Wouldn't surprise me in the least, Mo. Actually, it might explain why gas has been kept (what seems to be artificially) high over the last what, year or two?

If you want to see ALL Americans revolt over a financial scandal, **** Libor - that's too obscure for 90% of people out there, even if explained - try GAS on for size. That price affects EVERYONE, and disproportionately affects the middle and lower classes most. I'd LOVE to see that **** come out.

Quote:

Infidel has it right.

Think of it this way: how long did it take the European jews to figure out that Hitler was going to kill them all during WWII? Answer: when the gas began to come out of the vents of the gas chamber.

But, many trusted their instincts and acted upon their vision of the future at the time. The situation then is in some respects very similar to many who now view the future of the world economy and envision what is a best preemptive measure to save their very being.

Really uncomfortable decisions that, in the current time frame go completely counter to our sense of security and the roots we have set down where we are or the daily occupation of which we make our living.

Nearly 100,000 Jews left behind everything they knew and departed Nazi Germany between 1932 and 1939. There were many subsequent waves in other countries too, most notably Poland where more than 300,000 jews, many who had already relocated from Germany, once again uprooted and escaped German occupied areas of Poland moving Eastward into interior regions of the Soviet Union.

And to put the icing on the cake, once AGAIN, after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, more than a million Jews again hit the road moving further East into Asia. For many, they were in a state of permanent refugee status for years and years, keeping one step ahead of sure execution.



http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?....

The point I want to make in all of this: One consistent theme surrounding the virtual history of the world since the beginning of time is one of: Economic turmoil followed by political turmoil, war and the resulting mass migration of refugees escaping impossible conditions or death.

Another salient component of the long storied history of refugee flows is the knowledge, vision and anticipation of some, who trusted their instincts early enough and in a planned controlled manner to avoid the harshest elements that afflict mass refugee movements. Including but not limited to disease and starvation.

It goes against every innate human trait to leave behind ones familiar grounds, home and often family, in order to act on an article of faith that one's action today, against an unknown future, is required for essential survival. A self preservation that won't know it's own judgement of success until an unknown point somewhere in the future.

We sit here in awe, practically transfixed by what our conscious and subconscious reasoning tells us is a virtual economic disaster looming 'somewhere' in the future at some point. We constantly entertain a balance of 'what to do' 'where to go' should our current position become untenable or the future of our current position is seen as so.

There is a saying that has stood the test of time: 'Every generation ultimately has it's own cross to bear'. (speaking of cataclysms such as war, famine, economic depression, plague, etc. of which most of us will rarely avoid given a full life.)

I can only say, it may ultimately come down to one's gut instinct and not a small amount of confidence and bravery to make the final momentous decision to dismantle everything we have worked a lifetime for, to transform our circumstance radically in order to seek a survivable place in our life.

It's been the history of the world, time and time again, that so many have been presented unavoidably and unfairly with the most stark choice of a lifetime.

Many simply won't because of simple inhibitions such as force of habit or conditioned expectations based on past experience.

Unfortunately, there will be a time that comes when those become what is best described as 'Fatal Instinct'.

Very true Videopro, try to imagine walking away from fixed payed off assets and making your way to Idaho from Florida behind an ox cart full of whatever you could toss on top.

Videopro wrote..

...We sit here in awe, practically transfixed by what our conscious and subconscious reasoning tells us is a virtual economic disaster looming 'somewhere' in the future at some point. We constantly entertain a balance of 'what to do' 'where to go' should our current position become untenable or the future of our current position is seen as so...

Sometimes, when human beings get cornered, there's nothing left to do but take a stand, do or die literally. And once in a great while, even though one may not live to see it for one's self, that kind of stand changes history.

There is no other place to go. There's not one nation, saving only Iceland perhaps, that isn't buried under a mountain of debt and run by banksters.

Better prepare to make a stand.

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There's not one nation, saving only Iceland perhaps, that isn't buried under a mountain of debt and run by banksters.

well, maybe a couple.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications....


I wonder why so many super-rich are buying in Patagonia.


Might be a good place to ride out the storm.

Stanley, I love the Texan in you. Too bad our state has been diluted with outsiders. It is good to see a lot of us here.

There is enough pretend and extend that I have to believe Greece could go down and they would pretend it didn't happen for at least a few months. In the meantime, the bankers would steal all that wasn't tied down. I think Karl hit one thing on the head though. There won't be business as usual with the Greek government.

