covertress

Garden Porn

2009-11-11T20:53:00.008-05:00

Garden Porn

Vegetable garden pictures.

Music "Rosangela" by Mark Salona.

h/t: theediblegarden

Gerald Celente on Lew Rockwell Show

2009-11-11T20:02:00.011-05:00

Gerald Celente on Lew Rockwell 09-11-2009 - pt 1/2

Gerald Celente on Lew Rockwell 09-11-2009 - pt 2/2

The Greatest Heist In History

2009-11-11T14:27:00.011-05:00

By Damien Hoffman of Wall St. Cheet Sheat, via Zero Hedge

Will Lady Justice Weigh In On The Greatest Heist In History?

Here we are approaching 2010 and we have not yet punished the thieves who caused the Greatest Heist in History. It’s one thing for justice to allude Osama bin Laden as he scurries through miles of mountainous terrain. It’s another when the assholes who screwed us are sitting in luxury high-rises going about their daily business in plain view.

When I was young my great-grandfather told me: “Steal a loaf of bread and you’ll go to jail. Steal millions (now Trillions) on Wall Street and you can make it legal.” So true. While petty criminals are filling our jails, the SEC has their head somewhere dark and moist because they can’t figure out how to categorize crimes which have been redefined by decades of lobbying and attached legislative amendments.

We have been consumed with the current health care legislation. [A distraction authored by the Colluder 'n Thief.] We have sighed as markets have recovered off satanic lows. [Thanks to market manipulations by his minions at the FED.] However, the only way for future generations to loyally invest in markets is to apprehend and punish the terrorists.

If you lost a significant portion of your retirement stash, or maybe even your job, you now have to work that many more hours of your life to make yourself whole for the crimes of megalomaniacs. If that doesn’t motivate you to take 5 short minutes to write your local representative to ask about punishments for the thieves, I don’t know what will.

Until the criminals are brought to justice and sane rules are established on Wall Street, markets will remain nothing more than short term trading pits.

Preferred Carry

2009-11-11T11:17:00.035-05:00

Preferred Carry Part 1

Dave goes through his gear and explains his preferred carry items.

Dave's Knives and Tools - photos

Pathfinder Preferred Carry Part 2

Tarps, Hammocks, Bivvys, Blankets, Sheltering Items, Rope, Stakes - photos

Fire-Modern and Primitive Devices, Tinders, Fuels - photos

Water Containers, Water Purification, Meal Kits, Dried Foods - photos

Back Packs, Haversacks, Buttpacks and Pouches - photos

Compasses, Lighting, Mirrors, Whistles etc. - photos

Hunting, Fishing, and Trapping Supplies - photos

~ ~ ~

www.facebook.com/pages/Dave-Canterbury-Pathfinder/142229423061

Related: The Scout's Travel Kit

Thank You, Veterans!

2009-11-11T00:04:00.004-05:00

Joseph Ambrose, an 86-year-old World War I veteran, attends the dedication day parade for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1982, holding the flag that covered the casket of his son, who had been killed in the Korean War.

Veterans Day

~ ~ ~

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat. -- Theodore Roosevelt

~ ~ ~

Thank You, Veterans!

Peter Costa: The US Government Will Be Totally Bankrupt In A Year And A Half

2009-11-10T20:50:00.016-05:00

Doom and Gloom goes mainstream as Wall Street permabull warns of US collapse.

[CNBC video embed sucks. Please scroll down.]

h/t: Zero Hedge

Mark Haines: Peter, [the stock market has] had a nice little lift here. Does it continue?

Peter Costa: No.

Haines: No?

Costa: No. Nope. Nope. Nope. I'm not drinkin' the Kool-Aide. I don't believe in it. I think the market is way ahead of itself and if I were a bettin' man, I'd be selling into these rallies any chance I got.

Haines: Really?

Costa: Yep. Because I think the recovery's still a long way off. I think we still have a lot of things to go through. You have unemployment. You have the US government that's going to be totally bankrupt in a year and a half when they have to pay all these bills. Things are not looking all that great for me.

[Now there's an understatement! I wonder how many friends they'll have to hear it from before the sheeple awaken...]

Jean Luc Cornec's - telephone sheep - in the Frankfurt Museum of Communications

World oil reserves data being fudged by US

2009-11-10T20:14:00.008-05:00

In a startling revelation, a senior official associated with the International Energy Agency (IEA) has claimed that the data relating to global oil reserves has been twisted under pressure from the US.

The official, on the condition of anonymity, has disclosed that IEA has been constantly underplaying a looming shortage of oil as the US feared that original estimates would actually trigger panic buying.

The allegations, in totality, suggest that the oil reserves across the world will decline at a much faster rate that what has been predicted by the IEA under the US influence.

Further, there are concerns in US that if the real figures are revealed it would trigger panic in the financial market and eventually end the America’ oil supremacy as it would cease its easy access to oil resources.

These claims substantiate what Colin Campbell, a former executive with Total of France said in a conference in 2004, "If the real (oil reserve) figures were to come out there would be panic on the stock markets … in the end that would suit no one." -- excerpt from ZeeNews.com

h/t: Jim Sinclair

The Scout's Travel Kit

2009-11-10T18:27:00.003-05:00

The Scout's Travel Kit

www.facebook.com/pages/Dave-Canterbury-Pathfinder/142229423061

Broke

2009-11-10T17:36:00.013-05:00

h/t: Arthur

To President Obama and all 545 voting members of the Legislature,

It is now official: You are ALL CORRUPT MORONS.

The U.S. Post Service was established in 1775 You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.

Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.

Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.

War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to “the poor” and they only want more.

Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.

Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.

The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.

You have FAILED in every “government service” you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM??

You may not hear us now Washington, but you certainly will in 2010.

~ ~ ~

"It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted - by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility." -- Charlie Reese

Related: 545 People

Tim Kennedy and Jon Walsh Teach Special Ops MMA

2009-11-10T11:23:00.007-05:00

Tim Kennedy and Jon Walsh Teach Special Ops MMA

Special Forces Sniper Tim Kennedy and Recon Marine Jon Walsh showcase their professional mixed martial arts skills in real combat. Not for the feint of heart...

