See anyone espousing these things? Yes, there is that Bill Still guy and Ron Paul - neither of whom is going to be elected president. That's it. We still have idiots challenging each other to give just a little more away - more of our savings, more of our taxes, more, more, more.

Until everything implodes, I don't see fiscal sanity happening.

I've accepted they'll keep the plates spinning until they all crash down at once.

Nature demands a culling now and again, and this is the preferred modern method, apparently.

Most of the folks who lived thru the depression will be gone, their numbers are dwindling rapidly.

We will see bad times again, but there won't be many left that lived thru that.