I was talking to a guy I run into every month or so. He has a relative that is a bureaucrat in DC and went to visit him over the 4th. Those bastards are living it up in sodom and Gomorrah on our tab. Eastern Ivy League ****s who are having a party on our dime. Lobbyists and such blowing each other for a buck. This is the party we, the people have to stop. The more business arranged through DC, the poorer the typical American is going to become and the larger the FSA. When the FSA becomes better off than the typical American, the whole gig is up.

This paragraph from Frank Chodorov's Rise and Fall of Society says it all.

The corporation president has become accustomed to a
standard of living calling for a certain income. He likes it
and so does his wife. It is true that he has earned three times
that amount and that the State has confiscated two thirds of
his earnings. He resents the confiscation, wishes he could
retain more and thus improve his standard, but finds it convenient
to go along with the State for good reason. Perhaps
his corporation is wholly or partly in the employ of the State;
in that case, his income is actually derived from the taxes he
is forced to pay. It is true that his employees in the aggregate
pay more than he does and, though he has not figured it out,
the probability is that he senses a profit in this allocation of
taxes. Perhaps, if they were not taxed, his employees would
buy the corporation's products as liberally as does the tax
collector, but selling to a multitude of buyers would entail
more sales and credit problems, and for the time being
(which is all he is interested in) he finds it easier to do
business with the One Big Buyer. He hires a lobbyist to do
his selling.

Continuing with the corporation president, if the sales of
his product drop to a point where his accustomed profits are
threatened—say because taxes have deprived his prospective
customers of purchasing power—he is inclined to look with
favor on the State's inflationary activities. The distribution of
more money, even though slightly counterfeit, will temporarily
enrich the populace and enable them to make his sales
chart good to look at. That the infusion of new money into
the market place will have the effect of depreciating the
value of his eroding plant, possibly to the extent of putting
his business in an insolvent condition, no matter how much
he may put aside for replacement, is a consideration, to be
sure; but that is something for the next president and the
stockholders of the future to worry about. This year he must
pay dividends.* Pages 157-158

http://mises.org/document/3091/The-Rise-....

Chodorov wrote this book in 1959. This chapter was about big business and how it played up to big government. Government has destroyed the market place. This book can be read in a few hours and even faster for you guys that can read worth a damn. Unfortunately, the Mises Institute is proud of it, or I would buy a few copies to give away.

There are posts mentioning the price of oil. Any fool can see that every time the bankers think they can start dumping money in the streets again, industrial commodities go to the moon. They and only they can front run such a trade. I have suspected for quite a few years the copper market is cornered. I have read it is being used for Credit in China. The US housing market, a prime user of copper hasn't functioned for going on 5 years now and other hot markets such as Spain and Ireland have also deflated. Now we have China starting to hit the skids, yet the price of copper holds in the mid $3 range. i doubt the current crop failure story is anywhere near as bad as it is being sold to be. They rarely are. Repeatedly in the late 1990's they tried to sell a shortage of cotton due to drought. It was hot as hell here and didn't rain in West Texas for a long time. Cotton bottomed in 2002 at an all time CPI adjusted price of 27 cents.

no waiting for us ta nks in street after qe 666

Mannfm11 - The book is $30 from the institute, but $2.99 on Amazon Kindle.

Bagbalm wrote..

Mannfm11 - The book is $30 from the institute, but $2.99 on Amazon Kindle.

Or free download as a PDF or ePub (ePub can be converted to Kindle .mobi using the free (and quite good) Calibre e-book software, unless I'm mistaken.)

If disclosure of potential financial crimes by the too big to fail banks is glossed over in the name of National Security then the Statute of Limitations needs to be extended.

There are plenty of free programs that can convert PDFs to mobi files. Just sayin. Epubs are easy too.

Mannfm11 wrote..

I was talking to a guy I run into every month or so. He has a relative that is a bureaucrat in DC and went to visit him over the 4th. Those bastards are living it up in sodom and Gomorrah on our tab. Eastern Ivy League ****s who are having a party on our dime. Lobbyists and such blowing each other for a buck. This is the party we, the people have to stop. The more business arranged through DC, the poorer the typical American is going to become and the larger the FSA. When the FSA becomes better off than the typical American, the whole gig is up.