In May of 2009, President Obama published a declassification directive to release to the public many of the techniques used by the CIA and the Military against the enemies of the United States.

While much of the information is still forthcoming, Ranger Up, using their web of contacts in the Pentagon, has managed to unearth four of the most vicious and effective attacks in the U.S. arsenal.

Declassified Docket Number 72982 - Knife versus Unarmed Operator: The I.B. Defense
Declassified Docket Number 67926 - Low Hit During M.O.U.T. Operations Technique 17: The Pink Death Defense
Declassified Docket Number 34893 - The Special Operations Modified Sentry Takedown
Low Hit During M.O.U.T. Operations Technique 23: The Warrior's Exterior Drag & Grab Into Extinction (W.E.D.G.I.E)

h/t: Blackfive

Psychic computer that can read people's minds developed

2009-11-09T20:50:00.006-05:00

Tom Cruise in Minority Report

By Charles Smith via IBTimes

Criminals beware - a team of international scientists have developed a "psychic computer" which reportedly can read people's minds and reproduce images of what they are seeing or even remembering by scanning their brain activity.

According to The Sunday Times, the scientists, in a major breakthrough, have been able to "decode" and convert brain signals or activity into crude moving images on a computer screen.

During the research, the scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to scan the brains of two volunteers as they watched videos.

Subsequently, the computer, which was specially developed for the research, was used to search for links between configuration of shapes, colours and movements in the videos, and patterns of activity in the patients' visual cortex.

It was then fed more than 200 days' worth of YouTube Internet clips and asked to predict which areas of the brain the clips would stimulate if people were watching them.

Finally, the computer was used to monitor the brains of the two volunteers as they watched a new film and asked to reproduce correctly what they were seeing based on their neural activity alone.

Although the results were crude, the computer was able to correctly reproduce the rough shape of a man in a white shirt but not his face (the volunteers were watching a video footage of comic actor Steve Martin in a white shirt) and the vague image of a city skyline (the volunteers were watching an image of a city skyline with a plane flying past) minus the flying plane.

According to the scientists, the computer could easily interpret brain patterns if the subject was looking at a static image or a person or a human face but presently it is too confusing for the computer to "decode" brain patterns if the subject is looking at a fast moving object.

According to the scientists, one day the computer could be used to study people's dreams or thoughts or behaviors or even be used to help solve crimes by scanning the brain of witnesses.

"At the moment when you see something and want to describe it to someone you have to use words or draw it and it doesn't work very well," said Prof. Jack Gallant of the University of California, Berkeley.

"You could use this technology to transmit the image to someone. It might be useful for artists or to allow you to recover an eye witness' memory of a crime," he said.

However, it could also herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that envisaged in the Tom Cruise-starring Hollywood film Minority Report where police in the future read minds and make arrests based on 'thought crimes.'

No wonder, Gallant warned that their scientific breakthrough could have "serious ethical and privacy implications."

"We believe that no one should be subjected to any form of brain-reading involuntarily, covertly, or without informed consent," Gallant said.

Agrees Russell Foster, a neuroscientist at Oxford University.

"It's absolutely critical for scientists to inform the public about what we are doing so they can engage in the debate about how this knowledge should be used," Foster said.

"It's the age-old problem: knowledge is power and it can be used for both good and evil," he said.

However, Gallant's research is not the first of its kind. Earlier, scientists at University College London have conducted separate tests that detect, with an accuracy of about 50 percent, memories recalled by patients.

In America, security agencies are researching the use of brain scanners for interrogating prisoners while US defense contractor Lockheed Martin is reported to have studied the possibility of scanning brains at a distance without knowledge of the subjects in sensitive locations such as airports.

The Men Who Stare At Goats: The True Story Behind The Film

2009-11-09T20:32:00.014-05:00

The Men Who Stare At Goats

By By Dick Allgire via Rense.com

It was some thirty years ago on the big screen that we watched Darth Vader kill a subordinate with sheer force of will. Displeased with the performance of Admiral Ozzel because he brought his ships out of hyperspace too soon, alerting the Rebels to their presence, Darth Vader held up his hand and pinched the air. Moviegoers will recall the hapless admiral choking for air and falling over dead. Darth Vader killed the admiral with a look, employing some unseen force of Mind.

It was pure science fiction. Or was it? At about this same time, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier was felling goats in much the same manner. Now this story is coming to the big screen.

"The Men Who Stare At Goats" is a soon to be released major motion picture starring George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, and Ewan McGregor. It is a lighthearted look at how the U.S. Army explored paranormal powers, "new age" parapsychology and psychic functioning in the late 1970's and early 80s. The film portrays all of this in a whimsical and comical tone, but the real story is deadly serious.

The character portrayed by George Clooney is based on retired Special Forces Intel First Sergeant Glenn Wheaton. In real life Wheaton is a character far too complex to portray in a two-hour movie. In his Army career Wheaton was a stone cold killer, a Green Beret door-knocker as well as a remote viewer, a type of psychic spy who could readily displace his awareness to remote locations across space and time to bring back actual intelligence grade data using only his mind. He's also a boy from the Louisiana Bayou, a southern gentleman, a kind and caring teacher.

The title of the upcoming movie, "The Men Who Stare at Goats" is based on an incident in which a Green Beret instructor killed a goat by staring at it. Glenn Wheaton witnessed the event and recounted it to author Jon Ronson, who wrote about it in his book "The Crazy Rulers of the World." Glenn Wheaton sat down and talked about the goat incident recently during an interview for a documentary planned for release in conjunction with the movie "The Men Who Stare at Goats." His interview will also be included in the "Extras" in the home DVD version of the movie.

At the Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina they had what the Green Berets called "The Goat Lab." Special Forces medics were required to learn how to treat gunshot wounds, trauma cases, broken bones, and other types of battlefield injuries. It may sound cruel to members of PETA, but they shot goats and subjected them to numerous traumatic injuries, and then tried to revive and stabilize them. Soldiers also slaughtered the goats, learning so they would be able to teach people in third world countries how to butcher and dress an animal and prepare it for food. So they brought in goats from Honduras, and at least one of the goats became a victim of a Darth Vader type mental energy killing.

