The Wheels Are Coming Off the Bus - And TPTB Know It

I was reading some news today and three specific articles/items seem to jive together for me to create an ... epiphany. Well - maybe not that dramatic - but sort of an "Ah-Ha!" moment.

Nothing too earth shattering, and nothing you've not all read here before, but:
Our Nation Is Completely Out of Control. No One is At the Wheel. The Loons Are Running the Asylum.

There you go. We have a president who's in way over his head, a congress that's been power-drunk for too long and see it's slipping away, and a populace that is too worried about losing face to hold anyone accountable.

Our economy is seriously like a small fart away from the point of no return. We're talking U.S.S.R style collapse.

This is not about a sudden failure of the mines. Or a sudden manufacturing need. This is about a failure of the Congress to carry out its responsibilities under the Constitution. To suggest that the trend is reversible with an adjustment of interest rates does not address the issue we see. The issue is that there is neither a law or a policy being enforced or followed that references gold or silver as a matter of principle in the way that the Founders of the country understood — and, in the founding Congresses, wrote into law.

Greenspan's Warning About Gold

Our President is playing political games like he's back in Chicagoland with no concept of the gravity surrounding his decisions.

Although the internal divisions described have become public, [...] they were even more intense and disparate than previously known and offers new details. Mr. Biden called Mr. Holbrooke “the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met.” A variety of administration officials expressed scorn for James L. Jones, the retired Marine general who is national security adviser, while he referred to some of the president’s other aides as “the water bugs” or “the Politburo.”

...

As for Mr. Obama himself, the book describes a professorial president who assigned “homework” to advisers but bristled at what he saw as military commanders’ attempts to force him into a decision he was not yet comfortable with. Even after he agreed to send another 30,000 troops last winter, the Pentagon asked for another 4,500 “enablers” to support them.

The president lost his poise [...]. “I’m done doing this!” he erupted.

And it looks like the old "Emperor's New Cloths" scenario has taken effect at the treasury.

THE actual figure of the US' national debt is much higher than the official sum of $US13.4 trillion ($14.3 trillion) given by the Congressional Budget Office, according to analysts cited on Sunday by the New York Post. "The Government is lying about the amount of debt. It is engaging in Enron accounting," said Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University.

...

"The problem is we're seeing an explosion in spending," added Andrew Moylan, director of government affairs for the National Taxpayers Union.

In 1980, the debt - the accumulated red ink incurred by the Federal Government - was $US909 billion.

This represented some 33 per cent of gross domestic product, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Thirty years later, based on this year's second-quarter numbers, the CBO said the debt was $US13.4 trillion, or 92 per cent of GDP.

U.S. Hiding True Debt

So a President who's more concerned about his own popularity and political stability:

“I have to say that,” Mr. Obama replied. “I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

Plus a Congress and Treasury willing to placate to his insatiable and petulant wants

Now we have another Fed chairman who, in Mr. Bernanke, is prepared to testify before Congress that he doesn’t “fully understand the movements in the gold price,”

Plus a world waiting for us to fail so they can move in like vultures.

I'll leave you with a quote that I feel is particularly relevant at this moment in time:

The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it.

Simon Wiesenthal

I think it's in the very least quite unfair to hang it all on the President. Unwinding of the US economics started happening in decades before he was elected. Deregulation and lack of governance lead to us bleeding jobs and outsourcing ourselves into poverty and degradation. Obama may or may not have failed as an ER physician, but the patient was already gravely ill due to neglect by primary care doctors.

still it feels like someone or a group are keeping things ticking over like its business as usual. everybody agrees that the US should have collapsed but its still limping along. i dont think there will be a crash. i think it will keep plodding along.

reply to post by gncnew


It's not a "small fart away" - it is no longer avoidable.

The total destruction of the American empire WILL occur shortly.

This is not something that can be avoided with radical policy changes any longer.

The looting democrats and republicans have destroyed the currency through endless war and endless social welfare programs.

America is finished.

reply to post by gncnew
S&F!

Scary stuff in that book. We have been in trouble for a long time, but this makes it look like it has been worse than they have told us.

reply to post by buddhasystem


True but Obama has seen, more than any past president, what the financial institutions can do to a country..

