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The Blue Bus Is Calling Us

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Published : November 21st, 2011
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( 14 votes, 4.4/5 ) , 5 commentaries
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Category : Editorials

 

 

 

 

Zeez European politicians unt economists all zound like rocket scientists wiss all zeir charming euro-chatter. But zey must be quite dumb to machen zuch an unglaublich scheiße sturm of zee système financier. Che cazzo è?


Surely all the pretending nears its dire conclusion. Everybody is broke and everybody is in hock up to his prefrontal lobes and everybody is whirling around the drain over in the grand continental theme park of lovely cities and great eats. I'm sorry, but I don't see how they can stop the hemorrhaging as we slide into the season of holiday enchantment.


Every bank (and its uncle) is dumping everybody's sovereign bonds as though they were discovered to be croissants imported from a leper colony. Feh...! Folks of all stripes and accents desperately seek to move their money to some safe harbor - but where is this cozy mooring? To the US for the moment perhaps; but what happens Monday morning when the markets react to the weekend news that the US Senate super-committee has been utterly unable to agree on decisive action that would forestall the scheduled massive automatic budget cuts built into this red-white-and-blue doomsday machine - not to mention the ratings agencies threats to knock UST-paper down another notch upon such failure. Oy yoy yoy!


Just to be plain here: nothing is working. The global system of accounting control fraud has completely unraveled. Nobody will lend money to anybody anymore because everybody suspects everybody else is lying about their ability to meet any obligation. The whole world has become a daisy chain of schnorrers and schmiklers. All those hundreds of trillions of dollars in credit default swap insurance (ha!). Worthless and pointless, because now that a Greek default of at least 50 percent, officially, has failed to ignite a payout, then no default will. Instead, you'll just get cascades of un-hedged defaults. All the lawyers who ever lived could litigate until the sun turns into a red dwarf and they will never resolve these swindles, and the money represented in them will be so far gone that not even Ray Kurzweil in full Singularity mode will encounter a trace of it in his eternal travels through a zillion parallel universes.


So much for the hedge fund industry. I hope the folks who ran those cute operations enjoyed their years in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Saddle River, New Jersey, because in a few weeks they'll be disguising themselves as OWSers in some makeshift urban encampment in order to line up for three-day-old bagels. Personally, I look forward to test-driving a few $5000 "must-sell" pre-owned Lamborghini Sesto Elementos, not that I'd actually buy one. The nimble might even score some bargain beachfront property in the Hamptons.


It's been about a fortnight now since John Corzine's MF Global fund went up in a vapor, including a reported $800 million or so (rumored to be actually more like $2+ billion) filched out of clients portfolios that cannot be accounted for - though there are additional rumors that it constituted a batch of collateral that was liquidated a micro-second after its arrival at JP Morgan, which had lent Corzine's firm enough money to buy the rope that it hung itself with. Notice, the story has completely disappeared from the mainstream news media (while the Kardashians soldier on).


Even poor Gerald Celente, chief of the Trends Journal forecasting group, arch-nemesis of "the white-shoe boys" got snookered in the action when MF Global somehow ended up with custodial care of the Gold ETFs Gerald was collecting and his shit just vanished! I heard him fulminating over it on a podcast and he is not somebody I'd want to be on the bad side of. Up until now, Celente was only commenting on the prospects for revolution in the streets. Now, I daresay, he'll be out in front leading it (or perhaps rappelling down Jamie Dimon's security wall with a straight razor clenched in his teeth).


The MF Global case has fast-tracked the evaporation of trust in all the places, large and small, where American One-percenters stash their cash. The redemption orders must be flying through their transoms like radioactive black swans. By lunchtime tomorrow this could include all the TBTF banks. That's what the pundits mean by "contagion." Where will that money go now (if they can get it out)?


I don't see where else it can go now except to shiny yellow and white metal, and maybe some oil positions. But the mechanisms of the precious metals trade have also been monkeyed with, and you'd best be careful where you place your order. As for oil, if lending really does seize-up, then letters-of-credit will not be issued and tankers will not be moving any product. More to the point, the global revolving debt system has depended on colossal transfers of ultra-short-term borrowed money. If short-term borrowing is simply unavailable, things could go south very quickly - and by that I mean food stops arriving at the supermarkets, which hold just a three-day supply. Wouldn't that make for an interesting Thanksgiving?


I have admittedly painted an extreme picture this week. But this week presents the most extreme convergence of events the world has seen since September of 2008, and perhaps a good bit worse.


 

 

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James Howard Kunstler has worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis. His nonfiction book, "The Long Emergency," describes the changes that American society faces in the 21st century. Discerning an imminent future of protracted socioeconomic crisis, Kunstler foresees the progressive dilapidation of subdivisions and strip malls, the depopulation of the American Southwest, and, amid a world at war over oil, military invasions of the West Coast; when the convulsion subsides, Americans will live in smaller places and eat locally grown food.
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GM:

Yes, his assessment is right. But it is a common tactic of those, wishing to control others, to point to a real problem and then offer an irrational solution. That has been Kunstler's game and will probably continue to be.

Ron Paul not only names the problem but offers sound financial soutions.

P.S. I wouldn't want Celente after me either.
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I gotta agree with his financial assessment. Maybe the boyzzz will up the ante (with your money and credit) and keep the party running a bit more, but that's about it. Stealing Celente's gold is a warning to everyone. Celente and others will exact their revenge.
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Why a blue bus, Mr. Kunstler? For me, it is funny, as it symbolozes spiriitual emancipation and youthful idealistic missions. There really IS a blue bus, literally, we Toronto devotees used to travel on it and distribute books and collect for building temples of the Hare Krsna movement in the seventies.
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Kunstler begins in his usual manner by describing a known problem: the global economy. Which is a fact. Then, presto change-o, he jumps to this non-sequitur:

"Just to be plain here: nothing is working."

Nothing. And he means nothing. Nothing made by machines. You must look to his previous articles to see his solution: ordering individuals out of their vehicles and onto mass transit (nevermind the omnipresent criminality and proneness to obstruction by the Occupiers), giving up on the industrial world and returning to "a world made by and hand" and run by.....who? You guessed it.

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As usual Mr Kunstler produces another colourful insight into the future and no doubt if indeed Gerald Celente does catch up with JP Morgans supremo quite a few peeved goldbugs like myself would be delighted to witness it!
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GM: Yes, his assessment is right. But it is a common tactic of those, wishing to control others, to point to a real problem and then offer an irrational solution. That has been Kunstler's game and will probably continue to be. Ron Paul not only names  Read more
Jim C. - 11/22/2011 at 9:39 PM GMT
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