"I was there the day the first goat died," recalls Glenn Wheaton. He remembers it was in the dead of winter at Ft. Bragg. The Special Forces students had finished their usual ten to fifteen mile predawn run and headed to the woods for hand-to-hand combat training. At that time the 5th Special Forces Group hand-to-hand combat instructor was a martial arts expert named Mike Echanis.

"We got to the training area," Wheaton says, "and there was a dagger stuck in a tree." That meant Echanis was in the Bear Pit. The Bear Pit was hole in the sandy North Carolina soil, 8 to 10 feet deep and 60 to 80 feet wide. The instructor would wait in the pit. The students couldn't see him. It wasn't that he was actually invisible, but he could blend in, using both camouflage and mental trickery, that they couldn't spot him. He was able to adapt and blend into the environment so well that those looking down into the pit just could not see him. A trainee would jump into the pit, and suddenly Echanis would come out of nowhere and be upon him, and the hand-to-hand combat would ensue. The students were certain to endure a severe beating.

On this particular day, Echanis had brought a goat with him down into the pit. As the soldiers fought the goat would scamper and jump about, trying to avoid the combatants being hurled around the pit.

At the completion of the class, Echanis challenged the soldiers: "Where is your mind?"

Then the demonstration none of them would ever forget. Wheaton recalls that the instructor "grabbed the goat by the horns. He dragged him to the middle of the pit, pushing a green stake to the bottom of the pit, attaching the goat to it. Then he asked us again 'Where are your minds?' Michael had recently completed a lot of training in Qigong, the force you couldn't see that moves like a train."

Glenn Wheaton witnessed the incredible feat. The instructor never touched the goat. "Michael focused on the goat pretty intensely," he says. "It started to bray like a donkey or horse. It dropped down to its forelegs; blood began to drip from its nose. About 20 to 30 seconds later red suds began to froth from the goat's mouth. The goat lost its equilibrium and passed away in a fit."

There was nothing done physically to the goat. Wheaton says, "Michael never had to touch the goat, other than dragging him and sinking the anchor in the sand. A demonstration we required he repeat."

They tested Echanis several times under less brutal circumstances. They filled balloons with ink and the balloons were suspended in an aquarium. "He was able to successfully break or rupture three balloons filled with ink suspended in an aquarium filled with water," Wheaton recounts. "He was able to rupture each one of those balloons, causing the ink to contaminate the water."

Wheaton says it was "a lot to think about." And he goes on to say, "as an adaptation it has immediate applications. Could anyone do it, or could only Michael do it? That's what we investigated after that."

Wheaton does not talk about whether this technique was ever employed against humans, but he says Green Berets did study so called "paranormal powers" as part of a program called Project Jedi. What kind of techniques did they study in Project Jedi? Wheaton answers, "Can you be warm when everyone else around you is freezing cold? Can you regulate your respiration and heart rate so that when everyone else is huffing and puffing because you're running up a really long hill, can you manage your own body? Can you keep going when everyone else will stop?

That's what the empowerment portion of Project Jedi was for. You had to be perfectly able to control yourself, because if you couldn't control yourself you couldn't control anything else. So being able to control your blood pressure is a good thing. Being able to send heat to an exposed part of your body by will alone is a good thing. Being able to hear when there is only a cacophony of noise, a single thing. If I turned on a vacuum cleaner and gave a lecture that you couldn't hear, after a while could you hear? You learn to filter your environment so that you can accomplish any mission."

Glenn Wheaton is currently the president and chief instructor at the Hawaii Remote Viewers' Guild. He has been teaching advanced communication skills and mental focus techniques to civilians, for free, for the past 12 years.

"The Men Who Stare at Goats" currently in theaters. There will be a documentary released soon about the true story behind the movie, and the home DVD version will contain interviews with Glenn Wheaton and Jim Channon.

The Men Who Stare At Goats: "Predator" Clip

Special forces First Earth Battalion The Predator

The predator demonstrated by Peter Brusso.

www.TheMenWhoStareAtGoatsMovie.com

Man tries to sell 1 oz gold coin for $50; no takers.

2009-11-09T19:31:00.004-05:00

Man tries to sell 1 oz gold coin for $50; no takers.

Mark Dice tries to sell a one ounce pure cold coin for $50 but nobody has a clue how much gold is worth, and nobody wanted it.

Fall of the Berlin Wall

2009-11-09T18:30:00.007-05:00

Fall of the Berlin Wall: The moment the barriers came down

On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and both Germany and Europe set out on the road to reunification. Relive the euphoria and jubilation as east German residents broke down the wall that had divided the country for decades.

National Geographic: Berlin Wall

Venture into the 'death strip' and hear from East Germans who risked their lives for freedom.

0 Days - The Countdown Has Ended - Now What?

2009-11-08T00:06:00.018-05:00

Fire and Ice - Flames from burning lava break through the crust of a lava lake on the Island of Hawaii in the top of this mosaic image. Below, icebergs and pack ice extend as far as the eye can see off the coast of Antarctica. In both places a solid crust has congealed on the surface of a liquid.

~ ~ ~

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

-– Robert Frost

~ ~ ~

Hyperinflation: Extreme inflation, minimally in excess of four-digit annual percent change, where the involved currency becomes worthless. A fairly crude definition of hyperinflation is a circumstance, where, due to extremely rapid price increases, the largest pre-hyperinflation bank note ($100 bill in the United States) becomes worth more as functional toilet paper/tissue than as currency.

Excerpt from "Hyperinflation Special Report" [PDF] by John Williams, www.shadowstats.com

The U.S. economy is in an intensifying inflationary recession that is evolving into a hyperinflationary great depression.

The U.S. government and Federal Reserve already have committed the system to this course through the easy politics of a bottomless pocketbook, the servicing of big-moneyed special interests, and gross mismanagement.

