(OP) The Solari Report: Thursday, July 2, 2009 - 9pmET
Our 2nd Quarter Wrap-up is called "Surfing the Slow Burn." The "slow burn"
http://solari.com/blog/?p=818 is my term for a centrally managed economy in which a small group of insiders covertly subsidize themselves at the expense of the outsiders through (i) monetary policy, (ii) manipulation of government resources, regulation and enforcement and (iii) manipulation of financial markets and data.
What was most remarkable in the second quarter was the distinct advantage enjoyed by those who have taken the time to understand what is happening and have positioned themselves to navigate the changes underway. The lesson of the second quarter is that understanding the "real deal" is the basis for effective action.
Indeed, when enough of us begin to do so, the possibilities for effective change grow exponentially. So despite all the "shock and awe" around us, something very positive is happening as more and more of us shift our thinking, take action and reach out to collaborate.
In our year-end wrap up, 2008: Looking Back
http://solari.com/blog/?p=1929, I said that the big question of 2008 was the same one I have been asking as $4 trillion went missing from the US government: "Where is the money?"
http://solari.com/blog/?p=501In our 1st Qtr 2009: Looking Back
http://solari.com/blog/?p=2379, with bailouts approaching $12-14 trillion and counting (See Bailout Mo' Money
http://solari.com/blog/?p=2258), I said that the importance of this question continued to grow. With the laws related to public and private financial management treated by insiders as mostly irrelevant, the global financial coup d' etat underway was becoming more apparent
http://solari.com/blog/?p=2058.
As I prepare our wrap up for the second quarter, the importance of missing money keeps growing as unemployment rises towards Great Depression levels
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3342 and an out of control financial system keeps getting wierder. (See The Missing Money
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3208 and $134.5 Billion Mystery Bonds
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3276)
The signs are growing that the Wall Street banks have now built their war chest and are moving to ensure that Main Street is on its knees or worse as they move in for the kill. (See Stimulus or Economic Hit?
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3313) Signals of subtle capital controls that will help to force the continued flow of capital to Wall Street are growing as well. (See Foreign Financial Accounts
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3269 and Financial Coup d' Etat...401k Trial Balloon?
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3297)
Legislation promoting control of food (See Food Safety Bill
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3330), health care (See Big Cuts in Medicare and Medicaid Coming
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3122 and The Data Beast
http://solari.com/archive/databeast) and finance (See Obama's Sweeping Financial Regulation Plan
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3228) is pending; as is energy legislation to create the framework for resource taxation and, through carbon trading, create a new generation of fraud and derivatives that embroils localization efforts in businesses that depend on government engineered corporate profits.
When all of this legislation is viewed in totality, there will be no need to formally shred the U.S. Constitution since no one will be able to understand, let alone comply, with the trillions of rules related to every aspect of our lives and we certainly will not be able to pay the taxes and fees associated with staying alive anyway.
It would appear that the American people understand the legislative and appropriation wave rolling over us. I estimate that for every $1,000,000 awarded or loaned to the large banks in bailout money, Americans purchased one gun and 10,000 rounds of ammunition.
As I described in my last June Solari Report, state governments have been temporarily supported with the stimulus package. As predicted, the pain at the state and municipal levels has continued to rise with the California budget crisis serving as a bellweather. (See Shock Doctrine California, Part I, II, III, IV
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3209.)
As hopes for a last minute bailout from the federal government continue, Martin Weiss is now predicting that default is inevitable on $59 billion of California municipal bonds. This could send shockwaves through the entire muncipal market. If the Feds let California go down, more states are likely to follow. State and local land and assets, such as parks and open lands, will be ripe for the plucking. (See Financial Ecosystems
http://solari.com/blog/?p=3171)
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« Last Edit: March 19, 2016, 11:58:02 am by Luck »
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http://solari.com/podcast/Solari_Report_Digest-2.mp3 Catherine points out the high cost of doing things on the cheap at the state and local levels, and the potential boom to these same economies, when the larger financial ecosystem is taken into account. When we were talking about agriculture and I read you Sir James Goldsmith's statement, where he talks about looking at the cost of something on an inclusive basis, looking at not just making food the cheapest possible, but making all the social and infrastructure costs attributable to a change in the agriculturatl system and incorporating them in your assessment of costs. ... A lot of the promotion of centralization and incorporations has come from making very complex rules, that requires government at federal, state and local levels to do the cheapest thing within their budgets, or their line items, instead of doing the cheapest thing ecosystem-wide. There was a story up on the blog several months ago about a wonderful woman in Florida. She was unemployed, worked hard all her life, got herself unemployed, got food stamps, had a problem with the food stamps, called customer service hotline and proceeded to get somebody in India, working for J.P. Morgan-Chase. And the absurdity of the state of Florida paying people to not work, while, you know, they were basically paying somebody in India to do the same job that that person could do, struck her as ridiculous. Well, it turned out in the various media coverage of this story that they mentioned that Tennessee also had a contract for the food stamps with the same Indian site of J.P. Morgan-Chase. So one of the things that the Financial Permaculture Institute has decided to do at our event on September 22nd is to map out the financial ecosystems in and around the Tennessee food stamp program and social services program. Why do we have thousands of acres of farmland laying fallow and people not working, when, in fact, we're bringing in food from heaven knows where, far, far away, when ... people here could just be simply growing food and feeding themselves, not to mention doing the data service and customer servicing jobs. So this is going to be a fabulous real-world exercise. The reason I'm excited about it is it brings up the question how can we re-engineer government, so we do the thing which is cheapest for the taxpayers system-wide - not just within one little program item or line item. Believe it or not, if you unleash that one change, as the state and local budgets cut back, there's a huge amount of jobs and income that can be swung into local economies. It's a wonderful way to relocalize your economy. So I want to encourage anybody who's interested in that, to stay tuned, or to join us in September, the 22nd, at the Financial Permaculture Summit, here in Tennessee. It's a whole methodology you can take back to your county, and, I'll tell you, if we want to create real jobs and income in counties, what we have to do is stop trading them out. That's the first thing to be doing is to just stop shipping them out, when it doesn't make economic sense. ... If you can't join us in Tennessee, we hope to have the information available to you in other ways online afterward.http://solari.com/podcast/Solari_Report_Digest-1.mp3