Thanks for the heads up on Chodorov. Of late I've been reading and William Playfair's An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations (1807) and Adam Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1782), both writers being part of what could be called the Anglo-Celtic Enlightenment. Here's a quote from the latter:

Quote:

IF the fortune of nations, and their tendency to aggrandisement, or to ruin, were to be estimated by merely balancing, on the principles of last section, articles of profit and loss, every argument in politics would rest on a comparison of national expence with national gain; on a comparison of the numbers who consume, with those who produce or amass the necessaries of life...

...These appear to be the rules by which a miser would examine the state of his own affairs, or those of his country; but schemes of perfect corruption are at least as impracticable as schemes of perfect virtue. Men are not universally misers; they will not be satisfied with the pleasure of hoarding; they must be suffered to enjoy their wealth, in order that they may take the trouble of becoming rich...

...We are not only obliged to admit numbers, who, in strict economy, may be reckoned superfluous,... but because we are men, and prefer the occupation, improvement, and felicity of our nature, to its mere existence, we must even wish, that as many members as possible, of every community, may be admitted to a share of its defence and its government.

Men, in fact, while they pursue in society different objects, or separate views, procure a wide distribution of power, and by a species of chance, arrive at a posture for civil engagements, more favourable to human nature than what human wisdom could ever calmly devise.

If the strength of a nation, in the mean time, consists in the men on whom it may rely, and who are fortunately or wisely combined for its preservation, it follows, that manners are as important as either numbers or wealth; and that corruption is to be accounted a principal cause of the national declension and ruin.

Whoever perceives what are the qualities of man in his excellence, may easily, by that standard, distinguish his defects or corruptions. If an intelligent, a courageous, and an affectionate mind, constitutes the perfection of his nature, remarkable failings in any of those particulars, must proportionally sink or debase his character.

We have observed, that it is the happiness of the individual to make a right choice of his conduct; that this choice will lead him to lose in society the sense of a personal interest; and, in the consideration of what is due to the whole, to stifle those anxieties which relate to himself as a part...

...From our complaints of national depravity, it should, notwithstanding, appear, that whole bodies of men are sometimes infected with an epidemical weakness of the head, or corruption of heart, by which they become unfit for the stations they occupy, and threaten the states they compose, however flourishing, with a prospect of decay, and of ruin.

A change of national manners for the worse, may arise from a discontinuance of the scenes in which the talents of men were happily cultivated, and brought into exercise; or from a change in the prevailing opinions relating to the constituents of honour or of happiness. When mere riches, or court-favour, are supposed to constitute rank; the mind is misled from the consideration of qualities on which it ought to rely.

Magnanimity, courage, and the love of mankind, are sacrificed to avarice and vanity, or suppressed under a sense of dependance. The individual considers his community so far only as it can be rendered subservient to his personal advancement or profit: he states himself in competition with his fellow-creatures; and, urged by the passions of emulation, of fear and jealousy, of envy and malice, he follows the maxims of an animal destined to preserve his separate existence, and to indulge his caprice or his appetite, at the expence of his species.

On this corrupt foundation, men become either rapacious, deceitful, and violent, ready to trespass on the rights of others; or servile, mercenary, and base, prepared to relinquish their own. Talents, capacity, and force of mind, possessed by a person of the first description, serve to plunge him the deeper in misery, and to sharpen the agony of cruel passions; which lead him to wreak on his fellow-creatures the torments that prey on himself. To a person of the second, imagination, and reason itself, only serve to point out false objects of fear or desire, and to multiply the subjects of disappointment, and of momentary joy. In either case, and whether we suppose that corrupt men are urged by covetousness, or betrayed by fear, and without specifying the crimes which from either disposition they are prepared to commit, we may safely affirm, with Socrates, that, “Every master should pray he may not meet with such a slave; and every such person, being unfit for liberty, should implore that he may meet with a merciful master.”

In short, from the above and much more besides from the period, character matters.

Ferguson
http://files.libertyfund.org/files/1428/.... pdf

Playfair
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16575/165....

Almost any text file can be converted into any other format. Just type "xxx to yyy" in google where xxx and yyy are the file extensions you want to change from and to.

There are online converters for almost everything, and for the few that aren't, there are programs you can find that will do it for you.