The U.S. has no way of avoiding a financial Armageddon. Bankrupt sovereign states most commonly use the currency printing press as a solution to not having enough money to cover their obligations. The alternative would be for the U.S. to renege on its existing debt and obligations, a solution for modern sovereign states rarely seen outside of governments overthrown in revolution, and a solution with no happier ending than simply printing the needed money. With the creation of massive amounts of new fiat (not backed by gold) dollars will come the complete collapse of the value of the U.S. dollar and related dollar-denominated paper assets.

What lies ahead will be extremely difficult and unhappy times for many. Friedrich Kessler, a law professor at Harvard and University of California Berkeley, who experienced the Weimar Republic hyperinflation said:

"It was horrible. Horrible! Like lightning it struck. No one was prepared. You cannot imagine the rapidity with which the whole thing happened. The shelves in the grocery stores were empty. You could buy nothing with your paper money."

Depression/Great Depression

The U.S. economy is in a deepening structural change that has resulted from U.S. trade policies that have driven the U.S. manufacturing base offshore. As a result, a large number of related, high paying jobs have been lost to U.S. workers.

The U.S. trade deficit has risen to the highest level for any country in history, U.S. average weekly earnings, adjusted for inflation, have fallen. Even using official CPI for deflation, current real earnings are below their peak back in the 1970s. Adjusted for the SGS-Alternate CPI measure, real earnings have been falling since the early 1980s. Real median incomes for U.S. males versus females, also show declines in recent years, per official government data.

The effect of this structural change has been that most consumers have been unable to sustain adequate income growth beyond the rate of inflation, unable to maintain their standard of living. The only way that personal consumption — the dominant component of GDP — can grow in such a circumstance is for the consumer to take on new debt or to liquidate savings. Both those factors are short-lived and have reached untenable extremes. Debt expansion and savings liquidation both were encouraged by the investment bubbles created by Alan Greenspan; he knew that economic growth could not be had otherwise. Part of what is happening today is payback for those policies.

This circumstance places both the federal government and the Federal Reserve in untenable positions, where they cannot easily or rapidly address the underlying problems, even if standard economic stimuli were available. From the standpoint of the federal government, traditional fiscal stimulus in the form of tax cuts or increased federal spending have reached their practical limits, with the actual annual budget deficit running out of control at $4.0-plus trillion per year.

From the Fed’s standpoint, it can neither stimulate the economy nor contain inflation. Lowering rates has done little to stimulate the structurally-impaired economy, and raising rates may become necessary in defense of the dollar. Similarly, raising rates will do little to contain a non-demand driven inflation, such as seen in the current circumstance that is so heavily affected by high oil prices.

By the time hyperinflation kicks in, the economy already should be in depression, and the hyperinflation quickly should pull the economy into a great depression. Uncontained inflation is likely to bring normal commercial activity to a halt.

The greater the variance in income, the more negative are the longer term economic implications. A person earning $100,000,000 per year is not going to buy that many more automobiles that someone earning $100,000 per year. The stronger the middle class is, generally the stronger the economy will be. Extremes in income variance usually are followed by financial panics and economic depressions. U.S. Income variance today is higher than it was coming into 1929, and it is nearly double that of any other "advanced" economy.

Hyperinflationary Great Depression

In the United States, the printing presses have not been revved up heavily, yet, but the commitments are in place, as seen in the annual GAAP-based deficit running on average more $4.0 trillion per year. That amount is far beyond the ability of the government to tax or the political willingness of the government to cut entitlement spending. While the inevitable inflationary collapse, based solely on these funding needs, could be pushed well into the next decade, actions already taken likely have set the stage for a much earlier crisis.

The current systemic bailouts by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government, as well as earlier efforts by the Fed to buy time, have made the circumstance worse. Pushing recent Treasury funding needs on foreign investors — stuck with excess dollars from the ever-expanding U.S. trade deficit — has created a huge dollar overhang in the markets that already has started to crumble. The more the crisis has been pushed into the future, the greater the potential for pending calamity has become.

Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz noted in their classic A Monetary History of the United Statesthat the early stages of the Weimar Republic hyperinflation were accompanied by a huge influx of foreign capital, much as had happened during the U.S. Civil War. The speculative influx of capital into the U.S. at the time of the Civil War inflation helped to stabilize the system, as the recent foreign capital influx to the United States has helped stabilize the equity and credit markets of recent years. Following the Civil War, however, the underlying economy had significant untapped potential and was able to generate strong, real economic activity that covered the spending excesses of the war.

Post-World War I Germany was a different matter, where the country was financially and economically depleted as a penalty for losing the war. Here, after initial benefit, the influx of foreign capital helped to destabilize the system." As the mark depreciated, foreigners at first were persuaded that it would subsequently appreciate and so bought a large volume of mark assets …" Such boosted the foreign exchange value of the German mark and the value of German assets." As the German inflation went on, expectations were reversed, the inflow of capital was replaced by an outflow, and the mark depreciated more rapidly … (Friedman p. 76)."

The Weimar circumstance is closer to the current U.S. circumstance, although, in certain aspects, the current situation is worse. Unlike the untapped economic potential of the United States 140 years ago, today’s U.S. economy is languishing in the structural problems of the loss of its manufacturing base and a shift of domestic wealth offshore.

In the early 1920s, foreign investors were not propping up the world’s reserve currency in an effort to prevent a global financial collapse, knowing in advance that they were doomed to take a large hit on their investments in Germany. In today’s environment, both central bank and major private investors know that the dollar is going to be a losing proposition. They either expect and/or hope that they can get out of the dollar in time to lock in their profits, or, primarily in the case of the central banks, that they can forestall the ultimate global economic crisis.

It is this environment that leaves the U.S. dollar open to such a rapid and massive decline, and dumping of U.S. Treasuries, that the Federal Reserve would be forced to monetize significant sums of Treasury debt, triggering a monetary inflation. In this environment annual multi-trillion dollar deficits rapidly would feed into a vicious, self-feeding cycle of currency debasement and hyperinflation.

