14 km ( 9 mi) ENE of Springfield, OR

MAP 1.8 2012/05/28 01:16:07 45.059 -122.320 14.5

23 km ( 14 mi) ESE of Molalla, OR

I’ve been saving the contents of this email. I thought with my posts about austerity, I would share these gentlemen’s forecasts:

• Forecast #1 - Country after country will abandon their so-called “austerity” programs.
• Forecast #2 - If governments cut spending, the debts will pile up even faster!
• Forecast #3 - Some of the world’s largest banks will suffer massive losses and huge new bailouts will be needed.
• Forecast #4 - The European Central Bank (ECB) will kick its money printing presses into overdrive and very, very soon.
• Forecast #5 - The U.K. and the U.S. will also join the money printing rampage.
• Forecast #6 - Before this great financial crisis comes to its final tipping point a few years from now, you’ll probably see up to $20 TRILLION in global money printing.
• Forecast #7 - This unprecedented global orgy of money printing is about to light the fuse on an unprecedented period of global hyperinflation.
• Forecast #8 - The gold correction I’ve been forecasting will soon end, and gold will ultimately soar to at least $5,000 per ounce!

GOT GOLD?

You can see the list of words here that may flag your blog or social media site and cause you to receive an unfriendly, midnight knock. And here are the words I’ve used:

Drill - as in drill baby drill
Exercise - as in “I get all my exercise being a pallbearer for my friends who exercise.
Homeland security
Organized crime
State of emergency
Security
Riot
Nuclear threat
Cloud
Plume
Radiation
Radioactive
(What no Fukushima?)
Epidemic
Hazardous
Infection
Gas
North Korea
Ebola
H5N1 and H1N1
Avian
Flu
Pandemic
Pork
Collapse
Grid
Power
(What no EMP?)
Anything to do with drugs, Mexico, Illegal Immigration, (sorry we are not supposed to use “illegal”)
La Raza is ok!
Anything to do with terrorism
Anything to do with weather

Is this a great country or what?

How hard will it be to cut spending when 49.1% are receiving some sort of government benefit. Even this writer receives social security and my wife starts in October. It would be difficult for many of us to go without social security and for some, Medicare.

For many, any politician suggesting cuts to “entitlements” will be a loser. Then you have the CBO that tells us that combination of tax increases and spending cuts that is set to automatically hit in 2013…”would sink the economy into recession.”

Two Sewing
by Hazel Hall

The Wind is sewing with needles of rain.
With shining needles of rain
It stitches into the thin
Cloth of earth. In,
In, in, in.
Oh, the wind has often sewed with me.
One, two, three.

Spring must have fine things
To wear like other springs.
Of silken green the grass must be
Embroidered. One and two and three.
Then every crocus must be made
So subtly as to seem afraid
Of lifting colour from the ground;
And after crocuses the round
Heads of tulips, and all the fair
Intricate garb that Spring will wear.
The wind must sew with needles of rain,
With shining needles of rain,
Stitching into the thin
Cloth of earth, in,
In, in, in,
For all the springs of futurity.
One, two, three.

Aren’t those first two lines fabulous?

Hazel Hall was an Oregonian who died in 1924 at 38. “She helped the family finances by doing fine needlework for wealthy families in the West Hills. “

Google “austerity” and there are 33 million entries. The word was just declared the word of the year in 2010. What is austerity and why is it so controversial?

Wikipedia defines austerity, in economics, “…as referring to a policy of deficit-cutting by lowering spending often via a reduction in the amount of benefits and public services provided. Austerity policies are often used by governments to try to reduce their deficit spending and are sometimes coupled with increases in taxes to demonstrate long-term fiscal solvency to creditors.”

When a government spends too much by borrowing and couples that with promises to it’s citizens all sorts of benefits, it will eventually run out of other people’s money. Creditors will balk at loaning more money without demanding higher interest rates. Any household that lives beyond its means, will have to cut back. Not governments! They can’t cut back because the citizens will vote the politicians out or riot. They try to tax the 1% more to pay the bills, but the rich will move out of the country, just as they’ve done in New York and California.

Borrowing money is like being on crack, you need more and more. Pretty soon the interest costs alone will eat you alive. Some economists say that a country has passed the point of no return when its debt reaches 100% of GDP.

“Critics argue that, in periods of high unemployment, austerity policies are counter-productive, because deficit cutting reduces GDP (which typically means less tax revenue to pay off the debt); and that short-term stimulus is necessary to deal with deficits in the long-term.” That appears to be true, but short term stimulus, meaning borrowing more money, is the cause of the problem.

Now, countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy and Portugal and the U.S. are faced with telling their citizens the well is dry. No more food assistance, unemployment insurance, fire and police protection, no more street lights, no more social security and no more health care. The people will not sit back and accept this without protest. The governments will be forced by circumstances to call out the guards.

Like any family faced with mounting debts, the solution is bankruptcy, a repudiation of all debts and starting over. Governments don’t want to deal with the consequences of their overspending and over-promising, so they try to avoid facing the problem head on. They want to drag the solution out, but soon, very soon they will seek bankruptcy and the it will be many times worse than if they had taken their medicine early.

It’s too late for countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy and Portugal, and Japan. For the U.S., I don’t think we have a politician that will choose bankruptcy or even austerity!

20 km ( 12 mi) NNE of Halfway, OR