And his response? Carry on with bailing them out at taxpayers expense and then let them continue as if nothing happened..

That was the housing bubble, just wait till the derivatives bubble bursts....

Originally posted by buddhasystem
I think it's in the very least quite unfair to hang it all on the President. Unwinding of the US economics started happening in decades before he was elected. Deregulation and lack of governance lead to us bleeding jobs and outsourcing ourselves into poverty and degradation. Obama may or may not have failed as an ER physician, but the patient was already gravely ill due to neglect by primary care doctors.

I think the President deserves to take blame for what is rightfully his.

His actions so far have been the opposite of what I believe he should have done, and apparently much of the American people seem to think the same.

It is a moot point, IMO, as things are going to be very different soon, and the American Presidency may become just as insignificant as Muammar Quadaffi.

This country is going to hell in a hand basket and obama is carriering the basket. Hyper Inflation will distroy whats left in everyones retirement accounts. What happens to all those people that saved and saved and saved and now there money is going to be worthless. When the republicans take the house i hope they audit the system and stop kicking the can down the road like so many other congress people before them.

Lets just get the crash over with so we can start to recover.

Originally posted by buddhasystem
I think it's in the very least quite unfair to hang it all on the President. Unwinding of the US economics started happening in decades before he was elected. Deregulation and lack of governance lead to us bleeding jobs and outsourcing ourselves into poverty and degradation. Obama may or may not have failed as an ER physician, but the patient was already gravely ill due to neglect by primary care doctors.

I really wasn't blaming Obama for the meltdown, only citing that his actions in the White House - combined with the current crumbling of our financial foundations - are quickly coming to a head.

I also am stating that he knows what's going on but refuses to do what must be done to limit the damage or even try to correct it.

I voted for him - I believed when he said "Hope and Change" that he meant he would "Change" the path we were going down. Instead he's simply changed the timetable of events.

Pressing the gas pedal on the U.S. demise isn't really "change"... and it certainly doesn't inspire "hope".

Originally posted by mnemeth1
reply to post by gncnew

 

It's not a "small fart away" - it is no longer avoidable.

The total destruction of the American empire WILL occur shortly.

This is not something that can be avoided with radical policy changes any longer.

The looting democrats and republicans have destroyed the currency through endless war and endless social welfare programs.

America is finished.

edit on 22-9-2010 by mnemeth1 because: (no reason given)

I don't 100% agree. I do think that a sever turn to the right would help mitigate the damage.

I think the U.S. has really two options:

1. Continue as is and eventually implode (i.e. Brittish Empire)
   
2. Make a quick turn towards the U.S. of 1900 and build from there
   

The problem is that the America of yore was a Xenaphobic isolationist state that put the primary focus on individual rights. Right to "Life, Liberty, and the Persuit of Happiness".

People of today are simply not prepaired for it. They're far to worried about "fairness" and "equality". We've grown so soft that we no longer have the fortitude to simply say "sorry for you" when someone's in "need"

We - as a people - are trying to somehow magically solve the eternal truth that is inequality in peoples. Some people are simply better than others and if left unfettered will be more successful.

The .com Bubble was the last "undiscovered country" in America and it was the last time the populace at large had a real chance at the "American Dream".

With no new lands to explore, new industries to cultivate, or new philosophies to operate with the weight of oppressive anti-capitalistic governance will simply crush us.

A dramatic and drastic return (think Libertarian party) to the American roots is the only way to preserve this nation as a world power.

*NOTE: Good news is that even if it crashes - we have more natural resources and general self-sustaining ability than any other nation in the world. We're rich beyond measure in that capacity...

Originally posted by tim3lord
still it feels like someone or a group are keeping things ticking over like its business as usual. everybody agrees that the US should have collapsed but its still limping along. i dont think there will be a crash. i think it will keep plodding along.

I think to some extend it's the old "too big to fail". We won't die overnight. Rome took hundreds of years to actually collapse. Through the eyes of history you can see the tipping point, but living through it probably seemed like a slow fizzle rather than a super nova.

I also think that we've got something most other nation's don't: The means for complete self-sustainability within our own boarders. This means even with a crash we've still got what it takes to live. Might be some good old "fur trading" going on, but we'll get by none-the-less.