Lack of Physical Cash

The United States in a hyperinflation would experience the quick disappearance of cash as we know it. Shy of the rapid introduction of a new currency and/or the highly problematic adaptation of the current electronic commerce system to new pricing realities, a barter system is the most likely circumstance to evolve for regular commerce. Such would make much of the current electronic commerce system useless and add to what would become an ongoing economic implosion.

Some years back, I happened to be in San Francisco, having dinner with a former regional Federal Reserve Bank president and the chief economist for a large Midwestern bank. Market rumors that day had been that there was a run on a major bank in the City by the Bay. So I queried the regional Fed president as to what would be happening if the rumors were true.

He had had some personal experience with a run on banks in his region and explained how the Fed had a special team designed to handle such a crisis. The biggest problem he had had was getting adequate cash to the troubled banks to cover depositors, having to fly cash in by helicopters to meet the local cash flow needs.

The troubled bank in San Francisco, however, was much larger than the example cited, and the former Fed bank president speculated that there was not enough cash in the vaults of the regional Federal Reserve Bank, let alone the entire Federal Reserve System, to cover a true run on deposits at the major bank.

Therein lies an early problem for a system headed into hyperinflation: adequate currency. Where the Fed may hold roughly $210 billion in currency (sharply increased in the last year) outside of $50 billion in commercial bank vault cash, the bulk of roughly $780 billion in currency outside the banks is not in the United States. Back in 2000, the Fed estimated that 50% to 70% of U.S. dollar cash was outside the system. That number probably is higher today, with perhaps as little as $200 billion in physical cash in circulation in the United States, or roughly 1.5% of M3.

The rest of the dollars are used elsewhere in the world as a store of wealth, or as an alternate currency free of the woes of unstable domestic financial conditions. In Zimbabwe, for example, where hyperinflation is underway, U.S. dollars are used to maintain some semblance of economic activity, where wages and salaries seriously lag inflation, and goods often are available only on the black market.

Given the extremely rapid debasement of the larger denomination notes, with limited physical cash in the system, existing currency would disappear quickly as a hyperinflation broke.

For the system to continuing functioning in anything close to a normal manner, the government would have to produce rapidly an extraordinary amount of new cash, and electronic commerce would have to be able to adjust to rapidly changing prices.

In terms of cash, new bills of much higher denominations would be needed, but production lead time is a problem. Conspiracy theories of recent years have suggested the U.S. Government already has printed a new currency of red-colored bills, intended for some dual internal and external U.S. dollar system. If such indeed were the case, then there might be a store of "new dollars" that could be released at a 1-to-1,000,000 ratio, or whatever ratio was needed to make the new currency meaningful, but such would not resolve any long-term problems, unless it were part of an overall restructuring of the domestic and global financial and currency systems.

From a practical standpoint, however, currency would disappear, at least for a period of time in the early period of a hyperinflation.

Where the vast bulk of today’s money is not physical, but electronic, however, chances of the system adapting here are virtually nil. Think of the time, work and effort that went into preparing computer systems for Y2K, or even problems with the recent early shift to daylight savings time. Systems would have to be adjusted for variable, rather than fixed pricing, credit card lines would need to be expanded daily, the number of digits used in tallying dollar-denominated transactions would need to be expanded sharply.

While I have been advised that a number of businesses have accounting software that can handle any number of digits, I also noted on a recent cross-country trip that a large number of gas stations have older pumps that cannot register more than two digits’ worth of dollars in their totals or more than $9.99 per gallon of gas.

From a practical standpoint, the electronic quasi-cashless society of today also would shut down early in a hyperinflation. Unfortunately, this circumstance rapidly would exacerbate an ongoing economic collapse.

Barter System

With standard currency and electronic payment systems non-functional, commerce quickly would devolve into black markets for goods and services and a barter system.

Unlike Zimbabwe, the United States does not have widely available, for circulation, a back-up reserve currency for use in place of a highly-inflated domestic currency. The alternative here is in the traditional monetary precious metals. Gold and silver both are likely to retain real value and would be exchangeable for goods and services. Silver would help provide smaller change for less costly transactions.

Other items that would be highly barterable would include bottles of a good scotch or wine, or canned goods, for example. Similar items that have a long shelf life can be stocked in advance of the problem, and otherwise would be consumable if the terrible inflation never came. Separately, individuals, such as doctors and carpenters, who provide broadly useable services, would have a service to barter.

A note of caution was raised once by one of my old economics professors, who had spent part of his childhood living in a barter economy. He told a story of how his father had traded a shirt for a can of sardines. The father decided to open the can and eat the sardines, but he found the sardines had gone bad. Nonetheless, the canned sardines had taken on a monetary value.

Reserves of the Necessities of Life

Howard J. Ruff, who has been writing about these problems and issues since Nixon closed the Gold window, rightly argues that it will take some time for a barter system to be established, and suggests that individuals should build up a six-month store of goods to cover themselves and their families in the difficult times. Mr. Ruff covers this and many other excellent fundamentals in his new book How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years in the 21st Century.

Financial Hedges

During these times, safety and liquidity remain key concerns for investments, as investors look to preserve their assets and wealth through what are going to be close to the most difficult of times.

In such a circumstance, gold and silver would be primary hedging tools that would retain real value and also be portable in the event of possible civil turmoil. Also, at some point, the failure of the world’s primary reserve currency will lead to the structuring of a new global currency system. I would not be surprised to find gold as part of the new system, structured in there in an effort to sell the system to the public.

Real estate also would provide a basic hedge, but it lacks the portability and liquidity of gold. Having some funds invested offshore — outside of the U.S. dollar — would be a plus in circumstances where the government might impose currency or capital controls.

While equities do provide something of an inflation hedge — revenues and profits get expressed in current dollars — they also reflect underlying economic and political fundamentals. I still look for U.S. stocks to take an ultimate 90% hit, peak-to-trough, net of inflation, during this period. Where all stocks are tied to a certain extent to the broad market — to the way investors are valuing equities — such a large hit on the broad market will tend to have a dampening effect on nearly all equity prices, irrespective of the quality of a given company or a given industry.

Other Issues

A hyperinflationary depression would be extremely disruptive to the lives, businesses and economic welfare of most individuals. Such severe economic pain could lead to extreme political change and/or civil unrest. What has been discussed here still has not been a comprehensive overview of all possible issues, but rather at least has raised some questions and touched upon some likely consequences. No one can figure out better than you the peculiarities of this circumstance and how you and/or your business might be affected. Using common sense is about the best advice I can give.

Read the entire report and view the supporting charts here: "Hyperinflation Special Report" or here [PDF] by John Williams, www.shadowstats.com.

~ ~ ~

"...absolutely safe... ...fully protected... ...never lost a penny of insured deposits... ...none ever will... ...none ever will..."

~ ~ ~

Related: The Day the Dollar Falls

~ ~ ~

For those who really want to understand the engine of the 'Too Big To Fail monster' driving the U.S. into hyperinflation, don't miss this article from Zero Hedge.

Favorite quotes: "...the value of the dollar would go down by 1E10-15: you listening yet American middle class?"

"...thank you Mr. Einhorn [hedge fund manager] for finally starting to focus people's attention on one of the many facets of the Fed's uncontrollable liquidity Frankenstein. CDS [credit default swaps], while destructive, is merely the appetizer. What will truly annihilate financial markets are all those instruments that are in place only to perpetuate the myth that a 5% interest rate in 30 year Treasurys is somehow exorbitant (based on a quick back of the envelope calc, should prevailing interest rates move higher by 1%, the net IR exposure will rise by $3 trillion... in the wrong direction... at an exponential pace). Yet what better way to keep rates where they are than than to tell China: "Hey guys, you bust one auction, and this spring loaded balloon full of $420 trillion pieces of worthless Washington feces will blow up right in your face (and take us all down with you)." In essence this is an amusing revision of that old fable: the Fed owes the world a few billion here and there: well, Ben, you are out of luck, "You're Fired"; the Fed owes the world $1.4 quadrillion in naked and worthless pieces of paper (whose nudity will become apparent the second someone calls Bernanke's bluff) and the Fed owns the world."

Favorite reader comment by Cognitive Dissonance :

"There has to be a way to make the real risk in this mess clear to the average American."

"At first I thought the average American was simply too frightened to process information about the severity of these problems and to a certain extent I still hold that view.

But the problem sweeps across the education and occupation spectrum and in my view actually gets worse as you move up the ladder. This isn't simply an education or exposure issue. After I began asking more detailed questions, the picture became clearer to me. Mr. & Mrs. average American is worried about their piece of the pie, that they won't get out of the poker game before it's busted.

They bought into the economic system, often working at miserable jobs for years or decades in order to accumulate wealth and pensions. Now, with retirement around the corner, the economic vehicle is coughing and sputtering and might not make it to the end. I've posted before on ZH how Americans are deep captured by the system. In their minds, their ticket is stamped and thus non refundable, they're on the plane at 35,000 feet, it's two thirds of the way to their destination and they're committed regardless of how they feel about the situation.

The higher up the social/economic curve you travel, the more they're dependent upon a functioning system in order to "cash out" and retire. And that's how they see it. Cash out. While they do understand that most of their assets must actually remain in the system in order to be usable, they see a finish line, not a 20-30 year retirement process. They see their money as a pile that once accumulated, can be moved off the table to somewhere "safe" which is the actual word they use.

Reasonable or not their view is mostly fearful optimism. While things are going to hell, they will probably survive the plane crash mostly intact. This is more along the lines of wishful thinking or even head-in-the-sand denial than a thoughtful careful analysis of their own situation. You might be surprised how many doctors, lawyers, engineers and upper management types secretly pray to the God of their choice to just get them to their destination.

Not everyone feels this way and awareness varies. Those lower down the curve have less accumulated and thus less to lose. We ZH readers must remember that we do not represent "average" people, Americans or otherwise. We are engaged, curious, reasonably informed and for the most part mad as hell. Average Americans are not and I'm becoming convinced that up to a certain point and for the most part, this is a deliberate and conscious decision.

BTW, here is a link to a .PDF chart showing outstanding derivatives as measured by the BIS. Please don't leave it lying around for little children to pick up and possibly shoot someone with.

http://www.bis.org/statistics/otcder/dt1920a.pdf

BIS.org -> Statistics -> Derivatives

This table is chart 19 but there's other data there that will curl your hair."

Click graphic to enlarge.

Happy Sunday. :/ - c

Collapse

2009-11-08T00:04:00.004-05:00

Exclusive preview of the movie Collapse.

COLLAPSE - Theatrical Movie Trailer

www.CollapseMovie.com

"Grow up, or die."

1 Day

2009-11-07T00:06:00.004-05:00

Click chart to enlarge. Via Innocent Bystanders.

~ ~ ~

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche

~ ~ ~

- Annual Payroll Loss Rivals End of World War II Production Shutdown
- Unemployment Jumps to 10.2% (22.1% SGS) [In case you haven't figured it out, the U.S. is already experiencing a depression. During the Great Depression, unemployment in the United States rose to 25%. -- Wikipedia]
- Systemic Liquidity Problems Still Intensifying
- Fed Continues to Explode Monetary Base

~ ~ ~

1 day, and counting... to the implosion of the dollar.

Related: 24 Days

PELOSI: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail

2009-11-07T00:04:00.019-05:00

JCT Confirms Failure to Comply with Democrats’ Mandate Can Lead to 5 Years in Jail

Washington, Nov 6 -

Today, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-MI) released a letter from the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that the failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the Pelosi health care bill (H.R. 3962, as amended) could land people in jail. The JCT letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain “acceptable health insurance coverage” and who choose not to pay the bill’s new individual mandate tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.

In response to the JCT letter, Camp said: “This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail. It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately.”

Key excerpts from the JCT letter appear below:

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]

“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2]

“Criminal penalties

Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:

• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

When confronted with this same issue during its consideration of a similar individual mandate tax, the Senate Finance Committee worked on a bipartisan basis to include language in its bill that shielded Americans from civil and criminal penalties. The Pelosi bill, however, contains no similar language protecting American citizens from civil and criminal tax penalties that could include a $250,000 fine and five years in jail.

“The Senate Finance Committee had the good sense to eliminate the extreme penalty of incarceration. Speaker Pelosi’s decision to leave in the jail time provision is a threat to every family who cannot afford the $15,000 premium her plan creates. Fortunately, Republicans have an alternative that will lower health insurance costs without raising taxes or cutting Medicare,” said Camp.

According to the Congressional Budget Office the lowest cost family non-group plan under the Speaker’s bill would cost $15,000 in 2016. -- ###

Via republicans.waysandmeans.house.gov

Republican Ways and Means

Contact: Jim Billimoria or Sage Eastman (202) 226-4774

~ ~ ~

A Capitol Rumble

~ ~ ~

Nancy Pelosi's H.R. 3962 contains the following provisions:

* Permits federal taxpayer funding of abortion services, above and beyond the status quo of current law.
* Provides for a "health care czar" called the Health Choices Commissioner, who could forcibly enroll individuals in government-run insurance and whose tasks include requiring random compliance audits on Americans' health benefits plans.
* Allows for "community organizations" like ACORN and Planned Parenthood to assist the Health Choices Commissioner in enrolling individuals in the Health Insurance Exchange.

Need more?

* Encourages identity fraud for illegal immigrants seeking to gain taxpayer-subsidized health benefits through inadequate citizenship and legal status verification standards. Page 255, Section 345 of H.R. 3962 includes language requiring verification of income for individuals wishing to receive federal health care subsidies, and while the bill currently does include a requirement for applicants to verify their citizenship, it does not include a similar requirement to verify that person's identity, a key component of effective verification.
* Provides for 13 new and different tax increases, including an employer mandate excise tax.
* "Grandfathers" out of existence individual health insurance coverage.
* Retains the "death panels" by providing for bureaucrats working for a new comparative effectiveness institute funded by a tax on health benefits. The institute could publish the protocols needed to deny patients access to life-saving treatments on cost grounds.
* Contains NO ban on federal promotion of assisted suicide and/or health care rationing of treatments.
* Facilitates leftist, social engineering policies such as rewriting current tax law to allow domestic partners to be treated as "spouses."
* Retains both the individual and employer mandates to purchase health insurance or else face a financial penalty, and compliance to this mandate will be enforced by the IRS.
* Imposes a 2.5% tax on an individual's modified adjusted gross income if they fail to purchase "acceptable" health care coverage.
* Imposes a surtax, starting in 2011, on "high"-income people - that is, couples with adjusted gross income over $1 million and individuals over $500,000.
* Fails to hold Members of Congress to the same health care system requirements that Americans will have to live by under the public health insurance option.
* Prohibits states from using tort reform to reduce health care costs.
* Mandates that all health insurance companies accept all applicants, that they cannot deny anyone for pre-existing conditions, and that they cannot increase the monthly premiums for less healthy, more costly consumers.
* Accommodates "whistleblower" provisions for trial lawyers to bring suit against employers.
* Slashes Medicare payments to providers by more than $400 billion.
* Creates dozens of new bureaucracies (111 to be exact) including the Health Benefits Advisory Committee and the Health Choices Administration.
* Encourages people to drop their insurance in favor of the public option as it provides for underpaying medical providers, who will in turn jack up their rates for those patients who have private insurance, driving more people to the cheaper, government plan.
* Authorizes Medicare to pay doctors for providing advice to patients on end-of-life care.
* Grants the authority to negotiate drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
* Considers individuals to be treated as "children" up to the age of 26 for the purpose of remaining on their parents' insurance plan.
* Imposes an excise tax on medical devices.
* Cuts $170 billion from the Medicare Advantage program.
* Institutes $729.5 billion in job-killing tax increases on all Americans, fines those who can't afford to purchase government-forced insurance, and cripples businesses by taxing health benefits.
* If all of this weren't enough, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) even predicts that the public option's premiums will end up being quite high because it will attract less healthy people, who are more costly to the insurer. But, with a government-run plan, the government is the insurer, so higher cost projections for the government really means higher costs to American taxpayers. -- Chicago Daily Observer

~ ~ ~

Big Government Health Care PSA

A parody PSA about Big Government and its plans to take over health care. A spoof of Will Ferrell's ad for MoveOn.org.

~ ~ ~

The vote on H.R. 3962 is being cast today.

~ ~ ~

Michelle Malkin is Liveblogging: The new Imperial Congress votes on Pelosicare

Liveblogging, Pt. 2: The hurry-up House debate on health care

C-Span has a live stream here if you’re not near a TV.

11:08 p.m.: Dems erupt as only people who just got a lot closer to getting their hands on a good chunk of the U.S. economy can. “Free health care that costs well over a trillion dollars” passed, 220-215. One Republican, Anh Cao, voted yes.

A Common Man's Grease Lamp

2009-11-07T00:03:00.000-05:00

A Common Man's Grease Lamp

www.facebook.com/pages/Dave-Canterbury-Pathfinder/142229423061

2 Days

2009-11-06T06:50:00.011-05:00

United States Bank Philadelphia, 1875.

"I believe we can survive the folly of governments, even if they refuse to listen." -- Martin Armstrong.

Armstrong continues:

We are standing on the precipice of an new era in global-social-economics. How we enter this new age is of critical importance. Government is incapable to doing anything for any reform of its own abuse of power is not up to negotiation. We must weather the storm, and to do so we must understand its nature. Just as in the 1930s Great Depression set in motion profound changes that were even manifest in geopolitical confrontations, we have now reached such a crossroads. A debt crisis has its tentacles deeply embedded into every sector right into government. This is the distinction from a mere stock market crash that never alters the economy long-term. We are seriously still over-leveraged and some banks are still trying to be hedge funds and have to speculate to make a profit. That is a key warning sign that the worst is yet to come.

Read the rest from top to bottom.

Click "Fullscreen" at top of reader window, then "Zoom +" in lower left.

Is America On The Verge Of Another Bank War? Should We End The Fed Or Goldman Sachs?

~ ~ ~

2 days, and counting... to the implosion of the dollar.

Related: 24 Days

3 Days

2009-11-05T12:34:00.014-05:00

Moviegoers in France saw this poster of Gil Kenan's Monster House.

~ ~ ~

"The house is a castle which the King cannot enter." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

~ ~ ~

Fannie Mae Set To Become Largest US Landlord

Thousands of borrowers on the verge of foreclosure will soon have the option of renting their homes from Fannie Mae, under a policy announced Thursday.

The government-controlled company, through its new "Deed for Lease" program, will allow borrowers to transfer ownership to Fannie Mae and sign a one-year lease, with month-to-month extensions after that. -- AP

The catch: Fannie will be able to hold the home as not listed for sale. In essence the shadow inventory of millions of zombie houses will skyrocket overnight, further complicating any objective analyses of how many houses are available on the market (the answer: many, many more than you think, but the exact number escapes us).

It is clear now that the Fed will do everything in its power to attempt a reflation of the previous housing bubble, instead of wiping the slate clean. Taxpayer losses be damned: there are investment banks with horrendous balance sheets that need bailing out.

At the end of the day the question as always is who wins and who loses. And in the ongoing escalation of the conflict between Wall Street and Main Street, it is once again no surprise on whose side the Obama administration has decided to position itself. -- Zero Hedge

~ ~ ~

3 days, and counting... to the implosion of the dollar.

Related: 24 Days

Solar Flare Effects

2009-11-05T12:30:00.006-05:00

Solar flares occur when magnetic energy built up in the solar photosphere is suddenly released. Radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum is released; the energy released can equal that of a million 100 megaton hydrogen bombs exploding at the same time.

EM Spectrum Properties. Via Wikipedia. Click image to enlarge.

The first flare recorded occurred in 1859. A solar flare in 1989 blacked out all of Quebec, Canada. Solar flares in 1998 knocked out the Galaxy 4 satellite, causing eighty percent of the pagers in North America to fall silent. -- Space.com

Remember, remember the fifth of November...

2009-11-05T11:34:00.017-05:00

~ ~ ~

"Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot. " -- unknown

~ ~ ~

Guy Fawkes (13 April 1570 – 31 January 1606), also known as Guido Fawkes, the name he adopted while fighting for the Spanish in the Low Countries, belonged to a group of Roman Catholic restorationists from England who planned the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Their aim was to displace Protestant rule by blowing up the Houses of Parliament while King James I and the entire Protestant, and even most of the Catholic, aristocracy and nobility were inside. The conspirators saw this as a necessary reaction to the systematic discrimination against English Catholics.

The Gunpowder Plot was led by Robert Catesby, but Fawkes was put in charge of its execution. He was arrested a few hours before the planned explosion, during a search of the cellars underneath Parliament in the early hours of 5 November prompted by the receipt of an anonymous warning letter.

Guy Fawkes Night (or "bonfire night"), held on 5 November in the United Kingdom and some parts of the Commonwealth, is a commemoration of the plot, during which an effigy of Fawkes is burned, often accompanied by a fireworks display. The word "guy", meaning "man" or "person", is derived from his name. -- The rest, as they say, is history. Read it at Wikipedia.

~ ~ ~

The Gunpowder Plot: The 5 Conspirators

An introduction to the 5 main figures behind the 1605 Gunpowder Plot that almost destroyed England's political elite.

4 Days

2009-11-04T03:00:00.003-05:00

Bread can no longer be bought with Zimbabwe dollars.

~ ~ ~

"It may be necessary to use methods other than constitutional ones." -- Robert Mugabe

~ ~ ~

Economy of Zimbabwe

The economy of Zimbabwe is collapsing from economic mismanagement, resulting in 94% unemployment and hyperinflation. The economy poorly transitioned in recent years, deteriorating from one of Africa's strongest economies to the world's worst. Inflation has surpassed that of all other nations at over 80 sextillion(1021)% (although it is impossible to calculate an accurate value), with the next highest in Ethiopia at 41%. It currently has the lowest GDP real growth rate in an independent country and 3rd in total (behind Palestinian territories.)

Those who have money to spend find little to buy.

The country has reserves of metallurgical-grade chromite. Other commercial mineral deposits include coal, asbestos, copper, nickel, gold, platinum and iron ore. However, its ongoing political turmoil and one of the world's highest rate of inflation have greatly hampered its progress. Inflation, which many critics argue was caused by president Robert Mugabe's policies towards land reform, have led to internal upheaval and population displacement, and poverty.

Since 2000 president Mugabe has confiscated lands of white farmers, and this former net exporter of grain has now been plagued by hunger.

Farmers Mike Campbell [left] and wife Angela Campbell were abducted by a gang of Zanu-PF supporters and savagely beaten for several hours Photo: EPA. Via Telegraph. More at Agmates. [<-- Warning graphic photos.] Farmers evicted: food crisis to escalate [10/31/09].

Government spending is 56.4% of GDP. It has partly been financed by printing money, which has led to hyperinflation. State enterprises are strongly subsidized, taxes and tariffs are high. State regulation is costly to companies, starting or closing a business is slow and costly.

Labor market is highly regulated, hiring a worker is cumbersome, firing a worker is difficult and the unemployment has risen to 94% (at the end of 2008; the figure was 80% in 2005). -- The rest, as they say, is history. Read it at Wikipedia.

~ ~ ~

4 days, and counting... to the implosion of the dollar.

Related: 24 Days

Texas Punch

2009-11-04T02:50:00.005-05:00

h/t: Urban Survival

Near my home in Texas, there is a large German-speaking population. One day, a rancher walking down a country road, noticed a man using his right hand to drink water from the rancher's stock pond.

The rancher shouted, "Sehr angenehm! Trink das wasser nicht. Die kuhen haben dahin gesheissen." Which means: "Glad to meet you! Don't drink the water. The cows have sh*t in it."

The man shouted back, "I'm from New York and just down here campaigning for Obama's health care plan. I can't understand you. Please speak in English."

The rancher replied, "Use both hands. You'll get more."